I was trawling laboriously through the Multiverse, as is my wont, as is my Great Predilection, when to my delight I came across a universe which was so similar to our own that no one but an expert could tell the difference. And possibly not even then! I could pass it off as the real thing, I said to myself. I could sell it to terrorists on the Dark Net. Or maybe I was mistaken, maybe my mind was simply playing tricks on me, cunning little bugger that it is. Maybe there was a flaw but I just couldn’t spot it.
That’s what it’s like, you see. That’s what it’s like when you’re trawling through the Multiverse for years on end – your mind starts to play tricks on you. You’re looking for cheap sensations and you’ve forgotten what your original agenda was. You’ve lost sight of the difference between what is real and what is only half-real, what is significant and what you only think is significant. You’re looking for kicks, in other words – you started off being the parasite but now you’re the host.
It was my own fault – I had become blase. I had become cynical, weary both of myself and the world. I had become fickle and foolish, vain and pretentious, shallow and obnoxious, and all that sort of thing, and now look where it has got me! One minute I had been a respectable member of society – possibly an accountant, newspaper reporter or parliamentarian or something like that – and the next I had become a disgusting endoparasite, floating unpleasantly in a sack of milky fluid, dreaming my parasitic dreams. I was trapped screaming in the Dream Box, unable to get out…
From time to time I remember moments of exquisite bliss. ‘How exquisite the bliss was back in those days’, I say to myself sadly, ‘how very exquisite and also how very precious…’ We live in a Deteriorated Age, as is well known – nothing is a patch on what it used to be. There’s no bliss anymore – only an onerous sense of duty, which we know on some deep level we’re never going to fulfil. Our duty becomes our doom therefore, and I’m sure there’s no one here prepared to argue with that! Our duty always becomes our Doom….
There’s nothing worse than having to protect an illusion, is there? It’s so very annoying, so very irritating. ‘Oh. I suppose I’d better protect the stupid old illusion,’ you say to yourself with resounding bad grace and you grudgingly go through the time-honoured movements of whatever ritual it is you believe in. But then the next thing is that the Fear comes a-knocking briskly on your door. You’d know that knock anywhere. ‘I’m not here’, you cry out, ‘go away and pick on someone else instead’. Shit has suddenly got real, and you’ve been caught short. You’ve been caught with your trousers down and that’s just the beginning. You try your best to be friendly but you’re just not very good at it – the illusion’s got you on the run and it’s playing you like a fiddle…
You’re doing your best to be friendly, always doing your best to be friendly, but it’s just not working out for you. It’s so hard keeping a convincing smile going – your skin is stretched taut and pink with the effort. The universe is reflecting you back at yourself and that’s never much fun! You’re not a very nice person, after all. Not so nice, not so nice at all. You’re a bit of an old bollocks really, if the truth were to be told. ‘Be friendly,’ you tell yourself, ‘send out the good vibes…’ It’s awful hard sending out good vibes sometimes though, isn’t it? It can be awful, awful hard and I don’t blame you if it gets too much for you at times.
‘Protect the illusion, protect the illusion, protect the illusion’, my mind tells me. Orders me, really. Protect the goddamn filthy, dirty, lousy old illusion. You’ve been hooked on the bait you see, you’ve been hooked on the bait and now they’re slowly but surely reeling you in. Don’t feel too bad about it, though. It’s happened to us all, it’s happened to every single last one of us, so no one here is about to throw any stones, I can promise you. You’ve been doing it for so long now that you can’t give it up, you’re frightened to give it up, but that’s the same for all of us…
