The OMASTERS - Primo
It is now, according to local clocktime, 11:11. We cannot be certain that this does not mean 23:11 according to Doctor Adamantino's watch. @ 23:11, as the time was called by the chronometer on a ship at sea, roiling on the winedark, the Okeanos, as well the sea of galaxies in the night sky as the salt deep. The ship, she is the ADAMANTINOS, her Captain the Good Doctor. Our course, as last indicated in the log, is still fluttering: "STATE: von Foerster Flippity."
Primo spun on the steersman's seat. The interiors on the bridge and in some of the Higher Hierarchy's staterooms had received telepathic inspiration from the von Furstenbergs: the cybernetic seat at the helm was upholstered with the draped pelt of a snow leopard, backed with silk and felt, with a tag, "VOM FURSTENBERGEN." He slid the sole of his Argentine leather slipper along the finely knotted carpet (on a rich red background, "medallions or roses" in the shape of Double rDorjes, outlined in blue). The chair slowed to a stop facing the Crystal Navigation Table, on which were a small pile of books.
G. Spencer Brown, LAWS OF FORM
Dante Alighieri, LA DIVINA COMMEDIA
N.J.A. Sloane, A HANDBOOK OF INTEGER SEQUENCES
Oscar Ichazo, THE HUMAN PROCESS
James Joyce, FINNEGANS WAKE
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY
These were arrayed on the glass tabletop of a display and work area, which was one of the classic long missing original Mies van der Rohe pieces from the German pavilion at the Barcelona Exhibition of 1929.
"Von, VOM, van der Rohe, three 'from's' all in a row. German, Austrian, Dutch: the preposition from. If we knew our preposition, that is, if we had a fix in space, then we could perhaps plot a course, converting our remaining Resistence Energy, either to neutralizing the flutter of the 'von Foerster Flippity,' or to cascading us cleanly, if blindly--or at least with one-way blindness--out of this domain."
Then the penny dropped, as they say, and the little light went on. Primo spied a penny lying atop the tin of ten Balkan Sobranies. It was tails. "Can't see the date that way." He picked it up, thinking himself to be a Lucky Reckoner, not peeking at the heads side, and flipped it up with his right thumb "Smack!" On the back of his left hand, tails again. Once more, this time heads. Heads. And it was the last missing coin slot in his penny collection. "Just never can tell when you're going to find one that fits."
Some Scrabble/Qabala pieces were scattered on the carpet. An M, an F, an R. "Muthafucker!" Primo scouted around the chromed steel legs of the glass crystal table. "Oh." He picked up a fourth letter. It was an "0" with the numerical value 70 in tiny numbers. "Omicron, little o, with a value of seventy in Greek. 'Ain' in the Arabic Abjad, the Eye. Needle eye, Third Eye, Eye of God." Primo reached for a Huichol yarn structure woven as the Eye of God, twirled it and set its base in the hole of the inkstand.
On the keyboard he entered the association searched for EYE, 70, 0 and the other letters with corresponding values: F = 6, M = 40, and for the Arabic R, ra he put 200, but for the Greek R, rho, 100. On the color TV monitor, the Eye of Horus image appeared, of lapis lazuli and gold, as from the treasures of King Tutankhamon. On the Ikonic Network's Association Scanner, Primo logged inputs, He poured a neat glass of Osborne Oloroso BC 200 Sherry, and settled back on the snow leopard skin for the spectacle.
A scorpion image referenced volume One of Science and Civilization in China, with the number 10,000. Scorpion in a sand circle, two to the sixth power, 64. Sixty four squares: chess, the Zoroastrian game of Asha, zero-sum, black and white, Ahriman and Ahura Mazda, the I Ching.
The foursquare probabilities of Great and Lesser Yin and Yang flashed in Primo's inner neural graphics terminal as four points of differently colored light, which became the corners of a mandala as the arms of a double rDorje in the resplendent optical wavelengths associated with the conventional Tibetan Dhyani Buddhas: properly, Sambhogakaya, golden yellow, red and green. Then oscillating on the z-axis of this particolored plane, the white of Chenrezi and its opposite node, as black as the Egyptian cloth of the Kiswah, yearly draped anew, calligraphed in gold and silver with panels and bands in Jali Thuluth. White and black in the checkerboard of the Kahlif's personal guards of the technicolor Thief of Baghdad, in the version with Sabu; the Sufi's harlequin that made its way West in an Aria da Capo of the Commedia dell' Arte. Two pyramids in space resolved themselves in the form of a cube, still oscillating, perhaps a hypercube of Primo's consciousness, the color of the cyclamen flower.
Kurt von Meier
Circa 1974