XXIV.

Zot. Chubby pulls the plug. ‘Snap
out of it, Mr John C’. The Borovoe
download has long finished, the left
over files are sql-dumped on this

floppy drive’. In the % identity
that’s left on Titan, the hologram
flickers, and the happenings inside
the black hole take over. Time to

XXV.

Take over the Precision Tower. Medusa
is frightened and angry, she advances
towards Mount Olympus. The length of
her alignment with her stars is unknown.

She runs, as an individual, as a woman,
as a dramatic figure in an advancing
sketch. Now words are falling over into
the abyss. ‘I must confront Zeus – he’s’

XXVI.

‘the devious architect of this injustice.’
A thousand mobile phones appear in the air,
and swipe her to the left. She picks up
where she left off. ‘I must resume my %

identity, losing track of my ideals and
my memory is what chauvinist Zeus wants.
So the king of gods swoops down, ending
her ascent. Medusa shivers, ‘My rage, cold’

XXVI.

‘bloodless. I need strength, yet all I want
is to give up. My knees would rise to rival
pyramids.’ Zeus smiles. ‘My darling, little
woman. There is an ocean between us, and

what you need to do is pause and crouch,
cover your mind with yellow double duvets,
let your heart shit your compassion out,
we in Olympus frown on your little insurgency.’

XXVII.

‘I am most disappointed in you. You should
have died a witch at the hands of my half-breed
son, and be done with it. All this wondrous
name-calling, pow-wow spinning of poetic

narcissism is most unwelcome – you’re just a
voice in the maelstrom of twittering and face
booking. You’ve been swiped. Your % identity
is all spent, you have shed your beauty, hence’

XXVIII.

‘you are no longer part of this world, your
diagram has long been cancelled, because no
one is watching. You’ve been misled. I know
you think you have some sort of power in your

mind and some sort of agility in your legs,
and yet can you see that cloudless sky, that
Acropolis of power, it kisses heaven. You do
not belong there, you belong in the muck.’

XXIX.

‘Wake up, from your hateful fantasises, all
the bones of the slain surround you, the
authority lies in the sky and you may never
reach it, my power spreads idly below, your

blood may be hot, and coming out of your skin
now, but soon, with time, it will be dried
like painted hair on your perished skull.
The snakes in your heart will be fed with my’

XXX.

‘landmark thunderbolts… you see Medusita,
you are a gargantuan failture, you have built
a fortress in your heart to guard yourself
against the sweeping machismo of the world.

what a fool you have been, your place is
not in this room, or another room, your place
has been erased from the floppy drive, the
precision Tower is multi-threshering your’

XXXI.

‘time, your ideas, your shadow. I rob you now
of your shadow, because I can, because I am
mighty, because I am king of heaven, and because
you do not deserve a waking life. I condemn

you to a comatose existence at the bottom
of yonder garden, in a shallow grave, unheard,
speechless, robotic, wiped clean from the
board of wild-life, from the natural world.’

XXXII.

‘Your memory will be erased, the memory of you
shall also be spent, and in a thousand years,
while your sleepless haunting continues, I shall
review the best way forward, whether to let you

arise from your purple tomb and let you crawl
at my feet, or to unlock the wrath of all whirl fucking
winds, and spin you to crash onto a volcano, or a
half-decent man, who – I will ensure – will subdue you.’

XXXIII.

‘Wake me up, John C, from this nightmare.’ Chubby
is stunned to hear of The Nation’s authoritarian
wars against the spirit and the flesh. A gigantic
bomb has wiped out a section of the multi-verse.

John C is only half-human now, the wires have taken
over him. And while the computer wires take over
his mind, Chubby drinks tea, alone in her consciousness
that in the real world outside that Titan window

XXXIV.

The debate between Ahura Mazda and herself is still
raging, and the Griffinese ships are readying themselves
for yet another plunder and sack, and pirates of the
multiverse are roaming in search of treasure to hoard.

In the darkness, she weeps at the sight of the methane
boils bursting from the lake below, and she knows that
dying in the snow a long time ago may have been a good
choice. And yet, looking at the mountains she is somehow

XXXV.

reassured. In the black hole, the legend continues.
The multi-verse spins and seems to burn and spear the
reflections of atoms into a ghost of purpose. Will you
sit with me on the Acropolis of Corinth, looking past

the ridge, to the advancing waters, lapping now here,
now there – until the winged horse will fly once more,
and the dolphins may once more rescue guitar players?
Aphrodite, come back and continue wandering bright.