B: a third chapter of life through etc.

Life through a laidback lens-Chap 3-by D G Lennon-

Syllables did a thing syllables do: they reproduced asexually by
eliciting. They
included: good shit mmm yeah uh fuck yeah should be an' all got it from
et cet er a.
The narcotic life forms debatably inhabited their skulls and listened
stupefied and
mystified to head music. Sage and wise bright young things, they shared
a unified
and brilliant philosophy. Their object-centric meaninglessness of life
was this: fuck
it, it's all a load of bloody bollocks isn't it; I mean, at the end of
the day, like so what.
Eloquently stated, a beacon of intellect. Smoke curled, swirled and
wisped despite the
latter not being a verb. Stains and pockmarks proudly glorified the
mucky sofa. Stuff
of this ilk continued boringly for some time with occasionally
oratories of oppression
from disaffected braindeads, who would stand and stomp about
theatrically for their
three-minute rails against the ill-defined and seemingly
all-encompassing "system".
The speakers would remind themselves of the sacred doctrine of it all
being a load of
bloody bollocks, sit down, smoke more and shut up. Nihilism presided
over the
proceedings.
*
It's about now that you're wondering what there was before there was a
universe.
Nothing. There were no things. Things including objects, people,
abstract concepts,
dimensions, time and the laws of physics; nothing included none of
them. In the
beginning wasn't the word and the word wasn't with God and the word
wasn't God. I
can't imagine absolute nothing. You wouldn't need to-you wouldn't be
there and
there would be no imagining. Quantum uncertainty is wrong. What?
Later.
Anyway, nothing existed, but it had no dimensions and no time, so it
didn't at any
time exist in any place. Nothing can exist if it doesn't exist in any
dimensions and if
it doesn't exist for any length of time. So time starts and dimensions
unfold, change
of state change of energy inter-convertible with matter comes into
being. Big bang
except that it's the absolutely tiny and doesn't bang because for sound
to travel
through space (of which there is none apart from this fledgling
universe and
everything else is dimensionless and non-existent) it needs a
particulate medium to
travel through. Hang on, you said there were no laws of physics and now
your saying
that it has to obey the laws of physics. No, it isn't obeying the laws
of physics
because there aren't any. You see, nothing that has no dimensions and
no time has
never existed and it did all of it's never existing nowhere. That
doesn't even obey the
rules of grammar. Once the particles and wavicles come into existence
(because even
"empty" space is made up of stuff. Otherwise there would be nothing to
define the
dimensions and the space) they interact with each other. How they
interact defines
the rules at first, not the rules defining the interaction. You what?
Well look, say two
billiard balls come into existence from nothing and they hit each
other. With you so
far. Suppose they bounce off. That then is the way that those types of
objects
interact. That interaction has just set that particular law of physics
to what it is.
Another object of the same type comes into existence, it bounces off
identical objects.
Another billiard ball but of a slightly different type comes into
existence: it might go
straight through the other billiard balls. That sets the laws governing
this new type of
objects interaction. The laws of physics are set by how these things
interact, they
don't exist before time, space and matter exist- because nothing does.
Life can be
confusing sometimes. If at not time can life be confusing, you will
never experience
confused. He's old and not much life ahead of him, shall we throw him
into the mix?
If you like.
*
A torpid pervert flitted erect past the lonely old man as he fled
defiant the treble ex
live girls hardcore black and purple shop facade. The collar of his
seventies time-
warp sheepskin jacket was up to fringe the lower part of his face, yet
his face said:
I'm doing nothing wrong. A sheepskin jacket on a warm, sunny day. His
dark-brown
hair was greasy and thinning in a classic male pattern baldness: crown
first. His
moustache and horn-rimmed tortoise-shell glasses made him a living
caricature of
studied sleaziness and he carried in his fat, brown-leather gloved hand
a sheath of pig-
tailed Scandinavian oral. The older man's face was a cragged, thinly
coated skull
with blackening and wrinkles at the sockets of the vacated eyes.
Filamentous, scarlet
capillaries snaking and branching to the irises, irises that shrunk
back from the rims of
the eyelids. Fields of white opened round the eyelids that wrinkled and
shrunk,
retreating in defeat from closure like the life from his aging body.
The few white
clouds nodular, fluffy and stylised adorned the uniform royal blue of
the early evening
sky behind the man as he trudged up stood stopped still on his way up
the sloping
street. He was catching breath without resort to gasping because he had
not need of
haste. Watching the world go by, he thought of a world gone by. The
lids of his eyes
unfolded vertically narrowing the fields of the white and arching the
thickest parts of
his white haired eyebrows downwards, shadowing into recesses the upper
eyelids and
further hollowing the cavernous orbits- an expression of abject
mourning, yearning
for times that were now no more. Traffic passed shussing to crescendo's
like
breaking waves. The clouds and early twilight darkening blue to pale
then pinking to
orange imbued all about with the fakery of a cereal-box diorama: the
stern, pale-grey
concrete tower blocks, two-dimensional middle-distance props, might
well have cast
shadows on the backdrop sky whilst the street was all in-plane and the
old man, a
shape coloured-in within an obvious black outline. A brief look at the
ground and
then onward he trudged; the happiness of no future to worry and fret
over and a gentle
smile slowly crept across his lips. The effort of it all and he beauty
of no urgency to
hurry for, he walked with the rhythm of the road and on and on he went.
