The Revisionaries

by A. R. Moxon

  “I can see I’m failing to capture it. Try this: Think of a more closely associated Everything to our Everything, where time and space still operate in roughly similar fashion, but in which passage down time’s tunnel isn’t marked by a progression from hand-drawn panel to hand-drawn panel, but rather by words on a page, bricks of paragraph, tributaries of dialogue, letter by letter, word by word. In other words, imagine a comic book and then imagine a novel. Imagine a line connecting the one Everything to the other. The seventh dimension would be that line between our Everything and another Everything. A closed system of only two Everythings. Another tunnel, but from your perspective and mine, inexpressibly large and complex. Now imagine the eighth dimension, a planar assembly of such linear connections, associated one to the other by roughly parallel understandings of time, space, and possibility. Imagine the ninth dimension—the ninth! ay yi yi, the ninth!—the full collection of all Everythings across all their collective spaces (or whatever the various Everythings use as space) and all their collective times (whatever ‘time’ might mean for each) and all their collective possibilities—possibilities, guys!—every single possible shift of every single possible supersub-particular element of every sub-particle, all existing, always. Imagine it. Imagine all the Everythings. You can’t. You can’t even imagine a single Everything, much less all the Everythings. Can you even imagine imagining it? I can’t. But that’s what your ticket does, Gordy. Wherever the thing came from, for whatever reason you’ve brought it, that’s what it has done, at least in some small part that is what it has allowed.” Landrude thrusts his arm once again within the womb of his red rucksack, rummages, draws out a large book, paperback, its white cover empty save for the title and the single image, centrally placed, of a glass, shaped like a bell, filled with a dozen perfect ounces of golden Trappist beer. A FAR LAND, the cover proclaims.

  “Before I was a successful comic-book creator,” Landrude says, looking slightly abashed, “I was an unsuccessful novelist. This thing is the only work I ever got published. It’s not bad. It sold about twenty copies. It’s about my misspent youth in the worse neighborhoods of Belgium—or, as I have it, Färland; it’s a roman à clef with even the names of countries and cities changed to protect reputations. As good as it was that you ran away from Morris, as glad as I am that you kept the bastard from the power he seeks,” Landrude says, shaking the book. “When you ran, this is where you ran—into the next book over on my bookshelf. And boy-howdy, buddy, did you ever goof everything up when you did.”

  Julius sits on the checkerboard-tile floor. “You know what? I’m sick of gods who make simple things impossible. Gordy can play your game if he wants, but what I’m going to do is, I’m going to lie here with my head under this table until you cut this shit and go away forever.”

  Landrude rubs his forehead. “Let me ask you something, my fine friar friend. Does gravity exist?” Julius lies back, head under the adjacent table, staring at the gum-encrusted underbelly, keeping pointedly silent. Landrude, however, is undeterred. “I mean to say, do you and your friends and everybody go flying off the planet, or do you stay on terra firma? I’m guessing it’s the latter. Do you know how gravity works? Where it comes from? I don’t. As best I can tell, even the biggest brains in my Everything argue about it. And how about the sky? Or how about the entire country of China? Do they speak Mandarin in China? Of course they do. Do I speak Mandarin? No, I do not. How much of my story—your world—takes place in China? None of it does. And yet, your world has China in it, full of Chinese people speaking Mandarin. How? And, why? Better still, let’s get back to ‘doughnuts.’ Or even further back to ‘donuts.’ This one,” Landrude makes a selection from the box. “I suppose you’d agree it exists. I suppose it’s made of atoms. Would you agree? Do you know how atoms are bound together? I mean, exactly how? I don’t. But I suppose these atoms are bound by the same natural contracts instructing all atoms to hold together. Now consider the Crab Nebula, my poor petulant padre. Does it exist? You’ve never visited, I know, but you’ve heard of it, I’m sure—do you assume it exists? How about you, Gordy—what does your experience tell you? Do the stars exist? Do they form Orion’s Belt? The Big Dipper? The Milky Way? Other galaxies too numerous to count? Do they? Or let me ask you another question. Do you breathe? You know: in, out, oxygen to the blood through the lungs? Does your heart beat, pumping that blood throughout your body?”

