A Machinist I am. I am expected to know everything. Absurd I know. It cannot be any other way. Somebody must do it. Namely: Me. The planet is incorporated. It is me against us. Who is on your team? Are you sure? Time is clairvoyant. Space is murky. Primeval. I try to recharge the charger. Electricity is faster than cash. Nobody gets paid. Except for the Titans at Titanpointe. Sleep, restless sleepwalker. Sleep. You are a computer. You are a cyborg. You are a human being.

I shall remain nameless. Suits me. The namelessness. Perhaps a number is in order. N47. Or something along those lines. We like numbers. The people of the corporation. Z49. The sky is the limit. Do you like hanky panky? People often do. Never get enough. There are special rooms for dreams & nightmares. Anechoic chambers in the great state of Minnesota. Minnesota is an odd state of mind. Not unlike Indiana. California. Utah. The sky is the fucking limit.

We are machine people. Hurtling towards the next Big Thing. Smaller and smaller things. Anything. Scrap metal. Plastic bags. Electronics. Six-pin connectors. Eight-pin connectors. Am I connected? You know how it is. That feelingless feeling. Creeps up on you at the shopping mall. The agora. The supermarket. Pushing a shopping cart across a boiling asphalt parking lot. Yes. You know. Asteroids are grazing the atmosphere. What a perfect O² bubble. Until it Pops. Explodes. Annihilates.

A machinist cannot speak. A machinist only writes code. You, on the other hand, possess the gift of talk. People say the incredible. Things like Hi Bob. Every Robert in the country is at risk of being called Bob. It is a curious name. A very curious name. Tom Dick and Harry is also a perfect trinity. Where do people get such names? A book of names? I like paragraphs. A man named James said I fail to teach the paragraph. So be it, James. Cast your lure into the breakers at Montauk for striped-bass. Perhaps you get a bite.

I am obsessed with another sea creature. The Kraken. Tentacles in everything we say and do. The Electric Kraken … far deadlier than electric eels. Yes yes. I began to begin at the beginning of the millennium. Before that I was a boy and a girl … I am not sure. Uncertainty is my specialty. I swim in existence as a tadpole in a methane sea under the frozen crust of Saturn’s big moon Titan. The cilia of a cell are like tentacles. I feel everything. The true locomotion of a human being is impossible to describe.

There is the backward-and-forward motion of fucking. Buttocks are muscle engines. Fully engaged. All systems go. Zoë was a perfect fit for Zig. There are Others, of course. Spacetime keeps spiraling. Twists & turns of human flesh. Love affairs in the dragonfire ruins of medieval castles. Gothic grunts & fucks. Heretofore I have remained anonymous. Your story intrigues me more, reader. Scholar of ancient manuscripts. Scrolls tied by serpent’s twine. Unroll your scrolls. Unspool. This text is such that it may break apart at any moment. But you already know that. Ergo the shakings hands. Beads of sweat. Ache in the pit of the stomach. Anxiety. Excitement.

This text folds into itself. Trapping the reader. Forever. In perpetuity. Infinity. Sit back. Relax. I am the co-pilot. This text is on auto-pilot. I wish Carol Maso author of Ava were here. She might know what to do. Where to land. Parachute on her back. I wish Beckett were here. Molloy. Malone. Murphy. This text is peculiar. I did not expect to name real people. André the Giant. René Goulet. The list is getting increasingly bizarre. Is this slipstream? Anna Kavan, are you listening? Ice? What about you Philip K. Dick? Is this getting beamed into your head? Phil?

The space between space is dark matter. So there, I solved it. A Theory of Everything. A novelist must offer no less. Otherwise she is a charlatan. Or he is a warlock. Or a jester. Or a fool. Keep going with all those Os. I had a girlfriend who called it the Big O. Remember? Remember who you are? We dissolve into bubbles. Every bubble is a Cosmos. Every big O pops. Into smaller and smaller Os. The petite O. Earlier I spoke of something. What was it? O…. I forget. I am a forgetter. Forget I ever remembered. Goodbye.

Hello. So much loneliness here. Surveillance capitalism. Capitalist totalitarianism. Where is an anarchist to turn? Deep into literature I suppose. Art. Chaos & disorder. Entropy. We are machine beings. Trying to wall off the internal combustions of the mind. Human emotions & thoughts & feelings. Spark plugs. Carburetors. Transmissions. Sprockets & gears. Exhaust pipes.

Hero. Are you a hero? Are you failing at it miserably? I am a hero. I will lead us Nowhere. Somebody has to do it. The Big Nowhere. Sparkles and glitters. A novelist like me comes along at the end and the beginning of a millennium. Buckle your jockstrap. Clasp your brassiere. Get ready to rocket through a wormhole into Space. Nah. Let’s just stay here on Earth. There is too much to see already. Why impregnate extraterrestrials?

Storytelling is an ancient trick. People sit around campfires of the dead. Looking up at a black firmament of twinkling stars. Now and again, an asteroid crashes through the atmosphere. Somebody holds up a gnarled stick, and dares to speak: “I am Zig.”

Just let your beard grow. People will believe everything you say. If they call you a charlatan, say thanks. I like mint chocolate chip ice cream.

I feel a Harlem breeze on the East River. Things get real. December is here. Tugboats are fighting the current. The Hell Gate Bridge is a neo-Gothic railroad bridge designed by Gustav Lindenthal, a civil engineer born in Brünn (Czechs call it Brno) in 1850 during the Austrian Empire. Emigrated to Amerika in 1874. Impress your friends.

Brush your teeth. Go to sleep. Floss. Why don’t kids listen? Nobody listens to the old man. The machines are taking over. Washing the human brain. Kids watch kids watch kids playing Minecraft Dungeons.

Enough is enough. This is my last stand. I will fight the Kraken. I am a harpooneer. I will stand on the bow of the ship. The fender of a Volkswagen Beetle. Whatever it takes. Strike the Kraken!