Let There Be Lite, OR, How I Came to Know and Love Gödel's Incompleteness Proof

 Joe Taylor

Synopsis: Unknown to its four creators, Lay Auto, a cutting edge automobile, has become sentient. Whether this is from the newly developed fluid computer memory that incorporates chaos or from the statues of Buddha and Our Lady of Guadalupe placed on the front and rear dash does not matter. It has happened. Now Lay Auto has to think overtime to avoid the many terrorists who want it destroyed. After all, it can travel miles on KFC scraps (including the bones) or spent chewing tobacco. Where would that leave gasoline?  

Lay Auto. In its created glory and pidgin French, a perfect — !!! — alternative-fuel vehicle with fuchsia fenders, jet-black body, and silver-starred boot. Far sleeker than its faux-competitor the gas-guzzling Corvette, which amazingly still oozes off assembly lines from aging and decrepit Detroit, it glides the streets of Lexington, KY. Even in this prototype phase, Lay Auto has caught the attention of desirous consumers — and un-desirous terrorists. Why? Glance under its jet-black bonnet: a two-cylinder and earth-friendly engine, capable of running on beets, scrabble-level tobacco, discarded textbooks or newspapers — even spent chewing gum. That’s why.

                Lay Auto! How all futuristic, environmental, peace-loving Americans; all Gaia-loving, globe-loving terrestrials shall appreciate you! Let us count the ways:

                Your Septuagent stereo system!

                Your cozy electronic butt warmers!

               Your eighteen, better-than-Bond, life-saving gadgets!

                Your onboard 3-D, Technicolor, Sniff-o-rama, Global Positioning System!

                Your myriad safety cameras, complete with infrared accident alerts!

                Even these glimmerings of Lay Auto’s fruits, when combined with its miraculous ability to — to ignore gasoline, offer reason enough to alert nests of industrial terrorists. But forget buzzing terrorists. Concentrate on the four owners who masterminded Lay Auto:

                First, Willy Turner, rejected as a high school dropout by every university in America except Kentucky, which graduated the hometown boy out of pity. Willy finally received his masters in Auto Engineering from FAST U, an online school variously located in Miami, Los Angeles, and Dallas. Willy’s long beard — I’d love to draw it for you, but I’ve been prohibited from including illustrations by my California Agent, a conservative fig if ever there was one. How can I write a graphic novel without graphics, I ask during endless electronic meetings. A fiber optic pause always occurs, and I always imagine him bending, studying a speck intruding between tanned California toes and unisex California sandals. Iowa potato dust? Hawaiian volcanic ash? His silence serves as my answer, so perhaps I’m writing the first graphic novel without graphics? But let us return to Willy, numero uno of the Pit Crew conglomerate who masterminded Lay Auto: It took Willy seven years to earn his masters in Auto Engineering, twenty-one to grow his beard. That’s all I dare reveal about his age, for poor Willy’s terrorifically reserved about accumulating years, which he envisions lumping his body like wayward dandelion seeds.

                The second owner is Dave Branden. Dave holds two Ph.D.s, one in chemical engineering from Florida State, one in computer science from MIT, plus a B. A. in theology from Duke, that last courtesy of the G. I. Bill. How I wish I could insert a simple art-splash panel here, for after mapping the intricate contours of Dave’s brain said panel would reveal his blue-blue eyes. Technicolor blue. Sapphire blue. Paul Newman, Harrison Ford, Django Reinhardt blue. Oceanic blue, baby blue. Deep-in-a-cave blindfish blue. Blue Curaçao blue. Sky-tumbling blue. Were Django Reinhardt’s eyes blue? Doubtful. He was a guitar-playing gypsy who managed to elude Nazis while strumming under their Aryan noses. Terra incognita brown would be my guess. Blue crab blue. Lovesick Blue. Blue Monday blue. By midday’s happy light blue.

                The third owner — lest you fear this will be an blowhard boy book, and since my California Agent, hereinafter referred to as CA, once during an early cyberspace conference lifted from his silent pedicure to electronically warn me that a balance of male and female must prevail in the illustrationless panels. (“Call Jane Austen for help,” he insisted on-screen. / “Jane Austen?” / “You know what I mean.”) I didn’t know what he meant, but I now do. And I can truthfully (What is truth? asked jesting Pilate and not-so-jesting Gödel), assure you: this third owner is most fully female. Her name? Mary Lou Nelson.

                Moreover, the fourth owner is also a female: Brenda Angela Browning. For a tee-tiny period she was known as Babs, but is mostly known as Bad because of her fiery red hair and temper. Bad, by the way, claims no relation to either the poet Browning or the weapons manufacturer. After introducing these third and fourth owners, I, testosterone slave as I was created, long to fill their illustrationless panels with boobs, scents, curves, roseate folds, and silken skin, for memory informs me that in high school I drew lovely and intricate porno cartoons in a musty locker room . . . well, let that go. As mentioned, CA the CA fig has nixed illustrations.

                So, the two female owners: One pair of hazel eyes (ever-shifting mysteries), one pair of blue eyes (see male’s eyeball description above, but add a flash of heat lightning); one worried and compassionate brow, one angry brow; an abundance of red hair, an abundance of brunette. Bad banged drums in a hard rock band but quit to nearly obtain a Ph.D. in math from the University of Florida, a degree she’s still working on, when not obsessed with Lay Auto. Mary Lou finished a Divinity degree at Duke, which is how she met Dave. Despite her being an heiress with a goodly amount of money, no American church will accept her, because she’s too nice (that also in spite of being an heiress with a goodly amount of money). Wait! Too nice for a church? Have you looked at the Southern Baptist Conference? Mary Lou doesn’t hate kikes, mackerel-snappers, or queers. She doesn’t condemn divorced or unwed mothers. She doesn’t want to hunt down Moslems and slowly extract their infidel fingernails until they screech for saving Baptismal waters. . . .