  Landrude pauses waiting on truculent Julius’s acknowledgment. Gordy finally gives a perfunctory nod on the priest’s behalf. “Splendid. Do you know what’s interesting about all these things? I never wrote them into existence. Never once did I write, ‘Oh, and by the way, there are stars that form the Big Dipper,’ not once did I mention, ‘Oh, and by the way, throughout this scene, the sky still continues to exist, and it is blue, and also there is China (where Mandarin is spoken, you know), and gravity, which is probably caused by dark matter, and atoms continue to bond one to the other, held together by their unending electrochemical confluences.’ Nary a time did I write, ‘Oh, and by the way, Gordy’s heart continued to beat all the way through this scene here.’ And yet it does. Isn’t. That. Fascinating?

  “So now, I think, it’s finally time to explain interpretation and assumption. It’s another dimension—last dimension, I promise—number ten. It doesn’t sit atop the ninth, like the ninth does over the eighth, and so on down the line. It sits tucked between all of them. The tenth dimension is the observance by audiences of the other dimensions. Interpretation. Assumption. You do, and thus you swim through the channels of possibility. I say, and so it will be, and thus I dig the larger grooves in reality from which you cannot stray. But them? The audiences? They see whatever they will see, and decide what it means, and we are all at their mercy. It’s not me who keeps this whole assumed universal and biological apparatus going, and I assure you, it’s not you, either. It’s them. You choose realities into being out of a limited selection. I speak them into being out of a far wider one. But they observe it into being. They assume their own universe into yours. The stars and the sky and China and the very breath in your lungs are all in your world because they assume they are. And, as their understanding of their own universe changes, so your universe will change, automatically, with new assumptions and interpretations. So much more is unspoken in the totality of a universe than is spoken. This is their control over me, and over you. Over us all. Ours are the weaker powers; theirs are the stronger.

  “Observers. Readers, if you like, since that’s what they are in your case. The tenth dimension, situated in any Everything that might have access to my creation and to you, providing all possible interpretations throughout all possibilities across all time and all space of all the Everythings.

  “It’s always been hard on my mind, being here.” With distaste, he prods A Far Land. “Now it’s nearly impossible. Just sitting here is a serious chore. A comic book is an unusually stable place when it comes to interpretation; it’s all visual, you see. Everybody saw you as cats. You were cats. Your surroundings I drew as background, and so everybody saw it that specific way. But then, Gordy, you made your escape—into a completely different Everything, into a goddam novel—and you scrambled all the eggs.*5 You made connections between two Everythings, each with its own set of foundational rules—and I seriously doubt this was the only connection between Everythings you made. You punctured the seal of your Everything; all other Everythings—and audiences of other Everythings—came rushing in.

  “It’s them who make it awful for me in here. Don’t you understand? Because I control everything in this Everything, I have to see it all, all at once. And, now that you—” pointing at Gordy—“punctured the seal around your Everything, I have observers observing you as comic book, and as novel, and as movie, and…You see? Some formats I can only guess at. You’re being observed across infinite Everythings, and I have to see it all. Can you imagine it? Perceiving reality properly in such an interpretational stew is…h
orrific. It requires all my concentration.”

  Beneath the table, Gordy feels his seat shake; Julius’s left foot tapping against his bench in impatient staccato. Landrude, ignoring, continues. “That’s why I need the two of you so badly,” he says, his eyes moist, pretenses of grandeur released, the desperation that has all along been threatening to emerge from him thrown now to the fore.

  A doughnut bounces off Landrude’s forehead, leaving behind a glistening sugary residue. Julius, sitting, is already holding another in throwing position. “Then why don’t you fix this ‘goof,’ shithead? You’re so powerful. So mighty. You stop Morris. Stop his heart. Bury him under a mountain. Send a pack of jackal-frogs to eat him. Turn him into swamp water. Take Gordy’s ticket for yourself if you need it safe.”

