ONCE UPON A WEIRD

“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”

Lenny Bruce

MAY 28, 2011. There was a society that consisted of only 20 people. They lived in cottages in a valley.

There was no one else on the planet.

These people had no children, but they lived for a very long time. In fact, no one had ever died.

Above the planet, there were 20 moons. Each person had his own moon. Every night, he/she looked at his/her moon.

Joe told Carol, “You know what? There are only a few things we need. Food, clothing, shelter, and trinkets.”

Carol said, “You just figured that out?”

“It strikes me,” Joe said, “that whatever work I do, it’s about one of those four things. But I want to do something more. Yesterday, I imagined doing much more.”

“And what was that?” Carol said.

“Moving my moon.”

Her mouth fell open.

“That’s impossible. The moons rise and set. That’s it. They’re on their own.”

“I know,” Joe said. “But it’s the only thing I can think of doing that excites me.”

“And if you can move it,” she said, “everything will spin into chaos.”

“Yeah,” Joe said. “That’s what we all think. I mean, nobody talks about it, but we all believe it. Suppose we’re wrong.”

“Then you move a moon. So what? You have to balance that against the possibility of destroying the world.”

“Well,” Joe said, “I’ve figured it out. See, things are in balance. And as long as they are, nothing changes.”

Carol told Mike about this, and Mike told Ethel, and Joe ended up in a locked room in his cottage. A prisoner.

At his trial, he said, “Two things. One, everybody says it’s impossible to move a moon, so why can’t I try? And two, I was just talking to Carol about doing it. Why is that a crime?”

Mike, who was appointed judge, said: “I’ve thought long and hard about this, Joe, and I’ve decided you’ll be confined to quarters for the duration, for the foreseeable future.”

In his room, Joe started painting his moon on sheets of paper. He painted it faithfully, but after a few years, he began making moons that were purple, green, red, orange. He painted flat moons and triangular moons and moons with holes in them. He painted moons that looked like beds, sandwiches, and long horizontal eyeballs.

One day, he painted a moon with saw teeth, and he felt the floor tremble and the walls tremble. Outside his room, a tree fell and huge blue plumes of energy streamed out of the ground, up into the air.

People came to see it.

One man accidentally stepped too close and he was propelled a hundred feet into the air and sat there. He looked around him.

So a woman tried it next, and she was also shot into the air and came to rest a thousand feet above the ground.

Eventually, everyone tried it—and they were all floating at different heights. Then they began drifting. They drifted back to earth and then rose again. They found they could walk through air back to the ground.

That night, they noticed Joe’s moon had moved in the sky. It was higher and off to the left.

And there was a man on that moon. He was waving. He was wearing a robe and it was flapping. He was jumping up and down, and every time he jumped, he shot up into the sky, and then came down. Finally, he jumped off, spread his arms, and flew down to the ground.

He was a large man with a beard.

By this time, somebody had let Joe out of his room and he was there, on the grass, when the man with the beard hit the turf.

“Who are you?” Joe said.

“Moses,” the man said. “I was climbing this hill, see? I had led my people out of Egypt and we were wandering in the desert for a long time, and then I decided to walk up this hill because there were big stones there. I was going to carve laws in the stones and bring them down to the people. It would have been a pretty good deal. You know, some people obey the laws, some don’t. You’ve got arguments, interpretations, recriminations, punishments, revenge, a deal with God.”

Who?” Joe said.

“God,” Moses said. “The Guy. He’s in charge.”

Everybody looked at everybody.

“And then, bang,” Moses said. “I was up on that moon.”

“Where’s this God?” Joe said.

“You make him up as you go along,” Moses said.

Joe thought about that.

“Who made you up?”

Moses smiled.

“I’m a guy in a story. I don’t know who wrote it. I was a slave and then I broke out.”

“Broke out of the story?”

“Yeah…I guess.”

“Weird.”

“I know.”

“You want some coffee?”

“Sure. I’ll have to do something else now. I’m cut loose.”

In the following days and weeks, all sorts of characters from stories began appearing.

They were interesting. There was a man in a red robe with a cross hung around his neck. And a tall hat that looked like a fish. He said he was the Pope. At first, he tried to boss everyone around and get them to build a tower, but then a tough guy in a cheap suit named Mike Hammer told him to back off.

A dapper man emerged from the earth and said he was a critic for The New York Times. Hammer grabbed him by his collar and frog-marched him to a pond and tossed him in.

Then one day, Moses laughed.

The 20 people looked at him and asked what that was.

“I’m not sure,” Moses said, “but I want to do it again. Say something funny.”

“Say something what?”

“Funny. I think it’s like when you shoot up off the ground.”

“Like?”

“You know, when you compare one thing to another.”

The 20 people were bewildered. They considered bringing Moses to trial, but with all the new people around, they were distracted…

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

IMAGINATION IS LITERAL

LIKE A BIRD IS A TRUCK

MAY 28, 2011. Once upon a time, each thing was itself and nothing else. This suited the clan.

Then on a slow Tuesday afternoon, a member made a comparison in language—one word to another.

Half the clan wanted to throw him over a cliff, and the other half wanted to get down on their knees and pray to him.

They flipped a coin—or a wheel or a rock—and decided to reserve judgment because, fortunately for the future, the coin landed on its edge.

Thus metaphor was allowed to expand.

Something heretofore unknown was stimulated: imagination.

Immediately, an underground movement was formed to stop this. It was illegal by a Higher Standard, and it would certainly corrupt the young.

I’ve lobbied for a bill that would require every child, by the age of 18, to come up with one interesting metaphor, or face death, but the bill has stalled in committee.

And green and golden, I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

(Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas)

In the New Age—rainbow and pot of gold—there is no more metaphor, because that is confusing. Better to reinterpret it as literal truth and make believe it’s so. Flatland revisited.

In another venue, walk up to Security at a major airport and say, “My God, this is a Venice brothel without the cheap champagne,” and see whether you wind up in a small room with four cops.

The literalists take over. And they don’t even care anymore whether the trains run on time.

If you write a sentence that is more than declarative, the majority is baffled.

That girls at puberty may find

The first Adam in their thought,

Shut the door of the Pope’s chapel, Keep those children out.

There on that scaffolding resides

Michael Angelo.

With no more sound than the mice make

His hand moves to and fro.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.

