The Coach chattered his beak again as Bunnu reemerged from his daze to find himself back on the banks of Placenta-C.
“My dear Bunnu…” he said softly. “There is much at work in the way of things of which, I fear, we can know very little. And sometimes it’s there. It’s all around us, but we fail to notice. You understand?”
“I do.”
Sunset
I.
The sun had crept behind the buildings to the south. A brisk wind now gusted over the river, causing the tents on the opposite side to flap.
“You understand then, that it would be ill-advised to neglect the possibility of something, beyond your awareness and capacity to inductively reason, having a profound influence upon your Will, regardless of how you might struggle against it.”
“That’s not something I can control, but…yes, I do regard the phenomenon as plausible.” Bunnu said with a sigh.
“Do you say this with conviction?” the Coach chattered suspiciously as his beak smiled menacingly at Bunnu, “Or, simply to appease me, so that I’ll get to the point? Tell me, dear Bunnu. Tell me why you regard the phenomenon as plausible.”
“I believe…well I don’t know truly what I believe…” Bunnu said slowly and carefully, “In the context of free will and independent action versus that of fate and cosmic determinism, there is a lot that could be said. Surely, you wish to know of the motivations that guide my will and my actions. I cannot say that I am completely an agent of self-determined free will, nor am I willing to admit that I am a slave to some inscrutable deterministic machine. My take on such things is, actually, admittedly convoluted...and, well…I don’t know quite how to put this without sounding like an Algorithmist—which, I assure you, is not my intention—but I think we are limited in our ability to ascertain the true mechanisms behind even our own behavior and action. We cannot expect to understand our own drives, desires and inclinations any more than the Mole Flies do, for we are just as dependent on our flawed and stultifying perceptions. I equate our perceptions to those of the Mole Flies because it may very well be that our constructs of reality, as decoded by our physical perceptions and re-encoded by our mechanisms for expression and discourse, are done so in distinct, albeit disconnected and disjointed fragments and are, thus, subject to providing not exactly a clear and definitive understanding of the elements that pervade Awareness, but rather, an approximation. If one were to look at our perceptions as a means of determining the parameters of Truth, one can only get so close, while still remaining at a distance—which isn’t to say that we can’t get close. We most certainly can, but perhaps we can only approach the Truth of our circumstances by degrees. It’s a bit like that mathematical paradox in which we attempt to reduce a numerical value to 0 by splitting it repeatedly and infinitely into halves. Half of a half of a half…but we never quite reach zero. And so, we are left with gaps…”
“Trenches?” the Coach persisted with a saturnine smile.
“I don’t know. Maybe…to be honest, there is very little, at this point, that I am able to say about it with complete conviction. I can, however, say that it is not simple to understand that which guides behavior.”
“I see…and what, dear Bunnu, would you say if I told you that somewhere in certain indeterminate… gaps of your past, you have, in sum total, committed atrocities unimaginable, but have, until now, failed to see them as atrocities, or even addends thereof. That you have, in fact, either been misled or somehow managed to remain insensible to the unconscionable nature of your acts over the course of time.”
“I would say that that, too, is plausible…but the matter of which you speak, as well as its implicit severity, may also be a matter of perception. We cannot equate our actions to a universal sense of truth or morality without resorting to subjective idealization. Again, we are insensible to that which truly guides behavior and action. Whatever atrocities I have allegedly committed are only atrocities according to human constructs of virtue and justice: in particular, to jurisprudence. Whatever I have done, my intentions were not malicious, but born of what I assumed, at the time, to be my independent will. All the same, the purportedly atrocious nature of my behavior could also very well have been as instinctual as the Mole Flies’ responses to their Queen’s aromatic directives. If this is the case, what other recourse would I have had, but to commit these very actions?”
“Ah…so I see you understand the nature of the smell. And yet, I must caution on your behalf that matters, seen to unwittingly, often bear brute and devastating consequences that the conscious mind would otherwise be hard-pressed to concoct knowingly, when left to its own devices. We cannot excuse ourselves for the consequences of all our actions. Don’t you agree?”
“So…then, what is it exactly that I’ve done unwittingly that has had such severe repercussions?”
“I cannot say specifically. A consequence bears a series of causes, though none of them can stand alone perfectly. Your actions are entrenched in circumstance. That much is certain. Therefore, I am unable to state specifically whether one act or the other has been fundamentally right or wrong by human constructs of virtue or justice because I do not know enough details about each situation to make such a determination. I am, however, at liberty to say that, in sum, the atrocities with which you have been charged are linked to consequences brought about by actions or a series of actions over time that you may have undertaken willfully or found yourself committed to without seeing their long-term effects. But ignorance to such things does not grant one immunity to the human institutions of law and so, you must be charged. Or so I am given to understand.”
“Right…then, what am I being charged with?”
“Before we get to that,” the Coach said, “I would like to offer my assistance. That is why I have asked to meet with you before you are charged. I do not agree with your actions and cannot offer my full assistance. Additionally, the amount that I can give depends largely on what you can do for me. I do, however, have a certain degree of influence over local politicians who can overturn many of these charges. But you must understand that I want something in return.”
