The Trolled Man

Panting, MacDonald ran toward MacDonald's headquarters, the deadly metal flower in his fist. The sky was dark, uninterrupted by moon or stars.

"What is PGP?" he asked a passing Kibologist.

"i cant read pgp you need a mac to see that," said the Kibologist.

"Where is the Cabal?"

"there is no cabal i dont have windows," said the Kibologist.

MacDonald ran into the lobby of headquarters, and took the express elevator to his office on the 250th floor. Frantically, he dialed the vidphone that covered the east wall.

"Whom do you wish to call, Mr. MacDonald?" asked the operator.

"Get me Quizzard in Paris!" MacDonald barked. Nodoz, said the Bozo, he thought. Nodoz, said the Bozo. Bozing bozo, doze, Bebe Rebozo has begun.

"i dont know what paris is my mac dosent have those warez," said the operator.

"What is PGP?"

"i cant see those my moniter isnt big enuf."

"Damn your monitor! >MONITOR!< To Hell with all of you! I've seen your monitor and your monitor is murder! If only I could project the murder in my damned soul onto the Godforsaken world, a magic lantern of hate... why, I'd eat heaven and earth and make the sky anew!" He gave a savage, feral laugh. His legs screaming from lactic acid, MacDonald shot down the skywalk to the MacDonald Laboratory in the adjoining building. Nodoz, said the Bozo. Halfway down he stopped a puzzled security guard. "They've taken Paris!" McDonald screamed. "Paris and PGP and the stars in the sky!"

"i cant read pgp please post jif insted my gamma corections turned off," said the guard. There was something familiar about the guard.

The Man Who Was Not Allowed!

MacDonald howled. He raced into the laboratory, fired up Old Boze's input-output console. Bozing bozo, doze, Bebe Rebozo has begun. "Old Boze," he asked, "what is PGP? You, you soulless machine, you of all things should know for sure!"

"There is no PGP," said Old Boze. A face appeared on the console: The Man Who Was Not Allowed.

"What is a Macintosh?"

"There is no Macintosh."

"What is Windows?"

"There is no Windows."

And the laboratory, the building, the city were gone. There was only MacDonald, and The Man Who Was Not Allowed. And The Man Who Was Not Allowed was... Bob Hope!

"I am Bob Hope," said Bob Hope. "I made the sun, the moon, the stars. I move them this way and that way; I tell them where to go. The sea is like a lot of ointment to me. I am Bob Hope because that is my name. I am that I am. Sailors, give a big hand to Miss Brooke Shields!"

James MacDonald stared into the light, the light that was Kibology.

"Somehow, I knew we'd make it," said Kibo to Claudia Christian as he sipped his martini. "The first successful Mass Cathexis Troll in years, and I'm the one to pull it off." He chuckled. "And if you hadn't been a latent telepath, it might never have happened."

James MacDonald, naked and gibbering, came crashing through the fence and tumbled headfirst into the swimming pool.

"Tut, tut," said Kibo. "The poor man. I almost pity him. But it had to be done."

MacDonald stepped out of the swimming pool, grinning broadly. "Nodoz, said the Bozo!" he yelled. "Nodoz, said the Bozo! I had you all fooled! I pulled off the first successful Mass Cathexis Meta-Troll in history!"

Kibo's head exploded.

FROM THE TROLL JOURNAL:

In Kibology everything should be mentioned at least twice in three different contexts. This is how callbacks work.

Kibology is an attitude toward language and toward the reader's attitude toward language. In Kibology all statements have a context separate from any metaphorical content they may possess: the Bozo Context. In an ordinary work of fiction, a sentence such as, "She turned on her left side" has a mundane meaning. In a Kibological work, it has another, namely: "She turned on her left side. HOMINA, HOMINA!"

H-umlaut, H-acute, H-grave.

"Here's something that I've been thinking about," said Kibo. "Ever read any of that old twentieth-century Kibology? Fascinating stuff. Full of the fin-de-siècle spirit."

"I can't say that I have," said Claudia Christian.

Kibo sucked the olive out of his martini and chuckled. "You know, back then the male Kibologists had no idea that women have tails."

"Maybe they didn't, back then. Caudal structure is highly susceptible to the prescriptive modifications inherent in rapid genetic mutation. DNA provides parameters, not perimeters, and there is information interchange and interaction between the codons on various chromosomes that provide instructions for polypeptide synthesis. It could have come about sometime between that time and today." She passed him another martini with her five-foot prehensile tail.

"Maybe, but it's extremely unlikely. The explanation, as far as anyone can tell, is that none of them had ever seen a woman with her clothes off."

"Wicked pissah."

It is this Kibological context which removes sentences from the realm of the trite, the beaten-to-death in-joke, the infantile poo-poo gag, the advertising spam, the joke ripped off from Ernie Kovacs, the sentence typed in all caps followed by twelve exclamation points and the digit 1 in order to give it some lame semblance of humor. The Bozo Context transforms all of these into purest Kibology, if not very good Kibology. The sentence "Kibo's head exploded." which ends Alfred Koenig's The Trolled Man is at once one of the oldest Kibological in-jokes, being a reference to the very first post ever made to alt.religion.kibology, and a phrase given new significance by the very fact of its old and hoary nature. It is this dual significance which lingers in the mind long after the slavish parody of which it is a part has been forgotten; this and the sudden, implicit revelation, apparent upon close study, that the protagonist of the story, whom we have been following ever since the top of the Usenet post, is, in fact, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

In Kibology everything should be mentioned at least twice in three different contexts, except, possibly, The Nature of Kibology.

OK, I guess I've got to explain this one too. The first half is a parody of Alfred Bester's classic novel The Demolished Man... mostly. The second half is a parody of Samuel R. Delany's concluding remarks to Triton... mostly. Your assignment is to write a 300-word essay comparing and contrasting them. Due date is Monday at the beginning of class.