Tales of the Parodyverse

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CrazySugarFreakBoy!
Wed May 17, 2006 at 11:11:05 pm EDT
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The Cosmic Catch-22 (Tie-In to Untold Revolutionary Tales of the Lair Legion #273: Of the People, By the People, For the People)
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The Cosmic Catch-22 (Tie-In to Untold Revolutionary Tales of the Lair Legion #273: Of the People, By the People, For the People)

Philosophical preludes:
Untold Tales of the Junior Lair Legion: Modern-Day Dream-Stuff
Untold Tales of the Junior Lair Legion: Agents of Chaos

The start of the story:
Great Parodyverse Moments: An Untold Native American Folk Tale of Coyote, Spider and Worm
A Dreamcatcher in the Dreamtime

The saga since then:
The Fremen and the Empress: Showdown on Arrakis
Time Capsule of a Temporary Autonomous Zone

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything …

The warrior brave stirred from his slumber on the earthen floor at the mouth of the cave, the flickering light of the fire within playing across the sunburned skin of his body, which was uncovered except for his loincloth and the orange-and-green streaks and symbols of tribal war-paint that adorned his face, chest and arms.

As he regained consciousness, he cautiously drew himself into a self-protective crouching position, surveying the plains and woods illuminated by the glow of the full moon outside, before rounding to squint into the shifting shadows within the cave, just past the campfire.

The crackling blaze cast strange silhouettes across the ancient cave walls, rendering their neglected pictographs even more inscrutable, as the smoke coiled from the flames, no two swirls ever the same, then dispersed forever.

Two dark, looming shapes emerged from the concealment of the cave’s corners, revealing themselves to be the Spirits of Spider, a shawl of gray Webbing gathered up around his head and shoulders like a hood, and Raven, whose cinnamon red feathers were molting.

Brave though he was, the warrior was not nearly as lacking in common sense as he liked to pretend, but even as he scrambled backwards to escape the cave, he found his exit blocked by the Spirits of Ant and the Trickster known as the SacredClownSmilingCoyote!

“Don’t go that way, grandson,” Coyote growled, baring his fangs at Spider and Raven.

“Grandpa?” recognized Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove, the warrior brave and Agent of Chaos known as CrazySugarFreakBoy! “But … I heard you were dead.”

“I passed on,” Coyote contradicted cryptically. “There’s a difference.”

“A difference you will soon experience firsthand,” Spider promised Dream. “Ascension or extinction, running and hiding in the wilderness like a coward, or leaping into the fire like a fool. Those are your choices, between that which is Man and that which is more.”

Coyote padded forward on savage paws to place himself between his foes and his blood, but much to his surprise, Ant had already crawled ahead of him on her segmented legs.

“You will not harm Coyote’s descendants,” Ant clicked her mandibles together assertively, even as she communicated her conflicted emotions through the pheromone scents she emitted.

“What is this?” Spider hissed intimidatingly, his eight eyes glowing green with righteous indignation. “What are you doing, sister? We are architects, you and I. Our calling is to construct things, to make sense of the scattered debris of nature. Coyote and his kin, they are vandals, mindless and malicious. They have no souls or sympathy. So, why should you stand against me now, alongside the likes of them?”

“Because you are wrong, brother, and because your presence presses both the letter and the limits of the very Rules that you use to justify your vengeance,” Ant persisted. “I do not dispute your grievances against Coyote, but his pack has done you no harm. This pup in particular has acted with honor and fought faithfully by the side of a member of my own Colony.”

Coyote glanced sidelong at his grandson, feral amusement curling his lips. “You managed to make a friend in Ant’s Colony?”

Dream burst into a brief fit of hysterical giggles. “Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, not really, but at this point, why not?”

Ant approached Dream, awakening his instinctive apprehension of insects, until he could discern the intriguingly familiar golden diamond insignia between her antennae. “You might not see him as an Ant, but you should be able to spot his Standard, because it is the symbol he and I share in common. Like you, he was born a Man, but in spite of this handicap, he has conducted his affairs as efficiently and as conscientiously as any Ant. Spiders are selfish builders, who care only for their Webs and the welfare of their own children, while Ants nurture all the young of their Colonies.”

Even as Dream connected the enigmatic emblem on Ant’s chitinous cranium with the iconic insignia that his best friend wore on his crimefighting costume, Raven cawed shrilly with the voice of the Worm Spirit that sickened her from within. “This bickering is pointless! We have Coyote and his whelp here now, so we should slaughter them both and feast upon their innards while they are still warm!”

“No,” Spider chided Raven. “In one respect at least, Ant is correct. We must abide by the Rules, and allow this … Dreamcatcher to make his decision, devoid of significant outside interference. However, the Rules themselves charge him with carrying out his inherited burden, equally devoid of outside interference, not only because he was born a grandchild of Coyote, but also because he has grown to be a Trickster in his own right, who has indeed done direct harm to myself, my Webs and my offspring.”

