I have experienced one of those singularly life changing moments, almost on a level with the visitation on the road to Damascus, an experience so transcendently overwhelming that my self, my mind itself, has literally been changed in the twinkling of an eye. Forgive the religious imagery, but I cannot conceive of any other way to transmit the entirety of what has occurred. Briefly, I have been surprised. By myself. I have somehow transcended my own law, the axiomatic truth, backed up by Newtonian levels of evidence, that no innovative thought can occur during the sleep deprived conditions of summer. I myself have lived so firmly in the belief in this law, in its infallible accuracy, that I would have cheerfully staked my life against its violation by any earthly brain, and even in the rigors of intellectual combat against an enemy who now menaces my life’s work, I had not even bothered to assume that I would be able to summon the full powers of my cerebrum against him until mid October. I expected no better but to merely forestall the main event until October, and dimly hoped with the Grand Remonstrance to ignite an online debate which might be prolonged until I could end his literary pretensions with a total commitment of intellectual mass in the fall. As provocative as I made it, the Remonstrance seemed to have hindered initiation of another hideous comic on the Institute website, I would guess the sheer volume of the information it contained must have overwhelmed the limited processing power of the feeble organic computers currently maintaining a semblance of operations there. Unfortunately, as inside sources informed me, no post, however Herculean its use of ironic imagery, could now stop the publication process of the book, as the manuscript had passed to a third party for editing. I passed the bleakest of nights with little sleep, feeling the battle had passed beyond the power of my verbal sword to control, when…it was not a bolt of lightning, just a quiet thought. Combat…Mano a Mano…dungeon against dungeon!
My iron belief in the law of sleep deprived genius almost, paradoxically, crushed the thought at once, as I assumed that any idea born in this season must have a secret flaw. But desperation lent me a fevered courage, and without any preparation I called the enemy to drop my gauntlet before his eyes (ears actually, I don’t skype and never will), suddenly surging with confidence, with total surety, that he would not, could not resist the invitation, that the combat I proposed would present an inexplicably profound and unrefuseable offer to his dark, murky soul!
I don’t even need to inform the most certainly over-educated reader of this blog that the enemy has accepted my challenge. We will determine the fate of the novel, and the fate of my own hijacked life work, in combat, Mano a Mano, dice roll to dice roll, dungeon to dungeon. The complexity of the challenge, rules and refereeing an so forth, will no doubt necessitate some fairly involved negotiations, but the essence, the spirit, is simple: We will each create a dungeon based on our versions of the Parkland, and will connect those dungeons in a mutually agreed game space neutral zone. Then we will play the combined dungeon to win. So simple, so easy in hindsight to understand, but whence did this instantaneous and annihilatingly complete severing of the Gordian knot originate? A mere fifteen minutes after the phone call that literally changed everything I stood outside, in the silent darkness of my mother’s back yard, attempting to understand what had just occurred, that an idea of astounding, tidal impact, a mid-winter caliber thought, had clawed its way up from the aged, worn, irradiated and sleep deprived circuits that barely maintained the semblance of a subconscious. It was if a fountain of oceanic proportions had erupted like a blessed aquatic volcano from a sad, trickling well amidst a shabby, ramshackle farm on the edge of a dreary desert. I had seen, felt, lived an unfathomable event. I can only assume that my mind, trained from birth by disciplined reading to handle any level of thought, had received a transmission from a supernatural source.
I must apologize to the reader for the mysticism, if I myself had read such a sentence not three days ago, I would have closed the page with contempt, and moved onto the comforting sobriety of YouTube police chase videos. Yet here we are. Stay tuned for the first stages of negotiations for the ultimate tabletop combat!
Sperberspeak 