Kitman Versus The Squirrels

A novel. With some squirrels in.

<< Chapter 17 >>

In Which The Secret Of The Universe Is Revealed.

Faced with sudden disaster in the form of yet another evil house-devouring squirrel, Kitman knew exactly what to do.

"What are we going to do, Kitman?" said I.

"Nothing," said Kitman.

"Oh," said I.¹

"Good man," said Nash Mider. "Don't tip it off that we know what it's up to."

"Precisely," said Kitman.

There was a short pause.

"Are you finished doing nothing?" said Kathleen.

"Um," said Kitman, "yes."

And he pulled out a yo-yo and proceeded to Walk-The-Dog.

I frowned at this. "Since when do you carry a yo-yo?"

"I always carry a yo-yo," said Kitman. "I pull it out when I don't know what to do next."

"Really? I've never seen...oh."

Kitman, with a complicated grin made of equal parts modesty, pride, and shame, did Rock-The-Baby. "Squirrels," he said. "Evanescent and/or numinous. Impeding thereof. Suggestions, anyone?"

"I suggest," said Nash Mider firmly, "that you don't waste your time on what is strictly speaking my problem. Get a move on and see Kuan Kuo. Hodgson and I will handle this."

Kitman began doing Around-The-World while sidling toward the cellar stairs. "I think we can cogitate en route, at least," he said.

At this point I decided to make a rare contribution. "How about," said I, "one of those thingummies from the Edmund Scientific catalog? You know, the kind you put the quarter in."

"Eh?" said Nash Mider, opening the door to the cellar.

"He means a tube whose inner surface is a mirror," said Kitman. "The reflection of the objects at the bottom of the tube results in their phantom presence at the top. If we had one of those and an acorn to stick in it, the little devil might go mad pawing at thin air."

"You want to make it angry and frustrated?" said Kathleen.

"Well, yes, abstractly speaking," said Kitman, descending the stairs, "but I know what you mean. Law of unintended consequences, that sort of thing. On the other hand there is something to be said for using illusion against the unreal. What else can you use against a strictly nonexistent squirrel?"

"Schroedinger's Cat," I suggested, and received a heavy sigh in return.

There was a gentle cough. It came from Hodgson, who had somehow managed to get down into the basement ahead of us. "I believe, sir," said he, "that I may have an apropos solution." He was holding up a small box, some eighteen inches on a side, constructed of rough dowels cut from oily violet wood.

"Dear me," said Nash Mider, taking the box from Hodgson. "A voon picnic basket."

"Picnic basket?" said Kitman, taking the box from Nash Mider and examining it closely. "It looks more like a trap of some kind." He handed it to me. It had a sliding door that locked, and felt a bit like sticking your fingers into an electric socket, and tended to sink into said fingers to a distance of half an inch, which was all very disturbing.

Hodgson coughed again. "Prior to their conversion to Pizzerianism, the voons were well known for their...regrettable approach to food, sir."

I handed the box very quickly to Kitman, and so on back up the chain.

"Some of the, er, meals the voons have been inclined to pursue included entities that were other than physical. I suspect that this construction can be used to restrain the problematic rodent."

"Very good!" said Kitman. "Now all we need is bait."

I take a certain amount of pride in noting that I was the first to say "Pilcrow nuts."

"Brilliant!" said Kitman, and rolled up his yo-yo.

 

•

 

With Hodgson and Nash Mider off to deploy the metasquirrel trap, there was nothing holding us back, and we set about locating the pinhole view of the Jade Pyramid that would take us where we needed to go. (I really should think of a good name for that thing. Or at least stop calling it a thing.) Kathleen was the first to spot it, and this time didn't even need Noel's bottle of bubbles.

"Any last minute details?" said Kitman, scanning our faces for indications of uncertainty. "Anyone need to use the facilities? No? Good. I'll see you all on the other side, then. Everybody rotate your souls!"

So saying, he straightened up, looked into the middle distance of the basement, angled his head a few times, allowed his eyes to defocus, and failed to disappear.

Kathleen said, "Rotate harder, Kitman," and vanished.

Noel cocked his head, squinted and vanished.

Kitman did not vanish.

"Problems, Kitman?" I said.

"I seem," he admitted, still gazing vacantly at something in particular, "to be having trouble with the 'dive into the clear pool of inner peace and simplicity' business. Which suggests that there is something that I've been overlooking, some facet of my current existence that I've forgotten, which is weighing on my unconscious mind."

"I have every confidence in you, Kitman," I said, and it was merely true.

"Your confidence is my foundation," he said. "You go on ahead, I'll work it out."

