When All the World Was Young

Primary Locations:

Ham Radio Network (Schools for Gifted Children):

Function: Encapsulates modern vulnerability; false security of technological civilization.

Function: The prophetic announcement; marks the transition from speculation to event.

Function: Establishes documentary skepticism; truth will seem like fable, fable like truth.

Function: The "era-stone" declaration; foundational fact of the New World.

Function: Metafictional thesis of the novel; history as construction; narrative as reality-shaping.

Function: Critique of the apocalyptic machinery; precocious skepticism; Lafferty's ironic voice.

Function: The bitter adult exit; abdication of responsibility enables child authority.

Shirley recalls asking a rancher what was on his fence-posts before the buzzards came. He couldn't remember—he assumed they "must always have been there."

Her Catalogue of "New Buzzards":

Her Interpretation:

She concludes that what was on the fence-posts before were "censored buzzards"—invisible and "un-odorable." The spirits were always there; they just couldn't be perceived.

Function: Cynical acceptance of emotional manipulation as political strategy.

Function: Threat of violence; authoritarian tendency in the new order.

Function: The dissenting voice; critique of the selection process.

Function: Key statement explaining the supernatural emergence.

Function: Self-definition; the excluded, repressed, imaginary.

Function: Psychological interpretation; Jungian shadow made literal.

Function: Biblical allusion (Matthew 25:29) twisted into self-justification.

Function: Escalating coercion; desperation beneath the grandiosity.

His argument:

• Corruption is a "conserving" thing—connects them to the old world
• It's a stronger "anchor-rope" than humanism, art, or religion
• "A rope that is well-oiled with corruption won't break"
• His father was a conservative; corruption is the conservative anchor

Note: This creates an ideological contrast with Rufinus's "fetish-magic" progressivism and the children's revolutionary consciousness.

• Direct intimidation: Telling kids he was going to kill them with his axe
• Assassination-for-hire: Offering to kill targets for $5
• The "Tricky Conscience" Ploy: Claiming an enemy already paid $4.65, suggesting the victim could try to outbid by raising the full $5 first—"No guarantees, of course"

The Jessie Burnsides Case: Crocuta paid Lout $5 to kill Jessie. Jessie died of tetanus the same day. Lout claimed he killed him by "sending the tetanus onto him." Crocuta called it a lie. Lout offered a refund. Crocuta refused: assassination money is non-refundable; Lout now owes him one assassination.

Her interpretation:

• Surrounded by the "miracle of immediacy for the rest of our lives"
• Senses now as sharp as hunting animals
• Brains as sharp as angels
• "The scales have fallen from our eyes"
• "Now we've got a chance"

A recurring metaphor for connection to the old world:

Claud Cobbing later echoes this: Art, in the form of "festooned lianas," and Resonance will be their anchors—not rigid connections but organic, decorative ones.

With only one surface, everything exists in the "very foreground":

• Invisible creatures are now visible
• When Claud tries to paint, "a crowd of other creatures" interfere—all in the foreground because there is no background
• No one can be alone anymore

Claud fears their particular brand of intelligence is now useless:

He recalls a woman who visited the school:

New terminology:

• "We were a fungus growing on a dank surface"
• Their precocity is "out"; new types are "rampant today"
• Only place now for "chthonian" people—visceral, intuitive, spook-infested
• "The nubile nines" (a new type of precocity)

What can no longer be used in the fetish-magic-spook world:

The New Arts and Sciences:

• "Intuitive and non-logical mathematics"
• "Visceral and non-descriptive physics"
• "Literally inspired" art

Function: Simple declaration of transformative experience.

Function: Biblical allusion (Acts 9:18); optimistic interpretation.

Function: Epistemological rupture.

Function: Self-diagnosis of obsolescence.

Function: Philosophical definition of the new animist reality.

Function: Complicates the "oaf" appearance; he reads "weird books."

Function: Animal imagery; violence without thought.

Goldfingers' reply: Even if money plays a smaller role, "we will not stop handling it even if it plays no role at all."

