The Barren Adventures of Wimble Lord and Pieces of Humanity: Two Novellas by Neil Baker

THE BARREN ADVENTURES

OF

WIMBLE LORD

and

PIECES OF HUMANITY

Two Novellas

by

Neil Baker

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© 2014 Neil Baker. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/01/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-9835-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-9834-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014905242

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE BARREN ADVENTURES OF WIMBLE LORD

PART I

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

PART II

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

EPILOGUE

PIECES OF HUMANITY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank Kristin for her total dedication and acute sense of detail in the preparation of the two novellas that comprise the content of this book. I would also like to add that beyond any sense of literary structure, she is, indeed, my inspiration and soulmate!

THE BARREN ADVENTURES OF WIMBLE LORD

PART I

CHAPTER 1

I have mastered the routine of supplying the bomb shelter with filtered air. I know that, even at rest, a man needs at least three cubic feet of air a minute, and as a consequence, my sleeping periods are taken with precautions. I force myself, when I do take sleep, to wake up within the half hour and hand crank in more fresh air.

It is almost degrading to think that a hand-operated air blower, which is fastened to the side of Shelter’s metallic wall, is 99% of the reason why I’m still alive. I can imagine a handful of peculiar things saving my life … but this ridiculous looking contraption? If I were to describe its structure, it looks to me like a snail that has just been beheaded at the guillotine, and worse yet, this snail bears an angel’s wing. Snails, with their ram’s horns that they can either expose or retract bring to mind signs of death and rebirth, motives of the eternal homecoming. It’s intriguing to think that snails are more prone to appear after rain, which thereby links them to the agricultural cycle. And their spiral shells: How much they must resemble the face of Heaven, more or less the moon that may not see the sun. But, getting back to the air blower, I mustn’t ridicule the thing since it is my strongest instrument of survival.

Its operation is quite unusual and even worth delving into a bit. A three-inch intake pipe (the blessed thing is sitting approximately a foot above the ground and is even wearing a convenient weather cap over its hollow head so that all the poisonous whatnots don’t come sailing down into my cozy domain) sucks in the good air via a hand-operated blower. It is even equipped with an exhaust pipe to filter stale air. And every here and there, I just give a little crank … and here comes the new fresh air, which I so artfully breathe in with full heart’s content.

I am presently seven feet away from Hell and God knows how many feet away from Heaven. My living quarters, my being here, and my entire thinking process make me feel as if they were under the command of an animator’s hand. I can’t even think without first seeing the words written above my head. Must I become obsessed with a thought? Oh yes, I was on the topic of Shelter’s oval construction.

The distance from floor to ceiling, twelve feet, appears to be tailored for my comfort. I am five feet, seven inches tall. Two long strides carry me across Shelter’s length, and twelve steel bars, protruding like teeth out of the wall, lead me up to a metal trap door. And I mustn’t forget my currently unoccupied cot, which is fastened to the sidewall opposite the stairs.

Close to a year ago, I had the foresight to stock Shelter with a six-month supply of various canned foods. I also possess one can opener/bottle opener, one battered fork, one pocket knife, sixty-six books of matches, a flashlight, several batteries, a few cases of toilet tissue, one shovel, notebook, pens, an emergency toilet, a human waste bucket, two blankets, a six-month supply of water (considering the body needs a quart of water per day to survive), and the Hidden Book. Two plastic trashcans serve to dispose of the garbage and waste materials. There is disinfectant to help disguise the smell, but since I do not leave Shelter at any time, all of the unbearable odors are accumulating.

The climate within Shelter is the most unpredictable thing of all. It is either too cold or too hot, and it is a laborious feat trying to adjust my body to such harsh differences.

The end was coming. The Nuclear Revolution. Everyone knew it, but no one could stop it. All the world was guilty. Violence had become man’s obsession. Only I was not ready for the end. I broke the ‘Death Law’ man had imposed upon himself and retreated down into Shelter, where I am now left to contemplate my life above.

*      *      *

I was at the Center, and I was deep in the midst of the Hidden Book. Even then, its contents became imprinted in my mind, and the words streamed through my brain in waves of mysterious revelation:

Rebirth! The mysterious blueprint of growth. Memory incarnate. The script of existence is a multidimensional universe in reference to letters of living purpose. For a while, it suited existence in space and time, and therein god was defined: Billet-doux; but, outside of this, grains of unconsciousness are unleashed, energy limitless is unbound, and there is a new detail to contend with but only new as it pertains to outside of the senses. There is a range beyond the waves that cry, All cats love fish but fear to wet their paws. A mirror invisible, where a gene left over from earth is found … walking on water.

