Oedipus Simple

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I am not going to write these musings down. They are quite safe in my head. My memory is good and you only write something down with the arrogant hope that someone will read it. So this will remain a mental memoir.

I sit in a black leather swivel chair in front of a large flat LCD screen. It takes up most of the wall. I am controlling the display through my CICI. Currently, I am browsing the preliminary reports on Mr Dietrich, thanks to that GSSA catspaw, the Babylon Institute.

The man is cockroach. He disgusts me. I want to crush him now but, of course, that would not fit in with the plan. We must encourage his Icarian ascent a little longer. It will be that much sweeter when I finally tear open his eyes to the epiphany of his emptiness.

I shall tell you what I shall do when I have him. I am going to peel his skin off, scientifically, just like 'Sephy cutting off the giant's armour. I have a hypothesis which I shall state now so that I cannot be accused of fiddling it in light of later results. I think I know what I shall find under his expensively moisturised hide.

Nothing.

Under the skin, under that expensive bespoke suit, there is nothing. He is a hollow man.

Let me tell you about Peter Dietrich. Please do not think that this is researched. It is only speculation.

His mother and father, like him, are yippies. They had a child called Peter because that is what their vain, empty society demanded. They did not truly love their child but they hired nannies to attend to his needs. He went to expensive public schools and did well, very well. He was top of his class. But they did not care because that is what their society had led them to expect.

They did hear about the bullying though. They sat in the headmaster's office with him and told him that it was bad; that society found it unacceptable. And all the time he wanted to scream,

"But I did it for you, mother. I did it to show you how strong I am. How clever. How much better I am than everyone else. How worthy I am of the love you cannot give me. Don't go, mother. Don't go to the firm today. Stay and love me, mother. Mother!"

But he did not scream. He just promised that next time he would not get caught because it made his parents unhappy. It made him unworthy of their love. Getting caught.

And even now he carves out his own soul to hold more hollowness. He drags himself higher and higher. "Look at me, mother. Look at me. Look at me, you cold bitch!" Does she look? No. This was what she had always expected for her child. He is hungry for power, for wealth because he thinks that if he climbs high enough, he can make his mother love him. He is a slave to his loneliness and he is trying to fill his emptiness with hunger.

I speculate, of course, but, really, you do not think that I am wrong.

I know him better than he knows himself.

What do I feel, sitting here, watching this insect with a surgeon's eye? Sadness? Contempt? Pity? Power? Physick, cure thyself. I have cut up poor Peter. Maybe I should first look to the log in my own eye.

I feel this: we are enemies although he does not know this. Peter and Titus, we are enemies. Even if as people we nurtured no grievance against each other, we stand for different worlds and only one of these worlds can be born. He lives in a desolate dream and I dream of a tower in this desert that shall stretch to the stars.

I shall awake him from his dream and show him his true soul in the mirror of tears. And that waking shall destroy him.

Geoff Hinkley, 23/10/00


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