84. Jimi & the Galactic Empire

Leper had discovered Jimi Hendrix through Brother Stanley. Smell, as I may have mentioned, is the most spiritual of senses, never tempted by the devil. Stanley’s is overpowering. Pure. Even spirits and entities that live between timelines and worlds where past, present and future collide are terrified of him. He is not humanly conscious of it but he has the most imposing and amazing of auras. It was incredibly easy for Leper to sniff him out. One way or another scent and music are intimately connected (the secret labyrinth of the Scarab and the Priest), though the connection is not obvious. One should not listen to but instead, inhale music. This way it fills the lungs and the being instead of the void between the ears. Think of it this way, modern man is desensitized to graphic violence courtesy of Hollywood and video games. With the fully immersive trend of VR, this only compounds the phenomenon. But smell! Throw in how actually a carcass stinks, or rotting zombies, or mere trash cans in a back alley and somehow the game may be too real. All nice and fine if it’s an AI girl’s body perfume, especially if the virtual companion is hosted by Bluetooth activated sex dolls with realistic touch and taste; but inverse it and we would rather not encounter that negative olfactory sensation. So to carry on playing, the developers would have to make dead bodies smell nice, like watermelons or strawberries; or strawberry watermelon vape flavoured assholes.

What’s this gotta do with music when music has no smell? But what if it does, only that homosapiens are unaware? Let’s explore. Since you can’t detect the odour of sound, you would just have to take what I say in faith. Like in the frequencies of bass to treble, the aroma of individual notes lie within a spectrum. Sustains and staccatos can change something sweet to sour, or bitter, or plain salty. This translates to a good song’s power over our feelings and emotions. We don’t sense this association but that’s how music influences us, through invisible smells and pheromones. Hence a smelly spiritual person like Stanley or a VR game developer’s intentional subtraction of the pong from an undead and its pungent replacement with alcohol tinted strawberry extracts have a potent implication on audio and tunes. The One Song and One Note acts this way as well but on a scale that breaks the chart.

When the Celestial Maharani banned music aeons ago, a void vortex naturally evolved. Something’s gotta fill when something’s removed. That something is Stanley by unexplainable quantum science. You can never remove anything from the universe. You can just change its form. Brother Stanley, at least the eternal essence of him, is that metamorphosis when the Celestial Maharani cut melody and rhythm off. Music became smelly and became music again in a twisted fate on Earth, culminating in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.

The Brother explained this to Killa after the intergalactic deal had been made, and that he is about to retire. It’s not that he wants to; but his time to become a Buddha has arrived. He will translate to Nirvana, which is just another name for Meta. Sex, porn, enlightenment forever. Killa will have to be on his own. Use his own gut’s guidance. When the perplexed rock star protested, Stanley merely said his era ends when music is unbanned. And that time is at hand.

Zero and Pepe were released right after Leper and the Karonic dynasty signed a contract. The details of which neither the band nor the billionaire were informed. Life continues on Earth; Zero tours and the Lucipher singularity chip breaks through in wonders.

As for the Cybernetic Priest, from its inception in Sorori, and in its purging from paradise under Karonic forces to its eventual mutiny, it encapsulated sight and sound. It was designed by the god of suns to store only audiovisual. This was its disadvantage; for the remaining senses were ciphered in Azazel’s Scarab. When the god of suns returns he will reincorporate both the Cybernetic Priest and the Scarab into his being. Well, that was the plan at least. All to smithereens. What did the Celestial Maharani do with the scarab collection she cruelly removed from the angels of Sorori? She turned them to spaceships. And their flights released pores of dust throughout the universe, of which the concentration was greatest around our Brother Stanley.

Killa and Stanley had their last meal. After this chapter we will no longer be acquainted with the Brother. It is in a way our last supper. They had it in the open, at night, with a campfire. It was a simple meal, roasting marshmallows on twigs. After that they went for a stroll into the forest, the night creatures making way as they smelled Stanley’s presence. There was always a dead silence from nature in his vicinity.

This scene is reminiscent of Elijah and Elisha on the day the former (master) was translated to heaven on a fiery chariot of horses, leaving the padawan a double portion of anointing. We’re not sure what Killa is going to get. He isn’t either. Most probably nothing, for everything that is is already in him. The whole translation was totally uneventful. Without saying a word as they walked, the Brother slowly transformed from solid to translucent and finally transparent to thin air. The air smelled great and nature started singing.

AI generated art prompted by author

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons and events are coincidental. Use of names of public figures, places and events are purely fictional and are not representative of them.