What Hester got wrong:

• Cellars as connection between worlds → Called a "false analogy" (all analogies are now false)
• Her impressions are "unarranged" rather than entirely wrong

The Narrator's correction: The extinction of "consensus consciousness" has caused the mingling of conscious/unconscious minds and waking/sleeping states. The new standard state will be "alert and happy somnambulism."

A digression during Jimmy's totemic assignment:

• Captain Kusman owned a bear that regularly beat him at poker
• The bear "thought that he was a man"
• Losing to the bear sent Kusman into a "roaring fury"
• The bear died in the plague
• It is buried in the rose garden with the children

Jimmy notes:

• He wants to write before losing the faculty (happens within half an hour)
• "Scatter-print should never be trusted"
• The stunning line "I have just been killed" no longer has the same impact in the new world
• He experiences "double displacement"—from the new regime AND from being dead
• When perspective is gone, all times are simultaneous (as for small children)
• He may write another entry in a day or two if he learns anything significant before "fixed death"

What we learn about the Gift:

• Jimmy was rumored to be "the only transcendent man in the world"
• The rumor produced an automatic response: "Murder, Murder, Murder!"
• Jimmy passed it to Rufinus, yet kept it himself
• "It's the gift that isn't diminished in giving"
• The one who gave it to Jimmy claimed: "No, there are not any other ties; all of them are in this one"

Note: The source of the original gift and its exact nature remain unclear.

Function: One of Lafferty's most striking opening lines; matter-of-fact announcement of own death.

Function: Defines the paradoxical nature of the Special Gift.

Function: Pithy summary of epistemological shift.

Function: Defines new mode of consciousness.

Function: Casual announcement of world domination.

Function: The Gift as automatic death sentence.

The children believe they have a temporary opportunity:

Consequences of fallen restrictions:

• Conscience: Has "absolutely disappeared"
• Consciousness: They have had "no consciousnesses at all these last three days"
• Logic: Distinctions between logical/illogical erased
• They believe they can do "anything they can think of" for the next year or two

The group has grown from 8 to 10 members:

The Narrator is uncomfortable with multi-group membership, calling it like "fish swallowing fish" or "the same flesh being part of different bodies."

The Narrator notes that several members are "receiving very bad advice from shoddy entities of the polter and spirit community."

Rufinus refutes Murphy's Law:

In "slightly pre-classical times," magic was cultivated by naming "little gods" for various processes:

Magic is now most needed in:

• Human relations
• Economics
• Government
• Taxation

Rufinus notes ruefully that the computer "was a better computer before I began to urge him than after."

On education and motivation:

Planetary symbols from the John Wanderwide stories (a Lafferty meta-reference):

Function: Moral tabula rasa of the new world.

Function: Self-assessment as elite.

Function: Cynical truth about social order.

Function: Fundamental principle of the new epistemology.

Claud predicts a three-step process:

The New Art: Establishing an identity behind the mask will be "the real arts of the new regime."

Claud's assessment as "Minister of Arts for the Central Fiefdom":

Thanks to "magic in manufacturing," the Unholy Three Masks have spread worldwide within an hour:

• Every group now has a vested "Unholy Three sub-group working within it"
• The trend corrects itself (per the "magic in manufacturing" principle from Ch. 5)

The outsider evangelist senses something deeply wrong:

He also perceives a "peculiar light shining around here" that is "wrong if we are right."

Function: Diagnosis of the masking trend's end goal.

Function: Deliberate avoidance; fear of what will be found.

Function: Casual announcement of another murder.

With the "old wardens and censors" gone, the gates have stood open for three nights. What has come in:

Rufinus's policy: "Citizens, sleep with your light on if you wish. Anyone who laughs at you will be fined three dollars if convicted."

The chapter title comes from Rufinus's economic parable. The Narrator clarifies that Rufinus called Crocuta a "metaphorical hyena," not an "unqualified hyena."