  Landrude looks mordantly at the priest, blows smoke in his face. “I have tried. I can’t do anything with the ticket. It won’t let me touch it. And killing Morris is no good. Cause and effect are hard to predict. I don’t create the pages—they’re waiting for me when I return. And they’ve always gone wrong.”

  “I would very much like to go now,” Julius says, with a calm approaching panic.

  Landrude ignores this. “There’s not much to it, guys; it’s a simple game. Gordy, you and your ticket are the only things in this Everything that come from some place beyond me, the only things I can’t write. You’ve been injected into a narrative that pushes, no matter how hard I try to fight it, toward a reality in which Gordy gives Morris the ticket. Logically speaking, it follows there must be some horrifically powerful force that wants Morris to have it.”

  “I have no ticket.” Gordy peeps. He wants to scream it, but he’s too tired.

  “You do. You need to remember.”

  “I can’t remember anything.”

  “Don’t be a fool. You can. You do. Every night. Then you scream. Then you make yourself forget again, using the ticket, which you absolutely do have somewhere on you.”

  “I knew it!” Julius, exultant despite himself, smacks the floor triumphantly.

  “Then where the hell is it?” Gordy shouts. “Where have I hidden it?”

  The look Landrude bestows upon Gordy is slow and sad, and terribly weary. “That,” he says, “is one of the few things I do not know.” He leans forward over the table. “There’s not much time. It’s going to happen tomorrow. And it’s up to you and Julius to stop him.”

  “Then I just won’t give it to him.”

  “Ah, but I’ve already seen it,” Landrude says, sadly. “You do. The final panel.*6 He’s an inch from taking it from you.”

  “And what happens…” Gordy asks, though he knows the bad answer. He can see it rushing at him. He knows it; it’s been chasing him all along, it’s followed him wheresoever he’s hidden from it, it wakes him at night screaming, it makes him coffee in the morning, it passes by him repeatedly throughout the day like a multitude of strangers “…what happens if…if I—if I do give Morris…” “What happens then,” Landrude says, with merciless finality, “is why I’m risking sanity to be here today. Imagine a million pages of exacting six-point text, block after block after page after page, free of breaks, free of dialogue, every last detail nailed down. No, imagine a billion pages of it. All possibilities close; your story ends as badly as you could possibly imagine—and I’ll have a book nobody wants to read, about a megalomaniac who always had control over everything and always will. And that’s why we need to talk about who you are, and why you matter.”

  “What do we need to do?” Gordy asks, envying Julius his place on the floor. Lying down looks like the best possible option. This isn’t fair, he tells himself. You’re not important. You don’t even want to be important. What sort of demon thought you could be trusted with stakes this high?

  Landrude leans in to him. “The game is ‘keep away.’ That’s why I vanished the circus, which in all honesty, you must have realized was a trap. In doing so, I prevented a bad ending. But that just revised the pages a different way; you still give him the ticket at the end.”

  “But where did you send it?” Gordy says.

  Landrude rolls his eyes. “Just off to their next stop down the road. A favor. I saved them the expense of transshipment. But stay away from the circus—honestly, are you even listening? The game is ‘keep away.’ Gordy, you’re the ball. Julius, you’re the protector, the champion.*7 You’re the character I invented for it. I’ll be honest with you: You’ve been utter shit at it. Each time you’ve tried to save Gordy—including dozens of attempts nobody except me remembers any more—you’ve failed. But each time you’ve failed, I’ve started again, and given you another tool to make you more likely to succeed. Here’s an example you might find meaningful: In a recent recapitulation, you lacked the stamina needed to catch Morris pushing a stretcher down a long hallway. He got away, you were left wheezing, exhausted, trapped in the tunnel. Not long after you were caught and killed, the top of your head sliced off like a late summer watermelon. So, I made a change. I gave you a motivation, buried deep in your past, which made you run every day. A mad father, with a strange pathology and a guillotine. I gave you a place to which to run—a cathedral. The motivation I gave you for running also furnished you with an unusual version of faith, or at least a desire for faith, so I amplified it. It’s been very useful for increasing your interest in Gordy, and thus in keeping Gordy safe these months. So take courage—you’ve failed each time, but each time you’ve gotten better at it. More importantly, you’re the only one I have such control over anymore. Do you understand, you stubborn fucker?” Landrude gently nudges the silent priest’s leg. “You don’t recapitulate. You stay unchanged from my intent. So, the game is, stick close to Gordy. Help him remember the ticket. Keep it away from Morris. You, Gordy, have to do something new and unexpected. You have to do something more than ‘unexpected,’ you have to do something unexpectable—some possibility I can’t seem to find—and you can’t do that, Gordy, if you can’t remember.”

