I/Tulpa: Chitty Chitty Steam Punk by Ion Light - HTML preview

Chapter 9

“Dolls?! Dolls?! I have hundreds of dolls…”

      “Not another song,” Lester complained.

      “It’s the last song, minus the CCBB refrain,” Jon said.

      “Yes, this is a great melody, and where you see I truly love Jon, no, where you see I Truly Loves Caractacus,” Loxy said. “And though you might assume that look means I Loxy, the actress, the Jon the actor, and I do, but you can’t assume that, because sometimes actresses and actors can’t stand each other, and so maybe that love you saw was Loxy’s love for Caractacus and not Jon, but in truth, it was all love for everyone, for me, for my character, and for Jon and his character…”

      “Stop loving so much…” Lester said.

      “Can’t stop this feeling, and I love you, too, Lester,” Loxy said.

      “We all do. Now, back to me, this scene is important because I have this great existential moment seeing what a clown I am in the mirror and wondering what the hell is there about me to love, because I have seriously struggled with self love,” Jon said.

      “That and the Baron has never had a real doll before, because if he had a Real Doll, he’d probably be a lot nicer,” Loxy said.

      “That’s true. But he’d probably never time alone with the doll the way the Duchess hangs on him, cock blocking him every chance she gets. People should never be ridiculed for playing with dolls, even boys like playing with dolls, and that’s okay,” Jon said.

      “Exactly, you could even play with dolls in trucks, cause dolls like trucks,” Loxy said.

      “You two should not be allowed to write together,” Lester said.

      “Write?” Jon asked.

      “We don’t write these things. We live them,” Loxy said.

      “Now, before we go back in, I must say there is going to be a little bit of violence, and it might get loud and scary,” Jon said. “But if you watch closely, it’s all just pretend and no one gets hurt, like when they throw the oil on the floor and the guards fall before even hitting the patch of oil…”

      “Oh! That’s not right,” the children said.

      “But first the song,” Loxy said. “Because it’s a lot of work standing in a pose for an extended period, and doing the exact same mechanical arm movements through each turn. This is precision performance.”

      “How did you get costumes so quickly?” Eston asked.

      “They were already in the shop. You didn’t see them in the background?” Jon asked.

      “They just happen to perfectly fit you?” Lester went on.

      “He had the precise measurements because he was making Jon and Loxy dolls,” Loxy said.

      “OMG, no, who would make toys of you two?” Lester said.

      “Multiple vendors, as we have not signed any exclusivity contracts,” Jon said.

      “Yeah, you will find us as action figures in Star Wars,” Loxy began.

“Yeah, they didn’t get my face quite right. I look like Matt Daemon puppet from Team America,” Jon said.

      “Oh, you look fine, and I love they authorized your gold lightsaber,” Loxy said.

      “Proton sword,” Jon said.

      “Yeah, but just until it’s official,” Loxy said. “Oh, and they made us in the Star Trek universe. Much bigger action figures than the wars one.”

      “They’re still making those?” Lester asked.

      “Actually,” Jon said. “We might be giants.”

      “Speaking of giants, we’re also in the Barbie and Ken world,” Loxy said. “For those special parties where we sell special toys, not the Tupperware parties.”

      “Oh, did they authorize the Trek clothes for our Barbie line? I am so hopeful for authorizing My Enterprise playhouse,” Jon said. “Beam up Barbie, let’s go party…”

      “We really should let everyone know your ship is officially the Pathfinder,” Loxy said.

“That was us before we were us.”

      “No one has a fucking clue what you two are talking about, can you get back to the drama,” Lester said.

      “Sure,” Jon said. No one had to correct Lester’s language because, well, he’s an adult and may use whatever language he wants, and if it’s in the dictionary, it’s useable, provided appropriate context, that and the children learned to use profanity watching ‘Smokey and the Bandit,’ so usually Lester was a bit tame and understated.