(WB Yeats, “Long-Legged Fly”)

This is this. That is that. This is THIS. That is THAT. On and on, like a steamroller, until the mind and imagination go to sleep.

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

(William Gibson, “Neuromancer”)

Deploying imagination (or understanding it) is not like sending columns of troops out to battle.

And without irony or metaphor—two of the million children of imagination—there is no laughter.

Just stolid old USSR eyes asking for records.

Imagination doesn’t work in a straight line. You can’t take a simple declarative sentence and make a one-for-one translation and turn it into imagination.

Conversely, you can’t ask Melville to write a children’s book. You can’t put imagination in a step-down decompression chamber and come out with anything except mush.

The literalists think there is something good about taking a star a million times bigger than our sun and icing it until it looks like our moon.

They are trying to engineer a Flatland reality for the masses. They may not know it, but that’s the limit of what they can conceive.

These are the letters of my ancient fathers,

And these are the letters of the roses

Blowing across the rolling apparatus

That moves the sun,

Shining through old windows

On statues of drowned men.

Now they shake off the rime

And stagger up from their trench,

Without a city.

They form a many-rayed subconscious moon.

(Rappoport, from The Thunderhead Cantos)

Society: all the possibilities of metaphor harnessed to produce a non-metaphoric cartoon.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

If you’re receiving this as an email, scroll down a little and click on MARKETPLACE to see my audio seminars.

SIX PIECES OF SILVER

MAY 27, 2011. There is a fear of language. The major symptom is paranoia—uh-oh, veering away from traditional constructions will leave everyone in chaos.

This is what’s wrong with conservatives. They assume ALL deviation is a sign of an apocalypse, or something, a symptom of total degeneration of the species.

A little planned ambiguity gets you a special seat in a ring of Hell.

And a string of metaphors? Flame throwers for eternity.

Two sentences that don’t quite add up is a conspiracy.

(Liberals have their own brand of insanity that, these days, mainly revolves around trying to ban words and phrases and turn them into crimes.)

Well, here’s news. If you KNOW the language and then bend it, so what?

“Applesauce, applesauce,” said the Queen, “what is applesauce? Whoever started this thing must hang!”

–rumored (by me) to have been omitted from Alice Through the Looking Glass

Oh for chrisakes don’t be scared of words, Charlie said. You’re running down the street after a coupla definitions dropped down a sewer like you lost an ARM. Relax. You might hit the jackpot. You might get a feeling something NEW happened…

Three pictures in a row on Thursday

ARE A HYPNOTIC LUNCH

then crowds walk through a movie theater

and break the spell

we weren’t in a trance after all

we were thinking about billiard balls on a table that never collide

average distillation common denominator

you hit him with a few words he doesn’t

put together right away

and he goes into the television for the answer

Here is a collage

You nobly call your life

the teacher wants you to deconstruct it

and put the pieces in a drawer

INSTEAD YOU CLIMB ON TO THE CEILING

AND WALK UPSIDE DOWN

blow through the wrong end of the trumpet for a while and see what happens

here’s a perfect crystal

so what

we learned nothing

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjronsulting@gmail.com

WHY IMAGINATION EQUALS MAGIC

“Mountains, Bruce, mountains,” the manager said.

“Mountains, Bruce, mountains,” Bruce said and gazed.

“Echolia, Bruce, echolia,” the manager said. “Echolia, Bruce–”

“Okay, Bruce,” the manager said, and shut the cabin door behind him, thinking, I believe I’ll put him among the carrots. Or beets. Something simple. Something that won’t puzzle him.

Philip K Dick, A Scanner Darkly

MAY 27, 2011. Ordinary reality—and all those dedicated to living in it and propagating it—is the residue, the leftover, when imagination isn’t being employed with intensity.

Ordinary reality is organized with a minimum of imagination. That is its hallmark.

Ordinary reality is what people usually think is (might be) changed by magic.

Yet, ordinary reality is constructed as a network of interconnected parts, in order to exclude imagination.

“I’m ordinary reality. Try to change me through imagination.”

This can provoke much hitting-head-against-brick-wall.

Of course, there are many venues in which imagination can be deployed. The arts. Science. Invention. In fact, the closer you look, the more you realize imagination can be used universally.

However, when applied against ordinary reality, it often seems imagination produces little or no change.

That’s an illusion.

It turns out that ordinary reality was created BY imagination—but with a strange plan. “We’ll use imagination to make a reality that seems to resist imagination.”

In other words, it’s a trick.

It’s like saying, “I’ll create a labyrinth, so I can wander around in it and get lost.”

Or: “I’ll pretend I have no imagination, so I can need imagination.”

Or: “Let’s build the greatest wall there ever was. Let’s use our imagination to construct that wall around us, let’s make it out of steel and make it a hundred feet thick, so that when we’re finished, we’ll be trapped inside and we won’t be able to figure a way out, even though we want to get out.”

Or: “Let’s build ordinary reality so that it seems to resist magic in every way…and then let’s say we really want to make magic.”

Nice trick.

How about this for a solution? We grasp the full meaning of this self-defeating strategy…and then, boom, with that insight, we find we can walk through walls.

Doesn’t work.

How about this? Particle by particle, we dismantle ordinary reality and put all those particles out into space and then we’ll able to make magic? Doesn’t work.

What does work?

As I’ve been saying, live through and by imagination long enough and intensely enough, and magic will occur.

Seems too simple, too straightforward, too daunting. But it’s true.

Because this is how you really build ordinary reality: you use enough imagination to make it exist and make it seem to resist imagination…and then you build into that process an ever-encroaching loss of your imagination…so that, at the moment the walls are finished, you appear to possess less imagination than you need to walk through the walls. Time-release self-defeat.

It’s another illusion, because you never lose one iota of imagination…but you pretend you do.

The way beyond this ridiculous complexity is: you live through and by imagination long enough and intensely enough…and you’ll eventually—as a side effect—be able to do magic.

THE TOWER

The tower came crashing down in the storm, not like on the Tarot card, but in pieces, one on top of the other, some splitting out sideways in the rain, and bales of money broke open and the bills drifted in the wind until they became wet enough to fall like flat stones. The tower at the end of the world was gone. The station was gone. No more transmissions. No more information. The egregious lies stopped. There was only the sound of rain and wind. And the thought of what tomorrow could bring.

