Commander Walker and the Edge of Reason

Back to normality now. Commander Walker has returned and is scanning the horizon for signs of life. Will Ulysses ever play the harp again or is he doomed to an unmusical existence? Out in the bay the sun flickers on the gently lapping water as the scents of the offerings waft out to sea from the little lanterns and house doors. The world could end now and no-one would mind. This is how we all want to end our days, relaxing by the sea with a drink in one hand and a book in the other. My life has never been as simple as this. My soul aches for rest and how could anything as nice as this ever be my lot? Here the sun falls on the paving slabs, storing up heat for the day so that at night we will lie, young urban professionals, out for dancing and the end to a great weekend. The rain will fall and turn this dark city to a cage of lights and spray, cool water in the hot town. The cars will send the refelections of this civilization high into the air, night clouds and laid-back music filling all the spaces. We will relax and curl up in the windows of the bars and clubs, eyes fixed in the distance where nothing lives, where the ships lie at anchor crewless and lit like a far-eastern holiday. It is Christmas every day in this lighted night. We buy each presents and know our own minds, waiting for the best of us to become famous while all around the music slips into the water pipes and storm drains until all the blocks for miles around are as happy as we are. In the distant windows of the old but refurbished warehouses, the music is made by man and machine. It is free to us all and known to no-one. Unknown to no-one? A slacker magic show. Sleight of hand is everything. The man has done this act for years and knows every trick in the book ( a book he keeps under his pillow lest it should be stolen by the young assistant that he knows is out to get him). We all love this act and could probably do all the tricks without looking. We could die on this day and he could bring us back. Technology will bring us back. We will live in the wires, permanent, immortal minds saved and uploaded for ever to a web which links the stars for ever. We will store a human mind and transmit it across space long before a machine ever gets to send our real bodies anywhere other than here. I have fifteen minutes to re-invent the world - to send it spinning with me through the gold wires to the outer edge of the balloon that is the Universe. We ARE all made of stars. My God! We're full of Stars and they takes us to our end. Capitalise this sentence and you know which set to which you belong. I am self-swallowing like a set of catalogues - logs. Plastic Bertrand Russell know what I mean. That shouty French Philosopher who knows everything there is about maths and can prove it. I am Godel and I say he can't. I can prove that nothing can prove itself other than a baker. My Aunt went to School with Bertrand's Children. How spoiled were they. My Dad's a mathematician and you all think he's a philosopher. I think so I am his. Ergo Ergot. Tarantula. The Spider Dance. Rotten bread. That is what made us dance. It made us knock over that bridge at Avignon. It leans like a pier into the river and there we dance every May until we drop exhausted over the end and into the water never tgo be seen again. They find us know, frozen in the glaciers high up in the Alps, stuffed with seeds that were our last meal. We are the Icemen and we are the future. The rising water will wash us from our icy beds, send us like old tree-trunks tunbling down the rivers until we wash up alive on the beaches of your island. I empty my mind and dare to eat lots of peaches. I talk of Van-Eyck and see I can spell his name unlike that of Michelangelo which is such a strange word, that only people trained in the art of deception ever realise that there are exactly 2 to the power of 345 ways to spell that name and still understand who you are talking about. There are infinite ways to put together so many words. Thinking about it, there are not infinite ways. Just lots. There must be a limit. If the book is endless then just the length is infinite but say the book is a million words long, then there is a limited number of ways you can put that many words together. Even if you allow nonsense words, then there is still a limit. It is just a lot. Otherwise, people would stop writing books, even good ones. They have chemicals for that. We saw them and we cried. You must have extra-terrestrial DNA to be able to do that. What morals will space travellers have? Will they believe in the same things we do or will they want to eat us, or use us for fuel? We will never know because we will be machines by then and able to change our own minds with programming. This sequence is especially beautiful. It is pulses of the most evocative music ever written. It is the sound of life happening, the music of planets and of stars and of us and all our religions. We have won the world and we must live with it forever. Lift the trees and give the world a good dusting. I have just knocked a fly from my head. That was the end trigger for today. Goodbye everybody.