Kitman Versus The Squirrels

A novel. With some squirrels in.

<< Chapter 19 >>

In Which We Learn More Things We Do Not Understand.

"So this is why you visit us so often," said Kathleen.

She was looking up at my house, a two story Cape Hatteras much like the not-Kitman house two streets away except painted a sort of pale mold green.

"Hey!" I said. "This is a perfectly good starter house for the young working couple with no children or pets." I knew this because I had found the Abelton Park Realty brochure in a drawer once.

"Yes, I thought that was what it was," she said.

I led her to the door, unlocked it and pushed it open. After a few moments of no burglars leaping out at us, I waved her inside.

"Enter freely and of your own will," I said. "I'd introduce you to my parents but they're out. At a timeshare sales pitch."

She stepped into the living room warily. "So I don't have to worry about them coming back and finding me in the shower?"

"Not even if it happens," said I. "What were you planning on changing into, by the way?"

"You're going to give me some of your old clothes," she said, scanning the living room.

"I am?"

"Yes," she said. "The ones you wore in junior high which no longer fit but you never got around to throwing out. Look in your closet, jammed into the back.

"You know," she added, "this isn't nearly as horrible as I might have expected."

I was quietly glad that I had replaced the curtains, painted the walls and thrown out the rug. "It isn't?"

"No," she said, and pulled a set of screwdrivers out of her back pocket. "It will do. Where's this broken television of yours?"

"Uh — my room." I pointed in the general direction of up. "Top of the stairs, on the left. Are those Kitman's screwdrivers?"

"Of course," she said, and headed across the room for the stairs.

I ducked into the kitchen to check the fridge for bottled anything and found nothing. By the time I rejoined her empty-handed she had the TV screen-down on the bed with its back off, an insulated screwdriver poked into its guts, and was studying its interior with a practiced eye and a pocket flashlight.

"Hmm," she said, "yes." She probed around a bit, poked the screwdriver into a few presumably well-chosen places, pulled it out and snapped the case back together. "Finished," she said.

"What, already?"

"Yup. It's beyond repair. You spilled a milkshake into it, for goodness sake. Strawberry."

Memory returned at last. "I think it was vanilla, actually," I said.

Kathleen examined the end of her screwdriver, which now resembled a pink Q-tip. "Erg. Got any alcohol?"

"Medicine cabinet in the bathroom," I said, pointing to the hallway.

"Good," she said, making for the door. "I'll take my shower while I'm in there. Find me a white shirt and a pair of brown pants, please. Preferably not corduroy." In the hallway she paused to look back. "Black socks will do."

I contemplated the wardrobe she had just itemized; there seemed to be some items missing. "Um," said I.

"I always carry spares," she said, stepping into the bathroom. "Or was there something else?"

Actually, there was. "What did you do at music camp?"

She smiled the most oblique smile ever to go unrendered by Leonardo da Vinci. "I'll tell you when you turn eighteen," she said, "and can legally sign a non-disclosure agreement."

She closed the door with a click.

 

In my closet, wedged up against the far wall, was a geological layer of clothing from an era best forgotten. White shirts were very much in evidence, along with pants of your choice of brown corduroy or brown polyester. I picked out a shirt with almost no ballpoint pen marks in the pocket and a pair of the polyester brown, and laid them out on the bed before turning to the chest of drawers. After rummaging around in the top drawer for a bit I located a pair of short thick black socks, and then a pair of long thin black socks for variety, and...

...then, at the very back of the sock drawer, found...

...a necklace, constructed of twist ties and acorn caps, with a pendant consisting of a whole acorn that had once had silver glitter on it.

I picked it up.

And then...there I was.

Alone in my room.

My dark, dusty and unseasonably cold room.

I laid the socks down on top of the pants and shirt, and sat down on the bed.

The necklace rattled lightly in my hands, and bits of it crumbled away to join the other particles on the floor.

I stared at it, listening to the rumble of the shower, and didn't think of anything at all...

 

The water stopped.

And there was a knock at the door down below.

I ran for the stairs to see who was coming to see whom, or possibly vice versa.

 

It was a cakeless Kitman.