He came out of the cave with a harpoon looking for fish. Then suddenly, he realized how ridiculous this was. The sound of rain didn’t mean fish. Why had he thought, over and over, that it did? He dropped the spear and looked up at the sky. He floated up off the earth.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

If you’re receiving this as an email, scroll down a little and click on MARKETPLACE to check out my audio seminars.

A FEW NOTES ON LIBERATION

MAY 26, 2011. Liberation means freedom from closed systems.

It doesn’t mean entering into another closed system.

Freedom is the basic platform, from which new realities THAT HAVE NOT YET BEEN CONCEIVED can be imagined and created.

It’s a wide-open ballgame.

A person can never lose his imagination.

No matter what.

This is the wild card in every deck:

The potential for imagination.

There is no ultimate pattern of existence, no ultimate closed system.

So imagination isn’t reaching toward part or all of some Final Pattern. This is a major point.

Imagination is inventing something that’s never existed before.

There are infinities of things that have never existed before— IMAGINATION CREATES THEM…AND THEN AND ONLY THEN DO THEY EXIST.

We have no way of knowing what imagination will create.

This is non-system.

Imagination is individual. It isn’t collective.

When someone tries to explain “the ultimate reality,” he is inevitably looking at a product of imagination.

PAINTING:

Anyone can be a painter.

If someone denies that, he is clearly insane and shouldn’t be listened to. Period.

You begin. That’s the big secret. You begin.

You put paint on the paper or canvas.

I made this discovery in 1962, and it’s yours for only $49.95 and 2 boxtops from Quaker Oats and a cow.

You BEGIN.

Doesn’t matter what you do on the paper. You put on paint. See? You’ll have nothing to use but imagination.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time. There you are, brush in hand, paint on the brush, above the white space. Boom. You begin.

All the possible questions you could ask yourself to stall, including what seem to be the really sensible questions, are futile. Irrelevant. Born and bred of a culture that’s loony…so why bother.

Just paint. Go where you will with it. If you don’t like where you’re going, change directions. Change directions 50 times if you want to, just keep going.

And then on to the next sheet of paper. Keep painting.

There is no pattern in heaven or earth that’s relevant. You’re not only making up and inventing your painting, you’re making up (and changing) your aesthetic as you go along.

I predict that if you paint every day for 180 days, your life will change.

It’s all invention, creation, improvisation, imagination.

You’ll feel a liberation that’s very succulent and luscious and expansive.

Later on, you can try to find someone who shares your sense of liberation and can look at your work without preconceptions. But for now, JUST PAINT.

In a sense, when viewed from the angle I’m pursuing here, it doesn’t matter what system you teach people, if you’re going to teach. All systems are closed; they all share that property.

“Class, I have 12 systems here in a hat. I’m going to pick one out and teach it to you. I hope, as we go along, you’ll learn what a system is really like.”

The life cycle of a star; capillary blood flow; decimals; the function of the kidneys; tire repair.

It doesn’t matter.

(This why my audio seminars don’t present systems.)

Many people find it hard to believe anything exists outside of systems. Actually, most everything is outside systems.

If we, on Earth, ever enter a genuinely new era, this is one of the most important facts we’ll discover.

EXPERIMENT X:

Is this an experiment or a metaphor? So far—the latter. But it could become an experiment.

A teacher stands in front of a class of 50,000 students. He’s teaching them some sort of linguistics. Every student has a page of text in front of him.

The teacher says, “Okay, turn that page upside down.”

Then: “Pretend this is a language. Go home and write an essay on THAT.”

Of the students who turn in papers, some will suggest “trying to translate it.”

About 50 will try to translate it—whatever that means.

Of those 50, 49 will attempt to establish a system whereby it could be translated.

The remaining one student out of 50,000—if the teacher is lucky—will wing it. HE’LL MAKE UP A TRANSLATION.

He’ll invent something interesting.

This is a very informative result, although only one out of perhaps 100,000 people would think so. The other 99,999 people would ignore that one student who just imagined and invented a translation.

Actually, this is what education IS like.

Systems are taught. Exiting out of that environment, a tiny fraction of students emerge with the idea that the key is really imagination. And they are rarely noticed.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

If you’re receiving this as an email, scroll down a little and click on MARKETPLACE to check out my audio seminars.

A NOTE TO MY READERS

AND…

THE MERLIN MEMOIR

MAY 27, 2011. For a moment here, I’m stepping away from my recent work to comment about it.

In case you hadn’t noticed, lately I’ve been pushing my exploration of imagination into new dimensions. And I haven’t been holding back.

The quality of emails I’ve gotten has been quite fantastic. There ARE people out there who’ve been looking for, wanting, something like this. Or they didn’t think they did until they saw it in my articles.

At the same time, I realize some readers have found it hard to stay on board. So what to do?

Do I try to dilute what I’m writing? Do I try to straddle both ends of a bridge?

Well, that’s a bit of a dilemma.

We’ve all been taught that “success” comes from adjusting your mode of communication to appeal to the widest possible audience. We have movies, TV, and media as examples of that.

But I’m not really in the business of doing a juggling act. I’m not trying to gauge a “model” based on who will stick around if I write about X versus who will stick around if I write about Y.

Take the word “imagination.” I could break down the meaning so the word appears to be “just slightly ahead of our time,” as the old commercial went. I could gear my articles about imagination so they would seem to be just a few feet beyond where most people are. I could try to advance in tiny increments—hoping not to lose readers.

Of course, that approach would deny everything I’ve been saying about how imagination works. It isn’t a tight protocol or a closed system or a step-by-step manual.

Now, if you go to the store on my site, you will find audio seminars like: Mind Control, Mind Freedom; The Transformations; and The Magic and Mystery of Dialogue—where I do present techniques and exercises that really work. They DO expand imagination and its power to create realities. But those exercises aren’t timid little flips and twists. They’re big engines that operate on a wide superhighway.

The point of those exercises—and these articles—is to EXPAND THE TERRITORY.

So in the end, regardless of what happens to “the business model,” I’ll keep going as I have been going. Taking things to the limit and beyond. Because there is no limit. That’s been my premise since the beginning, and it still holds.

If my email list shrinks down to six people, I’ll probably leave a close-out piece on my site and go back to painting, writing, music, and poetry/fiction full time.

I’m not in charge of how people react to these articles.

