Dirty Socks and Denture Breath

by Robert Anton Wilson

from New Libertarian, August 1990
Chapter 2 in The Prometheus Meltdown
a tribute to Robert Heinlein
SIMON MOON WAS the Hairiest Cosmologist since Einstein; he had adopted the hippie Jesus
Christ look in the 60s and had never seen any reason to change it. By 1984 he bore a distinct
resemblance to aSaskwatch but his employers at Health, Education, and Welfare tolerated that
because he was the only computer scientist in the country who really understood GWB-666, the
giant Al system that had become the fourth, and most powerful, branch of the government.
For Simon, meltdown began with a simple mistake, an Error in Celtic History on a TV
documentary.
And then, the narrator droned portentously as the camera panned in on a map of medieval
Dublin, On April 24, 1014, Brian Born led his armies onto the field of Clontarf to join battle with
the Danes under Sitric
Simon snorted contemptuously, then snorted some coke as a chaser. The Moons (then spelled
Muadhens in Gaelic, of course) were from Dun Laoghaire and had fought beside Brian Born at
Clontarf; if there was one date in all history that a Moon would not remember wrongly it was the
day Ireland expelled the Danish invaders. And that was April 23, 1014, not April 24. Besides, the
number 23 was a phenomenon that Simon had been tracing and charting for years as an example
of Bohms implicate order, Jungs synchronicity, and Hagbard Celines Erisian Giggle Factor.
Shakespeare, like Brian Born, had died on April 23, and had been born on April 23, too, to make
the Authors hand more visible. Cervantes had died on the same April 23 (1616) as Shakespeare.
As icing on the cake, April 23, 1014, when Brian Boru defeated Sitric and died himself, was a
Good Friday, just like the day Lincoln was shot. It was a double synchromesh Boru,
Shakespeare, and Cervantes all obit. April 23; Born, the late Redeemer, and Lincoln
all kaput Good Friday and Simon had it in his charts.
The TV writer had simply goofed.
French Canadian arms against them, Simon muttered. Dont let Satan bring you metaphors.
It was the next night that Simon began to realize that something unheimlich was happening. He
was reaching behind his bookcase for his hash stash when a book fell over; bending to retrieve it
his Celtic eye saw the words, ,..at the Battle of Clontarf, April 24, 1014.. ,
The same error twice, in two days? That was a synchronicity in itself. Simon turned the book over
to examine the cover: Brennans Historica Chronologia Eblansis. He had read it many times and he
knew damned well it had always said the Battle of Clontarf occurred on April 23, 1014.
With an eerie feeling, Simon turned a few pages, looking for the Norman invasion. Strongbow,
Earl of Pembroke, had led his Norman hordes into Ireland August 23, 1170. That was another
date Simon never forgot, because on August 23, 1921, while discussing synchronicities, James
Joyce had seen a giant black rat, and the Joyces had originally entered Ireland with Strongbow.
But Brennan now said the Normans had landed in Ireland on August 22, 1170.

Simon hastily dropped Brennan and fetched a text on genetics. He read with horrorcatastrophized eyes: and thus the father contributes 25 chromosomes in the act of
conception
It had always been 23 before. Simon began methodically ransacking his whole library, his cosmos
eroding beneath him. He found that Vincent Mad Dog ColI had been shot by the Dutch Schultz
mob on 22nd Street, not 23rd Street, and that Schultz himself had been gunned down on October
25, not October 23. Shakespeare had been born on April 7 and had died on April 19. The
Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English had an entry for 25 Skiddoo but not for 23
Skiddoo.
Simon sat down weakly, his coincidences evaporating. His cosmology exploded. His confidence
entropied.
A boy has never wept nor dashed the laws delay, he thought. No sign nor smell of any bean
soup. Maybe the Rewrite Mob has been here.
Simon had heard about the Rewrite Mob from Clem Cotex, the president of the Warren Belch
Society, zonked theorists who specialized in explaining data so bizarre that not even the parapsychologists would look at it. Clem claimed that the Rewrite Mob were invaders from another
space-time continuum of higher dimensionality, who regarded our universe as an art-work. He
said they were all strung out on faster-than-light Speed and believed themselves Holographic
Coherence Editors. They thought every art-work could be improved by touching it up just a
little, to make it tighter and, brighter and more accessible to a general audience. That was
how Clem explained the process of evolution itself (theyre always changing things), most of the
so-called paranormal, and why, when you checked a reference, it often didnt say what you
remembered it saying the last time you looked.
That was a hardly credible exegesis, Simon thought.
Unless-the thought struck him like a huge chromium envelope-unless the Rewrite Mob had joined
forces with the first Church of Fundamentalist Materialism, a fanatic splinter group off the old
Committee to Scientifically Investigate Claims of the Paranormal. The Fundamentalist
Materialists claimed, like medieval Thomists, that there was only one map that
showed all realities and that they were lucky enough to own that map. Happy concentric egotists,
they were the last bastion of Dogma in a world of growing agnosticism and relativism.
A sea of troubles is the worst case of performance, Simon thought grimly. The proud mans
sidewalks were in trouble.
He ignored his hash that night and took some Valium instead.
When he awoke the next morning he saw the great whalelike hump of the peninsula of Howth
outside his window.
That would be a comforting, even romantic, view if Simon lived on the southern coast of Dublin.
Since he lived on Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., Dopey City (as he called it) the hump of
Howth was a distinct discombobulation.
Get that goat of yours between the maids legs, he muttered. A piece of him is actually
Cthulhu.
He wondered if some international secret society had secretly moved him internationally to another
society during the night. The only group likely to perpetrate such a mindfuck was the Legion of

