Dave The Penguin (9 page)

The same was true with a
lot of art. Even though the best art was unstructured, untethered
and inspired by ‘something higher’ - it still seemed to just end up
with not saying anything, evolving into something more and more
surreal, using virtual concepts, and non-located expressions over
time.

Even the artists themselves
were turning into faceless hermits, ending up producing vapourware
placed in remote empty spaces. They were all desperately trying to
‘articulate’ something that they had experienced, something ‘not
real’ that they wanted to describe somehow; put the formless into
form, which in itself was also evolving.

The same could also be said
about architecture, or fashion in general, which was mostly driven
by the mind of the consumer, and in turn was influenced by the
changing collective taste.

Fashion wasn’t really Dave’s
thing, it just seemed a bit, well, ‘girlie’, but he did like things
to look nice, whatever that was.

Dave had read in various
penguin religious literature, and on the Internet, that long, long
ago, the Penguin God had been a great giant seal. He was
vindictive, frightening, and ate bad penguins.

In other later articles the god
was a polar bear, which had lots of different interpretations and
forms, as nobody knew what they actually looked like or were.

This had caused lots of
fights long ago in the ancient past, w
ith
the need to make sacrifices to it to make it feel better about
itself, and to fend off bad storms.

Curiously the shape and nature
of the Penguin God always changed into the form defined by whoever
won the fights.

Then, over time, it had
changed to become multiple penguin gods all existing at the same
time. They all did different things, and had different
personalities and roles.

They also had different
feelings, and represented lots of ideas, and far away things.
However they all knew what they were doing and had a hierarchy.
There were male and female ones too, and they were all there to do
different special ‘jobs’. But they didn’t seem to have much of a
clue about
real people, and used the
World as a sort of board game.

Which sounded exciting
and made good stories that Dave liked to read about and watch in
films.

Years later, after many
more fights, it had all changed again, and the god had become just
one giant penguin that lived on top of the highest mountain on a
throne made of pure, smooth, shiny nesting stones.

There had even been a lot of
fights about what colour the stones were, and what the Penguin God
had said and revealed. There were also lots of numbers and symbols
used, and promises of things being better, and a sense of
urgency.

It was eventually agreed that
there were lots of different coloured stones, and that there were
fifty different shades of them between white and black.

Then some time ago, some
hero penguin named ‘Dave’ had climbed the mountain to say ‘Hello’,
and found that their god wasn’t there at all.

God had obviously moved, and
had even taken the throne and the stones too.

Now it was an all-seeing,
all-knowing, almighty penguin god, who lived up high in the clouds.
However, Dave knew quite a bit about clouds, and their capacity for
supporting large penguins and thrones, and he also knew about the
painful nature of gravity.

He had tried to explain these
fundamental scientific and practical problems to some of the
penguin clan elders, and had been confronted with a hail of abuse
and ridicule, along with a few small stones.

He was also about to ask the
obvious question that nobody else seems to have thought to ask -
the “Yes - but what is it?” one, but after the initial response, he
thought better of it.

Clearly these were special
magic clouds, and he should not question the existence or the
nature of the great Penguin God. The situation was a bit like one
of his favourite Monty Python films, but in this instance it didn’t
seem very funny.

What really confused Dave
though, was the fact that no one had ever mentioned that they were
magic clouds, or explained how they worked. It then struck him that
there was somewhat of an evolutionary pattern forming here, which
was also in line with a lot of the evolution of all the other areas
he had studied, especially Biology. Something of a
trend.

He also asked what had happened
to all the other gods - the ones that they had been so sure were
there long ago - and asked why they had changed. He had also
explained to the elders that it was all a never ending
self-adapting belief and control structure for the scientifically
unexplainable, a childish protective mental bubble developed in the
unconscious psyche. One which still made no logical sense.

Then he was really told
off…..
very loudly.

They didn’t agree with him.
Obviously whatever it was, wasn’t that keen to evolve or change,
and had quite a strong resistance to nosey smartarse penguins.

So he went off and
trawled through his collection of 1980’s video documentaries, and
behind his mint condition set of David Attenborough ones, he found
a set called
The Day the
Universe Changed
. They had been made in
1985 and were written and presented by James Burke, but Dave
realised that he had never seen them, which was curious as he liked
the previous ‘connections’ ones, and he loved
Tomorrow’s World
, with
all those strange
Space
1999
ideas.

He loved the ones where it
showed how we would all be going to go around in cars that flew,
that the world would be one big computer, and that we would get
machines to do everything, and how everyone would look like they
were having a nice happy time and be permanently on holiday.

Later, having watched them all,
Dave came up with many new ideas and started to show the other
penguins all the films. He wrote down his thoughts, and drew some
artistic pictures (because only some of the penguins could
read).

Dave was all fired up now, just
like Moses was when he came down from the mountain with his tablets
- which must have been pretty good ones.

Dave had been energised and
began talking inspirationally about what he has seen and how it was
all true, and tried to get everyone to see and understand, and most
importantly, to change.

Quite a number of the penguins
did like the stuff he was talking about and showing them, but the
majority just seemed to be more stimulated by his charismatic
energy.

They seemed to gravitate
towards him, and be attracted to his interesting magnetic
personality. They were happy to go along with it, watch, and be
drawn along by the exciting ambiance being generated by the rest of
the crowd.

It’s what everyone else was
doing after all.

