Marai, who had been living off the cognac and cigarettes he had found in the supply closet of his office, presumably belonging to the recently fired janitorial staff, fiddled with nearly anything he could get his hands on except for his failure-indicated Weather Clock. Only when he was drunk or bored enough would have the heart to put his cold fingers on it. The Weather Clock, much to the chagrin of Avaline Denty, was actually a rather elaborate invention. It stood about two feet high, consisting of a copper prism as its base. Extending from this heavy block were zinc wires rising in all directions to meet at their zenith a singular, cylindrical tube brimming with silver mercury. A long, transparent conduit connected the cylinder to the copper prism. A shiny glass dial was fixed to its center, indicating various measurements that the technician (at this point, only Marai) could then read and assess.
The Weather Clock’s function was to predict a cycle of the upcoming and current hour of Weather in any given area. Despite Marai’s knowledge, I must mention, this latter description is as literal as it comes. The Weather Clock was firmly capable of designating a location between 4sq ft and 5000 sq ft, defining the area’s circumference and then honing on the given area for predictions regarding current and upcoming meteorological data.This was indeed its most significant function, and yet it remained completely oblivious to its creator and everyone else. Since the prototype was juggled among a myriad of professors at his previous university, it was likely the function was produced by an unlikely admixture of ideas and blind changes.
As the story goes, one night while Marai was still cashing in his checks as a full-time meteorologist, he returned to his office at Shameless Inc to fiddle with some equipment he had recently found out of sheer boredom. He had no friends, nor family except his despondent childhood best friend cousin, whom the majority of the time seemed completely indifferent to himself, and thus he would find himself, for the majority of dark nights, to the closest place he could call home: his office; six floors and a thousand yards from Denty’s.
The forecast that night, according to the weather clock that was now high up in a plastic bin over a storage unit, for which Marai would invariably store there when he could not test the sight of it, was not reading outlier data of a probable, increasingly dangerous, whirlwind. Not just any whirlwind, mind you, for the clocks dial were now beginning to collapse into each other. This was a meteorological occurrence unprecedented by the Weather Clock. It was turning and contorting, moving hither and thither. Finally, hearing the buzz of the Weather Clock from the plastic bin, nearly heading for its descent off the storage unit, Marai snatched the bin from thin air and set it calmly on the table. Perhaps, he thought for a split second, it was destined to fall. But no, he was cut short by the windows shaking from the outside. The whirlwind was an unavoidable fact, everything was shaking, the ground felt to be collapsing. Marai, not knowing what else to pursue, reached for the only object due for comfort: the cognac. To him, the world was a sinking gut, traversing through the possibility of a building falling apart. Turns out, that possibility would almost be correct. He cursed the now screaming Weather clock, damning its creation, damning the dreg of life it had taken him on. The pursuit of nothing. A device that did nothing but show the exterior of a man devoid of spiritual fulfillment.
Yada, Yada…. As the story goes, Steven Marai would now become a murderer of his own creation. Death by chemical solution. Death by the cognac. Death by the institution's own possessions. God knows what he put in that solution . Perhaps the various chemicals Shameless Inc had been manufacturing on the hush-hush. Thelemine, G Magnitreaq, Detrehedro, Mulic powder, you name it. Perhaps the cognac. Nevertheless, he had the damn thing drowned in its new amniotic fluid. Just like he thought he would die by that storm, in his body, so too the Weather Clock would die by the liquid, in its plastic bin. Quid pro Quo! But no. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, HAHAHA! NO! The quid pro quo would only remove one identity. The device’s death was long away. And so again, the gods would change the circumstance of humanity with such phoenix-like qualities! Only this time, there would be only ash.
The Weather Clock and its green amniotic fluid danced in harmony, a new Adam and Eve catching first glance of each other until each grew horns. The mixture exploded, piercing the atmosphere with a thin, but extraordinarily powerful gust of air straight into the eye of the cyclone. The process had the effect of:
Evaporating Steven Marai into a million small pieces.
Leveling out the entirety of his office.
Replacing the Whirlwind with clear blue skies.
As fate would have it, Denty hearing the massive implosion and having been the only other person in the building at this time, she would be the one to discover the state of affairs Marai’s office was now in. The entire room was empty. No tables , no glassware, no machine parts, no books, no Steven Marai: except for a singular gray box that stood directly in the middle of the room. In it was a green solution filled all the way to the brim of the Weather Clock, now sunk like a rock in a river of new life.
In the end, Avaline Denny discovered the connection between the data of her cousin and the removal of the whirlwinds prophecy. After a series of tests and experimentations she further discovered the function of the weather clock and it’s amniotic fluid:
To control the given meteorological data within any given area. ( The area could be the cube or some circumference of an area spanning 4sq ft to 5000 sq ft.)
