SATELLITES (SETH)

Cotard: how are you?

Codrus: got a knife in the front from my best friend. peachy. keen.

Codrus removes the knife rapidly and plunges it in his stomach, chest, and third eye in a plume of time. the smoke from the plume shields his eyes as he wanted, he balks when he has to look into deep space. he instead focuses on the Earth below, a massive hissing molten dried-up stone of dirt.

Codrus: brings an earned tear to my eye. death is so sad but also so pretty. you have to lean on the pretty part or you'll go insane. death is sublimated when it's poetic, makes it less painful or so we trick ourselves. when it's final and absolute, and all of the white noise turns into one sound. the sound of silence. god i remember the last call i took, from some stupid woman complaining about the protesters at her Macy's. humans are so dumb, always calling for this and calling for that long after it's too late.

Cotard: oh don't pretend you're not just like them. you can't run away from your heritage no matter how far you go.

Codrus: i hated how that woman made me feel. she really got under my skin. hello, it's me, she asked. HELLO?!! i answered sarcastically. something about the female voice, it's so probing and laden with guilt lilt. she caught me at exactly the bad time. i was thinking about something else, daydreaming as i do. i stumbled over my words telling her, no ordering her, to call back for i was busy ending the world. the worst part is i feel she didn't get a good first impression of me, y'know? i hate that first impressions come first. like she saw me as a bumbling idiot instead of the refined, well-spoken gogue that i am, that i should always convey to any stranger that has a question. she thought i was some empty suit in an ivory tower.

Codrus picks up a pebble orbiting the Moon and throws it into space angrily. the pebble suspends in a turning circle, turns into a boulder, and crashes down onto Codrus.

Codrus: ow. speaking of, how do you think my boy Bump fared?

Cotard: Mickey Bump is six feet under. well seven, he's a big boy.

Codrus: shame. he would have loved seeing The Man in the High Castle, that is so him.

Cotard: film will be made and watched again, it's the nature of things that move. culture will come back. i'll remember our race, all of them, all of it.

Codrus jumps onto the Moon's round surface to avoid getting washed out into outer space. he slithers on all fours across the Moon. he uses another plume of time to smoke out his knifed body parts again and reassemble them upright.

Codrus: always be redistributing, that's the key. oh, well looky here, my digestion is better, my heart is squishier, my third eye got washed. i feel more human again. i'm a spring chicken. i feel like dancing.

the other space sailor in their space bubble lands gently on the Moon. Codrus scoops up some Moondirt in his hands, mixes some yellow fairydust in it, and it turns into a burrito.

Codrus: hungry?

Cotard taps his naked belly.

Cotard: i could eat. mmmmmmm, just like Mama used to make. but i prefer burgers. just no chimichangas, Mama says those are strictly a Taco Bell creation.

Codrus: Mama Fuerza. such an apt name. on the nose. *sniffs* no problem *poof* there, burger! bacon of course? it causes cancer but then so does everything. life causes death.

Cotard: speaking of Imzhan, i need to rest. now don't do anything i wouldn't do.

Cotard falls on his palm and lays on a nearby spacerock. his eyes are begging to close but he manages to maintain the slits long enough to see the tail beginning of Codrus's elaborate dance routine on the surface of the Moon. Codrus jumps high over positioned and placed golf clubs, bouncing off nascent volcano spouts and rocky hills, using the entire surface of the baby planet like a seasoned parkourist.

CODRUS DANCES EXACTLY LIKE THIS, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK.

Codrus looks so silly when he makes a jerk move and the knifeblade flaps up and down on his body, boinging and spinning like an out-of-control member. Codrus dons a sparkly yellow glove on his right hand but it won't fit cos his left fingers are too stubby. Codrus turns around and starts to glide creatively down the Moon but trips on a stone. before Cotard closes his eyes for good and trails on, he takes out a roll of postage stamps.

Codrus (mid-dance): what are those for? where did you take them out of? your backpocket? but you're naked! nevermind. letters unfortunately died out. lost art form. no friends to send them to. mine are gone, too. maybe if handwritten letters hadn't died out, humanity wouldn't have died out. couldn't handle the new stuff. hahahaha. did i just say that out loud? too soon? sorry, nervous laugh.

Cotard rolls the postage stamps around his penis and dozes off.




INTERMISSION. COTARD SLEEPS.



