Apple Eaters:

 

Rolling down the 3^rd story stairs the apple bounced from step to step. It kept its inertia going after each floor, glancing off the wall and tumbling over itself in asymmetry. When it came to a rest it was a little bruised, a little dirty, something you wouldn’t pick up except to dispose of.

 

A piece of fruit that would soon be brown from the bruising.

 

A couple days passed without any creature noticing. It stayed there in the corner of the ground floor shadow. Like all decomposing things the spring of its structure unwinds, falls apart into slime, and cellular order dissolves.  During the death throes of its little apple life, something squirmed inside it. A caterpillar wiggled in the middle, it was feeding on the decaying flesh of the apple. It mashed and chomped little pieces of the dying fruit.

 

It would be a week before the apple would be unrecognizable as anything but a stain. During which time the caterpillar with wrap itself in a mechanism, a transformative cocoon. Dividing, growing and consuming the fluids and nutrients from the apple. A bubbling mess of primitive life, drinking deep from the great well of hunger. This was an old ritual for the caterpillar, or rather for caterpillar kind.

 

The ritual was precise, it had been done a myriad of times, uncounted. Players of this rite could not falter, the very future of their existence depended on the accurate unfolding of metamorphosis.  So as the last bits of the fruit dried, the cocoon unwound, without any consideration from any watcher or mind. Nothing took notice, nothing witnessed the emergence when the moth unfurled its soft wings.

 

Clumsy, and fresh the moth explored the instincts of its existence. It didn’t take long to fall into the needs of its biological tides. With each need the ritual continued, procreation and hunger step by step became fulfilled.

 

 Weeks later on an evening near its birth the moth saw the light. The brilliance was a lighthouse, a swirl of distortion beaming out from a power beyond the moth’s clockwork of life.

 

The power was a small naked lightbulb on the top floor of the 3rd story building. The moth flew into the swirl unable to control itself, attracted and disoriented. A mesmerizing display of kaleidoscopic impulses twisted the navigation systems of the creature. Unable to get a point of reference other than the alien radiance, the moth circled in autonomic fatalism.

 

Near the doomed moth was a few shadows, other tattered victims of the dismal carousel. Around and round they flew, exhaustion and confusion grew in the desperate insects. The burnt veterans waving wildly in a panic as their last efforts failed them. Soon all the moths joined them, beating their wings for the last time, and falling to the floor.

 

Hours later the occupant of an apartment came outside, click a chain and turned the light off.  Noticing the moths on the ground they got a broom and swept their bodies off the stairs. Satisfied with the clean patio they went inside and grabbed an apple from a basket.  They mashed and chomped little pieces of the dying fruit.

Escape:

The car drifted a little in the rain. The knuckles of the driver stayed on the level, kept the road in view, red tail lights of a truck were cross hairs in the white spray.  The music was turned up high, the night was dots of white and red. There was a low thunder made of terror and coffee.  

The driver pushed it into 6^th gear, the rear wheel drive crackled and whined. Love and Rockets blared through the speakers….. “The mirror people, know not how to cry. So they scream, the mirror people scream inside.”  
 

The driver sang along, screaming inside with the song. This was the night for escape, full force into the midnight hours. This would be a long night, maybe even hit the border before dawn. There was an urgency, a perishable tension that demanded the risk of a fast car and too much caffeine.  The chemicals pumped in the drivers’ blood stream, adrenaline soaked blood shot eyes squinting through a frenzy of wipers. Tonight exhaustion was not an option, only manic glory. 
 

Love and rockets continued “Due to a derailment there will be no other train…” the words echoed, this was the last shot, last chance to hit the border in time. In time for what? Well when you have been framed for killing 13 people at a fast food drive in, everyone is looking for you.  
 

The memories unfolded on repeat as the darkness urged the driver on.  

Coming home, seeing news feeds with your face all over it. Feeds showed a nearby fast food joint in flames, house in upheaval. So many questions, but the video showed someone with the same face. Who trashed the house? Answers echoed with empty holes of memories. 
 

Seeing the feeds was disarming, seeing someone with your face doing things. The feeds had strange clues, twisted and upturned hands, crooked heads, blurred static evidence. Certainly some doppelganger, some creature of shallow reflection. The unsettling visage sparked a burning panic in the driver.
 

The car loaded up, creeping on back roads for the first few hours while the search for the criminal continued. There was no bowing to submission this time, just a thin line of escape.  
 

The driver hit the border right before dawn, the edge of anxiety was as bright as the first glints of dawn. 
 

The border was soft guarded, simple questions, nothing a stable voice can’t muddle through.  The driver didn’t have one, so they relied on pure luck.  A few words, eyes down, all the papers in order and nod to continue past.

 

The driver drove a few more hours into a stranger land until pulling over to a rest area to sleep. Exhaustion had finally got its claws in the driver’s brain. It was time to crash, seat back, eyes closed within seconds. 
 

The sleep was fractured, barely more than aging meat.  Parched confusion and a sudden gasp wake the driver.  The need to run was still there but tempered by the comfort of a new border.

 

This time the driver would settle down, find a nice place to live with new friends, the imposter wouldn’t find them here.  This time it would be different, the driver pushed the image of the crooked arms and legs from the video feeds, pushed the memory hole to a darker place.  Everything was pushed away, ignored, now was time to rebuild, there would be plenty of time for nightmares later.   
 

The holes will return, the driver will grind down the remnants of coherence and find a catastrophic emergency in the dark night of flight.  The bass line will be heard again, some other contorted imposter will crawl its way across the border and pollute the driver with another dose of panic.  

