Today The Storytelling Blog is excited to share a story from author Walker Zupp. He published his dark, yet comic, vision of 2089—the novel Martha—in 2020 (Montag Press). He is currently writing another novel inspired by the life and work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He splits his time between Bermuda and Cornwall.
Disclosure: I have a professional relationship with Walker Zupp’s publisher, Montag Press, which will publish the first Sean Joye Investigations novel in the future.
The IQ of the average human being is so low that the mere notion of having things called philosophers is ridiculous. To task oneself with the meaning of the natural world is such a joke that not even the most seasoned of comedians would deliver it to an audience most probably souped-up on pain medication.
A Story Past
There are people who would rather have a good philosophy than a good story. But often a good (or bad) story is all we have. I do not think that writers spend their time somewhere between past, present, and future history. Time is spurious and without meaning at the best of times, a cheeky leftover from the feudal era, which has been made to serve new masters who are wealthier now than any provincial prince ever was.
Indeed, at this very moment, professor of literature Julia Kristeva is touching up what will be her first published work: Word, Dialogue, Text (1980). She argues in the essay that Dostoevsky’s novels embrace multiple voices and positions in contrast to Tolstoy, who enjoys a narrow narrative style with a sociological bent. (Whether or not this is the type of thing a hyper-intelligent slug would say, I’ve no idea.) With any luck, Julia will be happy with the essay and she will take a lunch break during which she’ll think about the strange charm of Jean-Paul Sartre as well as the impossibility of finding a Parisian parking space. Whether these two thoughts are aligned is precisely what the slugs could tell us, but they are not here.
A Story Present
Walker Zupp has read back his second novel, Nakadai, and is rather worried about it, and the worry is exasperated by how exhausted he is. The alternate universe version of Poirot, he thinks, is a Belgian covered from head to toe in hair except for the upper lip, which is naked and certainly about as charming as Jean-Paul Sartre—their different nationalities notwithstanding.
Walker Zupp’s neighbor is a man called John Friedlander who looks nothing at all like Sartre. John has decided to stop the seemingly endless renovation of his back garden and to return indoors to the clammy hands of his wife, the warm paws of his dog, as well as the hypnotic gaze of his Victorian erotica.
Walker Zupp is twenty-five, and he believes that the socio-political factions of the world, the Big Tech companies, and the hopeless and rather cynical education system have worked together to produce a new class of serfs. It is doubtful whether Walker and the rest of his generation will ever own their own homes. They have bound themselves to the manufacturers of smartphones and to regional water companies. So, looking over the fence at John, standing proudly amidst his boundless property, makes Walker feel nothing but jealousy and petty resentment.
The Slugs Make Their Move
But John is a perfectionist, and, upon entering his newly-remodeled kitchen, he is flabbergasted to discover that the plug sockets are—every one of them—misaligned. Like Godzilla whenever he is faced with a foe mightier than humankind, John goes into a full-blooded meltdown and returns to the garden where he re-starts his campaign against the slugs.
The slugs, however, anticipated this reaction, as they realigned the sockets in the first place. Having set up a tripwire outside the patio door, they watch with glee as John flies through the air and lands face-first into a heap of mulch, which itself contains many worlds.
Walker does not witness the event because he is checking to see how relevant he is on Google which, suffice to say, is not very.
A Story Future
In the future, simultaneously, the Archbishop of New Australia is getting ready to hand in her resignation when she suddenly remembers that Julia Kristeva received her education at the hands of Dominican nuns. Imbued with newfound energy for reasons that are far too vulgar to go into here, the Archbishop throws her resignation in the trash and immediately runs to her observatory.
The observatory is a luminous room with one gigantic window. There is a table with a few pencils and bubble gum wrappers. The Archbishop picks up a pencil, and she starts to write. She figures that because one single bit is equal to one binary digit, there must be 4.7 times as much information when a single letter from the 26-letter alphabet is received. Therefore, she thinks, there must be 14 times as much information when the word GOD is received.
Now fully dedicated to knocking about with all this theological stuff, she thinks it would be a good idea to feed this information into the telescope’s internal computer. She does this and watches in awe as the telescope points toward the part of space from which God undoubtedly emanates. The Archbishop steps up to the telescope and looks into the viewfinder to recoil in horror—all she can see is John Friedlander’s slug-infested garden, which in the years that followed his unfortunate death became a rather successful tourist attraction.
A Knotty Problem
Archbishoprics aside, there is a branch of geometry called knot theory which concerns itself with a particular kind of knot. This special knot is known as an alternating diagram, a knot where the string being knotted crosses over and under itself in alternate waves. The funny thing about the alternating diagram is that it cannot be unknotted. This brings into question whether the eponymous knot should even be thought of as a knot; after all, what makes a knot a knot is the fact that it can be knotted in the first place, then unknotted if necessary. Doubtlessly many great men and women have tasked themselves with understanding the alternating diagram and in doing so have forgotten entirely about past, present, and future history.
Whether any of this would make an audience souped-up on pain medication titter is another matter for another day. There is little point to worrying about IQs and if we might learn anything from the slugs; it is surely that human beings make terrific mulch.
And Now a Word From Our Sponsor
Hear more from Walker Zupp, here. If you enjoyed meeting Walker Zupp, you might enjoy the interview with Chris Clancy, author of the dystopian novel, We Take Care Of Our Own.
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