The Soft Machine

by William Seward Burroughs

  —Suddenly he sat up talking in Mayan—The words curled out his mouth and hung visible in the air like vine tendrils—I felt a strange vertigo which I recognized as the motion sickness of time travel

  —The broker smiled and held out a hand—I passed over his fee—The boy was putting on his clothes—He beckoned me to follow and I got up and left the hut—We were walking along a jungle hut the boy ahead his whole body alert and twitching like a dog—We walked many hours and it was dawn when we came to a clearing where I could see a number of workers with sharp sticks and gourds of seed planting corn—The boy touched my shoulder and disappeared up the path in jungle dawn mist—

  As I stepped forward into the clearing and addressed one of the workers, I felt the crushing weight of evil insect control forcing my thoughts and feelings into prearranged molds, squeezing my spirit in a soft invisible vise—The worker looked at me with dead eyes empty of curiosity or welcome and silently handed me a planting stick—It was not unusual for strangers to wander in out of the jungle since the whole area was ravaged by soil exhaustion—So my presence occasioned no comment—I worked until sundown—I was assigned to a hut by an overseer who carried a carved stick and wore an elaborate headdress indicating his rank—I lay down in the hammock and immediately felt stabbing probes of telepathic interrogation—I turned on the thoughts of a half-witted young Indian—After some hours the invisible presence withdrew—I had passed the first test

  —

  During the months that followed I worked in the fields—The monotony of this existence made my disguise as a mental defective quite easy—I learned that one could be transferred from field work to rock carving the stellae after a long apprenticeship and only after the priests were satisfied that any thought of resistance was forever extinguished—I decided to retain the anonymous status of a field worker and keep as far as possible out of notice—

  A continuous round of festivals occupied our evenings and holidays—On these occasions the priests appeared in elaborate costumes, often disguised as centipedes or lobsters—Sacrifices were rare, but I witnessed one revolting ceremony in which a young captive was tied to a stake and the priests tore his sex off with white-hot copper claws—I learned also something of the horrible punishments meted out to anyone who dared challenge or even think of challenging the controllers: Death in the Ovens: The violator was placed in a construction of interlocking copper grills—The grills were then heated to white heat and slowly closed on his body. Death In Centipede: The

  "criminal" was strapped to a couch and eaten alive by giant centipedes—These executions were carried out secretly in rooms under the temple.

  I made recordings of the festivals and the continuous music like a shrill insect frequency that followed the workers all day in the fields—However, I knew that to play these recordings would invite immediate detection—I needed not only the sound track of control but the image track as well before I could take definitive action—I have explained that the Mayan control system depends on the calendar and the codices which contain symbols representing all states of thought and feeling possible to human animals living under such limited circumstances—These are the instruments with which they rotate and control units of thought—I found out also that the priests themselves do not understand exactly how the system works and that I undoubtedly knew more about it than they did as a result of my intensive training and studies—The technicians who had devised the control system had died out and the present line of priests were in the position of some one who knows what buttons to push in order to set a machine in motion, but would have no idea how to fix that machine if it broke down, or to construct another if the machine were destroyed—If I could gain access to the codices and mix the sound and image track the priests would go on pressing the old buttons with unexpected results—In order to accomplish the purpose I prostituted myself to one of the priests—(Most distasteful thing I ever stood still for)—During the sex act he metamorphosed himself into a green crab from the waist up, retaining human legs and genitals that secreted a caustic erogenous slime, while a horrible stench filled the hut—I was able to endure these horrible encounters by promising myself the pleasure of killing this disgusting monster when the time came

  — And my reputation as an idiot was by now so well established that I escaped all but the most routine control measures—

  The priest had me transferred to janitor work in the temple where I witnessed some executions and saw the prisoners torn body and soul into writhing insect fragments by the ovens, and learned that the giant centipedes were born in the ovens from these mutilated screaming fragments—It was time to act—Using the drug the doctor had given me, I took over the priest's body, gained access to the room where the codices were kept, and photographed the books—Equipped now with sound and image track of the control machine I was in position to dismantle it—I had only to mix the order of recordings and the order of images and the changed order would be picked up and fed back into the machine—I had recordings of all agricultural operations, cutting and burning brush etc.—I now correlated the recordings of burning brush with the image track of this operation, and shuffled the time so that the order to burn came late and a year's crop was lost— Famine weakening control lines, I cut radio static into the control music and festival recordings together with sound and image track rebellion.

