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.