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Tim Bobbin's Journal

What species am I down here in this hold-all cell with the sheep, pigs, goats, rabbits, chickens..? And the rats, everywhere the rats. Am I a rat; a ratta-tat-rat rating in this submarine shed shedding salt water tears into my torn shoes? Or am I a weeviled spontaneous life form born virginically from a box of unleavened biscuits? They picked me up from the raft, washed me down, pierced me with needles, blew smoke up my arse and attached leeches and scorpions to my throat looking for memory. They scraped shit from under my fingernails and muck from between my toes and gave me a receipt signed by their captain. Then they left me with an apple and a smoked herring and pen and paper and a dictation machine just in case. The gizmo works by sunlight so it’s useless down here where there’s only the batteries in the eyes of the beasts by which to see if it’s night or day.

That was months ago and sometimes I can hear them up there around their table forever going on about their Nomedia; what it’s like, where it is, what strange people they will discover there, and methinks by the time we find their Nomedia they shall have fancified it into a thing so solid in their hearts that it will block out all true vision of this new world and we shall sail right on and on with them grandees gainsaying the noses before their eyes.

I have no memory acceptable to them; they say I am traumatized or that my testimony is inadmissible. Perhaps that is the case but if they would only listen to my phantasms once in a while I’d knock some nonsense into their heads. So I write

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them down and if I had a crate of Champagne I could bottle them and file away my drunken soul in a great glass library down there for all the swimming beasts to read.

“You can tell us, we like tales, we of the long tails Tim Bobbin...” Night after night they go on like this, the rats. “Tell us the one about Christopher Columbus and the tomatoes and potatoes...” Why not? There’s a swell developing and we shan’t sleep. A memoire – a summat. I think I remember – and a carbon copy for the big bottle bank of submerged history and another copy for the captain. “We all know this story so well,” said Leibniz, the biggest rat who was not a rat at all but a coypu, a clone gone wrong. “Why don’t we act it like a play? I’ll be the King of Spain, Leavis the ram can be Christopher Columbus and of course Madame Hogarth, the great white pig, must be the Queen.”

Action! KING FERDINAND OF SPAIN : AMERICA?

What d’you mean,

YOU LOST

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS : It wasn’t there. We went back like you asked, followed the sun, exactly the same course as before in ’92, but it wasn’t there, we just kept on and on and on and came to the east Indies. Of course that’s what we set out to do first time but America got in the way – sort of. This time : no America. So you see your majesty, the earth is round.

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KING : You can’t just miss America. Didn’t you try to find it, sail up and down, round in circles for a bit, check your charts, all that stuff – compasses, sextants, SatNav? COLUMBUS : Spent ages looking your majesty, that’s why we got back so late. Sorry. QUEEN ISABELLA: About 500 years late. KING : Let’s get this right Christoff. You lost America; the whole continent, north, south and middle; Alaska, Alabama, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Los Alamos, lost, lost, lost, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Tierra de Fuego, cowboys and indians, the Grand Canyon... COLUMBUS : Fraid so, nothing there any more; a hiatus, a lacuna. KING : Some people lose handkerchiefs, some people lose their umbrellas and spectacles. Other people lose wallets and credit cards, but he loses America! QUEEN : He is from Genoa. KING : You know what the penalty is for losing a continent Christoff? QUEEN : Some men lose their trousers... COLUMBUS : I’ll go and have another look. KING : No. We will have another look. I’m just going to turn on this T.V. set and press this button and...Olla! C.N.N., N.B.C., Disney Channel... Funny, there’s no signal, no bloody picture. Someone’s been messing about with that

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dish again. Anyway, no matter, that’s America Christoff. It was there yesterday. COLUMBUS : It is just not there. QUEEN : He is from Genoa dear. KING : Bloody communist! QUEEN : Don’t browbeat the poor man Ferdinand, let me help. Look Columbus, when you were waiting for an audience just now, down in the plaza, I was watching you from the balcony and you seemed a little bit anxious. COLUMBUS : Wouldn’t you have been..? QUEEN : I was watching and you know what you were doing? COLUMBUS : Waiting. QUEEN : You were smoking dear boy, smoking. You got through two packets of Marlboro. You know what that means? COLUMBUS : Tobacco comes from America. KING : He’s quick this Eyetalian. QUEEN : Tobacco comes from America – just like tomatoes and potatoes...

