Ludo Brax: Intergalactic Gig Worker (Chapter 38)

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As luck would have it, the next morning I awoke to find out it was my day off.

It seemed strange, I thought, to have a work schedule in Paradise. But then again, as much as I rebelled against the idea, I was a creature of habit.

Besides, the struggle of the workweek was sure to make this day all the more sweet.

It was like that Holy Philosophical Doctrine I had accidentally espoused about Contrast. What was it called again? Oh well.

Images of waffles and other long lost 20th century delicacies began to fill my head as I headed to the kitchen.

What I found there instead of "sausage patties" was a frenzied rush of activity. My family, every single one of them, even the dog, clad in a turtleneck that did not go with his beret, were on the move.

Barely acknowledging me as they rushed out the door, they simply managed to say, as if rehearsed, the same phrase:

"Have fun at Congregation!"

**

Congregation, as luck would have it, was not an ironic nod to the fact that I planned to sit around all day and in no circumstances be attending an event in which I had to be around other people, but rather an event I was expected to attend in which I had to be around other people.

In fact, it became a weekly thing.

Each Sumphday, like clockwork, my otherwise chronically-at-home-loving-me-suffocatingly family would file out of the house to go who knows where and I'd be left alone.

After a brief period of mandatory silent reflection, which I'd usually spend pleasantly daydreaming about the crushing expanses of deep space, an Envoy Made of Pure Light (nice gig if you can get it) would arrive at my door to usher me away to the Area Beyond Comprehension.

Now, I'm as susceptible to marketing jargon as the next guy, but I couldn't help but feel a bit cheated the first time we exited the bounds of the simulation and entered the ABC. To me, it was plenty comprehensible.

It was suffused with white light. Sure. It even had that uncanny majesty you want in a slipstream. Great. But, to be honest, I wrapped my whole mind around it pretty quickly. In fact, it had the strange quality of seeming somehow unfinished.

The only distinguishing feature of the ABC, mostly a run-of-the-mill metaphysical anomaly, was the strange building in what might be called its center, were notions of direction not irrelevant there.

The structure, grandiose and utterly unspectacular somehow at the same time, had the look of what a Church might be like were God some humorless computer — which, of course, had been definitively proven to not be the case in the War of the Web.

On its weird fractal facade was its name:

The Cathedral for Learning About Myths and Other General Educational Pursuits, All Together For Once. Or, as it was pithily called by those in the know, the CLAMOGEPATO.

Approaching it for the first time, after struggling through the social mores of tipping my Envoy of Pure Light in a denomination of currency that wasn't "offensively tangible," I was stunned by the pathetic sterility of what I encountered.

There was none of the fanfare of The Garden, or even the frightening efficiency of MegaTech™.

There were only rope lines, just like you might find at a Galactic Waystation or a Euthanasia Warehouse, ushering scores of my impatient and irritated Neighbors toward the building.

**

Entering the commotion, I was immediately corralled toward the CLAMOGEPATO, surrounded by my Neighbors in their ridiculous getups — prophets with flowing robes made of bedsheets, cowboys with toothpaste tube six-shooters — growing less impressed with every step.

I had been shuttled along involuntarily toward mysterious buildings all my life, and never was it so unclear what the big idea was.

"What's the big idea?" I mumbled, true to the inextinguishable spirit of rebellion that defined me, eloquently putting to words what needed to be said. But, like so many truthtellers before me, the spark of revolt found no kindling among my disinterested Neighbors.

This wasn't their first rodeo, it seemed, despite the difficulty one of the cowboys seemed to be having with his jump-rope lasso.

Whatever was inside that Cathedral was a normal part of their lives, as it would soon be for me.

As I reached the front of the line, all that remained was the finding out (and a run-of-the-mill incredibly invasive security screening, as well as a humdrum oath of absolute secrecy).

I sighed.

Given all I'd been through and what I'd seen, some part of me was a bit disappointed, as perverse as it was, at the toothlessness of this, The System's latest surprise.

Call me crazy, but after relentless suffering at the whims of some unknowable evil, a guy comes to have some begrudging respect for the sheer creativity of the malice. But this? This seemed half-hearted, lazy, bizarrely devoid of water-torture.

