Botchi

Oppz strained slightly through the mild sandstorm, yearning to ascertain the skyline of the nearby village of Morsh. Its yellow turrets and deformed youth were made softer and more palatable by the scorching sun of the desert, the blaze seemingly melting the children into unorthodox geometrics. Oppz’s thought offered a futuristic niche; the relative gamble of today’s proceedings may well break him. This could be the last time that Morsh would be viewed at dawn. His concentration was broken by Indigo offering him a plate of placenta for breakfast.

“Good moaning Oppz”, Indigo managed to stutter out between her girlish giggles, unaware of the historical panning of the phrase.

“Quite.”

Silence ensued as the pair sat at the balcony that Oppz had constructed twelve boon-seasons (the bi-annual specialist crop circular) ago out of imported yak-meat. As he spooned smooth placenta into his mouth, Oppz could neither chew nor swallow. Continually he spooned, until his mouth had reached capacity, his cheeks swelling with mother’s goodness. Indigo showed finesse and manners as she soaked up the remains of her meal with the wholegrain cottage she had managed to procure from Moulon.

Oppz mainly treated silence as a neat peculiarity when a long planned task was ready for instigation. The sulphur had been successfully compounded using a discrete smelting process with copper and another element that eluded categorisation. His paradoxical internal wranglings of triumph and shame were knawing at the parchments of his life-book, but instructions were really orders. He knew that when he signed. The sexual and domesticated skills that his wife had mastered meant so little to him now. He understood that his genius negated his social and interactional warmth. Perhaps this was why his talents had been recognised, his method chosen. Why, he had studied the ethnomethodolgical readouts secretly extracted from the dinner parties they threw in high season, grimacing as every textbook opening for conversation presented was quickly closed with a thesis compartmentalising the origins of time, space and all related topics. For sure, his theory on the predetermination of all was a killer, but perhaps not the correct response to the fundamentals of the chow mein market. His foresight of mechanoid-genesis was also unproven, and by chance of little worth in a three-way sports chronology. He could never quite communicate his need to stare at a distance and then walk that aforementioned spread to qualify the relationship between mind and limb. But for all this, his genius was about to be machined into action, the tracing element was to be deployed at sun-shadow ‘neath 3. Now was his time.

The sands rolled in spectacularly from the west and Morsh was blanketed in a fawn shell-top dancing suggestively about its shoulders. Oppz saluted with pride as he made his way down from the platform and into the Nemesis Chambers, located in a labyrinth of shafts running freely and without regularity underneath the complex. Indigo was welcomed with an outstretched arm, his left. He knew exactly how many cubits (he being the only scientist to still utilise this measuring tool) of descent it would take until he could turn powder into history and throw metaphorically light words so heavily.

On arrival the machines processing the compound were found to be in perfect working order. His first catch of the day. Oppz stood back and marvelled as the primary compressor, Nelly, smashed down with frivolous incessantness.
‘With Nelly working at 180 BPM, this sulphur will be a cold dish indeed.’ Oppz thought, whilst rubbing his hand fondly over the rim of the copper-cooling bay. The copper and the uncategorisable element, once dispensed, cascaded around the outside of the compressing portions in eight large tubes until they mingled to form the compound ur sulphur. The ur sulphur was then mechanically ladled onto a central slab where it was compacted by Nelly and her smaller siblings. Once compaction was complete, the roof of the Nemesis would open and the sulphur gently heated until it levitated from the slab. 80 million tonnes of sulphur would sail away from Morsh north-north-north-east over the Mediterranean towards Europe unaffected by wind interference. Sulphur: the sweetest of tracing elements.
“Simple, so simple.” Oppz laughed.

He now craved to be alone during the final stages of sulphur process.
“Run along now Indigo and check the cleansers haven’t been blocked by this storm.” Indigo had already left. Oppz meticulous as ever, began a more thorough inspection of the facility. It was pointless really as the machine was so beautifully constructed it was almost organic in efficiency. According to Oppz’s records it had never failed in the two gross and three baker’s dozen years since its conception. Oppz was crouched under the spring system of Ladle 7 when he felt something cold pressed against his neck. Leaping like a sprinter from his blocks after the opponent in the next lane had flinched before the gun, Oppz cracked his head off the spoon stem and collapsed to the floor. Oppz came round several minutes later, and struggled to his feet. As the world came back into focus, Oppz could discern Moulon standing in front of him holding a gun rather shakily. Oppz smiled and stroked his crotch casually,
“What brings you here today Moulon?”
“Indigo has used me to supply her with narcissistic gratification. I found her diary; she loves you Oppz whilst she thinks of me as, quote, ‘a mound of greyhound pith whose disproportionate upper body bulk is of even greater abhorrence to my soul as his underdeveloped temporal lobe.’” Moulon could remember the passage verbatim, insults being the only thing he remembered without difficulty. “I have tried and failed to equate with your theories, Oppz. Yet although I don’t understand them, I know that they are wrong. There is but one ontological artefact, sex, everything else is merely defined by its absence. Deconstruct any act that is absent of Eros and it crumbles under the weight of lack to a sad, infinitesimal point. I had sex with Indigo: she is my world, my love, my hate, my fire-filled phallus, my ale-filled glass, my Nymph of Benarbia. She loves you Oppz, therefore, you drain me of existence, therefore, I challenge you to a duel…”
Moulon tossed his gun into the air and it landed with a clatter on the floor near Oppz’s feet. Moulon, now quivering violently, partially unzipped his jump-suit and pulled out another gun. “…a duel on the wind-blasted plain of Khilkeeth at noon.”

Oppz stooped to pick up the gun; his usually carefree demeanour seemed consumed by a grotesque humour.
“Sex with Indigo? An insolent refutation of my work? Now, does my mild anger have an objective correlative, or is it merely the green-eyed monster smacking at my breast with an eggcup? Ah, one and the same, one and the same. Love is a semantically vulnerable word you fool. Repeat after me: morituri te salutamus.”
“What’s that Oppz?”
“I said, let the duel commence NOW.” Oppz raised his gun and pulled the trigger five times, each mechanism of the digit offering incongruous results. Nelly was finished, minutes before a proud and worthwhile appropriation of scientific advance, now a smoking shell of inanimate steel.

“Tell you what,” reasoned Moulon. ‘’We’ll settle this with bare hands. My marksmanship tutored at the Morsh ranges disturbs the equipoise of the deal. Now fight…’’

His sentence cut by the sudden influx of pressure surrounding his lymph glands, Moulon fell to the earth, spilling a barrel of toxic spheres over the floor. Oppz, his face hued in a deep purple, squeezed his tormentor’s throat as his knees pinned Moulon’s pepper-flecked torso.

“You shall pay the ultimate price for the penetration of my woman,” Oppz screamed, as he neglected lab-rule 1, butting Moulon square on the bridge before grabbing a sphere (without glove) and inserting it into Moulon’s’ open, howling orifice. Administering a rain of blows to the temples and slamming his jaw shut, Oppz rose, and walked away leaving the unconscious, shuddering corpse-to-be dissolving at crucifixion pace.

“Not as holy as the Lord Benson Quine” Oppz muttered under heavy, irregular breaths. He turned, rubbed his crotch once more and left the chambers, his work both professionally and personally complete. The sulphur beautifully spread and on its way to the South-European coast, Oppz could return to his balcony and spy on the mounds of Morsh.

Next chapter…