Satan Burger

by Carlton Mellick III

  The man who knows everything is an exception, however, because he was probably born with the knowledge to know everything — at least in my opinion. So memory would not be an important commodity for him, since there is nothing he can learn that he will need to remember.

  By the way, I have been addressing the man who knows everything as a he, but I perfectly well know that it could be a she — the woman who knows everything. I will have to start calling it the Movac, so that I do not ruin its gender.

  Richard Stein figured that he could find total enlightenment by heading out to sea in a little sailboat. In fact, he said that he would either find enlightenment or die trying. With his spouse gone and without giving the world any children, there was nothing he really had to lose. Except for his life, but by then he was so old-hugging that he would’ve died soon anyway. He was probably going out to sea to kill himself. That’s the way he wanted to die.

  On the side of his little boat, he printed the words Ocean Man, which was the title of his ship. He took two months supply of food and three months supply of whiskey and a few books; one was Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and another was Kafka’s The Castle. Then Ocean Man shoved off from the port in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he lived for two years during adolescence. His girlfriend back then was called Nina, and she was the first woman that he ever loved. The one he never forgot.

  Richard Stein said that you’ll always love your firs t love, no matter how many partners you may go through. The first is always special. His second love, which became his first wife, did not compare to the memory of Nina. Neither did his second wife, who was his eighth love, and who died in an institution populated by crazies. Besides Nina, Richard Stein loved his Cool Blue Lady the most; she was the only woman who stood with him throughout his entire life.

  The Cool Blue Lady hovered over Richard Stein solemnly as he washed against the sea, kissing him with her breath. Yes, the Night was his love, deeply. He embraced her with passion, allowing Ocean Man to drift him into the betweens of her firm dark legs. Richard Stein called this voyage the supreme ordeal of his life — the climax of fire, his grand finale. It was the first and only time he truly felt alive and he was glad he lived so long to reach it. He was glad he never put the gun to his head as he always figured he would.

  Mortician and I find a dry island underneath a tree and set Nan down. On the swap-side of the tree is a miniature city by the ocean that has a port leading out to the sea. Dozens of fishing boats are coming and going. I wonder if this port is similar to the one in Gloucester, where Ocean Man set sail. I wonder if there is a character similar to Richard Stein over there, setting out to find clarity during the twilight of his life, trying to get in his grand finale before he dies.

  “What are we going to do?” Mortician asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Wait awhile, for Christian.”

  “Do you think he will make it?”

  “He better.”

  I pressure-thumb Nan’s eye open to see how she’s doing. Still unconscious. Her nipple has been covered over with a coat of mud. I’m guessing that Mortician is responsible for earthing Nan’s breast, because he was probably disgusted by it. Mort finds Nan dyke-hideous because she’s too thin, bald-headed, and without many curves. Skinhead girls are dirty to him.

  I hit myself in the skull, thinking about how I almost raped Nan back there. Then I hit myself again.

  Some walm people pass by, through the tiny ocean, slug-legged people with no eyes. I often wonder how significant the human race is/was compared to the other peoples of the universe, wondering if we were superior or equal or less. So far, I haven’t seen any race that is technologically more advanced than humans. I have seen some that were emotionally more advanced, or physically more advanced, or own better lives than us, but none are particularly evolved scientifically.

  Can it be that humans are ahead of their time? Can everyone else out there be as primitive as the walm races? Are we something special ? Maybe we were put to an end because we evolved past the danger zone — which is the zone where even gods are vulnerable to man’s destructive power. Maybe we invented a device that could blow up the sun, heaven, where Yahweh lives. Maybe He cut us off because He was afraid we would destroy Him.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Mortician says.

  I glisten to the rolling water and stutter-mumble a word.

  Mort asks, “Why do we have to leave?”

  “Because of the walm. Forget already?”

  “I didn’t forget,” he says. “But what if we get rid of the walm? We wouldn’t have to go anywhere. I think we should just destroy it, just fuck it up with an ax or light it on fire, damage it enough so that it won’t work anymore. If the walm is gone we can stay without losing our souls.”

  “You’re forgetting about the Movac,” I tell him. “The walm is guarded by something that knows everything. How are we going to beat something that knows everything? It’s impossible.”

  “Nothing’s impossible.”

  “The Movac knows everything, understand? It would know exactly how to stop us. Even if we had a gun, it would know where to go to dodge the bullet. Lenny told me to kill the Movac also, but he’s an idiot. It’s impossible.”

  “We might as well try,” he says. “What’s the worst that can happen? Get killed? So what, we can’t fully die anymore.”

  “Don’t be stupid. I’m not living here as a corpse, waiting for the walm to steal my soul. I wouldn’t want to stay even if we did destroy the walm. There’s no future.”

  “But there’s probably hundreds of people around the world that still have some soul left. We’d be saving them.”

  “You don’t know that,” I tell him. “We could be the only ones. I’m not going to risk restarting the human race so that we can save a few half-zombie people. Besides, we don’t stand a chance against the Movac.”