  "Cut word lines—Cut music lines—Smash the control images—Smash the control machine—Burn the books— Kill the priests—Kill! Kill! Kill!—"

  Inexorably as the machine had controlled thought feeling and sensory impressions of the workers, the machine now gave the order to dismantle itself and kill the priests—I had the satisfaction of seeing the overseer pegged out in the field, his intestines perforated with hot planting sticks and crammed with corn—I broke out my camera gun and rushed the temple—This weapon takes and vibrates image to radio static—You see the priests were nothing but word and image, an old film rolling on and on with dead actors—Priests and temple guards went up in silver smoke as I blasted my way into the control room and burned the codices— Earthquake tremors under my feet I got out of there fast, blocks of limestone raining all around me—A great weight fell from the sky, winds of the earth whipping palm trees to the ground—Tidal waves rolled over the Mayan control calendar.

  I Sekuin

  THE MAYAN CAPER—THE CENTIPEDE SWITCH—THE HEAVY METAL GIMMICK.

  I Sekuin, perfected these arts along the streets of Minraud. Under sign of the Centipede. A captive head. In Minraud time. In the tattoo booths. The flesh graft parlors. Living wax works of Minraud.

  Saw the dummies made to impression. While you wait. From short-time. In the terminals of Minraud. Saw the white bug juice spurt from ruptured spines. In the sex rooms of Minraud. While you wait. In Minraud time. The sex devices of flesh. The centipede penis. Insect hairs thru grey-purple flesh. Of the scorpion people. The severed heads. In tanks of sewage. Eating green shit. In the aquariums of Minraud. The booths of Minraud. Under sign of the centipede. The sex rooms and flesh films of Minraud. I Sekuin a captive head. Learned the drugs of Minraud. In flak Braille. Rot brain and spine. Leave a crab body broken on the brass and copper street. I Sekuin captive head.

  Carried thru the booths of Minraud. By arms. Legs.

  Extensions. From the flesh works of Minraud. My head in a crystal sphere of heavy fluid. Under sing sign of the scorpion goddess. Captive in Minraud. In the time booths of Minraud. In the tattoo parlors of Minraud. In the flesh works of Minraud. In the sex rooms of Minraud. In the flesh films of Minraud. March my captive head. HER captive in Minraud time streets.

  On a level plain in the dry sound of insect wings Bradly crash landed a yellow cub—area of painted booths and vacant lots—in a dusty shopwindow of trusses and plaster feet, a severed head on sand, red ants crawling through nose and lips—

  "You crazy or something walk around alone?"

  The guide pointed to the head: "Guard—You walk through his eyes and you N.G."
The guide sliced a hand across his genitals: "This bad place, Meester—You ven conmigo—"

  He led the way through dusty streets—Metal excrement glowed in corners—Darkness fell in heavy chunks blocking out sections of the city.

  "Here," said the guide—"A restaurant cut from limestone, green light seeping through bottles and tanks where crustaceans moved in slow gyrations—The waiter took their order hissing cold dank breath through a disk mouth.

  "Good place—cave crabs— Muy bueno for fuck, Johnny—"

  The waiter set down a flat limestone shell of squid bodies with crab claws.

  "Krishnus," said the guide.

  Still alive, moving faintly in phosphorescent slime— The guide speared one on a bamboo spike and dipped it into yellow sauce—A sweet metal taste burned through stomach intestines and genitals—

  Bradly ate the krish-nus in ravenous gulps—

  The guide raised his arm from the elbow, " Muy bueno, Johnny—You see." The waiter was singing through his disk mouth a bubbling cave song— " Vámanos, Johnny—I show you good place—We smoke fuck sleep O.K. Muy got good one, Johnny—"

  Word "Hotel" exploded in genitals—An old junky took Bradly's money and led them to a blue cubicle— Bradly leaned out a square hole in one wall and saw that the cubicle projected over a void on rusty iron props—The floor moved slightly and creaked under their feet—

  "Some time this trap fall—Last fuck for Johnny."

