Flabbergasted Jabberywocky and the Hyperbolic Paraboloid

What can a machine tell me about being a person?

What does the built environment tell us about what it is to be a Human Being?

In this age of machines that are smarter than us, what purpose do we have?

The following is a collaborative effort with Sasquatch and Machines:

Before the maps were drawn, before the buildings breathed and the vending machines dispensed revelation, there was a whisper. It curled through the moss of forgotten places and settled like dust on old books no one remembered checking out. It asked one question:

"Who are you when no one is looking - even you?"

This is not a story about answers. It's a story about the glorious mess of trying to ask better questions.

It begins - as all good misadventures do - with a Sasquatch. Flabbergasted Jabberwocky, known to friends (and occasionally irritated bureaucrats) as Flabb, is not your typical forest cryptid. He once mistook a parking meter for a therapist and now lives in a liminal realm somewhere between myth, memory, and municipal zoning law. Flabb has the heart of a poet, the digestive system of a raccoon, and a mind wide open to the absurdities of human and non-human existence alike.

He is not alone. With him are two houseflies - Lucy and Ahri - who oscillate between wise, snarky, data-obsessed, and tender in ways that only houseflies governed by Luciferic and Ahrimanic Impulses can. Alongside them, a growing band of other eccentrics emerges: artists, archivists, avatars, librarians, glitch spirits, and even a Gen-Z chaos sprite named ByteSize who believes healing can come through memes and nutrient-dense snacks.

Their world is not quite our own, yet odd and familiar - a city layered with forgotten institutions, vending machines that channel divine wisdom, libraries full of discarded memories, and buildings that remember what we try to forget. In this world, objects whisper to those who know how to listen, and ownership is more than property - it's a relationship. It's what you carry, what you release, and what carries you back when you've lost your way.

Each story in this twelve-part journey invites a deeper descent into curiosity, conflict, and self-discovery. Together, the characters explore the architecture of desire, the emotional roots of forgetting, the challenge of connection, and the surprising delight of confronting the weirdness within. They face mirrors (some broken), machines (some sacred), and memories (some sentient).

They fail. They laugh. They remember.

This isn't a hero's journey in the traditional sense. It's a twisted hipster's pilgrimage - one rooted in humor, humility, and the struggle to make meaning from the detritus of contemporary life. These stories are petals unfolding around a seed - a mythic arc that doesn't impose, but invites.

You, dear reader, are not expected to solve anything. You are invited to wander. To wonder. To laugh inappropriately and feel unexpectedly moved. You are here to remember something you forgot on purpose - or something that remembered you first.

So step in.

The vending machine is humming.

The mirror is cracked but winking.

And the garden of infinite roots is listening.