Been so eager to get the weirdest part of the story out that I haven’t told you anything about the Sschphlarths. The thing of it is, it’s all weird. This story has no parts to it that aren’t weird. My point is that I’m feeling a bit better now having spilled what little I’ve spilled. Don’t mean to say it’s all about me, this mess. But to me it is more about what happened to me than what happened to the Sschphlarths. Nothing happened to them, from where I grip.
The accident of technology that brought me to them as one of them on the outside and one of what I used to be on the inside1 could wait no longer to happen. I’ve mentioned before that the official version is that what happened was an accident. Another layer of research that is officially denied, quietly evolves into a conspiracy investigation. Everybody likes a good scandal, unless the scandal is them, or about them. The worst part of the situation, if the theory part of the conspiracy drops out, it’s such a cowardly and irresponsible way to pursue… anything, especially knowledge, especially since all anything really is is knowledge. The sting of knowledge is its power. Hence, the cliché, the adage, the maxim, whatever name of a magazine you want to give to a phrase that gets said so often it no longer has meaning. Knowledge is power. Know whut I mean? At’s what I’m talkin’ bout, mofo, so you betta get outta ‘d’way. Sheet on the clothesline, mama. In the rain. Whoah!
Took me over a month to even begin to try to communicate with the Sschphlarths. They were all so patient, like they’d seen this kind of thing before, like it wasn’t unexpected. And that, more than anything, tells me I was set up. So, I just can’t understand why the powers that be just didn’t ask for volunteers and offer bonus pay and incentives and all kinds of deal sweetening all over the place like I know they know how to do so well. Legal, moral, ethical issues aside, nobody had to know. When I say nobody, I mean, like, the public, the masses, the media, the information overburdened layer of society. These days, I guess that would mean anybody and everybody, including the subject, object, victim, specimen, asset… I’ve been called all of those things. Please don’t get the idea that I forgive whoever’s idea this was. If they want forgiveness, we’ll have to talk about it. It’s up for discussion. I’ve got no problem with that. I just don’t want to make it easier for whoever did this to ask for forgiveness than it would have been to ask for permission. It just makes no sense.
What I don’t understand2 is why the Sschphlarths set me up with all these pigments, all these colors that they keep telling me are so exotic and special and stuff, when they all look exactly the same to me, and then let me, even encourage me, to draw on everything and anything that I can draw on. I’m thinkin’ this whole hospital floor must look like one huge acid trip to them, the Sschphlarths, if those colors are as intense as they say they are. But I can’t tell which color from what. It looks like I’m drawing with one color, to me.
What the heck. I started sketching out my tattoos from my old fleshy body in the approximate places they were, or would be, on this body. The exoskeletal surface wasn’t a half-bad medium. But the whole place shut down. They all completely freaked. For the first time during my “visit,” I thought I was gonna die. I thought, just knew, they were going to kill me right then and there. It was a chemical thing. You can’t play these guys in a game of poker. I’ve tried. Not unless you’re one of them. As was my nightmarish joy of the moment. Their tells are not muscular of facial because those surfaces don’t move. You can read them, their emotions, intentions, expectations, even their recent activities because of various and sundry chemical and electrical combinations each emit and perceive via antanae.
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