Welcome to Acerbia; population: π
This is the archive of the many and fabulous adventures of . Like a hard-bitten son of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius taught to write by William S. Burroughs; continually reincarnated, debated over by intellectuals and literati at cocktail parties the author can't get invited to, the target of scorn and ire from women everywhere, frequently mistaken for a former member of the Warsaw pact, named after the Italian explorer Giuseppe Acerbi, slowly rewriting the Book of Cataclysm, this is postmodern fiction at its most playful and creative.
Secret Origins #1
I went to school with a meek and mild-mannered kid called Donald Twist. Donald was something of a late bloomer, so while all the rest of us were dropping octaves and testicles, Donald was the only remaining soprano in the boys choir. Considering that all the rest of us had also discovered that girls were no longer "icky" but something to lust after and try to paw, Donald remained the only boy in the choir altogether.
As our hormones raged and boiled inside us and we each in turn were taught how to shave by our fathers Donald could only scratch at his chin and wait for the first signs of stubble. While we were discovering the pitfalls of acne and greasy hair Donald's purity was retained well into his teens.
Then one day he sprouted the 'tache. It just seemed to expell itself through his upper lip overnight. Thick, black, bushy and protruding outwards from his face at a rigid right angle to his nose Donald's face was suddenly graced with the greatest moustache any of us spotty, greasy, pubescent boys could ever have hoped for.
Donald would toy with the moustache idlly during class, daydreaming. We never knew what he was daydreaming of course, we were all too busy trying to tease our own patchy facial hair into styles; goatees that looked like chin roadkill, hairy upper lips that resembled a spider graveyard, cheeks coated in pepperings of stubble and acne. What we never knew until it was too late was that Donald was scheming.
It wasn't uncommon to see one of the other guys go through a complete transformation now that they'd matured; Billy started wearing a leather jacket, Hippo took to wearing Lennon spectacles, Limpet got his ear pierced. Donald however started wearing a cloak that tied at the neck. He'd sweep through the corridors, cackling to himself, being led by the world's best jet black slick moustache.
The final change was inevitable for Donald, the story wrote itself almost. After weeks of descending into more and more sinister garb and dedicating all of his free time to scheming, Donald pulled on a black cowl and top hat, twisted up his wide pointy moustache and became The Twiddler.
From then on, every other day we would be untying the girls from the train tracks or stamping out the fuses to powder kegs. He'd tiptoe into class with that shifty look in his eyes, lifting his legs up ridiculously high with each step and then the daily rigmarole would begin; he'd chase after the teacher to frenetic accompanied piano music or shake his fist at us as we foiled another of his dastardly plots.
Eventually the principal gave him two weeks detention and sent a letter to his parents.
Dogma
Dan strode through the hotel lobby and towards the conference room; the note in his hand spelled disaster. He pushed the doors open and into the assembled throngs of people, heading for the stage. On his way there he was accosted by Professor Webley who held the younger man's arm with a tenacious iron grip.
"What's going on here Mossberg? What's the delay?"
Unable to break Professor Webley's grasp Dan Mossberg instead sighed disheartenedly and looked down at the note in his hand.
"Disaster. Disaster I tell you. Our keynote speaker..."
Doctor Mauser and Doctor Zastava approached through the crowd of luminaries and assembled intelligentsia. While Mauser peeled Professor Webley's vulture-like claws from Mossberg's arm Zastava repeated the query.
"What's the delay Dan?"
Dan told him. Zastava's face went white with fear but a moment later he collected himself and told Dan there was nothing for it, he'd have to make the announcement all the same. He placed a comforting hand on Dan's shoulder and steered him towards the podium. Dan took his place in front of the microphone and cleared his throat causing everyone in the conference room to turn and look at him.
"Fellow academics, I welcome you to this biggest ever gathering of the Flat Earth Librarians, Chroniclers, Historians, Educators and Researchers Society. I have some terrible news to report; our keynote speaker, Dr Gustav was forced to change connecting flights against his will in Punta Arenas. Already dangerous close to the edge of the world, Dr Gustav's flight was blown off course and is unaccounted for. I fear that our guest of honor may have fallen off the edge of the planet."
Round Three
Hollinger has had me in advance prep for an exhibition boxing match now for three weeks. Three whole weeks. I stay in pretty good shape normally anyway, but this advance prep is a whole new concept that Holly is trying out. It involved giving me an edge.