Crocuta writes his own rebuttal, claiming:

• Rufinus DID call him a hyena and say he was soft on communism
• "Organized Labor is the elder brother of everyone and everything"
• Labor should have "rights of approval or veto over everything" (government, religion, ethics, economy)
• They will recommend or ordain ministers and priests
• For those requiring Apostolic Succession: "we consider ourselves as the New Apostles"

How Shill uses it:

• He has "mastered" Rufinus's third hand
• Forces it to sign a $1M life insurance policy (payable to Welfare Nation)
• Forces it to sign a $10,000 check for the first premium

The twist: Rufinus recognizes the insurance company name—it's the one Goldfingers helped him set up. He owns it. The $10,000 premium will be paid to himself.

Next problem: He'll have to pay the $1M policy on himself after he dies—but there's no such money in his company.

Function: Satirical inversion of welfare rhetoric.

Function: Direct death threat for the Gift.

Friends:

1. Rufinus Lifshin
2. Greengold Garrison
3. Claud Cobbing
4. Venture Glintglass
5. Luke Bartleby
6. Shirley Kadesh
7. Hester Castile
8. Jimmy Rose (effigy)

"Enemies" (and friends):

9. George Crocuta
10. John Lout
11. Minion Notary
12. Goldfingers

Joined later:

13. Raymond de Harwit
14. Rex Grob

"That is class!"

Goldfingers to Grob: "There is at least one here who intends to own you."

He wonders if they are just "re-enactments in miniature of the lesser doings of people of the formerly adult world."

Shirley Kadesh corrects him: "That isn't exactly what the Reduction Division means."

Note: In biology, "reduction division" refers to meiosis—cell division that reduces chromosome number. Shirley's correction suggests a more technical meaning.

While it is the third day of the world, it is the fourth day of the month. On the tenth:

• Bills fall due and "are not going to be paid"
• Debtors will argue the people who contracted the bills are dead
• New businesses are not continuations of the old
• Result: "Total credit collapse" in six days

Minion's defense: The "real head" Lout carried was of a man killed trying to start a machine—they are not really the Unholy Three (implying they play-act the role).

Function: Establishing new social center.

Function: The chapter's key reversal.

During the debate, a "large and shaggy" fire child emerges from the fireplace:

• Stands over Raymond, causing him to blanch
• Then returns to the fire
• Raymond realizes his "projective power is less than" the group's

When Rufinus asks if Raymond had a mother:

• Raymond gives "the cry of a cornered rabbit"
• His face "cracks open" and he begins crying "literally and loudly"
• Cries "like a seven or eight-year-old boy"
• Admits: "Now I don't know which way I want it"

Rufinus accuses him of being "in trauma" over his mother's death—the advocate for "anchor ropes" to the past cannot face his own past.

• Setting: Redeemer Church-Abbey; broken doors; darkness; single votive candle
• Weather: Gathering storm; "jagged and Gothic-design lightning"
• Password: "The fifth day of the world will be the rough one"—which the real Minion had said earlier
• The Figure: Wearing Minion Notary Mask with "live rattlesnake eyes"; vowed to wear it until receiving Gift

• Raymond bursts in with a John Lout battle-axe
• Raymond: "If it is important to them to find out whether one of them can be consecrated, it is important to me to find out if one of them can be killed"
• Rufinus: "Why bother... He cannot be killed"
• The devil escapes with "ebbing laugh" and "resounding mockery"
• Later seen as a "demon-monkey swinging on a rope that reached high as the sky"

We can now piece together the murder timeline:

Key question: Did Shirley's Unholy Three kill Minion? Her threat in this chapter matches exactly how he died. But the original Unholy Three (Crocuta/Lout/Minion) were Minion's own group—so who ordered his death?

Function: Warning that proves prophetic.

Function: Confirms Venture's judgment from Chapter 8.

Additionally:

• Over 100 "great and honored humanists" have been replaced by demon usurpers
• The humanists gaze at their severed hands on the floor, "quietly bleed to death"
• They were told not to reach for the "festooned connector or line"

This mirrors Minion Notary's death—and Shirley's threat from Chapter 9.