“Spider speaks the truth regarding the Rules,” Ant apologized to Dream. “I can only ensure that the proper forms are followed. You only have as long as the campfire lasts to select your destiny. You have no chance to survive. Make your time.”

“After which, all my base are belong to you all, I guess,” Dream snarked halfheartedly, before addressing Coyote more seriously. “What did Shelob mean by my ‘inherited burden?’ Phobia hinted that I’d have to choose between my connection to Chaos and my own humanity, but he said that was because I’ve been consuming so much Chaos, and because the upcoming Resolution War has been wrapping up so many of the Parodyverse’s outstanding narrative threads. So … what burden have I inherited, and why?”

“Exu never tells anyone all of a story, nor does he ever tell any two sets of ears the same sides of a single story,” Coyote grumbled. “The reasons he gave you were accurate but incomplete. This decision you face is my doing, as well.”

I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar’s chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here …

And with that, Coyote straightened his spine, shortened his snout and shed his shaggy pelt, becoming U.S. Army Air Corps Cpl. Charles Smiling Coyote, the young soldier who had served as a “code talker” for the Allies during World War II.

“I was a Trickster once, much like you are now,” Charles reminisced ruefully. “You’re a different kind of Trickster than I was, though. Oh, I had a terrible lot of fun, but I caused a terrible lot of pain, too, because much of the fun I had was at the expense of those who didn’t deserve the pain I caused them. I made enemies of my friends, and I made myself beholden to them both, without making any plans to pay any of them back. They warned me that my children, and my children’s children, would inherit the consequences of my actions, but either I didn’t believe them or I couldn’t be bothered to care. Honestly, I can’t even remember anymore. Nothing much mattered to me back then, outside of myself.”

“What changed that, then?” Dream peered pensively, struck by how much his grandfather’s sad face resembled his own, even as he struggled to reconcile the remorseful man before him with the heroic figure whom his father had so mythologized.

“Everything,” Charles shrugged. “Everything changed. I woke up one morning and suddenly saw that the world I’d lived in was long gone. As a Trickster, I’d changed the whole world, but somewhere along the line, the world had started changing without me, and I was the one who was left standing still. I wasn’t even a Trickster anymore, since a succession of others had stepped up to dance as Tricksters in my stead, in the time since my time, except that they all wore masks of their own making, rather than taking up mine. I’d embodied the Spirit of my Age, but my Age was done and past.”

“So … what did you do?” Dream solicited.

“Not much I could do,” Charles confessed. “I couldn’t even make things right with those I’d wronged, because that balance could only be restored by a Trickster who embodied the Spirit of a living Age. Then, I heard tell of a crazy white man on the other side of the Earth, who wanted to spin the whole world into his Spider’s Webs, even though it meant killing off most everyone else, and I thought to myself, this was a situation I knew how to deal with. I enlisted in the white man’s Army, I served under a one-eyed sergeant who loved to curse and chew cigars, and I met your grandmother overseas.”

“Wait … my grandmother?” Dream checked.

“Eris Eleutherios,” Charles grinned. “Gorgeous Greek Isles girl, grew the most delicious golden apples I’d ever tasted, even though her ancestral orchard was all but abandoned. Her life had been nothing but mischief and misfortune, so of course, I fell in love with her at first sight. She’d had lovers, and she’d had children, but they’d all passed on. Most of her family had died in wars, and the local villagers whispered that she was cursed, ever since she’d sparked off a minor feud with one of her apples. American Indians call it bad Medicine, and Asian Indians call it bad Karma, but whatever you might call it, she and I had both built up several lifetimes’ worth of the stuff, which was what forced your father to sacrifice his own family, as he sought to settle it all up for us.”

“What do you mean?” Dream demanded dangerously.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Charles retorted ruthlessly. “It’s the one lingering question you’ve never dared ask him, because you were always afraid of what the real answer might be. Why would a man who loved his woman and children so much just up and leave them behind, without any words of explanation? Why would he stay away from the family he loved for more than a dozen years, and then, walk right back into their lives, for no apparent reason? Despite what you’ve feared, so much that you couldn’t even admit it to yourself, none of you are to blame for what happened. It wasn’t your father’s fault, it wasn’t your fault … it wasn’t even the fault of your sister or your mother, no matter how crazy those white women are. No, I’m the one who’s to blame. It was my fault all along. My mistakes cost my son everything that mattered most to him.”

“You?” Dream gaped. “He left because of you?”

“Your choice now was his choice then,” Charles recounted. “He could either become a Trickster, like his old man, and be swept up into the dance so much that he would pass from this world into the Dreamtime, or he could hold onto his humanity, the wages of which would be the nearly immediate enforcement of his mortality. Whether he became a Spirit or a corpse, those whom he loved and cared for would be stripped of his protection, and as the most prized possessions of a Trickster, they’d be considered fair game for settling scores, from those to whom we Tricksters still owe debts. As a Trickster, I took away what belonged to them, so they’ve tried to take away what belongs to us Tricksters.”

