THE MANGA MAN - A NOVEL OF NEUROFUTURE E-Book

Alexander Besher

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

I’m here to participate in the live study of an electromagnetically-induced earthquake. This one registered at a whopping 13.2 points on the Tesla Scale. That’s never happened before. An E-’Quake is the perfect super-weapon. Who would ever suspect it? It’s both invisible and untraceable. Oh, nature has been manipulated for reasons of state before. Take the ‘Great Gobi Sandstorm’ of 2032, for example. Hundreds of thousands of rebel Muslims were buried alive in China’s Far West Xinjiang Province. That was a beta-test for a certain type of military operation. But that event occurred almost thirty years ago when the science was still primitive. It was messy. Too messy. How do you explain all that real-time sand turning into mud?

The Manga Man – the new novel by Alexander Besher (born in China in 1951), author of the RIM trilogy (nominated for the 1994 Philip K. Dick Award; illustrated by German artist Christian Dörge.

Leseprobe

ALEXANDER BESHER

THE MANGA MAN -

A NOVEL OF NEUROFUTURE 

Apex-Verlag

Content

The Book 

THE MANGA MAN 

Note to the Reader About ‘Butoh,’  The Japanese ‘Dance of Darkness’ 

Prologue »the dead begin to dance« 

Part One: »Once Upon a REM...« 

Chapter One 

Chapter Two 

Chapter Three 

Chapter Four 

Chapter Five 

The Book

 

I’m here to participate in the live study of an electromagnetically-induced earthquake. This one registered at a whopping 13.2 points on the Tesla Scale. That’s never happened before. An E-’Quake is the perfect super-weapon. Who would ever suspect it? It’s both invisible and  untraceable. Oh, nature has been manipulated for reasons of state before. Take the ‘Great Gobi Sandstorm’ of 2032, for example. Hundreds of thousands of rebel Muslims were buried alive in China’s Far West Xinjiang Province. That was a beta-test for a certain type of military operation. But that event occurred almost thirty years ago when the science was still primitive. It was messy. Too messy. How do you explain all that real-time sand turning into mud?

The Manga Man – the new novel by Alexander Besher (born in China in 1951), author of the RIM trilogy (nominated for the 1994 Philip K. Dick Award; illustrated by German artist Christian Dörge. 

THE MANGA MAN

»Everybody is a dancer. 

A dancer is an angel who is corrupted 

and stands apart from everyday life. 

The dancer does not choose to dance 

as one alternative in life, but is rather chosen.« 

- Kasai, Butoh dancer 

»Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon 

with the moon itself.« 

- The Lankavatara Sutra 

  Note to the Reader About ‘Butoh,’  

The Japanese ‘Dance of Darkness’

»I may not know Death, but Death knows me.«

- Tatsumi Hijikata, Founder of Butoh (1928-1986) 

  The post-Zen philosophy and aesthetic of Butoh (Bu-tō) was developed in Japan by the artist and dancer Tatsumi Hijikata in the wake of the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima in 1945. Its essence lies in the spiritual connection between body and mind, conscious and unconscious, man and nature. Butoh evokes a primal and mythological presence, conjuring a bridge between ancient times and the yet unwritten future. Since its creation, the »Dance of Darkness« has spread all over the world, »like a virus,«* manifesting myriad intercultural mutations. It is Apocalypse Reborn, a rehearsal for the Afterlife; and a meditation on the Age we live in.  

* Akaji Maro,

founder of the Dai-rakuda-kan Butoh troupe

Third Millennium Manga Festival

Theater Miasma

Proudly presents 

‘The Necro-Genesis of Terra’

from ‘The Chronicles of the Z-Zone’

Medium: Pineal Prints on REM Brainwaves

Psi-Gel No. 48. Catalogue No. 32,

‘The Hanging Butoh’ series

Artist’s signature/seal (‘Hanko’):

Illegible due to scalar seepage

from the Leopold Tear in Vector 10

of Dimension VIII

This historical epic has been authenticated

by  the Ministry of Forensic Entertainment

as the work of the early 21st century bio-animé artist Jake Hill

(2034-2142)

Courtesy of

The Marquis T. Collection of Neuro-Media

Lucerne, The Swiss Pleiades

Access code required

to view this private collection.

Contact Luigi Mezzolini, Curator, 2512

Psi-Download Approved. Transmission begins...     

Panel 1:  Huge fires burning in the Imperial New Nippon city of Kobe on January 26, 2062. A flight of black crows streaking across a red-black sky. Greenish-blue balls of plasma erupt in spasmic bursts along the charred Meta-Grid that criss-crosses the liquefying metropolis.  

  Panel 2:  A macabre ‘buffet’ in a luxury Kobe hotel ballroom, with skeletons performing ‘reverse liposuction’ on themselves, i.e. reattaching skin and fatty tissues to their bones in a desperate attempt to become human again.    