“Why are you willing to help me?”
“Because you are a member of the League. And because I am now in a position to resolve, with your assistance, a certain matter that has been in my charge.”
“I’m not a member of the League anymore. My connections to them have been severed. At the moment, I have no associations or acquaintanceships that I can be held to. I am an individual entity, free from the obligations of a group. The actions I take are my own.”
“That’s not your decision to make.” The Coach shook his head slowly. His beak seemed to be gloating about something. Bunnu felt surging through him a vehement hatred for the beak. Not so much for the Coach, but just the beak, as if they were rivals, though he couldn’t quite understand for what.
“Right!” Bunnu threw his hands up in frustration. “Let’s get down to brass tacks here. Who are you and what’ll you have of me? Why am I even here?”
The Coach’s eyes disappeared again into the soup of macromolecules that comprised his face. He inhaled deeply and his arms rose slowly and gracefully at his sides. “I speak to you…” he said in a voice that seemed to emerge from behind what sounded like a thin curtain of falling water, “from a place far away: through spectral fields of such vastness that I am a mere particle, spinning about in orbit—sometimes evolving, sometimes devolving in evanescent sentience over a probabilistic course of uncertain trajectory. For brief intervals of time, semblance descends upon the frontiers of my awareness and I feel myself diffuse to the perimeters of what had been the interstices of a larger, more static superstructure, until I breathe again to fulfill a single, unalterable purpose: to collect on debts unsettled. I am an ambiguous spirit in an unambiguous state, left to settle the affairs outstanding of an entity I once may have been. And what remains of my previous incarnation is a seemingly innocuous light: dim, ye
t piercing as it penetrates my opaque, cloud-like myopia into a shimmering dusk light that slowly widens to incredible scope and clarity, as reminiscences alight upon me softly like snowflakes. I remember this reality and it remembers me. I emerge again in the very same moment that I had left behind eons ago, but no one detects my absence and I feel a renewed, unquenchable sense of purpose…”
“To collect on debts unsettled…” Bunnu mused.
“Precisely,” the Coach said with a slow bow.
II.
“It is not of money that I speak. The monetary obligations of the debt have already been paid in full, albeit not by those parties from whom payment was sought. The matter now extends beyond mere payment, itself, to the very epicenter of a sense of satisfaction that remains unfulfilled. It is a matter of principle, because it was not the debtor that endeavored to satisfy the obligation, but an organization of investors that extended beyond the scope of this situation: a group of bearded men in top hats and tuxedos who intervened in this matter to pay off the monetary obligations of the debt, thus, leaving the creditor unable to gain the sense of personal fulfillment that had been sought. And so, an incomplete feeling remains. It is thus that I must know the whereabouts of your sister. How long has it been since you’ve seen her?” the Coach said, sticking his chest out with his back arched and elbows out, the palms of his hands seeming to support the lower back, causing him—clad in that bizarre robe— to look like some kind of aging rooster druid.
“Who?” Bunnu responded mystified.
“Didi! DIDI!” Ottoman-13 piped in immediately from behind, seemingly annoyed at something, though it wasn’t very clear what it could have been.
“Oh. She’s not-”
“How long ?” the Coach insisted.
“God…I don’t know. Didi, eh? I guess about 220 years or so?”
“Let a little time slip by you then.” Ottoman said matter-of-factly.
“You know how these things can be,” Bunnu said shaking his head, only to be met by silence. Apparently, both Ottoman and the Coach were expecting him to say something more about it. But he had nothing more to say. “What…?”
“Nothing…” Ottoman said slowly with a sigh. “For a moment there, I thought you were going to explain something...more.” Ottoman seemed upset about something.
Bunnu looked past him to see giant flatworms creeping along the mud of the banks, some burrowing out of holes in the ground, some descending downward in a spiral along the trunk of a tree: all of them converging on the tree branch from which hung the sacred pig—the Lesser Bison-144 rather—who was now in the process of giving his own lecture in a voice that could best be described as a droll attempt at an academic sounding accent of indeterminate origin. Suspended in mid-air by the hooks attached to his ears, this pig-like creature now used a pointer to motion toward the blackboard on its easel, proclaiming enthusiastically to his audience of flatworms, “Und hier, ve haf ze Amimu Minanga matrix of ersatz realities, vich shows us truly zat all high mathematics zerves to do is to beget higher mathematics. Ze mathematical language of ze universe can only describe disjointed parts of ze theoretical whole! In zeeking to understand ze fundamental elements zat underlie ze Universe, we zeek truly to understand ourselves. And zus, it is a never-ending process of zelf-discovery. Just like flatworm reproduction, no? You know? Ahhh…you hermaphrodites haf no zense of humor! Go back to your penis fencing, or vatever veird zex rituals you filthy creatures engage in to decide vich one of you plays ze role of ze man und vich one ze role of ze woman venn you are knocking ze boots!”
