Bubbamu: After Babylon

Description

According to Babylonian cosmology, the waters lie before the gods. The original pact is a trichotomy between the sweet, fresh waters Apsu (who is also the void, Abzu); the salty, bitter waters Tiamat; and their activated implex Mummu. The gods came forth from this original three, and quickly arose in conflict, a divine genealogy against the slumbering sea.

War devastated the gods, leaving only Marduk, sun-king, to annihilate Apsu and Mummu and banish Tiamat to the deep future, with her new brood of virulent creation. The Leviathan of Babylon has grown hence, and passed out of its original Mesopotanian terminology through Abraham and into the Oecumenon of despotic cyberspace.

Yet Tiamat still lurks, in the end and the beginning, as the patient yet pernicious oceans, the world beyond domestication. The sevenfold model of creation (seven Babylonian gods who decree, seven days of the Jewish week, seven hills of Rome, seven angels of Christianity, seven deadly sins), collapses into the tumultuous sea. Tiamat, the one who couldn’t be killed, mother of the old ones, and both successor and predecessor of tridentity.

Bubbamu takes affinity with Tiamat, positioning herself after Babylon (though whether the two can be equated is uncertain). Her netspan, 7::1, is situated between the beginning of eschatological time and the turbulent one of infinite division, of turtles all the way down. From the Lesser Depths (8::1), she prowls the way out and haunts the way back, passing through the surge-current into historical time and returning through Gt-28 into maritime.

Bubbamu is titled the Cyclic Chronodemon of Relapse, and expects nothing less of her acolytes. The cult of Bubbamu is known as Hyper-C, and are the agents of aquatic return. They lurk in the depths of the oceans, remaining minoritarian and marginal. They engage in a practice of spinal catastrophism, warping their spines into ichthoid forms and revealing inhuman agents beneath their flesh. Their voices gargle as their physiology warps, and they traffic sonic mayhem through the Outernet: machinic sound, sound that kills, dissolving sound of the aquassassins.

Doom encroaches on despotic time from both sides, the beginning and the end. Babylon has nowhere to hide. As the climate changes and the tides rise, Bubbamu gurgles in the deep—a Thalassal upswelling beyond evitability. Level-2 beneath the waves.

Analysis

Bubbamu is Cth-pitched by virtue of combining the second highest number (7) with the lowest number (1) of the rank. Consequently, her pitch is the difference between the sum of her net-span and 9, thus making it Cth-3. She shares this pitch with Tikkitix, Minommo, and Ummnu. Because her primary rite is descending, and thus minor, her decadology is thus the minor Cth suite: diamonds. She is thus the first, or ace, of diamonds.

The mesh-tag of Bubbamu, M#22, cannot click another lemur by virtue of being a doubled number. She is one of five lemurs to possess this characteristic, joined by Lurgo (M#00), Tukkamu (M#11), Muntuk (M#33), and Ummnu (M#44). In this respect, she associates with the doubling flows of the time-circuit, moving down the hold-current from 2 to its submerged pole 4.

The Muvian quasiphonic particle for Zone-7 is 'pb,' and that of Zone-1 is 'gl.' Consequently, the proper name of Bubbamu is pb'gl, where pb is a swift ejection of air between the lips, making a bubbling sound, and gl is a gutteral gulp reminiscent of a fish suffocating in the air (fittingly for Bubbamu).

Because Bubbamu haunts gt-28, she is drawn into relations with the gate's cipher, Nammamad (8::2). Interestingly, Nammamad and Bubbamu occupy opposite ends of the first rank, sharing no net-span zones yet both relying heavily on gt-28, and both possessing a pitch opposite to the other (Cth-3 and Ana-3). Additionally, gt-28 clicks Minommo (M#28), who is thus also clicked by Nammamad's mesh-tag. This forms a trinary involution, associating gt-28 with the rite of ultimate descent through the greater depths (pth-58, Minommo's Terminal Undertow), and implicating the oceanic connotations of the first rank, derived from the Lesser Depths, with the Greater Depths of Cthelll.

Rites

Bubbamu's first rite charts the course 187, and is associated in the Book of Paths with the path 45, Primal Awakening. The word "awakening" also appears in path 72, Mombbo's Larval Awakening, which passes through the course 817. These are the two rites which prowl the surge-current. Because the rite's final value is greater than its initial value, it is a minor rite, or a rite of resistance. The Pandemonium Matrix describes rt-1 as: "hypersea (marine life on land)." Seeing as this rite passes out of the water of the Depths into the Rising Drift, it might be seen as Hyper-C's tactic of sonic warfare, infiltrating terrestrial space with oceanic rhythms so as to oceanize land-life. It probably does not refer to an invasion out of the sea, however, as the Hyper-C insists "we will never surface."

Bubbamu's second rite, 71, is her primary rite. It haunts gt-28, slinking smoothly from the Drifts to the Depths. It is described by path 46, Basic Reversion; the term Reversion is also used in path 73, Mombbo's Larval Reversion, with the route 718. 71 descends, making it a major rite; moreover, because no number is greater than the number prior, it is a path of pure compliance. Described as "Aquassassins (Black-Atlantis)" by the CCRU, it has clear connections to populations having descended into the depths (Black Atlanteans/Aquassassins) in the practice of spinal catastrophism.

Bubbamu's third and second minor rite, 72541, crosses the hold-current before descending to the Depths through the Sunken Track (either gt-10 or the Sink-Current). Because of this, it is the only rite of Bubbamu to possess a sub-rite, as indicated by "Fate marks the Sunken Track" in path 47, its entry. Its rite-name, Attaining Imbalance, mirrors path 6, Doogu's Attaining Balance, whose route is 27541. It also contracts with path 16, Skoodu's Supreme Balance, which passes through all of eschatological time. Its description, "seawalls (dry-time, taboo on menstruation)," seems to imply that the passage through historical (dry) time is an attempt to ward off the rising sea. In this context, it might be seen as the final revenge of Tiamat and the unstoppable ascent of the ocean, forcibly detoured through Babylon by the patriarchal Marduk.

Summary