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KING : You say tomatoes and I say tomaytoes, I say potaytoes and you say potatoes...bananas, banaynas... Get me a cardinal somebody – or a bishop at least, let’s beat a confession out of this lying scoundrel. He’s stolen America, sold it off to the English... QUEEN : Not bananas dear... KING : I need an inquisitor – Torquemada! QUEEN : You say Torquemada and I say Torquemayda... COLUMBUS : That reminds me, we did meet a bishop, you just reminded me. We did find a little bit of America. KING : Now, at last we might be getting somewhere. Hold the Inquisition. COLUMBUS : Alcatraz. We found Alcatraz and there was just this one poor little prisoner – a bishop – name of Berkeley... QUEEN : You say Berkeley and I say Barclay, doesn’t scan. KING : Protestant! COLUMBUS : We rescued him, actually, no we took him captive, he didn’t want to be rescued. KING : You’re playing for time now, stalling. You’re going to wish that you’d stayed in Alcatraz.

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COLUMBUS : He might be able to explain... This bishop, Berkeley, he did say he had an idea. QUEEN : Let’s find out... KING : Wheel in your bishop then. He should be worth a ransom at least. BERKELEY : My Spanish is a trifle rusty. KING : So, we have an arch heretic in the court of their most Holy Majesties. BERKELEY : Ah, I see you have satellite, may I? There we are – can’t find C.N.N. Here’s Al jazeera though. You think that you see the Middle East here? KING : Of course. BERKELEY : Wrong! All you see is an idea of the Middle East. I fact whichever channel I tune into all that you can see is an idea of this country and that person or such and such an event. Merely a collection of ideas. None of it has a material existence. Take the back off your telly and you won’t find America or Iraq or Australia. I’ve been waiting a long time for a tool like this which would explain my theory. KING : Tomfoolery! Heresy! Witchcraft! BERKELEY : Now allow me to suggest that all your T.V. programmes are made – shall we use the word – “Created” by God. COLUMBUS : Or Berlusconi...

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BERKELEY : Now God makes billions of trillions of programmes every day so we cannot possibly watch them all. But it is possible for us to watch any programme created by Him. But remember, these programmes do not have a material existence; they are merely ideas inside the Mind of God. What is impossible is for us to view a programme not created by God. COLUMBUS : Or Berlusconi... KING : The man’s mad. I want to know what you’ve done with America. I’m going to phone the State Department. QUEEN : I think you need a Jesuit – or better still a Dominican, certainly not Condoleeza. KING : I’m gone... QUEEN : No need to slam the door. BERKELEY : I have a feeling he’s not going to get very far. Not a bad idea of your’s Madam, to bring in a Dominican. They put up a convincing performance against the Albigensians. Where was I? COLUMBUS : We can’t watch any programme not made by God because there’s no such thing. BERKELEY : Quite – but remember this is only an analogy for the entire universe. Because God is omnipotent and all-seeing he can watch all His programmes all the time at the same time and, if He were to close His eyes for a second on any programme then it would cease to exist and we could not therefore receive it. It would have dropped out of the schedules.

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QUEEN : So that’s why we get all those repeats? BERKELEY : Only an analogy Madam. What I am saying applies to everything; everyone, the whole of Creation. Everything you or I perceive are mere ideas in the Mind of God. When we do not perceive them they have no reality, they are just memories. QUEEN : So Bishop, my husband no longer exists because at the moment I cannot see or hear him? BERKELEY : Don’t worry, he’ll be back, and you’ll know where to find him if he doesn’t come back. QUEEN : In that case why can’t Christopher find America? BERKELEY : Because – do I have to repeat myself? – we can only find the things we have lost because God can see them when we can’t. All things are visible at all times to God – for Him our Time and Space don’t exist; all is one and one is all – but we can only see things which He sees. COLUMBUS : So America? BERKELEY : It seems my boy that God has closed his eyes on America – all He sees is Alcatraz.

