i.... . . . .
Einstein's brain is pickled for posterity.
dots splatter the page / windscreen cutting cross-section
of vinegary drizzle at speed
and heading for your open mouth
the face of a famous scientist behind the wheel
about to be projected through
the about to be shattered into
a thousand tongue-lacerating particles
glass
and the miraculously re-formed head bursts
out of its pickle jar and rolls onto the floor
yellow and dripping.... . . . .
____________________
Ever watchful and always on the alert, police investigating the remarkable theft of Einstein's brain are at the scene of the crash within minutes. The area is cordoned off with flashing lights and strips of shiny fluorescent tape, which flutter and twist in the wind on their stalk-like poles.
A line of officers on hands and knees scrutinizes the road surface minutely. Clearly the fiendish perpetrators of this dastardly deed have left some important clues behind: a glistening, reptilian slug-trail of chemicals mingled with water leads to the burnt out vehicles.
The line of police shuffles towards them like a caterpillar slipping sideways on a tilting cabbage leaf that quivers under the fine spray of rain.
Much of the evidence slips through their fingers as amoeba-sized chemical droplets, agitated by the rain, circle one another in the water, eating and being eaten, as if retaining the savage momentum of the accident. Only the petrol stains appear remotely still, the energy of the impact frozen into concentric rings of prismatic colour.
But as the flashing lights play over their surface, the boundaries between the different colours become blurred and reveal no more than the opaque wet tarmac beneath. Shiny and dark brown, the colour of magnetic tape, it spools to the horizon and winds around the turning earth.
____________________
Inspector Holmes chews on his pipe and thinks for a moment, before settling back, comfortable and secure, into the cocoon-like interior of the patrol car. It whisks him off at high speed, all lights flashing and sirens wailing, to interview the only man who knows, currently lying in hospital in a critical condition.
____________________
The only man who knows is,
so they say,
a famous genetic scientist.
It's hard to tell.
His whole body is mummified, bandaged beyond recognition.
The hospital staff have nicknamed him “the invisible man”.
Now he is alone.
There is something he wants to communicate.
But his shattered hands cannot write,
cannot even hold open his notebook.
Pages flick past jerkily, like frames of silent film.
He lets them fall to the floor and reaches across,
trying to grasp a small dictaphone on the bedside table.
Only the bandages
muffle the screams of his every pore at this effort.
The shattered hands fumble with the controls
for several frustrating minutes.
Finally, they raise the microphone
to the place where his mouth should be
and he begins to rasp his message.
But unknown to him, the tape is defective.
Soon it will begin to spool off the reels
and wind itself around the turning mechanism.
____________________
Meanwhile, in the desert, a frenzied man inscribes scrolls with furious strokes and writes of seas of blood drowning those who dare to challenge the Gods' right to creation. None of which has any bearing on the present inquiry.
____________________
Nurses giggle and point as the great detective strides purposefully through the hospital lobby. A young doctor emerges from an operating theatre:
“I’m sorry,” he says. “We lost him. But,” he adds, taking off his gloves and reaching into his pocket, “he left this.” And he holds up a small tape recorder with ribbons of shredded and twisted tape hanging out of it.
“Come along, Watson,” says Holmes. “There’s no time to lose. Let’s get this to the chaps at forensic straightaway.”
____________________
The chaps at forensic
are conducting a post-mortem.
Patiently,
they peel off the white bandages
only to find still more underneath,
slightly yellowed by antiseptic,
the colour and smell
of a pickled onion.
As they continue to peel off the layers,
the limbs get thinner
and thinner
until all that is left
is a pile of fabric strips.
There is no body.
____________________
Meanwhile in the desert, our frenzied friend continues to write of seas of blood drowning those who dare to challenge the Gods' right to creation. This time, police dismiss it as a hoax.
____________________
However, through the miracles of science, the chaps at forensic have indeed managed to piece together the cassette intact. Well, almost.
Holmes is unimpressed though. When it comes to the big picture, these boffins are out of their depth. He spools back the tape.
Holmes has no truck with modern methods of detection and insists on a transcript.
“One simply can’t make any deductions if one can't see the beginning and the end at the same time, my dear Watson. Now stop complaining and get on with it. There’s a good chap.”
Watson writes, occasionally rewinding, as the man’s voice is hard to hear.
Life without hands
All my books have their pages glued together.
I bat them out of my third storey window
with the fingerless ball of flesh at the end of my arm:
half rigid with bone, half pudgy with dough-like lumps,
it reminds me of semi-dried clay.
As they fall, the books do not
open up, parachute-like,
their pages fluttering in the air . . . . . . . .
They plummet solidly to earth,
solidly onto the Ugs below,
and lie enigmatically on the pavement,
like the monolith in “2001”.
Only this time the Ugs will ignore it.
They have learnt their lesson.
They wave their fisty stumps angrily,
which is all they're good for.
We tried to mould nature and God
has cut off our hands in punishment.
Now every step backward is a step forward, they say.
Only then will we reach heaven.
Heaven is the place of many hands.
“That’s all there is, Sir.”
“Hmmmm. It’s not much to go on, is it ?” says Holmes.
____________________
Outside it is still raining, and the rain taps out Morse code messages on the window panes with increasing urgency. Water levels are rising and some coastal areas are already flooded.
____________________
Meanwhile, back at the laboratory, a mutated butterfly, wings the size of a large atlas, is disturbed by the vibrations of the doorbell ringing.
Too heavy to fly, it crawls sluggishly on the floor of its enclosure and flaps its book jacket wings to reveal brilliantly coloured patterns: concentric circles like a giant eye surrounded by smaller markings like an illuminated manuscript in some alien tongue.
Someone answers the door: a round package has arrived, special delivery, about the weight and feel of a large fruit of some kind. It is heavily wrapped up and smells rather strange.
Peel off the paper, layer after layer and suddenly the room dissolves in blinding white light - heat of the sun - wave after wave of energy billowing outwards
- a mushroom shape appears on the horizon, soon to be joined by others
- and the rain clouds grow elephantine feet and stamp on the ground, striding across hemispheres.... . . . .
____________________
The rain has stopped now.
At the top of a mountain
on the equator
a man stands under a giant lens.
He squints at the splattered universe
and observes
the tiny specks in the reels of undeveloped film
at the limit of his range.
Under the effort of concentration,
his eye begins to water.... . . . .
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