So things finally seemed
to be going very well for Dave, and he presented more and more
information and ideas, and he became more and more
self-stimulated.

He had quite a bit of a
momentum going.

The trouble began because
of the very last thing he said, which was just before the crowd
turned on him. It went something like, "This wonderful human being
has shown us the way forward and we should all follow him”, and
there were even cheers from the crowd, “From this day forward I say
we should all call ourselves….. 'Burkes’…”

... And that's where it all
very quickly started to go very rapidly downhill...

Then a week later he was
standing alone at the base of the mountain, far away from the main
group, covered in bruises and sticky plasters.

Now and then one of the
penguins would come past and shout something like “Idiot” or throw
a snowball at him.

It wasn’t a good time for
Dave…...

In
Reality
, thought Dave,
penguins just want to hear what they
want to hear
. It was hard to get penguins
that had been beguiled and hypnotised to believe in something else,
to see or understand things from another perspective. It took a lot
of energy to get them to change their minds.

It was too easy, as he
had just found out, to fall into the same trap that others had
done. Those that had tried to make penguins understand, to wake
up.

It just wasn’t enough
to
know
, you had to be able to explain it in a progressive way, to
allow penguins to go from one state to another in easy steps,
without rocking the boat.

Equally, if you
were
ever
to find someone who really knew what was going on and who had proof
of it, then due to the collective nature of it all, it was likely
that nobody would be allowed to see, hear, or read what they had
written anyway.

Even if they were able to
understand it. You also had to step back and ask why this was
happening and why what they knew was being deliberately hidden
away? As if something was hiding itself in a self-adapting
controlling way, and always one step ahead of common knowledge.

It was a tricky problem.

Then two weeks later everything
changed again.

The elders met and brought all
of the penguins together, in a bunch.

There were hundreds of them;
all packed tightly en masse, all looking up at the elders who stood
on a small snow mound that they, supposedly, had made.

The high elder came
forward carrying his sacred driftwood staff; it had a skull on the
top and the name of
their god on the
back, which everyone knew was ‘Skelator’.

The penguin elder spoke
in a deep, assertive voice. He told them that, apparently, the
Penguin God had moved again, and that his new home had been
revealed to one of them in a vision one night. God was now in some
invisible dimension, and he had given a long list of more
revelations.

The elder read through
the list, and the Penguin God seemed to be using the same sort of
words and ancient way of speaking as he had used when he spoke on
top of the mountain. He had also become angry with those that had
questioned his existence and his nature.

Anyone so doing so in the
future, he continued, would spend all of eternity in the deep, dark
penguin volcanic lava toilet cave under the ground…

There were gasps.

Everyone knew about the fiery
toilet cave. Everyone…

Then, slowly, they all turned
and looked straight at Dave.

Dave took a step backwards into
the space that was now clearing all around him, and suddenly the
bruises on his body were the last thing on his mind.

Now Dave was good at thinking
on his feet, which considering he rarely, if ever, laid down, was
just as well. He recognised the somewhat frosty glares, the
uncompromising ignorance, the collective resistance to change of
several hundred penguins all of one mind. He also noted the
multitude of rocks and stones around, and decided to ‘take the
initiative’.

“I will,” said Dave tentatively
“Venture forth and find this invisible dimension and humbly
apologise to the almighty Elephant Penguin God, and beg his
forgiveness, and I shall not return until I do.”

That got
them….

Dave could sense the
logic gears churning in the minds of the penguins, trying to work
out if he was politically outsmarting them, if he was genuine, or
in fact for the most part – what the bloody hell he was going on
about.

What else could he do? They
weren’t being allowed to see things from his perspective, they
couldn’t or didn’t want to come out of their programmed comfy quilt
bubbles of belief and control. They could not see things from his
viewpoint, it was too ‘difficult’, too ‘unprotected’, and they were
much happier being safely inside their protected hypnotised terra
firma perceptive couch potato worlds.

Change, after all, was
always difficult, especially when you didn’t know any different,
when it wasn’t necessary, when you couldn’t see anything wrong, and
when you were programmed to do set things.

Yet before they had even got
onto the metaphysical discussions with reference to the elephant,
Dave had already decided not to wait around.

He didn’t wait for the
interrupt protocols, the logic circuits of the mental control and
belief structures to resolve themselves and invoke action, along
with the accompanying rocks and pitchforks. He simply headed in the
direction of the hills in the distance at quite some speed; at a
rate that was impressive even for him.

He was in an even worse place
now. After several hours of waddling he reached the base of one of
the smaller hills that formed part of the foothills of the largest
mountain in the area.

He didn’t have a clue why he
had walked that way; it was just big, and there, and something to
head for, away from trouble.

Now his feet hurt and he was
tired and hungry, and he was breathing hard.

He stopped to catch his
breath;
he felt quite giddy. It was
surprisingly beautiful here, quiet, unspoiled, pristine. The giant
rocky snow- covered mountain above him was mirrored in the ice
sheet before him.

It looked just like two
mountains, one the upside down mirror image of the other. It was so
clear and bright and sharp that it was almost impossible to tell
which mountain was real and which was the reflected image.

It was then that he saw a pure
powder-white arctic hare (which was very strange considering where
he was). It ran straight towards him and then dashed past him,
almost as if he wasn’t there, and then disappeared down into a hole
in the side of the mountain and vanished.