Curtain **********

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“Now I am quite exhausted,” said Hogarth, the great white sow. Leibniz was perplexed, sniffing the air, “We didn’t cast anyone in the role of Berkeley but someone was speaking his part, but I couldn’t see anyone.” “It must be a rabbit,” said Hobbes, a billy goat who rarely said anything but who considered himself to be superior to all the others because, unlike them, he would never be eaten thanks to his rank, rank perfume. “There are rabbits on the ship’s manifest but I’ve never seen one nor heard one, it’s got to be a rabbit.” I had supposed that the rabbits had simply been eaten before I joined this ship of fools but a black rabbit might go unnoticed down here in the blackness, listening to my ranting long day’s night after short night’s day, learning the scripts. “You see,” said the disembodied voice of Bishop Berkeley, “my name is Berkeley, so I couldn’t resist, especially when you didn’t allocate the part. I am a rabbit, but not black. You can’t see me because I’m silver.” “But you can’t be,” said Hogarth. “If you are silver you must be really visible, you must shine almost.” “Wrong!” squeaked the voice. “I’m perfect silver, like a mirror and you can’t see a mirror can you?” “Of course I can. When I was young I spent half the day looking at a mirror,” said the pig. “Wrong!” said the voice. “All you saw was yourself reflected, and the things around you, no one has ever actually seen a mirror; never the mirror itself. That’s why they call me Berkeley. Now pig, look underneath the brown cow’s udders, that’s where I am right now, get close and what do you see?”

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“My God! I can see myself; not much light but enough, a shape like a rabbit but with a beautiful sow’s face...Gracious, now it’s gone!” The brown cow knew that the rabbit lived in the bran tub but said nothing, didn’t want all those rats jumping around in there. Leibniz, measuring his words, began to construct a critique, “But we can touch a mirror; it has substance...” But the rats wouldn’t allow him to go on: “White rabbit chased by Alice, Through the looking glass to the Palace. Alice is marrying one of the guards, A soldier’s life is terribly hard, Said Alice!” “Perhaps Nomedia is through the looking glass..” sighed Leavis, “a shimmering chimera.”

**********

Later... (Although time and tenses have little meaning here.)

The sea is stressed tonight. The beasts are frightened. Leavis the ram goes on banging his crumpled horns against the black planks of the ship’s hold. We are many feet below the water line and the tiniest puncture would be disaster. He won’t stop. “I’m a ram and ramming is what I do,” he says. I tell him that if he had half a brain he would be really dangerous, but he is an intelligent, well educated animal short only in what they call common sense. “I know this is suicidal,” he says, “but you are going to butcher me soon anyway.”

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I have to distract him. He likes listening to stories but his tastes are conservative. I try the “What if?” formula: “What if they discovered a continent they thought was Nomedia but which turned out to be Not Nomedia?” “Just give me ‘Once upon a time’,” he says, “with a beginning, a middle and a neatly satisfying conclusion.” “O.K.! Is you belief nicely suspended then? “Once upon a time the great western civilizations discovered a new land. They sailed around it, flew over it, took satellite pictures. It had over a million people, thriving manufacturing and agricultural sectors, an impressive transport infrastructure, imaginatively designed public buildings and a stunning range of sports facilities. But it had no ships and no aircraft. Its defences were exclusively natural. Around its perimeter stood a wall of unassailable cliffs scoured smooth by rampant seas at their feet and piercing black clouds with their pinnacled summits, save for one narrow cove with a paved jetty and sandy beach sloping gently upward to a wooded valley. The great western liberal powers (which called themselves acronymically GWELP) tried unceasingly to make contact with the natives of this land. They saturated it with telecommunications signals at every known frequency and in every known language, they dropped leaflets and videotapes and played music from offshore vessels and staged fireworks displays. And the great eastern civilized powers (known as GREPO) did the same. And it was all vanity. The new land did not respond one word. And they called this land NOMEDIA because of this silence and prayed in their chapels and temples for the deaf/mute peoples of NOMEDIA and were filled with compassion and pity.

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Many were the temptations to send succour. The GWELP alliance frettet in case their charity might seem to be less than that of the GREPO states and thus a mission was sent out in great secrecy comprising experts in all forms of communications; information scientists, linguists, speech therapists and a hundred other skills. Their ship moored by the cobbled jetty and waited for three days. Then, on the fourth morning, they rose to be greeted by children; hundreds of little children splashing in the clear water puddles, laughing and chattering to each other in a tongue which, although it was strange, was clearly a modern human language. In only a few hours the GWELPS with their machines were able to converse with the children and the children were quickly picking up the English, French and Spanish of the GWELPS without any artificial aids. Alas, the missionaries now faced a predicament. What to do next? Their mission had been accomplished peremptorily. In fact there was no need for their mission at all. These were not a tongueless, earless people. Moreover the do-gooders had no contingency plan. Their predicament worsened. “We would very much like to look around your beautiful country please.” “Fuck off!” “We should be really pleased to meet your elders; please can you take us to see them or can you ask them to come and meet with us?” “Our elders have told us to tell you to fuck off!” “But – surely – there must be many things we can learn from each other...” “FUCK OFF!”

