This week’s Futures story presents a remarkable travel solution in the shape of The Everywhere Bus, courtesy of Jonathan L Howard. As well as being a BAFTA-nominated games writer, Jonathan is the author of the Johannes Cabal, Carter & Lovecraft, and Russalka Chronicles series of novels. You can find out more about his work at his website or by following him on Twitter. Here, Jonathan reveals the machinations behind his latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing The Everywhere Bus

Dull humans that we are, we never really appreciate the problems omnipresent entities have to put up with (not least being inside and outside all the other omnipresent entities all the damn time. No privacy). We track along in our three dimensions, leaving a prism of ourselves in our temporal wake (making us look something like enormous millipedes according to the Tralfamadorians, although I’m not sure how far we should trust them), utterly unaware of how we’re worming through the intimate bits of Yog-Sothoth and, indeed, God. Damon Knight once pointed out that since we are created by God in his own image, but that God is also omnipresent then, by definition, we’re all up God’s nose. Knight was being polite; we’re all up all of God’s things. All of them. They skip that bit in Sunday School. 

I write, among others things, stories that use the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, and so I have considered at length the ramifications of the assorted creatures and entities that populate that bestiary. I have considered the linguistic ramifications of ghoulish meeping, the reproductive cycle of Deep Ones, and just why Nyarlathotep is such a big bastard. One thing that has always troubled me is Yog-Sothoth’s coterminosity with all of space and time, yet its ability to ‘be’ somewhere specific when necessary. I also thought it would be quite unpleasant if it were ever to die, because then everything would smell bad forever and always would have. How could we deal with that? The random idea generator it pleases me to call my imagination popped up a mental picture of the Catbus from My Neighbour Totoro at that, and the eminently practical solution became clear. 

In closing, I would point out that when Yog-Sothoth does manifest visibly in one location, it does so as bunch of bubbles. ‘Bubbles’, you will notice, is an exact anagram of ‘bus’, give or take a few letters. Take, as it happens, one or two. Four. You take four letters. The synchronicity (coterminosity, even) of it is undeniable. 

Thank you.