Even as IHS appeared, first on earth (microscopic dust particles enveloped by ice), he began to live in the mind of god. Oftentimes, he found god taking refuge as a gene in a snowball crystal, and he would be compelled to seek and find Dawn’s Night Angel. Deep secret conversations took place in any one of some sixty trillion odd rooms: Acid conversations at the DAIS; conversations that brought out blood by the wringing of the nose; all-in-all, conversations spoken in the exedra among tight-lipped Grecians. The clancular conversations were put on tape that, when uncoiled and played, stretched out fifty billion miles.

Destruction occurred long before the earth was formed.

Armageddon Was Over, lord.

Implosion.

Amaze. god breaks down. A maze. The network is intricate, and as god approaches one, one could not be more dazed. Unseen, a clandestine voice shouts, Catalyst! Not a creator. Was, in fact, the earth undone by way of synthesis even though it seems a contradiction to say at the beginning? For a synthesis would suggest a formation of otherwise shapeless parts into whole (i.e., garment), and in applying the term to an ‘undoing’ of the earth, one might think the word tobe misplaced. But without skirting the issue, consider this: The world is now lodged in god’s brain — beneath his garment — the combination of thesis and antithesis into a higher stage of truth. In this way, it is now a replacement of an otherwise usual reality, an abstraction, both visionary and absent. For is not god both rational and irrational, logical and illogical, the one to be?

Angtach … Nitolol … Muquixis … Suana …

Catalyst!

What voice does rage and catcalls? What wind gives rise to such a cry? If god is indeed a carrier, holding the seed between worlds, then whose seed does he carry? his own? I aquifolium?

Is it? It is. The forth watch. The familiar cry of Ma, TT. hew! Two … Four … Seven! The fami …

Who’s in charge!

Holly!

Dazed Nation! Apocalypse!

The magnetic tape, coiled, carries the speeches. The speeches have been heard though the thoughts have remained concealed. In the heart, there is a tape-like coil. The code of life. It too has been played and heard. It too conceals the ultimate origin of its power: the cell’s god.

The dust roamed, and in its midst, the code. Originally, from a turmoil, the dust rose and randomly floated through the galaxies, the seas, dimensions unseen from the nooscopic eyes that later gave a new structure and meaning to the dust.

In two trillion years, one per second, accumulating into a ball, still unseen, Plato prisms, spirals, and Revenging Night Angel make for an arresting trinity: Deadening mneme, the past aims like an obus and hits the perspicacious one constricted by the creator’s hand — in reality, no more than grains of sand. The virus, man, reaches its destiny only by way of sweeps and currents of the hand. god’s plan? To be the voice in the cool breeze of the day. To appear at the bottom of the leaf, in the feuilleton, for me to understand. Let it be, but let me be your guide in hermeneutics. At the wall, a virus will turn back upon him like a pack of dogs around a bleeding head. What god gave to save! attack! rape! lick! and murder! made (in minutes) Accelerate! An offspring. Attraction. Rape, by father to daughter to son, made. Torn husk is all that remains until dust rises, defying the G constant.

Leaving the Center was always a precarious odyssey. In spite of the systematic regimentation of society, there was an underlying sense of chaos that pervaded the lining of existence. The political and military factions within the main body of the Continuum were at odds with one another, thus producing a future consigned to chronic political violence, corruption, and lack of freedom. On every street corner, one was susceptible to interrogation. Once, I was apprehended and taken to a shabby dungeon where dim lights pooled on the ground floor like blood washed of its vibrant color. Government officials operated behind embrasures of security, ready to whiplash any suspicious nonesuch with a torrent of questions. I was a nonesuch in their eyes, and I was fast becoming a victim of bombardment as they directed a stream of particles, short and indeclinable parts of speech, against the atomic center of my secular transformation.

Your thoughts are the antithesis of Higgledy-Piggledy, for in the circumference of your ordered mind, you are committing an heinous act against the munificent attitude of the Savoir-Vivre, and your pestiferous nature can no longer be tolerated as it is downright pestilential to conformity.

I beg your pardon. Although I confess to pettifoggery, I am akin to a stelliferous sense of being, and, therefore, I beg to deviate with your harum-scarum methods of control.

That response put me in the clink, where I joined John Patmos in his deliberations on the animating principles of incorporeality.

But even here, I was at odds, as the breadth of the earth, the abyss, and wisdom enveloped me with a haunting exultation.

Manifesting myself into perverse thoughts that separate people from the High Sanctity, I became a disciplined spirit that fled from deceit as no secret thought is without result. The generative creatures of the world consist of destructive poison, and there is no remedy when a life comes to its end, and we are born by mere chance into a ‘forgotten in time.’

CHAPTER 2

M onday was University and an argument with my Guardian. He worked in a steel factory, and for this reason, I remained cold towards him. His only thought was of steel: steel of body, steel of substance, steel of strength, steel of lasting, everlasting quality. Wimble, he told me, I’m trying to understand you.