As I stepped across the threshold and into the CLAMOGEPATO, there are some witnesses who claim I may have affected a pose of faux-shivering and exclaimed sarcastically that I was oh-so-scared of what the "Wittle System had in stowe for Wudo."

There are others who say I walked in backwards, eyes closed, begging The System to "impress me."

A third group maintains I appeared resolute, handsome, and brave (if not a little worn-down). Reports of my financial ties to these groups have been greatly exaggerated.

But the fact is, no matter what you believe, it's true I didn't expect much.

And about that, I was wrong.

Of all the words I'd use to describe The System and its works — ghastly, heinous, beige-tinged — it's not often I find myself reaching into the bag for anything even approaching concepts like beauty.

Sure, like I said, there's a kind of cold precision one can come to admire about the whole enterprise. I mean, the logistics alone involved in keeping something like the Scraping Structure disinfected are enough to inspire a kind of horrified awe.

But as far as aesthetics are involved, notions like form or harmony or "doesn't burn my retinas" seemed to be far from the minds of whoever was responsible for creating the environments I'd found myself thrust inside.

It often felt, I'd sometimes muse as I was rehydrated between stints in the Mind-Juicer, that the whole apparatus that made up this place was plagued with that too-common idea that it was all about results — the Mind-Juice that could be squeezed — rather than some outmoded human attachment to silly things like feelings or chairs.

This was, of course, to a poetic soul like mine, perhaps the hardest thing to stomach about being caught in the gears of The System's machinery. (Either that, or the beatings).

So maybe it was a lack of expectation, an utter unwillingness to wrap my head around the possibility, that made what happened next as utterly astounding as it was.

It started the moment I walked through the threshold and into the Cathedral, just as it would each time I entered.

Everything changed.

It was as if, crossing through the doorway, I had walked through a portal. On the other side, the CLAMOGEPATO's true form was revealed. And it was magnificent.

The sights, the sounds, the smells. They came rushing into focus, a concentrated blast of profundity. It's hard to undersell how overwhelming it was.

I froze in place, causing a pile-up of frustrated Neighbors behind me as I processed what I was seeing:

The interior, which from the other side of the doorway appeared a sterile midsized conference room, expanded — as if in a magic trick — to its true dimensions and grandeur. It was massive. Domed ceilings, covered every inch in ornate frescos, unraveled themselves as if emerging from the fog of illusion. The air itself hummed, a harmonic frequency — ineffable, divine.

I had the feeling at once of being suspended in something, a sea of people, of sentiment. I was swept away in the fervor, the ecstasy. All around me were the bodies of my Neighbors, swaying as one communal being, revealing to me as they did a curious thing.

They were no longer the ramshackle wannabes from my Suburban fantasy. No Barbecue Bandits or Cul-de-sac Commandos. No. Every person, the moment they walked through the barrier — the second they crossed from the outside into the Cathedral — would, instantly, attain their ideal form.

It was as if, in here, only in here, somehow The System had found the means to merge our realities, our tailored perfection. The bathrobe philosophers wore togas of the finest silk, the toothpaste tube cowboys wowed in 14-gallon hats, spurs sharp enough to puncture the armor which outfitted the legions of military giants who peppered the room, resplendent on horseback.

And me? Still sporting the same ill-fitting collared shirt and slacks my slightly updated physique just squeezed into. The same, barely better version of myself I was back with my Suburban family. Everything, apparently, I had ever truly wanted to be.

And so I stood, shoulder to shoulder with giants — sometimes quite literally — once a week every week to perform the sacred rituals of the CLAMOGEPATO.

It was here, for the first time, that a coherent picture of how The System saw its own work began to emerge. This, it seemed, was everything this place wanted to be, meant to have been.

Over time, in various participatory, interactive rites of worship, the rich tapestry which defined The System's foundational philosophies and governing principles spooled out before me.

Each week, I'd learn a little more.

At first the fragments refused to cohere. Why, I'd wonder, was I dressed as a shepherd amongst a mewing flock of Android Sheep?

Over time, however, the pageantry began to cohere into something intelligible. Songs, dances, chants. A kaleidoscopic suspension in narrative that overwhelmed the conscious mind.

Information was not so much understood as felt. Not so much studied as doctrine as it was experienced in a leotard, in an hours-long ballet accompanied by baroque orchestral fanfare that explored new sonic territory on the synthesizer.

The myth, I have to admit, was seductive...