Good day, dear reader. As we all know, great Fleptimus spoke of changes to come. And indeed they have (and continue to)! Let me tell you everything.
It was five hundred years ago today that Fleptimus rose from the flesh pits of old, forged out of the bones of the fallen by dubious means to preach upon humankind his preachings. The exhausted army who had come from afar to light the pits on fire once and for all, listened to him. There was little else they could do. Every day he preached, and his preachings were long and rambling, iterating on the same points again and again. On the twenty-ninth day, the soldiers shot him dead with twenty-nine arrows, each one as revenge for each day he exposed them to verbal torture. Good riddance — or so they thought.
As often happens after you kill someone, you start wondering whether you committed the act prematurely. Yes, old Fleptimus’ mouth flapped unyieldingly, but once they started to trim the meat and digest his words, they soon realised he hadn’t actually been that bad. He spoke about peace, about endless friendships, of overcoming great difficulties, and where in the flesh pits one could isolate the best strains of bacteria for artisanal cheese-making. They realised they too wanted all these things, but the last preacher — the one solidifying how to obtain these things — was lost forever. Oh, the dismay of the people! What else did Fleptimus have to say? Is it a mystery we can only fabricate within the palace of our mind?
No! Today the final preaching of Fleptimus will be heard once and for all! Through technological advancement in the field of life sciences, we can now access and hear the past lives of others. We stand before the precipice of the soul, where our subjective selves, rooted in our internal culture, can gaze across and perceive introspection like never before. Prejudice, war, famine — all those words will finally be reduced to that — words!
I, Skroom, ventured to the Fleptimus Museum, to witness the grand opening of the Soul-Linker, a machine created by scientists and the Church of Fleptimus, finally bridging the two different domains just as Fleptimus would have wanted. The entire ordeal is sponsored by the grand enterprise Looka, which owns all of Krang Harbour by now. I don’t know how Fleptimus would feel about that. The machine, complex in components but simple in operation, allows the user to capture past lives floating around us and import them into an organic being. So far, multiple attempts had been made to harness Fleptimus, but they had all failed miserably until now.
I stepped in, blinded by the artificial light. The museum was filled with the finest of Fleptimus décor from the mosaic floor depicting his slightly unsymmetrical face, to paintings representing all of the twenty-nine preachings. A painting of the thirtieth one was artistically depicted as a question mark in Fleptimus’ charismatic, striped robe. The drapes had Fleptimus drinking Looka tea, and in another he was eating a bowl of their pre-packaged tomato flakes. Looka representatives handed out free samples with tiny Fleptimus figurines that when you squeeze them say: “Looka at me preaching.”
I won’t deny the crowd’s excitement rubbed off on me, despite not being convinced of Fleptimus’ words. Maybe I was wrong all this time? Maybe that final preacher would change all of our lives?
A red-cheeked priest lumbered onto the stage, and the crowd fell to silence. “I bear good news. We worked really hard with this, and it’s truly a revolutionary contribution from all of you to restore great Fleptimus. I want to thank my colleagues of the church.”
He started listing his fellow church members one by one, first and last names, but after a sour gaze from one of the Looka representatives who tapped their watch, he coughed and continued with the program.
“It was difficult to isolate Fleptimus. His soul is strong. Not many people could handle him, and it was hard finding a host.” He showed a hint of a proud smile that said, that’s our Fleptimus. “But luckily for all of us, now we have.”
The crowed oooohed as the drapes were pulled aside behind the priest, revealing a table clad in red with something on it. I tip-toed to get a good look.
It was a crab, looking at the crowd and clacking its claws.
I found the following silence rather uncomfortable, and the priest’s face reddened a few more tones as he tried to explain the strength of crabs and why it was their only chance.
“That’s not Fleptimus!” someone yelled from the crowd. “That’s just some guy!”
“Guy? He’s a bloody crab!”
“Mon Dieu !”
The crowd buzzed in discontent so much so that the host of the event, the CEO of Looka, went up on stage, introducing the crab by demanding that the priest roll the table to the edge of the stage. He made the rather good suggestion that we all listen to the crab before we judge too harshly. After all, that’s fitting to Fleptimus’ doctrine. There was a buzz of agreement to that.
And the crab, now Fleptimus, rose up on six feeble legs. I am no marine biologist so I don’t know whether crabs usually have eyelids. This one did. Its human eyes gazed across the crowd, its rigid mouth unable to present neither smile nor frown.
The crab tapped the tiny microphone and spoke into it. “Thank you all for your attendance today. It warms my heart to see you all here. And, yes, it is true. I am the reincarnation of Fleptimus.” He spread his clawed arms as if to welcome his children. For a crab he had a lot of grace, and I felt captivated by his authority. “After hundreds of years passing between lives, I have even more to add to my final advice. The thirtieth preach I will bestow upon you, revealing what your hearts most desire! What you crave. What you deserve. I will teach you the correct way of how to love.”
His words stalled the crowd’s discontent as if by magic. Don’t we all want to love correctly? Yes — for while love is an inescapable emotion that takes us by force, ruled once by the primitive need for survival, does it not comfort us in our darkest of hours to imagine it as something more? Something ethereal — something divine. It comes naturally, but maybe the truest of loves do require teaching to fully grasp? Or — oh — is it our own self-deprecating view once again thwarting us, making us believe that despite the love we feel and have, there has to be something more, something yet untouched that we can one day reach? A final goal to achieve in the otherwise dreary and dull?
Fleptimus continued, the room buzzing in silence.