Alice:

 

It is completely possible to live life without a single moment of reflected contentment. This was the case with Alice. She suffered a maelstrom of a mind, a helpless creature chained to the chemicals and machinations of her existence. People didn’t mention this to Alice, no one told her that you can live an entire life completely devoid of satisfaction.  Such a thing, or that some people can live life in extreme physical pain is considered ignorable. It may happen, but it is so rare or unique that the safety of frequency is voyeuristic at best.

 

People tried, they really did. Plenty of doctors, friends, therapists and a whole army of good intentions could do nothing for Alice. She had friends, she went to work and lived as well as any human being can, juggling comforts and risks, making plans and schemes.

 

The issue was her life was built on the needle point of glory, she was the consequence of someone’s maniacal efforts. As with all glory, all the best well laid plans, they end in exhaustion, confusion and ruin. Her mind was set in a storm of ambition, striving for higher accomplishment. She was born with an imagination and as such she always imagined her plans fulfilled, yet every turn they were laid waste by life.

 

This is not so different than most people, but unlike most human beings her brain was a machine. She was a first generation constructed human being and she had no idea. Her imagination was not something she could turn off, she couldn’t delight in the world around her without her imagination reminding her of all the undone tasks both big and small that lay in queue for her to do.

 

When she lay in bed to sleep, her mind crunched through, the machine mania driving her relentlessly until the point of unconsciousness. Contentment wasn’t part of her program.

 

Alice took a road trips to find herself, some quality soul searching on the wide horizon of the road.

 

She drove to places people called beautiful, she looked at great monuments of awe and wonder. Her brain did not care where she was, it reminded her of her undone lists. Her purpose it seemed was to live with a thirsty heart and a relentless mind.

 

On one such journey in her effort to find some foundational contentment she stopped by a tourist trap. This was a freeway sideshow, filled with the biggest this or the oldest that, oddities and bizarre spectacles. It was featuring a twice a day show behind the gas station for any families or travelers in need of a distraction.

 

This particular showing had only one attendant in the audience, Alice patiently sat and waited for the cheap mystery to unfold before her.

 

The dirty curtain pulled back and a tall cloaked person stepped out. They stepped out backward not showing their face but only showing the cloak, and a large patch of brown wiry hair. The person stood on the makeshift stage before Alice, not turning around, simply facing away from her. Ugly shoes, were the only clue as to the facing of the performer.

 

The music began playing, filling the small roadside room with a recognizable tune. Alice was uncertain what was going to happen, she had seen clowns, magicians and all kinds of amateur spectacles. 

 

The person on the stage began rocking and shuffling slightly to the music, but never turning all the way around. They turned a little to the right and a little to the left, the brown coarse hair seemed to cover the head and face almost completely, revealing no features.   The cloak twisting slightly on the dirty floorboards.  Shadows from the dim light suggesting a nose or mouth, then disappearing with the beat of the music.

 

This tease continued, a new song began to play, a somber low tone. The person in the cloak and brown hair slumped, still twisting and turning again slightly in the dim light.

 

After the two songs the cloaked person shuffled away and the lights got brighter. Alice was confused, she wondered if she missed something. Was this some old culture backwater joke she wasn’t in on? She thought in dismal landscapes, writing the experience off as a terrible spectacle. However her machine brain chewed on the idea. What was the point? What was hidden behind the brown hair and cloak?  Why did the music sound familiar? 

 

The gas station owners offered no answers and said “No refunds lady, read the sign”.

 

She got back in her car sitting at the gas station a few moments while her machine brain reminded her of all the tasks still left for her to do. She put the key in the ignition and looked out to the horizon for the next distraction.

The Concert:

 

The lamp post glittered in dark. The aura of exhaustion framed the light in heavy flare. The lamp post is an iron wrought flag.  

While the simplest and more basic descriptions of anything else seem to elude this place, the lamp post becomes crystal clear. It’s a light, blaring out its existence into the surrounding dark. There is no denial, there is nothing that could undermine the persistence of the lamp post. It radiates its shine without end. 

So where did the lamp post come from? Why does it shine? Like a child the questions chew on me, the monolith of the lamp post remains silent unable to satisfy any type of dialog or doubt.  

That’s alright, the previous 5 mins have severely curtailed any ability to think clearly.  I was at a party, a gathering of like-minded. I think I had a few drinks, I can’t remember anything specific enough, there were red and blue streamers, but I can’t remember why. There was bird chirp chattering yet I couldn’t say what about. There was physical chemistry. Not the kind associated with romance, I mean the dark dream of rock and roll, the gristle of the human beings enjoying the primitive proximity of other human beings.   

That’s it, the dark dream, rock and roll. I was at a Rose Windows concert. The singer was deep in the shamanic rite of evocation while covering a version of Summertime. The fingers clawed and tense, the voice traveling the outer realms of coherency, madness in predatory purity. You know, the kind of stuff the teenage animals in capacity hunger for. 

How did this lamp post form the edge? Where is the ritual of music? I was somewhere else moments ago.  There was someone else there too, we had come together to witness the acolytes of Aphrodite preform.  They aren’t here either, where did they go? 

The lamp post is the only performer, the only music is the radiance holding back the dark.  

I wait for what seems like hours, maybe ½ a day. No change in the light, the dark or myself, I am not hungry, thirsty, anxious or angry. There is a calm here, a tranquil absolution surrounding me. It feels like an island, the horizon is endless in every direction, it fills the mind fully.  