"If you'se gonna be facing Da Kid, you'll be needin' this kinda advantage. Trust me"
And with that he padlocked my shorts onto me.
I grabbed him and picked him off the ground holding him inches from my face and stared intently into his small black beedy eyes. I had to give him a few inches of space for the chewed cigar he constantly keeps in his mouth.
"What's the big idea Holly?"
Hollinger explained it like this, when you don't have sex for a while you start to get frustrated. Frustration leads to anger and anger leads to fury. His idea was to turn me into the fists of fury. After the match he promised me all the nubile little nympho girlies I could handle. Assuming I won of course. That was three weeks ago though.
The headaches came quickly enough, those and the aches that could leave me hunched over forward trying to nurse my poor meat and veg. Holly didn't make it easy for me, he'd keep leaving porno mags open at the centerfolds all over my place. Coffee table porn, fridge magnet porn, bathroom carpet porn. He even arranged for his niece, a professional aromatherapist to give me a full body massage, in a catholic schoolgirl uniform. Full body that is except for the locked on shorts area. And obviously, she was the one in the uniform.
Sure enough as time went on I was hitting the speed bags harder, I was smashing my practice opponents across the ring and I was leaving dents in steel plates with my bare fists. Holly figured I was as ready as I could be without blowing an artery, or worse.
But when I stepped into the ring I was somewhat confused. The Kid turned out to be older and infinitely uglier than me.
"Holly, is this the guy?" I asked him over the ropes.
"Sure is. And don't think he ain't got what it takes; this guy's never had sex."
Deified
Kirby brought me his new invention and set it down on my desk. He was long overdue on his project and the last of my students to submit his work for grading. If it weren't for Kirby I'd already have skipped the joint and started picking out a low-maintenance summer schooler to shack up with; summer school chicks are always willing and needy. The perspex cube sat atop a variety of papers I would never glance at ever again and Kirby took a step back.
"I present; The Metatron Cube."
I gazed into the cube within a cube and found myself feeling light-headed and slightly giddy. Embedded into the surfaces of the cube were thirteen output jacks, these connected the thirteen internal nodes which themselves were interconnected by seventy-eight conducting wires. I was broken out of my disembodiment by Kirby's query.
"What do you think?"
"Its a Tesseract; a regular convex 4-polytope with eight cubical cells. But how did you get the fourth dimension into non-Euclidian space?"
"Crowbar."
I paused and considered his response.
"You mean you brought the rhombic dodecahedral envelope of the vertex-first parallel projection of the tesseract into 3-dimensional space... through brute force?"
Kirby grinned at the simplicity of my explanation. "Yep. Do I get an A?"
"First explain to me these output jacks."
"Well Prof, I figured we'd want to be able to experience 4D in real life. So I hit upon the idea of using the hypercube as a means of translating sensations through four dimensions. Try it."
I picked the cube up carefully, as if it might vanish in a puff of unreality and burn my fingers as it collapsed spacetime in upon itself. It seemed solid enough and I even tapped one side, seeing the reflection of my fingers through the material delayed by a few seconds and mirrored inside out. I reached down to my PC and removed my headphones, slotting the input jack into the first output it would fit.
"Now what?"
Kirby reached forward and plugged a phone recharger into another socket. For a fraction of a second I thought I was about to be electrocuted, instead the Metatron Cube translated the electrical impulses of the charger into music that tingled on my tongue and smelled of pomegranate.
"Good God, man! You've discovered a way of curing synaesthesia!"
Kirby shrugged.
"I was thinking we'd explore the military and adult entertainment applications first, but if you think I ought to market it to the medical industry then I guess that's always worth a shot..."
Renaissance Man
Marco shifted gears and heard the crunch he had come to associate with all such gear changes in his pokey 2CV van. The flat-2 engine's puttering increased in tempo and the vehicle lurched forward against its own inertia on the incline to tackle the last bend in the road before he arrived in San Gimignano.
Spread out to his left Marco was treated to the landscape that had inspired DaVinci, Raphael, Dante and Byron; a vista of greens and browns in golden hues that the sunlight poured through with delicate ease. Instead of looking to his left though Marco was checking over his shoulder through the glass that separated him from his cargo. Tutto OK.
The battered van wound through the streets of San Gimignano and Marco ignored the towering medieval family fortresses that had survived generations of wars, catastrophes and urban renewals, inspiring Shakespeare to cast two warring families' offspring seeking the refuge at the top of their respective towers to share their affections for one another. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.