Dents was able to modify it down to a commodity:
Having the Weather Unfetterer solution, as it was now called, was paired in percolators on the outside of the Weather Clock.
It had a plastic, transparent shell surrounding the device, completely safeguarding the malfunction that killed Marai.
There was a square controller built into the sheath of the shell, capable of changing temperature, range, humidity, wind, you name it. (Temperature range: 40 degree F - 105 degree F).
Had sizes small enough to fit into a pocket.
After playing hush-hush with Marai’s death, blowup, and creation, Denty presented her new device to the world market under her newly named organization, Weather Inc. as : The Weather Unfetterer. Immediately the device caught the unanimous attention of the world, including national governments. It was cheap. It was handy. It was picked up by nearly all sectors, sanctions, and statuses of society. Even if you yourself did not own one, the area you inhabited was surely affected by a governmental Weather Unfetterer. People had them in their houses, in their cars, in their pockets, nearly everywhere you could imagine a Weather Unfetterer was surely governing that area. Natural disasters were simply a thing of the past, the Weather Unfetterer was the optimism for a new future.
However, it was not long before a dramatic shift in human cognition began. As I might now be inclined to put it, it was Noah's ark of attention and body parts. Months after the Weather Unfetterer was introduced to the consumer market, a worldwide frenzy began, causing all attention, all feelings of shame and success to hone in and obsess about the only object fully in our possession: The body. It became a generalized belief, as instinctual as it was to eat, to correlate psychological characteristics with features of corporeal build. In other words, the self-concept had left its resting place in the sky and was reborn rooted into physical form. A certain sized lip or the irregular shape of a curved hand paired in relation to a 2-inch suction on the waist. Each independent appendage, mixed to manifest a gestalt with all other physical features, would now act as data for self- interpretation and personality characteristics.
“Soma Therapists”, akin to plastic surgeons, became increasingly popular and in demand. They replaced the forefront of medicine as a mediator of the mind and body—now aptly termed Bodythought. They provided clients with information regarding psychological deficiencies and the addition, subtraction and rearrangement of flesh that would yield the deficiencies replacement.
Humanity, still enamored by the influence of the Weather Unfetterer all but noticed the blink of an eye metamorphosis, mania, and obsession it was now in the jaws of. It was as if the body hyper fixation had always been a thing, as if “soma therapists' had always been a thing, as if the only novel fluctuation was how to now control the weather with the push of a button! How spiritual-like! Gods of weather before mind! And all the while the people kept up their obsession, removing, cutting, augmenting clothing to get to the brass of the body, responding in fear and awe to the intrinsic shame of mind in flesh, Avaline Denty continued the metamorphosis of her own obsession.
For the previous year, before Marai’s accident, Denty had been taking part in various research studies at Shamless Inc. attempting to design and utilize a novel neurotransmitter located within the shame center of the brain. Apparently with her most up to date experiment, one occurring only days before the accident, it had shown with two rhesus Monkeys that by taking the novel neurotransmitter, G-Mew, as it was called, and combining it with an adrenaline compound, a very specific psychological effect would be caused, one of which the entire human race was now experiencing. Denty watched the world’s regression with amusement. She was quoted as having said in private:
“Spiritual conquest! HA! First climb over this mountain of flesh and just maybe you’ll find me in the clouds!”
Or singing:
“Regress! Regress! Regress!!….So I can progress! Progress! Progress!”
“Skin in jolly, mind in folly!”
The world's obsession with the body was as much a function of the brain as it was an expression of Avaline Denty’s own obsession with enlightenment. She had been pumping this new concoction into the Weather Unfetterer’s amniotic fluid, causing every user to blindly ingest this novel, cognition-altering substance. It was inescapable insofar as the Weather Unfetterer was around. Nobody knew of Denty’s other hand in the device. Not her staff, not the government, not the people, not even other scientists. Not a single soul in the cosmos was aware of her intentions—just as she liked it.
The planet carried on as usual, her plan guised by the recipe of the Weather Unfetterer’s amniotic fluid. One could make the damn thing perfectly as instructed by the recipe, all the while oblivious to a single thing about Denty’s malicious compound. The secret was in the very blueprint of a machine, and yet no perception of it could be found.
And so the secret lived on, for 42 more years, before dying in a bath on a Tuesday reading a book titled: “Unbloomed Lotus: What to do!”. And with that, Avaline Denty, a human pioneer, was thrown off the human plane into her abyss, grieved by a world who eventually, and quickly made due with her leftovers.
II
Fast forward four hundred years to the life of Dr. R. Calamari.