"Gotcha," said I, and, long story short, stepped without moving onto the grass of a hillside overlooking a wooded valley.

 

I feel obliged to admit that observing comes with distressing difficulty to me. When I was in the Cub Scouts I failed so dismally at the art of visual leaf identification that to this day I owe the Scouts a merit badge. So I am doubtless leaving any number of details out when I say I was looking down on the top of a four-sided pyramid surrounded by countless trees. For example, the types of the trees. They were all one big blotch of green to me. The pyramid, too, was largely wasted on me. It was green, and jade, and therefore presumably jade green, but that's about all I could say.

"Where's the coruscating waves of light?" said Kathleen.

"That's only at night," I said. "When we first arrived here it looked much like this —"

"Behold the Jade Pyramid," said Nash Mider from behind me.

"It's amazing!" said Noel, also from behind me.

This was disturbing because Noel was in front of me.

"Everybody relax, I'm here," said Kitman. "—Oh, good grief, what now?"

I turned around very slowly.

Very, very slowly.

In fact I just thought about turning around.

"Did you remember to bring the lunches?" said, apparently, Kitman.

"Um, oops," said someone whose voice I did not recognize, but whose words I did. "I left them on the — hang on, I'll be right back."

I finally turned around, just in time to see someone bearing a moderate resemblance to myself disappear.

Kitman was staring with bemusement at someone bearing a moderate resemblance to himself.

Also present were vaguely Nash-Mideresque and quasiNoel persons.

"Kitman...?" I said.

The remaining Kitman looked at me. "Well," he said slowly, "if not for the fact that me is wearing the same clothes that I am, I'd say that's us arriving here for the first time."

"Clothes?" I said.

"I believe I was wearing a white shirt and navy blue pants," said Kitman — and "he" suddenly was.

Noel stepped up beside himself. His duplicate was taller, but shrank almost immediately. "Hey, put that back!" he said.

"Who, me?" said I.

I, incidentally, was now carrying a (conventional) picnic basket — at least I assume I was me, since I had only a face-shaped face. We were all looking a bit non-descript, really.

"I think you've gotten your narrative structure into our reality," said Kitman. "Just a wild guess, mind you."

"Hah?" said I, watching with a peculiar irritation as the other us examined their surroundings and identified the easiest way down.

"You should be able to figure this one out," said Kitman. "But since we're pressed for time — everybody follow us-slash-them, by the way — I'll clue you in: you've been telling our story in a place that tends to shape itself around people's ideas. This is the part you would be telling Kathleen, if you were telling Kathleen."

He trotted downhill after himself, and I decided to follow.

After deciding that I was going to refer to the duplicates as Kitman₂, Noel₂, myself₂ and Nash Mider₂.

 

"You really aren't very observant," said Kathleen. "I mean, look at the poor man." She indicated Nash Mider₂, who was fading in and out of focus according to whether he was saying anything. The others were suffering from the same problem, and would occasionally disappear entirely when I₂ was paying attention to other things.

I looked at Nash Mider₂ and tried to remember him into crystal clarity. This was partially successful, although I couldn't recall where he parted his hair.

"Don't knock it," said Kitman, walking backwards in front of himself. "I mean, I thought that pimple I had was a lot more noticeable."

"And I," said Noel, "am rather pleased you've apparently never noticed that — oh, we've arrived."

"Noticed what?" said I, and walking into the side of the Jade Pyramid.

"Oh, nothing, nothing," said Noel.

"Noticed what?" I said, looking him up and down with increasing perplexity.

"It's just as well," he said.

 

"I remember this part," said Kitman, regarding the sealed doors of the pyramid. "It's like a Ditch Day puzzle at CalTech."

We₂ had arrived at the pyramid's entranceway, and were admiring the decorations, hieroglyphs and et cetera that were engraved around it.

Nash Mider₂ said, "I have yet to penetrate the sanctum sanctorum. Perhaps you have a fresh approach."

Noel₂ stepped forward and took a good look at the engravings on the door. "Some of this writing is Sanskrit," he said. "These doors are closed to all without, and open to all within. Signed, The Management."

"You can read Sanskrit?" said I₂.

"No, that part's in English," said Noel₂, pointing at the words over the door.

"'The Management'?" said Noel, sighting up the arm of his counterpart. "It didn't say that. And it still doesn't."

"Punching up the dialog, eh?" said Kitman, giving me the elbow.

"Can it, Kitman," said I.

Noel₂ stepped back from the door, applied forefinger to bill and closed his eyes for a long moment.

"Ah!" he said, snapping his fingers. "Of course — the door of enlightenment is always closed to those who actively seek it."