A further five minutes drive took Marco out of San Gimignano and down towards the vineyards, deep into the birthplace of the Renaissance, until he spied a field of pomo d'oro fat and juicy on the vines. In his haste he braked too quickly, causing his precious cargo to slide forward and thump against the partition, eliciting a wince from the young Italian. Opening one eye slowly Marco checked through the window again. Non c'è problema.
He reversed his Citroën van down off the road and between the vines, the ancient fore-aft linked suspension system living up to its original design requirements of being able to transport farm goods across muddy fields undamaged. Marco cursed the bumpy ride but continued until his van was nestled deep amongst the foliage. He had to climb through the canvas roof of the van since there wasn't enough room to open a door.
Clambering over the dented roof of the cargo box he landed in the mud behind his van and paused to inspect the fruits of the field, squeezing one between his hands and feeling the tautness of the skin. Taking a few deep breaths he put his hand on the door to the cargo area and was about to open it when he remembered suddenly. Fumbling for his top pocket he brought out a cigarette and lit it up, puffing furiously until there was a thick cloud of acrid smoke around him. Only then did he open the door.
The little bastards gave him a few stings as he pulled the hive back towards the open door but eventually he had it propped open. He unlatched the small panel at the front and retreated quickly before lighting up another cigarette. Maybe some thick gloves next time, he pondered as a cloud of bees streamed out of the beehive he had brought from his brother's apiary. Marco plucked a tomato from the vine and chewed on it as he considered just how clever his idea was; le api possono fare il sugo per la pasta, let the bees make the tomato sauce.
The Man Who Sold The Moon
Seeing last night's Horizon on BBC2 brought back painful memories of my own attempt to win the Ansari X Prize. I formed a partnership with a brilliant man called Charles Yaeger the third ("no relation", he assured me).
Every day I would come to the garage we rented out to find Charles poring over lists and scratchings on scraps of paper. As I sorted out our first round of private financing and the space flight license application he went through iteration after iteration of his lists. I could never read his handwriting though and the various diagrams and flowcharts were meaningless to me.
After I resolved the chemical mixture and fuel composition problems and started drafting the aerodynamics of our spacecraft I asked him what he was working on. "Vital details" was his answer.
We fell on harder times due to the success of our competitors in our second round of financing, we still had no viable prototype and some of them had already shown working demonstrations of their concepts. Still I managed to secure an endless supply of carbon-fibre reinforced Teflon and panel-beat the craft by hand down to exacting specifications I had pain-stakingly determined thanks to air flow dynamics and wind tunnel tests.
Still Charles would be there before me and there long after I left to crash on my couch, too tired to even undress, working on his lists and scribbles.
Finally with the craft all ready for launch and warming up on our landing strip atop Hampstead Heath I was having kittens; only days before Charles had informed me that he wouldn't be the test pilot ("not my thing, sorry mate" he said without looking up from his scraps of paper) and I had to do a one-day crash course on Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Just as I was about to close the hatch and ignite the engines for take-off Charles handed me his iPod.
"Here you go, the ultimate space journey soundtrack. God speed" he paused and added as an afterthought "No big deal if you don't bring the iPod back."
Bedlam
"I wanted to acheive something epic" Reichenbach stated "and I have!"
He pivoted towards the boardroom picture window and spread his arms wide, encompasing the whole of the city aflame within his reach. Skyscraper after skyscraper flickered like a monstrous candle and the concrete jungle burned.
From street level came the howls of sirens and the chatter of blue lights; the emergency services were swamped and unable to get anywhere through the clogged arteries of the city. Upturned burning cars blocked streets and crowds of rioting looters clashed with armored police, forcing them to fall back block after block.
"You can't stop this" he gloated as I struggled against my bonds "its already happened. You're in media res with a front row seat! Its glorious!"
Through careful contorsions I had managed to get my outstretched fingers around the switchblade Reichenbach's henchman had embedded in my back. Careless of him to leave it there but Reichenbach never passed up an opportunity to cause me pain. Twisting the blade to draw it from my flesh without alerting him was an acheivement in itself.
"You probably expected me to explain my masterplan and give you an opportunity to stop me. You spent so long defusing the decoy nuke you never paused to consider the path that led you here. What need did I have to level the entire city?"
The nuke had been surprisingly easy to defuse, the countdown stopping on 0:01 had seemed cliché to the extreme and now I knew why. It hadn't been my last ditch attempt to cut the wires and strip the core that had saved the city; the whole device was a distraction tactic, a delaying move for Reichenbach to trigger the conventional bombs in the Fortune 500 company headquarters throughout the city.