“Filthy pig…” Bunnu uttered contemptuously under his breath.
The Coach ignored the sacred pig, “A debt remains unsettled, my dear Bunnu. See to it, by whatever means necessary that this matter is taken care of and I can use the leverage of the League to clear you of many of the atrocities you have unwittingly committed. And when I say, ‘by whatever means necessary…’ I mean that you must take whatever measures you see fit to settle this debt. You must understand that this is a matter of principle. The terms of the debt itself are no longer important.”
“I have no idea what you expect me to do,” Bunnu said shaking his head. He was starting to feel tired and his head was pounding. “Anyway, I don’t know what I’m being charged with.”
The Coach turned silently to Ottoman, who seemed to be preoccupied by something. He immediately snapped to attention and nodded, before proclaiming in a formal tone, “Mr. Bunnu, you have been charged by the Republic with one count of defamation of character in the first degree-“
“Defamation of-“ Bunnu sputtered, “b-but…that’s outrageous. Whose character have I defamed?”
“Your own,” Ottoman said in a simple dutiful tone. “You have also been charged with one count of harboring an imaginary friend without a license. The imaginary friend, in question, a Mr. Cornelius-“
“Coronado!”
“Pardon…a Mr. Coronado, who is also wanted for questioning, in regards to reports of an illicit affair with a married woman.”
“I can’t speak to that claim. You’ll have to talk to him about that.”
“We certainly will,” Ottoman said in a polite, yet formal tone, “In addition to the aforementioned charges, we also have aiding and abetting a known war criminal. You lent money to a Mr. Motiwala shortly before he disappeared.”
“In his letter, he told me he was sick…”
“Nonetheless, what you did is an arrestable offense.,” Ottoman retorted, seeming to lose his composure slightly.
“Yeah…OK.”
Ottoman took a deep breath and allowed his muscles to relax, so as to shed aside that tone of authority he had taken on up until now and address Bunnu person-to-person, “We aren’t trying to vilify you. I know it may seem that way, but the law also seeks to be reasonable. To be honest, the way the criminal proceedings are going these days, the courts are throwing out these sorts of charges claiming them as petty misdemeanors. The judges seem to feel that these little, insignificant charges only serve to create unnecessary paperwork and tie up the courtrooms without reasonable cause. So, you could probably get off with a fine, or a warning, if you get a judge who’s willing to listen to you plead your case.”
“Well…that’s good to know.”
“It would be. But there are other charges I haven’t told you about. Serious ones.”
“Well, then, I prithee to proceed.”
Ottoman nodded as he held his breath to regain his composure. He continued again in an official tone, “Mr. Bunnu, you have also been charged with one count of harboring, one count of affiliation with, and sixty-two thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine counts of conspiracy to aid in the sustenance and care of a known Legal Non-Entity…”
“Legal Non-Entity?” Bunnu responded mystified, “O.! You’re talking about O., aren’t you? Are you implying that my association with him as my adopted brother bears criminal charges?”
“We are, indeed, talking about O.” the Ottoman said in his human voice, “Your adopted brother. The wealthy industrialist. The Legal Non-Entity.”
“Wealthy industrialist…?” the Coach said with a chatter of the beak, “You’re being too kind, Officer Ottoman. Unless you are talking about a different O. from the one with whom history will now invariably be forever acquainted. O., the robber baron and notorious war profiteer…in the eyes of the Republic, a nasty figure indeed!”
“War profiteer?” Bunnu responded in shock. “Well, you certainly can’t say that I’m responsible for that. How is any of this an atrocity? We were his family! And what about you, Ottoman? Who are you to talk of past atrocities? You killed off your whole village!”
“I did what I had to do in order to survive…” Ottoman responded mechanically. “But don’t tell me you’re comparing your situation to mine. That’s…rather insulting.”
“Insulting…right! And you, Coach! I’ve heard stories about you! Beheadings? Evisceration
s? Certainly not actions befitting of a coach. You, if anyone, should be put on trial. Not me.”
“My dear Bunnu…” the Coach said with a pitying sigh, “I’m afraid you fail to see the severity of your own actions. A terrible fate may yet befall you, should you fail to realize the repercussions of what you have done.”
Across the river, the drumbeats ceased. The sky had darkened and shadows of half-breeds and Hentai Chefs were packing up and taking down the tents.
“I thank you both kindly for your time. Officer, you are free to go about your business,” the Coach said to Ottoman. He turned to Bunnu, his beak seeming to gleam in the moonlight, as though taking great pleasure at his forthcoming misery. “Bunnu, you and I will meet again in due time. In the meantime, you have much to think about.”
Bunnu remained silent, seemingly mesmerized by the beak.
“It’s time to go.” Ottoman said grabbing Bunnu’s arm again and squeezing it firmly.
Ottoman-13 signaled to his subordinates, who were still having a chat with the Coach’s men further down the bank and the four of them made their way back up the stairs and into the Dowa District. The sweet melody of a tiny bird reached Bunnu’s ears as he climbed.
Spring would surely be here soon.