Jogging With Roussel 16 Part 4

            Martial Canterel and Abu Dakni were in the temporal strategy lounge of one of the lower laboratories in Montmorency, when Dakni began to grow querulous over the content of Canterel’s latest trans-temporal project: “Why Zoroastrianism, Martial? Why Persia?” To which Canterel replied after looking pensive for a moment: “Persist in patience, Eris, for parsing reason is not the job of seasons, but the leisure of a visionary art in seizure..” “Martial!” cried Abu Dakni, “You wouldn’t base an entire alternate world on some hazy poetics of echoics, would you?” Then Canterel, using a movement of the hand like a magician, snapped open a little yellow glass frame in the air and reached through it, and pulled out a volume from the TTL, and handed it to Abu Dakni. “The Three Imposters?” “You’ll notice it doesn’t say four imposters,” said Canterel evenly. “From what I’ve been able to intuit, Zoroastrianism is the one religion that failed that would have conserved the concept of magic, and combined it with what is typically called science. It has no historical tendencies for the punishment of apostasy, as it retains a certain Indo-Aryan plasticity in its theology, an accretionist, or literary-poetic tendency, and the origins of the religion itself are obscure because of its natural suspicion of writing which is bound up in its origin. That originating tendency renders its fundamental character a form or figure of heterodoxy. The Zoroastrians will allow any religion to exist, and as the central pillar of geo-metaphysics, and one aligned with magic, it will allow a flourishing of both occult and scientific cultus. Zoroastrianism is the Persian fruit of equanimity.” “But Canterel, surely, reason and enlightenment are the path, what of protecting and fostering the world of Charvaka,” said Dakni growing impassioned as a man of science, and clear direct thought.

 “My Dear Abu, I leave that project to you, For if you wish to ‘make it new’ or real, my wish is to keep it eccentric, or ‘keep it weird’ as they say in America on their automobile bumperstickers! And as for Charvaka, I have already printed his mind, and I had thought of something supremely weird of him, for this world.” “And what would that be?” said Abu Dakni somewhat crestfallen. “I had thought to create tree cities of green Charvakan squirrels, chlorsquirrel Charvakas on every continent, protected by powerful Chlorlock Gargantuas, and these tiny furry little emeralds would become enigmatic gurus to the humans with a more naturalist, and more fantastic bent.” “You would have green squirrels to profess atheism to warlock Zoroasts?” “Not something as pedestrian as Atheism Dakni, but a larger, more mysterious idea, Lyrical Materialism!” Abu Dakni seemed satisfied. He put his arm around Canterel’s shoulder, and imitated in an Indian accent, “What a strange and wondrous old guru you are Martial Canterel.” “I’m all-a’bullish on fiddle-faddle's honey,” said Canterel, “I’m a fan!”

And they went off to put Fogar into the jail in Bahrain where he would call himself  Abu'l-Fadl al-Isfahani, and be discovered by Abū-Tāhir Al-Jannābī, and would be seen to be the Mahdi, but this time, the process would be a little more cunning, and a little less murderous. There are ways to move people around without having to kill them. Canterel had the biggest witness protection program in the universe until he sold the rights to it to be used as a training museum for successive ages of Trans-Temporal agents controlled by Ray Echenoz-Bolger in the year One Hundred Thousand and One. If Canterel was the world’s first Trans-Temporal Artist, or Poet, then it must be said, that it was CIA Agent Ray Echenoz-Bolger that was the great pioneer of the trans-temporal economies, even going what you might call ‘native’, his vast ‘rogue’ agency like a tribe of carnival caravaneers, wending their wild-shoppe intelligence through the hinters and winters of time. If Canterel, and his work was the spine of the Caduceus, Ray Echenoz-Bolger was the snake slithering across its surface, and the whole affaire, it could be said, was nothing if not Hermetic. It was all a sea of professing.