7. Who is responsible for my story?

A reader asks: "Dear Peter Chaff, where do you fit into all of this?"

I'm glad you asked that question, dear reader, because I have begun to ask it too.

I am of course grateful to my Translator/Catalyst doppelgänger, Rudy Monteverdi, for making me aware of the two print versions of Geneva Farewell . But only now am I beginning to realize the liberties John Levesque and Samla Bishap have taken with their source material.

I easily recognize myself as the narrator of my original imaginary novel Geneva Farewell, Version 1. But In the two printed novels I have been shown so far by Monteverdi, I am a mystery to myself. I wonder if I am in fact a mystery to myself, regardless of how I highlighted my self awareness in my source material.

Two instances from Levesque's version of Geneva Farewell:

Page 28: All through my twenties I watched myself become my father, my sister, my aunt, my co-workers, while nobody, myself included, was becoming me.

Page 99: The individual depicted on the canvas was someone of sorts, a vaguely cartoonish intention of an individual against a dark background, an artist's conception of a person neither fully alive nor properly dead. Despite her rusty technique and creeping self-doubt, Geneva had captured the essence of me.

I recently turned 30 years old in my present place of confinement. Frankly it was a relief to leave my turbulent twenties behind, so maybe Levesque was right to attribute the above thoughts to me. But I never thought them. Ardyth never say to me, as she does on page 56 of Levesque's version, "In your twenties your brain stops growing and it makes every

problem feel harder to solve. Is that part of what you're feeling?"

Here's part of what I'm feeling: The story about the first settlers that Ardyth told in Samla Bishap's version of Geneva Farewell (which I reproduced in my previous post) appears neither in my original imaginary novel nor in John Levesque's print version. It certainly sounds like the kind of story Ardyth might tell, but I never heard it.

How can this be? From what source did Samla Bishap acquire this material? To whom does the story of me, Peter Chaff, belong? Do products of the imagination belong in any way to any one any where? I would like to post these questions to Samla Bishap on her FaceMe page.

SB and JL, those two lowly keyboard jockeys from the great beyond, are archaeologists of the imagination. They hammer fragments together for the sheer joy of it, the "most gorgeous excitement" of it. (See JL, page 26). I am rubble in their hands, to be assembled into whatever shape they see fit. I am not in control of how they manifest my self.

"Why do your courtier's hands sweat?" Rudy Monteverdi butts in. "This is a problem that is shared by everyone alive, including those who have been imagined into life. The centre of ourselves is outside us. We tread water in an imaginary sea of the self. We take things ill which are not so and which should not concern us even if they are."

Are you saying that the exact words I or John Levesque or Samla Bishap use to describe me don't matter?

"Each of us now lives mainly in a metaphorical medium. The arrival of global computer networks finalized that arrangement. We are the fossil impulses of our former selves. Our physical organism is all that's left of what was once called the self. Meanwhile psychology and the other 'soft' sciences carry on as if nothing happened. The centre of yourself is outside you, Chaffy. That's how Samla Bishap was able to take liberties with your source material.

"By the way, I was sent a hastily reconstructed photograph of her through a fourth party Translator in her reality strand. She looks like she's turning to acknowledge something a fan on the street has said to her about Geneva Farewell. As you know, she made a big splash with that book in her world. She paragons wild fame with the quirks of her blazoning pen."

I know that, yes, but thanks for reminding me, Rudy. By now John Levesque probably also knows and is similarly moved.

"With all respect to keyboard jockeys far and wide, the printed word is doomed by its myriad electronic offshoots. It's a classic case of division by multiplication. The irony is that the products of print technology will inevitably outlast those of digital technology. Language has always been a symbolic medium, to be handled with care. Shakespeare, the worst offender of all, warned of language sorcery in several of his plays. We must learn to put language back into our mouth and grow oral in our mysteries and enchantments."

On page 199 of Levesque's Geneva Farewell, you hijacked the book for a few paragraphs and took me into a void beyond the reach of all authors. I asked you if we were dead in this void and you said: "No, if anything we are pregnant, waiting to give birth to the coming moment." Is that the shape I'm in?

"In one sense, yes," says my trusty Translator. "I another sense, you are beginning to suspect, as I do, that a version of Geneva Farewell has somehow made contact with Samla Bishap or vice versa. Sorry to put words in your mouth, but..."

I think I am beginning to see more of myself in the Levesque and Bishap novels than in my imaginary original.