      While Caractacus, Truly, and the Benny the adult toymaker, were preparing for the final confrontation, Jeremy and Jemima had remained with the newly liberated children to teach them how to play ‘finders keepers,’ and also how to be invisible, without the use of tech, because you don’t always have a fabulous father of inventions who made you a ring of invisibility, as was the case with Jeremy and Jemima, of course, it hadn’t been a real ring, but they pretended it to be, but it was such a powerful ring that they could only have one and they had to share, and though you think it wasn’t it real, it is through pretend and imagination that real magic is produced. Anyway, the people of the court lived in the court, and all their belongings were in the castle, and the children went in search of old treasures that had been long forgotten, as well as some nets, and ropes, and they had gathered all the shackles, which when they looked at them for the first time realized, they were adult shackles and they could have pulled free with their tiny feet and hands at any time, and so, their imprisonment had been an illusion all this while, which is kind of frustrating, even angering when you think about it, but what they didn’t know, or hadn’t made the connection yet is that the adults are equally shackled by invisible chains, and today Caractacus had intentions of liberating everyone.

      And so the Truly’s second song, Music Box, is really about invisible shackles, and spells, and gears, because this is a steam driven contraption, and her song, though not quite punk rock, which would be appropriate for the Baron’s court, because he does have an edge, this was more like a ‘Steam-Guns and Roses from Ashes’ song, and thanks to them and Truly this song now had the edge it needed to be believable in the same way a certain Bond song was appropriately improved upon by the same band. Not saying that there was anything wrong with ex Beatle’s version of the same song, it just lacked that certain edge. Another wonderful thing about Truly’s second song is that it fits perfectly with an earlier song, and becomes a Melody that allows two hearts to mesh as solidly as any two gears, allowing a knowingness to be exchanged, and love. It was this very thing, the clear evidence of love, that brought the Baron out of his seat, holding the suspiciousness of a child that he had been duped with sentiment! Or given clothes instead of toys.

      The moment the Baron was in grabbing range, Caractacus and Truly whipped around him with a golden lasso, and drove the baron to his knees. Simultaneously, there was a ruckus of unseen proportions, and kids were suddenly everywhere, advancing like an avalanche down a mountain, and guards were falling, and you think I am ignoring your question, but Truly is also Wonder Woman, a steam punk version, and you should know that Loxy comes from the same island as Wonder Woman, well, at least, she went to school there for a moment, and so when the steam box spun her at the right speed she was transformed. A guard rushed Truly, and she fired a weapon at him, hitting him point blank. You may think that an un-lady like thing to do, but all’s fair in love and war. You may also wonder where she acquired a weapon, and why would Wonder Woman be shooting at people, but then, you realize even as you’re asking the question, she was shooting ketchup, and the men who had been hit understood the rules, as they had heard the story of the brute, and they laid their weapons down and went home.

      While this was going on, children circled the Duchess, and corralled her over to where the Baron was.

      And in a moment of true love, under the influence of the golden lasso of truth, the Baron said, “Don’t let the children touch her, she will die…”

      “Oh, you really do care?!” the Duchess cried.

The sentiment surprised even him, but it would be impossible to tell a lie while tied in

Wonder Woman’s Lasso of truth, even a lie so deep that it had fooled himself, and this is also why the scene with Chris Pine is unbelievable in that movie, because we all know, he is really Captain Kirk and the things he would be saying in front of Amazon Women, well, that’s a whole nother tangent, and clearly what we saw was the magical editing of history changers. Speaking of which, that movie is the Aeneid. Only this time, when Kirk came back in time, instead of Edith Keeler dying, he died, so that Wonder Woman, a queen warrior woman could finally bring back matriarchal societies. And you know it’s Kirk, because, well, clearly, Chris Pine is Kirk, but also Ewen Bremmer is clearly Scotty, even though he isn’t Scotty, which is Simon Pegg, but they’re both clearly Scotty! Also, Chris Pine didn’t actually die, he was beamed up, which from the stand point of history, looks like he died, but really he just went back to his time, which was possible because he corrected the thing McCoy messed up. And some of you by now will be telling me to stop trying to push literature from 2000 years ago on modern society, but the truth is we as a species haven’t changed in 2000 years, and neither have our stories, which Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell have been trying to tell us for years, but we’re too caught up in the replaying of our dramas which we think are new but have been recycled since forever…

