Nova Express (6 page)

30. Burroughs, “Tangier,”
Esquire
62.3 (September 1964).

31. In October 1963 Burroughs asked Seaver for two copies of the
New York Times
front page. The
exact
repetition of the line is crucial, although this feature has often been lost in translation, as in the French edition translated by Mary Beach and Claude Pélieu (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1970). This has “au-dessus de New York, le 17 septembre 1899” the first time but “17 septembre 1899, au-dessus de New York” the second time (9, 189). Unaccountably, the edition also translates the final date “21 July, 1964” as “21 janvier 1964.”

32. Folio 108 in the original catalog became Box 38 in the Berg Collection archive.

33. Burroughs, “Word,” in
Interzone
(New York: Viking, 1989), 184. Fats Terminal does appear in the “Gave Proof Through the Night” section, on a jukebox playing
The Star-Spangled Banner
.

34. Burroughs to Gysin, August 30, 1960 (Berg 86.8).

35. Undated typescript, probably late 1960 (Berg 48.22).

36. “King of the YADS,”
Time
(November 30, 1962), 96-97.

37. “Mr Henry Luce, Do you know what the machine is up to?” begins one typescript (Berg 7.38). A diatribe addressed to Mr ­Bradly Mr Martin in
The Ticket That Exploded
is clearly a reworking of similar material, but the only time Luce is actually named in the trilogy occurs in the 1968 edition of
The Soft Machine
when a character “goes into his Luce act” (106).

38.
Burroughs Live
,
150.

39. Draft typescript for
The Ticket That Exploded
(Berg 20.39). See also “The Inferential Kid,”
The Burroughs File
(San Francisco: City Lights, 1984), 128.

40. Burroughs to Seaver, October 10, 1963 and October 24, 1963 (Syracuse).

41. Burroughs' clearest statement on the subject is quoted in Miles' Introduction to
Le métro blanc
(Paris: Seuil, 1976), a collection of cut-up texts translated into French: “As you know my methods of writing do not allow me to correct rough copies and first drafts [
. . .]
It is only when I obtain the final form that I correct errors” (12; my translation).

NOVA
EXPRESS

Foreword Note

The section called “This Horrible Case” was written in collaboration with Mr. Ian Sommerville, a mathematician—Mr. Sommerville also contributed the technical notes in the section called “Chinese Laundry”—An extension of Brion Gysin's cut-up method which I call the fold-in method has been used in this book which is consequently a composite of many writers living and dead.

Last Words

LAST WORDS

Listen to my last words anywhere. Listen to my last words any world. Listen all you boards syndicates and governments of the earth. And you powers behind what filth deals consummated in what lavatory to take what is not yours. To sell the ground from unborn feet forever—

“Don't let them see us. Don't tell them what we are doing—”

Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth?

“For God's sake don't let that Coca-Cola thing out—”

“Not The Cancer Deal with The Venusians—”

“Not The Green Deal—Don't show them that—”

“Not The Orgasm Death—”

“
Not the ovens
—”

Listen: I call you all. Show your cards all players. Pay it all pay it all pay it
all
back. Play it all play it all play it
all
back. For all to see. In Times Square. In Piccadilly.

“Premature. Premature. Give us a little more time.”

Time for what? More lies? Premature? Premature for who? I say to all these words are not premature. These words may be too late. Minutes to go. Minutes to foe goal—

“Top Secret—Classified—For The Board—The Elite—The Initiates—”

Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth? These are the words of liars cowards collaborators traitors. Liars who want time for more lies. Cowards who can not face your “dogs” your “gooks” your “errand boys” your “human animals” with the truth. Collaborators with Insect People with Vegetable People. With any people anywhere who offer you a body forever. To shit forever. For this you have sold out your sons. Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere. You want the name of Hassan i Sabbah on your filth deeds to sell out the unborn?

What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you: “
the word.”
Alien Word “
the.” “The” word
of Alien Enemy imprisons “
thee”
in Time. In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out. The great skies are open. I Hassan i Sabbah
rub out the word forever.
If you I cancel all your words forever. And the words of Hassan i Sabbah as also cancel. Cross all your skies see the silent writing of Brion Gysin Hassan i Sabbah: drew September 17, 1899 over New York.

PRISONERS, COME OUT

“Don't listen to Hassan i Sabbah,” they will tell you. “He wants to take your body and all pleasures of the body away from you. Listen to us. We are serving The Garden of Delights Immortality Cosmic Consciousness The Best Ever In Drug Kicks. And
love love love
in slop buckets. How does that sound to you boys? Better than Hassan i Sabbah and his cold windy bodiless rock? Right?”