"No luck?" said I, stuffing the necklace into my pocket.

"Not an iota," said the cakeless, setting a can of vanilla frosting on my dining room table. "The bakery is closed and the Food-n-Stuf had nothing but single slices and a styrofoam model of a cake with a picture of a football on it."

"Did you consider buying all the single slices—"

"—and sticking them together with frosting?" completed Kitman. "Yes, but they were all different heights for some reason. And they wouldn't sell me the styrofoam model. Apparently someone bought it by phone while I was looking for the frosting. I don't suppose your oven is working?"

"I don't know," I said, "we've never used it. Have you ever baked a cake?"

"I can follow directions in an emergency," said Kitman. He stepped into the kitchen, and pulled open the oven door with the sound of a rusty drawbridge.

"Mphm," said Kitman, examining the oven's interior. "Yes, I thought as much..."

"What?"

"Your oven," he said, "is full of videotapes. Also," he added, over louder and more percussive rust-related noises, "I can't get the oven door shut again."

"I'll go find some 3-in-1 Oil," I said.

As I re-entered the living room en route to the hallway closet, Kathleen yelled down the stairs "Did you know that this shirt you left out for me is labeled 'Size Tedium'?"

"That sounds about right," I called back.

There was an enormous crash from the kitchen, which distracted me from some extremely dull memories of junior high school so that was all right.

"Never mind, I got it," said Kitman. He stepped out of the kitchen dusting his hands. "It's just as well. In terms of cake construction I am a mechanical neophyte and this is probably not the time to learn. Especially since I didn't think to buy any cake mix. I'll just call in a reservation to the bakery for tomorrow. Mind if I use your phone? Did you happen to find out what Kathleen did at music camp?"

"No and no," I said. "Did you learn anything at the library? Do you know the number of the bakery?"

"No," he said, picking up the phone, "and no," he said, setting it down again. "The only thing they had that was likely was Blackspring's Big Book Of Cults, Esoteric Organizations and Isolated Weirdoes, and it's been checked out since last spring." He opened the cabinet beneath the telephone and pulled out the Yellow Pages.

There was a cough from upstairs, and Kathleen descended into sight. She was making better use of my clothes than I ever had. She was also wearing bunny slippers, provenance unknown, and carrying a large black book.

"Did you also know," she said, "that there was a library book in your bathtub?"

This was a 3-in-1 shock — first because I didn't know any such thing, second because it was a copy of Blackspring's Big Book Of Cults, Esoteric Organizations and Isolated Weirdoes, and third because the overdue fine was going to be huge.

"The overdue fine is going to be huge!" I said, my fingers twitching with anxiety. "Was there any water damage?"

"Thankfully, no," she said, examining the pages. "You must have seen me reading it and borrowed it after I returned it, because this is the book I saw that mystery symbol in."

"Never mind the fine, Watson, the game's a foot and a half!" said Kitman, grabbing for the book and getting clouted lightly over the head with it for his trouble.

"Manners!" said Kathleen, flipping through the pages. "You must learn patience, Kitman. And manners. —What did I just say about patience and manners?" she added, yanking the book away again.

 

Eventually they settled on the traditional compromise.

"The World Tree Hugger sect," read Kathleen, while her brother hung over her shoulder, "is generally characterized as a degenerate form of the Cult of Yggdrasil—"

"—or vice versa," read Kitman. "Both groups worship the the Goddess Nut —"

"It's pronounced Newt," said Kathleen, stepping away from her brother.

"Wanna bet?" said Kitman, stepping after his sister.

"— and both believe," they read, "that as the universe ends, the World Tree produces the Goddess Nut —"

"Okay, it's pronounced Nut," said Kathleen.

"— which the servants of the Goddess Nut plant in chaos, thus creating existence anew," finished Kitman. "It is believed that the groups are actually identical, maintaining different names for tax purposes."

"In chaos?" I said. "Any particular chaos, or just the general chaos?"

Kitman turned the page. "It doesn't specify."

"According to Hesiod's Theogony," said Kathleen, "chaos was the gap created by the separation of Heaven from Earth."

We looked at her.

"What?" she said.

