Ludo Brax: Intergalactic Gig Worker (Chapter 40)

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It wasn't easy to try and parse a rapidly unfolding mystery while also remembering the steps to the System Shimmy.

Was it right foot, left foot, startling revelation — or left foot, right foot, contradictory mythic retelling? It was hard to keep it all straight. Luckily, being naturally lithe and predisposed to twitching, the rest of my Neighbors never seemed to notice how preoccupied I was.

Being unanimously named King of The Narrative Dancefloor, however, was little consolation for the internal strife unfolding within me, as week after week, it became clear that The System's retelling of the foundational Myth of The Garden was irreconcilable with what I knew.

Plus, the "prize" the title came with was only a measly gift certificate to The Restaurant in The Sky, where the service and food were so good you couldn't even work yourself up into a lather of resentment the way I liked.

Would there be no end to my troubles? The cumulative effect of weeks was starting to take its toll.

I'd become a ghost back home with my family, drifting through the week leading up to another day at the Cathedral, mind too preoccupied to even "productively sulk" — my favorite hobby. My Wife and my Kids, beautifully optimized souls that they were, tried their best to support me, but there were limits to what support they could lend me.

For one thing, they had never been to the Cathedral.

They preferred, it seemed, to keep their relationship with spirituality limited to a general, gnawing, omnipresent sense that they were literally controlled by malevolent forces that saw them as little more than pawns. My Father had been the same way.

For another, each time I tried to even vaguely reference my concerns, an Envoy would arrive at the house and wipe their minds of all evidence that I'd ever spoken of it.

It wasn't so bad the first few times, convenient even, seeing as they'd usually, as a pleasant side-effect, also forget some incident or other earlier in the day where I'd lost my cool or denounced them all as "desecrators of my well-earned solitude" for asking me for quality time. But when they all forgot to intentionally forget my Birthday, it really lost its novelty.

Just what was I onto here, and why was The System so intent on keeping it under wraps?

I had theories, sure. But the fact was, I wasn't even sure what The Occurrence was, or why I was able to access it. For all I knew, it was another trick of The System, some intentional mirage meant to lead me astray. But it definitely felt forbidden.

**

So there I was, at the Cathedral again, shimmying with that accidental grace only a man paralyzed by fear and used to walking across precarious rope-bridges could have, when, all of a sudden, everything came to a head.

I knew something out of the ordinary was going on the second I saw the look on Anagorazia the Almighty's face.

She, the All-Powerful Sorceress and Genre-Bending Pop Sensation who lived down the block from me, had, despite all attempts to the contrary on my part, become a bit of a rival of mine in the ensuing weeks.

You see, as I've mentioned, unburdened by the personalized illusions which governed our daily lives, we were free, here in the CLAMOGEPATO and only in the CLAMOGEPATO, to be amongst each other as equals.

But we were not equals. Not exactly.

As it turned out, my absurd metrics, which were displayed on a leaderboard for all to see at the front of the Cathedral, made me something of a celebrity. What else was new?

It was subtle, but noticeable. A beaming smile of admiration lobbed my way by a Samurai during the singing of a communal hymn. A sheepish look of astonished awe flashing across the face of some Warrior as they sheathed their flaming sword as I passed by in a gesture of respect.

This, for the most part, had been nicer than my brushes with notoriety so far in my journey, if only because my elevated status got me out of ever having to bring anything for the potlucks. I was influential, important, beloved.

But Anagorazia The Almighty could not have felt more differently.

**

Looking back now (despite the vicious whisper campaign I had launched against her at the time) I can see where she was coming from. I mean, my metrics were fake, though I couldn't have said whose doing it was.

By any truly honest accounting, she, who had the power to literally tear open the seams of reality and forge new categories of catharsis every time she sang, was the obvious choice for Lead Soloist in the Choir, but that's simply not what the numbers said.

And so, with more than a little shame, but a stalwart intention to earn my D.I.V.A. SCORE of SPICY, I had accepted role after role, honor after honor, week after week. Knowing all the time that it was her, not me, that deserved them.

I had pretended it was no surprise when my atonal rendition of "Simulated Serenity" was received like I hadn't struggled to find a rhyme for "zettabyte." And Anagorazia had silently seethed.

I had accepted the plaudits when it was decided I be put on the Design Committee because of my "penchant for interpreting abstract expressionist art about algorithms." And Anagorazia pretended not to notice.

But now, as she bounded toward me — 10 feet tall and wearing an expression of malice that seemed to suggest the human skulls she wore around her neck weren't, as the nasty rumor I started had suggested, "just for show" — I knew that a line had finally been crossed.

