Dan Dan and the Noodles of Despair

The Machine - Part 1

He seizes Daniel's arm and walks him aggressively down into a dimly lit basement room. Daniel struggles to get his bearings, unable to see the walls, he has no way of knowing how big the room is.

At the bottom Bill turns, his gaunt features accentuated by the blue light shining from within the glass staircase.

'I expect you are wondering what's going on here, what I am going to do with the sheep, why I am building an army, what is The Machine? - yes, I imagine you are wondering what my motives are, what I want?'

Pausing for dramatic effect on the last raised tone. 'Well I will tell you, and when I am sure you understand - when I can see by the look in your eyes of realisation that there is nothing you can do to stop me, then I will destroy you.'

Pausing for a moment and then turning to Daniel, he commences what seems like a well-rehearsed performance. Every word is carefully chosen, every nuance perfectly placed. A perfect marriage of Shakespeare and too many Macchiatos for one person to drink.

'Those fools in Trumptonia think they can use me to do their dirty work, but I have a big surprise for them, Hah! Oh yes - I can tell you, I have been watching them for years,' he sneers with an acrid drawl.

'I know their kind, I have seen them marginalise the poor and disempower the middle classes. I have seen them tear hope from the hearts of the underprivileged. I have watched them amass wealth and power into the hands of a few who secretly plot to maintain their stranglehold on business and commerce. All the while systematically breaking the hearts of millions.'

Turning to Daniel with an air of righteousness in his slightly raised voice, like a librarian on a power trip,

'I will show them that I can do a much better job. I will use their own ethos to beat them into submission. I will take the power they crave away from them, then in their helplessness, they will bow the knee to me. I will become all-powerful, I will rule this world - Oh but Bill how will you do this I hear you say? well, I'm glad you asked - let me tell you.'

'But I didn't ask anything.' exclaims Daniel.

'Silence!' shouts Bill as he turns to point his index finger directly at Daniel's lips. His long black polished fingernail catching the light.

Taking a moment to recompose himself in the face of the insolence, he takes a deep breath. He holds it for a few seconds and exhales slowly, recapturing his train of thought. Then beaming with pride and self-glorification, he uses the remote control unit to activate a floor and wall mood-lighting system. It reveals a gigantic black cube, resplendent in an array of screens and dials, standing in the centre of an entirely white room.

'Welcome my son, welcome - welcome to The Machine!'

Spinning in a kind of manic pirouette Bill rotates several times so that he can rest his gaze upon the splendour of The Machine, then take in Daniel's look of complete amazement...take in the view of The Machine again, then Daniel's growing look of fear in his young eyes....and so on several times to reassure himself of the magnitude of his achievement.

All the time beaming with the demented smile of someone who for higher artistic reasons has abandoned their medication.

'I acquired The Machine from those idiots the Worms. I was going to use it to bend the laws of politics, but then in a flash of inspiration I modified its core algorithms to unlock the mysteries of tactical mathematics and bend the laws of physics.'

Overflowing with pride, he proclaims in a hushed voice of reverence.

'It works on the simple principles that underpin a ' Distributed Denial of Service attack'. Did you know that the quantum of numbers in the universe is constant, as numbers are destroyed new numbers are created somewhere else in the universe? You cannot create new numbers, there will always be the same amount of numbers, that is how the universal balance is maintained.'

Waving his hands with a deft sense of theatre and cackling with the thrill of having a new audience, he points to the various displays. They show a cascade of numbers descending like a waterfall down the glowing screens.

'The Machine is connected to a nano wormhole through which it sucks numbers from another dimension. It uses them en-mass to completely overpower the mathematics supporting the laws of physics in this dimension, crippling their ability to do their job.

I can turn reality into something like plasticine that I can mould and twist as I desire. Thus it is simple to encapsulate a small area within a reality distortion field, and for example, adjust the geometry of spacetime and hah! - remove gravity!'

Skipping and laughing like a lunatic around the cube, he continues.

'When I have captured all the sheep, I will expunge their kind from the face of the land. I will utterly destroy them in the most exquisite way imaginable and cleans this world of their wretched influence.

Oh yes, there they are right now harmlessly passing the time away in the grasslands of the sky paddock, only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air. But things are not as they seem, Ah-ha-ha-ha yes it will be amusing to see the look of terminal shock in their eyes as their pathetic lives evaporate into oblivion and the influence of their ideas disappear forever.

I will usher in a new order, a new balance, one way, one truth.'

Pausing to wipe the tear of inspiration from his eye, Bill musters his composure and continues to elucidate the final act of his masterwork.

'Then I will turn my attention to the custodians of the three colours, I will reconfigure my beautiful Machine to manipulate the laws of power and bend the laws of politics. I will tear their ivory towers to the ground, trample their ideologies underfoot and destroy them all.

When I am finished numbers will rule supreme, numbers will govern everything. No more doubt, no more colours, no more shades of opinion, just the black and white truth of the balance sheet.'

He pauses, takes a moment to reflect on the righteousness of what he has just said, and turns to Daniel.

'And now it is time for you to die - I am no longer interested in why you are here. I have decided I will lower you into the flow of numbers as they pour through the nano wormhole. You will be torn apart as the high-velocity values shred your body into millions of tiny pieces. Within a few seconds, you will quite simply cease to exist.'

'You are quite mad, you know that.' says Daniel.

'Oh no, my boy, history will show that you were quite mad to think you could stop me. I have the power of numbers on my side and numbers do not lie. Numbers are a gift from the divine creator, and they reveal the inevitable truth, that he who has the numbers will rule.'