“Love, you see, is such a simple thing. But dangerous it may also be. Never take it for granted. Never leave it cold. It is difficult to gain, easy to lose. But I, Fleptimus, have found a secret way to experience its warmth and joy for everyone to partake, and this time it will never leave your grasp no matter how much of an awful person you may be!”
They liked that. “Tell us the secret!”
Fleptimus laughed in crab, cleared his throat and continued. “The secret to love, my dear family, is a Looka tea in the morning. It’s not only a tea, but it simply radiates decadence and its nutritional profile can be felt through my entire non-vertebrae! Now that’s what I call love.”
Fleptimus turned his crab-body towards a camera just as it shot a picture, with a magnificent blink of an eye. How he already had a bag of Looka tea in his claw, I didn’t catch.
“Fucking crab! He’s a sellout!” someone yelled, and those were the only words needed to start a revolt.
Three forces met. The timid followers of Fleptimus clashing against the capitalists of Krang, with the scientists dipping their toes in between, depending on whether they preferred academia or industry. I ducked under a pack of Looka tea lancing towards me and started crawling towards an exit. They shouted and pulled each other’s hair. Had profanities held physical strength we would have all died that day. I had nearly reached my goal of escaping when I felt a cold claw on my neck and witnessed Fleptimus himself trying to hitch a ride with me.
“Help me out here!” he yelled. I let him crawl up on my back under my shirt to hide him as we made our way out the back door, as is also tradition.
“Ah the sun!” said Fleptimus. He lifted his claws against it in worship and laughed in childlike joy. “And the wind! The smells of — well everything!”
There was a faint smell of piss, but I wasn’t going to point that out. It’s just the typical Ardnard backdrop, and while not pleasant, it has a charm to it that says you are not alone. That the city is inhabited, that life continued even when you were asleep. I inhaled it together with him, appreciating this moment of experiencing simple things anew.
It didn’t last for long. One of Looka’s representatives barged through the backdoor, and after a bit of arguing back and forth about consumer rights, Fleptimus and I were taken upstairs into a waiting room reminiscent of a cell. There we were told to wait, seated on two waiting room chairs. I took this moment to light a roll of krahash to share with Fleptimus, and if lucky, get some words from the now rather infamous head figure of the church.
“So, was that really your thirtieth preacher?” I asked.
Fleptimus laughed nervously and waved a claw. “Oh, no. Change of plans.”
He inhaled the krashash, as I asked him: “For the money? I thought the point of the church was to forego a life chasing wealth and to live it by sharing kindness and compassion.”
“Bah! There is no point to anything,” spoke Fleptimus. “I was naive all those years ago when I spoke before the flesh pits. Look where that got me. At least by brand recognition I can make something for myself instead of being shot for preaching kindness. I still possess some of my old clairvoyance, and I can tell their revenue will increase with at least 25% after this event is pressed.” He shrugged in crab. “Now I can live with wealth and power, and crabs live really long.”
“But don’t you want to continue what you started? Spread love and kindness and all that?”
“They’re just words, man. I didn’t know what I was doing more than anyone else was. I just woke up one day and thought maybe the world could be nicer, you know? Be the change you want to see and all. The truth, my boy, is that we are all alone. No one knows what the Flep is going on. Then we die. And anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something.”
There was a brief silence of only in-and exhales, the smell of my subpar krahash slowly filling the room.
“Ah, I know it sounds harsh,” continued Fleptimus, a hint of regret in his voice, perhaps. “But really. There is nothing. I remember seeing the face of an arrow between my eyes, and now I am here in this crab. We all think of a soul as being something meaningful, but its existence doesn’t prove that at all. It just adds another meaningless layer to life and death.”
I sat back, inhaling my krahash. I expected to feel something profound in what I personally considered as Fleptimus’ last preaching, but I realised that even this was nothing I hadn’t heard before. Maybe there isn’t anything more profound to be learned? Or maybe there just wasn’t anything at all to begin with.
“And you?” asked Fleptimus. “What is your opinion on all this? Does it not fill you with dread?”
I shrugged. “I think it’s alright. I like waking up in the morning knowing there is nothing below or above me. It makes things more relatable.”
Fleptimus grinned in crab, but coughed on smoke as someone entered the room, ripping apart this fragile moment of ours.
“You didn’t fulfil your contract.” A stern looking woman towered over Fleptimus and me, tapping her foot in a manner that told every tap cost money. “You weren’t supposed to start a riot. You said you would increase revenue and bring your worshipers over as stakeholders. Have you learned nothing from the lecture I gave you on B2B sales?”
“B to what?”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Listen. You seem like an alright crab, but this is just not going to work out. I am afraid we have to lay you off.”
“Lay me off?”
“For someone managing to preach thirty times, you sure are short on response now — yes, lay you off. You are just going to cost us more than you give. And it may make us more popular if we launch a campaign against you. We will be shutting you off.”
“Wait! No— I.”
But it was too late. Fleptimus’ crab eyes had turned white.
I inhaled the last snippet of krahash in a moment of silence, until I realised the woman was looking at me. I stared back.
“Can I leave?” I asked.
I was half dreading to become a valued member of the Looka team, but she smiled. “Of course, as long as you remember Looka tea will help soothe you and forget all the traumatising things you have witnessed here today.”
She gave me a sample, and I left through the backdoor. The faint smell of piss had vanished, and in its wake was the scent of fresh petrichor left by a light rain.
I tried the Looka tea when I arrived home. It was simple to make. You can even use cold water. If I were honest, I would admit it tastes awful, and leaves a film of something unholy in your mouth that lingers for days. But the contract I signed to enter the museum says Looka may shoot me if I leave a bad review, so I won’t say that.