The court door swung open, as expected, and all the kings men came rushing in, to save you from the author expounding and educating you further, but that’s okay, because really, we learn in small chunks, and you were given just enough chunks to pique your interest and make you go look for yourselves, like that one kid did after watching Jaws and hearing about that ship that went down, and at 8 years old got the survivors of that crew together before congress, which is the story you should be hearing about, anyway, the soldiers were followed by a car, yes, the very car this book is about, with its gold plated, continuous firing apparatus in play, both the for and aft, and the two side mounted cannons, all four were continuously firing, making such a horrendous noice in the confines of the castle that almost everyone had to cover their ears, and all the guards and the king’s horsemen, and the spies, each simultaneously touched their chest, feeling the warm flow of ketchup, because it wasn’t refrigerated ketchup, and it’s perfectly okay to leave ketchup out, and if you don’t believe me, the next time you eat at Hooters and you see the ketchup on the table, imagine how long that’s been sitting there, and yes, it’s true, it probably doesn’t sit as long as it does at your home, due to the volume of people eating there, but still, it’s okay. Relax.

All the soldiers went to their knees, a quiet fell over the court, and you could hear the silent turning of the gold plated, continuous firing apparatuses, and there was a space on the floor where the final confrontation was even now being played out. Now that everyone was quiet, they understood the hum of the steam powered proton swords, and the clashing of energy blades, and the serious disturbing sound of energy blades locked together. There was evidence of ketchup stains on the catcher. Caractacus and the catcher separated and circled.

“Parlor tricks! Do you think I would bow a knee to such?!” the catcher asked.

“Your power over the children here is forever broken,” Caractacus said. “Surrender, and we will help you.”

“There are other towns, other children,” the Catcher said.

“I am afraid I won’t be able to allow that,” Caractacus said.

“You can’t stop me! You have been spell bound, by your own children none the less, not to kill anyone,” the catcher said.

“I know,” Caractacus said.

And he engaged, again locking their blades, and using telekinetic powers, he caught the weapon Truly had tossed to him, and he clicked the safety over and discharged the final round directly against the catcher’s chest. They separated. The catcher seemed stunned, because even if you’re not thinking the worse, that Caractacus broke his promise to his children, paint balls hurt like a son of a bitch, and so don’t shoot someone at close range like Caractacus just did.

The horrified look of the Catcher turned to gleeful laughter. “Paint? You will have to do worse than that if you intend to stop me.”

“I will not become a monster to stop a monster,” Caractacus said. “Yield, and we will help you.”

“Fuck you!” the catcher said and raised his sword to charge.

Caractacus whistled. Chitty let loose such a torrent of ice and steam, an incredibly hideous sound like a million angry cats dropped in to a cucumber bin, (‘Oh!’ Fersia sang out) that everyone covered their ears, even self-guided bullets joined the din, and when it was quiet again, and the steam cloud evaporated, the catcher was there, perfectly preserved in carbonite, which is a real thing, not just an invention of Lucas.

Jeremy and Jemima rushed up, their hearts broken by the apparent failure of father breaking his promise.

Caractacus deactivated his proton sword, and picked up the catcher’s sword, as he had dropped it in the process of being frozen. He was on his knees, his long bony fingers up in a form of supplicatory posture, because being put into carbonite is not a pleasant experience. Caractacus approached the Baron, who had been untied and was hugging his wife, both on their knees.

“What do you intend to do to us?” the Baron asked.

“Free you from yourselves,” Caractacus said. “Children?”

The children gathered around and the Duchess was so fuill of firght you might think she was to have an epileptic seizure, but Truly said:

“You are cured from your illness, children cannot harm you.” “Truly?” the Duchess asked.