"You think you're Tyler Durden or something?" I spat in anger.
"Oh no my friend, nothing so vainglorious. I deal in realities. No honorable erasure of the debt for the mindless sheep of society. I'm doing this because I've already secured the insurance payouts and the reconstruction contracts; effectively doubling my commission for this whole endeavor."
I just had to keep him talking, I'd almost made it through the ropes. He turned back to the symphony of destruction being played out in widescreen.
"Tiger, tiger, burning bright. In the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye. Could frame thy fearful symmetry? The immortal hand is mine, the vision mine. The symmetry is you, my eternal foil."
With a final snap the ropes came free and with the last of my strength I charged at my most hated nemesis, bringing the knife up and between his ribs into his heart. Our momentum carried us towards the giant picture window; I was going through and he was coming with me.
One of The Few
When I arrived at my front door I discovered it was not locked. I pushed the door open with one finger and stepped gingerly inside. If there was an intruder in here I wouldn't want to alert them to my return too quickly so I walked tip-toe down the hallway and listened intently for voices or noises of ransacking. Instead all I heard was the tinkle of ice in a glass and the satisfied "ah!" of someone enjoying a drink.
I pushed the door to the sitting room open with fire in my eyes, ready to give whoever it was a stern talking to only to find a spindly old gentleman with a face-wrapping snow-white walrus moustache drinking Glenfiddich from a lo-ball.
"What the deuce..." I stammered in surprise.
"Ah, my dear boy, allow me to introduce myself" he rose with difficulty and the aid of a cane but never spilled a drop, "Wing Commander Sir Wesley Brook-Westington-Smythe, KCB, DSO, DSC, etcetera, etcetera. Retired. Hope you don't mind, got stuck into the juice." He raised the glass in mock salute and emptied it with all due haste.
"Well I'm afraid I've probably out-stayed my welcome, didn't expect you back so early."
I blocked the doorway as he tried to shuffle past. Very carefully and crisply I asked him "who. are. you?"
"Well I thought I covered that already," he presented his hand, now devoid of whisky and glass, "Air Vice-Marshall Sir William Wilmington-Arniston, Knight's Cross, Victoria Cross, King's Cross. Retired. The pleasure was all mine."
He once more tried to bumble past me and I felt a pang of guilt as I held him back. He would have had trouble fighting his way past a strong breeze, he seemed to be held together by tweed and moustache.
"I say dear boy, this is getting a little tiresome, would you mind letting me past to collect my coat?"
"what are you doing here?" I tried to ask as politely as possible.
"You mean this isn't the RAF Officers' Club on Piccadilly?" he looked around innocently.
"drop the doddering old codger routine, how did you get in here?"
"Well I happen to have the keys to the city as presented to me by Sir Frederick Rowland in 1949 for the defence of London in the battle of Britain and that includes, my dear boy, this house."
At this he presented a giant golden key on a red ribbon, somewhat tarnished but otherwise quite obviously one of the keys to the city. And since you really can't argue with that, I let him go.
Mind Bomb
June 5th 1992 was the first day that Timothy Widget exploded. It would not be the last.
All his life he'd been raised to stay quiet, to never say anything unless he had something nice to say, that children should be seen and not heard and under the relentless oppression of every adult he came into contact with Timothy Widget became a simmering pressure cooker of tumultuous emotions and repressed energies.
His creativity was stunted to the point where he daren't use his box of crayons for anything other than a color reference chart. His dinosaurs were placed in unimaginative dioramas where the most exciting thing to happen was a slow leak in the tar pit. His racing cars stayed in their boxes and even his desire to say "vroom" would be frowned at and internalised.
Inside Timothy Widget's head ideas and concepts danced and compressed. His ears would buzz from dawn to dusk and he would frequently excuse himself in the politest manner to diligently take care of a nosebleed triggered by an over-enthusiastic thought being brow-beaten down into the mundane mental gumbo that sludged through his head.
All this came to an end on the 5th of June 1992 around 9:02 a.m. when he was introduced to Katie Doodah; the love of his life. He quite literally exploded. Sounds, ideas, mimes, drawings, colors, expressions, hairstyles. His body became a conucopia of every repressed thought and deed that he had spent his life burying inside in a flurry of activity like a Tasmanian devil. By 9:04 a.m. Timothy Widget was a changed man.
That was the first time, but it certainly wasn't the last.