Straight from the other side of make belief, this team will restore your faith in the world.
If you take their word for it.
Individual Excellence for Collective Needs
Born in fiction, this team of outspoken survivors successfully transitioned from novel character to observer of life on the outside.
Their thoughts may mean something.
Here are brief, personal introductions to each team member, samples from their past when they were still imprisoned on death row in THE DAYS OF THE DODO.
MIKEY: an eight-year-old cantankerous prodigy who passionately loathes all things popular.
"I bet that’s why you tuned in: to be upset about something.”
“I am a child amongst children: born in diapers, dying in diapers. Diapers from the cradle to the grave: at any given age, the loins comfortably wrapped in absorbent pads, none of us ever does expect anything. All we want is to extend our life of hard-earned ease with another day.”
NEO-NATIONALISTS: torch-carrying self-proclaimed patriots of all races and countries.
“We all know things are heating up. The temperature is rising. Something is brewing. We say, ‘We’re in a sticky situation! And worse off as it’s getting more and more crowded. There’s no space left to breathe. Every day there’s more of them trying to get in.’”
“Now you go back to yours and bring your people the good message!”
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE: provocateur, man of letters, and belated hippophile. (1844-1900)
“What does not kill me makes me stronger.”
“In my lifetime I was known to be frank. I did not shun truth-saying. My finest hour, though, a hundred years ago and counting, came when I saw the people around me carry God to the grave.”
LABS: brain-trained, clip-boarded ambitionists in genetic editing, speaking truth to eternity.
“After we introduce a piece of genetic code into their nervous system, we sit back and watch their world crumble.” […] “Besides: we’d just fulfill their favorite prophecy. It’s been a long time coming. They have been flirting with the End of their Civilization ever since it began.”
“[…] In any case, they’re no longer the same. That’s why they’re color-coded.” […] “The way it used to be? Like in the old days: good and bad, right?” […] “Keep it down. Someone might hear you!”
LEGIONS: general pronoun implying ‘those doors wide-open to any proposal’.
“If angels were sent to separate goats from sheep, we will also slaughter them. This is our time.”
“If all this sounds like farewell, well, it’s because it is.”
BOOKY/BOOKIE: former Nobel laureate venturing into commercial/art-house cinema
“Myth travels everywhere, and what myth travels lighter than the wind? The many guises of love do! Also in my block buster, love will take flight.”
JOHN THE BAPTIST: thunderous prophet venerated both in Islam and Christianity.
“Oh, what blindness! What foolishness! What futility! Amongst the many vying watchmen, I counted myself the chosen one, predestined to shame the others. What ordinary fate I now meet. At the end of the longest day, I am less than my deriders. I am the worm.”
THE FLY: ancient usurer from the World of Haute Finance. Eventually new bride to John the Baptist.
“Loan shark? Is that what you called me? Let me tell you: the beads on my abacus were never as loose as the screws in your bed. I was a fair partner!”
“Then tell me, John My John, where are we heading, if not scorched earth and the abomination of the holy places? We’re locked in a cave and eager to walk out. For God’s sake - and may His Spirit rest in peace - My Love: Reveal! Reveal!! What’s it all for?”
THE RAT: holly harlot blurring the line between hypersexual transgressions and romantic ennui.
“We cannot even enjoy the consolation of a death wish.”
“Oh no, sweet Fred. Your bile is a fine grand cru. That vitriol you spawn we swallow whole. Do take aim at the old-timer and take a shot! Don’t be kind. He is but human.”
MUSIC MAN: semi-retired star of swooning songs and larger-than-death public image (limited).
“Glory, indeed! We delivered! The palpable kind: We were feeding the whole world from behind our microphones! One night we ordered a 1000 pizza’s for the pit area. The following week we teamed up with big business to air-drop baby formula into tent camps. There were no boundaries to what we achieved!”
GABRIELA: Mikey’s twin who brings all traffic to a halt through works of beauty.
[…]“So we talk and talk and smarten up
And at the end we kiss.
I have a snake in my heart,
And I can hear yours hiss.”
THE PRINCE: event planner for The End Times, working on personal 401K scheme for after the final events.
(33)“The time has come for us to assist humankind, to join their fight for man-made liberty. (34) Our united forces will celebrate the last evolutionary leap forward: the emancipation of creation.
“Who can imagine nothing will be left? Nothing? Who can think of nothing?”
A few characters who featured in the novel did not make the cut (for various reasons) and can therefore not be found in the ‘TEAM’ section. They include The Christ and the Anti-Christ, A. Hitler, the First Daughter of POTUS, an anonymous German goat farmer, the story’s narrator, and his Queen of Light.
