Botchi

Diary Entry 26

The situation has become intolerable. I lie awake at night wondering how to rid myself of the twin evils that are experienced daily. The outside pressure that has resurfaced is also exacerbating the very poisonous fabric that cancers all we have worked for. Staffing motivation is at a negative integer, and the delay in BB8 has presented a multitude of conundra that offer little in the way of conceptual relevance.
I have also fallen in love. The notion of desire is not without its pitfalls, and the failure of others to live up to a perfectly facile model of my making has resulted in a process of elimination. I am not entirely happy with my choice, but the world offers so very little. I know not why I scribe these words; the feelings of inevitability and swansong are foremost in my mind, but here I am communicating to no one save myself. The correction tank has offered little in the way of comfort refurbishment, and I see no exit to the perpetually spiralling flume that speeds my career of life. If you happen to read this after the fallout, please think of me as an officer who has failed to marshal the troops, or a miller who cannot operate the flour-grind correctly.

If only my love could know!!

Darkness followed the click of the switch. Kluzens was angrier than a spoon salesman in June. Botchi must have known his number was up, and had purposefully left his half-witted diuretic ramblings where he, Kluzens, was sure to find them. One line kept swirling round his septic mind as he descended the steps into the hidden wall constructed in the thirteenth century by paranoid monks fearful of doomsday (“Eight hundred years early” chortled Kluzens)

‘but here I am communicating to no one save myself.’ That was all he needed. A mind as limber as his, kept in shape with self-set puzzles without solution, could spot the message that betrayed the true motive of the entry. The syntactical clumsiness was obviously intentional. With such linguistic flourishes as Botchi was capable of, the meaning was clear. Of course he meant ‘but here I am communicating to No One. Save myself.’ No One had been Kluzens’ nickname at the orphanage. But a too late in the day profession of his love for Kluzens meant nothing now.
“If you can hear me Botchi, allow me this rebuttal – a man of my Babel-like intellect was more than aware of your feelings. That’s why killing you was all the more sweet. Your sentimentality surprises me though, for did you really care about a future for this spherical cemetery in the outer reaches of the Milky Way? For that is all this lump of rock is Botchi, a cemetery, and your bloated corpse is now lying in its crust.”

But the truth is that Kluzens was affected by that final entry more than he cared to admit. No matter how unwanted that love may have been, it was love nonetheless, and it could have proved useful if his plans came to naught.

At the bottom of the steps, he smelt a smell he hadn’t smelt this side of the Rhine: the limber smell of compacted granite. The monks were astute constructioneers: the triple weave granite could withstand up to seven doomsdays. Kluzens, now feeling mentally refreshed from the darkness, flicked the switch on his oil lamp again and marvelled at the 13th century recondite wonder. The main trunk of the structure consisted of a stairwell that spiralled downwards 400ft below surface, but in a triangular rather than conventional circular habit. The reason for this, according to Kluzens’ research, was religious rather than practical (although Botchi had always maintained that it was impossible to demarcate a distinct boundary between the two). Corridors splintered off from the main funnel and led to the dormitories which would have housed the Elders. The dorms were carved into the earth in an X shape: this configuration created a unique airflow condition that facilitated the asexual reproduction of oxygen. The main entrance to the subterranean monastery would not consume enough air and in any case, when doomsday was imminent it was to be sealed by a giant granite bung. The bung would have had to have been inserted externally and according to periodic records, 10 monks were nominated from each generation as sacrificial bung plungers. This glorious god-prescribed role would ensure the corporeal survival of one’s brothers. How the bung was to be inserted has never been ascertained and it took four tractors (suited to heavy tortion work) eight days to tow the bung to the Jutland Masonry Foundation.

At the bottom of the stairwell where Kluzens stood, the ‘engine room’ of the monastery was situated. The engine room was a huge spherical matrix that perfoliated the primary chute. Remnants of a sophisticated pulley system could be discerned by Kluzens’ retina absorption. The system had been devised to sustain a constant flow of information from the apex to the nadir of the structure. Kluzens had almost been touched when he had stumbled across the legend of Elder Beloc Belloc in a turgid, polysyllabic sophomore textbook. Belloc had designed the pulley system as he fervently believed that unmediated access to information formed the bedrock of any utopia. Furthermore, he was rightly concerned by the entropy that was caused by the ineffective dissemination of materials between fused but heterogeneous locales. His scriptural interpretation of The Byzantium Tracts stimulated a certainty in Belloc that careless seepage of information could imbue inanimate objects with conscious existence. Belloc did not relish the prospect of sharing a life underground with anthropomorphic granite. Therefore, the pulley system had to be erected upon the principles of Zragobbski Paromavovian Lineage. With unconstrained sado-masochistic euphoria, Kluzens withdrew his pocket scythe and prepared to cut the eight-hundred-year-old pulley ropes. The matrix would now be unleashed and free to inseminate the surrounding geo-physical environment with Knowledge. His knarled hands were aquiver, his breath heavy and his bowels aflutter.
“Halt, Kluzens, are you really prepared for the consequences?” An inexplicable feeling of sexual excitement surged through Kluzens as he heard that voice. He wondered whether it was the voice of God or the middle stages of madness, the madness he had been told of during the tunnelling expeditions undertaken whilst at the orphanage. The memory of the laborious forcement froze Kluzens even now. Picking at malnourished coals with nothing but his bare feet, strapped sideways into the group harness, Kluzens persevered with his toil. His makeshift tool-pack, cleverly disguised as a fortune flower aided and bettered him, singling him out for special praise from sub-commander Bot…

The cleanest of blows struck Kluzens on the left cheek of his face. The rusting shaft-axe pierced his oily skin, spewing sunshine plasma over the dirty blade. As he fell, Kluzens stammered somewhat, the words refusing to clarify themselves into a comprehensive linguistic. He felt the figure tighten his grip on the handle of the axe once more, and prepared himself for the most unimaginable of pains. The vagabond completed three complete revolutions before extracting the weapon, by now carrying two-hundredweight of lacerated flesh and assorted facial tissue. Strangely silent, Kluzens offered a demanding gesture towards his assailant, to which only a laugh followed.

‘’To halt the flow of information is a crime not only against yourself, but it offers a barrier to the improvement and development of the societal paradigm as we know it. Your anarchist tendencies have been well documented in our files since the orphanage days; the use of tool-kit a blatant disregard of the drone-like acceptance of a predetermined ethic. It is your failure to apply and comply with these conducts that will eventually prove your ultimate ruin, and how I will party when this eventuality occurs.

Your reticence does you no favour Kluzens. Hear the market place by night; bereft of custom, it offers an ineffectual representation of our nation’s nocturnal charms. Is it purely biological fancy that drives us to trade by day? My metabolism shifts yet I have an equal desire to purchase onions under the cover of solaris or star. Your descent cannot disguise this. But you: do you have no desire for organic root vegetables at this point in time?”
Kluzens could offer no retort, but instead was mindfully thankful that the wound had rid him of his gangrenous blemish. The finch, redundant, flew off into the darkness, out of reach of the familiar stranger’s luminoid.

“Come hither Kluzens,” the mysterious figure gestured with his hand for Kluzens to approach, (a somewhat redundant exercise in the dark). Kluzens acquiesced with his demand and walked nervously towards the voice. The dark figure put his arms firmly around Kluzens shoulder then whispered in to his ear,
“Let us discuss a small matter. I have word from Pertunia.”

Next chapter…