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And so the first GWELP expedition to the country which was clearly not NOMEDIA ended. Very shortly afterwards a GREPO ship arrived and left in a similar state of disarray and disappointment. A year later the GWELPS elected a new president who was determined to establish proper diplomatic relations and a whole new academic discipline arose out of the question of how to initiate peaceful and positive exchanges with NOTNOMEDIA. Another mission was despatched, and another, and yet another, but the deadlock remained unbroken and the GWELPS began to suspect that the GREPOS had entered into a secret understanding with the NOTNOMEDIANS. This was nonsense of course and, as is the way with these things, the GREPOS nurtured similar suspicions. Now armed skirmishes occurred with increasing frequency between the two great powers in the waters off the new continent. Both were afraid that a full-scale war would result and so a peace conference was arranged and a secret peace treaty agreed. This became known as the Everlasting and Blessed Peace because never had such trust, harmony and co-operation been achieved between such mighty rivals in the history of the world.

Not a word came out of NOTNOMEDIA; never, never, never. But deserters, senile veterans and madmen still stand on street corners in the cities of the GWELPS and the GREPOS ranting and slobbering about mountains of dead and dying children with arms, legs and heads missing and a cobbled jetty running with blood.

**********

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“Do you know that painting; The Slave Ship, J.M.W. Turner’s greatest work?” said leavis. Why did he ask that question, at that precise moment? “Don’t mention Turner, I shall be seasick and the storm is getting worse.” The vessel was spinning and rocking. The upward swell wasn’t so bad but then there was this sensation of a great nothingness beneath us and a falling into a void, a black vortex in the ocean. My supply of empty bottles rolled musically across the floor of the hold and up and down the bulkheads as we keeled to starboard and then to port. “We are slaves; all of us down here,” bleated Leavis, “we shall all die very soon.” “Slavery’s been abolished,” I snapped back naively, but he had me picking at scabs; old souvenirs from which lymphed out curdled and clotted recollection. His name was Coal, or Cole, or Charbonnier or some such because he worked in the mines and because he was black. He was one of our Yorkshire slaves freed by Wilberforce, our Honourable

Member of Parliament. He told

me about this land far away which had been found and lost by a Frenchie. No, not Bonaparte, who was the only Frenchie we knew, but a sailor. Blackamoor Coal had been a powder monkey on La Perouse’s ship and then sold on to a wool merchant who took him home as a birthday present for his wife in Harrogate. Coal might even have been a Nomedian himself. He had this wicked fear of women and said they were all cannibals so he was happy to be freed from his mistress and from idle, decorative slavery in order to go down the pit. I know which shaft I would have chosen – slave or not. “Spare me the crudities please,” bleated Leavis. Coal told me how he had spent all his childhood underground. His birthplace was a place subject to frequent and

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prolonged innundation, it lay submerged for years on end but contained an extensive system of underground workings and huge natural caverns which could be sealed to keep out the water. Because of this geography all surface buildings were merely temporary structures. Coal would often sing to me a tiresome, tuneless hymn about his homeland – something like this:

Under the crust of the world, Away from all light, Is our commonwealth of iron and gold, Of coal and oil, Where the blind white serpents sing...

The rats in the wet shitty straw deep litter of the animal pens stirred like malignant tumours in a dead man’s chest and began to chorus the words, and then to extemporize:

Coiled and crustacean under your feet, Ready to fight, waiting to spring, We have smelled, we have tasted, Black Coal’s white meat...

Coal had been to NOMEDIA and these madmen up there want to take us back there. Coal made me promise to deliver a message if I was ever so ill-fated as to land in the place. “Let me guess,” said Leavis. “Pull the plug, pull the plug!”

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“Gulp the lup, gulp the lug, lug the glup, guggle, glup, upple, luggle, lupple, glug...” sang the rats.