Dynamic Discord, Hagbard Celines egregious anarchists, and they would have left a kangaroo in
the room with him to multiplex his pixillation.
Simon wondered if he were finally wigging. After all, it could happen to anyone. Under the
present brutal and primitive conditions on this boondocks planet hysteria was chronically epidemic. Armed thugs of all varieties, some called governments, made life more hazardous, not
less $0, than it had been in the primordial jungles; the general anxiety and freak-out level was
higher than anywhere else in space-time. Why should Simon Moon, who was the Invisible Hands
Societys agent within H.E.W., be immune to the general madness as this domesticated primate
species approached the 30th anniversary of the Hiroshima werewolf howl?
He crept exasperatedly w the window and studied the view with humor, care, and empathy. That
was Howth Hill out there, all right, and a Sealink ferry was moving south in the bay, headed for
Wales. There was a Martello Tower to the left. A Martello Tower, he wondered, or the Martello
Tower?
I am an Alien with a bare bodkin, he reminded himself. Let in the maid for the widows son..,
A stately, plump young Irishman came out on the roof of the tower, blessed gravely the awaking
mountains and began to shave with a straight razor. In a moment, another young Irishman,
taller, lithe, and dressed entirely in black, also appeared on the roof of the tower.
The Martello Tower, then. Indeedyment: Simon was in the first chapter of Ulysses. He had been
moved in time as well as in space. He was back in June 16, 1904. About now, in the homely
cottage on Eccles Street, the nameless cat was saying Mrkgnao to Leopold Bloom. Any other cat
would say Meow, but a Joycean cat is precise; he says Mrkgnao.
Simon looked back at the tower and could hear the dialogue in his imagination: The aunt thinks
you killed your mother He was raving all night about a black panther A new art color for our Irish
poets: snotgreen
A quick smile broke over Simons lips. He no longer thought he was going bananas. He had an
explanation of what was happening to him.
He had simply fallen out of one book into another.
Simon dressed hurriedly, carelessly, energetically, in the clothes the Author had left for him the
huge closet enclosure. He was only mildly surprised to find a brown mackintosh among them. So:
he was due at Glasnevin graveyard at 11 a.m. less than three hours from now. The Hibernian
Cemetary Escapade.
At least, he mused, I have solved the riddle that has tormented Joyce scholars for sixty-two years;
who was that lanky galoot in the brown mackintosh at Paddy Dingams funeral? As with most of
the profound enigmas of philosophy, the answer was the hardy perennial: You did it yourself. Just
like the answer to the Zen koan: Who is the Master who makes the grass green?
Washed and dressed, Simon descended three flights of stairs to the street, already excited at the
prospect of seeing Dublin 1904 for himself. Newspapers to defend any unauthorized orgasm, he
remembered.
The streets of Sandycove which was where he had guessed he was had the 1904 mix of horsedrawn carts and a few scattered automobiles, as he had expected. But few of the citizens looked
at all Irish. Most of them were Arab street-boys, definitely homosexual in gestures and demeanor.
Twenty-three of them propositioned him before he reached the comer and caught the tram into