“Truly, you were never sick,” Truly said. “You simply didn’t want children, which is okay, not everyone should be a mother, and that’s a good thing to know, but the fears you had were exaggerated, and it is okay to be in the presence of children, even touched by children, because they carry no more germs than adults do, but you might think otherwise because they seem to be sick more, but really, they’re simply getting acclimated to adult germs, and so more than likely you’ve already been expose to whatever they carry, and so you’re more likely to be a danger to them, but you still got to interact with them.”

The children drew even closer and one by one they came up and put a gift on the floor by the Baron, and hugged him, “Happy Birthday, my Lord,” they said and in each of the gifts were all the presents that he had been given as a child and had failed to realize their significance in his time, but now, the gifts were bringing back memories, good memories and bad memories and the memories he sculpted with those memories so that the whole of him unraveled in a such a unique way that he was humbled and crying. Even Benny’s father, the toymaker, brought forwards a gift, and set it before the Baron, “my Lord,” as Benny had disappeared and freed all the workers from all the dungeons during the chaos. At the same time, everyone in the court had also received a present past gift, melting all of their hearts, and bringing tears to everyone, which would start a new practice of giving gifts on a birthday, as opposed to receiving gifts, and every day is technically Christmas, because redemption isn’t just one time a year.

“I am unworthy of such demonstrations of love,” the Baron said.

“We all are,” Truly said. “That’s why it’s called love.”

And so, in an instant, the whole of Vulgaria was transformed by the display of kindness from children…

“Oh, hogwash!” Lester protested. “Kids can be absolutely brutal.”

“They can be,” Loxy said.

“But not here. The kids had seen such torment that there would be no more games of cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers, or any other divisive game play that makes one caste superior to another, and those never were about superior and inferior, but were really just opposite sides of a coin, cause you can’t have one without the other,” Caractacus said. “And it is only when we forget the roles we play are just that, roles, not absolutes, that we fall victim to the dark ways.” This would be later confirmed by studies at Stanford, so horrendous in outcomes that the psychological concepts of what it means to be good or bad were forever changed. Additional confirmation came from an experiment performed on children, the blue eye brown eye experiment that resulted in a teacher getting fired, because, well, they sent their children to learn elementary stuff, not advance soul expanding stuff. And then when you look at the outcomes from the Milgram experiment, where people were encouraged to shock volunteers to the point of death, well, you would think there was no hope, except there is, it’s all in what you are taught.

“You can’t dress up a life time of injuries and make it all go away with a few gifts and children expressing positive sentiment,” Lester said.

“You’re right,” Loxy said. “At the end of the great war of economics, there must be in place an absolute amnesty for all past wrongs. It’s called forgiveness.” “Ba, humbug,” Lester said.

“But what about the child catcher?” Eston asked.

“Yeah, you said no one would die, and clearly being frozen in carbonite for all eternity is the equivalent, of death,” Elixabeth said.

“Worse than death, as is soul can’t move forwards, or fall to the level it needs to fall,” Keera said.

“It’s the only semi-reasonable thing you did,” Lester said. “In fact, I would have dropped into the mouth of a sarlacc where he could have suffered for tens of thousands of years.” “And poisoned a sarlacc?” Alish asked.

“Oh, please. Sarlaccs are much more resilient than people give them credit for,” Lester said.

“Did you ever hear you are what you eat?” Alish said.

“What if I told you the actor who played the child catcher was actually a really nice man?” Jon asked.

“How could that be?” the children asked.

“His name was Robert Helpmann,” Loxy said. “And he was a really nice man. He helped people.”

“He scared generations of kids,” Fersia pointed out.

“Indeed,” Lester said.

“He took on this role to help people. Just like a dentist, who may hurt you, but not harm you,” Jon said. “And the truth about spirit is though you can be hurt, you can never be harmed. And that’s just one bad guy. In the book, there were several bad people, much worse than the child catcher.”

“And you’re letting them get away, too, no doubt,” Lester said.

