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Welcome back to Ship of Fools, my satire on conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and anti-science beliefs.
Part II: Diaspora
As we begin Part II, Clive Cuddleshanks is dead gutted about Liz standing him up for the astroanamorphoscope demonstration. Will he find another sympathetic ear, or possibly a backer for his invention, among the conference attendees?
CLIVE Cuddleshanks paced the lido deck, wondering what had happened to Elizabeth Dare. As much as he hated being stood up, it just didn’t seem like her to do it. Maybe she’d just forgotten, or her alarm had failed to go off. But he couldn’t have her room paged until later in the morning, and by then the sun would be too high to really show off the ’morphoscope’s capabilities.
The top of the orb was just cresting the horizon. They were out to sea far enough that the coast of Baja was just a dark line, perspective shrinking the bluffs and mountains to near-nothingness, nowt to do with any curve of the Earth.
He put the helmet on just to see if it was still in working order. There it was, the sun in its rightful place, twenty degrees above the horizon to the northeast. Instead of arcing from one horizon to the other, reaching an apparent zenith in the southern sky at noon, it would move in a great curve at one altitude, 3,000 miles above the disk, from the northeast around to the south by noon then continuing around to the northwest by “sunset,” when it would simply disappear. Unfortunately, his astroanamorphoscope could only work with light rays available to it, and at that point the electromagnetic distortion bent the rays beyond the apparent horizon, out of reach of his device’s mirrors.
Satisfied that it was working correctly, he stowed it back in its box, waited half an hour, entertaining himself by watching dolphins surfing in the ship’s wake, then went in to breakfast, hoping to find Ms. Dare at the buffet, sheepish at having overslept. They had days left on the ship, and he could always reschedule.
By the time he finished breakfast, the dining room was emptying out, and she still hadn’t shown. Now he needed to get to the Exhibit Hall to find his table and set up his display.
The hall was buzzing with vendors and groups setting up their promotional material, racks of merch, and video screens. The booths were organized thematically. Here in the Flat Earth section, vendors sold intricately hand-carved wooden models of Earth’s true shape, some of them working orreries complete with the Dome of the Firmament, while others ran experiments demonstrating that water couldn’t stick to a spinning ball, Earth couldn’t cast a shadow on the moon during an eclipse, and more. Farther afield, the moon-landing truthers showed how easy it was to fake a photo from space with a CGI image of the Earth and a white toilet seat filling in as a spacecraft’s window. Beyond were videos showing the movements of the multiple plotters in the JFK assassination, simulations of what would really happen if an airliner hit a skyscraper, and reams upon reams of tracts exploring the evils of the Rothschilds, the Bilderberg Summit, the WTO, the WHO, the CDC, the Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Land Management, and local public works departments, the latter being in charge of mind control through fluoride and other additives to drinking water.
His own booth was equally complex, with a large banner showing the disk with the sun and moon above it in their proper positions, a video monitor running the sun’s and moon’s movements on a loop, T-shirts bearing the slogan “The moon is out there, but not where you think it is,” brochures, business cards, and, for seriously interested parties only, thick reports crammed with specs, industrial drawings, diagrams of the optics, and a lot of maths. All of this to convince the public he was serious and had solid support behind his invention. He’d spent the last of his GoFundMe money, the bulk of which had gone into the device itself, to hire a display designer, pay the $2,500 cruise and conference fee, plus miscellaneous travel expenses. After that, if more funding wasn’t forthcoming, it was either back on the dole or making sandwiches at Ali Baba’s Kebab House, living in his parents’ basement either way.
He finished setting it all up with a few minutes to spare before the doors would open to the rest of the conventioneers. Maybe Dare would show up then. He looked around for Sarge Marshall, who should have been here overseeing things. If Dare was standing him up, for whatever reason, maybe Marshall was his last hope. But only the co-organizer, Terry Simpson, was on duty, wandering the aisles, answering questions, and sending runners here and there. Where was Sarge?
At nine the doors opened and a crowd of people entered, followed by a steady trickle. He answered a few questions from attendees who didn’t seem all that interested. Then at a quarter past, Simpson got up to speak.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the TruthTech Trade Show, or TruthCon for short. Just a couple of quick announcements, then you can go back to your browsing and arguing. First, Sarge Marshall unfortunately has had to leave the cruise on unexpected personal business. Apologies to all of you who were looking forward to his workshop or just to rubbing elbows with him at the bar. He sends his deepest regrets. And it turns out that last night was your only chance to hobnob with that billionaire globalist, Lonnie Ester. Seems his helicopter arrived in the middle of the night and spirited him away. These Global Elites, what can you do? They don’t have time for the likes of us.” Boos and shouts from the crowd.
Clive sat down heavily on the stool provided with his booth. With Marshall having departed and Dare nowhere to be found, his hopes were dimming. Maybe he should be concerned about her. Maybe she was holed up in her cabin, seasick — which didn’t seem likely, given the glassy state of the sea so far — or something worse.
The next time Simpson was nearby, he flagged him down and explained his concern.
“Oh, Elizabeth Dare? I should have mentioned, she left the ship with Sarge and Ester, but I didn’t think anyone would care about a lamestream media bitch like her. I guess she was following some story with either one or both of them. Some sort of Buddhist monk went with them. Strange bedfellows sort of story, maybe.”
Clive sat back down. All this money and effort, and for nowt.
“Hey, there, fella, don’t look so dejected. There’s plenty of people here who oughta be interested in your…” He looked around at the display. “What’s-its… Astro…muffinscope?”