  There was a pallet on the iron floor, a brass tray with hashish pipes, and a stone jar.

  "Johnny shirt off'—said the guide unbuttoning Bradly's shirt with gentle lush rolling fingers

  —"Johnny pants down"—He dipped a green phosphorescent Pretend an Interest

  Benway "camped" in the Board of Health. He rushed in anywhere brazenly impounding all junk. He was of course well-known but by adroit face rotation managed to piece out the odds, juggling five or six bureaus in the air thin and tenuous drifting-away cobwebs in a cold Spring wind under dead crab eyes of a doorman in green uniform carrying an ambiguous object composite of club, broom and toilet plunger, trailing a smell of ammonia and scrubwoman flesh. An undersea animal surfaced in his face, round disk mouth of cold grey gristle, purple rasp tongue moving in green saliva: "Soul Cracker," Benway decided. Species of carnivorous mol-lusk. Exists on Venus. It might not have bones. Time-switched the tracks through a field of little white flowers by the ruined signal tower.

  Sat down under a tree worn smooth by others sat there before. We remember the days as long procession of the Secret Police always everywhere in different form. In Guayaquil sat on the river bank and saw a big lizard cross the mud flats dotted with melon rind from passing canoes.

  Carl's dugout turned slowly in the brown iridescent lagoon infested with sting ray, fresh water shark, arequipa, candirus, water boa, crocodile, electric eel, aquatic panther and other noxious creatures dreamed up by the lying explorers who infest bars marginal to the area.

  "This inaccessible tribe, you dig, lives on phosphorescent metal paste they mine from the area.

  Transmute to gold straightaway and shit it out in nuggets. It's the great work."

  Liver-sick gold eyes gold maps gold teeth over the aguardiente cooked on the Primus stove with canella and tea to cut the oil taste leaves silver sores in the mouth and throat.

  "That was the year of the Rindpest when all the tourists died even the Scandinavians and we boys reduced to hawk the farter LWR—Local Wage Rate."

  "No calcium in the area you understand. One blighter lost his entire skeleton and we had to carry him about in a canvas bathtub. A jaguar lapped him up in the end, largely for the salt I think."

  Tin boys reduced to hawk the farter the substance and the strata—You know what that means?

  Carried the youth to dead water infested with consent—That was the year of The Clear—Local Wage Rate of Program Empty Body—

  "Head Waters of the Baboon-asshole. . . That's hanging vine country—" (The hanging vine flicked around the youth's neck molding to his skull bones in a spiraling tendril motion snapped his neck, he hangs now ejaculating as disk mouths lined with green hairs fasten to his rectum growing tendrils through his body dissolving his bones in liquid gurgles and plops into the green eating jelly.)

  "This bad place you write, Meester. You win something like jellyfish."

  They live in translucent jelly and converse in light flashes liquefying bones of the world and eating the jelly—boy chrysalis rotting in the sun—lazy undersea eyes on the nod over the rotting meat vegetable sleep— limestone dope out of shale and water. . .

  The youth is hanged fresh and bloody—Tall ceremony involves a scorpion head—lethal mating operation from the Purified Ones—No calcium in the area— Exists on Venus—It might not have bones—Ray moss of orgasm and death—Limestone God a mile away— Better than shouts: "Empty body!" Dead land here you understand waiting for some one marginal to the area.

  "Deep in fucking drum country" (The naked Initiate is strapped with his back and buttocks fitted to a wooden drum. The drummer beats out orgasm message until the Initiate's flesh lights up with blue flame inside and the drum takes life and fucks the boy (( puffs of smoke across a clear blue sky...)) The initiate awoke in other flesh the lookout different... And he plopped into squares and patios on

  "Write me Meester.")

