Wild Kingdom S2 E5: Danse du Processus
"What to do about The Olive Moose?" said David quizzically, turning from face to solemn face at the round table. "We swore he would never play another game in a Royals uniform, yet there he stands, night in and night out, batting at the heart of the lineup. If we weren’t sure about his status as The Key Prospect before, we shouldn’t have any lingering doubts after what happened."
"David, what exactly did happen?" asked Denny. "How did the plan get turned upside down like this?"
"The Process,™" said David bluntly.
"The Process,™" everyone at the table intoned.
"It’s resisting us," David continued. "Even more so than usual." He paused. "Dayton, Julia, and I bore our minds deep into The Process™ one evening, as discussed, approaching depths we had never previously reached. We were firing on all cylinders, I tell you." A lengthier pause. "We came within sight of the black rainbow," he said with a distant look in his eyes, and several gasps filled the room. "It was right there," said David, raising his arm as if reaching for something and then slowly lowering it back to the table.
Julia leaned back in her chair and let out an uneven sigh. Dayton shivered and spoke: "We did everything we could according to the knowledge afforded us by the Prospectonomicon. Everything felt right. We were certain we had swayed the order of the universe to the extent that The Olive Moose would sign with another club. But…" Dayton trailed off.
"But The Process™ pushed back," said Julia. "According to the agent of The Olive Moose, everyone stopped asking about him. Nobody would even return his calls. It was as if The Olive Moose fell off the face of the earth."
"It got even worse," said Dayton. "We were content to let him sit in free agency forever if we had to; whatever it took to keep him away from those accursed catacombs beneath us. If he were to set foot in there? If he is truly The Key Prospect? Well, none of us want to think about what might happen."
"I have an excellent handle on The Process™ and its ways," said David. "But it overpowered me and forced me to re-sign The Olive Moose. In fact we’re lucky it was only a one year deal, because it was trying to get me to extend him even longer."
"I’m not sure the rest of us would have been able to resist," said Julia. "Do you remember feeling anything strange around the time of the signing?"
A few heads nodded. "Yeah, I sure do," said Willie, a grim look on his face. "Things seemed off. I remember a few times there was a distant ringing, a tolling of a hundred bells. And I couldn’t concentrate."
"That’s right," said Denny. "Same thing happened to me. But it sure wasn’t Sunday."
"I couldn’t concentrate," Willie went on. "I went through my normal routines. My body went through the motions, but it was like I was just sailing down a stream without any control, losing track of everything else up here," he said tapping his temple. "I distinctly remember having a metallic taste in my mouth right toward the end of these spells. It was like there was nothing left of me. Like I was just a husk of myself, floating inevitably towards the bells. Then, it was just gone. I felt like my old self again."
"Right after the signing of The Olive Moose is when it stopped," Leslie added.
"That was The Process,™ said Julia. Fighting you. Fighting us. It’s enforcing its will upon the universe, in the face of our intentions. It wants The Olive Moose right here in Kansas City," she said, smacking her palm against the table. "It drew him here, as it drew The Dual Star here, and as it will one day draw the Golden Mist here. However, unlike with The Dual Star, this time it’s not letting him leave."
"You’re making it sound like The Process™ has a mind of its own," said Frank. "That it’s sentient. That was never my understanding."
"No, we do not believe The Process™ to possess any form of awareness," Julia continued. "It is a never-ending force, churning away, like an insect mindlessly going about its mechanical routine, the endgame of which, it knows not. But like the insect, perhaps it can evolve, finding more efficient ways to achieve that towards which it strives. Fortunately, David had the strength to stay focused and withstand the overwhelming force of The Process,™ minimizing the deal to only one year."
"Now," said David. "What is our next move?"
"The obvious option," said Dayton. "Is to wait out the contract, keeping close tabs on him, as we have been doing since we identified him as The Olive Moose after that very first Moose call. Then we could try our hand at getting him to sign elsewhere once again. As we have come to discover however, this is far from a foolproof plan."