At the immediate risk of finding myself the most unpopular character of all fiction—and history is fiction—I must say this:

“Bring together state of news—Inquire onward from state to doer—Who monopolized Immortality? Who monopolized Cosmic Consciousness? Who monopolized Love Sex and Dream? Who monopolized Life Time and Fortune? Who took from you what is yours? Now they will give it all back? Did they ever give anything away for nothing? Did they ever give any more than they had to give? Did they not always take back what they gave when possible and it always was?
Listen:
Their Garden Of Delights is a terminal sewer—I have been at some pains to map this area of terminal sewage in the so called pornographic sections of
Naked Lunch
and
The
Soft
Machine
—Their Immortality Cosmic Consciousness and Love is second-run grade-B shit—Their drugs are poison designed to beam in Orgasm Death and Nova Ovens—Stay out of the Garden Of Delights—It is a man-eating trap that ends in green goo—Throw back their ersatz Immortality—It will fall apart before you can get out of The Big Store—Flush their drug kicks down the drain—
They are poisoning and monopolizing the hallucinogen drugs
—
learn to make it without any chemical corn
—All that they offer is a screen to cover retreat from the colony they have so disgracefully mismanaged. To cover travel arrangements so they will never have to pay the constituents they have betrayed and sold out. Once these arrangements are complete they will blow the place up behind them.”

And what does my program of total austerity and total resistance offer
you
?
I offer you nothing. I am not a politician. These are conditions of total emergency. And these are my instructions for total emergency if carried out
now
could avert the total disaster
now
on tracks:

“
Peoples of the earth, you have all been poisoned.
Convert all available stocks of morphine to apomorphine. Chemists, work round the clock on variation and synthesis of the apomorphine formulae. Apomorphine is the only agent that can disintoxicate you and cut the enemy beam off your line. Apomorphine and silence. I order total resistance directed against this conspiracy to pay off peoples of the earth in ersatz bullshit. I order total resistance directed against The Nova Conspiracy and all those engaged in it.”

The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals. In
Naked Lunch The Soft Machine
and
Nova Express
I show who they are and what they are doing and what they will do if they are not arrested. Minutes to go. Souls rotten from their orgasm drugs, flesh shuddering from their nova ovens, prisoners of the earth to
come out.
With your help we can occupy The Reality Studio and retake their universe of Fear Death and Monopoly—

(Signed) INSPECTOR J. LEE, NOVA POLICE

Post Script Of The Regulator: I would like to sound a word of ­warning—To speak is to lie—To live is to ­collaborate—Anybody is a coward when faced by the nova ovens—There are degrees of lying collaboration and cowardice—That is to say degrees of intoxication—It is precisely a question of
regulation
—The enemy is not man is not woman—The enemy exists only where no life is and moves always to push life into extreme untenable positions—You can cut the enemy off your line by the judicious use of apomorphine and silence—
Use the sanity drug apomorphine.

“Apomorphine is made from morphine but its physiological action is quite different. Morphine depresses the front brain. Apomorphine stimulates the back brain, acts on the hypothalamus to regulate the percentage of various constituents in the blood serum and so normalize the constitution of the blood.” I quote from
Anxiety and Its Treatment
by Doctor John Yerbury Dent.

PRY YOURSELF LOOSE AND LISTEN

I was traveling with The Intolerable Kid on The Nova Lark—We were on the nod after a rumble in The Crab Galaxy involving this two-way time stock; when you come to the end of a biologic film just run it back and start over—Nobody knows the difference—Like nobody there before the film.
*
So they start to run it back and the projector blew up and we lammed out of there on the blast—Holed up in those cool blue mountains the liquid air in our spines listening to a little high-fi junk note fixes you right to metal and you nod out a thousand years.
**
Just sitting there in a slate house wrapped in orange flesh robes, the blue mist drifting around us when we get the call—And as soon as I set foot on Podunk earth I can smell it that burnt metal reek of nova.

“Already set off the charge,” I said to I&I (Immovable and Irresistible)—“This is a burning planet—Any minute now the whole fucking shit house goes up.”

So Intolerable I&I sniffs and says: “Yeah, when it happens it happens fast—This is a rush job.”

And you could feel it there under your feet the whole structure buckling like a bulkhead about to blow—So the paper has a car there for us and we are driving in from the airport The Kid at the wheel and his foot on the floor—Nearly ran down a covey of pedestrians and they yell after us: “What you want to do, kill somebody?”

And The Kid sticks his head out and says: “It would be a pleasure! Niggers! Gooks! Terrestrial dogs!”—His eyes lit up like a blow torch and I can see he is really in form—So we start right to work making our headquarters in The Land Of The Free where the call came from and which is really free and wide open for any life form the uglier the better—Well they don't come any uglier than The Intolerable Kid and your reporter—When a planet is all primed to go up they call in I&I to jump around from one faction to the other agitating and insulting all the parties before and after the fact until they all say: “By God before I give an inch the whole fucking shit house goes up in chunks.”

Where we came in—You have to move fast on this job—And I&I is fast—Pops in and out of a hundred faces in a split second spitting his intolerable insults—We had the plan, what they call The Board Books to show us what is what on this dead whistle stop: Three life forms uneasily parasitic on a fourth form that is beginning to wise up. And the whole planet absolutely flapping hysterical with panic. The way we like to see them.

