Ratatosk's BiP: A Story in Five Parts

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Yes, Rat is still not getting with the program. 

After many discussions and metaphor examinations and ideas... I finally put my thoughts on the BiP into a story. Originally I intended this to be spread throughout the GSP or another version of the BiP, but since I haven't gotten either of those completed... I figured I would post it here so I can reference it. There will be five posts one for each part, then you all can ignore it or tear it up at will

A Story in Five Parts

Part I

Following two loud blasts from the siren, Bob awoke just like he did every day. He opened his eyes to the morning light streaming in from a barred window, which left alternating stripes of light and dark painted across the floor. Above him the flat gray of a featureless ceiling loomed, as though it were a cloud just waiting to dump its load. His cot with its thin layer of padding was by no means plush, and the blanket covering him was scratchy. Yet none of this entered the conscious parts of Bob's brain when he opened his eyes. After all, none of it ever changed. This was his cell, it was his ceiling, his cot, his blanket, and he had become comfortable with those familiar surroundings.

Comfortable and familiar were two words that described almost everything about Bob and his life. It described his cell. It described what he did to occupy his time. It described the thoughts that ran through his brain. It especially described the things that he thought he knew about himself.

The other prisoners began stirring in their cells. There was the loud metallic clunking sound as guards opened the hall door and entered with trays of food to start off the breakfast ritual. Each cellmate was passed a plate, something to drink and their daily assignments. The routine was as well-known and broken-in as a pair of old shoes. Ironically, that's also what the food tasted like. Bob never complained though. It wasn't the best food, but it wasn't bad. He'd grown accustomed to its mediocre quality.

After breakfast and a tall latte, he wandered over to the back corner of his cell. Bob spent much of his day in this corner with its odd beige-colored walls. It's not that he actually accomplished much in this space; usually he just sat there. Sometimes he would shuffle some papers or draw a few pictures, but that was just busy work which kept him from being terribly bored. The desk and chair were neither elegant nor artistic. If form follows function, apparently the entire beige corner was designed to function as an assassin of creative thought.

After a few hours of staring at the walls and shuffling stacks of papers into yet another configuration, the siren sounded again. Bob's mouth began to salivate. "Lunchtime!" he said happily to no one in particular. Of course, the bland food was no better than breakfast, but Bob didn't mind. He expected lunch, he didn't expect high quality food and the Prison never failed to meet an inmates lowered expectations.

Later, the siren bleated twice and the guard shouted "Lights Out!" as the filaments went dark. Bob crawled under the blanket, masturbated to no fantasy in particular and, just like every night he could remember, fell asleep in his cell.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Part II

The siren let out five long "Whoop" noises and Bob immediately woke up. The siren never made five "Whoop" noises.

He looked around. The room was dark and still. No one else was awake in the prison. Bob laid back, assuming that the siren call had been in his head. Then, once again the siren called out: "Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!" and Bob was immediately alert again.

This time he could see someone in his cell! Bob was suddenly uncomfortable and unsure for the first time that he could remember.

"Excuse me," Bob ventured, assuming that the person was a prison employee, "why are you in my cell?"

The Stranger turned around and looked at him for a moment. "Cell? What the heck are you talking about?"

"Cell," Bob said, "my prison cell. You are in my prison cell and I would like to know why."

The Stranger scratched their head, looked at Bob curiously and sighed. "Oh, sorry, you mean your cell in the Black Iron Prison." He started to laugh but then, noting the confused look on Bob's face, he sighed and pulled over a stool which Bob was sure had not been there a moment ago. The man sat down, leaned forward and studied Bob closely for a moment. Bob tried to study the man in return, but it was a losing proposition... he couldn't see quite clearly enough.

"Well Bob, you're not in a Prison, per se. You have never really been in a prison. This whole thing, the prison, the guards, the other inmates, the food and even that annoying siren..." he tapped his forehead, "it's all in your mind. It's your own personal prison, made out of every decision and experience that you've had in your life."

At this point, Bob decided someone was trying to make a fool of him. He stood up and walked to the cell door. "If this is in my head," he said, "then I should be able to walk right through it." Saying this, Bob stepped into the door and smacked his head on the bars. He staggered back, shook his noggin and then looked at the man. "See," he said, "they are real bars and this is a real prison."

The man rolled his eyes, stood up and walked right through the wall. He looked back through the bars in the door and smiled, saying, "I said you weren't in a prison 'per se,' not that you weren't trapped. See, its your bars and your prison. You made it, you maintain it and you keep yourself inside it by doing the same thing and thinking the same thoughts." He paused and looked at Bob slyly. "When was the last time you had a brand new idea? When was the last time you had a brand new experience? When was the last time you cut loose and did something that you have never done before?"

