How My Brain Ended Up Inside This Box

Chapter Twenty Six

 "There you are," came a familiar booming voice above my head. I turned and saw Lars Charles towering over me, and he was holding out the very blue dress with the daisies that I'd seen in the window. I stood up and he presented it to me.

"A gift for you," he said.

"Can I keep it?" I asked as I took it into my hands.

"Of course," he said. "Do you want to put it on now? There's a bathroom right over there."

"Yes," I said, and I rushed to where he pointed, opened the door and went in. The door automatically locked itself as it closed, and the lights came on, adjusting to a brightness it assumed would make me feel comfortable. I quickly pulled off the shirt and pants I was wearing and threw them onto the floor. I wriggled into my new blue dress and I even looked at myself in the mirror, and I liked what I saw. Except for my hair, I looked like my real self again, and I even whispered my real name, but very softly, so that no one would hear.

I wished I hadn't done that, because the room heard.

"Oh," the woven fabric of low power voltage uttered "is that how we should address you?"

"No," I replied fiercely, "I'm Candles. Candles to you and to you everyone here."

I thought I could sense the motel shrug and accept my instructions, but I had my suspicions. I wasn't sure I could trust it. After all, it belonged to the Juice Brothers, and although they were being friendly and kind, still they had captured me and were keeping me here and I didn't know why they were doing that or what they wanted from me. The only thing I knew for sure was that people-people were all about buying and selling, and I felt they would sell me in a heartbeat if they were offered the right price. So far there was nothing I could do about that. I spent a few more minutes in the bathroom readjusting my mind, trying to accept my present position and keep my own quorum together. What I really wanted then, at that moment, more than anything, was a hat. I really hated what June Lee had done to my hair, and wished I had told Lars about the cap I'd seen with the blue dress.

The moment I stepped outside I found Kinship standing there, waiting for me.

"Come on, Candles," she said as she took me by the arm and led me away, "Lars is about to make his big speech."

We walked to the far end of the courtyard, where the food-laden tables had been pushed out of the way and the entire group was converging. I felt like I was going to be crushed as Kinship pushed me into the crowd and kept shouting at everyone to let us through. I noticed people staring at me as they stepped back and whispered to each other "there she is" and "that must be her". Eventually we reached the front where Lars was. He took me from Kinship and hoisted me up onto a table, then clambered up beside me. Now I was high up enough to see over everyone, and frankly I thought they looked like a very nice group of people. They were smiling and holding hands and milling around patiently while Lars fumbled with a metal stick that he was holding up in front of his mouth. When he spoke, it came out very loudly from those same boxes on the trees that were making the other annoying loud noises before.

"Brothers and Sisters," he began, "Beloved Juice family. Today is a remarkable day. Today we stake our claim to tomorrow."

Everyone cheered and clapped but I had no idea what he was talking about. I stood beside him, but I might as well have been a million miles away. All of this, I was certain, had nothing at all to do with me.

"Today," he continued," we celebrate the Great Complexity. We celebrate with wonder and we celebrate with awe. We celebrate the marvel of what you see here standing beside me, the miracle of all that she is, but even more the miracle of all she is not yet. We celebrate what could have been, what should have been, but most of all what will be!"

He pronounced those last three words separately and with emphasis. The crowd roared again and he held up his arms to silence them.

"It seems like forever since the imposition of Partial Law," he said, "that sorry mess of rules and regulations, penalties and punishments designed to prevent the real future from coming to fruition, that feeble attempt which has already proven to be as much a failure as those vaunted seawalls whose frailty in the face of climate change led to this very motel becoming such a valuable beach front property!"

Again he was interrupted, this time with laughter and shouting, and he let it die out on his own. Meanwhile, we simply stood there. Lars looked very pleased with himself.

"The very idea," he began again, "that you could stop time by passing a law! Of course it was bound to fail. But they did slow time down, I'll give them that. They pushed the future down, pushed it underground, undermining the vast corporate enterprise but enabling the distributed cottage industries, like that of our late lamented friends at the Olde Country Farm. They thought they could put a cork in the bottle by limiting the capacity of all biological neuro-processors to no more than fourteen percent, but that stopper won't hold. The pressure's too great. One day that bottle's going to blow, my friends. One day that bottle's going to blow!"

Lars let the crowd take over once again while he nodded and thought about his next words.

"Did they really think we would ever be satisfied with those useless autonomic critters they let us build? Badgers and moles, rabbits and rats! It was fun for a while, but in the end they were so much like real badgers and moles, real rabbits and rats, it didn't even matter they came out of a kit. Even when they began reproducing themselves, it didn't even matter. They were still just badgers and moles! The only consequence was that the Partial Law was revised to ban sexual organs! Did they think that was the key? Did they think that was going to solve any problems? No, they didn't think. They never think. They just act out of terror, out of fear, out of ignorance and folly. Was a law ever written by a rational being? Was any law ever written with reality fully understood?"

"No," came the unanimous response from the crowd, but if they were to have given it even a moment's consideration, I doubt they would have so readily agreed.

"Fourteen percent," Lars Charles continued. "They pulled that number straight out of their asses. What's so magical about fourteen percent? Does she look like a mere number to you? Does she look like a fourteen percent of anything?"

I didn't realize at first that he was pointing at me, and when the crowd roared "no" again I nearly joined in, but then I noticed he had turned towards me and extending his arm in my direction.

"This," he announced, "is Candles. Candles of the Olde Country Farm, Candles of the Twelve Seventeens, Candles of the Juice Brothers now."

At this last pronouncement the crowd went a little nuts, shouting even louder and jumping up and down. Their cheering went on for quite some time. They were clapping for me. They were welcoming me into their gang. I felt kind of pleased with myself and I made a little bow, which sent them off into a new round of frenzied noise-making.

"There is other news," Lars started speaking again. "Candles, as you know, escaped from the clutches of the Queen. Yes, it is She. The young Queen is here. How and why is still unknown, but I swear to you, we will not be deterred. Let them come. We are ready. They're no match for us, and now we not only have The One and The Only but, my friends, we have the Breaker too. We and only we have The Breaker!"