Noel₂ turned his back on the door, which promptly opened behind him.

It also remained closed to us, until Kathleen turned her back on it.

"That was very clever of you," said Kathleen to Noel, who blushed to the fullest extent of natural law.

"Actually, that was something I heard my friend Robin say once," he said.

The remainder of his party rushed past Noel₂ through while the door was still open. We followed.

 

"This is a pretty empty pyramid," said Kathleen, once we were inside. "Or is it just lack of imagination?"

I gave her the eyebrow raised and fixed.

Unlike the pyramids featured on the History Channel, which were essentially stacked stone blocks interrupted by crevices, the Jade Pyramid was wall-to-wall floor; there were some urns and statuary around the perimeter, but the only major architectural features were two doors and two mirrors. The walls themselves were green and glassy and as transparent within as they were opaque without, and rose unimpeded to an apex several hundred feet above us. There were no ladders or stairs or window-washing devices.

It was like being inside an emerald.

"It's like being inside an emerald," said Noel₂.

Kitman₂ was already examining the mirror that reflected the entrance. "Nothing behind here but wall, and that's transparent, so I don't think there's a secret passage — unless it's literally esoteric, which is beyond my purview."

"Nothing behind this one, either," reported Nash Mider₂, from the right.

"Hey!" said I₂, from over to the left. "This door is a fake. It opens onto the wall."

"A pair of doors," mused Kitman₂. "A pair of mirrors. Each door reflected in a mirror. There's nothing concealed, and nothing hidden..."

"Tricky," said Kitman and Kitman₂.

Everyone₂ fell momentarily silent. Almost palpable waves of green light washed over them (and us). Faint birdsong echoed through the room, and what might well have been the memory of temple bells.

The scent of waterfalls...

"It's like nothing in my wildest dreams," said Nash Mider₂.

"Nor me," said Noel₂ excitedly. "It's different. It's real." He pat-pat-patted his way to the center of the room, stood under the zenith and gave the perimeter a three hundred and sixty degree examination while rubbing his hands together. "Thinking in terms of doors is wrong. We need to reflect."

"Hah?" said Kitman₂.

"It's a zen joke," said Noel₂, walking up to the mirror that opposed the door to nowhere and looking, apparently, at his own reflection. "Mirrors symbolize reversal. The mirror of a door that leads nowhere is a door that leads anywhere, or everywhere; the mirror of an exit is an entrance."

Kathleen whistled through her teeth.

"Zen?" said Nash Mider₂, baffled.

Noel₂ reached up to the surface of the mirror and touched the reflection of his own fingertip. "This is not the interior of the jade pyramid," he said.

"It isn't?" said Kitman₂, among other people.

"No." Noel₂ walked away from the mirror-of-the-false-door and headed for the mirror-of-the-exit. "It's more like the foyer, part of the entrance." He stopped in front of the mirror-of-the-exit. "What do you see when you look in a mirror?"

At the moment he was looking at us (or us₂, in fact) but the point was clear nonetheless.

"I see myself," said Kathleen and Nash Mider₂. I₂ and Kitman₂ mumbled concurrence.

"Exactly," said Noel₂. "And one of the other keys to enlightenment," he said, and for a disturbing moment it seemed that he caught my eye, "is learning to get past yourself."

And he stepped forward into the mirror and was gone.

 

"You impress me greatly," said Kathleen to Noel.

"I read a lot," said Noel. He looked down at his left foot briefly and then turned to me. "Didn't it take me about half an hour to work that all out?"

"Apparently I condensed it a bit," said I.

"You left out the poem," said Kitman. "You know, when all is emptiness, there is no mirror, and so forth. I thought that was a good bit."

"You also," he added a moment later, "left out my line about how this was like getting the platinum bar in Zork."

"I didn't understand it," I said.

"It was a funny line..."

Noel₂ walked out of the mirror, much to the repeated amazement of many. "Would anyone else care to try?"

"Let's not," said Kitman, who knew full well what was about to happen. "Noel?"

"If you just hold my hand and keep your eyes closed I can lead you all through it," said Noel.

"Yes, let's do that," said Kitman, reaching down for Noel's hand. "Spit spot!"

"You go ahead," said Kathleen, folding her arms and focusing her attention on Kitman₂. "I want to see the other you try to walk through a mirror."

"It wasn't all that entertaining," said Kitman.¹

 

The other side...

...looked exactly the same. It wasn't even a mirror image.

"Huh," said Kathleen.

