{ ... }

۞

  In the sociocratic think tank something was going down.  While everyone else was wondering whether it was evil or not, some of the biggest evil was going down.  It started off lightly and then got serious quickly.  

  “Thank fuck for carbon or we wouldn't have fizzy … ”  

  “Not another carbon deficiency!”  

  “Not another deficit, surely?”  

  Conversations were blurring into a semblance of endings.  

  “...-py,”  

  “...-ty,”  

  The ending of the word was all that could be heard, ideas were bouncing off the walls.  

  “Absurd!”  

  The sociocrats, or rather Ingsoc. as they jokingly likèd to call themselves, were chatting shit.  Tête-à-tête around another round of café.  Once around the block and back to the café.  Four lefts later and they were back where they began.  Scratch that, starting over from square one.  The square root of minus one.  

  Ingsoc.'s work was more serious than their little play-on-words.  In fact, it was a complete détournement of a religious text to suit the purposes of diverting Muslim attention from the Sharia Law of Islam's own invention to one of Ingsoc.'s own creation.  Rock the Qasbah!  All of this, mind you, to remain unknown.  

  Ingsoc. got chattin' again,  

  “How about this,” suggestèd a sociocrat technocrat twat.  “Verse one: Hadith! The manifestation of Night.  Religion of the Moon, Religion of the Stars, et cetera, et cetera.  Something about the Sabians and then something more about Egyptology, maybe.  How about Coptic Greek as the script?  You know, make it look nice-and-pretty …  What was the role of Nut in the Egyptian pantheon?”  

  “How do you tell a Shi'ite from a Sunni?”  

  “Ask a Sufi.”  

  And on it went into the night and beyond.  

  Commonality surrounding poetry.  Carvossier.  Another Carvossier.  Sociocratic tête-à-tête.  Sober up, another round of café.  

  Liber AL vel Legis.  The Book of The Law.  Sharia Law did not know what it was in for.  The text was a big text with a lot of misdemeanours, to say the least, that socially could only be applicable to one time frame.  One time frame and one people.  Egypt.  The civilization of Egypt and the civilization of the Arab world.  The poet to the prophet.  The prophet to the poet.  It was all about love as we know it.  A verse read, Love is the Law, Love under Will.  Oh, and the stars, Come forth o' children under the stars and take your fill of love.  

  °Ah, the gemmed azure° thought Mister Magog.  

  Mister Magog tippèd his brandy glass to refract a glow from the moon.  

  “You see,” Mister Magog spoke aloud, “the religion of the stars, Islam, encompasses the manifold manifestations of the moon.  The stars belong to Sabiah.”  

  {Republika}  

  It was a full moon, that night.  

  “Do you, ladies and gentlemen,” askèd Mister Magog, “know anything of the seventh direction?”  

  “And what of the seventh direction?” askèd Tulpa, much older and estrangèd from her surrogate father.  

  The people from The Grand newspaper were there, including Telly.  Telly vs. Sally.  Sally reporting back to Quincy.  

  The Yids from Tottenham Ton, Mister Donald Baggs, Mister Donald Burns, and their faithful wives, Connie and Connie, had joinèd their good friend, Magog, for the third round of tête-à-tête that day.  A la that night.  Moonlight.  Moonlighting.  

  “But when, if the tale's true, the pestle of the moon, it pounds up all anew,” said Magog, “it encompasses the world and holds it in the bosom of its changing face … There she is, our full moon!”  

  Mister Magog lowerèd his brandy glass and pointèd up to it, the pestle of the moon, pounding up all anew.  He continuèd, “On the other side of the globe, the dark side of the whole of the moon, Eous, has risen!” exclaimèd Magog.  “This is the first manifestation according to the seventh direction of the changing face of Eous.”  

  Mister Magog lookèd down into his brandy glass as he swilled it, divining the reflection of the moon from within it.  He pointèd to the empty space in the west of the sky, and said, “Eous waxes as a half moon in the West … Eous wanes as a half-moon in the East.  And in the corners, the crescent.”  

  The manifold manifestations of the moon were the regulatory periods of the seventh direction.  

۝