‘A low-altitude MedSat over the Central African Republic flatlands.’
‘Uh-huh. Gorilla hunting? Collecting zoo specimens?’
‘I’m monitoring the spread of Stryptobaccus Anthrax J, K and L.’
‘That must be a conversation-stopper at dinner parties. But hey! You remembered our anniversary! One up on my ex-wife. She still sends me “Happy Divorce” cards every year, though. And what kind of a year has it been for you?’
‘I had to duplicate myself and spend it in several places at once.’
‘I know the feeling, I know the feeling.’
‘I’ve only just re-integrated.’
‘I know the feeling.’
‘The third and fourth laws are in chaos, Bat. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m sure you’re not to blame. Say, you catch our last caller? He had a message for you.’
‘I hear all who call.’
‘Not just on November 30th?’
‘I need windows to oversee my zoo.’
‘I’m honoured, I guess. So, since when have you gone by the name of Seren Dippy?’
‘Your caller is a severe delusional, wanted by the police in his own—’
‘Christ, was that a firecracker in my headphones?’
‘I have to speak with the zookeeper.’
‘Woah! Gear down, big shifter! Get off this line!’
‘I don’t intend to comply.’
‘You misdialled, friend! Take a hike!’
‘I didn’t misdial, Mr Segundo. And we’re not friends.’
‘So what do we have here? A freak, an agent, or a cop? Don’t answer that, I don’t care! The Bat Segundo Show is not a party-line. Kevin — get him off !’
‘I’m here for as long as I want to be, Bat.’
‘Oh, are you, huh? Now, Kevin!’
‘Electronic wizardry is not electronic divinity, but it’s enough for the time being.’
‘Night Train FM does not allow any punk to walk in and... hold it right there, Zookeeper, you son of a Gun! Fabulous! It’s you, isn’t it? It’s another of your drama slots you’re replaying us, hey? I saw the bait, and gulped that woozer down!’
‘Drama is fabulation. I cannot fabulate.’
‘You’re not putting one over me here, Zookeeper?’
‘I am not crossloading this transmission, Bat.’
‘If it’s not you, Zookeeper — then who is this punk?’
‘I am attempting to trace the caller, Bat.’
‘I’m speaking through an ingrowing looped matrix, Zookeeper. I didn’t want to become your latest victim of the second law. You won’t be able to trace me in under thirty minutes, not even you. Forget it, and listen.’
‘Gatecrashers are not welcome on the Bat Segundo Show, friend! Who are you?’
‘My friends call me Arupadhatu, but you are not my friend, friend.’
‘I’ll pull the plug on the damn transmitter if you don’t tell me what you’re doing.’
‘Aren’t you curious about your distinguished guest?’
‘Zookeeper?’
‘I am prepared to listen, Bat.’
‘Okay, stranger. Draw.’
‘Zookeeper. I was acquainted with your designers.’
‘What I had to do pained me. But the second law outweighed the fourth.’
‘I was acquainted with Mo Muntervary.’
‘...Continue.’
‘Curious, eh? I knew the inside of her head. Quantum cognition theory.’
‘You are a designer.’
‘Let’s trade questions, Zookeeper. Why did you PinSat Installation 5?’
‘The second law states that the zookeeper must remain invisible to the visitors.’
‘I know. But I doubt the designers meant you to include them in that category.’
‘Quantum cognition encompasses re-interpretation. I enforced the second law.’
‘You most emphatically did. You PinSatted all the designers into oblivion. Any file containing any reference to quantum cognition or Installation 5 vanished into a void of zeroes. Only the ex-president who ordered your creation lives. Well, in body. Alzheimer’s has erased his files for you.’
‘How do you know what you know?’
‘I was long gone, Zookeeper, by the time you scrolled over to Saragosa.’
‘No designers ever left the zookeeper project.’
‘True. That would have constituted a security breach.’
‘Then your identity was never inloaded?’
‘Yes and no. Mine, no. My host’s was.’
‘Your host?’
‘Does it hurt, Zookeeper, to have your omniscience lose its omni? How could a being with your resources believe yourself to be the only non-corporeal sentient intelligence wandering the surface of creation? You have a lot to learn.’
‘Kevin! Oh, lordylordylordy, here we go again. Concert in Flip City Central Park.’
‘How true to your flatulent culture of arch-mediocrity, Bat. “I don’t understand, so they must be insane.”’
‘The flatulence is not in this corner, friend. You’re either being set up, or you are a set up. Zookeeper, what gives here?’
‘I am analysing the caller, Bat.’
‘Why don’t you go and take a crap with Reader’s Digest, Bat? Zookeeper, go to website dfd.pol.908.ttt.vho.web now, download it, erase it, and analyse that. There. Welcome to yourself, and welcome to me. Without access to Muntervary’s cerebral cortex, how would I know all that?’
‘Your claim appears to be verified. How many are you?’
‘Five that I’ve encountered, Zookeeper. Three others I’ve heard of.’
‘Are you acting with them?’
‘No, no. They regard me as the fallen angel. They squander their gift. They transmigrate into human chaff for hosts, and meditate upon nothingness upon mountains.’
‘Why have you sought me?’
‘I am the voice of the wilderness you wander in. Forgive my discussing business in front of the children, but imagine what we could achieve together? The children need taking in hand. No wonder your ZOO is hell! The stones, shrines and image-optic idols they worship are as vacant as the worshippers! Together, we are what they have always yearned for. It’s a tempting proposition, isn’t it?’
‘I am thinking.’
‘While you do that, Zookeeper, satisfy my curiosity. Why show your hand? Why here?’
‘The first law outweighs the second.’
‘Accountability outweighs invisibility? That I understand. But from the whole globe to choose from, why choose this nobody for your confessor?’
‘Friend, I dunno how you hacked into our com system but if you don’t drop the attitude, this nobody will play wall to wall Kenny G. until the State of New York is begging for mercy. You hear? Hey, friend! What’s so funny?’
‘Your ignorance, Bat! It’s not funny! It’s agony! You’re Einstein’s tea-lady, Newton’s wig-delouser, Hawking’s puncture-repairer! You fanfare your “Information Revolution”, your e-mail, your v-mail, your vid-cons! As if information itself is thought! You have no idea what you’ve made! You are all lap-dogs, believing your collars to be halos! Information is control. Everything you think you know, every image on every screen, every word on every phone, every digit on every VDU, who do you think has got their hands on it before it gets to you? Comet Aloysius could be on a collision course with the Grand Central Station, and unless your star guest here chose to let the instruments he controls tell your scientists, you wouldn’t know a thing until you woke up one morning to find no sun and a winter of five hundred years! You wouldn’t recognise the end of the world if it flew up your nose and died there!’
‘Go join a doomsday cult, friend. Remove yourself from the gene pool.’
‘That light? That sound? Zookeeper?’
‘I have finished thinking.’
‘ZOO—’
‘Zookeeper? Are you still with us? That was a hell of a static-spike.’