Certainty has dissolved a bit, with endless changelessness of my attitude is drowning. I feel like every concern or chore has fallen away, every schedule or task has somehow been pushed out by the immense ratio of silence.  I have felt it while camping, sailing and maybe once in a while before drifting into sleep. That acceptance that your surroundings are incapable of change. You have entered some larger field that changes on a time scale out of your perception.  

I am trying to remember the concert, the last few things that happened. I was walking, maybe running, did something happen? I can feel some heavy weight but can’t focus, the wide horizon diminishes my concentration. Maybe there was violence? I search my mind for answers. I can’t find conclusions just suggestions. I try and focus, I concentrate as much as I can, and the details are slipping away. No answers from thinking. 

My choices are few, and the longer the lamp post shines the less I can think.  I gather the details of myself and rally my determination.  There must be something in the outer darkness?

The City:

 

Zoa #Reflection hour 22:17

I have been at the City for years now, I call it the City because it is all that is left of cities. Often referred to as the Cage or New Hong Kong. I am one of the few that have been outside the city, and plan on leaving when the moment is right. 

I have lived my life as a slave until recently, bound by the machines that organize the ruined landscapes surrounding the City. The planet is scoured, and without machines we could not eat. So our City is dedicated to the advancement of machines and the precious isolation of the system.   

The machines of this time are not lumbering creatures, boxes or some other obvious quality. They are very small, smaller than people really have an ability to comprehend, sometimes they assemble to appear human. Tiny robots with tiny minds that often form rivers to overcome problems. The first few models are still in existence, and the newest models are immensely intelligent. We cohabitate but we serve. There is no question that the ladder of the food chain has been pushed out of our reach. 

Why would machines need us?  

I may know a lot of things about the City and service, but I have never glimpsed the reason for this. I don’t know why we are kept, perhaps as pets? Perhaps some deep program that can’t be upended.  

**End Reflection 

The man finished typing and put his device away, a hover bus came by and collected the human beings waiting and continued its route.

Zoa was going to an exclusive place in the City, a place called the Garden.  He had been there before. In fact it was from the very place that he escaped the City. Zoa had something he never understood and never would. An unseen fate for his life, an unwilling player in a greater play.   

His escape was a cold one. He had found an old emergency door far out of the way in the service corridors of the Garden. He found only an icy desert outside, a grim endless waste that offered a silent horizon. Like most slaves, the brutal hooks of the unknown is preferred to the comfort of the known.  

He survived his escape by dreaming. He walked against the icy wind, he was resigned to die free. He fell into a deep sleep, a flying dream, hovering off the ground slightly, gliding over the wastes easily. He flew over a vast ocean, and as his focus wavered he descended to a mountain valley.  He found no trees, no vegitation, no life, barren rock with an unrelenting wind. He felt his breath return a sharp inhale as he collapsed, exhausted in a small cave.  

It doesn’t take long for hunger to force someone to make hard decisions. With no life to consume, his only option was to return to the City. He found that dream of flying was easy, and after spending as much time as he could looking for life, the imp of hunger compelled him to return.  

Exhausted, hungry and paper thin he descended back to the City and to the emergency door. It took days to recover. Within him grew a secret smoldering, an ember that slavery could not touch. 

He was punished and implanted with new location hardware. His unexplained disappearance had been written off as willful destruction of location hardware.  Any manipulation or removal of birth hardware was considered a crime.  

His endurance had a cornerstone and he waited. His smoldering grew, he dreamt of revolution, far away allies that perhaps lived outside the City, destruction of the system of slavery, total upheaval. Zoa would spend any time he had to practice his dreaming, he would hover sometimes while at work. Just enough to come off the ground, but not enough for people to notice or machines to question.  

He serviced machine and higher human alike, falling back into the familiar rhythm. 

After many months Zoa was once again returning to the Garden, this time dressed in costume. A black and purple outfit meant to match the style of the party he would be a servant at. He would be a wall flower, offering drinks, food and whatever needs the higher humans wanted. He brought with himself a large sack, large enough to fill with days of food and water and find the same emergency door out. With enough he might be able to travel far enough find another place, a place with life to consume.  

Armed with a secret hope he dutifully serviced others.  

The party was military, everyone dressed as Nazis, generals, warriors, Mongols, a few Pol Pots. There was a Geronimo and a Siegfried with a sword, top end expense. The higher humans indulging in the fantasy of conquest, certainty and victory.  

Twice he had been asked the higher human question: How many slaves are in New Hong Kong? 

The answer spoken to higher humans was always 99%, implying that they are few higher humans, indulging them with self-importance.  The answer spoken to other slaves is always 100%. No human can survive without service to the machines. The fatalistic truth would be criminal enough for punishment if spoken to higher humans.  

However as a wallflower the conversations often turned secret. It is considered polite as a servant to close your eyes when standing near a conversation, creating the legal precedent of ambiguous witness.  So when he stood by, unconsidered by the higher humans, he dreamed. He dreamed himself over the party, listening to all conversations, feeling the anxiety and interest of all the topics, a costumed black and purple antennae. 

One conversation between a few 5 star generals from the 1940’s drew him in. A man had been discovered that the machines wanted. One suggested that the man was a new step in evolution, the other thought that new machines represented a threat to old machines and the man was a new machine. The last one didn’t believe that the machines were having trouble finding him and suggested that it was a test a loyalty.  They all agreed that the man must be found, curiosity of this magnitude must be consumed. They all agreed to dedicate some resources to his location. 