Dublin central. There were flutes and Pan-pipes playing nearby wormwood, too much in the
sun
The tram was drawn by a giant black centipede. The driver, old Nehemiah Scudder dour behind
his eyepatch, kept a flamethrower by his left hand and had to employ it a few times, sending
warning blasts of fire over the centipedes head when it made obviously hungry lunges at passing
Jesuits and Mugwumps. Holy Christ Everlasting, Simon thought, I suspect Im in a
Finkelstein virtual universe between two eigenstates Wormwood, wormwood.
The mugwumps were naked, the color of penis flesh in hard corpuscular erection. They sipped
pussy juices out of laboratory jars as they walked, masturbating casually, their cat faces impassive. Occasionally one of them would leap upon the back of a passing nun to bugger her forcibly
and suck blood from her neck.
The tram passed through Kingstown where five croppies were hanging from a gibbet, bodies
covered with tar as a preservative they were White Boys, Simon knew, and this area was
warped by 18th Century vibes they entered the Silent Blue Desert and had to fight off giant land
crabs (the driver issued krypton guns to everybody in into Monkstown where Simon saw Owan
McCarthy staggering out of a pub, shouting back at the angry publican, Sure, if all the cats and
dogs of Kerry knew about this place, theyd all come here to piss Past Sandymount Strand
where green fishboys, ineluctable modality of wet dreams, rose from the rocks making vaguely
obscene gestures An old junkie coughing and hawking as they passed Lord Edward Fitzgeralds
home where the rebellion of 1798 had been planned
The Subliminal Kid as pale as his shirt, Simon thought. A king of infinite space for our Irish
poets: Dirty Socks. Im caught up in a Burroughs cut-up!
They were passing St. Stephens green and a stone Sir Arthur Guiness stared pensively at Punks
with green-streaked hair, who walked by with portable stereophonic radios blaring Julie
Atrociouss Lifes A Drag, a lament for a house-maid who had committed suicide after Julie
sacked her for carelessness that was from Julies LP Snot, which was popular with Dublin
Punks in 1983 The time coordinates were still shifting St. Stephens Green was packed with
clones: some fanatic Divisionist had mass-produced himself to stage a rally against an alleged
Sender The Divisionists planned to take over by endless self-cloning and then win
democratically by majority vote They are all paranoid about the Senders who are planning to
take over by direct hypnotic-telepathic broadcast into the forebrains of the tired, the depressed,
the weary, and all those who had made their minds empty by practising Zen or Transcendental
Masturbation They turned the corner past Tommy Moores statue above the public urinal, the
author of Meeting of the Waters still in the right place, as Bloom had observed The urinal had
a new graffito on the outside wall: Schrdinger rules the waves. . .
Simon remembered that Schroedinger had walked these streets in 1948, pondering the cat
paradox, just as Joyce had walked here seeing a hundred curious epiphanies 44 years earlier.
The pipes of Pan grew louder. A smell of hungry crucified eroticism, like rotten cheese, began to
permeate the air. They entered the quays, and Anna Liffey flowed by laughing and dancing
toward the sea. The huge greycloaked Liberator, old Daniel OConnell, looked down, hand out as
if to say, In my day, the dung-heap was this high Beneath the Liberators pedestal men in
black skirts and Aztec priests were performing open-heart surgery without purpose or anestheticRoman centurions building crosses for Sean McBride and the central committee of Amnesty
International who have been found guilty by reason of sanity on charges of Bleeding Heartism,
Do Goodism, and Aggravated Compassion-Past brass and copper streets of Venusburg where

