Greetings, everyone, and welcome to our one hundred thirty-seventh episode. Amazing, eh? Today on the podcast, we’re doing something different. Instead of featuring a story or novel excerpt by a guest writer, I’m going to read some of the fan letters that Tom and I have received from our listeners. I’ll just grab them randomly.
 
The first one says:
 
“To whom it may concern. Have you seen my dog? His name is Alfie and he’s very tall and blond. Last seen at 97 megahertz on the FM dial. Call me on your fingerphone. Love, Bob.”
 
Hmm. Well, I’ll try again. The next one has a big weird logo and is signed by someone called Gustav X. Pettytripe.
 
“Dear Sirs. In my official capacity as Supreme Commander of the Security Forces of Greater Fürstengard and Near Dominions, I order you to appear in my office on Trinday the eleventeenth of Whatsember at half seven. You will bring all podcast recordings, scripts, and correspondence related to such, encased in tin-reinforced bamboo wrapped in yellow cellophane and tied with seven yards of half-inch floral satin brocade. Failure to meet evidence specifications will be cause for court martial and subsequent imprisonment in the Domus of Manischevitz. Failure to appear is punishable by death. Surely you’re already familiar with the protracted suffering and eventual deceasement that results when I am forced to send the Impetosys Vectum to a non-compliant’s midnight bedchamber. Warm wishes.”
 
Okay, now this one I find really annoying. Some guy in a silly yellow jumpsuit knocked on my door last week, making nonsense demands just like this. I had to show him my thirty-ought-six deer rifle and gently suggest he vacate the premises. And now this letter. After we finish recording, I’ll call my buddy the police chief.
 
Ha, just kidding. Sort of.
 
Let’s move on. The next letter comes from Magdalena O’Murphy. She writes: 
 
“Hello, you big strong men. Mmm, what are you wearing? You would like what I’m wearing right now! I want you both, together, here in my bed, and we…” 
 
Oh. Well. Looks like that’s all I’ll be reading of that letter. But thanks for writing, Magdalena!
 
The next letter comes from Kris Karmannghia. It says:
 
“Hey guys, I really like what you’re doing with the podcast! Nice variety of stories and voices, and I enjoy the author interviews a lot.”
 
Well, this is more like it. Thanks, Kris! He—or, oops, maybe it’s a she—goes on to say:
 
 “However, please remove me from your mailing list for the weird promotional flyers. Like this yellow one that says, ‘As a listener to the podcast, you are a victim of their politically incorrect manipulation of the Fürstengard Identity Dictum. This is malicious abuse inflicted on you, and you are required to report it as such, under penalty of law.’ Very creative, guys, but it makes me uncomfortable.”
 
Wait a minute. Kris, if you’re listening—we have not sent out any promotional flyers. We don’t do that. This is some kind of gag and you can just ignore it. But thanks for being a fan!
 
Okay, let’s move on. Next we have a note from Jesús de Dios Manchego. Jesús writes: 
 
“Muy excelente, hermanos! Bendiciones sobre ti!”
 
Well, I don’t know Spanish, but it sounds good. Gracias, Jesús!
 
Now… wait. Before we go on, I just have to back up a little. I wanna say something else, because, well, I’m really pissed. Look, Mister Gustav Pettytripe, you can take your nonsensical gibberish and your threatening tone, and your flyers and jumpsuits and rules, and you can shove them where the sun don’t shine. Pardon my frankness. I mean, we love our listeners, we appreciate them—but the ones like you, Gustav, we can do without. Your bullshit is a big waste of everybody’s time.
 
Sorry, people, I just had to get that off my chest. On we go.
 
“To whom it may concern. Have you seen my dog? His name is Bob and he’s very melodious. Remember, the rose flavor is both tart and smoky. I’m on the corner. Love, Alfie.”
 
Well, okay then. I’ll continue to persevere. The next one comes from Joey Blinkus.
 