I just want you to know how I’m looking at the present situation—which certainly has an upside, in terms of the things some of you are saying in your emails to me. For which I’m very appreciative. Excited. Inspired.

This society, civilization, planet—whether or not we have current crises of large proportions—has been in a doldrum for a long, long time. And the reason for it is simple. As a result of various breakthroughs, people found themselves on the cusp of realizing that imagination and creative power WERE the next step.

But they were unwilling to take it. They stalled at the gate. They comforted themselves with other stories, other fairy tales. They were horses led to water, but they weren’t going to drink. Despite the fact that the human race had offloaded so many paralyzing myths, people found new forms of paralysis.

They found new fundamentalisms and re-found old fundamentalisms.

The future isn’t only about what imagination produces, it’s about imagination itself—as the recognized power source we use to drive us into untold realms and fulfillments.

Okay. That’s what I wanted to say for now.

Let’s move along to this:

ON THE SPACESHIP SS GRINDER, a gigantic bloated vessel hanging in space off the edge of the Milky Way, a rescue crew finds NO ONE. The cabins and offices and labs on all decks are empty. Clean and empty. The engines are fused.

After a six-month on-board investigation, a crew member discovers a sealed cylinder on a shelf in a small cabin. Opening it, he removes a handwritten note, titled:

Merlin speaks:

Look, I’ve been making universes for a long time. I don’t make a big deal of out of it because I don’t have to.

I crank them out. Some I build, some I create whole-hog in a few seconds, maybe less.

I gave up the robe and the beard and the scepter and the stone and the sword a little while after Arthur and that whole crowd faded.

Did you know you could create a minus universe? This isn’t anti-matter nonsense, and it isn’t a reversed mirror image of something else. It’s just minus. It basically ISN’T—but there it is.

I like those. It’s a kick. In fact, evidence is mounting you people live in a minus universe. The downside is you tend to mill around and screw things up. I’ve always said a person who would take up residence in a minus universe for longer than a year is nuts. He gets the sun, the waves, the beach, a few adventures in the city—it’s time to check out.

What is magic?

Imagination. Pursued long enough and intensely enough.

That’s all.

That’s all I do.

You’d think this would be an easy point to get across, but it isn’t.

I can make things vanish and reappear. It’s a side effect of imagination.

People deny the existence of magic on three counts: it’s impossible, it’s hard, or it’s a delusion.

I wasn’t born lucky. I worked at it for a long time. I didn’t practice making things disappear. I just lived by imagination. So it wasn’t a chore, it was what I wanted to be doing.

I lived through what some people call the old magic era, when lots of people were making magic all over the place.

And I lived through technological ages that would make yours look like a wooden wagon coming out of a cave.

One thing I notice about you—you’re hypnotizing yourselves right out of imagination. It’s quite a trick. It’s a kind of magic all its own.

I know places where the people are very wishy-washy, and I bet they’d pay you a pretty penny to teach them that trick.

Imagination is like love. You keep saying you don’t want it or you yearn for it or you’re looking for it—right up to the moment when it happens. Then you stop dead in your tracks, because you know this is it.

Imagination feels a little like the future, until you use it right now, and then you make the future and present. That may sound strange, but it’s true.

Once I had an altercation with a guy who claimed he was the god of a universe I made. Can you believe that? He told me he’d made it. It was all his. I explained he was a rank liar. Then on top of that, he told me he’d give me a free pass to get in!

Some people do that. They set up shop in a place you made and they go around selling other people on their story.

You’re being sold a lot of stories. You can tell, because sooner or later they always involve giving up a piece of freedom. First you pay, then you lose. It’s a double scam.

But the worst thing I see happening when I look at your home base is the novelty con. Whatever you’re interested in on Monday, on Tuesday it has to be something else. That’s a crime and punishment all rolled into one. It cuts the legs out from under anything that’s good.

See, that’s imagination at work, too, although you might not recognize it. Just a little below the surface, you’re convincing yourself you’re bored with something that lasts longer than five minutes. You’re creating your own boredom.

And no drug is going to cure that.

You imagine you’re “human beings,” and the various definitions of that fiction floating around would drive away tourists faster than swarms of bees. You’ve concocted patterns of life that are their own prisons. Some of your most impassioned and articulate spokesmen for freedom are pushing it like dishwasher soap. It’s evident their own lives are far from free.

Remember the old phrase, Midas Touch? These days, it’s the Android Touch. Whatever androids brush up against tends to develop androidal qualities.

The question is, do you want to get out of that?

Your world is a copy of itself. It’s enduring on that basis. Actually, it went to sleep a long time ago, but the replica lives on.

Like a cartoon.

I know, everything looks and feels as real as ever, but it’s animation.

When a person goes to sleep, his vague memory of the world behind and below him is a kind of sketch. When he stays asleep, the sketch BECOMES the world. That’s a bit of a metaphor, but it makes the point.

So you’re in and on Earth Two.

The engines of this ship worked for a while, but then they fused because they were entering, shall we say, another level of reality, and they just weren’t up to the task.

I watched the frustration grow as the slowdown occurred. Nothing could be done. Finally, the entire crew vanished. It was their first act of magic.

They went into a gray area, a limbo. They’re there now, trying to figure out how to proceed. Staying on the ship would have destroyed their bodies, as the sense of weight increased.

I believe the crew will eventually find a way out. When driven to the brink…interesting solutions occur.

Meanwhile, plastic cameos of the SS Grinder will be sold to millions of people.

Since I have time on my hands, here are a few of my lesser known quotes:

“You can create the same thing over and over, and eventually you’ll be about as alive as a table. Inject imagination into the mix, and everything suddenly changes. You can steer that boat anywhere you want to. You can steer it into nothing and build worlds.”

“More imagination equals more life. You can try to fight that formula and its corollaries, but you won’t win.”

“Sitting around in a cosmic bus station waiting for reality is what reality is. Everything else is imagination.”

“The most overrated word in any language is ‘exists.’”

“Traveling to places one has never seen is far different from creating something that never existed before.”

“Sooner or later, you will come across people who try to assert that every power is ‘inherent in the universe.’ They will describe such power. They will keep on doing this until they realize that nothing they have discovered begins to explain consciousness or imagination. You don’t have to care about any of that. All you need to do is create with imagination for a few million years, and everything will come clear.”

“You make me a painting of something that never was. I make you a painting of something that never was. The beginning of a true friendship.”

