The Soft Machine. William S. Burroughs

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with them and everything I did and thought was already done and thought and there was this round of festivals where the priests put on lobster suits and danced around snapping their claws like castanets and nothing but maize maize maize—And I guess I would be there yet fructifying the maize God except for this one cat who was in Maya drag like me but I could see he was a foreigner too—He was very technical and a lovely fellow—He began drawing formulas on the floor and showed me how the priests operated their control racket:

      “It’s like with the festivals and the fucking corn they know what every­body will see and hear and smell and taste and that’s what thought is and these thought units are represented by symbols in their books and they rotate the symbols around and around on the calendar.” And as I looked at his formulas something began to crack up in my brain and I was free of the control beam and next thing we both got busted and sentenced to “Death In Centipede”—So they strapped us to couches in a room under the temple and there was a terrible smell in the place full of old bones and a centipede about ten feet long comes nuzzling out of one corner—So I turn on something I inherit from Uranus where my grandfather invented the adding machine—I just lay there without any thought in tons focus of heavy blue silence and a slow wave went through me and spread out of me and the couch began shaking and the tremors spread into the ground and the roof fell in and crushed the centipede and smashed the couch so the straps were loose and I slipped out and untied Technical Tilly—So we got out of there dodging stellae and limestone skulls as the whole temple came down in chunks and the wind blowing a hurricane brought in a tidal wave and there wasn’t much left of the whole set when things cleared away—All the workers were running around loose now looking for the priests—The head priest was paralyzed and had turned into a centipede—We found him in a cubby hole under the rubble along with some others who were half crab or in various stages of disgusting metamorphosis—And I figured we should do something special with these characters they are wise guys—So we organize this “Fun Fest” and made some obsidian jockstraps strung together with copper wire and heated the straps up white-hot and slipped them on, the priests did a belly dance like you used to see it in burlesque and we sat there yelling: “Take it off Take it off,” laughing till we pissed and shit and came—You never heard such laughing with the control gone and goosing them with hot copper pricks—And others we put weights on their backs and dragged them through wooden troughs with flint flakes sticking up and so on—Fun and games what?

      Well after that none of us could look at corn and the grocery problem became acute—So we organize this protection racket shaking down the agriculturals—“It could happen again here—Kick in or else”—And they kicked in come level on average—Well groceries—And I had perfected a gimmick to keep my boys in line—I was still subject to these fits but I had learned to control the images—That is just before I flipped out I could put any image in the projector and—Action—Camera—Take—It always happened the way I took it and any character gave me any static was taken care of that way—But the boys from the North were moving in whole armies so we packed in and shifted to the hunting and fishing lark—I picked thirty of the most likely and suitable lads all things considered and we moved South up over the mountains and down the other side into jungle then up and over again getting monotonous—Piecing out the odds best we could spot of this and a spot of that—Once in a while I had to put it about with the earthquakes but come level on average what you might call a journeyman thief—Well fever and snakes and rapids and boys dropping out here and there to settle down with the locals I had no mob left when I run up against this really evil setup—The Chimu were something else—So we hit this town and right away I don’t like it.

      “Something here, John—Something wrong—I can feel it.”

      To begin with the average Chimu is unappetizing to say the least—Lips eaten off by purple and orange skin conditions like a baboon’s ass and pus seeping out a hole where the nose should be disgust you to see it—And some of them are consisting entirely of penis flesh and subject to blast jissom right out their skull and fold up like an old wine bag—Periodically the Chimu organize fun fests where they choose up sides and beat each other’s brains out with clubs and the winning team gang-fucks the losers and cut their balls off right after to make pouches for coco leaves they are chewing all the time green spit dripping off them like a cow with the aftosa—All things considered I was not innarrested to contact their loutish way of life—

      In the middle of this town was a construction of clay cubicles several stories high and I could see some kinda awful crabs were stirring around inside it but couldn’t get close because the area around the cubicle is covered with black bones and hot as a blasting ­furnace—They had this heat weapon you got it?—Like white-hot ants all over you—

      Meanwhile I had been approached by the Green Boys have a whole whore house section built on catwalks over the mud flats entirely given over to hanging and all kinds death in orgasm young boys need it special—They were beautiful critters and swarmed all over me night and day smelling like a compost heap—But I wasn’t buying it sight unseen and when I proposed to watch a hanging they come on all indignant like insulted whores—So Iam rigged up a long distance periscope with obsidian mirrors moaning about the equipment the way he always does and we watched them hang this boy just down from the country—Well I saw that when his neck snapped and he shot his load instead of flowing into the Green Boy the way nature intended these hot crabs hatched out of his spine and scoffed the lot.

      So we organize the jungle tribes and take Boy’s Town and confine the Green Boys in a dormitory, they are all in there turning cartwheels and giggling and masturbating and playing flutes—That was our first move to cut the supply line—Then after we had put the squeeze on and you could hear them scratching around in the cubicle really thin now we decided to attack—I had this special Green Boy I was making it with who knew the ropes you might say and he told me we have to tune the heat wave out with music—So we get all the Indians and all the Green Boys with drums and flutes and copper plates and stayed just out of the heat blast beating the drums and slowly closed in—lam had rigged up a catapult to throw limestone boulders and shattered the cubicle so we move in with spears and clubs and finish them off and smashed the heat-sending set that was a living radio with insect parts—We turn the Green Boys loose and on our way rejoicing—

      So down into the jungle on the head-shrinking lark—Know how it operates—You got these spells see? confines the citizen to his head under your control like you can shrink up all the hate in the area—What a gimmick but as usual I got greedy and the wind up is I don’t have a head left to stand on—Sure I had the area sewed up but there wasn’t any area left—Always was one to run things into the ground—Well there I was on the bottom when I hear about this virgin tribe called the Camuyas embrace every stranger and go naked all the time like nature intended and I said “the Camuyas are live ones” and got down there past all these bureaucrats with The Internal Indian Service doubted the purity of my ­intentions—But I confounded them with my knowledge of Mayan archaeology and the secret meaning of the centipede motif and Iam was very technical so we established ourselves as scientists and got the safe conduct—Those Camuyas were something else all naked rubbing up against you like dogs—They were sweet little critters and I might be there still except for a spot of bother with The Indian Commission about this hanging ceremony I organize figuring to trade in the chassis and renew my substance—So they chucked me out and talked usefully about that was that—And I made it up to the Auca who were warlike and wangled two healthy youths for a secret weapon—So took these boys out into the jungle and laid it on the line and one of them was ready to play ball and—spare you the monotonous details—Suffice it to say the Upper Amazon gained a hustler and there I was caught in the middle of all these feuds—Some one knocks off your cousin twice removed and you are obligated to take care of his great uncle—Been through all this before—Every citizen you knock off there are ten out looking for you geometric and I don’t want to know—So I got a job with the Total Oil Company and that was another mistake—

      Rats was running all over the morning—Somewhere North of Monterrey went into the cocaine business—By this time fish tail

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