“Hi fellas. Thanks for all the work you put in for very little reward. Not enough credit is given to all the folks laboring behind the scenes to bring us our daily dosage. Here we are now, entertain us, LOL. I’m giving you a pat on the back!”
 
Aah, that’s very gratifying. We sincerely appreciate the feedback, Joey. We’re doing our best.
 
Okay, this next one is signed by Mrs. Golda Thickwinkle. It appears to be quite long. Should I read the whole thing? I think I will.
 
“To the prime purveyors of podcast perfection: Please find herewith a delectable little story for your oddity taste buds. Read on, young gentlemen!
 
“In the earliest hours of Friday, December 9th, 2022, I awoke into darkness from a strange dream. In the dream, I am at the home of my old friend Carlotta. But of course, as is common in dreams, it doesn’t look like her actual house. We sit at a round table in her kitchen, perhaps we chat a bit. Then, within the dream, I find myself waking up, my head down on my arms on the tabletop. I am embarrassed and apologize to Carlotta for the social faux pas of sleeping while visiting. I know that I was dreaming as I slept there at the table, and then I remember: in my dream-within-a-dream, I was in my real bed, tossing and turning, unable to sleep because my mind is obsessed with a telephone call I had received—which was precisely the actual reality before I fell asleep at home in my bed and dreamed the dream. So in the dream-within-a-dream I was back in the same reality from which I had dreamed the dream that contained both reality and dream. Can it be said that I had awakened from reality into a dream, and then had awakened again from the dream into reality?
 
“I grant you, that is a bit unusual, but the most important aspect of my tale is the telephone call itself—the call that was common to both levels of reality. It had come in on my old landline and the voice on the other side sounded like an elderly man. He identified himself as “Mr. Thomas Pynchon.” Yes, he included the “Mr.” He said he had undertaken, on his own, a nationwide phone campaign and had been at it for many years, for the good of the world. He very strongly urged me to go that very instant to my TV and turn it off. I was watching the news as I always do and was all set to hear the next overwrought exposé of political malfeasance, but the serious tone of his voice frightened me, so I obeyed. He went on to tell me an incredible history.
 
“It seems that long long ago in China, in the Song Dynasty of the 11th century, a hypothesis arose regarding written messages: that the most powerful communication, perhaps even cosmic truths, could be found not in the obvious sequences of symbols, but in the spaces between. Maybe this concept was born as a result of Bi Sheng’s invention of movable type, or perhaps it was a simultaneous co-arising, but in any case the group of believers remained small and inconsequential for four hundred years, until after Gutenberg revolutionized the publishing industry in Europe. 
 
“By the way, we know about Bi Sheng from the famous Dream Pool Essays of the 12th century Chinese polymath Shen Kuo, in which we also learn of repeated visits by a dazzling pearl in the sky, seen by many people. ‘Make of that what you will,’ Mr. Pynchon said.
 
“Anyway, all across Europe in the decades after Gutenberg, members of what may have been called Société Bi, after Bi Sheng, began to surreptitiously infiltrate the early metal-type manufacturers and font design shops and printing houses and publishing companies, with the mission of crafting invisible messages in the spaces between—in the kerning, tracking, and leading: the shapes that readers think are merely background. 
 
“A branch cropped up in colonial America, of which Ben Franklin was said to be a member. Perhaps it was he who coined their name, borrowing from the concept of Figure and Ground. Text is the figure, standing against the ground of the blank page. There can be no figure without ground, so they called themselves the Ground Group, or GG.
 
“In those centuries past, were their motives beneficent? What were the hidden messages delivered subliminally to the public? We don’t know. But as time went on, secrecy took its natural course. ‘Deeds done in darkness turn ever darker,’ is what Mr Pynchon said. And at the same time, technology advanced. Slowly at first—for centuries, the only mass media was print on paper—but then came the telegraph, then the telephone. These were not mass media, but they opened the floodgates, and soon came motion pictures, radio, television, and then the internet and social media.
 
