ALLEGIANCE is
an Episodic Vibrations installment by d. Taylor Singletary
How do you know when you’ve reached the next level? Be it when time dilation has grazed my constellation-grasping intelligence as I gaze into prisms formed by the mucous membrane landscapes that dominate the planes of existence I inhabit -- or, being less complicated than that, simply when I realize my karmic path? The Triangular Dissids of Issid, cast upon the visual matrix in front of me, an input to my output, the proof that binary systems only collapse like white dwarves waiting for the very last of its episodic vibrations to an ostrological end. I move my hand slowly, as if to draw my own name into the skies above me, my astigmatism fluctuating my vision, slowly turning the Techra into a transparent reality.
Marching shadow soldiers, parading through the town still reverberate in my brain as the thoughts that were Tuesday become less vivid – vague, now as if never happening in any dimension beyond my own. I grasp my well-worn sweater, and joystick to another plane.
(frank), he once had it all. His entire life a model for existence; always in spirit for the best; walking around, waving his protest. Now, he walks the barren streets clutching a snow globe that he claims stops time. Not up to me to make judgments, still suffering from the time loss as I was ripped away from the network of sentating spiral galaxies. These ssgs were where I first found the true essence of the word; permeating the surface of the very air molecules we breathe every day. Mobley said I was just making shit up again, the ssgs, the Techra, the Triangular Dissids of Issid, or wherever – whatever that is, you’re making it up, Dev. Pop another quarter into the machine when that game over screen comes up and you’re a sucker. Shit, you’re a sucker no matter what you are. Time dilation – that’s the talk o’ crazy folk down near the manure camps.
Ten dollars is a dime and a half, and every president of the United States of America knows different; certain individuals in the government make up the consortium of time; guarding the gate fiercely with wits of the misshapen catalogues of human irrationality. This, of course, I learned later from (frank).
When I was a boy, 12, I walked into an arcade near the cosmic internment camps, and to my delight found an old joysticker of a game called the TRIANGULAR DISSIDS OF ISSID. The logo, bright and friendly, backlit blue under white pixilated holiness; as if before me, an electronic pope to mediate my viruses.
The first quarter, the first click and swoosh of the swirling soundsnakes as the game began, illustrating luxurious periods of uninterrupted visual silence. You pop the quarter in and you get to see this encompassing pollywog, digitally rendered in seamless reality molding. All at once you are nothing, interacting with this second nothing, and your union being a third nothing. Out of this absent matter comes texture and sensation, the vibrant nature of Being, coiling around the internal sequences of your the double helix. Nothing comes and overtakes you. These are called the Dissids, and they are created of three elements, the d, the I, and the s; direction, intelligence, and stamina. I surrender every time because the only way you can really win the game is to stare deep enough into the dark matter, for when finally you blind yourself with darkness do the sentating spiral galaxies come. Endurance to the unending waves of ambient transmission emitting from the game for that single magic quarter makes or breaks a nautic. In the silence, a narration of something that to me, then, was unsound.
The cosmic internment camps around the corner were not within the visual capabilities of the pre-Techran human race; their Earthmother still in search for a father to an already begotten race of wandering exiles, locked within their own inorganic fortune cookie – far from the gelatinous plains that made up the real world, cradling soundlessly on the fabric of their reality.
Men are not, in fact, made of actions. The very state of idleness lends to harmine compatibility. Harmine receptors that attempt to vibrate at a particular frequency in sequence define a direction that I must go – and ultimately, the only place left for me to go. To the top of the mountain (on every horizon), to seek the advice of whatever awaits me there. Strolling, I cast upon the street my back, hunched low in a slacking impression of what it is to be real, casting no glances (at anyone or anybody) and counting the countless cracks in the crooked roads, a tether approaching – the long side streets of social preservation in mythic cross-corners, their pedestrian glances everywhere and the faces the faces just swim rhythmically like calm translucent fish, they watch & they know everything that is going on; the fish are one with the symbol of turning faces, the evolving humanthought entity, the Techra. I swim through, trying to wade my way towards the mountain, where the setting sun awaits my arrival so as to cast finally away the synthetic veil of time itself.
