Chapter Text
As I trekked the zinc-and-gypsum Hyrcanian forêt de Tarabiscoville with machete in clutch of mine sole apparatus, numbered 0037022 (an adroit invention, borne of Ali and with Macchiaveli’s mind1) I pierced a swath of pre-brutalist drudgery and those modern darics and siglos; processors quantum and otherwise. No sooner had I pierced that veil of antiquity with main outstretched comme Eve avec le serpent et la pomme and begun to plunder Eden’s bounty, however, than the concrete jungle’s fiercest cat himself did pounce, punishing my indolence. My alloyed retainer fell supine across the sol; silicon doubloons scattered, its gorgetless vitals laid exposed (a fundamental flaw), and I attempted to shield à la Patroclus (a role reversal) my tempered steel Adam (“Cainan” might serve more meticulously, as this was my eighth such bipedal creation) to scant success.
The guileless Gestapo (or Sturmabteilung sans savoir-faire, since they easily invite such bitter allusions) that had descried mine incursion into the copse of Les Électroniques d’Henri2 flanked me; the Strigiforme-fetishist took my left arm in her serres, the costumed Gekkonid swathed my right—I could feel his sweat drip through the fabric, a sieve through which only the foulest particulates might penetrate. I cried as le chat drew back his odious forepaw and slit 0037022’s throat. The repellent garçon even took son tête and buffeted it against le sol. I couldn’t abide such damage to the carapace housing the processor I had spent hours training. I sobbed pathetically. Oui, j’ai pleuré even as I depressed the central bouton on the remote in my palm, sending my deliverance en route.
As his prepubescent roughneck compatriots manhandled me, le chat attempted some audaciously puerile soliloquy3. My eyelids strained to shutter even as I mentally counted down les secondes twixt this farce and my exodus. The lackwit thought it prescient to inform me that “stealing is wrong” to which I thought of offering that most basic of rhetorical retorts by way of dear Hugo, insomuch as the famished man what takes his mouthful of baguette transgresses only a society which transgresses his own personal propriety and treats its citizens as dogs, but thought better of it upon noting the mental strain incurred when the boy strove for even rudimentary vocabulary. Instead, I gritted my teeth at 0037022’s desecrated chassis and spoke some choice threat4, which I won’t reprint here, as its meager magniloquent sway served mostly to reprieve me avec schadenfreude just as my chrome Pegasus arrived.
0024013 possessed a beauteous construction of which I was quite proud—that mattered little, as its velocity was such that I was swept away from my pathetic surroundings in the blink of Polyphemus’s eye. My feline aggressor was able only to bemoan my egress with a single phoneme, something like “oh”, before I was riding somewhere near the stratosphere sur the comforting arch of my steel-winged seraph. I dug some digits in la poche de my coat and retrieved a pilfered processor. It would serve. Through a veil de larmes I guided my chariot, postmodern aeronautical Apollo that I was, to my private residence. There I could lick my wounds, as the colloquialism goes (not unlike my erstwhile nemesis) and revisit this matter of the PJ Masks. One thought rose saliently to the forefront of my humiliated cortex: the cat must go. The cat I could not abide.
1I simplify of course; the full breadth of texts on which this particular model’s CPU was trained include Rand, Nietzsche, Tzu, Hume, Caesar, Lee, and many others—I internalized my lesson vis-à-vis feeding my digital progeny too singular a philosophical diet early on, in an encounter with the Masks at a credit union a year ago. My creation, trained on Kant, refused to handle a single cent of our remuneration for a heist well plotted—a facile ethic which resolved me to never again include Immanuel in my curricula. I was left to haul our windfall myself, to little avail. I believe I returned with €27,030.15 ce jour: the union in question was sorely lacking in 100 euro notes.
2Not the supplier I would have chosen, mais le meilleur que Tarabiscoville has to offer. The French government has blacklisted me from importing such components wholesale from the superior manufacturers in Korea, the US, and Japan.
3In fact, I will resolve now not to repeat the drivel of any such adversaries that should seek to stain the surface of these pages, least of all the Masks. If a particular piece of air disruption becomes somehow pertinent, I may rethink this ultimatum; but for now, you shall only read mes mots sur ces feuilles.
4For those curious; though I will not repeat the exact threat, I can hint at its essence for your epistemological benefit: I alluded to a rending of limbs, after which I described the spilling of my target’s varied organs and their function. Not my finest work, to be sure, but by the face of my aggressor I surmise it succeeded at its purpose.