Born forty eight years prior, Dr. Calamari at its current date, is a pioneer and innovator within the re-emerging field of “Soma Therapy”. After its hundred year stagnation in terms of principles , practices and research, Calamari began his new outline of Soma therapy. Writing and publishing books establishing its principles and beliefs, the myriad of equipment he made and used, and not to mention the six volume, in total two thousand page work on the particular relations between sizes, shapes,textures, and activities of the body and their research-proved personality correlates. For instance, here is a redacted example from Volume 4, page 247:
R. Calamari
Appendage/Organ:
Lower Lip
Size: Redacted
Shape: Redacted
Anomaly features: Redacted
Extra information: Redacted
Sketch:
Personality Correlate: Thoughtfulness (1 Variant); Compassionate (2 Variant )
Link to other Appendages:
Nose (pg. 203); Eyes (pg. 104); arm (pg. 410)
Pg. 247
The entire premise of this therapeutic model is based firmly, according to Dr. Calamari in psychological “lacks” that can then be substituted, or “surrogated” with corporeal “fills”. The body was therefore not only an expression for mind, but also our greatest source of personality construction and interpretation. The good doctor wrote and published various theories describing and explaining this relationship. However, his greatest source of influence was his emphasis on the dual-part Soma Therapy model, specifically the first part. This half stated that with enough genuine dialogue between client and practitioner, with sufficient elaboration of psychological “lacks”, each client could then express, with surprisingly accurate description , the ideal, or “pinnacle” as it was called by Calamari, of their own personality. Phase two, with its own depth of research and experimentation would then surrogate the psychological “lacks” with corporeal “fills” in order to mitigate and augment various personality characteristics to mimic, or “surrogate” that person’s pinnacle. Again it should be noted that this personality “pinnacle” could actually be conceived via the rearrangement of the body because, to put it rather dully, the Self now used the body as a source of interpretation for far more than blank sensations. This was the new epistemology. Traits, attitudes, inclinations, even some types of values could all now be conceived via the appearance of the body. How strange! How beyond belief! But yet, this is what humanity believed, and even worse, they acted on it! :
The presence of spiritual investigation: GONE
Mind’s discernment of itself independent of its own most physical form (The body): ALMOST GONE
Emphasis in society on mental cultivation on values, activities, beliefs and perceptions: HOMOLOGOUS WITH THE STATUS OF THE BODY
Indeed, this was the new state of affairs for the world. Mind in skin. And so too, the good doctor, with his innumerate number of Weather Unfetterers littered about his laboratory, became product and victim of the same system responsible for his livelihood. The tragic fate of many! Five hundred years ago, maybe he could have been a biochemist, or a philosophy professor at Uni, or even a poet expounding the beauty of nature. But no— that would never happen. It could never happen. The world was as it was and R. Calamari’s mind was structured as it was. No past history, no future destination could ever suggest an alternate trajectory.
But recently, a new trajectory would take light. Despite his well maintained appearance to the public, Dr. Calamari was too , just like transformation from human to ape, beginning to experience some unique changes to his Bodythought. His knowledge remained, his obsession remained, yet there were new fantasies, new obsessions that were just now taking position to tango in that cranium of his. The good doctor was, as modern science would have called it, on the cliffs edge of a full fledged psychotic break. This break, however, unlike the breaks of four hundred years ago, not only brought the good doctor to the lowest rungs of obsession, chaos and delusion, but also to the briefest artifacts of lucidity and “truth” wholly forgotten to the human race. Here was a snippet of its outcome in the BodyThought of Doctor Rayk Calamari:
III
“Christ, hand me the scalpel already.”
But Proteus wasn’t there.
“I guess I’ll just get it myself. Just wait till I catch you and make you cough up your answers.”
Disgusting . What else am I supposed to do? He’ll be coming back. He’ll see the lack of progress. Not to mention my own dissatisfaction! The mirror was relentless. I found that out the hard way doing self- instrumentalization. It was always the hardest part, reflecting yourself back before completion. But forget it. Proteus demands. That damn sea god! Stick to Greece! But he’s also right: corporeal form must be perfected. Why do I even have ideas posing incredulity to the body? It’s the nose. Or maybe the hand. Yes! The hand. I must fill it. HA! But now let’s focus here on our main attraction.
Dr. Calamari was now inserting a soma-instrument into the lower right quadrant of his lip, causing himself to bleed profusely. A voice echoed from behind his work station.
“How deficient in contrast to your pinnacle, ol Ryke!—Weakling!!…
But keep going, yes, oh yes you are close.
Maybe just one more?
You're doing fantastic work here doctor….
I believe in your metamorphosis more than all those other fools…
A man of science and Bodythought!”
And there he was, that perverse fish.
And Indeed, the good doctor was correct, here he was, the deity known to Ancient Greece as Proteus , the sea god, the transmuter of forms, Dr. Calamari’s most recent self- conceived hallucination, now laying on his operating table.