• Charles's father had "highly specialized equipment for speculative contexts"
• This equipment was for psychological "what if" studies
• The speculation came from Bombshell, the Journal of Outlandish Speculation
• The "glittering gem" of an idea: a mutated plague that kills 98% of the world in one day, leaving only children
• "Evil principalities" (demons) intervened, placed representatives in his father's group, had his father arrested, and seized the equipment

• Demons broadcast the speculation subliminally and massively to the whole world
• This created a "consensus subjectivity" → then a "consensus objectivity"
• The majority of people woke up three mornings ago believing:
  • The fiction had happened
  • They were dead
• They became translucent or invisible, leaving behind "precipitates of 'false body'" on their beds

• The subliminal transmissions must be halted
• Charles can lead people to his father's equipment
• They can send out "countervening messages"
• The days can be "scrubbed like an unsuccessful experiment"

After Rufinus ejects Crocuta and Lout from the meeting, Venture follows them out. The Narrator observes her talking "very seriously" to the Unholy Three, giving them "an instruction of some sort" for a "mission of deep purpose."

Raymond has a 20-minute Network slot. His plan:

1. Brief entertainment by Raymond
2. Turn slot to Rufinus for "impassioned plea for world leadership"
3. Turn remainder to the Prisoner for his explanation
4. Ask viewers to vote on when to hold definitive vote

The Narrator notes this is a "deep and mysterious invisibility," different from the "shallow invisibilities of days past" which are now visible.

Raymond believes the words are his own. The "subliminals" are literally putting words in his mouth.

• Does NOT understand how money works
• Will NOT appoint Goldfingers as Financial Secretary "if people don't like him"
• Defends "printing-press money" as "logical and rational" but doesn't understand objections

During Rufinus's speech, protesters enter carrying blank signs that fill with "hot-color scramble letters":

The Narrator notes the contrast: the protesters have "zombie-like appearance" and "slack faces," yet their messages are "energetic" and "violent."

Who is writing on the signs? The same invisible forces running the Network.

Immediately after the broadcast, a phone vote begins on two issues:

1. Who should be World Leader?
2. When should a meaningful vote on the Prisoner's fate occur?

Function: Exposes Raymond as an unwitting puppet.

• The prison is populated by "Old World people" who are mostly invisible
• The Narrator compares them to "invisible elephants of the middle pleistocene"
• Old Prisoner (~25): "If we have confidence that we are still alive, then we are still alive, in a way"
• He is "fading fast" and believes the fifth day will be "final doomsday"

• Located in the "highest and most inmost cell of all"
• Tobias appears as a "cadaverous-looking young boy or man with the hollowest-appearing eyes ever seen"
• Nearly ten years old but looks "very old"
• Venture calls him a "living spook"

This explains Tobias's "cadaverous" appearance and why Venture says he's lost "half of the moving parts of his brain."

Venture asks who signed the letter authorizing Tobias's imprisonment:

The masked man calls Tobias an "idiot" for believing this. But George Crocuta agrees: "And I also believe that it was the Prince of the World, the Devil himself."

Implication: The Devil personally ordered Tobias imprisoned to prevent him from reversing the subliminal fiction.

The fight against:

• "Unnatural stuff"
• "Principalities and powers"
• Dogs
• New guards and old guards

Implication: Their perception of their own power—their belief—transforms their actual strength. The same mechanism that makes the subliminal fiction "real" can work in reverse.

Venture asks why, noting he is "newly married to Shirley Kadesh who is a New Culture Figure."

Crocuta's explanation:

• He has nothing in common with Shirley
• He now understands what infidelity means
• He understands "how the Old World feels about the infidelity of the New"

Note: Shirley was shown leaving with "a man who is not her husband" at the end of Chapter 8, and Crocuta's wife was described as unfaithful in Chapter 10.

Function: Belief and reality are interconnected.

Function: Murphy's Law was literally created by Tobias's father's machine.

