Pedantic Peter
Inspector Kermit was on his last leg. The case that he had been working on for over a year was finally coming to an end, but there was one thing that bothered him. For the first time in a career spanning two decades, he was not so sure about the man he was going to prosecute. Kermit was a perfectionist and knowing everything was crucial to his success.
His mental check-list had him asking questions: is the suspect clean, thoughtful and scientifically inclined or was he/she a general fuck up? what did the suspect eat every morning? did they like to establish a routine in order to focus on a craft or did their lives involve waddling around, eating and taking the occasional shit?
On a normal day, the answers were laid bare, but this time something was 'off' and he couldn't quite place his finger on what was wrong. The suspect, Roosemar Pheloosh is a renowned screenwriter and abstractionist. His work is so great that it often falls outside the realm of criticism. Everything he produced until now was so edgy, visceral and brilliant that Kermit had to think twice before locking him down.
He was currently at one of Mr. Roosemar's many ‘safe-houses', looking for any bits of evidence that could cement his deductions. He achieved this by sitting on a chair and meditating while his assistant, Detective Gomez looked for hidden secrets.
Kermit was a simple, but sharp man. He wore a bold dark suit with a red shirt inside. A slick black tie hung perfectly from his neck. His attire matched a brown leather watch that he wore on his left hand. The watch had an imprint of an 'elk' under the clock-face. He was sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of the room for over an hour— eyes closed and hands placed inwards on his lap. Subtle breathing was given away, only by the minute displacements of his tie. He was in a state of deep awareness. By focusing on the breath, the concoction of images and thoughts that pulverized him at first were slowly disappearing like clouds in thin air.
Kermit could always count on the 'morning sitting' to clear out his thoughts. The meditations helped him be more stable. However, this time it was not a matter of simple relaxation. He was trying to speak to the man that was hiding in his subconscious. This 'elusive' man, was a concept that Kermit could swear by. He could always radio-in whenever he needed help. The elusive man usually showed him what he needed to see at that very moment. It was up to Kermit to take his advice— or warnings —about the state of things to come.
Trying to contact the elusive man by focusing on the breath was a similar experience to tuning a stringed instrument. One had to focus on the movements of the abdomen by catching the breath in its natural rhythm. While resting on the breath, a comfortable middle ground had to be found between being too relaxed and too wound up; a balance between being lethargic and rigid. If a string on a guitar is too loose, it has a lazy...blubbery sound; too tight and it produces an over-enthusiastic tink, tink. For a chord to have the desired effect, the tension of the strings must be balanced. In just the same way, one had to attain an unwavering and delicate focus on the breath.
Kermit was now perfectly in tune. With his back straight and feet flat on the ground he resembled an antenna that was ready to receive and send signals. An image of the man slowly started to appear— like a television in his mind. The man's figure was like any other person but his face kept switching features like it was unable to decide. This 'twitching' mostly affected the jaw line and forehead. Caucasian for a few seconds then hispanic for half. Only his eyes remained consistent throughout. An imprint of the man was on a blank canvas but soon enough, a 32X32 grid based system was imposed and pixels of varying colors started to bleed in from all sides.
A purple sun filled-in two and a half bigger grid-squares while the surrounding area was dabbed with ominous streaks of colors that were two to three shades lighter than the sun. The ground was made of sharp white sand that supported a strange circular room. Kermit could slowly feel himself. He entered the room. The elusive man was standing atop a table. His jawline, still unreadable but Kermit could tell that he was proud of his latest work. The man was after all responsible for constructing dreamscapes when Kermit was asleep at night. An engineer of the dream.
A subtle bell-like sound came from the man's core as if to request Kermit's attention. The engineer looked at the watch on his hand and froze in place. Perfectly still, he resembled the living embodiment of an instructional manual. Kermit registered this and looked at his watch. The imprint of the elk under the clock-face was gone. The hour markings were replaced with head to heel caricatures of Roosemar Pheloosh, the suspect. Roosemar's figure was down sized and drawn inside of a watch. Each hour-marking was slightly different. It took Kermit a while to notice, that all the caricatures collectively formed the frames of an animated loop. The suspect's face was mimicked perfectly and each frame had an impeccable amount of detail. Every hour, progressively showed Roosemar's figure losing visibility and eventually disappearing. Kermit thought hard to make something of it. He then looked up from his watch and waited for the elusive man.
The man suddenly shifted position with military confidence. His hands were pointing to the other tables beside him. A grid system was slowly phasing-in around the suggested area. They were accurately being filled-in with what seemed to be heads belonging to Roosemar, but this time it was to scale. Both the heads were identical but Kermit was starting to see minute differences. Two to be precise: a thicker brow on one and a small mark under the eye of the other.
The man then switched-off and fell lifeless onto the floor— like a ragdoll. Legs tucked underneath the spine with head and heel facing each other. Hands in obtuse angles to the center of the body. Kermit was left alone to analyze. He thought for a while but came up empty. It didn't seem like there was an epiphany hitting him anytime soon. What was the elusive man trying to tell him? Throughout his career as a deductionist, he always knew what things meant. This time everything was void. An absolute zero. Kermit was slowly shuffling into a bad mood. He could feel his metaphysical self tensing up. A mucky soup of irritatingly convoluted thoughts were forcing his transcendent state, out the window. Anger was taking control and the ground under him was starting to feel a bit loose, creaking with every step Kermit took to balance himself. The circular room was closing in, its circumference getting smaller. Kermit could feel sweat dripping down his brow, the pain of uncertainty creeping in. He let out a well-timed scream, as the dreamscape began to collapse.
"Gomez, I'm not so sure about the case!“, Kermit said, erupting from his meditation chair like a hot geyser.
