If you have heard of Scruffrug before, or read about him, the rug who flies, but you've never known how he got that way, this story is for you. If you want to find out, that is. Do you?
For the first five years of Scruffrug's flights no one guessed he was gone at all. How could that be? It has to do with time and imagination. Scruffrug can travel faster than the speed of light. So he could shoot off to Zanzibar and back again without taking enough time for anyone to notice he was gone.
However his imagination... Oh, uh huh, you are wondering how a rug could have imagination, and yes, there is another story there (Imagine, Scruffrug). ..Just imagine that he has imagination. He always imagined he was gone as long as he wanted. When he zoomed off, he'd only be aware of where he was going, not where he came from. So he'd be gone, back, zip away, zip back, and forth and back, but only thinking about the gone away forth parts. The back parts didn't matter. Since it was so fast he couldn't tell.
In math a function like that is called discontinuous, but it exists the same as a continuous function.
So in the German castle, Scruffrug still served as the entryway rug from 1934 to 1939. At the same time he was exploring new worlds of flight and the power of imagination.
What was it that happened in 1939 that totally transformed Scruffrug? The events started when some Nazi police suspected a connection between the castle and numbers of Jews and Gypsies that were disappearing. They came to interrogate Herr Krump.
When Scruffrug heard the boots march march marching up. And the bang bang banging on the door. And the Heil Heil Heiling going on, he laid low. As he always did. But when he saw the fingers point point pointing at Herr Krump with the accusing tone, tone tones of voice he guessed what was coming. He heard "Jxx Jxx Jxx" and "Gxxxxx Gxxxxx Gxxxxx" and "what is the explanation for this?"
Up he whipped. His fast flights had taught him fast thinking so he outhought the police and Herr Krump. There was only one way to stop what he thought would be the inevitable outcome. What he feared would happen is that the police would blame Herr Krump. Herr Krump would have no one to blame but his wife, and she would have no excuse. That idea was unbearable. Scruffrug must act fast and do one thing: scramble.
Moving faster than the speed of light he scrambled and rearranged the digital sound blips coming to Herr Krump so that he didn't hear the awful accusations. Practically at the same time, he rearranged the sounds of Herr Krump's voice so that the police heard only what Scruffrug wanted them to hear. He sent the police off to pester another awful Nazi who had no excuse either. And absolutely convinced them that Herr Krump was not the person they were after.
When they turn, turn, turned on their heel, heel, heels and left, bang bang bang, Scruffrug settled down and looked up at Herr Krump. What he saw changed Scruffrug forever. Up swung Krump's arm, stiff, straight as if mechanically jointed to his shoulder. He held the palm facing out up as far as he could reach, and shouted "Heil, ..." Before the sentence finished, Scruffrug was gone.
In his haste to leave, he didn't notice that two of his fringes were stuck under Herr Krump's boot. Before, since he had always zipped back and forth faster than the speed of light, it wouldn't have mattered. But this time he didn't come back. He just kept going. He had reached the famous point of no return. He was not going to continue being a rug underfoot such a foolish person as Herr Krump. He had people to see. Stories to make.
Two fringes lay in the entry where Scruffrug used to be. Herr Krump didn't notice because he was inwardly too upset and confused by the Nazi soldiers' visit and Krump was outwardly incapable of dealing with inward confusion. He stomped into the parlor and looked around for something to be mad about.
The next day when Madame Krump noticed the rug missing, they finally decided that the soldiers had stolen it. There was no other explanation. Madame inwardly grieved for her beloved rug.
Is that it? I can feel your seething discontent. I've told you about some unbelievable events, of some interest as a story, but where's the transformation? There is an answer of sorts for the question. It's my question as well as yours.
We know that he changed into another form. People used to see him as a rug, he was a rug, but he expanded beyond the state of being we know as rug. He flew, which has been attributed to carpets for centuries. He visited babies' visions, became able to scramble communications, and then vanished. Only to return as a figment of imagination. What does it mean? It's as though he reinvented himself. He became what he would like to be.
Now there's no way to prove this. But he promises to show us things in the fifth dimension that will more than make up for his incredible lack of credibility. And remember, it's not so much his need, as ours that he responds to. He is drawn to his future like a magnet. And we're part of the attraction. The rest, I can't explain. Maybe some day we'll find out.