“Religion, metaphysics, spiritual systems, science—they all try to explain what ultimately exists. ‘Ultimate’ is a fabrication. Imagination proliferates endlessly, beyond any attempt to explain.”

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

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PART 2, CRADLE TO GRAVE, BABY

DON’T YOU DARE ROLL THE DICE, YOU SON OF A BITCH

MAY 26, 2011. Peer pressure, which is to say, family and friends, is a major force in the medical world.

It’s really a piece of the model.

It can work this way. Patient A is diagnosed with disease B. Actually, B isn’t a disease at all. It’s a nutritional deficiency. But the medical cartel is always looking to expand its dominion, like any ambitious church, so it labels whatever moves, wiggles, or vibrates a disease or a disorder.

“Hey, we throw a lot of stuff against the wall and see what sticks.”

It’s the infomercial pattern. “So you get the 12 knives at $39.95. That’s a $300 value. But hold on. If you order in the next five minutes, we’ll give you two sets for the same price, can you believe it? And the pork-intestine slicer. And the sharpener, plus the 50 napkins, and season tickets to the Opera is My Life lecture series at the Biloxi 7-Eleven…”

Patient A has been diagnosed with disease B, and therefore receives treatment C, which is a powerful drug that causes a little thing called DNA chain termination. Normal cell reproduction is disrupted.

The patient, on drug C, finds he can’t get out of bed in the morning without an overhead crane. His sister pours him into the car and takes him to the doctor, who says, “The disease is disrupting your cells.”

“What?” the patient says.

His sister pats him on the arm. “Listen to what the doctor is telling you.” she says.

The patient shakes his head.

“Doctor, I’ve read that the drug disrupts cells.”

The doctor smiles and nods.

“Yes, in rare cases, but this is different. It’s the disease doing it. We’re going to have to escalate the treatment. Increase the dose and add another drug.”

The sister nods sagely. She has a degree in house-sitting from a junior college.

The patient closes his eyes. A few tears leak and dribble down his cheeks. Which, of course, prompts the sister to say, “Do you think my brother should see a counselor, Doctor?”

“Might not be a bad idea,” he says. “I can set up an appointment with social services. I think they’ve straightened out the billing scandal down there.”

Flash forward a week. Patient A, who is now on a higher dose of drug C and a new drug, D, which favors disrupting immune-systemcells, is laid up with three infections. A phone call to the doctor, and another appointment, introduces patient A to drug E, an anti-viral, for which, in clinical trials, no efficacy has been established.

Two days later, the patient is vomiting and has diarrhea.

The social services counselor welcomes the pale sweating patient into her office. He is accompanied by his sister and her husband, for moral support. The husband does payroll for a local medical testing lab. He’s now on the case, assuring the patient the doctor has been handling his drug treatment properly.

The conversation with the counselor lasts 20 minutes. The counselor establishes that serious disease can trigger depression. The brother-in-law concurs. This astonishing insight about depression has, of course, consequences. A psychiatrist will probably prescribe one of the SSRIs. Prozac, Paxil.

“I started on Paxil four years ago,” the sister says. “It’s changed my life.”

She smiles and nods at the counselor.

The sister’s husband concurs.

“We had a little problem with the social stigma attached to these…disorders,” he says. “But we got past that. And never looked back.”

“Well,” the patient says, “I was on Paxil after the boating accident. Remember? A week later, I tried to burn down the flag pole in the back yard.”

“I’m glad you mentioned that,” the counselor says. “The psychiatrist will probably try Prozac instead.”

Flash forward again. The patient has been having hallucinations. His sister and brother-in-law tell him Prozac could not be the cause.

The patient says, “But I don’t usually think our dead mother is Big Foot dancing upside down on the ceiling.”

His brother-in-law gives him a hard stare.

“Listen, Bob, tough love isn’t usually my thing, but I’m going there now. You have to keep up the protocol. You can gut it through. We’re with you all the way, but you have to do your part…”

To which the patient replies: “Appreciate the pep talk, bro, but this isn’t friggin’ Afghanistan, and you aren’t my lieutenant.”

The patient’s sister frowns and shakes her head. She calls the psychiatrist later and says she thinks her brother is going over the edge into psychosis.

…Three months into this multi-drug treatment, the patient has another appointment with his doctor. The doctor tells him that despite these heroic pharmaceutical measures, what he suspected all along has come to pass. There is nothing more he can do. The disease has spread. He gives the patient two months to live.

After breaking down and weeping, the sister says to the doctor, “But he should continue taking the drugs, correct?”

The doctor offers a noncommittal shrug. “Research just hasn’t caught up yet to where we are.”

Two days later, the patient, through a herculean effort, staggers from his bed to the computer on his desk and begins to read about disease B.

It turns out there is a clinic in the Bahamas where doctors are using nutrients to treat even advanced cases—there are claims of success in some cases.

The patient makes a call and speaks with one of these doctors. The conversation lasts half an hour. Afterwards, the patient feels better. He feels hope.

Back in bed, he plans how he’ll get himself to the clinic.

Unfortunately, his sister, her husband, and a cousin, who’s flown in from Detroit, recognize patient A is smiling and seems a little better. This sends up red flags. He finally confesses he’s booking a flight to Freeport.

All hell breaks loose.

This is war.

The brother-in-law (who does payroll) handles the money-rip-off scenario aspect. “They’ll bleed you dry. Then they’ll leave you on the side of the road like a dog without a license.”

The cousin, who is a retired prosecutor with chronic shingles, adds the American-alone-in-a-foreign-land-without-a-support-system-they-can-do-anything-they-want-to-to you-and-there-is-no-recourse mantra.

The brother-in-law comes back for an encore with the they’re-just-a-bunch-of-quacks-they’re-not-real-doctors-if-they-had-anything-don’t-you-think-it-would-have-been-approved-and-everybody-would-be-using-it rumba.

Then the sister drops the you’re-crazy-what-will-people-think-you’re-thumbing-your-nose-at-the-only-family-you-have-left-I-always-knew-something-like-this-would-happen-from-the-time-you-were-a-kid you-thought-you-were-different-from-the-rest-of-us tonnage on her brother’s head.

A call comes in from the patient’s uncle in Fresno. The uncle is 92 and has good days and bad days in the nursing home. He tells the patient, “If they’re big men, stand near a doorway. They might give you a badge with a different name on it, if you ask them. Lace up your shoes after surgery.”