“This is a dead easy pitch,” The Kid says.

“Yeah,” I say. “A little bit too easy. Something here, Kid. Something wrong. I can feel it.”

But The Kid can't hear me. Now all these life forms came from the most intolerable conditions: hot places, cold places, terminal stasis and the last thing any of them want to do is go back where they came from. And The Intolerable Kid is giving out with such pleasantries like this:

“All right take your ovens out with you and pay Hitler on the way out. Nearly got the place hot enough for you Jews didn't he?”

“Know about Niggers? Why darkies were born? Antennae coolers what else? Always a spot for
good
Darkies.”

“You cunts constitute a disposal problem in the worst form there is and raise the nastiest whine ever heard anywhere: ‘Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me???' Why don't you go back to Venus and fertilize a forest?”

“And as for you White Man Boss, you dead prop in Martin's stale movie, you terminal time junky, haul your heavy metal ass back to Uranus. Last shot at the door. You need one for the road.” By this time everybody was even madder than they were shit scared. But I&I figured things were moving too slow.

“We need a peg to hang it on,” he said. “Something really ugly like virus. Not for nothing do they come from a land without mirrors.” So he takes over this newsmagazine.

“Now,” he said, “I'll by God show them how ugly the Ugly American can be.”

And he breaks out all the ugliest pictures in the image bank and puts it out on the subliminal so one crisis piles up after the other right on schedule. And I&I is whizzing around like a buzz saw and that black nova laugh of his you can hear it now down all the streets shaking the buildings and skyline like a stage prop. But me I am looking around and the more I look the less I like what I see. For one thing the nova heat is moving in fast and heavy like I never see it anywhere else. But I&I just says I have the copper jitters and turns back to his view screen: “They are skinning the chief of police alive in some jerkwater place. Want to sit in?”

“Naw,” I said. “Only interested in my own skin.”

And I walk out thinking who I
would
like to see skinned alive. So I cut into the Automat and put coins into the fish cake slot and then I really see it: Chinese partisans and well armed with vibrating static and image guns. So I throw down the fish cakes with tomato sauce and make it back to the office where The Kid is still glued to that screen. He looks up smiling dirty and says:

“Wanta molest a child and disembowel it right after?”

“Pry yourself loose and listen.” And I tell him. “Those Tiddly Winks don't fuck around you know.”

“So what?” he says. “I've still got The Board Books. I can split this whistle stop wide open tomorrow.”

No use talking to him. I look around some more and find out the blockade on planet earth is broken. Explorers moving in whole armies. And everybody concerned is fed up with Intolerable I&I. And all he can say is: “So what? I've still got . . ./” Cut.

“Board Books taken. The film reeks of burning switch like a blow torch. Prerecorded heat glare massing Hiroshima. This whistle stop wide open to hot crab people. Mediation? Listen: Your army is getting double zero in floor by floor game of ‘symbiosis.' Mobilized reasons to love Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Virus to maintain terminal sewers of Venus?”

“All nations sold out by liars and cowards. Liars who want time for the future negatives to develop stall you with more lying offers while hot crab people mass war to extermination with the film in Rome. These reports reek of nova, sold out job, shit birth and death. Your planet has been invaded. You are dogs on all tape. The entire planet is being developed into terminal identity and complete surrender.”

“But suppose film death in Rome doesn't work and we can get every male body even madder than they are shit scared? We need a peg to evil full length. By God show them how ugly the ugliest pictures in the dark room can be. Pitch in the oven ambush. Spill all the board gimmicks. This symbiosis con? Can tell you for sure ‘symbiosis' is ambush straight to the ovens. ‘Human dogs' to be eaten alive under white hot skies of Minraud.”

And Intolerable I&I's “errand boys” and “strikebreakers” are copping out right left and center:

“Mr. Martin, and you board members, vulgar stupid Americans, you will regret calling in the Mayan Aztec Gods with your synthetic mushrooms. Remember we keep exact junk measure of the pain inflicted and that pain must be paid in full. Is that clear enough Mr. Intolerable Martin, or shall I make it even clearer? Allow me to introduce myself: The Mayan God Of Pain And Fear from the white hot plains of Venus which does not mean a God of vulgarity, cowardice, ugliness and stupidity. There is a cool spot on the surface of Venus three hundred degrees cooler than the surrounding area. I have held that spot against all contestants for five hundred thousand years. Now you expect to use me as your ‘errand boy' and ‘strikebreaker' summoned up by an IBM machine and a handful of virus crystals? How long could you hold that spot, you ‘board members'? About thirty seconds I think with all your guard dogs. And you thought to channel my energies for ‘operation total disposal'? Your ‘operations' there or here this or that come and go and are no more.
Give my name back.
That name must be paid for. You have not paid. My name is not yours to use. Henceforth I think about thirty seconds is written.”