  Of course, there is one way we can defeat the Movac, although it’s a long shot. The only way you can beat a man who knows everything is if he wants you to beat him. If the Movac knows someone is trying to kill him, he has two options. One, he can take the necessary steps to stop that someone — not to mention the Movac already knows he will succeed, because he knows the future, which can almost be considered cheating. And, two, the Movac can accept death and do nothing — but the Movac would already know this before needing to decide.

  By the way, decisions are just as irrelevant to the Movac as memories. You don’t need to make choices when you already know which ones you will choose.

  Then again, the Movac may want us to kill him, because the one who knows everything must be waiting for death, out of boredom. Everything must be so boring to him. Then again, the Movac has always lived knowing everything about everything, so he’s probably so accustomed to knowing everything that he wouldn’t have it any other way. Humans may want to better themselves and better themselves and better themselves without being the best — because the best, since they’re the best, can’t better themselves — but the Movac’s point of existing has nothing to do with bettering itself, so these rules don’t apply. The Movac’s point of existence must be something I can’t understand, something beyond my personal knowledge. Something godly…

  I’d prefer to leave the walm in soul-sucking order anyway, instead of destroying it. Even if the Movac would allow us to kill it, I wouldn’t hurt the walm. Because I’m hoping that it will go out of control, become unstoppable. And it will suck the souls out of everything nearby. It will finish off the human race, then go to the walm people, then go to the Movac or whatever other super-beings are here, then go to Child Earth and suck the bratty little soul out of it, and then it will start taking the energy out of heaven. It will suck God’s soul away, chopping it up into the walm, into oblivion. And I’ll be laughing safely on the other side of the universe, because that’s what He gets for turning His back on us. A taste of His own medicine, you can say.

  Of course, this is very unlikely. I’m sure that God is the one
controlling the walm and has the ability to turn it off. I don’t even know if the walm can reach that far. Of course, God might want the walm to take Child Earth’s soul away, which is good enough for me. If I was God, I would’ve straightened out this bratty planet a long time ago. I think Child Earth deserves oblivion. On the other hand, I’m just an action figure. I don’t have any say in the happenings of the universe, and I’d be laughed at if I thought otherwise. I’m just a form of amusement.

  I wonder how amusing Richard Stein was to Child Earth, when he shoved off an old man into the sea without any sailing experience, and without any company besides his Cool Blue Lady during the second half of each day. I wonder how Child Earth felt about old men in their twilight moments altogether. I wonder if he gives them their grand finale without killing them off first, if he thinks it would be funnier to not satisfy a pitiful old man. Or was the distribution of such grand finales God’s job?

  Scene 25

  Brain City

  An hour or two passes and still no Christian.

  He went crazy, so who knows what could’ve happened to him. Being in a bad place to be when the scorpion flies attacked, probably paralyzed in an alley somewhere, or in a pile of half-corpses.

  We can’t wait for him anymore. Humanity’s future depends on our survival.

  So we decide to head towards the walm, with Nan against our shoulders. She can walk now. Well, it’s more of a stagger-wobble, and her head is still drunk with toxins, but she’ll pull through in time. Through the miniature ocean cluttered with micro fish and organisms. I wonder if there are water bugs trying to eat the tiny people in the sailboats. I wonder if the tiny people are scared of this new land of giants.

  “It must be there,” Mort tells me, motioning to a flesh-tangy area up ahead, beings walking (or sometimes oozing) from that direction.

  “Here we go,” I tell Leaf.

  The area is peach-meat sunshine, flowing curly, plastic.

  Peculiar shock emotions hit me here, right here, emotions that I haven’t felt before in my life, wiggling strong. Just as strong as love or fear or hate or happiness. Another emotion, never felt by human feelings. So new to me, freshly breathing into my system.

  Intensities camber and take me over.

  I’ve always figured there could be more emotions out there somewhere, similar to love or sadness, but I never thought they’d be so different, so unexplainable. I feel like the color orange with red dots and a tree branch inside. Then I feel like the tip of a needle and the fabric of a plaid couch. I can’t tell if these feelings are beautiful or scary. I can only say that they are extraordinary.

  The emotions must be emanating from the walm like sillygo, but I can’t see the walm entirely — just a glow of red light.

  It’s blocked by the people leaving from there. More new people. I see one man attached to a woman, who seems to be his wife. Joined in flesh as well as in marriage.

  Another being has a snake’s torso, like something from Greek Mythology, but it also seems to be a hermaphrodite with crab-claws for hands. I don’t go too near it, especially with my dizzy visions mixing with my dizzy emotions. Who knows what these creatures are capable of?

  Mortician is in awe and doesn’t speak to me now. I don’t speak to him either.

  I look towards the red light behind the walm people, over the heads of twelve identical beings.

  They’re fish-like beings, scaled wings along their arms, and large hook-like skulls that waterfall a salty liquid down their shoulders and into the miniature ocean — the source of ocean water. Dark pools for eyes, staring at me, all twenty-four eyes directly at me.

  As they stare at me, I figure out what they are. But I’m not sure if it’s my intelligence that comes to this conclusion or if they have subconsciously told me in some way.

  I realize: they are the Movac.