“At the heart of every bad man was a very good child, in a system that became more about the system than the humans it was designed to serve,” Loxy said.

“And so, in order to heal this man, we had to travel back in time and remove him from his family and environment of origin and allow him opportunities to experience a different way of life, and so the man that we encountered no longer exists,” Jon said.

“So you killed him by default,” Lester said. “The evil man was killed and replaced by a good man.”

“But father, you met Mimsie by accident at a toy store, where she asked about what gift she should get her nephew, Lego’s or Mega Blocks, and if you destroyed the catcher, then Mega Blocks wouldn’t exist, which means mother never asked you a question, which means she wasn’t dazzled by your expounding on Lego’s long term value not diminishing over time, which means we wouldn’t be here, I mean, Jeremy and Jemima wouldn’t be here,” Eston said.

“That’s a great point,” Jon said. “So the question becomes, would you go back in time and kill Hitler before he was Hitler…” “Yes?!” Lester said.

“Knowing that all of the billions of people who came into existence because of the War would be erased?” Jon asked.

“Yes,” Lester said again.

“Which means the lessons of the war to end all wars was never learned and I wouldn’t be here because my great grandparents on my father’s side met due to the war,” Jon said. Which, in and of itself may not have been a bad thing, because grandfather was the product of a victory rape, in Berlin once the Russians took over, and the men tired from war and cold, and angry at the Germans, and a long way from home, and so in addition to nunneries and dormitories being raided for food, well, there were other hungers that had gone unsatisfied. And though there were lots of hero sex, where men were rewarded for deeds, Jon’s family line came from a more problematic line, the line most people don’t want to talk about, except great grandmother was such an extraordinary survivor, most people of that age were much hardier than the present age, and her trauma opened up her access to the gypsy magic that had laid dormant in her blood for generations, and you don’t need trauma to open it, but that’s what it took for her, and so she raised a spending young man, who was just a bit off because she was just a bit off… “I would be okay with that, because then…” Lester began.

“You would not have met any of us, because contrary to your belief that you met me before Jon, I exist because Jon exists,” Loxy pointed out. “And it was I who brought our team together and introduced you to Jon, so you can’t have the best of both worlds without some of the worst.”

“So, do we have free will?” Eston asked.

“No,” Lester said.

“Yes,” Loxy said.

“Why would you say no?” Jon asked.

“You can’t rewrite time and have free will,” Lester said.

“That’s where you’re mistaken, my friend,” Loxy said. “Jon and I removed the catcher from the time line and when we were finished with him, he was so rehabilitated that he could not even hurt a mosquito, even an annoying one that buzzed his ear and bit his arm while he watched.”

“Which means you destroyed the timeline,” Lester said.

“No,” Jon said. “While conducting the life review, he experienced all his awful deeds, and normally that alone would have been a crippling blow to any one sould to handle alone, but a whole team of experts in love were there to prevent him from being inundated with so much shame and personal horror that he would have died on the spot. Loxy and I and all the others who were privy to the good that came about because of him sustained him with such an outpouring of love that he was transformed even further...”

“Which means, time was changed,” Lester said.

“No, it was preserved. The punishment of a healed man is to re-experience his life again, in its entirety, without changing a thing,” Jon said.

“But how could a good man do that?” Elizabeth asked.

“Most can only make the commitment to relive their life, but very few can actually do it with memory intact, and so, the memory of who he really is had to be suppressed and he was born back into his role,” Loxy said.

“Which means, no free will!” Lester pointed out.

“The choice came from him agreeing to reprise his role, because it was necessary for soul to learn,” Jon said.

“You two, hippie loving, love pushing, metaphysical Krishna jumping Buddhists are insane!” Lester lamented. “You can’t eliminate evil by white washing and putting a good face on it!”

“And you can eliminate it by killing it?” Jon asked.

“And the feud continues,” Keera said, trying to make a joke.

“We’re not putting a good face on it. We’re just saying it’s not what you think it is, that it is much more complex, and everything is so integrally conne