**********

“What do they expect to find when they get to their NOMEDIA?” pleaded Hogarth the sow. “A land awash with milk and honey I think,” said Leavis. “Eldorado!” chorused the hungry rats grown thin on a diet of ship shit and ship’s biscuits. “Milk and honey will suit us fine but there’s not much to eat down a rich gold mine.” “All I want is a happy ending,” said Leavis, “a kingdom of vegetarians.” His plea moved me. After all he had stopped battering the wooden walls of our prison hold. Levers and tumblers were clicking and springing, unlocking secret compartments in my head; in my scrambled consciousness. I remembered the myth about the women of NOMEDIA killing their men. Do they eat them? They might kill me. They might bury me under a granite slab with an inscription. But if they have no media then there can’t be an inscription or worse – they might get it all wrong – TOM BIBBIN or MOT NIBBIB or BIMBO NIMBOB. “You’ll set off the rats if you aren’t careful,” cautioned Leavis. I don’t want to spend all eternity as a textual error, my identity lost in bastard words underlined with red and green Microsoft squiggles. This was too much for the rats, “False, false prognosis like the slanderous epithet, not to say epitaph, I smell a rat. We do the smelling that’s to be done here and we smell another mud-slinging, red herring hypothesis. Your appelation, your

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nomenclature, NOMEDIA, was cut and pasted by Bill Gates in revenge for their adopting Apple Mac. as their national default setting.” At this moment the captain descended the ladder and ordered us all to line up and shut up shipshape and Bristol fashion sort of order. “I’ve got here, in my hand, a computer model of NOMEDIA; a simulation, a statistical extrapolation of all the known and verifiable facts.” Rat ears twitched and rat noses snitched. Leibniz, the biggest rat who wasn’t really a rat at all, bared his rodent dentures, “Signed no doubt by his girlfriend, Virginia.” “Who is Virginia, what is she?” asked Hogarth. “Virginia Langley; a sybil, an oracle, a vestal, the font of all knowledge.” “Couldn’t spell Condoleeza I guess,” grunted Leavis. That did it, the rats loved that:

Condoleeza, Condoleeza, pretty little thing, Condoleeza dance, Condoleeza sing, Condoleeza, Condolleza, tho’ you’re very small, Standing there right next to George you’re ten feet tall.

At this the captain lost it, turned on his heel and made off up the ladder, looking back only to bellow, “Bobbin, get your crew in order, or next time I’ll bring the butcher down here.” He had dropped his paper into the straw; manna from Heaven and the rats had a decent meal at last.

**********

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For decades a favourite theme of the MEDIA has been the whales, creatures which are mammals like ourselves, lords of the oceans, social beasts who make music and use it to communicate across vast distances and which, above all, are gentle and vulnerable animals, always willing to play, but not to play games because they are utterly without guile. In past centuries the whales were merely a valuable material resource adding yearly increments to the process of capital accumulation but, more recently, they have been appropriated by the MEDIA as stars of the universal electronic zoo, copyrightprotected, taught the script, edited to fit the frame, made cuddly, transmogrified. Might it not be surprising if once in a while some of their elders yearned for the sharp cold taste of Ahab’s harpoons? And is it not surprising that for respite from ballyhoo sensible whales swim straight to NOMEDIA. So I, Tim Bobbin, Fellow of the Sisyphian Society of Dutch Loom Weavers, and an old Adept in the LANCASHIRE DIALECT (Heaw Arse wood wur I? *) It’s coming back, what was I doing in Yorkshire? So I, Tim Bobbin, following the best traditions, dived overboard straight into the whale’s mouth and down into its belly. Leviathan shit me out a week later, a kind of rebirth, in one of the great caverns of NOMEDIA. These caves are so immense that one has no sense of being enclosed. There are horizons rather than walls and clouds for ceilings. Illumination is provided by a system of glass tubes and brighter than the most radiant terrestrial desert sky. * Who else would I be?