Goldfingers predicts the rise of "kinetic politics" or "gyroscopic politics":

• Viewers' 5-minute attention spans will coincide with political trends
• Government will be "floating"—no offices or desks
• Communication via animistic computers like "Slippery Cloud"
• Reading and writing will become obsolete

• An "elegant man"—a "very close friend of Rufinus"—has been lurking nearby
• He attempts to shoot Rufinus, crying "Thus always with tyrants!"
• Goldfingers throws a heavy coffee saucer, hitting the gunman's hand
• The bullet only scratches Rufinus's ear (the tragus)
• Secret police kill the gunman
• Rufinus: "I just can't believe that he was my enemy"

Goldfingers's explanation: The friend's "world-anchor rope, humanism, had just collapsed"—he blamed the Ruler of the World.

Rufinus carries a sack of white powder throughout the chapter:

• Sends a teaspoon to a person at a distant table → that person dies (one of the 50)
• Gives a packet to a man whose dog barks at night
• Reveals to Goldfingers: it's "neat and quick poison for man or beast"
• "Dead dogs don't bark."

Despite the vote, Goldfingers reveals:

• He believes the Prisoner's thesis is fact
• He believes the Prisoner has the equipment to reverse it
• BUT: "He won't be permitted to"
• Bets $10 million that the Prisoner "never gets a chance at the equipment"

His reasoning:

• Restoring Old World would be a "horrible confrontation"—the "walking dead" would see them as traitors
• The Old World had a "Death-Wish" or was a "Suicide"
• A new species begins with destruction of the old
• Calls himself "Minister of Neanders"—"We are all new men or Neanders now"

The Price:

• Cut "just one of the several joining ropes"—a rope Rufinus has always regarded as "a bit minor"
• The backlash will kill one of his friends who has "held too long to that line"
• Rufinus asks: "How important a friend?" Prince: "You have always regarded him as a bit minor"
• Rufinus: "Cut it!"

• The Prince declares the world belongs to Rufinus
• Term of office: "as long as your life"
• The Prince touches Rufinus—like a "death stroke to the heart"
• Rufinus knows he can count the remaining days of his life on one hand

Rufinus tries to comfort himself: "It isn't real though... He's a cardboard prince and a cardboard devil."

Goldfingers insists: The Prince was real, and is "part of that thesis" of the Prisoner.

The Surgeon General notes this happens when someone "holds onto a thing too long." He gets a phrase "clear outside of the medical text": "buzzards coming home to roost."

• Claud was to be "World Minister for All the Arts" (announced Ch. 11)
• The rope was "one of the anchor ropes"—specifically "made of music"
• Claud held onto the arts too long; his death severs humanity's connection to them
• Rufinus "fell into a deep despondency"

Pattern: Like Minion Notary, Claud dies reaching for/holding something—and his hands are severed.

• Crocuta's Failed Intel: Could not get location of the father's equipment—Tobias would not reveal it to "doubtful persons"
• The Contradiction: The Prisoner's enemies already seem to know where it is
• Masked Man's Expertise: Claims to be expert on all locks
• Lout's Suggestion: Scale walls with battle-axe
• Venture's Suggestion: Enter through sewer line

• Other Inhabitants: Prisoners and guards, "old world people," mostly invisible but can be glimpsed
• Narrator calls them "Invisible elephants of the middle pleistocene"
• An old, transparent prisoner tells them Tobias is in the "highest and most inmost cell of all"

• Appearance: "Cadaverous-looking young boy or man with the hollowest-appearing eyes ever seen"
• Venture's Assessment: A "living spook"—mad
• Tobias's Response: "I am mad, yes, but my thesis isn't mad"

Tobias explains his "outre" personality resulted from brain and personality damage caused by riding in his father's machines.

• Armies of Midgets: George Crocuta hears and feels "armies marching, armies of midgets marching"
• Letter of Cachet: Tobias reveals it was signed by the "Prince of the World himself"
• Venture's Decision: Declares the democratic process is rigged—"we will begin the break-out right now"
• The Battle: They fight "unnatural stuff, with principalities and powers, also with dogs, and with new guards and with old"
• Subjective Giantism: The commandos become giants and rip apart the "toy structure" of the prison
• Crocuta's Death Wish: He gives a "moaning-hyena bark and howl," hoping to be killed because he understands "how the old World feels about the infidelity of the New"