Nova Express

by William S. Burroughs

  A young agent turned away vomiting; “Police work is not pleasant on any level,” said the D.S. He turned to Winkhorst: “This special breed spitting notice on your dirty pharmaceuticals—Level—”

  “Well some of my information was advantage—It is done with a cyclotron—But like this—Say I want to heat up the mescaline formula what I do is put the blazing photo from Hiroshima and Nagasaki under my cyclotron and shade the heat meal in with mescaline—­Indetectible—It’s all so simple and magnificent really—Beauty bare and all that—Or say I want ‘The Drenched Lands’ on the boy what I do is put the image from his cock under the cyclotron spurting whitewash in the white hot skies of Minraud.”

  The death dwarf opens one eye—“Hey, copper, come here—Got something else to tell you—Might as well rat—Everyone does it here the man says—You know about niggers? Why darkies were born?—Travel flesh we call it—Transports better—Tell you something else—” He nods out.

  “And the apomorphine formula, Mr. Winkhorst?”

  “Apomorphine is no word and no image—It is of course misleading to speak of a silence virus or an apomorphine virus since apomorphine is antivirus—The uh apomorphine preparations must be raised in a culture containing sublethal quantities of pain and pleasure cyclotron concentrates—Sub-virus stimulates antivirus special group—When immunity has been established in the surviving preparations—and many will not ­survive—we have the formulae necessary to defeat the virus powers—It is simply a question of putting through an inoculation program in the very limited time that remains—Word begets image and image is virus—Our facilities are at your disposal gentlemen and I am at your disposal—Technical sergeant I can work for ­anybody—These officers don’t even know what button to push.” He glares at the dwarf who is on the nod, hands turning to vines—

  “I’m not taking any rap for a decorticated turnip—And you just let me tell you how much all the kids in the office and the laboratory hate you stinking heavy metal assed cunt sucking board bastards.”

  Technical Deposition of the Virus Power. “Gentlemen, it was first suggested that we take our own image and examine how it could be made more portable. We found that simple binary coding systems were enough to contain the entire image however they required a large amount of storage space until it was found that the binary information could be written at the molecular level, and our entire image could be contained within a grain of sand. However it was found that these information molecules were not dead matter but exhibited a capacity for life which is found elsewhere in the form of virus. Our virus infects the human and creates our image in him.

  “We first took our image and put it into code. A technical code developed by the information theorists. This code was written at the molecular level to save space, when it was found that the image material was not dead matter, but exhibited the same life cycle as the virus. This virus released upon the world would infect the entire population and turn them into our replicas, it was not safe to release the virus until we could be sure that the last groups to go replica would not notice. To this end we invented variety in many forms, variety that is of information content in a molecule, which, enfin, is always a permutation of the existing material. Information speeded up, slowed down, permutated, changed at random by radiating the virus material with high energy rays from cyclotrons, in short we have created an infinity of variety at the information level, sufficient to keep so-called scientists busy for ever exploring the ‘richness of nature.’

  “It was important all this time that the possibility of a human ever conceiving of being without a body should not arise. Remember that the variety we invented was permutation of the electromagnetic structure of matter energy interactions which are not the raw material of nonbody experience.”

  Note From The Technical Department of Nova Police: Winkhorst’s information on the so-called “apomorphine formulae” was incomplete—He did not mention alnorphine—This substance like apomorphine is made from morphine—Its action is to block morphine out of the cells—An injection of alnorphine will bring on immediate withdrawal symptoms in an addict—It is also a specific in acute morphine poisoning—Doctor Isbell of Lexington states in an article recently published in The British Journal of Addiction that alnorphine is not habit-forming but acts even more effectively as a pain killer than morphine but can not be used because it produces “mental disturbances”—What is pain?—Obviously damage to the image—Junk is concentrated image and this accounts for its pain killing action—Nor could there be pain if there was no image—This may well account for the pain killing action of alnorphine and also for the unspecified “mental disturbances”—So we began our experiments by administering alnorphine in combination with apomorphine.

  COORDINATE POINTS

  The case I have just related will show you something of our methods and the people with whom we are called upon to deal.

  “I doubt if any of you on this copy planet have ever seen a nova criminal—(they take considerable pains to mask their operations) and I am sure none of you have ever seen a nova police officer—When disorder on any planet reaches a certain point the regulating instance scans POLICE—Otherwise—SPUT—Another planet bites the cosmic dust—I will now explain something of the mechanisms and techniques of nova which are always deliberately manipulated—I am quite well aware that no one on any planet likes to see a police officer so let me emphasize in passing that the nova police have no intention of remaining after their work is done—That is, when the danger of nova is removed from this planet we will move on to other assignments—We do our work and go—The difference between this department and the parasitic excrescence that often travels under the name ‘Police’ can be expressed in metabolic terms: The distinction between morphine and apomorphine. Apomorphine is made by boiling morphine with hydrochloric acid. This alters chemical formulae and physiological effects. Apomorphine has no sedative narcotic or addicting properties. It is a metabolic regulator that need not be continued when its work is done. I quote from Anxiety and Its Treatment by Doctor John Dent of London: ‘Apomorphine acts on the back brain stimulating the regulating centers in such a way as to normalize the metabolism.’ It has been used in the treatment of alcoholics and drug addicts and normalizes metabolism in such a way as to remove the need for any narcotic substance. Apomorphine cuts drug lines from the brain. Poison of dead sun fading in smoke—”

  The Nova Police can be compared to apomorphine, a regulating instance that need not continue and has no intention of continuing after its work is done. Any man who is doing a job is working to make himself obsolete and that goes double for police.