Cotard opens his eyes like a cat and the frame of the camera opens up to let in a little light and the expanse of space beyond the Moon hits him for the first time. there's too much light out there in the wild open spaces, so his eyes adjust humanly and pull back. when he can focus again on what's in front of him, he sees an old man with a paunch and tight beltbuckle and bushels of white hair growing inside his spotted ears sitting by a stone. the man has the most approachable face of all time. Cotard checks his dick: there was movement with the stamps. inflation. liquid growth.

Cotard: i can still feel. thank Christ.

Cotard dabs his finger with the precum on the tip of his penis, lightly marks his face with it, two parallel lines on one cheek, two perpendicular lines on the other. he notices his headphones attached with two wires that become one and tail-end into a bottle-shaped plug. he takes this plug and plugs it into the old man's bellybutton. the old man tastes his eyes for the first time.

old man: me Tarzan, you Jane Roberts. hello, my name is Seth. nice to meetcha. bump it, bro.

Cotard wearily touches Seth's hand as memories of when Cotard used to do communion flood back into Cotard's senses like a hurtful electric signal.

Cotard: we will miss them. they were everything. they were what captured life. in a bell jar. they were the mirror by, to, but most importantly of God. you can't say you weren't moved as much as you were horrified. we should have mixed more but goddamn it we loved our salad too much. Bethany Hamilton. she infuses your fear with faith. there is always someone who has it worse than you. oh why did we allow our technology to foster complainingness? if we are to ban anything, let it be comment sections.

Cotard has become quite frayed around the edges. Seth, meanwhile, is always mild-mannered and steady.

Seth (coughing but surprisingly crisp-voiced): everyone is buried under rubble. except those terrorists. leave it to the terrorists to defy the odds and somehow survive the glue apocalypse. what if i told you i know of a cell that is somewhere around, let's say in Syria. or in Bruges. they are hiding in a glass bubble they built with their hardened belief system, held together by ancient delusion, and are ready to come out of their bubble and create the world in their image when the ash settles. remind you of anyone?

Cotard: ah, terrorist, it can mean so many things to so many people, meaning the exact opposite of itself at the same time.

Seth: what if i told you there was one structure that remained not-razed. Disneyland. but look, down below! it's playing in real time. see that warhead? oh no, see it flying there? it, oh, it fucking hit Disneyland! how could you, you bastards!

Cotard: have you been reading my diary? i wrote it on paper, not on a blog. i hate war but that would be the one unforgivable heinous action that would spur me to enlist. but please, don't reinstate the draft, we have enough hatred of government, don't need more mistrust and fudged numbers. what we need is more fudge.

Seth points to his third eye which has transformed into a circling radar.

Seth: now what if i told you that you had the power to decimate this terrorist army. the last of its kind, you make them extinct. you can do a service for your fellow precious hu-more-man, you need not pay the ultimate sacrifice, that's hogwash, why do a glorious thing once when you can do the thing and live on as an eternal war hero?

Cotard: do i get to bring back the dodo? equivalent exchange, right? asymmetrical warfare is too skewed. the galaxy yearns for balance.

Seth: don't look at me like i'm a talking dog, i'm an author. now all you have to do is shape your finger like a gun. like so. and place it touching the tip of your uvula inside your mouth. ah the uvula, that fleshy little member we've all got. the uvula and the butt---men, women, we've all got one. the gift of sound, of words, of language, the miracle of communication, and finally of meaning. then you merely pull the trigger and boom those nasty vile death-cultists get what they deserve. virgins. or more precisly, air. virgins, sure, if they think hard enough. hahaha. death's not cool, it's the end of the journey. you must fight to stay alive. some call it weakness, i call it learning. death's not cool nor hot. it's unfeeling nothing. or, more horribly, it's feeling nothing. hahahaha. do it, end them, stop their firebreathing as they lay on the frozen tundra. give in to your bloodlust, nobody's watching. nobody watches anymore.

Cotard: you sound so calm. i'm doing this.........for scientific purposes.........just to see.

Cotard shoots his tongue and the terrorists are vaporized before they can be vanquished. one of Cotard's  brow furrows turns red and begins to hiss but Cotard does an emergency session of meditation and masturbation and it turns blue.

Seth: have you not noticed we've been atop a mountain on the Moon this whole time?

Cotard takes advantage of this vantage to spot his invisible bubble, where Uvula and the others are. he trains his eyes so they can zoom in like a microscope until he meets his beloved Uvula's eyes. she nods her divine acknowledgement. Cotard nods again to make sure, a safety nod.

