The Scorn-Eater
Nikholas "Rain Man" F. Toledo

	Damned if this isn't strange-feeling.  As odd and familiar as the warm, 
wet darkness of my dreams, as rose orchids and a spicy mouthful of kielbasa and 
mustard.  The fear is over now, though I crest into a vaguely shameful and 
pleasurable loathing of what is to come.  The circus, elephantine little brown 
hulks with too much baggage and smug in their ignorance as they jostle, 
overladen with trash and costume jewelry souvenirs and trinket memories.  They 
jockey for position, eager as dogs fighting over a day old strip of dry meat.  
And they can't explain to you why, only that they are compelled to, deeply-
ingrained cultural instincts vicious and merciless as hunter savages of the 
paleolithic.  Or perhaps I slander those noble progenitors, after all, I wasn't 
there.  But I am here, witnessing a new breed of barbarian.

	Terrible of me to think of them as such, since they are my people, I do 
not deny it.  Well, I'm sort of one of them... but not quite anymore.

	Only watch me, chimera, when I talk to my friends across the vast Pacific 
and my colors change, and soon I am calling the Americans ignorant barbarians, 
basking in the superior culture and intelligence of the Filipino people.  Fool 
and liar, me.  To myself, but never to my friends, so convincing is my 
performance, my sincerity.

	Only watch the shape-change, the hissing crack of bones beneath skin in 
the airport.  And a new mask is formed, real as flesh and blood, and politics.

	What kind of monster am I?  Worldly and naive as a voyeur in a lily-white 
tower, I watch the everyday perversions of living, and try to find meaning.

	Airports are the vilest of the accepted sin-houses, the most titillating 
and raunchy of peephouses.  Only not for the average lecher, but for the refined 
and the hardened and distorted of spirit.  I make too much of my species, but 
here we are gentlemen and ladies...  Watch the crowd the next time you are in an 
airport, and hidden there will you find my kind, watching, lusting and loathing.

	Be warned.  Know of us, and be shamed, be wary of your naked foolishness 
that brings me such sublime thrill.  Blush and cover yourselves, be cautious, be 
quiet, and you might avoid my eyes... perhaps.  But you can never know for sure, 
never realize how my eyes dirty and assault you, until you join our ranks... and 
then you will be one with me, and may your god or gods pray for your lost souls.

	We are the new breed of Nazi... but we judge not race, only 
ridiculousness... and you can never escape those mocking chains.  Oh the 
humanity...

	Welcome to the Nightsongs, to my world of pretensions and illusions... and 
the fool who you next deceive shall laugh, as it is you who become the clown, 
subject of rambling scorn, a flood of insulting data, your secrets laid bare.  
Never mind truth, verisimilitude is irrelevant, it is only our perceptions, and 
how gloriously do we warp this pitiful world we live in.

	Boarding has begun - oh what an orgy of crowding, a constipation of sweaty 
bodies, jostling and groping!

	But what a delightfully frightening surprise!  The attendants are 
attempting to impose order!  What brave, doomed soldiers they are, how 
courageous, pure and unsullied their rebellion!  Faced with the tide of hostile 
faces, sharp teeth shining and gnashing, they stand their ground against the 
human flood.  Such audacity - I wonder if I am humbled.

	Is there hope after all?  Is the scorn-eater proven wrong at last?  I wait 
and watch as they try to board by row number.

	Multicolored rainbows, cloth and skin shuffling and sliding with 
deliciously pointless friction, brown, black, yellow, white and pink.  A mass of 
sex denied and suppressed by culture and the trappings of civilization.  Here a 
flash of ancient gold and glass spectacles, there the matte-dun-brown purse, 
color and texture of shit and sausage.

	But a line!  Dear Lord, they ask for a line, those darkshirted soldiers of 
order and false-decency.  A miracle before my eyes, is this the work of a god 
before me, a hallucination, or merely a cruel joke?

	Ah, but the order has collapsed.  I stand to do battle once more.

- - -

	Our conversations, well, we talk in Mock-Shen Speak.  It's a language of 
sorts... except that there's no standard dictionary, syntax or structure.  It 
just *is* and it is something we recognize.  And so it may seem like a cop-out 
to you folks, but dammit, it's a code.  Hell, I even lied to you about what it's 
called.  Secrets, you know.  Even Mockers like me have to have them.  Oh sure, 
one of the major things we scorn is the elaborate affected secrecy of the Mocked 
(that means you folks out there, by the way), but hey, I never claimed that I 
wasn't a hypocrite.

	After all, that's the deal with us Scorn-Eaters.  Chimeras.  Well, not 
even that, really, because that's just a mythical beast with limits - it doesn't 
really change.  It is a fixed hybrid.  I suppose a mythical creature we are 
close to in spirit is the Tengu, but no, even a Tengu has fixed traits, parts of 
its character that won't change.  After all, how else do you recognize and name 
something other than to know (or believe that you know) the characteristics of 
what you are trying to name?  Or to know all the things that what you are trying 
to name is not?  Hence, the "void" - the idea of emptiness, of not-matter, of 
nothing.