The practice used to be so simple. The principles even simpler! But now, what a fucking mess
I’ve made of it! No..no.no.no.no.
Not a mess!! A cleaning! Yes! A cleanse! Ha! The purity was simply never there. But now I am entering new green fields! Or should I say..hehehe.. pink! He set the instrument down. This lip configuration certainly adds up! I appear looking into the broken mirror, devoted! Courageous! That damn Proteus, sea god or not, doesn’t dictate me. Choose your damn oceans and I’ll c h o o s e myself! I will reach my pinnacle, with or without him. The delusions of others doesn’t depend on my flesh, only their perceptions of it, delusions or not. So goodbye!
I looked down, now seeing the red ink dripping off my face and coagulating into a pool on the floor. Welll…I answered:
“There are two routes”:
HEAL
BEGIN NEXT THERAPY SESSION
Upon the lip being completed and “ filling the lack”, I certainly feel more like myself. Yippee!! More kind, more friendly, I look beautiful and compassionate! Of course exactly what the research had indicated. It’s never really about the traits though is it? It’s the organization! The ability to mix face together with legs and feet! Order. That is my cause and effect. Pinnacle this, pinnacle that, maybe it helps other people, but how deluded are other people really?
“Where is their spirit?”
My god why am I saying these things. What spirit?
Wait, yes. A procedure. That is what I must do. I cannot wait.
And there he was again, Proteus, blue as can be, holding that tacky looking trident again.
Blah! Blah! Blah! There he goes again justifying my actions. Ha! Tell a human right from wrong will ya non-human?
Ow! The pain on my temple insinuated that my arm had just hit it. That looked angry! Was I angry? Or maybe regretful?
Ah! I should be more appreciative of Proteus, he’s just trying to help. He was the one who sent me on this mission after all. When nobody else believed, there he was, telling me how noble my pursuit was.
Waitt… was it I or he who came up with this idea?
No matter! He sounded my convictions and ultimately manifested the content state I was now in! I was not unhappy after all!
Bleh! What a blessing and a curse. Oh how self-creation is as much a burden as it is a catharsis!
Maybe just one more operation! The flesh around the eyes! How important! The eyes reveal everything. This was how the research was mapped out to end: with the eyes. The pinnacle was quite close with the lip maneuver. I just don’t feel exactly myself yet! That’s the goal isn’t it? To look like myself? I must look like myself to feel like myself.
But I know how close I am. That is what Proteus keeps saying, how close I am. I think the last one will do. Yes!
Option 2
Proceed with operation.
The eyes will be perfect, devoid of blemish. That will be the apex of my pinnacle. A body finally fulfilled and thus a person. All the research, all the correlations, they will reach their sum total. It was never for nothing. That is what the sea god has been trying to tell me. The last one! Proteus don’t hold me back now! I’ve finally attuned our desires. How will you do without me? My craving is yours after all isn’t it?
He waited but with no response.
The blood came in waves. Pulsations wrestled from the stitches in my arms, legs, mouth, torso, any appendage you could conceive. But it doesn’t matter, the healing. I have become embarrassed by my own ideal, and yet I still continue onward! Tell that to human freedom! “I am no longer Bodythought!”
The scalpel now held in his forefingers, standing in front of his favorite broken mirror.
“I am no longer Bodythought because I have found a mind that does not betray its limits, something beyond physical form. Perhaps my dissatisfaction was but another part of the satisfied whole… And yet even if this operation kills me without any retribution of skin for reward, I will perform it simply as an act of my own incorporeality!”
And so it went, despite the pain, despite the threat of death, the good doctor traversed onward, carving into the flesh around his eyes to produce the greatest contradiction known to himself, and humanity as a whole. But Calamari did not die, nor did his hallucinations of Proteus ever return. He woke up three days later, surrounded in blood, miraculously removed from his psychotic stupor. And as it would turn out, he had also been relinquished of the influence by the Weather Unfetterers molecules. He had returned to a state of cognition known not by human beings for the past four hundred years. For the first time in his life, he had felt shame. A sense of shame directed towards something that was wholly invisible. Albeit, upon looking into the mirror at the abhorrent mutilation he had delusionally weaved into his own body, he was certainly disgusted, but not by what he saw in the mirror. It was what he could never see in the mirror that disgusted him so deeply. It was the invisible actor hidden behind the curtain of an entire life of physical form. This was a feeling ubiquitously unknown to mankind. Dr. Calamari had returned this artifact to its rightful home within himself and the light of human consciousness.
He stood in the mirror, disgusted, perplexed, confused, uncertain to all the future possibilities of Mind A N D body, and with a shrug of the shoulders, laughed himself to tears.
The End.
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