Bob was taken aback. This had a lot to do with the stranger walking through a solid wall, but he was also, suddenly, very uncomfortable with how comfortable the cell actually felt.

"Lookit," the man continued, "can you tell me what crime you committed that got you put behind bars? Can you tell me how long you were sentenced to be here, or how much time you've already served?"

Bob strained to recall the arrest, the trial, the sentencing, but there was nothing there. He tried to remember how long he had been here, but that too seemed so far distant in his memory that no valuable information was forthcoming.

"I don't understand," Bob said, his voice shaking a little, "If I'm not in prison, then where am I and why do I think I'm in jail?"

The man smiled. "Ah, now that's a good question. It conveys the potential for independent thought! First, as I said, you are in a 'prison' of sorts. You are in what some smart people call 'The Black Iron Prison.' The prison of your own reality..." he paused and shrugged. "Well, your own interpretation of Reality, anyway. You're not alone in this, either. Almost everyone starts out here, and most people never leave. Some people don't even see the prison walls and bars... they just putter around following the sirens, sitting in their little beige boxes and shuffling papers. They don't see that they're trapped because they can't, or don't, see ANYTHING outside of their own little world. Not even the walls or bars. It's very hard to escape a prison, if you don't even know that its there."

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Part III

Night in the prison had always been pitch black and fit only for dreaming. Now, Bob realized, he could see his cell clearly, even without the lights, though the stranger himself was still indistinct. He thought about what the man had said. He certainly felt trapped, but maybe he was just losing his mind after years in prison. Though what if this guy was right? What if he could escape this 'Black Iron Prison'?

Bob looked at the man perched on the barstool and said, "I'd like to get out".

"There is no 'OUT.'" The man shook his head and smiled. "You aren't really 'IN'." He hopped off the barstool and tapped his head again. "Getting in and out of this Prison is up to you. You see Reality as a Prison and so it is."

As he spoke, Bob began to think that maybe Reality wasn't a prison after all. Maybe it was simply an inescapable tarpit, holding everyone within its grasp, slowly dragging them further and further into the black abyss of death. The prison walls shifted. The bars were suddenly vines. The bricks faded and became the trunks of ancient trees. Then he noticed the floor: a steaming, bubbling, stinking pool of thick tar, tar that had a strong hold on his feet and ankles.

The man was standing above the tar and seemed entirely unaffected by it. "Well, I'm not sure I've seen anyone go from bad to worse quite that quickly," he said with a look of slight concern.

"Help me, for God's Sake!" Bob screamed, "I'm being sucked in! I'll die!"

"We all die, you big baby, you can't escape it or stop it. So why worry about it?" His grin, which was beginning to annoy Bob, returned. "Besides, the only thing sucking you down right now is, well, you."

Bob tried to clear his head as the tar touched his knees. He concentrated, saying, "Not a prison, not a tar pit... DAMNIT!" The tar had his knees now and the heat was beginning to make his balls sweat. Not a prison, he thought, not a tar pit! But what else could it be?

The man smiled and grabbed Bob's wrist. "Let me help you out where you need it. Come on, come with me."

In an instant they found themselves in a small room with lots of buttons and levers. "This is one of my favorites," the man said with pride. "This is my Yellow Steel Submarine." He pushed a button and a wall slid away to reveal a magnificant scene which Bob supposed was deep beneath the ocean.

"In Reality," the Man said, "what you're looking at is deep inside normal human consciousness. This vehicle is how I explore the hard-to-reach parts of my brain."

Bob was astounded. "But, if this vehicle, like my prison, is just in your mind, why not go out there and explore freely?"

The man looked serious for a moment and tapped the window. "Out there, Bob, is Everything. Every frequency of light and sound, every smell, every taste, everything that can be experienced. All of it at the same time. Out there, Bob, I would be crushed in an instant. The sensory pressure alone would utterly destroy me. However, I can still explore a lot of it, from the safety and constraints of my Submarine."

Bob thought about it. The stranger was still trapped, kind of, but this was at least a nicer prison than the one he had.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Part IV

"Of course," the man continued as he piloted the Yellow Steel Submarine through the Seas of Human Consciousness, "this isn't the only vehicle I have." He caressed the control panel of his little submarine. "She's just one of an infinite number of possible vehicles."

Bob nodded, still concerned that he was, perhaps, insane. The man shrugged and waved his hand across Bob's field of vision. They were immediately somewhere else.

"This is my Silver Metal Spaceship." The man looked quite proud as he said this. "It's one of my newest."