When the hubbub finally subsides in the patient’s bedroom, he closes his eyes and lies there in a rancid puddle of shame, resentment, and fear. His relatives go into the living room for a pow-wow.

The phone rings. It’s his friend Allan, a retired loan hustler.

“Listen,” Allan says, “I know what you’re going through. We have a group. I want you to come to a meeting. Every session starts with a member saying, “What’s the last stop on the train track?”

The patient mumbles, “Do they all go choo-choo then?”

“Just trying to help you, pal,” Allan says.

The patient dangles the receiver in his hand, holds it for a minute, then lets it drop on the rug.

Something is taking shape in his mind. Something that’s never occurred to him before.

The thought is interrupted as his sister raises her voice in the living room. She’s saying, “The shame he’s bringing on us. How can I tell my friends about this? We have to stop him from going. Look, here’s his plane ticket on he table.”

Now, it all comes clear.

He realizes that, even though he’s been diagnosed as terminal, he’s supposed to follow the advice of his doctor—who has nothing for him. It’s protocol. Social protocol.

Take the drugs, or stop them, but don’t do anything else. Don’t roll the dice. Rolling dice would be abhorrent.

The real message of his family is, just close your mouth, do what the doctor says, even if it’s nothing, and DIE.

He nods.

That’s it.

Don’t rock the boat.

Don’t switch tracks.

Don’t leave the bus.

The Bahamas. Sunny days. Lying on the beach with a cold vodka- soda, a little paper umbrella.

Maybe that’s just a pipe dream.

The chemo, the Prozac, the other drugs, or nothing—that’s the consensus.

He bangs his fist on the wall behind him.

His family comes rushing in.

“What’s wrong!” his sister says.

He holds up his hand.

“Nothing,” he says. “It’s all right. I want to talk to you.”

The sister, the brother-in-law, and the cousin quickly gather in a little semicircle by his side.

“What is it?” his cousin says.

“I’ve made a decision,” the patient says. He pauses. “I just want you to listen. Don’t interrupt me.” He starts to choke up, but brings himself under control. His face slowly settles into stone. “I’m…not going to Freeport. I…want to you to make sure my plot is ready in the cemetery. It’s supposed to be. Just check on it. I don’t want a big funeral. Family and close friends.”

His sister wails and drops to her knees. She grabs the carpet with her nails and tries to tug it off the floor. Her husband restrains her, pulls her back to her feet.

The cousin frowns and nods slowly.

“Everything’s been paid for,” the brother-in-law says.

The sister screams once. Then she covers her mouth with her hand and bends down and takes her brother’s limp hand. She kisses it over and over.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to be cruel, darling. We’re just so…concerned about you.”

The patient nods.

“I understand,” he says.

His face is composed.

“You want me to die so I’m not going to try to do anything else.”

Silence.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

EVE AND THE SNAKE RETOLD

MAY 26, 2011. One fine day (every day was fine), in the floating place called Astral Island Y-96a4, or The Garden, Eve was sitting naked under a large tree working on her tan, when a long serpent approached, slithering through the tall grass.

Eve sat up and watched him. She and Adam were on their Multi-Dimensional Universe Tour II.

He was the color of old oil. The sun picked up rainbow highlights on his scales. The main thing about him was his smile. She’d seen it on the faces of used-car salesmen, New Age talisman peddlers, and agents.

“Hello, Eve,” he said, coming to rest at her feet. His voice was low and rich, like spoiled caviar.

“Where’s Adam?” he said.

“Oh, he went to Bold Foods to pick up some food,” she said.

“Really?” he said. “There’s a Bold Foods here?”

Eve pointed to three low hills in the distance.

“That way,” she said. “This is a hybrid island. Primitive and pristine on this side, overdeveloped out there in the flats. Tire recappers, gas stations, bars, thrift shops, a couple of drug stores, and a Dome Depot.”

The snake paused at this news.

“Well,” he said, “so you’re eating well?”

“Sure,” she said. “Lots of chips, the chicken noodle soup, salad bar, burgers. Chocolate cake.”

The snake sniffed the air.

“I was wondering if you know what tree you’re sitting under,” he said.

“This?” she said, patting the trunk with her hand. “There’s a plaque on the other side. Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I can smell the apples. Tart.”

“Yes, well,” the snake said, “there’s a rule. You can’t eat any apples .”

“I didn’t know that,” she said.

“I’m surprised,” the snake said.

“How would I know it? Adam and I just arrived last Tuesday.”

“I see,” the snake said. “So you haven’t been briefed.”

She frowned.

“What are you talking about?”

“When people land, they’re instructed on how to proceed. Usually, the clouds part, and the King comes down half-way and issues a few edicts.”

“Haven’t seen a king,” she said.

“Maybe he’s away,” the snake said. “I stand in for him then.”

“That’s good,” she said. “I guess.”

The snake stuck out his tongue, then withdrew it.

“But you see,” he said, “I can issue special dispensations. And for you, I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Why would that be?” she said.

“Because the apples are quite delicious, and when you eat them, you automatically acquire wisdom. Essentially, you become more like the King.”

“Wisdom?” she said. “In general?”

She seemed a little puzzled.

“No,” he said, “you learn about the distinction between good and evil. It’s a tricky subject. The King knows all about it. It’s a source of his strength.”

“Good and evil,” she said. “For example, when someone is trying to sell you a used pickup with a cracked engine block?”

The snake gave her his big smile.

“Yes,” he said, “that would be one instance.”

“Over a few islands from here,” she said, “Adam and I were at this country club playing golf. On the sixteenth hole, I hooked my tee shot into the rough. I was in there, in the woods, trying to find my ball when a golf cart came whizzing by on the road. It stopped, a porky guy got out, and offered to help me. So we’re searching in all the bushes and tangles, and he says he can give me a good deal on a club membership. But I figured this was baloney, because what’s he doing way out on the sixteenth hustling memberships? Know what I mean? Besides, he doesn’t even have any clubs in his cart. He’s wearing a rug, his pants are checkered, his white shoes have little gold buckles on them. But you know, I didn’t want to call him out. Adam and I had been invited to play the course, so we needed to be polite. We keep looking for the Titleist, and he keeps up the hustle–”

“Okay! Okay!” the snake says. “I get it. But what about the tree and the apple?”