Rhysling sang A Spacesuit Built for Two and the Ladies Moral Society led by Dante Riordan
stoned him Past the metal bridge and the Four Courts where Matt Wands, Marcus Cups, Luke
Swords, and Johnny Pentacles listened in endless testimony about a case of public indecency in
the bushes of Phoenix Park involving a minor bureaucrat named Joseph K. Mayan priests were
preparing youthful victims for Ah Pook, centipede god of death in orgasm Heavy metal addicts
lurched by moaning, Gotta have my uranium that Plutonium monkey climbing my back, man
Coke bugs Let me outa this Death Universe.
Simon Moon had jump of the peninsula He thought, Back to Howth Castle and Environs My
father much offended about a planet of domesticated primates-He was raving all night about the
most blatant case of hard-core goat-Honeying and making Denture Breath for the Mafia
We pass through Chinatown.
Sandstorms from the Silent Blue Desert beat against Simon Moon as he staggered along
Ormonde Quay, past the bar where the Sirens sang for Leopold the Lonely Bloom, so lonely
blooming, sad Leo. The Mugwumps marched by with sandwich boards: H and E and L and Y and,
still trailing, apostrophe S. The 1904 citizens ignore the time travellers and speak: in furtive,
cryptic phrases:
They dont want the Hiroshima werewolf in lower Manhattan, said Ned Lamberts brother.
Felicity a while?
This exercise because Olave the Black was an ancestor of mine, muttered Long John Fanning.
Huge centipede entities. The three ruffians?
They drove his wits away by visions of hell.
Him possessed of canine entelechy. Mechanical and random methods. He can explain.
A white patrol car before the death. And an encyclopedia.
You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard shouted, that he can put that writ where Jocko
put the nuts.
Cashel Boyle Fitzmaurice OConner Tisdall Farrel with bottlegreen eyes, walking carefully outside
the lamposts, cried Coactus voluil
King King lurched past holding Fay Wray in one huge paw.
College of Pataphysics, Bulletin 23-THE DEATH DWARFS OF MINRAUD ARE STILL RUNNING
THE SHOW. WHEN THE MARKS WALKED OUT ON THE CHURCH, THEY INVENTED
FUNDAMENTALIST MATERIALISM AS A NEW FRONT FOR THEIR BLACK IRON PRISON.
ANY JAIL IS BETTER THAN NO JAIL, IS THEIR MOTTO. THEY ARE TRYING TO
STAMPOUT QUANTUM LOGIC, BURN THE BOOKS OF VON NEUMANN AND FINKELSTEIN,
OBLITERATE COPENHAGEN. THEY DONT WANT THEIR HUMAN CATTLE ENCLAVES TO
LEARN THAT IN ADDITION TO A YES AND A NO THE UNIVERSE CONTAINS A MAYBE.
Simon Moon awoke. He could see the towers of lower Manhattan and the high church elegance of
Trinitys episcopal spires. In the other direction that great old gal in the harbor held up her dollar
sign. This was an executive suite in a building in the comer of Wall Street and Broadway.
Strange damn dreams, he muttered. Cthulhu, get that goat of yours. Country matters, or take
arms?

The radio in the comer by the washbasin turned itself on:

Russian troops are still advancing across France In England, London is radioactive rubble.
The mad faceless government in Liverpool has surrendered under a better Red than dead policy.
In Washington, President Galt has ordered all our nuclear missiles fired in every possible
direction since quote we dont know where the next attack might come from unquote. The only
ones opposing the war effort are the first Church of Irresponsible Whim Worship. Their leader,
Reverend Gooey, has said
A new voice came on: We dont want to wisk our pwecious necks!
and he was immediately stoned to death by the Ladies Moral Society under the leadership of
Shib-Niggurath, the announcer concluded.
I will begin with death on a nice spring day the vampire Joyce is the result of random genetic
cut-ups plural Country matters is their Black Iron Prison Simon grumbled.
Wait, the announcer cried. A new bulletin just in Oh, my God, our missiles arent firing.
There is suspicion of sabotage by effete intellectual snobs. This may be the end of freedom and
democracy in the world
Simon snapped the radio off. He had guessed what kind of novel he was in this time when he saw
the dollar sign instead of the traditional torch in Libertys hand. He was in a humorless capitalist
epoch; he had fallen into the universe of that feisty old lady he always imagined was the lost
grand-duchess Anastasia.
Reality police really on my ass this time, he mumbled. Trying for pix of the cock, and less than
kind. He knew that in this book there was Pure Good and Pure Evil and anybody with his Irish
skepticism about those who claimed to be Pure Good was a pathetic dupe of Pure Evil. The war
going on out there had not been started by Machiavellix, Machiavellix, Atoms and Oil (the cartel
that owned everything,) like the wars he had known before; the government was not lying about
its motives, like all governments he had ever known in other eigenstates. The Purely Evil were
attacking the Purely Good and all objective persons had to rush out and join Purely Good in the
struggle or the universe might become, Gnosticwise, Purely Evil. In this universe, the laws
were: Obey, Believe, Fight. Die.
Simon was not intimidated. He knew this was just another book.
He had discovered that he was living in a book while reading G. Spencer Browns Laws of Form on
hashish. When he came to the theorem, To cross again is not to cross, he suddenly crossed. In
that vertigo and hilarious cosmic ecstasy, beyond form, Simon remembered that he had been in
many other books before and would be in other books later. He was not the character, the
particle (so-called) in any form, but the wave function that coexisted in all probability states.
Author can go take a flying fuck in a rolling Mobius strip, he said. I got n dimensions.
A hand from the ceiling emerged, holding a card extended.
It said: DADA IS NOT DEAD! WATCH YOUR OVERCOAT! Andre Breton
Simon passed through M.M.M. Mystical Books of All Ages and found himself on the bridge of
the Starship Enterprise.
We were expecting you, Mr. Spock said. It was logical.

