23.

I’m sorry, sir, once more we have finished running the universal equation & it’s still coming up cute.

Ce n’est pas vrai, what exactly does it say?

It just says Absolute = Cute, sir, there’s no arguing with it.

But what about X versus Y & all those Zzzs? It couldn’t be something to do with the 123s?

It may be something in the nature of infinity, sir, even an expression of chaos itself.

But chaos has no self, & infinity is awesome, how could anybody evaluate it as cute? They should be quaking in their boots!

Apparently it has something to do with the way it feels, sir, when something is impossible to measure & yet indisputably there.

Here, you mean? Like that thread that came loose the other day? “Not too big not too small: infinite.” Hadn’t that come loose from Goldilock’s pajamas? I suppose there is something quite sweet about homeostasis. I’ve always been rather fond of a touch of dynamic equilibrium, I just didn’t expect it all to add up to some kind of cosmic home-making, even if it is of the wherever-I-lay-my-head variety. I suppose it makes sense in a way, it just seems so… dowdy? Is that a word? Domestic, settled. Oh my god I hate that word.

There are those who think it Sublime, sir.

Settled?

No, sir, the Absolute Cute. Well, there is one at least at any rate.

Sublime?

Yes, sir, in fact they insist that cute things are an appropriate source of holy terror. Portals to the incomprehensible, the overwhelming madness of the impossible’s strangest pet.

Odd. Somewhat interesting but doesn’t sound to me very knife’s edge, more like wet the bed?

I think the problem is… well, I’m not quite sure, sir, but it could be an approach from a different order of experience. We’ve started talking about it quite a lot, up top down below, & it seems this joke’s got legs, even lots & lots of little hairy ones, even millions & billions of horribly sharp ones, row after row of icky sucky ones — you get the picture.

I do, I do, it just doesn’t sound very cute?

You have to conjunct it, sir, with the Absomaloot. Everything even.

Everything odd, you mean? It doesn’t exist.

That’s it, sir, you’re getting it.

Hmmm, well, okay I’ll stick with it a bit. The Absolute Cute dudes, better make them the prophet of the age, set the old fruit to ripen towards the end of the 23rd Century, if you can’t cross the actual timelines then work it hard through trips & dreams. Let’s do this.