My female Guardian worked with clothes. I saw her at the factory once. She was jammed between bodies that twiddled their fingers on a platform. Steam was hissing and rising from an assortment of treacherous machinery, and it formed stratus-like clouds around the women. The gas stung my Guardian’s eyes, but her hands were too busy fumbling with clothes to wipe away the exhaustion.

Here’s your capsule. You forgot to take it today. Will I see you tonight? she asked.

No. I’m studying at the Center.

Then I’ll see you in the morning.

I glanced down at the wet paper sack between her feet and then at the capsule in my hand. It was nothing but a means to conformity, but non-conformity was my secretive desire. All right, I said, with subtle blankness.

*      *      *

Since time is neither here nor there, nor around the corner, nor down the block, nor up at the Center, I no longer need to situate myself into an accepted bracket of space; for time is no longer separated by the hour, by the minute, by the second, by the bell. In fact, time has accomplished the impossible — it has completely vanished into space.

Shelter is getting hot!

I estimate my stay in Shelter thus far to be about a week. A week since the pounding stopped and the world above me became silent. Now it is I who makes the noise.

Boredom is taking over. I preoccupy myself on the ladder, putting my ear up to the metal entrance and listening to the hollow wind, a kind of wind that I used to hear inside of seashells, and I pace back and forth, back and forth like a neurotic lion in a zoo cage.

The Blind Man is practicing to walk and to feel again. He robot-slides across the floor as if his feet were blocks of sandpaper. He reaches out and pokes things in the face. He finds the can opener and the canned food and laughs like a successful imbecile. He begins to open the can, and his laughter is broken by the cranky joints in his fingers. He listens for the final snap of the can lid and gets a squirt of liquid in his face. He fumbles for the battered fork but cannot find it, so he eats the beans with black fingers. His teeth grind back and forth as if operated by a switch. He stops. He swallows. The beans taste rancid, but he expresses nothing. He digs in for more beans and licks a fingernail. The Blind Man bumps into the wastebasket and drops the piece of tin. It crashes with a twang. The Blind Man lies down on the cot and listens to nothing. The Blind Man’s ears need adjusting, but he dozes off into space.

I have just cranked air into Shelter. Second in importance to my survival is the water, for I can endure a day without food, but the body must have its proper amount of water. I take in about one quart per day. I might stretch my water supply to last me for a day or so after the sixth month, but then I will be compelled to look above for replenishments. And who knows, maybe I will even find a survivor like myself.

I cannot accustom myself to the darkness. A flashlight is burning now, but I nearly cry like a baby when it is turned off. I lie in the darkness, or sometimes I manage to create a little test. When the light is off, I allow until the count of 200 to relocate the exact position of every item inside Shelter. I say to myself Matches, and within the count of 10, I hope to find the matches. Then I say, Shovel, and within the count of 20 I attempt to find the shovel. The test is carried on until I have touched every object with my hands. My energy is exhausted afterward, but the test helps to save me from insanity.

I will soon turn Flashlight off and try to sleep. Everything runs backwards when one no longer needs a pair of eyes. I’ll sleep with them open, and I’ll walk with them closed. And when they cry, I just hang them up to dry.

Oh, goodnight Wimble. You need your rest.

CHAPTER 3

L ike every child, I had my one little superiority, which was ‘digging holes.’ Once, when I was twelve years old, I dug a hole in the backyard and dashed away to find Guardian …

I’ve hit China!

What do you mean you’ve hit China?

I’ve hit it. That’s what I done. I smacked it right on its bottom.

Now Wimble. What business is that of yours? Explain yourself.

Ain’t no explaining. I dug a hole to China. That is my business. It wasn’t hard. It didn’t take me long. It was easy. China’s an easy place to dig to.

Well, may I see this hole of yours?

Oh, it’s much too deep for you to see.

Really?

Much too dangerous too. You’re liable to get lost and hurt yourself. Well, I’m going out to dig some more.

"Don’t you get lost now." Guardian, at this time, was watching the water drain from the sink — a ‘habit’ she had acquired during her official training.

Oh, Wimble never gets lost, I said. Wimble knows all the ins and outs of holes.

I grew older and qualified for a position in an AntiThought Institution … but I was fired before my first evaluation for ThinkingThoughts.

I was never cut out for the word permanent, and two tired feet carried me from one window to another — always looking in at people looking down. My job applications were reported as ‘Misplaced. Can you reapply your Status?’ Then I misplaced my StatusCard, forgot my number, and became an indefinable ‘dementiazen’ of US, the Universal Synthesis. Normally, indefinable dementiazens (citizens suffering from dementia) were arrested, put away, confined someplace, and never seen again thereafter. And so, I had to be extra cautious whenever the Guards were present lest they detect me as one