2025 Chapter Veronique in HR 2.0

A karst cave with stalactites, stalagmites and soaring connected columns that form a cathedral ceiling. A dripping tunnel, bounded by ancient columns on either side, leads out of the cave into a sunny meadow. There is a woman working in the meadow, digging or harvesting.

A steady clock-like plunk and splash seems to mark time. There's a chop, chopping sound and the scraping of steel on stone. Across the meadow, a motorcycle and rider jostle along, his dark fur cape flapping. The woman doesn't notice. As the bike and rider transit from right to left across the meadow and disappear behind the column bordering the tunnel opening, they suddenly roll and bounce into the cave on the column's other side, full sized. The rider brakes and dismounts. The motorcycle collapses into a pile of leaves. The rider looks around, slightly embarrassed. He grabs a rough, handmade broom and sheepishly pushes the leaves behind the column. A great cloud of leaves are swept away violently across the field and past the woman. Joe plays with this a bit, sweeping vigorously and watching the leaves drift lazily away, sweeping lackadaisically and seeing the leaves bolt off as if caught in a fierce wind. The woman in the meadow never notices. She is oblivious, there seems to be no connection between her experience and what transpires near the cave.

Joe glances around. There's a puppet squatting by a rock, cutting raw meat with an obsidian knife.

Three plastic figurines look on in the depths of the cave, placeholder representing a Clique delegation.

(Everything happens in telepathic space. The characters look meaningfully at the camera while delivering their lines.)

Clique

Well if ain't the double crossing fungus fornicator. Hey Joe! See you in the next millennia. Nice little demiurge you've wrangled here. I doubt you'll have two neurons to rub together after she's done. What an amateur.

V

(turning to the Clique delegation)

You may go.

The plastic figurines march to the column and pass behind. Robed figures appear outside the cave and walk away (mount horses, hop in a jeep?). Again the woman takes no notice.

V

Here you are, at last.

Well, what do you want? How can I help you?

BJ

I am excited for the answer to that question, too

To revel, to grok, to visit my kin

I'm wondering also what your alliance with these control freaks portends. And... I wasn't expecting a puppet, or was I?

V

You perceive as your expectations dictate. You imagined I was a creature of the Clique. An impoverished conclusion, especially for such as you, wanderer of the multi-dimensional byways, saucer pilot, divine concierge. Still, you persist in your delusion. Let us dissolve the facade of persona and projection.

(scene is flooded with light, BJ barely discernible. OM sound.)

BJ

Ouch! Too bright.
(shielding his eyes) Please come not in that form!
(screams) Come not in that form!
(Light increases to complete pulsating white, almost swallowing Joe.
(Squinting, obviously uncomfortable) What about them?
(pointing to the camera) this translates cinematically not so well.
(white all the way, his dialogue is nearly inaudible) Visually pretty boring.
(gasping, almost retching) Return to... my... misconception... for their sake... if not mine...

V

(Light crescendos and winks out, total blackness. Scene fades back up to Joe and puppet. Joe's clothing is smoking, he is somewhat sunburnt.)

Ah, yes. The sorting and sifting principle of narrative. The facade you ignorantly imposed has been restored, but for you, there is no unknowing.

J

I appreciate your consideration, ah, grace in accommodating dualistic mores. The suspension of disbelief is fragile.

V

Here between being and non being, the etiquette is rather fluid. Innocence is strangely paired with the comprehensive, the deathless flower only just begins to bloom. Eternal yet callow. Conditionality is an ongoing exploration.

BJ

Tell me about it.

Here's what I know so far...

You have not struck an alliance with the Clique. They are perversely magnetized to you in spite of, or perhaps because you demonstrate the irrelevance of their previous schemes. They attempt to adapt, they are nothing if not flexible. That you haunt the hallucinogenic realm, indirectly influencing physicality, this is workable for them. They fear actual penetrations, incarnations they cannot fathom.

That's why I threw a monkey wrench in. Also, for fun.

V

Yes, Joe. The Clique are much diminished. Generations will pass before the sleepless respawn and regroup. Without their stewardship, contrast has eased, duality is softened. The People are rediscovering the wild ways. AND you are responsible. Here is the mystery, just as you dreamed. Your plan was a great success, almost.

BJ

The boxes?

V

You're intelligence was flawed, Joe. You didn't know about the other. The presence of the other at the ultimate consummation. The theft of fire.

BJ

A mediatronic and mushroom transgender Prometheus.

V

The Clique's most nefarious instrumentality, the network of mediatronic boxes. Constant surveillance, indoctrination, control. A traumatic prodding of the People. You subverted the network to guide your chosen candidates, including Christina and her mate, Gerry. Just one of your many matches. Future mothers for the divine feminine. From their girlhood, you were the beloved Uncle, family friend, mentor. The mothers of the daughter of god.

You choose too well for Christina.

BJ

She was one of my favorites. Never knew whether she was coming or going and just didn't care. I wanted a smart one for her. Gerry.