Bob walked over to the portal and peeked out. Planets zoomed by. Stars, asteroids and moons tumbled past him at a frightful speed, so close it was surely not real. "These planets have to be light years apart; what sort of nonsense is this?!" he exclaimed.

The man shook his head, "It's metaphor, man, that's not real Outer Space. Out there is the Outer Space of Possibility. See that planet over there?" He gestured out the window toward a world that had just popped into view. "Let me take us in for a closer look." The ship changed course and brought them close to the surface of a beautiful forested planet with pristine lakes and gentle rolling hills.

Bob gasped as he caught sight of a... well it... it can't be a... "Is, err, is that a, a, um, a Unicorn?" Bob finally stammered.

"Of course," the man said, "what else would a white horse with a horn in the middle of its head be?"

"But, they don't exist." Bob said.

"Well, they exist on that planet in the Outer Space of Possibility. They may not exist anywhere else though, I don't know... I've only ever seen them there." He turned the ship away from the Unicorn and began cruising past other worlds.

"That planet over there is full of Pookahs. I don't think they ever leave that planet, but sometimes, people claim to see them elsewhere."

If Bob hadn't been so intently listening to the Man, he might have been startled as a teapot floated by bearing a small silver nameplate attached the delicate china:

"B. Russell".

"Reality," the man continued, "exists. It just doesn't exist in the same sense that most people think."

Bob was far too stunned by the entire adventure to argue.

"See, we all have limitations. Some of them are real, a lot of them though may be artificial. You thought that your prison of scheduled alarms, lattes and that beige corner were inescapable, didn't you?"

Bob nodded silently.

"Exactly. Those weren't real limitations, they were just the places where you stopped exploring what might be out there. It became comfortable, safe, predictable, and stable, right?" He looked at Bob, who seemed about to explode under the complexity.

"So I'm free, but I'm not really free?" Bob finally asked. "I can pretend to get out of Prison, but NEVER ever really get OUT?"

The man paused and studied him, "Well yeah Bob, you can do several things. You can go back to your comfortable prison and shuffle papers, eat when the bell rings and behave like a Pavlovian pooch, or you can break free of that tiny corner of reality and live in a much bigger cell, maybe seeing every constraint, every limitation and everything that you cannot do, as bricks, mortar and bars of a much bigger prison that you have some control over."

Bob smiled. "Well, a bigger cell is surely better."

The man grinned. "Yep, it is. But, thats not your only option." He paused and winked at Bob, "What do you think about the trip so far?"

Bob chuckled, "It's amazing. Mindblowing. I can't believe how free I feel, now that I know I don't have to go back to that cell, back to those alarms and that crappy food. And at least I'll be in control of the decorations. No more beige, ever again!"

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Part V

Driving down a dirt road, the Brown Muddy Humvee bounced through pot holes and skidded across mudflats. Bob hung on to the "OSHI" bar for dear life. The man was laughing, mad as a hatter, behind the wheel.

"Wheehoo! Now this is the life, eh Bob?!" he shouted over the thudding sub-woofer and the roar of the engine.

Bob held on and didn't speak. It dawned on him that outside the window - well, outside the window and in between the huge splotches of mud - was some part of Reality.

"So, why is it that the best I can do is a bigger cell, but you can go mudrunning?" he asked, looking at the man.

The stranger stopped laughing for a moment "My friend, no one said that a bigger cell was the best you could do." The man waved his hand to indicate the Humvee that they were sitting in, "This is a constraint, a container, a set of limits and controls. It is a thing that prevents me from ever being 100% free." He paused and sighed, and with the long exhale things went fuzzy and suddenly they were back in Bob's prison cell. Of coure, it wasn't the old cell; it was new and huge and furnished with the most interesting things.

"See Bob, we can be here, if this is where you want to be," a flash and they were flying through Outer Space, "or here," Bob looked out the window and saw a planet suddenly turn into a puffer fish, "or here, in my submarine."

Bob smiled as he suddenly got it. "You mean, the constraints are only a prison if I allow them to become a prison? The walls only exist when I settle for a conclusion, rather than forcing another question. The bars only exist if I don't continue to explore. The Prison only exists if I'm not in the act of jailbreaking."

The man smiled. "Exactly! You see Bob, no matter where you think you are . . ."  he reached toward Bob's forehead and pulled from the center of it a round, glowing yellow ball of energy, ". . . you are always and forever here in the Golden Sphere of Possibility."