How do I get back to my um you know ah my own bag?

Spock turned to the computer. I can hook up with GWB-666 in your time coordinates, he said.
I believe you have had considerable experience with that early pre-Migration silicon-based life
form?
Yes, Simon said. I worked with it. Or for it.
Spock punched in his question about Simons wobbly reality-grid. GWB-666 answered on the
console:
SUBJECT IS UNDER ATTACK BY THE REALITY POLICE. THEY ARE ATTEMPTING A
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM OF HIS HUMAN SKEPTICISMAND NIETZSCHEAN RELATIVISM. THE ATTACK WILL ESCALATE. DREAMS MAY COME. HIS OWN PATH, LIKE
LAWRENCE TALBOTS, WILL BE A THORNY ONE. SUGGEST THAT HE CLING TO THE LAST
WORDS OF HASSAN I SABBAH.
Does that mean anything to you? Spock asked, raising an eyebrow.
It will do, Simon said. Take me to your transporter.
He changed ectoplasm. They beamed him down to birdchirps. Genes are passed on more
illuminated than bugger all the Greeks had known too the maid never departed more He was
staggering along Ormonde Quay looking dour behind his eye-patch love between maids legs
rose under Section 23
Simon decided later, as he came down, that that was what the mystics meant by illumination. He
felt a vast superiority to all other characters in the book, who were still identified with their roles
there and had never known true freedom as he had. Still later, he began to feel sorry for them,
because they took events in the book seriously and suffered awfully about it all.
They all needed an O.O.B.E. (out of book experience.)
Of course, Simon had never succumbed to the vulgar error of worshipping the Author. The Creator
was as crazy as the Creation: that was the first axiom of Moonian ontology. Hagbard Celine had
given him reasons to believe the author was, in fact, a Crazy Woman. The Greeks had known that,
Hagbard said, and called her Eris, goddess of chaos: Her Chaotic Excellency, happy causeless
essence.
If you dont believe it, Hagbard argued, who put all the nuttiness here, huh? Answer me that,
Mr. Wise Guy Logical Positivist. Hagbard had been illuminated in a book called Illuminatus and
thought he was more illuminated than bugger all or anybody else.
It was obvious, then, that the Author, while under the influence of Joyce, Burroughs, old Star
Trek shows, the Anastasia lady and the general chaos of current history, had gotten into some
vicious psychedelics. Simon was riding a Schroedinger wave between Dublin 1904, Interzone,
Galtopolis and various other virtual universes.
Damn it, Blake Williams exploded. Theres still a Real War going on out there. A real war with
Real Good against Real Evi1.
Hdeat-hdeat-hdeat came the sound of the machine guns, opportunely.
It will only last until I get to another eigenstate, Simon said serenely.