"I’d go so far as to say there’s a less than one percent chance of that scheme paying off," said David. "Now that The Process™ has thwarted the plan once, it will surely do so again and again. I believe we need to move in a direction it doesn’t have a handle on yet, keeping it’s so called evolution off balance."
"If we’re thinking in the short term, yes," said Denny. "We ought to find a new maneuver. But let’s say we’re hitting a point in our struggle with The Process™ in which it catches on to all of our near-sighted zigging and zagging. Perhaps we may need to condition it to expect this attempt at pawning him off elsewhere each off-season before pouncing with a new plan, thus catching it off guard."
"Of course," said George. "We can always take more drastic measures. We know we can’t simply cut him or trade him; The Process™ has never allowed us to take such easy avenues. But we were able to intervene more harshly with The Dual Star, drawing on our knowledge of The Process™ to facilitate his football injury. Not our proudest moment, but as we all know, it was for the greater good."
"Dayton, Julia, and I have discussed that," David said solemnly. "But The Olive Moose does not run head first into linebackers on Sundays. He leads a relatively quiet lifestyle. There isn’t a wide margin for mishaps. Remember, as great as our knowledge of The Process™ may be, we still can only do so much. We can’t call a bolt of lightning from the sky to strike him down, we can only precipitate events already heading naturally in a certain possible direction."
"Did any of you ever think that maybe we don’t have to oppose The Process™?" asked Willie, and everyone went silent, only staring back at him with wide eyes. "Did it ever occur to anyone that we might be fighting against something we don’t need to be fighting?"
"No, that had not occurred to me," said David coldly.
"That had not occurred to us, Willie," chimed Dayton.
"It just feels like we are trying to paddle upstream against violently wild rapids. What if The Process™ isn’t leading The Key Prospect towards humanity’s destruction but towards its enlightenment? I mean, just imagine a world where everyone realized their own cosmic insignificance? Where everyone wasn’t trying to crawl over everybody else for a morsel of self-validation?"
"No, Willie," said David. "People need meaning. People need hope. People need to feel like their lives are worth something, otherwise what do they have to live for? People don’t need to know the truth about the black rainbow and all that lies beyond. The world would descend into madness and misery were those secrets revealed. We’ve seen first-hand what can happen when consciousness descends too far into The Process™ without a safety net. Dayton’s apprentice is lost to our cause for all time. He’s more Process™ than man now, twisted and full of Darkness."
Dayton dropped his head and put his face in his hands. "There’s just no way of knowing, Willy" he said dejectedly. "We can’t take that risk."
"The Mad Hungarian knew," spoke Willie.
"And then his mind wiped the slate clean of the Prospectonomicon and its contents to preserve his sanity," said Julia. "The Process™ got him to do what it wanted him to do like a pawn, and now it’s done with him. I don’t think he could even recall any of this if he tried, and if he did manage to peer into that keyhole again, into the darkness, it would surely shatter him."
"You ever get the feeling that maybe we’re just pawns of The Process™ too?" asked Willie. "And that in everything we’re doing, we’re just feeding it what it wants?"
"Does anyone else hear that?" Denny asked.
"I was hoping it was just my mind playing tricks on me," said Frank, sweat reforming on his brow. "After what you all said about the bells. I don’t feel right."
"It is happening again," David said darkly. "We must fight it. Everyone concentrate on the here and now. Do not forget our purpose."
The lights began to dim slowly, and the sounds of infinite bells rolled towards the group of people huddled around the table like melodic thunder. A maniacal high-pitched cackling soared up from below as if catching flight along with the bells, the dissonant noises reverberating through the suite to create a symphony of madness. They peered out the window to see a woman amidst a group of shadows, swaying to and fro before a triumvirate of flames on the field.
"The Danse du Processus," whispered Dayton.
"Oh, how she laughs," David said almost as quietly, his eyes - all of their eyes – losing themselves in the sweeping unearthly gyrations of the woman, the shadows keeping pace, the flames licking the night sky, the wheels of The Process™ in motion.