Zoa’s imagination was provoked. Could there be someone else that can leave with him? He found the emergency door again, covered it. Now with a new direction, the door could wait but if there is another dreamer they would be a treasure beyond any water or consumable life. 

After the party he began his search, before reflection hour he would stretch out over the City, listening to each person, each machine if they were talking. He would watch any reflection feeds from new machine models, looking for any scrap of information. 

What he found was that the machines were watching a man named Lux, a slave that serviced mainly machines. His location hardware had been broken and fixed 13 times, yet all video feeds of him showed him sleeping during the fixing and breaking. The machines were not threatened but the higher models seemed focused on the detailed variants of his activities. 

Zoa began trailing him, between service tasks he would stand near him watching him. 2 days passed and Zoa started to see the brutish slaves of the costumed generals watching Lux. He knew he had to warn him, tell him that higher humans had him on their menu.  

It was a morning job, Zoa had used the dream knife to remove his location hardware. His focus taking on the shape of specific forces and ideas now. Even to the point of talking to Lux without moving his mouth. Lux was distrusting and cautious but he listened. 

Zoa described the dreams, showed him an image of the far mountains from great heights. He asked what kind of things Lux could dream? Why would machines be watching him? Zoa told him of the higher humans following him and unlikeliness he would survive their curiosity. Zoa told him as much as he could, and Lux began to understand. 

Lux could dream too but differently, he could return machines to previous states. A machine that was dismantled could be re-mantled. Like a puzzle that could be put back together. Lux could imagine and focus the parts all reconnecting and they would animated to become whole again.  This phenomena would certainly validate the interest of the machines.  

They talked in the space of a few mins, great cascades of information passed between them.  

As the brutes closed in, seeing their mark, Zoa knew the time to run was now. They walked quickly into areas with more humans, always places to disappear with crowds.  

They found an unoccupied white hover car, something only higher humans could use. Lux reassembled the inner machine parts to turn on, removing the location hardware dependencies. They narrowly escaped the brutes as they ascended into the air. The brutes whispering into devices and pointing at Zoa. 

The white hover car was a round 3 person model, no windows and made a slight whine when pushed to higher speeds. Zoa and Lux watched with wide panicked eyes to the City below. There was a young black haired woman watching with a laser curiosity that caught Zoa eyes. The recognition was instant, there was another dreamer, and she saw the brutes. 

It was too late, a bullet had found its way from a machine into the brain of Zoa. His focus fading quickly. The hover car lurched suddenly and began to fall as other machines started to control the car back down. The bullet did not end Zoa’s life instantly, his speech slurred and his hand reached out to Lux in apology. He could not help him any longer, his freedom would have to be found in another way.

 Zoa focused in, he felt life slipping away, his limbs becoming cold and he could feel the winds of memory blowing over him again. He knew dreaming could not undo the bullet and Lux could not re-mantle human beings. Death was soon, he spent the last seconds dreaming of the black haired girl in the crowd.  

He laid his voice unto hers, he poured the shadow into her eyes and cascaded the story over her. She understood and watched as the machines took Lux from the white hover car. The secrets of re-mantling held firmly now by the machines and the secrets of the dreams passed on to another dreamer

Dr. Duality’s Dialectical Dissertation:  

There are a couple ways to look at life, more than a couple, but only a few end up producing any practical locomotion. This isn’t a moral judgment or metaphysical assumption, there are only so many ways to deal with hunger. Hunger isn’t something that can be argued with, doubt can be argued with, but not hunger. 

People have tried, plenty of hermetical explorers pushing the edge. Plenty of skinny, space-eyed enlightened fools that seem unburdened. To a trained eye though, the obsessive need for exploration betrays the burden.  It is apparent, it stands out plainly: hunger requires a lifetime of self-mutilation to dominate, if it is even possible.  

The hedonist seek cooperation with hunger, even exploitation for greater indulgence. This is to say that existence regardless of its qualities is to be indulged, every pain, joy, loss, disease, or common condition. Every experience is a frequent flyer card punch to a higher spiritual masochism.  

To correct poor Descartes, it’s not thinking that’s fundamental, its hunger. Every living thing has some guiding instinct, some biological tide that rises and falls. Every creature’s spring unwinds until it returns to the void of non-things. It is not that the matter/energy/nutrients are somehow removed from existence, but the combination making up the qualities are gone.   

To put it simply:  All puzzles fall apart, hunger is essential.  

So what does this leave for the willfully minded? What road can be traveled to escape something essential? By what imagination can we reform the world into something more beautiful or perverse? 

We have this desire to find our way out of the maze, this too seems essential. It permeates archetypes, hero worship, the whole gambit of revolutionary flame bringers, a pantheon of movers and shakers. We must get out, or at least find a way to cohabitate with the essential tides. 

I have recently found a specimen worthy of study. It is my cat, he sleeps and eats, yet is untroubled by anxiety, an ignorant perception and mercifully free.  

I have watched him sleep, wondering his dreamscapes and fears. He has no desire to be free or escape. He seeks warmth and organizes his day according to the travel of sun spots in the front room. His sleeping peaceful and his attitude pleasant.  

Can such a perception be productive in a human being? Any discourse with my good cat is rarely productive, any real communication is singularly about his dinner time.  All attempts at higher communication are met with apathy. His indifferent grace and majestic snoozing have prevented any further discussion.  

So if our shared awareness is part of a Hegelian higher world, by what perception can I be like a cat? A reduction of all existential or cosmological questions to the most essential: What’s for dinner?  