"This is the apex of the real jade pyramid," said Noel. "Below us lie at least seventy-six levels of —"

"You know," said Kitman₂, looking around, "for a temple of enlightenment there seems to be a distinct shortage of people with fly-whisks."

"Maybe they're Jains," I₂ suggested.

Noel₂ sat down on the floor in as close to a lotus position as his feet would allow.

"Now what?" said Nash Mider₂.

"When the student is ready," said Noel₂, "the master will appear."

"Are you ready?" said Kitman₂.

"Ready as I'll ever be," said Noel₂, looking thoroughly composed.

We₂ waited, and so did we, for that matter.

Have you ever fallen asleep for a moment? Just long enough to experience that durationless discontinuity that tells you that you did, in fact, fall asleep?

That happened.

And when it had finished happening there was a small bit of paper fluttering down from midair, where it had simply appeared. It was the size and shape of a movie ticket. It landed in Noel₂'s lap, and he picked it up. Looked at it.

Laughed...

...and showed it around. It had the number 1 on it.

"Take a number?" said Kitman₂ — just as a hole appeared in the floor, spreading like spilled ink.

A noise came from the hole. It sounded like the pat-pat-pat of footsteps ascending a spiral staircase.

A head emerged from the hole, and a body followed, and the person stepped up and out.

The person was dressed in a saffron robe. The person was green. The person was a duck.

"Hello, student!" he said.

"Hello, Master," said both Noels.

Kuan Kuo — for it was he — plunked himself down on the edge of the hole, facing Noel₂, and dangled his feet into the darkness.

He reached into the sleeve of his saffron robe and pulled out a steaming cup of tea. "A cheap trick, but I like it," he said, passing the cup to Noel₂. "Lemon and five sugars, if I am not mistaken?"

Noel₂ nodded with a certain degree of embarrassment.

Kuan Kuo offered a canister of chocolate chip cookies around. I tried to take one becase I remembered how good they were, but he smacked my hand and said "Had one last time, don't be greedy." He turned back to Noel₂. "Existence," he said, "the short form. Kuan Kuo explains the nature of reality. Listen carefully, for he will say this —" he gave me the eyebrow raised and fixed — "only once."

 

•

 

"The Whole of existence," said Kuan Kuo, "consists of exactly that. Everything...and then some. The then some is the problem.

"Birds, beans, thumbtacks, love, four-sided triangles...all these things fit your mind to varying degrees, some less than others.

"And then there is the other stuff. Mere four-sided triangles you can comprehend as nonsense, but the other stuff, with which Kuan Kuo deals on a daily basis, would drive you insane. The simultaneous truth of A and Not-A is just the beginning. Synthetic a priori synaesthesia, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

"So, to secure you from things beyond your ken, genial and fabulous Kuan Kuo et al. set up for you a gated community that you call the universe."

"Gated community?" said Noel₂.

Kuan Kuo shrugged with one shoulder. "Gated community, sanatorium, sanitarium, jail: any and all of these apply. —The Chair recognizes the honorable gentleman from the state of confusion," he added, as Kitman₂ had raised his hand.

"In the phrase 'set up for you'," said Kitman₂, "would you please define the word 'you'?"

Kuan Kuo pointed at Noel.

"Me?" said Noel. "Just me?"

"I speak both metonymically and literally," said Kuan Kuo. "It's complicated. Important bits are that one, the current physical appearance of your humble servant is not mere catering to student's expectations, and two, the other universe—" he indicated the more anthropoidal life-forms in the room — "was...how shall Kuan Kuo put this politely...?"

"An accident?" suggested Kitman₂.

"A catastrophe," said Kuan Kuo. "In the scientific sense, of course. Mostly." He addressed Noel once again. "For your benefit — in some ways your exclusive benefit — Kuan Kuo and his delightful volunteers divided the acceptable from the unacceptable, artifically separated the can from the can't, defined rules that separate oil from water.

"However...there is a minimum unavoidable vagueness at the borderline."

"Brownian motion," said Kitman₂. "The uncertainty principle."

Kuan Kuo shrugged his other shoulder. "Oil or water roils, droplets and bubbles form. Sometimes vacuoles. As existence is basically conceptual, thinking can churn the borderline, cause out-of-continuity entities." He pointed at the human population of the room. "Never intended, didn't happen, could have happened, some comic book writer asks, hey, why not hairless apes at just the wrong moment — presto, an idea-bubble forms at borderline, full of hairless apes.

"At this point Kuan Kuo will distinguish between reality and mere existence."

Everyone waited for him to continue.

"What's real?" exploded Noel₂, who apparently really needed an answer.