Uvula, on her back in the lake, whisperly mouths the words: it is all about sex.

Cotard: you can't know everything about them. there's too much to know. it seems like you reach a point where all is known. but they surprise you. it's the surprises which provide the spark. for most is known and played-out over the centuries. nothing is learned. if it were learned, things would get stagnant. the next generation has to make their own mistakes. it's one thing to read about it in a history book, it's another thing to have a boot on your crotch, to feel the stinging air of an alfresco cafe after getting stood up, to come out of your closet wearing the clothes you want for the first time, to catch the ball in the playoffs, to work yourself to death and die on the job.

Seth: i know the important stuff. i know pop culture. i have every DVD and every netflix of every show ever made chilling in my mouth. and those that were in preproduction and never got made? those got made, too, in my teeth. look.

Seth's teeth are lined with little miniature tvs broadcasting every show ever.

Seth: i find that the culture is cruder. trying too hard to be shocking, gross, sexy. really just trying to get noticed. everything is at the fringes now, there's no center. Rick and Morty explores nihilism for laughs, Bill Maher explores nihilism as smart common sense. everything is bottom-lined. i prefer not to have a bottom.

Cotard (getting more comfortable): you don't have an ass, honey. real friends keep it real.

Seth: and news must be entertaining, it can't just be news. if you're not popular, you don't exist. VICE News, VICE news, that's the indie underground secret news, the take-no-prisoners fuck-you news, even their name is unsavory, they go places Dan Rather would never go. at least before he was fired. they'll do the story behind the story on blowup-doll culture. they know where the plane is cos the person who took the plane is on their payroll. only they can talk to the real killer. VICE.

Cotard (getting more in control of the situation): i've never thought of another man before but i must say that Michael Weiss with his shirt left open unbuttoned thrice is quite the cutie. i love his big words. i could listen to him news me all day. can you suddenly turn gay at 30? or is it an evolution?

Seth: evolution is a smokescreen, one i intend to nip in the bud. do i smell bud?

Cotard takes a bouquet garni out of his butt and waves it around. the aroma is deafening.

Cotard: don't mind me. just sanctifying. i need my space clean before i can perform magic. i know you don't believe in stuff. humor me, please, i need a laugh. you destroyed my home. although, it's true, i don't want to live on *he points his finger to ruined Earth* THAT planet anymore. when i'm done feel free to steam down the leaves of this thing and use it as salsa for the burritos. tell me, have you ever smiled with that mouth of yours?

before Seth can answer, Cotard smiles directly at Seth. Seth looks away despite all his divine might, he slides his hand over his face and reveals he was Codrus all along. Codrus touches Cotard's shoulder at a distance. Codrus can't sit on the Moon anymore, his crusty butt is lined with poo he didn't wipe off properly. it hurts like hell.

Cotard: look at me. look at me smile. there's nothing more powerful in the universe than a genuine human smile. you'll miss it. your mouth cannot produce a smile cos it's too full of lead. we only learn to do what we see represented, that gets us on a repetition kick. we are simple animals who do what our tvs tell us to do. knowledge is imitation.

Codrus: my my, that fur is so soft. dolphin-safe i hope, those eco-terrorists are harder to kill than the cockroaches they protect. man it's fun being other people. i know you're wearing a robe. i see your invisible. i see your invisible robe. and i see your invisible lake. i know what you're trying to do. you won't succeed. you won't save them. i know everything. i've read all the dictator manuals which came before. unlike humans, i learn from my mistakes. it's built into my programming. i'm a machine. i know all strategy and all countermove. i've read all the books and written myself the ones which were unfinished or never written. i shall be the most bombastic evil person who ever lived. i know this because i shall be the last entity who will ever live. i'm like the Hitler of knowledge.

Cotard: hate to always be the contrarian but...............um, you know the lake you so astutely found? it's part of the Pacific Ocean, right?

Codrus: yes, of course.

Cotard: but it's not, it's the Atlantic Ocean. yes, it's really the Atlantic Ocean. and after some time, once the residents don't get fucked over immediately, they'll learn to live in a bubble, fuck each other and raise the family. as the water of the lake serves as their natural home, after a couple of generations, they'll breathe easy again---through their gills---they'll be comfortable in their kinda-human skin, they'll stand up and swim, knowing they're living in unusual strange mythic times. and i hope these people name their civilization after the correct name of the ocean that started it all for them.

next stop: the Sun