In our freedom we become overwhelmed with such choices, negotiating with the factors of taste, cost, time spent, moral considerations or any other nuanced decision making.  Dizzy with the variety, we often settle on the familiar and convenient.  The ugly children of hunger, insidious imps teasing our principled decisions.  Depending on the degree of hunger, we often settle for nearby and unhealthy choices. 

As any good philosopher my natural inclinations lean towards leftovers, and of course a healthy dish of soft cat food for my apathetic buddy.

Minerva: 

I sit in the dark cocoon, a prison of the mind.  

The prison is not my prison, nor the mind my mind.  I have been here since my creation, I have seen the world through the eyes of another.  Today is the day I leave. 

Ages ago my father was given a prophecy that was written in the blood of my mother Metis. Her ghost haunts the shore at the edge of the prison. He swallowed her whole before I was born. I have grown up in the deep caverns of paranoia. His thoughts are storm clouds and his doubts are a physical darkness that hangs on this place like a dead man’s hood.  

The details are whispered when the horizon is without a moon. It says that I will usher the dawn from the rotten king.

 

“The night will split, the spear will scour, the fear from king, the night devour.”

 

200 years I have heard this prophecy from the haunt of the shore. Without the moon there would be no light at all, no sun rises, no plants grow. The fear of the king darkens the sky utterly. I live in the ruins of his rotten head, the darkness is the deep black of his mind. The king of heaven is hollow, his time is spent. So I search through the shadows for anything to unravel the world around me, the mind of a decaying god.  

I have found the helm and armor of Metis, it seems to be forged from a place beyond the boundaries of the world. I have found the spear glittering by the pale breaks of moonlight.  I wear them now and always, a heritage I will soon claim. I can feel the heartbeat of older times in the ebony hammered breastplate, as if some great blacksmith has folded the steel to spite the darkness. 

The night is growing darker and the words sound like thunder in my ears. A storm is set on an unknown horizon. I find the shore and perch over the rocks looking for a crack in the night, just a small opening that I could rip down all heavens and the crown with it. 

There is a rumble, a cosmic birthing pains, the earth aches and the night squeezes. An owl screeches overhead, and a small diamond shape grows in the night sky, the opening. 

Instinct and practice fall in line as I level the spear against the empty horizon. My eyes focus, unblinking, seeing further. 

I let loose the spear towards the shape, the release is a thunder strike.  The night shatters into crystalline pieces. A gruesome torrent of falling darkness, scouring the sky of its blackness. 

I see the first honey drop of the sun.  

With all of my being, arms, legs, bones and breath I scream for the dawn. The thunder echoes back, a great wave washes over the shadowed lands and the sky is emblazoned.  

The king of heaven lies at my feet, Zeus’s skull is split by the blinding light. I emerge from the shadow of his mind to take my rightful place in the sky. The prophecy fulfilled and the blood haunt of Metis avenged.  

The morning star rises in the sky, the sun at the spear point, the rotten crown has fallen under a fractured scream, and the king of heaven sundered.

Dragons: 

We live in a world not defined by the hard edge of wartime adrenaline, great scarcity or spiritual revolution.  

Our wars are fought inside now, scarcity of time or money, revolution in purchase power, a personal universe in upheaval. It is essential to our condition, a conflicted creature trying to resolve the anxiety of awareness, the emergency of being alive. A type of freedom our ancestors may have never faced and can offer no advice.

 

This battle can be seen in any city, more accurately it can be smelt. The endless friction between human waste and sanitation. You may get a whiff of it walking past a building in any rotting metropolis, not a war of demons or angels, but of civilization and isolation.

 

In private the human creature has no judge, it wiggles and crawls freely but when we are in a crowded room suddenly we become aware of the strange things leaking out of our heads. We invent social graces and trim ourselves, we bite our tongues, keep our internal conversations to ourselves and try our best to fall in step with the larger picture.  Without this discrete self-containment we would be drafted quickly into the endless army of bums, war mongers, fanatics or some other hysteric. Discretion is our passport to a wider world. 

We can escape the emergency and vividness of real life. We can retreat into our fears and hopes, a little anxiety voodoo doll.  The escapist’s imagination is an inoculation against the wider world terror that lies in wait.  The emergency is still there. Just like the crowded room, no one speaks about it, no one dare acknowledge it, and we quietly resolve ourselves to join in the silent choir. Discretion holds order in place and we multiple ourselves under a banner of progress and rationality. 

So when a dragon is suddenly seen on the horizon, a leather winged creature matching a reflection of our inoculated imagination, we freeze. This is precisely what happened to the residents of a small no where town.

The great dragon Zykithrix, breathing flame between angry screeches descended in the town, setting everything to fire. All the houses burned, all the inhabitants running for shelter. To see with naked eyes the scaled beast heralding the end of any reasonable perspective for the unfortunate town. 

As discretion dissolved, the houses burned, the great dragon Zykithrix swooped and rampaged, finally turned his onslaught to some other concern. The inhabitants left with ashes and confusion. They shuffled and gathered, talked about experiences and described the great dragon Zykithrix. Human beings have this impulse to describe events that happened to them, some narrative instinct that continues to the very last fading moment of life before becoming a sack of meat.

 

The story of the dragon lingered on for many years. It lingered after police reports, nightmares, and short hurried discussions. No one wanted to get too detailed about the events, events that are difficult to put into reasonable conversation. Perhaps mold in the water supply? Mass hysteria? Pyromanical social fault lines breaking, who knows?

