SAVANT WANT: THIS DOES

Xat enters the lab ferociously.

Ferm: ferocious phone call?

Xat (bloodshot eyes): what's going on here?

Ferm: what, it's nothing unusual.

Ferm and Tob are finishing up the flaccid corners of their bag of Reese's Pieces.

Xat: you're fraternizing with the enemy! this is not how science is done!

Ferm (echoing through the chamber): it's called love. and when did science get us anywhere?

Xat storms out of the room, hiding his furiously as he breaks apart the sliding door from the middle before Zhu has a chance to crack it open for him and before the Star Trek doorslide sound of compressed air releasing.

Tob: bad day?

Ferm: might be our last.

Tob: love never dies. it can spark up in a second and fade away, but the trail of it is committed to fleshy memory.

Ferm: i just don't want it to end.

Tob: our love or our life?

Ferm: it's all one.

Tob: yes, it's all One, never thought i'd be a Columbus in my waning years, but the discovery of something truly new has sparked my old circuits back to nature.

Ferm: bad example but i catch your drift. so you've discovered the ore?

Tob: no, something much more valuable.

Ferm's sigh brings a deadening hush to the quiet of the greenhouse.

Tob: i'm sensing something.

Ferm: i know, that's what i love about you. my poor brother, he is lost but so am i.

Tob: i'm not familiar with earth customs. do brothers and sisters have sex?

Ferm: it's earthy, earthen. this world is so streamlined it has come to this. we aren't individuals anymore, we pleasure at the pleasure of the hive mind. we orgasm with the image of the CL in our O faces.

Tob: scary though somehow also kinky.

Ferm: even now i don't know what love is save for a bit in my computer memory, i'm trying to feel it a bit more with you more than know it. knowledge can create only so big a tremor, the wave crests over only through touch.

Tob: we all knew we were everything that is. but that was not enough, we wanted to feel everything that is.

the screens' glow provides the only light in the room.

Tob: was he good? if i may be so bold.

Ferm: you are the boldest man i know, you are everything, without you we are nothing, i am nothing. he's a good brother, he needs to hide it to project business strength. bad lay, though. it's cold, sterile, and like a laboratory. no feeling because we have lost feeling. all computerized and cyber, no swell of free-will release, of breaking the rules in open air, of shouting at the top of our lungs, the fleshy flap that does that is a bit. it's not his fault or mine, it's none of our faults and all of our faults, we caused this to happen, we are unnatural now, this isn't the way it was supposed to be. the future is a funny thing. we don't know how to love.

Tob: you forgot. i know, the time drags on, i know first-hand, the hand of time is slow and deliberate, allergic to change, nothing seems to change, ice ages cover over progress, well-worn ideas aren't the superior ideas, just the ideas that survived the evolutions, so they're the shiny hills we build our cities upon. they are the ideas of the superiors. history is written and backlogged by the victors. but i tell you this with my last alien breath, i do feel that things are about to change. you feel it, too, and that's much better than thinking it or knowing it.

Ferm (tears up): you're dying?

Tob: in a way.

Ferm tears up a page from her green notebook of digital paper and invisible ink and continues scanning with her green scanner the panel of Tob's buttons, pushing in the various combinations, sticking her fingers into Tob's mouth gob opening and listening to her heartbeat, then trying more buttons. she subtly pushes the newayz sticks in and out of Tob, ever so gently, to get a better reading, better transmission, better reception.

Zhu is frying an egg but she forgot whether she saw two pieces of eggshell in the batter or not and whether she should scrape those off before the egg starts cooking. she lunges for the refrigerator but thinks about it, takes a deep breath into her lungs, and returns to the pan but thinks twice and maybe those two pieces of eggshell weren't ever there so she twists her cyberfeet back to the fridge.

the populace go round and round in circles outside, too, until the screens come on. that running scroll has such a calming influence. it's in the center of all towns and centers everyone.

on the screens:

* come to Golden Corral for yeast rolls! that's how we roll! same recipe we've used for 1000 years. they're hard as a rock by now!

* right-wing nutjobs were correct! they knew the truth all along! but everyone thought they were crazy. they were trying to prevent an environmental disaster. not a natural disaster. you can't stop natural disasters like wings of birds flying around to spread the seed to produce the best-tasting nuts. She is in Her Heaven. take a look at this focus group trying the nuts: we have a senator in plaid, a real female nerd, a poolcleaner from the 'burbs who cleans his own mansion, and an asexual fiend. they are all giving each other nutjobs. the people on the left side of the table have weak, limp wrists, can't pick up for themselves, have to have others stuff those nuts down their throats. those left-siders will swallow anything!

* good news, everyone! James Flacco and Seth Rogen have woken from their sybernetic slumber! James and Joe Flacco have done a joint commercial for the Superbaltimore Ravens With Wings. now he's free. here's a snippet from the interview, cyberwink cyberwink:

Flacco: the one thing i will say is that it's weird.
Rogen: i know, just, like, weird.
Flacco: yeah, this whole thing has been weird.
Rogen: everything, when you think about it, everything, like everything that there is is weird.