“Société Bi and GG and their affiliates around the globe, all went even deeper underground, as they evolved their messaging systems to ever more elaborate heights to match the amazing new technologies. Marshall McLuhan glimpsed it in the 60s when he said “the medium is the message,” but he didn’t see what was really going on in the spaces between. What a propagandist’s playground! Now, hidden communications could not only be embedded in the typography, but between the frames that flash past 30 times a second to simulate motion. And now it’s all delivered with an extra punch, inserted more deeply into human minds than any paper medium could accomplish. Media images today are nothing other than thousands of pixels, and our brains have to actually assemble the picture in order for our conscious mind to understand it. That means that images, scenes, action, drama, and everything in the spaces between, are dumped in fractions of a second directly into our unconscious, bypassing the gatekeeper of our conscious mind. What are we being taught without our consent? Mr. Pynchon sounded deadly serious when he said, “This is powerful and dangerous black magic. And it's being utilized worldwide to hypnotize the human race.”
 
“The last thing he said was this: his investigations have uncovered incontrovertible evidence that Société Bi, GG, et al—of course, today they are nameless—in their lavishly financed secret labs and underground data centers, have now surpassed all known digital technologies for exploration of subliminal territories, and have actually partnered with entities from other dimensions. 
 
“And then he just hung up. That was it. 
 
“Of course, as if to put an exclamation point on the whole thing, that very night came my disturbed dream-within-a-dream. As Carlotta told me, it speaks in its own twisted way of the spaces between, those foggy regions just outside our conscious understanding. Dream and reality—which is figure and which is ground? 
 
“So, my illustrious podcasting compadres, isn’t all this right up your strange little alley? Isn’t this a tasty nugget of weirdness that you can use? And then, of course, you will need to self-reflexively ask: Are we, in our own small way, unconsciously spreading the poison?
 
“Thank you for the years of literary pleasure you’ve provided. Blessings to you and yours, Mrs. Golda Thickwinkle”
 
Whew! What can I say? Is Thomas Pynchon really calling people? Seems like too much work for a prank call. Maybe he wrote that letter, pretending to be Golda Thickwinkle. Or maybe it’s true, and he’s done with novel writing because he doesn’t want to be a tool for the dark side. After all, a big fat book has just as much space for invisible messages as it does for the story. Also, who’s investigating this alleged secret society? An esoteric private eye… I’d like to meet him. Or her. Or them.
 
Well… I guess all this means that you, our listeners, should probably pay closer attention to what we don’t say. Tune in to the spaces between the words. Decode the silence. In fact, maybe we should make an entirely silent podcast. 
 
Just kidding, sort of. Clearly, Tom and I need to discuss this whole thing offline. Meanwhile, what do you think? Drop us a line.
 
And before I forget—Golda, we’ll take you at your word. Thank you for that exceedingly rich missive. Real food for thought. We hope you keep listening.
 
Okay, folks, we have time for one more letter. Here it is—uh-oh, another official-looking letterhead. I forgot, what is DHS? Oh yeah, the United States Department of Homeland Security. Great.
 
“Dear Sir or Madam: It has come to our attention that your podcast is being closely monitored by certain parties that we have reason to believe are a threat to national security. Our proprietary Cross-Dimensional Broadcast Detection Technology (CDBDT) deployed with Reverse Ultra-Sensing (+RUS) has picked up artifacts from a listening device located somewhere outside three-dimensional space (3dS), focused precisely on the coordinates of your “episodes” web page. Our meters track increased activity every time you launch an episode. Analysts interpret the signals as information-gathering efforts by one or more hostile parties possessing Advanced Intersectional Surveillance Technologies (AIST). You are hereby ordered to bring all your podcast recordings, scripts, and correspondence related to such, to the DHS New York Metro Field Office on Thursday April 1, 2023, at 9:17am. Failure to appear is punishable by….”
 
 
© Brent Robison 2023