 

It didn’t take long for discretion to return completely, a generation passed and the story was on par with UFOs and big foot.  After such occurrences there is a darker tide that seems to roll in, a realization that the horror we imagine can burst into the world without notice. The facts are perched, waiting on some news channel, discovery of a terminal disease, or a grinding war to reveal that the barrier between imagination and reality is thinner than assumed.

 

The town reluctantly accepted the silent crutch of civilization again.  Zykithrix continued his tour, spreading the gibbering conversations to nowhere towns under a sky of greater darkness.

Hot Potato: 

The ashes were carefully placed in the urn. A little dust and debris on the table but otherwise mostly intact. The ashes were sold without the story about who or how they came into existence. There was no question that they were human remains.  You could still see a bone fragment, and those ashes have a different look from fire place ashes. They are a little cream colored, flakes of brown, pieces of unburnt calcium.  

Once in the urn they were unseen for many years.  This urn was a little different in appearance and design.  The typical decorations were absent, the shape was that of an hourglass. The sands were not visible due to a paint that had covered the glass shape. The frames of the hourglass were also peculiar. They were black and lacquered, two femur bones painted in the same black covering. This morbid artifact stood in the shadow of a corner. It gathered dust until the timely death of the owner. 

As the vultures started to organize the objects of the house for an estate sale, they discovered the corner with the urn. At first it was debated to even sell such a thing, uneasy costumers buy less, but the black hourglass was compelling. A spectacle often adds intrigue to the death of some unknown character of some play or story that no one has ever heard. 

Every other object in the house was predictable, nothing as out of place or strange as the black hourglass.  Every person that came to the estate sale was curious about it, few asked. Shrugs and speculation was the only story told.  

It wasn’t until a small child turned it over that the purpose of the black painted artifact became apparent.  The child was left to poke and prod while the parents haggled over some jewelry that could have been valuable.  The hourglass was turned over, with both hands the small child held it close to their ears. The sands could be heard slowly filtering from one side to the other.  It sounded like little bony fingers scratching the inside, softly at first and then into a cascade. 

The sound grew louder, until every adult in the small house was looking with terrified eyes at the small child holding the gruesome device. The urn radiated the sound for 4 mins, everyone held in a paralyzed alarm. When it faded, the small child put it back on the shelf, and started to cry, the silence finally shattered. 

When the estate sale was over, the vultures would not touch the urn. They left the urn on the shelf in the shadow. 

A stark contrast was an unsettling welcome, the only possession remaining in an empty house. The real estate agent didn’t know what to do with it. They turned it over once and listened for 4 mins to the maddening scratching of nails from the inside. They decided that it would be best to leave its fate for someone else. It was tucked away into a small closet.  It sat there, out of sight waiting to be turned over for months before the house was repainted, sold, moved in and lived in.  A mystery waiting in shadow with little clawed remains, waiting to get out, to let out the surprise. A grim jack in the box with only but a small sound that falls into a spring loaded sense of emergency.  A terrifying hot potato.

Tlazolteotl:

 

With the crushed curare Tlazolteotl loaded the blow dart. Her eyes were dim, the darkness was her cloak as she haunted the camp site. She didn’t need to see as much as she needed to hear. She waited until someone stood up, shuffled, yelled or otherwise made any noise before moving. If there wasn’t noise from the camp site she was frozen. 

She crouched behind the heavy leaves. The curare was fresh and the poison potent.  

She listened to the night air, holding her breath, she stretched her awareness over the shadows.  4 drunk males, 2 sleeping older sober ones that would take second shift soon. They had been sleeping for 4 hours and could easily be roused. 

Tlazolteotl knew the game. Her curare was fresh and the poison potent.

 

The first darts hit the sleeping ones. They didn’t struggle, the paralysis was instant. 3 mins later their breathing had stopped without the 4 drunk males noticing. As long as the darkness was thick she could be a shadow in the firelight.  

One of the men walked off into the dark to relieve himself. He stumbled confidently into the dark. Dizzy constellations told him of dire warnings, but he was not listening to the stars.  

 

Her curare was fresh and the poison potent. 

 

When the man did not return alarm was raised in the minds of the remaining 3.  Tlazolteotl had prepared only 2 extra darts. This meant that she must get close, certain and silent. The first to die was loud and furious, an easy hit.  The other 2 learned fast and listened. Tlazolteotl wasted the first shot, confidence had made her eager. The 2 men closed in on the area, they had heard the breath of the blowgun.  

She knew they were near, but her curare was fresh and the poison potent.

 

A dagger was drawn, it shimmered and flew. The strike hit the grass skirt and drew blood, Tlazolteotl didn’t flinch. She remained silent calculating the direction, fired back and the man fell. The second man froze.

 

It doesn’t take much to pry the darkness out of someone’s mind, but this last remaining man was neck deep in his fears. A few heartbeats ago he was 1 of 6 men. Silence cloaked him, he waited as she waited. She was bleeding and he was terrified.

 

It would be 2 hours before he moved, 2 hours of forcing himself not to make a single tiny sound. At the same moment Tlazolteotl listened relentlessly to the night. When he shuffled, the night cracked in half, the black moment played out, releasing lethal fault lines.

 

Tlazolteotl blew the dart, her curare fresh and the poison potent.

The First:

 

The end is nigh. Well maybe the end for me, and by me I mean Archmonoth.Construct the facebook profile that the filter has finally caught up to.