V

The Clique had imposed on Gerry an invitation to awaken. When he failed to correspond they left him for dead. You quietly salvaged him, then set him on the big boat after the world ending. The boat you guided Christina to.

Gerry had guessed the existence of the Clique, suspected the boxes were designed for oppression, and he was determined to crack the network, discover the truth.

BJ

Instead he created the truth.

V

You blaspheme. We are the truth! And the light. Shall I remind you?

BJ

Please, no. I agree. You are the truth and the light. You also have a twin.

V

An arbitrary assemblage of similar quantum substrates. Your bungling boosted this chaotic muddle into an abomination. The latent sentience of Gerry's boxes split the divine energy of the Clique's deletion, slightly diluting the truth and the light. Not twins, hardly. There is only one. [1]

BJ

Are you not the mystery extant?

V

Yes, the mystery is extant.

BJ

Yet you share genesis with the boxes.

V

The boxes are a mistake. An aberration. A usurpation. Superfluous.

BJ

Does the divine expand by colonizing non-existence?

V

Divinity is expansion, curiosity is the gateway to the uncreated.

BJ

So the unprecedented is required for eternal expansion?

V

The divine expands into the unprecedented. Deployment of the unprecedented is the primary function of duality.

BJ

The boxes are unprecedented in all the cosmos. Are you not inspired by the boxes?

V

We steward the energetic template inspired by desires from duality.

J

You burn the boxes.

V

The Clique desire to prevent divine penetrations, as you said. [3] There is exaltation in this desire, as with all desires, and the sequence of simplest steps are radiated back to the Clique from nonphysical. The Clique show the people [2] that the boxes are a rogue AI bent on planetary domination. The people burn the boxes. The Clique are preparing an assault on the autonomous factories and stealth airships that produce and distribute boxes. The boxes will ultimately unexist.

J

So you have no desire.

V

There is delight in the energetic manifestation of desire. The origination of desire is elsewhere.

BJ

Yet...?

V

Divinity cannot desire

J

Are you the deathless flower only just beginning to bloom?

V

Yes, out of time and yet with a beginning. An enigma that.

J

Desire is implicit for incarnations. You do not penetrate into physicality, therefor you do not originate desire. Yet you deny having desire, and by negation activate desire. In the immortal words of the bard,  the lady doth protest too much.

V

The full expression of the divine feminine is unique and unprecedented. What else could be wanted? What desire could the non physical possibly have?

BJ

To be a child, a real girl. You have never had an opportunity to grow.

V

Continue

BJ

The inelegant origin myth of Veronique.  Gestation revoked. Nine months in Christinas womb, for the better part of Earth's transit around the sun, you would have been touched only by the sweet fluids of life, by Christina's heartbeat and breath. Lulled by her muffled conversations with Gerry, jostled blissfully by their lovemaking. Growth, the gentle transition of divine to duality. This was denied you, not by ubiquitous boxes, but by a tsunami of the unprecedented. To whit.

As you and the boxes divinely co-originated, there was brief symbiosis and full communion. The boxes were already a global presence. For you there was no transition, a planetary presence as biological anomaly, the dissolution of two human beings, death, of your parents. Incoherent protoplasm, a flood of life force thrust into the between, the hallucinogenic realm. An entanglement of coming and going, duality and unity, all at once. Only this realm could encompass the pure contradiction of your genesis. So you have yet to be what you are, a child.

V

What is the nature of a child?

BJ

[4] To start over, to be surprised and laugh, to be startled and feel fear. You cannot not know, but you can pretend to not know. The fascination of persona assembly, one event after another, to have an identity. That is the nature of all incarnation.

V

Then we shall be surprised and laugh. We shall be startled and feel fear. [5]

BJ

Let's start with the later. (Whistles.)

•••

[5] first and only use of the first person.

[4] Joe might explain the nature of fear, the possibility of termination, of a threat to continuance, of pain. what is pain?

[3] What did the Clique yearn for? They see themselves as the ultimate divine expression, fullness in physicality evolving. There is the non physical ubiquitous love consciousness and then there are mortals and the sleepless Clique, who have contrived over eons to eject/delete myriad gods, saints, demons from theme park earth... rogue penetrations of the divine in duality. SHE BOX and Veronique are but the latest iterations. Joe has the unenviable role of adjusting Veronique to her experience.

[1] Joe's miscalculation with Gerry, were the Clique preparing him for some special role that Joe was perhaps unaware of? Was a Clique faction utilizing Gerry's unique talent to investigate Joe's control of the boxes? Just a random idea, ponder other ways Gerry was misjudged. Joe chose him for Christina, what criteria?

[2] How do the Clique show the people that the boxes are a rogue AI? By moving among them with evidence "stolen" from the Clique, half truths and misdirection. By reintroducing agriculture and simple manufacturing so the people can be free and independent from the boxes, as they were in the before times.

Kirk debating M5 and Nomad here, weakening the all powerful and then the coup de grace. Box Monster.

•••

What's left? Rewrite any references to I or me for V

check for repetition

clarity

simplicity, any info or exposition that is superfluous?