The sphere began to expand and grow both in size and intensity until it surrounded Bob, the walls of this amazing ball stretching and expanding, all under his control, following his thoughts. Somewhere outside of this beautiful and brilliant new place, he heard the Stranger's voice one last time, though this time it was at a higher pitch, an almost female voice with a lilting laugh.

"Remember Bob, You have built for yourselves Black Iron Prisons, but I am chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are free."

[Scribbly]

I like this.

It's well written, there were lots of little laughs, and it lays out your ideas clearly, without bludgeoning the reader over the head with them. On top of that, it was actually an enjoyable read. I read it once... then I read it again specifically looking for anything to complain about.

Thing is, there isn't much for me to complain about. It's very upbeat. But that is what you are shooting for. And you hit the mark, I'd say. If I absolutely had to force myself to find something to complain about, I'd say that the point that one can backslide into the Prison very easily could be labored more (although that concept is in there, so that's a lame criticism to make), and that there is an implication that some mysterious outside force is going to give you a hand breaking out of the Prison, when I've always seen it as a very individual experience.

But, hell, those are petty things to complain about in an overall great piece of work. I particularly liked some of the more subtle elements that point to various intrinsic limitations throughout the story (Always a prison of Three Capitalized Words.) And the humorous touches were good without being corny. Always difficult to do, imho.

So...

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I like this.

It's well written, there were lots of little laughs, and it lays out your ideas clearly, without bludgeoning the reader over the head with them. On top of that, it was actually an enjoyable read. I read it once... then I read it again specifically looking for anything to complain about.

Thing is, there isn't much for me to complain about. It's very upbeat. But that is what you are shooting for. And you hit the mark, I'd say. If I absolutely had to force myself to find something to complain about, I'd say that the point that one can backslide into the Prison very easily could be labored more (although that concept is in there, so that's a lame criticism to make), and that there is an implication that some mysterious outside force is going to give you a hand breaking out of the Prison, when I've always seen it as a very individual experience.

But, hell, those are petty things to complain about in an overall great piece of work. I particularly liked some of the more subtle elements that point to various intrinsic limitations throughout the story (Always a prison of Three Capitalized Words.) And the humorous touches were good without being corny. Always difficult to do, imho.

So...

Thanks!

I keep trying to communicate with real words but I seem to do it better in story and poem

Damned Prison. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ofuck, it's going to take me a while to read this! Maybe I'll print it out.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Ofuck, it's going to take me a while to read this! Maybe I'll print it out.

Do you think its too long to hold the reader's attention?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ofuck, it's going to take me a while to read this! Maybe I'll print it out.

Do you think its too long to hold the reader's attention?

I think that depends a lot on whether the reader is me, or someone with an attention span.

[Golden Applesauce]

Hell yeah Russell's Teacup!

I liked the vehicle metaphor; that was one angle I hadn't considered before.

I guess the only thing I really don't like about it is the Mr. Exposition characters.  The story essentially boils down to a conversation between the Wise Man (who comes across as the author stand-in) and the Fool (who comes across as the reader stand-in.)  The problem here is the Bob only ever asks questions The Stranger knows how to answer, and only ever comes to the conclusions that The Stranger wanted him to.  Which means if the reader is has a more troublesome question to ask, or follows the reasoning to a different conclusion, then it feels to that reader that you've just constructed a straw-man out of himself.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Hell yeah Russell's Teacup!

I liked the vehicle metaphor; that was one angle I hadn't considered before.

I guess the only thing I really don't like about it is the Mr. Exposition characters.  The story essentially boils down to a conversation between the Wise Man (who comes across as the author stand-in) and the Fool (who comes across as the reader stand-in.)  The problem here is the Bob only ever asks questions The Stranger knows how to answer, and only ever comes to the conclusions that The Stranger wanted him to.  Which means if the reader is has a more troublesome question to ask, or follows the reasoning to a different conclusion, then it feels to that reader that you've just constructed a straw-man out of himself.

Ah, good points!

[LMNO]

I think I'm going to have to compile this text & print it out; i'm having trouble reading it on-screen.

[Sheered Völva]

Nice!

I'm going to sound like I'm parroting what's already been said, but I do agree with much of the above posters.

I liked the metaphor of us beging limited by physical Reality, i.e. stuck in a box/prison, but that we can give that box windows and wheels and wings.  We can be free, at least in our minds.

The story did turn rather "wise mentor - ignorant student" but that may be what you wanted.  I tend to like didactic works, but would prefer more "show me" than "tell me."  I'd like to see Bob do more, or at least try to do more.

I liked the "Eris ending," but I suspect it would make sense only to those who recognize the reference.  Others might get to the end and say, "WTF?"

But as for me, I liked it!

[Adios]

Damn you for making me think!