"We are," said Kuan Kuo. "All else is scenery. Even shape of bodies merely aesthetic detail. Rock versus baroque.

When you master your self, you can leave your restrictions behind, or keep them. Unconstrained reality isn't better, just different. You can bound yourself in a nutshell and count yourself king of infinite space."

"That's what Hodgson says," mumbled Nash Mider₂.

Kuan Kuo pointed at Nash Mider₂. "Do you consider yourself trapped?"

"Me?" said Nash Mider₂. "No."

"Though your universe is tiny, badly maintained, and rattletrap, because you want to be there it is no constraint upon you, any more than a glove constrains a hand."

"Hm," said Nash Mider₂, looking up.

"Of course," said Kuan Kuo with narrowed eyes, "there is this pilcrow nuts business..."

"Erm," said Nash Mider₂, looking down.

"But the solution to that is at hand."

"?" said Nash Mider₂, looking up again.

"Kuan Kuo itches to do monograph," said Kuan Kuo, looking from Nash Mider₂ to Noel₂. "Fascinating how two like minds from two bubbles can collaborate through a single wormhole, building a castle in the air like a ship in a bottle, and then actually move in! Could write pages and pages on positive and negative mind space of Nash Mider — poking finger into mushy side of existence, leaves print as sort of mirror image of self, which eventually swaps places with him like moving kink in rug from one side of closed door to other — dragging part of collaborator along for the ride. Alas, after putting in all the math, no one but Kuan Kuo would understand it."

("You look pained," said Kitman.)

("It's the metaphors," said I.)

"Takes two for entanglement," said Kuan Kuo. "Remove Noel and whole edifice collapses, you know. If not for him still dreaming, would have vanished the moment physical body of Nash Mider awoke."

Nash Mider₂ blinked. "What would have happened to me, then?"

"What may yet happen!" said Kuan Kuo, waving a stern cookie at Nash Mider₂.

"Well, what?"

Kuan Kuo bit into his cookie. "Beats me. Not easy to simulate dynamics of probability fluid in head. Could get pushed back into the original universe, or your own, possibly incarnating in new body; might get stuck on wrong side of borderline and get mind blown like an egg." He wasn't spilling crumbs, which was a tribute to his transcendental nature. "But Kuan Kuo, of course, has solution. How would honorable student like a job?"

Noel gleeped. "Job?"

Kuan Kuo held up Noel's business card. "Kuan Kuo has much midnight oil that needs burning. Sorting normal from para is what you enjoy, no? Sitting up all night hunched over books?"

"Um, yeah!" said Noel₂.

"Perfect," said Kuan Kuo. "Records department is a shambles! You start tomorrow, eighteen-fifty an hour, full medical, transcendental."

Noel₂ said "But —"

"Tell everyone you got a job in sunny California. Can still visit from time to time, or more accurately leave them with that impression."

"Okay," said Noel₂.

Nash Mider₂ said "But —"

"— you will surely not mind taking on a boarder on the borderline?" completed Kuan Kuo.

"Him?"

"Me?"

"Who else? You just need someone to talk to once in a while, Nash Mider, stop you moping around munching on pilcrow nuts. So it will do you good to host Noel's unconscious physical body in your spare room so that he can continue propping up your universe by dreaming it, until Kuan Kuo has sufficient spare time to stabilize it properly."

Nash Mider₂ blinked. "That's so bizarre I can't resist."

"Having solved their problems," said Kuan Kuo, "we turn now to you. —Why are you back?"

 

•

 

"For that matter, how?" said Kitman. "If memory serves, the only reason the vaxillator was even possible was due to the distortion of the possible by the Mider-Quillie ontological infarct."

"Which I sealed after sending you home with a nice reward from Nash Mider," said Kuan Kuo. "How did that reward work out, by the by?"

"The voonish gold I haven't figured out how to liquidate yet. The tomatoes went over very well."

Kuan Kuo stroked the underside of his bill. "I know of a certainty that you built only two of those devices," he said. "I confiscated both of them and you could not have constructed the replacement you so clearly possess. How, indeed, did this come to pass?"

Kitman said, "Beats me, unless it was the squirrels, and I can't see what they had to do with it."

Kuan Kuo looked nonplussed, which disturbed me.

"Most peculiar," he said. He turned to Noel. "Will the honorable student please conduct the honorable guests to the Visitor Center?"

"We have a Visitor Center?" said Noel.

"Five floors down, straight down main corridor, third right. Just past the Gift Shop."

"We have a Gift Shop?"

Kuan Kuo nibbled a cookie more in sorrow than in anger. "Evidently," he said, "this will be a long day..."