 

•

 

"Separation of Heaven from Earth," said Robin. "That sounds suggestive."

"It does?" said I.

"Of the Borderline, he means," explained Noel, not looking up from the Rolodex he was sorting through. I made a mental note to ask him why he thought the World Tree Hugger (or Cult of Yggdrasil) symbol might be in a Rolodex.

"What if," said Robin, "the World Tree was a Limit Point?"

"Limit Point?" said Kitman.

"It's complicated," said Robin and Noel.

They took a deep breath.

 

The explanation that followed was worthy of Kitman, so I'll just summarize it as best I can from the place they got it from in the first place, namely a blurry blue ditto handed out in the Jade Pyramid Acolyte Orientation Class.

When Kuan Kuo arbitrarily divided the Can-Happen from the Can't-Happen, in order to spare the likes of us from having our brains leap out through our nasal cavities in response to the more extreme incomprehensibilities of existence, he did it by putting in place a series of...tent pegs, so to speak, which are the Limit Points of Existence. They reside just outside the realm of possibility, which is to say the universe as we know it, and basically constrain it. If you move a Limit Point, the range of possibilities in the universe changes.

Limit Points consist of nominal objects, or pseudoexistentials, of great philosophical mass — things that don't exist but act as though they do, like Atlantis, or Beethoven.

 

"Beethoven?" said Kitman.

"There is only one Beethoven," said Robin. "He's the tentpole of everything. You can't have existence without Beethoven."

"Oh," said Kitman. "That seems...reasonable, and yet..." He looked at me. "How can you let all this just wash over you?"

"Because I never understand what's going on anyway," I said. "Why, are you finding it disorienting?"

"Me? Not since space aliens abducted Confucius has anyone been so disoriented. I hide it remarkably well, however."

"The salient point being," said Noel, setting aside his Rolodex and reaching for another one, "that if the World Tree is, or was, one of the Limit Points, it might explain a few things. Show him what we found, would you please, Robin?"

Robin turned to the shelving near his desk and pulled off a thick volume of the forgotten lore variety. It had a stylized nut on the cover that did look slightly like the symbol on the collar of the green squirrel.

"According to Les Cultes des Écureuils by von Endstück," said Robin, opening what was, presumably, Les Cultes des Écureuils by von Endstück, to somewhere in the middle, "it was chopped down by a person or persons unknown before ever producing a World Nut, and so when the current universe ends, that's it."

He turned the book around and pointed to a particular paragraph that of course I couldn't read.

"Really?" said I.

"Well, that's the impression I get," said Robin. "It's a one paragraph French precis of a two hundred page German abstract of a seventy-two thousand line Norse epic tragedy in iambic hexameter, and my French is not too good."

Kitman began to pace. "How can you chop down a pseudoexistential? No, never mind, pseudoexistentials do exist, they just exist outside the gated communityverse, like Nash Mider's—"

Kitman, I may have mentioned, is a genius.

"—Eureka," he said.

"What?" said everyone.

"What do you do with a chopped down tree?" said Kitman.

"Make books out of it," said Noel.

Kitman sighed. "Where's Nash Mider?"

 

•

 

In the Visitor Center, which had been upgraded with a conference table and a non-working TV since the last time we saw it, Nash Mider poked another pilcrow nut into the paws of his captive green squirrel and looked doubtful.

"Traditionally, the World Tree is an ash," he said. "Our house is mostly oak."

"Are you going to tell the World Tree what kind of tree it is?" said Kitman. "And being the World Tree, it was big. Huge."

"Enormous," said I.

"Gigantic," said Robin.

"Certainly big enough to build a couple of houses out of," said Kitman.

"Or even three," said Robin.

"Why three?" said Kitman.

"Famous mystic number," said Robin. "Mind you, they'd all be the same house due to the polydimensional fractality of it all."

We looked at him. Kitman moved his lips, silently outlining the syllables of "polydimensional fractality".

"What have you been reading?" said I.

"Barry Zarkov's Quantum Sheep," admitted Robin, and hung his head. "The New And Improved Physics. It was one of Noel's."