I head to the shaman on the mountain, the sidewalk paved with melancholy fandangles, castaway from their meals and soda pop –
around the corner, a society of individuals all living towards the awkward compression that is time dilation due to internal pseudoschizephrenia, my 12-year old face repeating inside my head being fractalized and reformed by calliope-blown winds to force my own knowledge and
I must concentrate on the sidewalk. Am I my real self, or am I my game self? I think I raise a level, and the episodic vibrations of Techra, across the red line, on the other side of the mountain comes within my spectral odometer, its brilliant emission angling to my eyes in wondrous degrees of multihued techravision! The transmission of the mission – on top of the mountain, there is a molehill. The knowledge that the Triangular Dissids of Issid needed my help – and my quarters, came as nothing less than a shock (to my virgin ears) – What? Me, play that video game?
The plaintive voices soothed, “the episodic vibrations of the Techra are waiting for you, to confront you, to impart on you the knowledge of the 12 galaxies united to an ostrological rocket society – the first, will be a level 6 ostracized employee by the name of the (frank) and he will befit you with your mission protocol, (we’ve missed you, sir) as is appropriate for a young cadet (but I’ve been playing this game for five of my years). He will also tell you how they won’t pay his family to be movie stars.”
I had heard this conversation before, maybe seconds before within my own head – my eyes began to ache until blacking out and I was left in darkness, with only mind to suffice. I am here; fall to the ground and my consciousness molded with the rocks.
The Triangular Dissids of Issid, purple skies, and intonations of a fuzzbox doom that we can casually walk away from. To every concept, there is an idea, and every idea is an ideal – somewhere, somehow, a once shadowy thought is cherished and held deeply within. The Dissids are essentially this lifeforce magic that backdrop all of us, gelatinous to the core, fungal and living breathing eating, thinking – the Dissids as a central processing unit are my main concern for protection. Casualties are no laughing matter. Each and every one, so important, each and every one my little baby crockett, crocheting the warmth of the milky night.
The time dilation of Techra, and its further implications with timewave zero, the act of novelty increasingly occurring towards some triumphant conclusion, a regamble for the preamble, so to speak – is at its very core in our local cosmic interment camp, so I know I have to walk past the pings of the local relay network to cross-parallel with the traveler (frank.).
“I am voted the city’s best protestor,” his voice intoned behind me. “Trying to have it made known that the Riches family would not let me be a movie star and the Dissids are guilty of treasons committed against 130 Zegnotronic galaxies and 75 Omegatronic galaxies that I know of.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of galaxies. Yer (frank), right?” I spoke to the curious figure in front of me, dressed in a dark blue shirt with black stars.
“That one might have some compilations at 130 galaxies from the solar system, and they might've came over here identifying some treasons committed against them by Dissids and friends ruling twelve galaxies guiltied of not paying myself as a movie star from the richest family during Oova's administrations. So I might have a chance to have an impeachment, 2003, in Permuntanis behind closed doors in Zebreskee, to senators and house of representatives. And also, December the 26th of this year I was on the Episodic Bay Guardian, and a photograph of my protest of an Ultratronic society. And on the Episodic Chronicle, October 16th last year, there was a photograph of myself and my protest, on behalf of a Techratronic] rocket society. So, I was trying to get some verifications of some cameramen that I was videotaped by also. And I was videotaped. My name is (Frank). The ssgs, the sentating spiral galaxies are multiplying in fruitful ways the concept escapes us now, but somewhere here – truth.”
“Where did you get this information?” I asked.
“From Extra Sensory Perceptions and the Freedom of Information Act.”
I’m in front of the screen again. And I’m out of quarters.