  Panel 3:  Partially resurrected corpses are seen rising from their sitting positions on the floor, as some of them begin to crawl towards the exit.   

  Panel 4:  This ‘skin’ and ‘fat’ and bodily ‘organs’-hearts, lungs, kidneys, intestines etc.-are displayed in chafing dishes that are neatly laid out on a buffet table. Instead of napkins and silverware, there are hospital gowns and other accessories within reach, such as combs and canes and IV’s containing unidentified bodily fluids. The living-dead help themselves.  

Some of them come back for seconds.

  Panel 5:  A man who is dressed like a maitre ’d stands in the shadows of the ballroom observing the scene with a sardonic smile. He wears a black tuxedo with a barbed-wire cummerbund wrapped around his middle. A protective mesh of antimatter covers his entire body like a mosquito net.   

Blue light sizzles from his lips as he speaks.

  Text translation:  Ha! Look at these fools! They think they’re alive, but they’re dead. Not to mention they’re inside out. As for me, I may look like one of the hotel staff, but I’m not. My name is Dr. Hajime Naoki. I checked in this afternoon on a special assignment for my superiors. My specialty is highly advanced microwave and gamma/cosmic-ray physics applications for use in the cold molding of steel at the Kobe Steel Laboratories. (Smiles)  In reality, it’s a top-secret research facility for EM weapons technology which just happens to be located at the near-exact epicenter of the Great Kobe Earthquake of 2052. The one which is occurring right now. My employers? Their names shall remain secret. It’s in the contract.   

  Panel 6:  The sinister Nipponese scientist steps past a corpse that begs him for a sip of life-giving photons that he carries in his hip-flask. Ignoring its pathetic grunts, Dr. Naoki fixes the monocle of a plasma-reader to his eye and looks upwards-up, up, up through the writhing funnel of light that swallows everyone and everything in its ever-expanding throat of exploding quarks.   

  Text translation:  I’m here to participate in the live study of an electromagnetically-induced earthquake. This one registered at a whopping 13.2 points on the Tesla Scale. That’s never happened before. An E-’Quake is the perfect super-weapon. Who would ever suspect it? It’s both invisible and untraceable. Oh, nature has been manipulated for reasons of state before. Take the ‘Great Gobi Sandstorm’ of 2032, for example. Hundreds of thousands of rebel Muslims were buried alive in China’s Far West Xinjiang Province. That was a beta-test for a certain type of military operation. But that event occurred almost thirty years ago when the science was still primitive. It was messy. Too messy. How do you explain all that real-time sand turning into mud?  

  (Glances at data on plasma-reader)  So far so good. Everything is going according to plan. Unnatural ‘natural cataclysms’ are the new frontier of meta-warfare. But this catastrophe will be different. It has unique properties. For one thing...  

  Panel 8:  He kicks a grovelling zombie in the head. There is a sickening squish as the goulash of its brains splatters underfoot. The gray matter quickly reconstitutes itself, grows little millipede feet, and scurries across the floor to rejoin its fellow ghouls who are lollybuckling in a snakedance of despair.  

  Text translation:  That should teach the unruly beast manners! Where was I? Oh yes, what’s so different about this ‘Quake? Ever since the twentieth century when Soviet scientists established that there was a definite cause and effect relationship between magnetic fields and biological functions, that thought-patterns can be influenced and restructured, we’ve made giant strides in the ‘Art of EM War.’  With our specially calibrated radio-frequency interference algorithms, we can reconfigure memories and realities on a collective and individual basis. Soon we will be able to deconstruct all of physical matter anywhere in the universe by reducing it down to its basic subatomic state.   

  Then we can regurgitate everything back again into brand-new forms of life!  And rechannel these captured electromagnetic impulses into specially designed environments. These digital colonies and slave dimensions will serve our Imperial race and our sacred ancestors for all time-and beyond the known quadrants of time and space!  

  (Psi-cortex beeps)  That must be headquarters. I better take this call. (Speaks into left nostril)  Mission Control Leader Watanabe? No? The Lord of Project Fingermoon? No? Wrong number? That’s odd. Who else would know that I’m not here? (Stares with horror at the shrivelling cryomacrotome of his right hand, the carbonized puss of his bone-marrow fizzing)  My God, what’s happening to my protective shield! I’m turning into a parabola! I’m spiking out!  

  Panel 9:  A ripping sound as the seams of the protoplasmic mass that was once the city of Kobe splits apart. A huge boiling avalanche of light turns in on itself, and spews incandescent darkness into the reverberating tsunami of antimatter.  

  The picture splutters and fades. Blackness. Then a sign appears outside the city limits of this strange new world of the dead:  

Welcome to The Z-Zone

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