in the midst of clashing thunder rose an empire of milkshake stands and advertising signs. built on top of legendary computers that song sweet lullabies to the nation it rose out from the ashes of circulatory war. the ravashing cries of its birth withstood for millenia under galvanizing waves atop the starry membrane. thankfully the lights stayed on for only a period lest the whole thing be washed away amidst the tides of a silent becoming. an entire empire built from styrofoam toothpicks & languishing ghosts & microwave ovens & pickadilly hotdog stands & jewelry stores that didnt really sell jewelry & lights that came on at when the clock struck a certain hour & galvanizing gadgets that rose to power on the back of their wind-up levers & stonecold hearts & perfected angles & lights once again. it rose in this very spot, said Mulberry excitedly. Mulberry stands 4 foot 2 and doesnt mind watching the sun set over the horizon a hundredfold. he retells stories. long ago birds flew over the kingdom of electronic potpourri and sing songs to the machines but no longer, the birds stopped flying & singing 50 years ago on the dot all together at once. the machine weep sometimes at night, electrical tears which zap away at their electronic ligaments. this is a sad state of affair on the surface, but in truth it is alright. the machines and the birds had their time, the kingdom rose to great heights & it felt surging. beneath crackled skies rose great cranes & buildings that resembled waffle irons reaching the lower tips of the mandibles of heaven. over concrete waves soared administration offices like ice-cream cones whose shadows fell skywardly over mountain regions, “quite the sight” Mulberry adds excitedly. Mulberry is 892 years old. kleptocrats & sting rays & bureaucratic moles & judges & jurors & rotisserie chickens & salesmen of croissants & lawyers & indigo men of strange origin & perfected housewives & old fools & wombats & zombies & administration clerks & business men whose suits don’t fit them well & trolley pushers & drug cartels & football players & mice & chief financial officers & generals & general busybodies & men whose names rhymes with Leter & women whose names are unpronounceable & coal miners & jelly fish whose hair is long & assistant to assistants to assistants all rose up one day and proclaimed with a great humungous wallop “THIS IS TOO MUCH!!!!” or “I’VE HAD ENOUGH!!!!” (the records aren’t clear on this and also there was too much screaming to make out exactly what they said but it amounted to something like that). the weight of their shouting, like an ice-rink with too many ice-skaters, collapsed something beneath where they were standing (the ground, you could call it) and they all of them, the kleptocrats & sting rays & bureaucratic moles & judges & jurors & rotisserie chickens & salesmen of croissants & lawyers & indigo men of strange origin & perfected housewives & old fools & wombats & zombies & administration clerks & business men whose suits don’t fit them well & trolley pushers & drug cartels & football players & mice & chief financial officers & generals & general busybodies & men whose names rhymes with Leter & women whose names are unpronounceable & coal miners & jelly fish whose hair is long & assistant to assistants to assistants all fell down into a place hitherto unknown to them, this place was dark & unpleasant to the nose.. but they were okay with it all.. they had no other choice. the kingdom of rainbow stratagems and unperforated documents dazzles nicely in the sun when you cook it at the right temperature. it sprawled out in all directions but east & stayed there like a mushroom, rooted, grooted, zooted & booted. Mulberry is tired of this story but a significant portion must still be written in order to convey the full scope & details of this narrative. this kingdom consisted of hang-gliding radar dishes & performance artists, vulpine dollar bills & emaciated freaks, plenty of other things too. the machines who ran the kingdom’s finer details were left to count the clocks themselves at a certain point and nobody wondered why or questioned the ultimate purpose of the clocks. “they just kept running” one computer scientist athlete spoke into 7 or 8 microphones at a press conference whose sole organizer felt slightly ashamed afterwards. ‘there’s no more questions, only answers’ said many freckled men in large overcoats. the populace found this somehow dismaying, as they did everything. meticulously the computer kept counting, frugally the people kept living, the balance was just right for moments here & there, but one event or another always radicalized some group or another and the whole thing was pushed out of wack. in truth the wack is the truth and the balance an imaginary bandaid on an imaginary wound. 4 lightbulbs called “the pillars” always shone in this great kingdom, 4 cascading towers in 4 different parts of the kingdom, these tower lightbulbs hung from the sky and were rooted to the ground, they transcended what we call a beginning or end. they remained lit since cavemen roamed in caves & snot still adorned the leaves of the jurassic. the dinosaurs had nothing to do with this story though, that is a different kingdom altogether. this kingdom rose from computers and fell from computers. it teetered a hairs breadth away from implosion at its worst & shone in morning sun like confetti bolognese at its best. “a true sight to behold” Mulberry adds excitedly again. grand sewer tunnels the size of planets that spanned criss cross underneath like a goose game connected all the people’s feces. a true mark of ingenuity & an object of great pride to men whose mustaches could spell out the alphabet. tectonic wires connected all the bits and bops of all the mice that crawled around. plastic islands were constructed in ode to what the bureaucrats called Progress. every man had to put on gloves so they would not rape the women, this was a great thing altogether it turned out much to the chagrin of the ones who called themselves rapists. documents towering like monstrous lasagna folded 7 times was enough to reach the moon and held together the alphabet in all its glory, one time a man called Willard surfed on these documents for 8 days straight from the gulf of Mexico to the north of France and did not fall once because these documents were so sturdy. spitfire rocketshops sometimes created images of teddy bears in the sky during grand parades which stretched many ozone layers.