Oh damn Everett, Wheeler, and Graham damn old man Schroedinger and his insane deadand-alive cat
Simon passed Parnells grave (Twas Irish humor wet and dry/flung quicklime into Parnells eye,
he thought) and saw the twelve mourners at Paddy Dingams grave. Bloom, a handsomer man
than Simon had realized, stared at him. Hes just realizing that Im number thirteen, Simon
thought.
The tram passed through Kingstown into the Silent Blue Desert Strange furtive figures, men in
black skirts with bottlegreen eyes, scuttled through Blackrock: practitioners of perversions so
secret they had never been recorded by any sexologist on any planet-an old junkie coughing and
hawking as they entered North Clark Street and turned toward the Loop
What does that do to your oxymoronic Absolute Relativism? Blake Williams cried angrily as
KGB men on a scaffold removed the dollar sign from Libertys hand and replaced it with a
hammer-and-sickle.
This happens to be a right-wing Aristotelian universe, Simon said calmly. There was bound to
be one static block-like universe in Wheelers super-space.
There was a knock at the door. Here comes everybody?
Come, Simon called.
Father Starhawk entered. The tall, bronze, beardless Cherokee made both Simon and Blake
Williams aware of their own hairiness and whiteness. The priest wore his lapel button of Pope
Stephen, looking dour behind his eyepatch, with the caption, What, Me Infallible? Father
Starhawk was a Stephenite, part of the band who, under Pope Stephen, had turned the Roman
Catholic church from the most reactionary to the most progressive in the whole book.
We have to go to Chicago to see Hagbard, Starhawk said. He did not waste words.
I wanted to split this scene anyway, Blake Williams said, looking glumly out the window. The
Abominable Tcho-Tcho People were executing Catholic priests, old Jewish rabbis, Moonies, all
kinds of non-Cthulhoid reactionaries. Dog-faced things were creeping out of the subways,
minions of Nyarlathotep the mad faceless god. Russian troops marched down Lexington Avenue
to Brass and Copper Streets with a bare bodkin.
Blake Williams, Ph.D. was author of Quantum Physics as a Branch of Primate Psychology. He had
always regarded all religions, all arts, all philosophies and all sciences (including his own) as
illustrative data showing how domesticated simians organize the quanta of perception into
reality-tunnels. Now he was beginning to believe there was a block-like Aristotelian universe out
there after all, and it seemed like a bitch on wheels.
The Author is tripping, Simon said. Nothing to get upset about. He did it to you before, more
than once. Remember your affair with the transsexual? Or the unspeakable violations of
experimental ethics, as the F.D.A. called them, in your Project Pan?
Williams slouched into a chair. I dont believe in the Author, he said. We are emerging from
some stochastic process a random word generator perhaps At the most there may be a
Bohmian Hidden Variable involved some highly clever epigrams emerge clearly here
Simon noticed that Starhawk had a scratch on his cheek and that his coat was badly tom in the
back.

Trouble crossing the Silent Blue Desert? he asked. Those giant land crabs again?
No, the priest said. Mugwump tried to sodomize me.
The Citizen staggered out of Barney Kiernans pub howling, May the God above/Send down a
cove/With teeth as sharp as razors/To slit the throats/Of the English dogs/Who hanged our Irish
leaders! Sinn Fein!
Hush! Caution! Errorland!
A group of VIkings came marching tiredly from Clontarf. They were not hostile, just weary and
dog-tired.
Pardon me, their leader said to Simon, My name is Fortinbras and we are looking for
Elsinore we got lost, I think He showed a greying telegram:
DEAR FORTINBRAS TERRIBLE NEWS STOP. OLD KING, NEW KING, QUEEN AND PRINCE
ALL DEAD STOP. ALSO DEAD PRIME MINISTER, PRIME MINISTERS DAUGHTER, PRIME
MINISTERS SON STOP. ALSO DEAD TWO COLLEGE STUDENTS STOP. ALSO COURT
JESTER PREMATURELY EXHUMED STOP. BRING SHOVELS STOP. HORATIO, CASTLE
ELSINORE.
On a planet of domesticated primates armed with bird of paradise feathers Radical Lesbians
distributing copies of The Thoughts of Chairentity Brownmiller To cross again When Simon
awoke the next morning he had confused dreams about Dublin and Interzone. He looked out at
Dupont Circle and saw that Washington was having another blizzard.
Strange damn dreams, he muttered. Simon Moon awoke the next morning in the Silent Blue
Desert. In the distance he saw the Cities of the Red Night, Kadath in the Cold Waste, the towers
of Wall Street, Miskatonic University, the hill of Howth, and the Blue Lodge assembling at the
temple of Solomon the King.
So soft this random word generator, he thought.
Oh Lord my God, he shouted, is there no hope for the widows son?
The door burst open with a sound of titanic Viking gods hurling thunderbolts. The Reality Police,
led by Sgt. Joe Friday, burst into the room, phasers on stun. Grim crewcut types: no nonsense.
Blake Williams, Starhawk, Padre Pederastia and the goat were all ordered back against the wall.
You are under Suspicion, Friday said formally. Possible assembly for hypothetical discussion
of virtual alternatives.
Probable cause for suspicion of mental masturbation, added one of the crew cut clan, his chest
expanding.
Simon sighed. He carefully extinguished his cigarette end.
The fuzz spread out looking for evidence. They sniffed the chamber-pot knowingly, making
notes; examined the pen-wipers for signs of lint; turned up the bed Sometimes they hide Plotinus in the mattress and seized a bag of Simons weed on the grounds that There might be
laetrile in there. Better let the lab boys have a look-see.
These are the rules if you are under suspicion, Sgt. Friday explained with no muscles moving
anywhere. You have the right to an attorney of our choice. We offer only first-year Chinese law