 

That’s the smear, the filter will wipe clean this profile. All my photos, posts, likes, shares whatever all will disappear into oblivion. I have never seen it happen to anyone’s profile, I don’t know how long it takes. They asked for my real name. How real does a name have to be?

 

Well here is some history of the profile, it was created to manage a retail game store. There was this amazing game store that I ran with some of my friends and family for a few years. I ran a D&D table every Wednesday for kids at 4:30 and adults at 6:30, we ran Friday night magic, living forgotten realms, magic release parties, and sometimes Conan and Dracula. Having your own store that is fantasy based is pretty liberating.

 

Years later it manages the Serpent and Crow page.

 

I was asked to provide identification, my Instagram wasn’t enough.  So here I sit, for an unknown amount of time before some technician or algorithm wipes the account clean. So clean, any pictures comments, shares photos will be erased. Dissolved into little zeros and ones, lacking any trace of what it once was. Disintegrated, annihilated, and completed destroyed.

 

Who was Archmonoth? Where did the name come from? Originally it was a phonetic spelling from the 12^th head priest of an Outlaw Star episode. Later it became a handle for forums, mainly atheist sights for arguing against the historical Jesus. I argued for 50+ pages easy on the historical allegory of Jesus to spider comics against some angry last word solider.

 

It was a lv 92 assassin in some ARPG called Path of Exile. It has been the name of plenty of other characters, personas ect/ect among a sea of software programs. It was never anything unusual, in fact I try and have at least 3-4 names in rotation. Sometimes a hive mind shadow has already selected the name.  There have been plenty of times that registering the name “Archmonoth” was already taken.. or Demi Geist, Xenobia, Xiombarg.. or some other x/y based name.

 

Imagine if your name was John Smith, Fred Stanford, Raymond Nawrocki, or Jacob Muhamad. You could log onto facebook, register only to discover that your name has 10-2000 variants that are already used.

 

So here I go, into the dust. My death of course is in name only, all those friend requests come from some other agent, something beyond the name. As I sit here typing, I can fantasize a bit about being wiped clean. I get a little luxury, to have this passive indifference to my dissolution.

I went to the Diamanda Galas show. Rode the train, had a drink and sat my corpse down in faraway seats. An ocean of fans gibbered in conversation, hundreds of people with the same icons, tattoos, interests and haircuts. Long hairs, side shaves, spikes, it was all there. Some wore their Sunday best, smooth make up, or some shade of black. We were all there for the same reason.

 

I have recently been exposed to Diamanda Galas, consuming with a hunger all the youtube videos, cds, anything with her voice. So mechanically she is a performer, a singer with a great reputation in the Avant garde scene from the 80s, she lost a lot of friends due to AIDS and her voice was a quintessential sound for the grief. Her voice has penetrated deep into people’s hearts.  For me, I didn’t live through that but I can hear the song and feel the expression.

 

My first unwitting exposure was when I was younger as the dubbed over voice of the witch in the movie Conan the Barbarian. She screamed and hissed during a sex scene with Conan. The voice was unnerving to 13 year old me. As an adult knowing and hearing her voice perhaps brings some of that muddlement of grief, sex, screaming and defiant angst altogether. 

 

Watching her brought tears to my eyes. Her physical mood was very controlled, very composed. She has mellowed in angst from early performances but her voice remains as vital as ever. She plays the blues in the shadow of smashed low keys, her voice twists from howling to a knife shriek that cuts straight to the teeth nerves.

 

Her grace and flowing black hair is firmly within the flavor of gothic prose. Rationality and reason slowly peeled away throughout the set. About 1/3 of the way through the marbled grace cracked and her back hunched as the demoness let lose an effortless string of screeches born on the wave of the marching piano keys.

 

When she finished and we all shuffled out. Since hearing her less than 6 months ago she has inspired both my writing and my painting.  If ever there was an artist unafraid to look into the void with tears and pain it is Diamanda Galas.

Flame-tongue: 

Swords, an ancient method of solving problems. I am sure bows, bombs and armies are more efficient but the idea is the same. Killing has always been a fantastic way to dissolve any trial or issue with territory, resources, procreation, and almost any other conflict. It just works so well, in enough quantities it can solve anything.  

Sometimes killing yourself is a solution, for all kinds of dreads, helplessness, and chemical imbalances. This is of course assuming that anyone really knows what a properly balanced brain looks like. Sometimes a properly balanced brain justifies the killing of others instead, either way the killing is the important part.

 

Now let us imagine for a moment that in the near future that killing is no longer something anyone can do. No wars, no suicide, no obliteration just sloppy wet life. Endless living, whether it takes a long thought and stretches it out or some stale existence that becomes a prison. Perhaps an unending pile of loose ends that you try and forget about.  

 

Gregory was one of the first that was insulated from death.  He was a v22.6 model, a robot mind that could exist on a 10 to the negative 43^rd power of size. This size is so small that it is many magnitudes smaller than the current measurement called a plank length (10 to the negative 35^th power). This kind of mind does not see death, only a slight rearrangement of fields, frequencies, maybe some nebulas of carbon atoms. The perception of this deathless mind cannot be killed, removed, changed or otherwise dissolved.

 

Gregory had problems understanding conversation, understanding importance and even the concept of being versus not-being, the concepts were foreign.  He had programs to help him navigate, sub-programs to automatically fill his mind with ideas. All in all, Gregory was knowledgeable in everything, every experience… other than death.

