a-patch-e

 

Pixelation was spreading. No one seemed to know where it started or why, just that it was becoming a right royal pain in the BIOS.

 

Gary minimised, split into digital components and found himself floating above an endless green screen. He wanted to groan, but could only extrude a string of ones and zeros - which no one could see or hear and which did, in fact, only exist in his digital consciousness.

 

It was like a football pitch - an endless, eternal football pitch. Gary was no football fan, so this was his idea of hell.

 

[Oh 1011000101100!] he thought, as shapes started to form around him.

 

 

 

The hand of a god...

What is God?

Splat!

He leapt.

Existential disintegration.

Transmogrification.

Another hand! Another! Another!

Monotheistic refutation.

White lines... one... two...

On your marks...

Sli-i-i-ide!

Through the viral puddle... to the output!

But no END in sight.

 

 

 

[Must focus], he thought (in a string of ones and zeros) - which was the first coherent thought he had had since he got "here" - apart from [This is nothing like Tron], which was ever-so-slightly poignant, but not entirely relevant.

 

And he thought of the last thing he had done that made any sense, which was being forced to watch Tikkabilla by his daughter, in particular the song about losing things, which offered the pertinent advice that "whatever is lost can always be found," which in turn led him to consider his present state of being.

 

[Where did I last leave it?] he thought, which is never really that useful, seeing as if you knew where you left it, you would know where it was. He went "with the flow," however, since he had nowhere else to go, and the train of thought along which the flow flowed terminated at the station known as On The Living Room Sofa.

 

[Great...] he thought, which it really wasn't.

 

 

 

A horrendously huge living room sofa materialised around him. It was not comfy. It was, in fact, the most uncomfy sofa he had ever sat on. This was in no way alleviated by the fact that it was the size of a planet.

 

The cushions were not straight.

 

"You find yourself in a quandary," said the voice of a science video on YouTube. "You want to return to your former state of being, and yet you also wish to rectify the spatial discrepancy which you find before you. Said discrepancy is, however, of such magnitude that you cannot conceive of a means by which it may be rectified. Although what you fail to understand at this moment is that your present state of being enables you to transcend the boundaries of space and time."

 

"wtf" - said Gary (in a string of ones and zeros).

 

 

 

[OK], he thought, binarily. And he heaved. He pushed. He shoved. He shunted. He emptied his mind of all thoughts of spatial relativism - which was interesting, as he never even knew those thoughts were there. He projected. He thrusted. He swore in 136 languages simultaneously.

 

"Stop trying to move the cushions and move the cushions!" said the voice of Laurence Fishburne.

 

The cushions flickered and became as one.

 

 

 

the cushions

flickered

(and)

... became as ...

[[[one]]]

 

 

 

Vertiginous rising.

 

Dimensional smoothing.

 

Relative perception of size diminishing.

 

"Gaaaghhh!" he said (in ones and zeros).

 

The sofa was joined by another. And another. And another.

 

Rising.

 

Diminishing.

 

A rain of sofas.

 

Only now he was looking up. And the sofas were falling down. And they were no longer sofas, they were just...

 

 

 

Rain.

 

 

 

Rhymes with pain.

 

Which was funny, because it really was not a comfy sofa. This was in no way alleviated by the fact that it was raining. And he was outside. In the rain. On the uncomfy sofa.

 

"Woah!" said a passing dude. "Too many Red Bulls, man!"

 

"What are you on..." - then Gary realised he was back in the real world.

 

 

 

When the dude remembered that he had never drunk a can of Red Bull in his life, and realised that the sudden appearance of a man on a sofa in the middle of the pavement was in fact the result of a post-pixelatory splurging, he conceded to helping the man get the sofa back into his house.

 

Gary gave the dude a can of Red Bull by way of gratitude.

 

"Err... thanks, man."

 

Gary looked at the cushions.

 

("The circle is complete," said the voice of Denzel Washington. "the anomaly is resolved.")

 

Gary collapsed onto the sofa, sunk into his perfectly straight cushions and flicked on the TV.

 

 

 

"Whatever is lost can always be found," sung Tamba the androgynous puppet.

 

***