* and now, the Chips Ahoy! Dancers in their sailor hats and baggy jeans have something to say to you as they dance the Elaine Dry Heave:

"Chips Ahoy! motherfuckers, Chips Ahoy! Chips Ahoy! motherfuckers, we eat them, we're out of gumballs, fuck yeah!"

the crowd can't conversate with each other cos they're too busy with crumbs on their lips.

* the Queen's Christmas message: reconciliation, it's a Grand thing. that's all we need. it's too late of course now. stiff upper lip made of metal all. accept the end with grace, Daily Mirroring our Savior Lord Jesus Christ's Grace. good bye, i have loved being your eternal queen. Mary, i'm comin' home!!!

suddenly there's a hush. the CL comes onscreen, but before he talks, he takes a moment of silence. then he resumes. but before,

THIS, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK.

this immediately softens the people with reflection and everyone in the world cries. cyber eyes or not, milky liquid more clear than milk streams down everyone's cheeks. they think back to how Korra was the last great series of rich, layered, evocative storytelling for kids. and for adults. Korra the last heroine for love. creativity became focus-grouped and financed after that.

CL: i feel your pain. i am here with you. we haven't found the ore. we have but not enough of it. all the ore is in my private vault under my private desk in my private office for the safekeepers, don't you worry your pretty little cyberbrains about it. we tried, my darlings, we tried, but it was doomed from the start. it was doomed from Adam. get into your escape ipods and your rockets to take you to Mars and beyond. that is if you still want to live. i love you all! i live you all! to infinity and beyond! well it looks like infinity has come sooner than not. it's so funny what is important at a certain time is thoroughly unimportant as time rolls along. except dinner rolls, they are eternal, they last forever. one last day before the new year. one last pie of pizza. one last beer with all the common folk. oh what could have been! Jodorowsky's Dune was a pleasure to watch, a feast for the cybersenses. imagination is all. alas alas alas. a lass saved me. remember, my dear people, it has been so dear for me to be your leader. remember, happy new tear! majority report. remember,

FOLLOW NOT FALSE PROPHETS, THEY ARE LOST, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK.

the screens go out, jam, old-skool jams, someone is trying to hack in and collect valuable data, the only valuable data is the CL, what's going on?, have to fucking reboot, push that slender button on the tippity top, wait, wait, is the apple-with-the-worm sign on there yet? looking for a sign. wait, wait, slide to unlock, blue screen, blue screen of death, HE'S BACK ON!!!

* hi, it's me again, remember me? remember anything? yeah, so, have you become a follower at my blog? just wondering, lost a couple more today, but i'm thinking that was a glitch. or follow me on my superinstagram, whatever.

the CL is back on the screens!

CL: hi, it's me again!

and which point the CL begins to do the Lambada! the Forbidden Dance! the world erupts, erupts in howls of laughter like a tsunami, their tears of cry turn into tears of laugh. they don't know if they're reacting to the fact that this is ridiculous, inappropriate at a somber time like this, or forbidden, but everyone in the world as a single unified entity laughs in their own unique way, vocaloid and vocal, and lets out their last gasp of humanity. thank you, CL, for this moment of global bonding! to utter, to squirm, to notice, shrug, celebrate, see, enjoin, shiver, flood, condemn, see something new, it's a reaction, that's the importance, group-laugh from '80s cartoons, group-cry, groupthink, group-hug in the end.

Xat is speeding down his way, ignoring everything on his ballleaper. he's on the ear.

Xat: what? i'm so confused. my mind is confuzzled, jumbled, streamlined, streaming. the ore? do we have it? yes, the ore exists in the universe. and isn't the entire universe ours to explore? is it enough? what is it called? muchwow or bae or throwing shade or something. the name of the rock it's on? Rock. Marble. Dot. it's pale. it pales in comparison. the meteor? the asteroid? who cares? we landered a lander on the Comet. we can place an entire civilization on an atom. our nanos have become nanas, we've grandfathered everything in, we are Fry, we are our own grandfathers, the second we could time-travel was the second the afterlife ceased to be. it only takes a second. yes, we are saved. but i am not saved. i don't care anymore for my acres, never did, i care about something else now, oh how blessed it is to care, to not be you anymore cos you're thinking about something that's not you. yes, i need my money, my roof's leaking. where's my money, bitch!? you government types are all alike. put it in my account. accounting is boring. an accounting of oneself...

Xat looks with his advanced cybereye but it's not fast enough, despite all the advancements he's not advanced enough to advance his ballleaper away from the black gravestone in front of him in the middle of the road. roadblock? or was he drifting into a grassy cemetery this whole time? he swerves and makes a noise, his ballleaper swerves and makes an electronic noise of bustle and sparks and hover-skidmarks all over the road. there's flipflopping to no end. car crash. Xat crashes into the screens.

TO BE CONCLUDED...