A rural
brutal thug he was, a tearaway torn away to the urban inhumanity of
city life. They'd
despaired and blamed the kids and blamed the parents and smacked the
kids and
censured the parents with an air of none of my business. He was the
product of a
broken home that should have broken long before the damage was done. A
broken
life, damaged goods, he was a no-hope no-good young dumb punk shoved
somewhere
where his wild wayward ways had no space. Alien in an urban world, his
peers feared
and jeered him in equal measure. The round hole, the square peg and
the
lumphammer of necessity, he was banged into place with hard knocks at
school and
would smack back in equal measure. The outcast stranger without a name
he would
do whatever he could to impress and latterly to shock. "Whatever", he
knew from
experience, had always to go that bit beyond with whatever it was. "It"
was, he knew
from experience, violence that shocked; it had shocked him- and
enthralled in equal
measure as his newly settled gypsy ma took another backhand slapping
from her shit-
for-brains espoused and as a mouthful of oaths tumbled over her hand
held up in
defensive, tearful surrender. Bygone days then, further bygone now. A
messed head
an sadistic bent, he picked on and picked-off the weak and aged the
feeble and fuck-
witted; twatting then senseless with objects and taking the bread from
their mouths.
He'd learnt from his country days of isolation, learnt from his dad or
whichever
"uncle" was screwing and hitting his ma. Make them apologise. The hands
protecting
the head, curled up into a ball on the floor with kicks still raining
in- it were your fault
weren't it. Say "Sorry" and I'll stop. I brought this on myself- I
shouldn't have
looked in his direction. I should have known that. He'd have done it
even without a
pretext. To the victim, make them think the beating is through their
own stupidity. it
violates more than violence ever can. The pensioner's pension book
piggy-in-the-
middle between him and his fellow outcast reprobates. It felt so alive
and now it has
died as he slowly mechanically puts one foot in front of the foot that
was in front on
the slow and mechanical march to the council flat and dull, lethargic
existence.

As he neared the brow of the hill to a maze of red-brick terrace,
slate-roofed houses
lining the fresh, black tarred sidewalks with light-grey curbstones
that triangulated
into traffic calming chicanes sporadically along the road length, a
souped-up saloon
car slowed-up alongside him and parodied his faltering amble. Extra
lights like round
frog eyes had been stuck on inappropriately to front end partially
eclipsing the
radiator grill and a tail fin predatory and sharklike adorned the hatch
at the back as
chrome-spoked wheels turned with a slowness not in their nature.
Speaker cones
pulsed forth hammering out a banging bass beat. The four lads leered
across at old
Granddad laughing and smiling the smiles of gleeful devils. Ignore
them. They
shouted stuff and the stuff was obscene; they mocked and they provoked.
The old
man walked on without looking as the rage welled up inside of him. I'm
old, I
haven't long left an d what there is can't I simply be left to enjoy
it. He thought back
to what he must have been like and thought of the slashing he'd have
given these
upstarts were he still young and had he still Excalibur- his trusty
flick-knife. An old
hand, age and experience must count for something. He'd had meat on his
bones,
these youngsters had no meat on them; thin as rakes. Mard was what he
would have
called them. In his prime he'd have called them mard. The jeering and
goading
continued. They were skin and bones, they'd not be a patch on him when
he were a
ted. He ought to say something to them. Someone had to be the hero and
stand up for
aged dignity.
'Oi you you little buggers what you trying to do? Go on get out of it.
There now I've
told you. Clear off I say!'
And then it all went quiet. They looked at each other form one to the
next studying
the eyes of each. Righteous indignation came over them all. It
constituted a
challenge. The car stopped and the old man hurried his pace but little.
Out they
poured onto the side walk and bore down upon the old man stealing his
cap and
grabbing at his cane as he flustered about him as if swatting for
flies. He took a quiet
kicking in broad daylight on an urban residential street. The pain not
registering he
fought merely for breath in the panic-stricken groundwork aerobics:
push up, reach up
two three, get kicked get stamped and down two three, crawl two three.
Smacked
about and beaten black for fun an amusement and then they strolled off
laughing.

How long he lay he could not say, the effort of motion and thoughts of
what was there
left in life to move around for held him in a slow despairing scrabble.
Dave
approached cautiously from behind, whistling nonchalantly.
'Mate. You alright?'
'Urrrp. Ah Urrp.'