  Puerto Joselito is located at the confluence of two strong brown rivers. The town is built over a vast mud flat crisscrossed by stagnant canals, the buildings on stilts joined by a maze of bridges and catwalks extend up from the mud flats into higher ground surrounded by tree columns and trailing lianas, the whole area presenting the sordid and dilapidated air of a declining frontier post or an abandoned carnival.

  "The town of Puerto Joselito, dreary enough in its physical aspect, exudes a suffocating fog of smoldering rancid evil as if the town and inhabitants were slowly sinking in wastes and garbage. I found these people deep in the vilest superstitions and practices.

  "Various forms of ritual execution are practiced here. These gooks have an aphrodisiac so powerful as to cause death in a total blood spasm leaving the empty body cold and white as marble. This substance is secreted by the Species Xiucutl Crustanus, a flying scorpion, during its lethal mating season in the course of which all male Xiucutl die maddened by the substance and will fly on any male creature infecting with its deadly sperm. In one ceremony the condemned are painted as gold, silver, copper and marble statues, then inoculated with Xiucutl sperm their convulsions are channeled by invisible control wires into exquisite ballets and freeze into garden fountains and park pedestals. And this is one of many ceremonies revolving on the Ceremonial Calendar kept by the Purified Ones and the Earth Mother.

  "The Purified One selects a youth each month and he is walled into a crystal cubicle molded on cervical vertebrae. On the walls of the cubicle, sex programs are cut in cuneiforms and the walls revolve on silent hydraulic pressures. At the end of the month the youth is carried through the street on a flower float and cere-nominally hanged in the limestone ball court, it being thought that all human dross passes from the Purified One to die in the youth at the moment of orgasm and death.

  Before the youth is hanged he must give his public consent, and if he cannot be brought to consent he hangs the Purified One and takes over his functions. The Purified Ones are officially immortal with monthly injections of youth substance." Quote Green-Baum Early Explorer.

  Carl's outboard vibrated in a haze of rusty oil, bit a jagged piece out of the dugout canoe and sank, in iridescent brown water. Somewhere in the distance the muffled jelly sound of underwater dynamite: ("The natives are fishing"), howler monkeys like wind through leaves. The dugout twisted slowly and stopped, touching a ruined jetty. Carl got out with his Nordic rucksack and walked to the square on high ground. He felt a touch on his shoulder light as wind. A man in moldy grey police tunic and red flannel underwear one bare foot swollen and fibrous like old wood covered with white fungus, his eyes mahoga
ny color flickered as the watcher moved in and out. He gasped out the word "Control" and slipped to the ground. A man in grey hospital pajamas eating handfuls of dirt and trailing green spit crawled over to Carl and pulled at his pants cuff. Another moves forward on brittle legs breaking little puffs of bone meal. His eyes lit up a stem glare went out in smell of burning metal. From all sides they came pawing hissing spitting: " Papeles,"

  "Documentes," "Passaport."

  "What is all this scandal?" The Comandante in clean khaki was standing on a platform overlooking the square. Above him was an elaborate multileveled building of bamboo. His shirt was open on a brown chest smooth as old ivory. A little pistol in red leather cover crawled slowly across his skin leaving an iridescent trail of slime.

  "You must forgive my staff if they do not quite measure up to your German ideal of spit and polish.

  . . backward. . . uninstructed. . . each living all alone and cultivating his little virus patch. . . They have absolutely nothing to do and the solitude. . ." He tapped his forehead. His face melted and changed under the flickering arc lights.

  "But there must be thirty of them about," said Carl.

  The Comandante gave him a sharp look. "They are synchronized of course. They can not see or even infer each other so all think he is only police officer on post. Their lines you sabe never cross and some of them are already..."

  "And some of them are already dead. This is awkward since they are not legally responsible. We try to bury them on time even if they retain intact protest reflex. Like Gonzalez the Earth Eater. We bury him three times." The Comandante held up three fingers sprouting long white tendrils.