My Friend, the Minotaur/ Part One

 

A challenge had been issued: “Find the past!” Most records had disappeared. The ones that survived were not worth the DNA they were printed on. The reasons for the body count—which, each year, grew by exponential leaps—were as variable as was the scale and appearance of the labyrinth. Some claimed that the labyrinth was actually just a concrete pillbox bunker, left over from the days of World War II, whose iron doors, streaked with salt, had long ago rusted shut. On one door: a large eye beneath a pair of horns, and on the other one: an octopus. Perched on a plateau, the complex gave access to a 360-degree view, and there were “wheel tracks,” cut deep into the stone, which led from it in a network of straight lines to the beach, and then continued on, straight down through the surf and down into the depths. Every seven years, of course, would come the drawing of the lots, though few had ever met the occult corporatists who would materialize to serve as judges on the pageant, and the doors never did appear to open or to close.

 Now, it was obvious that a new Reich was in charge, and that, from their makeshift cybernetic Bindu, they were ready to wrap their spell around the next 1000 years. At each of the 28 U-turns, they had cut the throat of a professor of geometry. It was a time for glad preparations. With his gold-tipped training horns, a tiny and scrunched-up bundle of omnipotence had arrived. It seemed possible, however, that the director of the WTO had been incorrect in his reading of the entrails. Many objects had been thrown, noses had been bitten, and ears had been torn off. A seizure had occurred, it was said, which had somehow split an atom. Great fissures had opened up in the holographic stage-set, which, as the Minotaur continued to stamp his tiny hoof against the world, had all the more aggressively to be closed. Amid the glow of the radioactive fallout, it was possible that the Guardians of the Double Ax had begun to lose control. It was possible they too might succumb to the madness that, until then, they had found the means to micromanage.

 Commandos in black parachutes had dropped like electrocuted birds and then landed in broken heaps, to form two rings around the steadily expanding complex. No direct assault could prevail against the Minotaur, no challenge to his force-field from without, no intrigue of rogue sub-departments of DARPA from within. He existed, as was scheduled in the stars. To attack the Minotaur was to amplify his strength. To turn against the labyrinth was to magnify its breadth.

Hoarse bellowing had flown across the black waves of the ocean. Foam had gathered on the lips of the scrunched-up bundle of omnipotence. His eyes rolled, striking fear into the hearts of even those in the inner circle. Was there some way to distinguish between a tantrum and a seizure, some method marked with the thumbprint of the Ancients, some safe way to harness the convulsions of the beast? This issue was a source of ongoing speculation among the Long-Skulled Seers of the Federal Reserve, yet both of these phenomena had pointed towards one end. It was feeding time. The technology that had been meant to keep the monster in had instead provided him with access to fresh victims, who were even less able than he was to escape. 

Continue reading at Scene4:

https://www.scene4.com/0623/briangeorge0623.html

My first book of essays, Masks of Origin: Regression in the Service of Omnipotence, is now available through Untimely Books:

https://untimelybooks.com/praise-page/masks-of-origin/