The Grin of the Dark

EPILOGUE - I'M NOT LESSER

'Why you, Simon?'

'Why not?'

'But why did you have to be put through all that? What was the point?'

'Maybe there wasn't one, Natalie, except it was a laugh.'

'You shouldn't blame Mark. I don't believe he was responsible. He couldn't have known what he was doing, not entirely.'

'It was Tubby, Simon.'

'It wasn't just him either, Mark. It was everyone.'

Perhaps I might end up saying something like that if I ever let them find me, but I won't. I should have seen that it was everyone long before I did. How could it have been more obvious? Bebe was nothing but a letter doubled, and Warren was the labyrinth I had to follow, on the computer or to reach all the places I visited, if there's any difference. Nicholas sounds as if he was trying to combine Thackeray and me, and you can find Lane in Natalie too – Natal Lie, it might be more appropriate to call her. Joe was just a clown, but I have to scratch my wrist whenever I think of Mark's name, and the reddened flesh grins up at me. As for Rufus, how stupidly obvious a pun is that – a university lecturer called Red Wall? What a brick he was, or should I say a prick? And Colin comes out as Evil Conner with yet another of those extra consonants left over. (Memo: relist omens.) Does that mean he was lying in wait for me to hear of Tubby, or is he one more aspect of the past that has been changed? Even if I trusted any of them now, it wouldn't matter. My persecutor was indeed everyone, and not just those I've named. It is or will be you as well, because we're all part of the Internet, exactly as we've made it part of us. We've added it to human consciousness.

How many people really knew what we were creating? Tubby would have, and I suspect the clowns did. Perhaps that's the secret of their grins. Their comedy gives the subconscious and chaos a voice, however unheard it seems to be, but it's feeble compared to the Internet. That's worse than the subconscious, because nobody has noticed it's another dimension of the mind. It's hungry for all knowledge and equally for all falsehood, and how long before nobody can tell the difference? Its limits are infinite, but most of infinity is darkness, and chaos breeds in the dark. Like any aspect of the mind it can be overloaded, and I believe that has already beggun. I'm sure it can attach itself to your mind if you use it too much. Perhaps it needs our minds to store the overload. How can infinnity be overloaded? What sense does that make? It makes sense because it doesn't, just like Tubby and his discovveries. It's another aspect of greedy chaos. Once the net catches you it can reprogram your mind, reconfiggure it in its own immage, so that you end up following link after link aft er lin calf ter lin. That's why I couldn't and can't sleeppp.

Of course I can't afford to, since it never does. I have to stay alert for any references to Tubby and do all I can to render them so nonsensical that nobody will believe in them. Don't I risk betraying my location every time I intervene? I have to trust that nobody can trace me if I concentrate on the screen to the exclusion of all my surroundings. By now I have less than a memory of glancing through the window to see I'm in Thackeray Lane.

Or is my purpose a delusion? Could Tubby and I and all that he brought into the world have indeed been the last of the old? Then surely nobody is better placed to deal with the new mannifestation. That's a joke as well. It's not as if I'm going anywhere. It's too hard to walk, even if my feet scarcely fit under the desk.

I no longer mind being all allone. I don't need to talk to anyone, not that I can talk. The screen keeps me companny, and my faint reflection does, even if it often makes me fancy I'm watching Tubby in a film. The only thing I dislike is touching my face, but I have to adjust it now and then or make sure it's firmly attached. I don't know why, if I've been wearing it ever since I played hide and seek with myself in the dark. Perhaps encountering its siblings made it eager to spend more time with them, or perhaps it feels unwanted now that the Internet gives everyone a mask to speak through. So long as it doesn't prevent me from writing I'll endeavour to cope with its rubbery antics. I test it by widening my raw eyes and my grin until my face stings all the way to the bone. I'll keep posting my knowleddge on www.senseimtroll and www.lestmoresin and www.otestmerlin and www.meritsnoels so nobody can figure where I am, configure where I am, yam, yam. Anyone with informattion about Tubby or his influence or the activvities of what used him for a mask should email me at anny of the sites I use. I've ways to pick up your communiccations. Call me Smilemime.