“What about it?” Eve says.

“It’s a very good apple.”

And then Eve turns on a kilowatt smile. She’s really quite lovely.

“Listen,” she says. “Adam and I have been around a block a few times. Right? We’ve visited thousands of these astral islands, and you’d be surprised how many times snakes have tried to run this same number on me. It’s a staple. There’s a book on it somewhere. The temptation, eat the apple, gain knowledge of good and evil, whatever that means, and then the Fall. Wow. I mean, come on. Who cares about good and evil? I know the difference. I’m not stupid. I don’t need to go to school on that. It’s simple. You’re free unless you lean on somebody else’s freedom. Case closed. Why you guys want to keep re-enacting it is beyond me. What’s the point? We should all bow down and support something that’s a scam to begin with? I’m just sunning myself here, Adam will be back from the store soon with goodies, and we’ll have an early supper. Then we might take in a movie.”

The snake coiled and uncoiled a few times.

“Suppose,” he said, “I decide to sink my fangs in your thigh?”

Eve reached behind her and brought out a thin flat L-slab of gray metal. She pointed it at the snake.

“Then,” she said, “I’d have to fill you full of energy that would rip most of your cells apart in under five seconds.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“Yeah. Hmm. Why don’t you find a nice little critter for dinner and leave us alone.”

The snake shook his neck and instantly reappeared as the king. He was large and thunderous in his blue robe, and his white beard swung back and forth under his chin. His eyes bulged, then relaxed back into his sockets. He stared at Eve.

“Haven’t I seen you before?” he said.

Eve nodded.

“Last summer. We stopped off here on the way to the circus at HT4ux. Just for the day.”

“Yes,” he said. “And you and I played out this little scene then.”

“Right,” she said.

“So what are doing back again?”

“We came for the apples. I really like the apples. Very tart. They’re hard to find. Most of the fruit these days is fibrous. It’s dead.”

He nodded.

“Well,” he said, “I have a few discount coupons for the mall. They get fresh fruit in every day from locals.”

“We’d appreciate that,” Eve said.

The king pondered for a few moments.

“No problem. You know, the plaque on the tree. I’m thinking of changing it. Good and evil was a mistake from the beginning. It just didn’t add up. Why should knowledge of good and evil be a bad thing? Redundant, yes. Bad, no? The writer was looking for a hook. I don’t think he found it.”

“No,” she said. “It’s a misdirection no one really cares about. But in all fairness, what really works? Adam and I have discussed it, and we couldn’t come up with anything, either. Eat the apple and lose your power? Won’t be able to sleep at night? See, that would be going the other way, and still it doesn’t compute, because then there’s no temptation to eat the apple. The story just got off on the wrong premise, and there was no way to fix it after that.”

The king sighed.

“Tell me about it,” he said. “I’m still amazed so many people bought in.”

“Well, the guilt thing, I guess, delivers a lot of mileage…although Adam and I have never been prone to falling for it.”

The king reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out three wrinkled coupons. He bent down and handed them to Eve.

“Good until Christmas,” he said.

Eve laughed.

“Let’s not get started on that one,” she said.

The king pointed at her.

“No guilt, no redemption,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “You know, Adam has this script he’s been trying to peddle for a while. You might take a look at it.”

“He have an agent?” he king said.

“I’m his agent,” Eve said.

“Well, then…”

“Take you an hour to go through it,” she said. “Lots of action. The dialogue’s pretty straightforward.”

“Give me the bottom line.”

“Adam and I create the world and trap the king.”

“The old switcheroo. Might have legs in an art house.”

“We’re not looking for boffo. Starting small.”

“What’s the budget?”

“Four-five mill. Chicken feed.”

“When you get home, check with the Pope. Tell him to call me.”

“Why would he bankroll it?” Eve said.

“The Church feeds off criticism. They get an outrage and sympathy bump. Figures show it. Collection plates. Church attendance.”

“Maybe they could issue a statement when we’re ready for release. Condemning it.”

“Oh, they will…”

“For the extras on the DVD, we could do a sit-down with you.”

The king thought about this.

“If things don’t pick up soon,” he said, “I might even take a small part.”

“Who’s your agent?” Eve said.

“On most deals,” the king said, “the Vatican.”

“Like they need the money.”

He shook his head.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “They run me. My cut of their action just about keeps me in in Kleenex.”

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

WHEN THE WORM TOOK OVER

MAY 25, 2011. Everybody on astral island W-53A2K was free, young, happy, and wild.

Except one worm that moved slowly through the soil.

In his younger days, he’d wanted to write The Great W-53A2K Novel, but his dream had now taken on a new shape.

On a long flat stone near the river, across from the palace where people ran and played in the small grove of purple trees, the worm inscribed a series of indelible smears in the local language.

Five years later, a young shepherd found the stone, took it to the palace, where it was examined by a bevy of drunken scholars. Its message, in essence, was: THE WORM IS GOD.

A general meeting was called, and after much hilarity, a verdict was agreed upon:

“Let’s make the worm God. It might be fun.”

So a search was mounted, and they eventually discovered the creature under a rusty plow by a hay barn near the river. He was taken on a white satin cloth to the palace and installed on a throne.

A scribe was appointed to note and convey his commands.

The first worm edict was: YOU’RE ALL CRAZY AND I’M SANE. THEREFORE, STOP MAKING MAGIC. NO MORE TELEPATHIC TRANSMISSIONS, SPONTANEOUS MATERIALIZATIONS, OR SUNDAY BREAKFASTS. SUNDAY IS FOR CHURCH. I’M THE GOD. SO I CONDUCT THE SERVICES. GATHER HERE, LISTEN TO MY WORDS, AND HEED THEM. WE’RE GOING TO WAR, WHEN I SELECT A SUITABLE ENEMY. DIVERT THE RIVER AND DRY OUT THE BED. WEAR CLOTHES. NO MORE NAKEDNESS. PRAY TO ME AT BREAKFAST, LUNCH, AND DINNER. FORGET YOUR NAMES. YOU HAVE NO NAMES. BURN THE FIELDS. IF YOU DREAM AT NIGHT, REPORT YOUR DREAMS TO THE SCRIBE AND I WILL INTERPRET THEM. LEVITATING IS A FELONY. ON TUESDAYS, EVERYONE WEARS A BLINDFOLD. ALL DAY. NO DRINKING WATER ON WEEKENDS. ALCOHOL IS BANNED. ILLNESS IS A SIN PUNISHABLE BY DEATH. NO WRITTEN OR SPOKEN SENTENCE MAY BE LONGER THAN SIX WORDS. ADVERBS ARE OUTLAWED. STOP WEEDING GARDENS. TRAVEL IS ILLEGAL. ADDRESS ME AS HE WHO CREATED THIS PLACE. DO NOT SHOW YOUR TEETH FOR ANY REASON. FISHING IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH. WALK SLOWLY. WEAR ONE SHOE. EXTINGUISH ALL LIGHTS AFTER SUNSET. EAT STALE BREAD. BY A SYSTEM YET TO BE DETERMINED, HAPPINESS WILL BE QUANTIFIED IN UNITS. EACH PERSON MAY EXPERIENCE THREE UNITS A YEAR. MEMORY IS OUTLAWED. SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE MUST BE CLEARED THROUGH ME.