  Now look at the parasitic police of morphine. First they create a narcotic problem then they say that a permanent narcotics police is now necessary to deal with the problem of addiction. Addiction can be controlled by apomorphine and reduced to a minor health problem. The narcotics police know this and that is why they do not want to see apomorphine used in the treatment of drug addicts:

  PLAN DRUG ADDICTION

  Now you are asking me whether I want to perpetuate a narcotics problem and I say: “Protect the disease. Must be made criminal protecting society from the disease.”

  The problem scheduled in the United States the use of jail, former narcotics plan, addiction and crime for many years—Broad front “Care” of welfare agencies—Narcotics which antedate the use of drugs—The fact is noteworthy—48 stages—prisoner was delayed—has been separated—was required—

  Addiction in some form is the basis—must be wholly addicts—Any voluntary capacity subversion of The Will Capital And Treasury Bank—Infection dedicated to traffic in exchange narcotics demonstrated a Typhoid Mary who will spread narcotics problem to the United Kingdom—Finally in view of the cure—cure of the social problem and as such dangerous to society—

  Maintaining addict cancers to our profit—pernicious personal contact—Market increase—R
elease The Prosecutor to try any holes—Cut Up Fighting Drug Addiction by Malcolm Monroe Former Prose­cutor, in Western World, October 1959.

  As we have seen image is junk—When a patient loses a leg what has been damaged?—Obviously his image of himself—So he needs a shot of cooked down image—The hallucinogen drugs shift the scanning pattern of “reality” so that we see a different “reality”—There is no true or real “reality”—“Reality” is simply a more or less constant scanning pattern—The scanning pattern we accept as “reality” has been imposed by the controlling power on this planet, a power primarily oriented towards total control—In order to retain control they have moved to monopolize and deactivate the hallucinogen drugs by effecting noxious alterations on a molecular level—

  The basic nova mechanism is very simple:: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflicts—This is done by dumping life forms with incompatible conditions of existence on the same planet—There is of course nothing “wrong” about any given life form since “wrong” only has reference to conflicts with other life forms—The point is these forms should not be on the same planet—Their conditions of life are basically incompatible in present time form and it is precisely the work of the Nova Mob to see that they remain in present time form, to create and aggravate the conflicts that lead to the explosion of a planet that is to nova—At any given time recording devices fix the nature of absolute need and dictate the use of total weapons—Like this:: Take two opposed pressure groups—Record the most violent and threatening statements of group one with regard to group two and play back to group two—­Record the answer and take it back to group one—Back and forth between opposed pressure groups—This process is known as “feed back”—You can see it operating in any bar room quarrel—In any quarrel for that matter—Manipulated on a global scale feeds back nuclear war and nova—These conflicts are deliberately created and aggravated by nova criminals—The Nova Mob:: “Sammy The Butcher,” “Green Tony,” “Iron Claws,” “The Brown Artist,” “Jacky Blue Note,” “Limestone John,” “Izzy The Push,” “Hamburger Mary,” “Paddy The Sting,” “The Subliminal Kid,” “The Blue Dinosaur,” and “Mr. & Mrs. D,” also known as “Mr. Bradly Mr. Martin” also known as “The Ugly Spirit” thought to be the leader of the mob—The Nova Mob—In all my experience as a police officer I have never seen such total fear and degradation on any planet—We intend to arrest these criminals and turn them over to the Biological Department for the indicated alterations—

  Now you may well ask whether we can straighten out this mess to the satisfaction of any life forms involved and my answer is this—Your earth case must be processed by the Biologic Courts—admittedly in a deplorable condition at this time—No sooner set up than immediately corrupted so that they convene every day in a different location like floating dice games, constantly swept away by stampeding forms all idiotically glorifying their stupid ways of life—(most of them quite unworkable of course) attempting to seduce the judges into Venusian sex practices, drug the court officials, and intimidate the entire audience chamber with the threat of nova—In all my experience as a police officer I have never seen such total fear of the indicated alterations on any planet—A thankless job you see and we only do it so it won’t have to be done some place else under even more difficult circumstances—