Turning away from the pack of admirers I had graciously let give me a pedicure, I looked up at Anagorazia, trying my best not to let on that I knew something was wrong.

I managed a weak smile up at her meant to impart a message like "please don't shove that gleaming marble tablet you're holding into my chest and send me flying backward." But, instead, she shoved the gleaming marble tablet she was holding into my chest and sent me flying backward.

I scrambled to my feet as fast as I could, impeded as I was by the cotton balls between my toes and the thin coat of lacquer that had just been applied. She stared at me with utter contempt, demanding a response.

"Well?"

I looked down at the tablet, glistening otherworldly colors in the reflection of the light. It was important alright, a proclamation of some sort, a fact all but confirmed by the chiseled letters atop it that read IMPORTANT PROCLAMATION.

I skimmed its contents, perusing several paragraphs of platitudes about the wisdom of The Founders and boilerplate clauses shielding The System from liability for the Solemn Proclamations it made.

I had barely reached the bottom when, impatiently, Anagorazia snarled at me the crucial point.

"They've selected you to be The Witness."

Heads around the CLAMOGEPATO snapped to stare my way. Gasps were heard, tumult and to-do so deafening I figured it likely I was supposed to know what that was.

I studied her a second, careful to affix a look on my face that suggested I was deeply in thought about the matter at hand, and not, as I was, wondering if I could survive a blow from her Staff.

It was clear to me that accepting this role, whatever it was, was something important, not just in The Cathedral, but important to her.

And sure, we were rivals, but despite some of the pranks I had enlisted The Warlocks to play on her, I didn't really harbor any ill-will toward her (which was good, because I'm pretty sure she could read people's thoughts when she wanted).

But, just as I had finished mentally penning my magnanimous refusal — certain to bolster my popularity even more while conveniently getting me out of this new responsibility — she burst in again.

"Don't tell me you're thinking of accepting!" She ducked down to my level, voice heavy with disdain.

"Even you, Ludo Brax, foolish as you are, craven as they come, must have some shred of honor within you."

She scoffed at me as if it was over, turning toward the stunned crowds who looked on in shock.

Her outburst was an obvious breach of The Cathedral's gentle insistence on mandatory harmony.

And yet, as I glanced up at Anagorazia's Metric Display, I saw the steady accumulation of points in categories like

 

> UNCOVERED RUSES,

> WORTHWHILE CONFRONTATIONS,

and, most painfully,

 

> GET BRAX'D!,

 

a new metric that promised dizzying rewards for any instance in which I was taken to task.

She was reveling in it.

She paced back and forth to a chorus of whoops and cheers from a small group of supporters, some of whom had been giving me a pedicure moments ago and were now recounting the experience in horror to anyone who would listen.

She doubled back, gesturing toward my own Metrics, which had obligingly appeared for all to see.

"Look at them!" she said. "Does this man read to you as someone worthy of this WOZM?"

She pointed her giant finger at me.

"Even you must know you're unworthy."

The crowd exploded.

Right on cue, the Artificial Metrics most precious to me began to tick down — slowly at first, then faster with every moment I stood there stammering.

This was bad. I was getting Brax'd.

I had to do something. Anything. Not for my pride, or because I disagreed with her, but for my metrics — which, despite being utterly fraudulent, I had grown strangely possessive of, if only because they came with perks when I went out to eat.

But while I was still debating the respective metric and social tradeoffs inherent in "pathetic pleading" and "contemptuous sobbing," the decision was taken out of my hands.

Anagorazia, emboldened by the steadily growing crowd of cowardly opportunists who had jumped to her cause, had decided to up the ante. The Metric Board, now flashing an Applause-o-Meter to boot, had prompted a directive with maximum promised rewards:

 

> EXPOSE - +1,000,000

 

as Anagorazia aimed her glowing Staff in my direction and cast a vicious spell with a frightening, earthshaking yowl:

"Let's see who you really are!"

A rushing stream of purple, malicious energy shot out and hit me squarely in the part of my gut that had always been most susceptible to dark magic.

The incantation crawled over me, enveloping me, obscuring me in a cloud of awesome purple energy, as the rest of my stunned Neighbors waited in anticipation for the shocking result.

They expected, I'm sure, some harrowing revelation of my Pre-Idealized form: a monster, a demon, an ill-advised goatee.

What they saw instead, as the magic cleared, was something else entirely:

Me. Exactly the same as I’d always been.