  The Movac isn’t a male or a female, as I earlier believed. It is twelve beings — all with the same mind. They seem to be four males and eight females, an entire race that share a brain. They probably reproduce so that the Movac’s conscious thoughts will continue. A race of one. A single brain.

  “We are not a single brain,” says one of the Movac.

  I’m surprised to hear it speak, and I’m sure they know that I’m surprised, and I’m sure they knew that I was going to be surprised before he said that.

  “We have separate brains, Leaf,” says another. “But we lack a sense of individuality, even in our appearance, but we are still individuals.”

  I think I understand. When you know everything about everything, it’s probably hard to be unique from others who know everything. You own every consciousness of every being that is, has been, or ever will be alive. Which makes it irrelevant to have one of your own. It all sounds hideous-depressing to me. But the Movac live for a different purpose than what I live for, so I should stop comparing them to myself. Their purpose is something completely beyond me.

  “It is to answer questions,” the Movac says, all of them.

  “What?” Mort shrugs.

  “The purpose of our existing is to answer questions.”

  “That’s it?” I ask.

  They all nod.

  I feel betrayed and punch my leg. They know everything and all that they do is answer questions. What in the hell is that supposed to mean?

  “That’s why we were created,” says the Movac. “We were created because something had to know everything. With us around, nothing will be forgotten. Not a man, not a thought, not anything. You think of us as beings, but don’t. Think of us as the record books of everything.”

  “Nobody else knows everything?” Mort asks. “What about God? Doesn’t He know everything?”

  “No, gods created us because they didn’t want to know everything. In a way, you give up your individuality to know everything, and the gods refused to give that up. It was necessary for us to exist, for history’s sake, and also for the future’s.”

  I ask, “So you are the all-knowing computers of the universe?”

  They started nodding before the question came.

  I notice that the Movacs have miniature cities inside of their brains. These cities are inhabited by the same miniature people that inhabit the miniature ocean. An entire society physically living inside of a brain city.

  They are the brain citizens: physical beings formed from the thoughts of the Movac. The process of knowing everything must be so complex that they need hundreds of brain-workers, functioning together in one society — moving toward one goal — to form a Movac’s super-complex brain. And all twelve Movac brains work together to form the all-knowing super computer of the universe. I’m not sure if my theory is correct, but I don’t want to know for sure, because theorizing exercises the brain muscles. The Movacs know I am thinking this, so they don’t tell me if I’m right or wrong.

  The brain citizens build their societies outside of Movac brains too, expanding productivity across the countryside of Punk Land. This entire ocean, which Mort and I are standing in and Nan is lying in, is the overflow of the Movac brain. Ships and villages and animals — all part of the Movac brain, all working together to maintain the knowledge of everything.

  A female Movac stares at me with a gurgle-leak coursing down her neck. Her brain citizens have built elevators from her chin to her breasts, where they can relax on the soft flesh before taking a shuttle to her toes. Through my swirly eyes, I see her body as an arousing work of architecture. A sky-scraping building that I wouldn’t mind laying over a mountain to inject my whale-sized shank through its front entrance, knocking the doorman out of the way and flooding the lobby once I am finished with her.

  The Movac woman must’ve had her dark-pools eyeing into me because she knew I was about to fantasize about her, and wanted to give me a good stare-down before I performed the sex thought, licking some brain citizens from the corner of her white lips to dissolve in thick mouth water. I’m embarrassed, but I shouldn’t be, not at all: she’s known I was going to
do this her entire life. It wasn’t a shock in the slightest, I’m sure.

  “We’re going through the walm,” Mortician tells them.

  “We know,” they say, pig-drippy.

  The female, the fantasy building with large vacation breasts and the leaky saltwater entrance, approaches us, stiff-moving with her city built on her insides, trying to keep the brain citizens from falling into the ocean. She glares into my eyes again, her pools gathering hints of purple and silver. Black cave of a mouth… shingles for teeth… opening with pearl-expression…

  “Let’s go there.” She turns and heads to the walm light.

  I wonder why she is taking us rather than any of the other twelve. Is it because I’m attracted to her? Is she attracted to me as well? Will she take advantage of my weakness to alien women before allowing me to escape through the walm?

  I hope so.

  She leads the way, through the vapid humanoid crowd emerging from the light. Her walk patterns are mechanical. Her backside is so sensual yet it’s like a machine, just how the blue woman’s seems to be, but the blue woman is an animal-like machine and this Movac is a machine-like animal. I’ve never been attracted to mechanical women before. Now I guess it’s becoming a trend in my life.

  The walm emotions go squirrely here, as do my eyes, running up the tree bark and chirping. Brain liquid drools from the Movac woman’s head, and I watch it slowly licking down to her fleshy rounds that are inhabited by the lower class of her body’s citizens — the salty odor thickens the air down there — then slipping between the crack to her thighs where it weeps into the miniature ocean world.

  I’m paying so much attention to her absorbing body that I don’t realize we have reached the source of the light. My head fixes on the lower parts as she stops, then it looks up at the sublime doorway, the walm, eyes fixed without much dizzy-swirling.