students who still say regal for legal. You have the right to any and all dope you need to tolerate
this universe but any unauthorized orgasm will be observed and may be used in evidence against
you. You have the right to speak, as long as you dont question the Big Bang, the Second Law of
Thermodynamics or any other sacred dogma of Fundamentalist Materialism. If you try to remain
silent or meditate, we have the option under Section 23 to tickle your rectum with bird of
paradise feathers. You will be assumed guilty until proven insane and then shock treatment
commences. If you try to leave this novel you will be sent to the Deleted Expletive Department
and re-issued in a comic book for life;
Another man burst into the pub, almost knocking Bob Doran off his barstool and stomping on
Garry Owens tail in his rush. Garry barked, Oaf! Oaf! Oaf!
I am Joseph K., the stranger cried with a haggard clammy expression. I think that is, I
presume that there is some kind of a mistake, or error in judgement. I am completely innocent.
I have no pornographic books or philosophy, I am good to my mother, I am still a virgin at 42, I-
One of the Reality cops turned his phaser to kill and dissolved Joseph K.
Too surrealist, he explained. We aim to establish some solid Reality here at last. Law and
order.
King Kong lurched past in the street, locked in death struggle with Hastur the Unspeakable.
Special effects are allowed, up to a point, Sgt. Friday explained coughing hastily. Comedy is
allowed, up to a point. But guerilla ontology is an offense against the Iron Laws of History.
The Black Iron Prison, Simon said, almost to himselfAnother man burst into the clothing
suggestive of Mitte/europa, appearance of a minor bureaucratthe Reality Police turnedThere
was a real chance for freedomGuys were knocking down their PRIME MINISTERS SON
STOP Downright surrealist, tommyguns blasting death-death-Yes, Simon said, Getting It,
the bathroom to washall is permitted and we are unconditionally holding a card extended
Technicians, WATCH YOUR OVERCOATOver here, Simon, this way, holding Fay
WrayThe tram was drawn by a flamethrower in his left handthe riverwoman danced and
laughedSandstorms from the Silent Blue Desert along Ormonde Quay, past the bar where
Bloom, so lonely blooming, when we overthrew dogmatic theologyChicago gangsters burst
intobrothel on the Lexington Avenue SubwayBohms implicate order had always been 23
beforeA sea of troubles with a straight razorAye, theres the centipedes head as they passed
Lord Edward Fitzgeralds clones: some fanatic Divisionist god of death in orgasmTo be or not in
a building near the corner of Wall StreetNobody thinks of death between a maids legsDADA
IS NOT DEAD! WATCH Hitler and the Chinamans wave between Dublin 1904 and What, Me
Infallible?
Simon awoke. The Empire never ended. I got it, he cried like any happy convert to Erhard.
When we overthrew dogmatic theology, there was a real chance for freedom. Hume, Huxley,
Nietzsche, Korzybski, all those guys were knocking down certitudes. The Empire had to find a
new system to control us I must create a System or be enslaved by anothers, grok? so they
invented Fundamentalist Materialism. No wonder Willie Blake howled his head off and warned
us it was the same old con with a new set of blinders If we got beyond all tunnel-realities we
would be out there in Chaos with Nietzsche and Hassan i.Sabbah nothing is true, all is
permissible, the anarchist gnosis

The set collapsed. Carpenters wheeled the walls back to the prop department; the actors walked
off, lighting cigarettes, removing make-up, chatting. Bored technicians dismantled the solar
system.
Simon was alone in infinite space. Over here, Simon this way came the voice of Hagbard
Celine, Episcopus.
But the Rose Cross College the Blue Lodge
You dont need them anymore, Hagbard shouted. Youre in the Eye of the Pyramid now. This
way quick!
Simon walked toward the voice, his Craft ebbing.