“That’s what Dad was running from,” Dream realized. “Not from me or Mom or Wendy, but from the ones who wanted to hurt us. He was drawing those things away from us.”

“Louis was always a smart boy, but he was never cut out to be a Trickster, and he knew it,” Charles nodded. “He knew he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, but instead, he thought he might be able to delay his decision indefinitely. What he didn’t get was that the world wouldn’t wait around for him, any more than it had waited around for me. Even if your father could have embodied the Spirit of his Age, his Age passed, and other Tricksters stepped up to dance in his stead. He came back to your family because he saw you wearing the Trickster mask you’d made for yourself, and at last, he grasped that he’d unwittingly contributed to a worse outcome than that which he’d hoped to prevent.”

“Because he wound up passing the buck on to me, just like you’d passed the buck on to him,” Dream accused. “But why didn’t he tell me any of this himself?”

“He couldn’t,” Charles shook his head. “There are ways in which he and I and Exu have been allowed to prepare you for the tests that have awaited you, but ultimately, it has always been your responsibility to persevere through these trials alone. I had to hold my tongue, until this time, and wait to share these stories with you, and the only remaining advice I can offer you now is a clue, cast as a riddle, that you must solve yourself.”

What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt …

And with that, Charles’ square shoulders slumped, as his black, short hair lengthened and whitened, his soft, smooth face wrinkled and hardened, and his freshly creased and cleaned military uniform turned into a dusty, well-worn set of cracked leather cowboy boots, patched-up blue jeans and a snap-button western shirt. He had become “Charlie” Smiling Coyote, the old shaman whose mobile home his grandson had visited on occasion, back when Charlie was still alive, Dream was still a small child, and both of them were still living on the Spokane Indian Reservation.

“To answer one question, you have to answer another,” Charlie elaborated evasively. “It’s a question your father was never able to answer.”

“How am I supposed to puzzle out any problem that had a genius like my dad stumped?” Dream protested incredulously.

“Your father is much smarter than you,” Charlie admitted. “But you’re much more clever than him. They’re both kinds of intelligence. The difference is, Sherlock Holmes is smart, but Bugs Bunny is clever.”

“Okay, fine, whatever,” Dream prompted impatiently. “Go ahead and Sphinx me.”

“What is the will of Chaos?” Charlie challenged.

“The will of Chaos is … Chaos,” Dream stumbled. “Chaos wants Chaos. Agents of Chaos exist to enact Chaos, and counteract Order.”

“But then, what is will itself?” Charlie continued.

“Will is … want, but more,” Dream searched. “It’s like desire, but more driven and directed. It’s not just instinct or impulse … it’s an active intelligence, that channels and categorizes those instincts and impulses. Will sets goals and carries out action steps to accomplish them. It’s powered by emotion, but it prioritizes and … organizes.”

“Don’t stop there,” Charlie supported. “Finish the train of thought.”

“Will organizes,” Dream comprehended. “Will is a form … a Force of Order.”

“Which would mean … what?” Charlie compelled.

“The will of Chaos is for Agents of Chaos to enact Chaos and counteract Order,” Dream summarized. “But if will itself is a Force of Order, than the will of Chaos is for Agents of Chaos to counteract the seed of Order within the core of Chaos itself.”

Charlie simply smiled and shared a short silence with his grandson.

“It’s like the Yin-Yang symbol, isn’t it?” Dream chuckled. “There’s the two teardrops, one black and one white, both swirling together to form a single circle, except with a white dot in the center of the black teardrop, and a black dot in the center of the white teardrop. The Taoists really were on the right track about Order and Chaos after all. At the heart of Order is Chaos, because Order is forced to construct its artificial forms on the shifting-sands foundations of the natural Chaos of existence. At the same time, Order is at the heart of Chaos, because even the most random and spontaneous acts of Chaos eventually betray evidence of premeditated patterns of Order, if you zoom in close enough or step back far enough. That’s where coincidences and Mandelbrot sets come from.”

“You know what you have to do now?” Charlie assessed, before he dropped to all fours and became Coyote once more.

“I know the choice I have to make,” Dream assured his grandfather and Ant, as he turned to face Spider and Raven again.

The fire’s light had nearly died out, but the moon still shone full overhead. Spider and Raven stalked toward the warrior brave, and Coyote and Ant could do naught but let them pass. He was not yet a man but no longer a boy, a champion of countless tribes who could never belong completely to any one tribe of his own, and as he stood his ground and set his jaw, he brushed the autumn auburn hair from his face to return the predatory stares of his would-be destroyers, his faded jade eyes fixing them with a steady gaze of cold steel.

And with that, Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove died.

… If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way.

(“Hurt” vocals by Johnny Cash and lyrics by Trent Reznor)


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