"Well, why not?" said Kitman. "Let's run the scenario. The World Tree gets cut down, cut up and reassembled into a multi-aspected house, part of which ends up here on the borderline, part of which ends up in Abelton Park—"

"Not to forget that which is neither out nor in," said Kuan Kuo, who was now casually leaning against the conference table without having entered the room. He looked at me, said "Be here now," and winked.

"Oh, it's you," said Kitman. "Have you come to be enigmatic at us again, or to tell us what's going on?"

"Yes," said Kuan Kuo. "You have been flitting twixt universes again without filing flight plan, haven't you? Disgraceful, but shows initiative. I pardon you one hundred blows." And he hit Kitman with a fly-whisk.

"Hey!" said Kitman. "You just said—"

"Okay, ninety-nine blows I pardon you," said Kuan Kuo complacently, and stowed away the fly-whisk. "Now attend. Kuan Kuo has not been lazing about. Careful examination of the polyfractal dimensionality of existence reveals that everything is all farshimmelt and the situation is excellent. Suitable training opportunity for up and coming self-starting young persons, not a situation requiring personal intervention of overworked, underpaid Kuan Kuo."

He climbed up on the table and clasped Kitman and myself on the shoulders. "Expediently chosen ones," he said warmly, "go to next level." He pointed at Robin. "Friends and fellow students further along the path will guide you further along the path."

He hesitated for a moment, silently repeating what he had just said. Then he shrugged and leaned in close to Kitman's ear.

"A house has many stories," he said. "To travel between them requires volition, exertion, and access to the stairway. Think. And remember also the doors."

He leaped silently to the floor, and walked out the door, feet going pat-pat-pat.

After a moment he stuck his head back in the room and said "Incidentally, history records that squirrel is also known as tree rat. Drop a line to Noel, would you?"

And he was gone.

"That sounded like permission to me," said Robin, after a moment.

"Next level?" said Kitman.

"Permission for what?" said I.

"Level 26!" said Robin.

"Oh, that," said Kitman.

"What's level 26?" said I.

"The existential dojo," said Robin. "For the purpose of acquiring facility with basic reality."

"Oh, that," said Kitman, and smacked himself in the head. "I forgot again!"

"Forgot what?" said Robin and I.

"The cake! I got as far as getting out the phone book, but I forgot to call the bakery!"

"Cake?" said Nash Mider and Robin.

"For his parents's anniversary," I said.

"Oh?" said Robin, looking thoughtful. "There's a coincidence. Almost synchronicity."

"Hah?" said Kitman.

"I could do you a personalized anniversary cake, no trouble."

"You could?" said Kitman.

"I won the Strawberry Bake-House competition with a triple layer wedding cake," said Robin, with a bit of preening. I wondered what he had used for eggs. "There's a full-size oven in the break room," he said, "so if you need a cake..."

"Robin," said Kitman with gratitude, "you're...ducky."

"Well, of course," said Robin. "I'll need a complete description, though."

"Hm? Vanilla with vanilla frosting, twelve inch diameter?"

"No, no — description of your parents, I mean."

"Well, I've got pictures in my wallet," said Kitman, fumbling at his back pocket, "but why?"

"No no no," said Robin. "As people. To do a proper job of designing an anniversary cake I have to understand the people it's for. When I said personalized I meant it."

Kitman is a genius, but sometimes observing his thought process is like watching someone trying to parallel park a Boeing 757. I decided to intervene.

"They take in strays," I said.

"There we go," said Robin. "That would indicate a big-hearted cake."

"You people are strange," said Nash Mider. "I like you."

"Hmm," said Kitman. "Well. This should be interesting. But we'd better do this level 26 thing first."

"Trancendence? That won't take long," said Robin.

"Oh, good," said Kitman.

 

•

 

After telling Noel what Kuan Kuo had said ("Yes, I suspected as much," said Noel, and declined to elaborate), Robin led us downstairs to, eventually, a pair of frosted glass doors, which he walked straight through — by which I mean he simply permeated through them.

Kitman and I looked at the doors, which had the legend EDUCATION etched into their surface.

"Don't tell me," said Kitman, "let me guess. There are no barriers to learning."

