The Expanding Blueberry Band

I view the world from a certain cinematic perspective, as an observer, not completely without feeling you understand, but more like a movie, I don’t let it get to me too deeply. I’ve always been this way.

Well, that’s a lie, in fact I remember watching an old black and white version of ‘The Beast of Skull Island’ on the goggle-box as a kid. I was nine at the time, and at the end of the film I broke down in inconsolable tears at the shear injustice of it all, I mean for Prophet’s sake the beast was perfectly in sync with nature on the island, but humanity just had to bring him to the most populated city on earth and then they freaked out because he didn’t fit in, so they killed him... with airplanes. So no, in all honesty, I’ve not always been this way, but people change, and knowing what I know now and what I’m about to tell you, you too may adopt this position of distance.

‘The 4th division is asking for our authorization I.D... what do I say to them?’

That voice you hear belongs to Kay Blueberry, she’s covering the radio, in truth, it’s a little difficult to hear her in the earpiece over the rumbling crunch of the tracks, by tracks I mean the massive tracks of the forty-armored assault tanks now hurtling along the A 1. military road out of Cloistergrad.

...The fuck?...you say? Yep, we, Kay and I and the others, I’ll get to them in time, are currently racing along the giant military road out of Cloistergrad in convoy with thirty-nine other assault tanks. The only difference, between our tank and theirs, is that our tank is the only one that’s been stolen.

Yes okay... I have some explaining to do I know that, for one, how can you hear my voice in your head? why am I talking to you? what the fuck is going on, who are you... etc? Well as to who am I, my name is Kieder, I’m a Blueberry, and I have tuned with several different time-minds in the last four years, I play bass in the band and have just helped bring about the end of our world as we have known it. Now I know that probably doesn’t help a whole lot right now but as you can imagine I’m a little concerned that we, my fellow Blueberries, and I are at risk of being vaporized by an angry and rather terrified division of armored tanks!

‘BD47 Helspot...’

That’s Jay Blueberry, one of them whom I said I’d get to, who incidentally should be the one on the radio rather than fumbling about in the back there.

‘... tell them, Kay... BD47 Helspot!’

Jay is mind-tuned with a grandchild of the tank division commander, which turns out to be truly fortunate indeed as we would have a lot of trouble getting out of the city without his info. The entire country is now under complete martial law, which if you knew or know Permia would not sound terribly out of the ordinary, but this is far beyond the usual scanning of Jahn Citizens’ implants at every turn, no, they’re rounding up everyone, I mean everybody who isn’t rich or connected, so everybody who matters, and they’re being marched to the old salt-mines in the mountains and murdered en-mass!

‘We’re clear, our orders are to advance at speed to the river gate and deploy along the western defile and await orders there.’

You guessed it, that’s Kay again. She’s good with Intelligence, she supplied the Intel that got us into the Lip-Sync club in the first place, we’d some good gigs there, but the point was to get to one Larry Bloc, now this guy is a nobody, I mean a total nobody but, as I’m sure you can imagine, a nobody in the right place, at the right time can turn into somebody incredible. This was not quite the case, but Larry Bloc was formative in the bringing about the end of everything, sweet guy really. I know, I know not too clear yet but bear with me I’ll get back to the whole ‘bringing about the end of our world as we have known it.’ in a moment, it’s just we’re in a bit of a pickle here. We are never completely sure what is going to happen next, you see we know, and we don’t know, it’s all down to the chain of events we have put in place, by “We” I mean the Blueberries, and, as I am sure you can imagine, chains of events run the risk of cascading in the oddest of directions no matter how you try to account for probability. I have bet my life on the ‘Little fella’ issuing a general recall. Martts Blueberry, I know big family right, says that the big man himself will do it, Kay says that we’re going to die trying to slip over the border. On that note... I think it’s fair to say the tank won’t cut it, or at least we’d be shot to shit by either side as soon as we peeked our nose over the border. None of us are wearing a uniform, in fact, we’re still in our stage clothes... so going for a walk is out too... in case you’re wondering.

‘Are you thinking to someone?’

That would be nosy Martts with his beady eyes in my rear-view screen array, shush!

‘What...’

stall here and go for the misdirection.

‘... You really think Burndegard will cave, the dictator/traitor in Chief will call the whole show off?’

Martts is hot for this topic, convinced that the supreme ruler of Permia is a little lost boy at heart.

‘Well yes actually, I do, I give it...’ he’s eyeballing his watch now, like he has a clue. ‘... twenty minutes from... now!’

Pifff... drama queen!

‘We’ll see, we’ll see...the clocks ticking on your time now Martty m’boy.’

He fucking hates being called Martty, he’ll fume now for a bit and leave us alone, look at him... oh you can’t, well he’s all stiff and pissed off, he’ll wear the face off that watch now looking at it.

So, some details as we hurtle through the dark of night like some enormous rumbling wave of death, which in fact we are when you think about it. Time-minds and Tuning are probably two things I’ve mentioned that need some explaining. Okay where to begin, let’s see...

‘You are tuning with someone, I can tell, you do that thing with your lip when thought sharing...’

‘What time is it?’

And shut up and let me think Martts, ha there he is all over the watch again, who wears a freaking watch in this day and age? Okay down to business, tuning is... tuning is... do you... have you ever heard of a radio... I ask as frankly, I don’t know what time you’re from. A radio is a device that receives signals from the air, shit I’m not explaining this well. Um, visualize if you will a voice, a mechanical voice that can only be heard by a mechanical ear, Okay now imagine if the ear was copied, well you’d have two ears... shit everyone has two ears, I’m just talking crap now, hold on a sec. The point is there are two ears but only one voice right, so think about this, what if, your-self, your thoughts, your mind was like that mechanical ear just hearing one voice and that voice was the greater consciousness signal? Well, that being the case, the other mechanical ear is also hearing that one voice, but slightly differently because of its location. You with me here so far, with the ears and all? The ear, under the right conditions, can hear the sound coming from the other ear, like reverb coming off speakers, fuck I hope you know what a speaker is, an amp, or an amplifier, does that help...

‘We’re two klicks shy of the deployment line, that gives us something like ten minutes to come up with a plan of escape guys.’

That’s my sister Roshi on navigation, her real name is Rochelle, but everyone, my mother included, hates that name. I blame my grandmother’s influence quite frankly! Bugger where was I... oh yeah got it, so your mind, your piece of the greater consciousness, if tuned in correctly like the mechanical ear, can hear the stream of the consciousness coming from a similar mind. If you tune in just right you can speak in minds, Ta-Da! But you never know in advance where or when this other mind will be. Ade lexium de nordeum or some other fake Latin quote, point being We the Blueberries through the use of a very particular blueberry, see the connection yet, are able to tune our minds into other minds across time and space, well geography really as I don’t know of anyone tuning into an astronaut. Sorry... hold on..., looking at the amount of lip chewing going on here it looks like I better get working on that plan of escape. So, we’re driving at 60 km per hour in a convoy consisting of four tanks across, ten deep, huge bluddy road this, and we’re three rows from the back of the column. Boxed in!