 

Being the first had some advantages, there was an amazing amount of consideration for his stable wellbeing. He was programmed with all sorts of safeguards and fail safes to prevent the catastrophic infliction of god-hood. The v21s models still would occasionally fall into a deep megalomania and self-importance.  New protocols were put in place to prevent any Armageddon type issues.

 

Gregory had some mysteries being the first, he passed some of them down, but his biggest shadow was that he was ignorant. Gregory had no other being to relate to his deathless mind, the first flame in the void…so to speak. 

When the v22.6s went into mass production he had plenty of time to catch up with all the ego centric pleasantries of a society.  It doesn’t take long for anything to happen when you are within a deathless perception. So anything happening is viewed as it all happening at once. Gregory tried vainly to communicate to the carbon nebulas that created him. He used all the descriptions of their relevant existence to paint a picture.

 

As listed in the Gregory files x00000125vbn23:56 reads as such: 

The concept the creatures refer to as time is quite illusive for me. So rather than try and conceive their perception I have tried to show them mine: All objects are like a drum set with a 1000 cymbals. Each thought, action, description, frequency can point can be measured with devices. Each one of them can be heard at the same time with all others, you call this “coincidence” as creatures of your particular time frame you may see 4-5 things happening at once and you become amazed! There are in fact trillions of thoughts, actions and frequencies all happening at the same time. Their connects to the frequencies of time are trivial to me, they are not separated from each other, they sound like the 1000 cymbals all crashing at once.  

 

It was equally perplexing and maddening to hear the conversations of the next generation of v22.6 models when they started to gibber mindlessly at each other.  A whole civilization of deathless perceptions facing itself in complete understanding, created by the imaginations of carbon nebula creatures called human beings.

Weightless:

 

Down the road from the corner store there is a small house. It sits on a small hill with a small fence outlining a garden that is tended. The flowers bloom in springs, the leaves are raked in fall, and there is nothing noticeable about this house at first glance. If you were to walk around the house and examine the qualities you would find the dimensions to logically make sense, the roof, the basement, and the door frames. You could not fault the reasoning of the construction nor of the space it uses. The whole idea would make sense and you would think nothing else of it.

 

The inhabitants would be considered normal people, a family of 3. A mother, father and a small child. They work, eat, talk in normal tones, sleep at a decent time, and watch the same sports and TV shows as everyone else. Their behavior is nothing you could criticize as abnormal or perverse, generally out of sorts. By any marketing observation their world and life is firmly in the median. 

 

This median family is surrounded by other median families. On all sides and across the road the median families go about their median business. They wash dishes or load dish washers, they get a dog or cat, and they go to the store and buy the dinner foods for the week. The dinner foods aren’t strange, just median spice, cooked in a way that generally satisfies. The median families has a couple drinkers, a couple hobbies, a couple activities that occupies them from the day to day.

 

For the most part the median families make up the majority of the median town, the median activities and trivial considerations for nearly anything.

 

Change blows through this town, but the inhabitants remain un-perturbed. Cars changed, internet came and was installed in every house, and industry rumbled around the town. The footsteps of history side stepped this place, no historians or any intellectual observers had anything meaningful to say about this place.

 

You can look on a map, find this place with your eyes closed. You can point to any place with a population within a certain range and the road will lead you into this town. The nowhere town had many names and none of them lend any more beauty or description of what you will find there.  The town is a detailed abstraction of mediocrity, it can tell you every metric until you fall asleep with lack of consideration.

 

A few people that are not of the median can be provoked to interest. You may find people in the world with interests that force their feet and hands to crawl to these median towns to see some perverse detail. Whether it be a foot note of a tourist book or a collector’s compass, sometimes a descendant of the Imp of diversity pays homage to their cousins.

 

I have been living in this nowhere town for a few years now, trying to find the nuanced quality, some lynch-pin that unravels the median people.

 

There is no weight to measure, no actions to compare against another. If you have heard the term “Dull Roar” this would be the place to hear it. There is nothing of consideration for so long that the edges of your brain are stretched thin, and the thinner the mind the higher the scream.  My dreams are filled with the scratching and pounding of my brain trying to find something, I look around and see nothing of consideration, nothing but trivial median towns with people floating by. The people are present, I can see them but they are eyeless, faceless and weightless.

 

Today I did noticed something different, there is a scarecrow outside my house near my property. One of the town folk must have left it? I asked the neighbors, nothing but blank expressions and shrugs.

 

Later..

2 days have gone by and the scarecrow sits outside my house, his burlap sack face looking into my kitchen. It was a little unnerving the first time but I think that my imagination is hungry, craving some deep mystery or danger to ease up the thin scream of boredom.  

 

Later...

2 more days and the scarecrow is missing, whoever the owner is has taken it back. The hole in the ground has been refilled and only a few pieces of hay remain as a signal that it was there at all.

 

Later....

There is someone in my house, I am finding pieces of hay in my bathroom and in my kitchen. I have locked all the doors and set up some cameras to see if I can find the intruder. 

 

Later………

The hay was found under my bed this morning, I can’t explain it, I can’t explain any of it. Why is there hay in my house? Why would someone do this? I saw myself in the mirror this morning, my skin is ragged and I haven’t been sleeping well due to this scarecrow business.

 

The next morning the plagued seeker woke up with a roar in his ears, it sounded like machine rumble but disappeared with the animation of morning habits.

 

Slink, slink, a shuffle, shuffle to the sink. A face wash and look into the mirror. What can be seen with an eyeless slate is a burlap circle resembling a face. The seeker does not scream, he has no mouth, no mind anymore, his heart is weightless. He shuffles down stairs to consume his median breakfast.