Here's Scruffrug now, peeking around the computer at me as I write. As if to say, "You see me fly, you listen to my stories, but do you know how it feels to me? What do you think it felt like that evening in '39 when I finally took off for good?"
"Well, Scruffrug, knowing you, you'll probably let me know how it felt!" I still prefer talking to rugs than myself sometimes. Especially this one. This is quite a one. And I'm beginning to know how he felt. As if he were falling up. Amazing.
Flying was not an effort when the urge to escape was so strong. Just let go, really let go. It felt as if he had been holding himself down all those years, maintaining the rug form. Now the problem was reversed. Normally a zoomer, zooming off, zooming on, zooming onwards, the question became "How do I stop?" Little did he know he'd have to fly around the infinity sign, passing from positive to negative infinity, to get back to the earth time/space he left.
Infinite Scruffrug
Paraphrase an old song "...that lucky old rug, has nothing to do, but roll around heaven all day." Sing, sing, sing it out for Scruffrug. If you sing very concentratedly and feel like anything goes, it's OK, you may be able to sense him rounding the infinite curves. There you'll lose him in the infinite distance, where things simply cannot get any bigger or faster or more-er in any way so they peak and begin to fall away.
That part is undefined of course. If things could get most infinitely large, then they would be completely undivided. That is, they would be divided by zero. Mathematicians say that can't be.
But think of it like superconductivity. When an electrical current meets no resistance, the voltage is divided by zero and becomes infinitely conductive. Whoosh goes Scruffrug. He overcomes, conducts. Then infinitely slowly he rounds back to less and less infinite until he approaches his zero point, where he had entered the infinite continuum. Still doesn't know how to stop, zooms past infinitely fast.
On his second round of infinity, Scruffrug had an extraordinary vision. He seemed to be in a forest of tall trees with trim straight regularly spaced trunks. While he continued to blast through the mind blown infinite, he imagined his flight path as a thread and began to weave among the trees. First he flew straight to the farthest tree he could see. Wrapped his flight path around it and flew straight back to the tree where he had started. Wrapped the thread of flight around it and flew straight to the farthest tree again. Each round he dropped down about a foot or so. Kept flying back and forth moving slowly down each end tree until he had created a giant flight path that formed a great rectangle about the same proportions as himself. The flight path thread stayed put. It was very like the warp of his own weave.
Irresistibly Scruffrug was drawn to fly in and out, under and over at right angles to the warp threads, drawing his own rug patterns in the forest air. The flight path changed colors to match. Scruffrug guessed what was happening after just a few passes. He had glimpsed one corner of himself in the long entry hall mirror in the Krump castle. So he knew his pattern. There were his colors held in light, expanded and shimmering in slight forest breezes. In out in out in out in out in out up down in out in out.... down up, over and over. It seemed like forever to finish. But when he was done, he flew to the side and hovered, awed by his self-portrait. He tried to look down at himself and compare to make sure it was real. How wonderful. All the living trees woven in seemed to laugh.
Then poof, the vision was gone and he was turning back round from the infinitely infinite once more. "This time I've got to stop." Years later Bob Dylan would sing a song, wailing, "...stuck inside a mobile, with the Memphis blues again..." that would express some of Scruffrug's feelings. Another was "stop the world, I want to get off." What could he do?
Then he thought of Caroling. If she would see him, maybe the reality click would do it. He'd have to surprise her enough to send a tiny pulse to infinity. The tiniest ripple of recognition might just connect him to earth. As the time came, she was climbing up the long cement front steps to her house. She cleared the top stair and saw something impossible. It was a huge clown towering over the house in the back yard. As Scruffrug cum clown retreated behind the house he was fading. Caroling raised her arm to reach out or point, blinked and he was gone. She ran back behind the house but nothing was there. It was the only hallucination she ever had and she never forgot.
She didn't suspect it was Scruffrug, that clown. But the contact was enough to break him out of the loop. Exhausted, it was all he could do. He drifted in the twilight between new-being space and earth. It was his own space, he had invented it. A good place to rest.