'You got any pills or nowt? Got owt on you? Owt what the doctor
prescribed you?'
'Ah ah uh.'
'Don't understand you mate. Have to have a look in your pocket see if
you got owt
on you like. That alright, mate?'
'Urr.'
'S'ave a look. That your wallet mate, I'll have a look in that see've
theres anyone I
can phone.'
Dave took the wallet from the old mans breast pocket and opened it
looking for
medical details, next of kin, home phone number, anything. He found
fifty, the old
man's pension.
'Going to see someone who lives on this road. I'll see if I can phone
someone for
you. That alright? I say: that alright, mate?'
Dave pocketed his fee and called in on Gary.
*
Interesting. Unusual, certainly. Anyway, quantum uncertainty is wrong.
Quantum
uncertainty is wrong. So you can determine the velocity and the
location of a
quantum simultaneously? That bit's not wrong. The bit that's wrong is
the finding
that quanta are inherently uncertain. "God does not play dice?"
Einstein wasted his
latter years on this before finally conceding it was true. You're not
about to claim
you know more than Einstein are you? Sure I am. This is a work of
fiction- check the
disclaimer- I can say what I like. Take astrophysics: events that
happened hundreds
and thousands of light years away, millions or billions of years ago
and you analyse
these by collecting radiation (quantum wavicles) and analysing. Quantum
wavicles
that have travelled vast distances through space and along time! We all
know space
isn't empty. These things have travelled through other things not
cosmically that
much smaller than themselves, for millions or billions of years. Are
you going to tell
me that these things are the same as they were when they started out?
That they don't
interact with these other things at all in all that time? And when
they're collected,
how do we analyse them? Go on. I'll tell you how we analyse them: we
hit them
with our own quantum wavicles and get them to interact; then we analyse
what effect
they've had on our own quantum wavicles by hitting them with more
quanta. Like
throwing a tennis ball at another tennis ball and working out where the
first was and
which way it was heading from the angle the second bounces off at.
Don't you think
that has room for just a teeny amount of error? Sure, what of it? Well
in any other
field results that flawed wouldn't even get a look-in at the
publication stage. And
from these results the observers then try to tell us what the universe
might be like, not
what actually happens, what might happen. Pigs might fly. But you take
inherent
quantum uncertainty: a quantum can do whatever the hell it likes. Fire
a quantum at
a given speed at a dilemma and it goes one way, fire an identical
quantum at the same
speed, same trajectory under identical conditions at the same dilemma,
it chooses to
go down the other lemma? I don't buy that; have you seen the size of
these things?
Fire them at the point of a needle and it's like aiming a bullet at a
sports stadium
vertically downwards. How can you get the conditions that identical
with something
that small when all you've got to measure it are things of the same
size as it? Point
taken, but what of the experiments where you only fire one quantum and
it goes both
ways? These things are indivisible- they can't split in two. Yes, good
point. Ah, but:
Only way you can determine that you're only using a single quantum is
on a time
basis. A pulsed laser sends out a number of quanta per second, so you
cut the pulse
time down so that you're only sending one quantum per pulse- you with
me so far?
Yes. You still don't know if the initial burst of a laser is only one
quantum, the
quanta per second could mostly be made up from the initial activation
barrier
breakthrough and could settle down to a steady rate thereafter. Until
you hit that
pulsed beam with another quantum and measure the energy change, you
don't know
how many quanta you're sending per pulse. And even then you can't be
sure that
happens every time. You only know that the pulse time is accurate
through quanta
interacting with quanta and the resulting data being modulated through
the area under
a curve as determined through calculus. Differentiation does not give
the area under a
curve- it only ever gives a good approximation to the area under a
curve. On the scale
of the tiny dimensions and energy transfers and losses involved, this
gives a big
enough error margin to invalidate any findings on its own. The you take
parallel
universe theory, that's doubly wrong. How can it be wrong if it sells
in novels and
sci-fi films though? That's why we'll use it in this novel later. It's
wrong because
even if you accept that quanta are inherently uncertain, parallel
universe theory goes
one step further abroad. The lapse of logic in parallel universe theory
is to say that
just because a quantum can make an infinite number of different
decisions under one
set of circumstances, that infinite numbers of ghost quanta
automatically do so. So
therefore must be an infinite number of universes side by side in which
a different
decision is taken at any and every dilemma. Is that really how parallel
universe
theory is postulated? If you don't believe me, read the first page:
"All characters and
events depicted in this book are entirely fictional. All physics and
philosophies herein
espoused are entirely bullshit." Right.
*
In a parallel universe, Dave called an ambulance. In this one, Gary had
no money on
him but he did have good skank and negotiations went that way for
repayment of his
debt to Dave. The narcotic life forms took turns postulating
conspiracies of
capitalists, banks, money and local co-operative loan sharks. Yards
from the door an
old man come one time young yob exhaled the last stale, malodorous air
from his one
good lung. The circle of life.