(Low Saturday) The Harrowing of Hell (II/V)

Posted on April 15, 2006 by Jenna

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The second of three histories regarding the cracking of the lens.

Jane sits on the skyway by the lens.

She kicks her feet in the air.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she says.

Dozens of colors flicker and swirl within the lens. There is green and there is gold and there is a spot of shifting red.

“I’ll get in trouble,” she says.

The mist of chaos in the room coheres, briefly, into the image of Jane dolefully standing beside a locked cookie jar; of Martin triumphantly copying names from the Nice List to the Naughty List; of thunder crashing and Martin laughing manically as spiders rain from the sky into Jane’s hair.

“Not the last!” Jane clarifies.

The mist subsides.

“But,” Jane says, “I’m worried about Meredith.”

“Why?” asks the lens.

“She is a surging, threshing power,” Jane says. “But she doesn’t know how to deal with that. I think she’s getting on towards running away again.”

The lens flickers for a moment.

There is amidst the chaos, Siddhartha Buddha, and he is saying this:

The second noble truth: anatman.
We are not what we appear to be.
Not singular entities driven by specific purpose
But shapes cast up by the chaos
Looking now like one thing,
Now like another.

“Blee!” says Jane.

She sticks out her tongue.

“What?” the lens asks.

“He was totally cheating.”

“Oh,” says the lens Necessity. It’s laughing at her with its voice.

“You can’t just make something happen and call it a truth,” says Jane. In a superior tone, she adds, “You don’t see me making stuff happen and then pretending it was true all along.”

The lens flickers for a moment.

There is amidst the chaos, Jane and Martin, and Jane is saying this:

Good morning, Martin!

And Martin says:

Good morning, Jane.

Have you considered the underlying corruption
Eating at the soul of man
And incorporated
A recognition of its presence
Into your grim and terrible agenda?

Jane says:

I have considered it!

Martin says:

And may I, then,
Take such dispensation as is appropriate
In eliminating the detritus
And in general resolving this fourth kingdom with efficiency?

Jane says:

To the limits of the appropriate.

Martin says:

I shall begin—

Jane says:

But it is the conclusion I have reached
That there is no individual
Entirely unworthy of our aid
Much less
Of our consideration.

Thus it is my recommendation
That the grinding wheels of history
Run over the open ocean, splashing it in all directions;
The fields of grain, grinding them to meal;
The open road, burning their rubber.

But that it is not appropriate
That any person be harmed:

That no one deserves to suffer at our hands.

Let no one be harmed.

Martin says:

A fundamental conflict of
operating methodologies.

The fog of chaos clears.

Jane is blushing beet red.

“I didn’t make everybody worthy,” she says.

“Hypocrite,” says the lens.

Jane sulks.

“Sulky hypocrite!”

Jane pokes the lens with her finger, getting the history of the world all smudgy.

“Anyway,” says the lens, “it’s just, I think that Meredith needs to think about the fallacy of independent existence, not the proper application of world-destroying power.”

“… I worry,” Jane admits.

The chaos swirls.

Then Jane brightens.

“Oh!” she says. “Could you do that Siddhartha thing as a romantic comedy?”