“Astroanamorphoscope.” He briefly explained its purpose. Simpson looked impressed.
“I’m not a flat-earther myself, but showing the reality that exists behind the mainstream lies — that’s always a good thing. In fact, there are a couple folks here working on something similar, but in a different domain, if you know what I mean. Maybe I could put you all together.”
Clive nodded, but it seemed hopeless. The rest of the day was like torture, answering desultory questions of the uninterested. He didn’t have the energy to debate with the American flat-earthers over their absurd notion that “gravity” was produced by density and buoyancy. It was obviously a product of the disk constantly accelerating upward at a rate of thirty-two feet per second squared. Then he had a run-in with some Nazis who kept going on about Neuschwabenland and Operation Highjump. He yelled at them ’til they scarpered. Of course there had to be some sort of cover-up to keep the true shape of the Earth a secret, but why’d there always have to be a cabal of rich Jews behind it all? The scapegoating made his stomach turn. He'd always stayed away from all that conspiratorial thinking, focusing instead on the maths and the intricacies of his invention. Once it was on the market, he hoped it would take flat-earth mainstream, and these nutjobs and white supremacists would move on to something else.
Simpson returned toward the end of the day with a companion in tow. “Clive, this here’s Alex Croft. Tech guy, used to be in Silicon Valley back in the day. He might be interested in your astro-what’s-it.”
The new fellow was about his age, on the shortish side, dark hair perfectly gelled, dressed all in black from the sport coat to the kecks to the light-weight hikers. From his tan, the build that showed even beneath his coat, and the way he held himself, Clive guessed he spent as much time in vigorous outdoor pursuits as he did behind a terminal or in the lab.
The only thing that stood apart from all this was a pair of red-framed sunglasses, smart by the shape and bulk of the frames, a guess that was confirmed when they went from opaquely dark to transparent, revealing a set of steely blue eyes regarding him with interest.
“Terry says you have something that might interest me. I specialize in wearable tech.” He tapped the glasses. “Red glasses for the red-pilled, revealing the truth behind the everyday reality of the sheeple.”
“Er, what kind of truth?”
“Mostly about people you meet — facial recognition — but also the built environment. What we don’t have is anything about the natural world.”
“So you believe in the fla’-earth model?”
“I don’t know about ‘believe’, but I see it as an opportunity to add value for our customers. We try to cater to all flavors of conspiracy enthusiast by providing modular overlays. For instance, in our JFK assassination package, we have over a dozen different options tailored to all versions of the conspiracy. You can follow Oswald alone, or any number of alleged accomplices, Soviet agents, CIA, mafia. It would take a week to follow them all on the ground, which is why the Dallas visitors bureau loves us. We use only the most discreet product placements so as not to interfere with the user experience.”
This was all a little out of Clive’s purview.
“We have UFO and Ancient Astronaut modules, so why not a Flat-Earth module?” He turned his attention to the device itself, picking it up and examining the mirrors inside. “So this is it? Your astroanamorphoscope?”
“Tha’s righ’. You’ve ’eard of the regular anamorphoscope? Changes a nonsensical drawing into somefing you can recognize? This one does the same but for celestial bodies, the sun and moon to start wiv.”
“It looks so…19th century.”
“Part of the point, really. I aim to revive me ’ometown as a leader in invention and industry. Plus which, I’m more of a mechanical and optical engineer, not so much into the electronics.”
“I see.” Croft shifted his attention to the video display, showing the movements of the sun and moon when viewed through the ’morphoscope. “It looks impressive. And there’s math behind all this? You haven’t just fiddled with the mirrors until they showed what you wanted?”
“D’ye take me for a bleedin’ idiot? Mirrors ’ave to move accordin’ to algorithms, don’t they?”
“No need to take offense, bro. If you’ve got all the math nailed down, it should be pretty easy for our engineers to incorporate this into our system. But you’d have to give up on building anything in England. The glasses themselves are manufactured in India, and this would be more of a software update.”
“I don’t know…” If he’d wanted to go digital, he’d have done that from the get go. But his options were running out, along with his bank account, and this was more interest in his invention than he’d managed to generate in…well…ever. “Can I fink abou’ it?”
“Of course. We have a few more days left on this cruise. And I tell you what, maybe you should come up to our facility in the Zone after this is over, see what we’re all about.”
“The Zone?”
“Southwest Autonomous Zone, St. George to be precise. A lot of us who used to work in Silicon Valley have moved out there. Plenty of water since they started ignoring the Colorado River Compact, low taxes, virtually zero regs, and great scenery. It’s like Nirvana.”
“Well…”
“If it’s the money you’re worried about, let me assure you that our backers are serious. Whatever you think this is worth, they’ll be prepared to double it, assuming they’re as excited by it as I am. And if it’s fitting this side trip into your schedule, you could even fly back with me on the corporate jet.” He flashed a radiant smile, his teeth displaying a movie star’s mania for whitening.
“Can’t really say no, can I?”
“Great! See you around the con.”
Croft walked away, leaving Clive wondering if he’d just sold his soul to something worse than the devil, though exactly how he couldn’t quite say.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, please give it a like, a share, a restack, or a comment. And if you really enjoyed it, I hope you’ll buy me a coffee or upgrade to a paid subscription.
Things are looking up for Clive, but has he really sold his soul to the devil?
Next up: Chapter 13, “Jackie Onassis,” in which Liz discovers that the kidnapped life isn’t too bad.