“But sir, all of the evidence we have so far makes sense.”, Gomez said, trying not to laugh. He felt a pinch of happiness seeing the ever-tranquil Kermit in such a mess.
"Yes, I’m aware of that. There’s something else going on here, though. This whole ‘Roosemar’ situation is surrounded by a deep mystery. We have all the facts and they’re all solid but I just feel like there’s more to this. It was all too simple.”, Kermit said as he paced around the room feverishly while Gomez watched him.
Something doesn't add up, Kermit thought. Why would he leave his keys by the bedstand when he drinks this much caffeine? Why was the victim left unscathed? Most importantly, why was he shown two copies of Roosemar’s head? Kermit was still pacing about, talking to himself in a hushed tone. The nerves on his forehead looked like they were about to pop. The room went quiet for a minute until something caught Kermit’s eye. A white sheet of paper sat peacefully on a dull wooden table. Kermit felt a calm breeze enter through the window and soothe his forehead. He walked up to the table and read the contents of the paper. It was a script for a film of some kind.
Pedantic Peter
A script by Roosemar Pheloosh and Tambourine Smith
The scene opens in a strange basement laboratory located in the mucky,deeply-industrialised Penwick city. The city has nothing but pipes and engines for vast stretches. A slice of which is visible through a grill high up on a wall in the lab. Two scientists Peter and Garcia can be seen working on an experiment. Various filters,computers,charts of algorithms,dead garden-cats,snails and bottles of wax can be seen strewn about long tables. Peter is an alarmingly tall man with hair like the spikes of a cactus. His assistant Garcia is short and sleepy-eyed. He reeks of a visible green trail of 'laziness'.
Peter: I don't know about you, but something's amiss.
Garcia: Padrone, you are looking for something?
Peter: Well, Subject A has a mark on the posterior segment but Subject B is smooth as far as the eye can see.
Garcia: Longworms will be longworms, Padrone.
Peter: Open your eyes. They are both the same, yet so different!
Garcia: Peter, my eyes are open. But, not for long. I can feel a blanket of sleep coming over me.
Peter: Garcia, you fuck! We are so close. Flawless cloning is just a few embellishments away. You can’t give up on me now!
Garcia: They will be pleased with everything we have at this very moment! We don't need to make sure that every graft of skin is the same! You worry too much Peter. It is time to relax.
Garcia walks up to a small refrigerator. A dead meer-cat blocks the door. Garcia flings the carcass across the room. He opens the refrigerator, grabs two bottles of liquid beer, walks up to Peter and offers it to him.Peter refuses.
Peter: I haven't shown you this but... I think that now is a perfect time.
Peter pulls out a wallet from under his lab coat. A dead snail falls onto the floor, the sound of its shell cracking is barely audible.He takes a thin piece of folded paper from a secret compartment in his wallet. The paper contains an image of the Menger Sponge Fractal. He holds it up dangerously close to Garcia's face.
Peter: You see this? Everything is paced perfectly with arithmetic precision. There's a rhythm, a continuation all up to the Apex. A fractal that speaks volumes of self-similarity. I have to say, Garcia, after I first set eyes on this, everything around me has morphed into a parable for symmetry. All we have to do is replace the Sierpinski Carpet fractal with this and I guarantee, the result will be a perfect clone.
Garcia: A job's a job, Peter. You've gotta learn to space it out. Besides, when a thing is finished in some way or form, learn to let it go.
Garcia takes off his lab coat and leaves the basement. Peter has lost faith in the people around him as nobody shares his eye for detail. He looks at the fractal one last time, while he walks to a terminal that is attached to a transparent enclosure. He makes an alteration to the algorithm, looks a Longworm in the eye and pushes a button. The machine shakes violently. Smoke seeps out of it like a waterfall covering the entire room with a thick white haze. From the opening, a purple gland breaks through the smoke like a houdini, its succulent body moving by centimeters. Peter's eyes are fixed on what could be a success. Was the effort worthy of praise? The gland reveals more of itself. Several orifices can be seen on the side of its body. They have an outline that glows. The color of the light is deep blue. The orifices open its sphincters to reveal horribly sharp teeth. Peter has seen enough. It turned out to be worse than he had imagined. He picks up a stool and smashes the mutated clone to bits. The machine shakes in response as if to mourn for its creation. Peter falls to the floor with his head in his hands. A bolt from the machine ricochets and hits a small storage hanger on the ceiling. Peter wails loudly, his voice reverberating through the lab, as medium-sized animal carcasses fall onto him from above.
SCENE ENDS
Kermit puts the script down. "We've solved the case" he said as he placed the wooden chair in its original position next to the table. A deceptive knot was finally untangled. Kermit was sure that it was Roosemar and asked Gomez to call it in. All of the evidence made sense so it was rather unquestionable. This was not the situation a few minutes ago however, as Kermit struggled with the few remaining pieces. All he had to do was loosen the pressure that Uncertainty had instilled on him. Its dark depths sucking away every morsel of his ability to make a decision.There comes a point when a ‘concept' becomes too intertwined like an impenetrable jungle. If its meaning can be abstracted in a single sentence then that is enough.
Gomez was relieved to find out that he could go home. He did not grasp what had happened and gave up entirely on trying to figure out the causes and conditions of Kermit's confusion. Maybe this was a good thing as his mind was sitting perfectly still with no ripples on the surface. He yawned, as he walked up to his car as if to acknowledge the end.
Kermit, on the other hand, was thankful for the experience of imbibing something new. After all, learning is the only profound remnant of the strange world we live in. Before returning home that night, he picked up an artist's rendition of the Menger Sponge Fractal. He nailed it onto the wall behind his bed and went into a deep sleep.