The scribe read the edict to a throng gathered outside the palace.

Afterwards, the laughter went on for several hours.

One by one, the people disappeared. Winked out where they were standing. The last to go was the scribe.

So now, on astral island W-53A2K, the worm, alone on his white cloth on the throne, in the palace, ruled no one.

“It’s a shame,” he said. “I was going to create a whole new civilization. Gift cards, cell phones, subways, Oprah, news headlines, law schools…”

Suddenly, a thin man in a suit appeared in the throne room and stepped forward.

“Your Majesty of Majesties,” he said. “I’m here from TY437UIS49Qv-32-ITYD. It’s quite an advanced operation, and we just lost our God in a tsunami. Terrible thing. We’re interviewing candidates for the job. The superstructure of our society has 2Q-/%yuv7* layers. Very complex. Maintaining order is a top priority. I have a feeling you might be right for the job.”

Silence.

The worm gazed at the thin man for a long time. The man didn’t seem to mind waiting.

Finally, the worm spoke.

“I assume there would be conditions. A contract of some kind.”

The man nodded.

“Yes, sir. I have a copy with me. Basically, you would exert unlimited power. Quarterly reviews of your actions would be compared to a Standards Board Outlook long form, which was drafted for the purpose of assuring our population would remain in a servile and malleable state of mind.”

“So, for example,” the worm said, “total destruction is out of the question.”

“Well, of course.”

“And devastating storms, floods, magnetic shifts, earthquakes and the like would be adjudicated against a grid of ongoing operational control.”

“There are clauses which cover that, yes.”

“You have the landing platform of a myth structure on which I could credibly alight?”

“I believe so, sir. Its cardinal premise is ‘the lowest shall be highest.’”

The worm considered this.

“I’m the only one who can perform magic.”

“Goes without saying. Over the course of twenty centuries, we’ve scrubbed the memory of it from the collective consciousness.”

“Oh,” the worm said, “you have a collective consciousness?”

“We do,” the man said. “Its propagation is Job One. Actually, it’s a fiction, but a widespread belief in it is as effective as the real thing—if there were a real thing.”

“Yes,” the worm said, “I believe I understand. Now, if I wanted to change my identity, even my appearance…”

“This could take place gradually, over a suitable period of time,” the thin man said. “For example, you could become a seventeen-year-old boy at the height of his sexual power. There are coteries of girls which could be made available. But that’s just one possible scenario. We’re flexible on the details.”

“An old man holding a scroll sitting in a thundercloud, a radiant figure floating down from a cherry tree, a fierce hawk diving through still blue air to seize prey, a troll surfacing from a pond, a hybrid genetically engineered military leader holding an electronic paralyzing whip, a priestess adorned in gleaming metal astride a magnificent stallion…”

“All those, and more,” the man said.

Again, silence.

“And this would be a permanent job?” the worm said.

“That is the whole point, sir,” the man said.

“You are continuing to degrade the intelligence and energy of the population, over time?”

The thin man nodded.

“We have a medical establishment dedicated to that goal. Drugs. They depress function.”

“While mitigating symptoms.”

“Yes.”

“I’m interested,” the worm said.

“I thought you might be,” the man said.

“What about my rake-off from taxes?”

“After your ascension, you start in at eleven percent. That figure increases each year by one percent, based on a positive report from the Standards Board Outlook Committee, until you max out at forty-nine percent.”

“And who holds the other fifty-one percent?”

“We do.”

“Who is we?”

“Well, sir, it’s a question you’re not permitted to ask.”

“I see. Was that why your recently deceased God was wiped out in the tsunami? He asked the question?”

“We had to send a message. After all, we watch God.”

“And who watches you?” the worm said.

“Even I’m not privy to that information,” the thin man said. “I’m told it’s an infinitely receding series of control centers. But that may be just a cover story.”

“Can you be promoted?”

“Yes.”

“What about me?”

“No. You’re God.”

“Can I write a book?”

“Of course. We would consider that a plus.”

“Where would I live?”

“As far as the people are concerned, your home is in the sky. Actually, you and your staff would occupy a villa overlooking the sea in temperate zone 4A04dtL.”

“Why have a God at all?” the worm asked. “Why not make one up?”

The thin man pursed his lips.

“It’s a position. It exists. Someone has to issue commands, edicts, and arbitrary decisions.”

“There would be churches in my name?”

“Churches, temples, cathedrals, small far-flung franchises.”

“After the unfortunate tsunami, you could have introduced a double of the old God.”

“We thought of that, but we have the opportunity to stimulate the population with a Great Change. It will be said you are the inheritor of the mantle, by His decree.”

“Which means you’ll have to announce that he died.”

“No. We’ll say he has important business elsewhere, where things need to be cleaned up.”

“Then I’m simply his deputy,” the worm said.

“The scepter will be passed. Permanently.”

“Do you have television?”

“A form of it. There are no screens. Electromagnetic waves of meaning distributed over the whole system.”

“I can promise to give much and yet give little?”

The thin man paused. He moved a step closer to the throne.

“Sir, let me make this very clear. Your job is to promise everything and give nothing.”

“Why?” the worm asked.

“Because we’ve found, through trial and error, that things work out best that way. The total hoax is the most effective hoax.”

“In other words,” the worm said, “the people pretend I’m a giving God.”

The thin man snapped his fingers.

“You’ve got it,” he said.

“Where do I sign?” the worm said.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com