	But the Scorn-Eaters, bastards that we are... our names change, too.

	So you may ask, how do we even communicate with each other, if our tongues 
are never static, our faces are like water and our habits are described 
accurately by neither chaos nor order?

	We change until we match enough so that we can.

	And if you try to name us as "The People Who Always Change", well, Mr. 
Lopez, that isn't accurate either.  Because sometimes we don't change, and for 
some of the things we do, there are neither words in any language nor ideas in 
any thinkers.

	We are what we are, and for this brief drop of infinity, we are the Scorn-
Eaters.

	Who is Mr. Lopez?  Ah, well, that's a long story.  A shame.  Brilliant 
man, you know, tried to study us, to define us.  A shame.  His brilliance is 
lost and now, now he's one of us.

	But enough of that.  Right now, I am a Scorn-Eater, and this game has 
rules.

	"Well, Ethidium FensClock?" says a dapper old Mocker in black tights and 
orange blazer, his eyes glazed over with the half-dozen drugs he's taken on a 
bet.  In Mock-Shen Speak, of course, his old pipes smelling of burnt cloves, and 
garlic.  Only no one notices that he is smoking in the non-smoking section.

	"Hancock Bird-Eyes!  How good to see you!"

	It may interest you to know that those names did not exist twenty seconds 
ago.

	"Dog.  You know the rules."

	Bastard.  The old ones can do things I can't.. I can't think like them 
yet.

	"But Ben Day Home," I plead.  "How could anyone ever know the rules?"  The 
contest is on, and unfortunately, it was brutal.  For me.  A slinging of 
questions and counter-questions, the format of the rules we have just 
synthesized.  But how long can my luck hold?  This one is old... who will change 
the rules first?

	"But how do we know, dear Never and Past King, that Feyerabend knew 
nothing at all really, about truth?" I ask, confident.  We had moved into a 
realm I have just finished studying, and my, what a tasty dish Popper's brain 
made.  It went down well, grilled slowly on a rotating spit as salt, wine and 
sarcasm were generously sprinkled on it.

	The old one inclined his head towards me.  "Lot 49 Cries, friend Garlic.  
The Vineyard is a Savage Garden, but the Orange was sour."  And he winked, 
disappearing into a convenient, never-used ashtray.

	Fuck him.

	I lost.

- - -

	So I couldn't change the rules yet.  Not old enough.  So I had to follow 
the inevitable conclusion of this 747 flying across the marvelous ocean.  From 
Dreams and spit, and the shoestrings and toothbrushes of the sleeping passengers 
on board, I built a bomb.

	You see, I lost because the attendants had been able to bring order... too 
much of it, onto the plane.  I had made a bet by calling myself a Scorn-Eater, 
that humanity's innate callousness and primitive nature would prove itself 
again.  I lost.  The match with the Arbiter was to determine if I was at least 
skilled enough, in my dirty sneakers, expensive jeans and two-hundred dollar 
striped silk shirt with matching rose-lensed glasses, to pretend that I had won 
the bet all along.

	But the old one pulled the right names, and I didn't know the counter.

	So one glow-in-the-dark watch goes out on the plane.  Big deal right?  
Well, you must know the story of the loaves and the fishes...

	So you poor schmuck, why am I telling this to you, strapped down as you 
are, mouth wide and screaming, eyes blind?  Because I thought it would be mildly 
appropriate for one human to know WHY or a little about the big WHY, anyway.

	What big WHY?

	Well, because I, Scorn-Eater (soon to be ex-Scorn-Eater) the only one 
willing to outright defend the current boring state of humanity, lost.  I lost.  
Humanity's world has been Judged... and it has been found boring, too static, 
too orderly.  I wasn't able to demonstrate that humanity had enough chaos to 
justify my introducing some order.  And now the pendulum begins to pull the 
other way, drawn by the relentless desire for self-gratification of my kind.  In 
ten minutes, the time it will take for me to finish building the bomb, this 
plane will crash, just off the coast of Hawaii.  Upon crashing, nose-diving into 
the water and reaching an appropriate depth, this bomb WILL detonate... and the 
state of Hawaii will disappear in a flash of light and heat and deadly water and 
tears.

	Fifteen minutes after that, the United States will begin launching its 
nuclear missiles.  Then China and the USSR.  Then India and Pakistan.

	You should have pulled through and been stupid for me, you little slice of 
humanity.  But no, you showed improvement.  Hey, look on the bright side, (and 
doesn't a little part of you brain feel happy about all this as you watch me 
assemble an Armageddon bomb in front of you?) not the entire human race will be 
wiped out.

	That would be boring, too.

	Well, there goes the last toothbrush.  Bomb is ready.  A pity.

	I have enjoyed my ride as Scorn-Eater.

	It was fun.  It was the most stimulat-