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“I expect you’re thirsty.” It was my old friend Coal. “Your bottles come in very handy,” he winked a wide, white-eyed wink. “Sit down and I’ll give you the Welcome to NOMEDIA spiel.” Just then the whale farted almost blowing us over and then a greenish, slippery bubble came riding out on the wind, big as a supermarket, and when it burst, there were all the sheep, rats and all the other beasts from our ship who hadn’t ended their days on the captain’s table. “You didn’t even say Goodbye,” squeaked Leibniz. My turn to tell stories,” said Coal. “First thing to learn is NOMEDIANS are descended from a tribe of people who were conquered, colonised, enslaved and domesticated by the whales. That was tens of thousands of years ago and today the NOMEDIANS and the whales co-exist in an apparently equal relationship.” “How do you mean – ‘apparently?’” I said. “Just so. The whales appear to be the sleeping partners; the passive and permissive members of the alliance. The NOMEDIANS, whom you should always remember are human, have created a civilization with a technology and culture which is the most advanced in the world. But their social moraes, their value system, their psychology are much closer to those of the whales than to yours, Tim Bobbin.” “Surely though,” I queried, “the whales have a much inferior intelligence.” “Without a doubt, but that is of no significance whatsoever.” “But if these humans have only the psychology, the minds, of whales then what motivates them to improve, to invent, to create. How come they didn’t just stay as they were, content with a present state of being?” “Because they have to do something with their hands and their brains. But more important, because they are driven by a desire, a need to become more like the whales, in fact to actually become whales themselves. NOMEDIANS have no

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religion but they do have a myth that they are descended from whales. Originally their founding fathers may well have got to this place in just the same manner as you but the myth says that they were not merely transported and excreted but were spawned, born, out of the womb of Leviathan.” “But they don’t really believe..?” I said. “They believe they have to try. All their science has this as an ultimate goal.” “All of them believe this, there have to be doubters, sceptics?” “Yes and no. They don’t argue about it. There is never any conflict between whales so neither is there with NOMEDIANS.” “But...If they have all this science...The empirical facts..?” “Another thing you will find hard to grasp Tim Bobbin...NOMEDIANS don’t admit the existence of what you call FACTS.” “Come again...” “They recognise only things they call FICTS. Nothing can ever be treated as a FACT – with the one exception of the whales. All phenomena are ultimately false, lies, fictions. That way there can be questions but no answers, no disputes. A FACT is a singularity; a FICT is an infinity of multiplicities. FACTS are capable of being challenged, fought over, FICTS have the uncertainty principal built in.” Leibniz, the coypu, was nodding sagely, “I said that in 1703 you know.” “But you never published it...” smiled Leavis. “If it’s not in hard covers then it doesn’t exists. You gave the punters what they wanted; a hundred ways to prove the existence of God, but you still couldn’t prove that Leibniz exists.” “I should have put it between hard covers bound in sheepskin,” spat Leibniz. “reliure, bélier, reliure bélier... sang the rats. “O Random Access Memory!”

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“en peau de chagrin... ” wept the coypu. “But when the black man here says one of his FICT things ‘is’ something; ‘an infinity,’ for example, then is he not stating that as a FACT?” He had stopped crying. “Welcome to NOMEDIA, capital of the philo. cafes,” hummed the rats. “Feed them somebody please!” complained Coal. “To summarize – NOMEDIAN society is based upon co-operation not competition. The personal vices we imagine to be inevitable elements of a dynamic civilization: pride, deceit, greed, vanity and so on, are hardly present at all; there is no crime and no war. There is no such thing as property and therefore no Law. Offences are dealt with in a novel fashion. I may accuse someone of wrongdoing. When this happens the accused person almost always admits the fault, a punishment is then agreed between the accuser and the accused but it is the former who submits to the penalty not the wrongdoer – or someone else may volunteer to do so.” Hogarth the pig was listening intently by the waterside performing imaginary post-natal toiletries so, so meticulously. “Can we go back a bit, I’m lost. Tell us more about how the whales took control and how do they stay in charge?” “NOMEDIANS don’t talk about that much, don’t go in for history which they would tell you is all just a matrix of FICTS from which one may extrapolate any string of FICTS one fancies. They are good at this, it’s a real art form, but it wouldn’t satisfy a big fat sow. As far as I can work it out though, the whales simply swallowed up the inhabitants of a sinking archipelago and brought them here. The whales brought food and the humans built these submarine shelters for the whales. But the whales have always prevented escape attempts and seen off curious outsiders like yon Perouse. One or two things you should understand about whales – Melville got this right – they can turn nasty, don’t always allow free, unhindered