  “Something ‘unexpectable’ like what?” Julius asks. As Landrude has delivered this last monologue, the priest has, despite himself, drawn back into a seated position. He’s obviously struggling with revelations greater than a person should be expected to digest; he looks like a dog who has been taught, for the first time, knowledge of its own mortality.

  Very casually, Landrude shrugs. “Give the ticket to somebody else? Use it against Morris yourself? I don’t know. If I could tell you, it wouldn’t be unexpectable.”

  “All right,” says Julius. His voice sounds like the last straggling gasp of a drowning swimmer. “And is there anything else?”

  “I feel I’ve convinced you,” Landrude replies, after consideration. “At least I’ve convinced you of who I am, and who you are, and why it is important. It’ll have to do. So now, I have to wait. I don’t know what you’re going to do with your new information, but I hope you choose to play the game. And Gordy, at the risk of belaboring the point, you need to remember. Try the confessional.*8 Everything—and I’m speaking literally now—Everything depends on you.”

  “And is there anything else?”

  Landrude sighs. “No, Julius. No, there’s nothing else. That’s all there is.” Inside, without a rush of wind or a pop or any other announcement, the customers and cooks of Bailey’s Doughnuts return, slackfaced and chewing: hustle and fry, murmur and call. Out the windows, the pearly mist is gone, Loony Island restored. Julius rises and dusts himself off. He and Gordy stumble away, mutely, leaving the man in the powder-blue suit behind.

  “Julius. You forgot your doughnuts.” Julius leaves without acknowledgment. Jingle of the bell on the door. “Interesting,” says the man in the powder-blue suit. He selects one—frosted, no sprinkles—and begins to eat.

  * * *

  —

  Outside, they stumble away from the doughnut shop like recent witnesses to hard murders. Only when the shop is long out
of sight does Gordy finally speak.

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t give a warm fucking fart either way,”

  They trudge on. Gordy says, “I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

  “I know. I’m coming with you.”

  “I know.”

  Back at the Chapel, when they once again feel themselves unobserved, near Julius’s cell, they argue.

  “Hell no, I’m not taking your fucking confession. I didn’t feel qualified before. I damn sure don’t feel qualified now.”

  “If you’re going out on the run with me, you should know what I’ve done—what I’m capable of.”

  “I don’t know what I’m capable of. I don’t even know what I’ll be tomorrow. All I have are my convictions, and even those…do what Landrude told you. Use Father Ex if you need to. There’s a memory card in it you can take with you to replay it for me someday. Someday I’ll listen, if the reason is right.”

  “The reason is you’re my friend. My only friend. Take my confession.”

  “Sorry, buddy. When you leave, I’ll go with you. It’s what I’m made for, isn’t it? But I’ll never do another priestly thing in my life. It’s done. I’m not a real priest. I’m not even real. Use Father Ex.”

  * * *

  —

  Later, shaking with screams, sequestered within Father Ex-Position, Gordy lets great waves of memory crash into him. Most of all, he remembers the voices screaming out from the oubliettes as he opened them—that most of all. The voices of those he left behind.

  *1 The gambit of imprisoning Gordy in an oubliette was your first attempt at more subtle manipulation: jumping through the timeline; pushing from the shadows, wreathed in smoke; nudging Gordy this way and that; getting Gordy’s dad down Pigeon Forge way for his research; getting young Gordy to the circus; making sure the trustees would catch him, manipulating Morris without telling Morris directly (you knew the dangers of approaching Morris), getting Gordy into the circus (even appearing to him directly; giving him a ticket of sorts for admission), making sure he’d be seen, captured, processed, interred.