2:22

by Odious

This is Chapter 18 of King of Spain, the serialized text art that is being channeled to me by a future version of myself called HeirMax98. It's a story about four strangers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who discover that they are trapped in some sort of simulation haunted by a strange entity they call, "The Curator".

In Chapter 18, Casper describes his journey back to The Roses, where he hopes to find the key to rescuing Nada and Eden, who are still trapped back on The Grid with the newly violent incarnation of Dean.

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Paid subscribers can read Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here , Chapter 3 here, Chapter 4 here, Chapter 5 here, Chapter 6 here , Chapter 7 here , Chapter 8 here, Chapter 9 here, Chapter 10 here , Chapter 11 here , Chapter 12, here , Chapter 13 here , Chapter 14 is here, Chapter 15 is here, Chapter 16 is here and Chapter 17 is here.

[Casper]

I am/He is 

I don’t know, except to keep moving

I’m going up and down, I’m running into and over walls, I’m reeling in the years.

I can hear music playing, somewhere far away

I’m crawling on the floor, I’m cutting down trees

I’m running as fast as I can and throwing the chunks of cut tree-wood in front of an oncoming train to stop it from hitting a man. 

He is a stranger. He looks familiar because he looks like everyone else I’ve seen since I left. He sits on a toilet that’s on the tracks, blasting out shit rapidfire and hard as rocks. He’s holding on to the seat to keep from being knocked off, eyes closed in concentration. I run past him, he doesn’t even see how close he was; now I’m sitting next to him on my own toilet shitting too partly in relief and partly as a celebration.

(But it’s not really me, I’m not there. The real me is the one who watches all of this, untouched, unfeeling)

A hallway filled with flowers. Real ones, in big bunches. No windows, no outside light, no one around. A fly buzzes too loud so do the fluorescents. I look for glitches, places where the energy gathers like wind.

Nada called it The Big Ship–it has many levels that float together as one. The action was like falling but we could control it. We had to recognize our bodies were only borrowed meat puppets.

“I’ve been remembering something I read or heard about parallel worlds,” she said. I cradled her head as her already red and glassy eyes rolled back. The smell of the cart hung over us like a curse.

“I can see it now, I can see it so clearly,” she said. With the exception of her horror movie eyes her face was peaceful. The deep furrow in her brow had smoothed out. It was a glimpse of how she must have looked when she was young and happy.

“All this time we were scared so we moved slow. But in order to get out sometimes we have to move quick. Like in any game. There are secret ways that open up if you press all the buttons at once and jump. It’s like falling but you catch yourself and you can move through walls and through levels–through radiations of time.  Not by going back and forth into a faker past or missing future but by transcending intensities. You feel me, homes?”

“No, I mean, ok, yes, Nada.”

“It’s Nadamaas2k! Though I’m realizing now it should be NadamaasY2k.”

“Sorry, yes, I know, please, don’t yell like that.”

“Y2K, the ultimate raw decimal delirium,” she said, still very loud. I was about to put my hand over her face but it was too late. Dean was already on his way over. But then I remembered, he’s always on his way over. We were only ever going to have these few minutes, before the unfolding of the next part.

“The computer and the computed, you gotta get with it homes. You’ve gotta learn how to find the seam and slip through it. Out on The Grid there is no time to pause or look back.”

“Wait.”

“We are starlings on the slipstream.”

“I just need to know that you’re going to be ok.”

“You’ll have to consult the blackbox. The one that records all our traumas and is always broken, always skipping. Listen. I’m talking directly to that super relaxed part of you that exists somewhere way past the task-achieving DJ. The part that hides from the rest of you. But I’ve found it, I’ve got it now. It’s the part that will be able to go in and get back out. I will be there to help you. It’s you, it really is. I don’t know why I didn’t see it right away. Things are changing. Quickly now. I already said it: Like a spool unwinding as the kite rises higher.”

She snorted and laughed at the same time.

“Fuuuuuck, man! All those words, all those words we kept saying, over and over. Who knows what we made materialize with their repetition. Dean made us do it. The incantation, the daily reading aloud of the notes.”

“Please, try and be quiet, if he hears you high as fuck or if the NPC’s come over all of this will get wiped out and we’ll have to start all over.”

“Tis’ok, the world was never created so it can’t be destroyed.”