We took a breath, closed our eyes and and stepped forward through, well, nothing.

On the other side we opened our eyes and looked back. Behind us there were no doors, just an open archway.

There wasn't much of anything in front of us, either, except for some wooden cabinets in the far corners of the room and a 2:3 scale Harley-Davidson near the entrance.

"That would be Kuan Kuo's, I take it?" hazarded Kitman.

"If it's not a Harley, it is indeed nothingness," quoted Robin, raising his half-closed hands to indicate the grasping of either nothingness or handlebars. "Have a seat on the floor while I fetch some transcendors."

He pattered off to one of the wooden cabinets while I resolved not to ask any questions.

Kitman sat down to wait, and I joined him. He gave me a peculiar look.

"What?" said I.

"Strays?" he said...just as Robin returned and handed us two golden wire circlets, like haloes or old-style television antennas.

The one he gave me was far heavier than it looked and was humming slightly.

"Put them on your heads and lie down," said Robin. "And then just think 'free my mind'. They'll do the rest."

"Um," said Kitman, turning his newly received halo over and over in his hands, "would I be correct in my sudden and growing suspicion that attaining transcendence is a strictly mechanical operation?"

"Well, yes," said Robin. "It's not like enlightenment. I mean, you could do it through sheer meditation — Kuan Kuo did, but even Kuan Kuo needed six or seven kalpas. That's why he invented these: training wheels for the mind, for people who don't have twenty billion years to spare."

"Swell," said Kitman. "Prone or supine?" he asked, after donning his mystic headgear.

"Ducks don't do supine," I said. "The tails, you know."

"Yes, it's very inconvenient," said Robin. "Either will do, it's just to keep you from falling off."

I laid back. I put the halo on my head.

I thought.

 

Imagine for the moment that you were wearing 3-D glasses of the red and green lens variety.

Imagine also you were reading letters printed in alternating red and green.

If this were the case, you would, ideally, be seeing red letters with one eye and green letters with the other eye...

...but you would also, less obviously, be not-seeing green letters with one eye, and not-seeing red letters with the other eye.

In other words you would be simultaneously reading and not-reading the text. It would all be right there in front of you, plain as day — missing and totally invisible.

Take that experience, invert it completely, and you'll know what transcendence is like.

 

"Williams," said Kitman when he was again able to speak and/or I was again able to hear, "have you just had an apparently solid block of reality deconstructed into its component conceptions right in front of you? Because I have."

"Sounds about right," I said. "—Hey, I can see my house from here!"

It was true. Reality had broken apart while remaining together, and I was now looking at, on, in and through the only universe I had ever known, including my own house. I could see Kathleen on the couch in my living room, reading The Essential Iggy the Stoof, which I considered literature and certainly not a collection of reprinted comic books. And at the same time I was looking upon the universe that Kuan Kuo had made, in its entirety. And I remembered that elegance is the mark of the truth, that the correct equation is the one that is most beautiful, that 'inventor' and 'poet' are at bottom the same word, and I said, "Kitman, what rhymes with 'spackle'?"

After a long moment he said "I was wondering that myself. How about 'ramshackle'?"

"Yes," said Robin, "so be careful where you step."

"Dear me," said Kitman. "Um," he added, "I can't see my house from here..."

He was right. Although the universe was laid open before us like an exploded diagram with twenty-three additional dimensions, the Kitman house was no more to be found than it had been when we were standing in front of the Cape Hatteras that had replaced it.

"There's always more to see," said Robin. "You'll learn. Regardez!"

And, so saying —

— Robin metaphysically reoriented us. I found myself looking at an equally deconstructed view of the other side of the Borderline. (Part of it, at least. The parts that were beyond my comprehension were censored by the transcendor.) I was looking the Jade Pyramid. I was looking at myself inside it. I was looking at my own pancreas inside my body. I was looking at Nash Mider's house, which was not inside my pancreas but which suddenly drew my attention anyway.

"I'm still not seeing my house," said Kitman.

"Yes, you are," said Robin. "I see you seeing it."

"Oh," said Kitman. "Right. But where's my half of it?"

"That," said Robin, "is where things get...tricky."