  The success of the nova mob depended on a blockade of the planet that allowed them to operate with ­impunity—This blockade was broken by partisan activity directed from the planet Saturn that cut the control lines of word and image laid down by the nova mob—So we moved in our agents and started to work keeping always in close touch with the partisans—The selection of local personnel posed a most difficult problem—Frankly we found that most existing police agencies were hopelessly corrupt—the nova mob had seen to that—Paradoxically some of our best agents were recruited from the ranks of those who are called criminals on this planet—In many instances we had to use agents inexperienced in police work—There were of course casualties and fuck ups—You must understand that an undercover agent witnesses the most execrable cruelties while he waits helpless to intervene—sometimes for many years—before he can make a definitive arrest—So it is no wonder that green officers occasionally slip control when they finally do move in for the arrest—This condition, known as “arrest fever,” can upset an entire operation—In one recent case, our man in Tangier suffered an attack of “arrest fever” and detained everyone on his view screen including some of our own undercover men—He was transferred to paper work in another area—

  Let me explain how we make an arrest—Nova criminals are not three-dimensional organisms—(though they are quite definite organisms as we shall see) but they need three-dimensional human agents to ­operate—The point at which the criminal controller intersects a three-dimensional human agent is known as “a coordinate point”—And if there is one thing that carries over from one human host to another and establishes identity of the controller it is habit:: idiosyncrasies, vices, food preferences—(we were able to trace Hamburger Mary through her fondness for peanut butter) a gesture, a certain smile, a special look, that is to say the style of the controller—A chain smoker will always operate through chain smokers, an addict through addicts—Now a single controller can operate through thousands of human agents, but he must have a line of coordinate points—Some move on junk lines through addicts of the earth, others move on lines of certain sexual practices and so forth—It is only when we can block the controller out of all coordinate points available to him and flush him out from host cover that we can make a definitive arrest—­Otherwise the criminal escapes to other coordinates—

  We picked up our first coordinate points in London.

  Fade out to a shabby hotel near Earl’s Court in London. One of our agents is posing as a writer. He has written a so-called pornographic novel called Naked Lunch in which The Orgasm Death Gimmick is described. That was the bait. And they walked write in. A quick knock at the door and there it was. A green boy/girl from the sewage deltas of Venus. The colorless vampire creatures from a land of grass without mirrors. The agent shuddered in a light fever. “Arrest Fever.” The Green Boy mistook this emotion as a tribute to his personal attractions preened himself and strutted round the room. This organism is only dangerous when directed by The Insect Brain Of Minraud. That night the agent sent in his report:

  “Controller is woman—Probably Italian—Picked up a villa outside Florence—And a Broker operating in the same area—Concentrate patrols—­Contact local partisans—Expect to encounter Venusian weapons—”

  In the months that followed we turned up more and more coordinate points. We put a round-the-clock shadow on The Green Boy and traced all incoming and outgoing calls. We picked up The Broker’s Other Half in Tangier.

  A Broker is someone who arranges criminal jobs:

  “Get that writer—that scientist—this artist—He is too close—Bribe—Con—Intimidate—Take over his coordinate points—”

  And the Broker finds someone to do the job like: “Call ‘Izzy The Push,’ this is a defenestration bit—Call ‘Green Tony,’ he will fall for the sweet con—As a last resort call ‘Sammy The Butcher’ and warm up The Ovens—This is a special case—”

  All Brokers have three-dimensional underworld contacts and rely on The Nova Guards to block shadows and screen their operations. But when we located The Other Half in Tangier we were able to monitor the calls that went back and forth between them.

  At this point we got a real break in the form of a defector from The Nova Mob: Uranian Willy The Heavy Metal Kid. Now known as “Willy The Fink” to his former associates. Willy had long been put on the “unreliable” list and marked for “Total Disposal In The Ovens.” But he provided himself with a stash of apomorphine so escaped and contacted our Tangier agent. Fade out

  URANIAN WILLY

  Uranian Willy The Heavy Metal Kid. A
lso known as Willy The Rat. He wised up the marks. His metal face moved in a slow smile as he heard the twittering supersonic threats through antennae embedded in his translucent skull.

  “Death in The Ovens.”

  “Death in Centipede.”

  Trapped in this dead whistle stop, surrounded by The Nova Guard, he still gave himself better than even chance on a crash out. Electrician in gasoline crack of history. His brain seared by white hot blasts. One hope left in the universe: Plan D.

  He was not out of The Security Compound by a long way but he had rubbed off the word shackles and sounded the alarm to shattered male forces of the earth:

  THIS IS WAR TO EXTERMINATION. FIGHT CELL BY CELL THROUGH BODIES AND MIND SCREENS OF THE EARTH. SOULS ROTTEN FROM THE ORGASM DRUG, FLESH ­SHUDDERING FROM THE OVENS, PRISONERS OF THE EARTH COME OUT. STORM THE STUDIO—

  Plan D called for Total Exposure. Wise up all the marks everywhere. Show them the rigged wheel of Life-Time-Fortune. Storm The Reality Studio. And retake the universe. The Plan shifted and reformed as reports came in from his electric patrols sniffing quivering down streets and mind screens of the earth.

  “Area mined—Guards everywhere—Can’t quite get through—”

  “Order total weapons—Release Silence Virus—”

  “Board Books taken—Heavy losses—”

  “Photo falling—Word falling—Break Through in Grey Room—Use Partisans of all nations—Towers, open fire—”