So I did order one gizmo off Bjornix's Deadweb Catalogue. It's the Sympathetic/Parasympathetic Load Balancer. Most people call this: a BRAIN. But Mummies don't have brains. It is the one organ completely dispensed with by the mummification process. As you know, we have all our other organs neatly preserved in canopic urns. Except for the heart, of course, it gets left behind in my otherwise empty chest to pump ointment and 10W40 through my veins. But the rest of the organs serve some purpose similar to what I used them before. They seem to digest information. But if I Feel like eating cheesecake, I chew it up and spit it into the jar. Sound pointless? That's why I don't eat a lot of cheesecake.
The Sympathetic/Parasympathetic neural subsystems, as we learn in science class, are the graceful yin-yang of the autonomic nervous system. It governs the organs and all the sweet little pumps that run your body mechanic. Get too stimulated by way of one part of this dualism and you start behaving like the House of Representatives; sphincter tightens, breathing becomes labored and you need to eat fresh fruit for a week to get a decent poop. Coffee won't keep those legislators going for too long till they have to spend a week at Club Med or its power-broking alternative specializing in high-colonic.
So, this device (S/P LB) insures that the mummy doesn't go either into extreme lassitude or cicada-like mania. And this I could have actually used in real life. See, I had a brain, but I didn't use it. As the two-headed gatekeeper to one's own private abyss, it has to remain vigilant. A filter with broad pores can be useful in certain applications, but if often will let just about any fnarbage in. The nifty brain is designed to be adjustable in that regard. It will arbitrate feedback, sort whimsies, keep the finger of death out of the genesis porridge, and bar the well-meaning bulls from adjusting the crystal antennae. When it's functioning, it's the best tool around. Best of all, it's free to all participants.
S/P LB is a kludgey replacement. But it makes Hubbard's auditing device look like technology from Gilligan's Island. It even has a little hydrostatic meter for you living folks to remind you to drink some water so you don't get dehydrated. You'd be surprised at all the boppers that let that go. And if you get too excited by all the flashing lights on the bridge of the mummyship and the S/P LB tells you to take a stroll on a long catwalk. Now that I think about it, it would have been perfect for LSD trips. But I probably would have just laughed at it and dashed it to a thousand pieces.
All told, the S/P LB is the perfect tool for post-mortem orgonomic health. With the right unguent to loosen up muscular armoring, I stay flexible in mind and body, as well as all the synthetic systems derived thereof. Without a fluid mummy, you might as well be the scarecrow left out when they scorch the cornfield.
The SymPara Balancer was jumping around wildly. I could gather that a systemwide crisis was approaching my humble corpse. The orgone levels dipped. My face sagged and muscles turned into number 2 plastic.
I felt like shite, but I had been writing like mad, these memoirs, in fact. It was one one of the well-documented side effects of my medication. It's like that old, but good joke:
"My brother thinks he's a chicken."
"Why don't you take him to see a doctor?"
"We need the eggs."
Thanks, Prolifix.
The joke on the mummyship: "Spacemummy thinks he's a writer." Eye roll.
"I never said that! It's that drug Cyborg Bill gave me."
Elder Barton: "I think we're about to blast off into hypertext." Guffaw. As if that was the most absurd proposition in the universe. These kids don't understand pop philosophy.
But they had a point. I was not even performing my duties with any concentration. I retreated to lie in a bed of sweet, dry camel dung and incense and let the scarabs pick nits out of my brow. That's when the boojums hit.