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passage through their guts, can chew you up and spit you out in bits. One emotion they learned from us humans is fear and, because they know fear, they keep control and keep hold on their ultimate sanction.” “THE PLUG, THE PLUG, THE PLUG!” sang the rats. Just then a whistle sounded and an electric train slid out from a side tunnel, heavy with passengers. There must have been forty or fifty trucks, half of which were empty cargo wagons. Then more trains arrives from smaller tunnels, all carrying coal. Our guide’s eyes ran tears of joy. “This is what it’s all about then, everything mechanized, the little wagons are bringing the coal from the deep seams and this is a central collection point. In a minute cranes will come down from the roof – now you will see the fabulous skyhook – and move the black stuff from the small trains onto the big one which will take it to the furnaces which fire the generators which provide all our power and make this civilization possible. There’s no smoke and no lost heat. It’s all too efficient for that...” “FACTS, FACTS, FACTS,” muttered Leibniz. “Now it’s time to talk to some NOMEDIANS,” said Coal. An elderly woman came over and embraced Coal and then took my hand, “Please don’t take him too seriously,” she began. “Whatever he’s been telling you, take it with a pinch of salt...” The rodent horde, whose numbers were growing, interrupted again. “Salt and coal, salt and coal; a pinch of salt and a lump of coal: witchcraft!” “My name’s Ellie and I’m not a witch. Coal still has vestiges of a slave mentality you know, and, when you’re a slave you escape into impossible fantasies. By the way, he’s not a NOMEDIAN. Like you he jumped overboard and got swallowed up. We had to cut off his chains and then he immediately ran away again. That’s

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his life story, can’t sit still, can’t make stable relationships, always afraid of being trapped; still, I am very fond of him, even though he believes I might eat him. I’d love to eat him mind...Only figuratively of course. “This is a big country and you are welcome. Anyone is welcome who passes through the belly of a whale.” “Coal says you think you yourselves can become whales..?” “That would be a miracle...Who knows? But improbable. No, what we are doing is converting this lump of rock into an artificial whale. It’s almost a sphere you know with an equator measuring over a thousand kilometres.” “So it could be a meteorite or an asteroid or something, fallen from outer space?” I suggested. “I don’t know. But we are not aliens, let me disabuse you of that notion.” “Not even, possibly, FICTITIOUSLY?” I ventured. “Just look at our people, do they look like aliens?” I watched the men and women working on the coal trains. They looked like ordinary, regular human types pressing buttons, blinking at electronic displays on big computer monitors, exchanging words and glances, scratching their noses, scratching their arses. I was convinced. Ellie continued. “Most of the time this world of ours floats around just beneath the ocean surface, sometimes we dive to collect food and minerals from the bottom, and then we have to surface to expel surplus sea water. In winter we rest under the ice. About one third of the rock is made from coal so we have more than enough power to do all of that and live in comfort. We do wonder though that, if we go on using up the coal and carving out our caverns, if NOMEDIA will become so light

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that it will rise onto the surface and become a ball rolling, out of control, across the sea.” “I hope you don’t mind me bringing my menagerie. They, well, just, sort of followed me.” “Thoughtful of you to bring your own food supply.” “I don’t think I could eat them now. I’ve gotten quite fond of them. I’d feel like a cannibal.” “Figuratively speaking,” she said. That didn’t sound quite right and I was trying to work out if it was an oxymoron, but she was obviously addicted to the expression. Hogarth, the pig, was nuzzling up between Ellie’s legs when the billy goat, Hobbes, who rarely spoke, butted his way onto the scene, “I wrote the book you know – Leviathan – that’s what we bucks are for, you know the word book comes from buck?” “En peau de chagrin,” sighed Leibniz. “NOMEDIA is my kind of society – a Leviathan – ruled by leviathans,” said the goat. The rats were quarrelling, “Nasty, brutish and short...Roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball...On a round ball a workman that hath copies by, can lay an Europe, Afric, and an Asia, And quickly make that, which was nothing, ALL.” “That’s me you’re quoting dimwits,” shouted Hobbes, “and Marvell and Donne – my century you see.” “Marvell; he was a Yorkshireman,” said Coal.

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I felt my memory slipping; there was something cross-threaded about it and this lot weren’t helping. Even Ellie was doing it. “We have a great problem of circularity,” she said, “like Glasgow, we may end up going roond and roond...” I was lost totally and half expecting Zebedee to say, “Time for bed”.

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