Nyx:

With a small slice the sacrifice was made, the Prefect had paid good money for this one. Rarely did such a high authority come to the temple of Nyx, this was personal. The Prefect in this case was suffering from nightmares, disturbing obsessions of the dream time.

 

The sacrifice wasn’t expensive and the temple acolytes were generous in their attempts to relieve the Prefect’s nightmares. They had burnt a large amount of frankincense which was the premium incense for offerings, the acolytes had a good contact in Arabia so they were glad to display their quality. The smoke floated like night clouds through the dimly lit altar room. The walls were painted black and the acolyte’s robes dyed in the same indigo base.

 

The subject and details of the obsession was known to the acolytes, the Prefect was lose with his words. The cult of Nyx had never breached secrets and had no heavy political alliances to complicate the trust of their service. The details were bound up in half sentences, dream fragments and paranoia.

 

The Prefect had visions of a great wave of black, a force that dissolved his sinuous attachment to political concerns. Prior to his visions the Prefect was endlessly involved in the smallest logistics and deepest specks of information for ruling. Now he was floating in a great ocean of terror. The Prefect could not shake loose the mind’s eye focus upon this vision. His rule was starting to crumble under apathetic sands.

 

The vision was described to 3 acolytes and pieced together in a scroll. The scroll described the following vision:  

I awoke within my dream on the black sands of a midnight shore. The waves disappeared into the sky and the horizon was hidden. I looked out into the deep void and saw all the constellations of the gods, the stars began to dance and move as I watched. The glittering drama of the great forces of the universe unfolded as I wept and witnessed. My eyes were peeled back in a strain as the courtship of heaven churned with such a titanic weight. I felt as Atlas, nearly smothered by the relentless beauty of the eternal night.

 

It was when I could take no more, when I could breathe only a whisper that the wave came. It started in the night sky, each star began to extinguish into a deep black I had never seen. A greater blackness that all glory of heaven, each constellation was swallowed whole by the black wave. The tide seemed grow with each twinkle of heaven adding its sorrow to the wave. I was watching the funeral of the gods as if their last breath had summoned me to this shore to see the end of all things warm and light.

 

Then the wave came for me, the greater blackness rolled out of the sky and washed up with a shadow upon my heart. I collapsed as if the strings of my soul were cut, the masters of fate no longer able to guide my hand. I fell to my knees and felt the growing shadow pass through me and claim me as those constellations, my remaining body became a slumped over gravestone without an epitaph.   

The Prefect came to the one temple that may have an answer, the acolytes of Nyx worshipped the night and perhaps could understand the nightmare portent.

 

The acolytes could not offer any comfort so they offered services. A small animal sacrifice, incense and confidence the nightmare would pass and release its hold on the Prefect. The last part of the offerings was the scroll, it was burned in a blue fire. The offerings helped and the Prefect was able to return to his duties. The memory faded and washed away, he was generous to the temple and trusted them not to betray his nightmares. The temple of Nyx was later given a position as an oracle in the acropolis of Megara.

Shadow Party:

 

Setting down the buckets the people finally took a seat as the night crept into the sky. The buckets had been on a river carousel, round and round between everyone’s hands. Up the road and into the town the line of buckets had traveled. Upon reaching the end, their contents were emptied and a gasp of steam heralded the return back down to the river.

 

The house fires were caused by old cloth curtains sitting too long in an angry sun, or a bomb. The hot temperatures teased the blaze to catch 3 more houses. All of them struggled to burn, the townsfolk splashing river water as fast as they could to stop the flames. Exhaustion was all that was left, and ashes but no one counts ashes.

 

The town sat watching the horizon cool the sweat from the necks and foreheads of river folks. They started to gather by the 4 houses that no longer stood. The pile of debris and stacks of buckets lined the edges of the congregation. Half burnt pieces of memories pulled out now laid in a pile, there were 6 corpses, the fire moved too fast. The horizon matched their eyelids as some collapsed in torn and weary shapes, arms wracked in pain and panic. Tears had flowed with the river water, the first house to fall contained 2 elderly folks unable to get out in time.

 

As the night descended some returned to their homes, some stayed and slept by the debris. The town had never had a fire like this, the leaders were speechless. A few children clung nervously to their mothers. The hearts of the living slowly joined the dreamless sleep of fatigue.

 

In the night the scene took on a deep haunt. The piles of buckets appeared as leaning people engaged in a slice of memory, their hips angled out in a relaxed enjoyment. Ashes added a pale light to the party, a dreamtime glow separated scene from the rest of the town. A cool mountain breeze joined in and a few ashes fluttered up.

 

The buckets weren’t the only objects casting living shadows. The debris was a voluminous citizen of the dreamtime party. The shadows cast became tables of people sitting, hunched over conversations, whispers of flirtation and lumbering dancers. The glow of the ashes marking contrast into ever deepening depths of objects. The tables lined in strange angles, the dancers rustled with the moving ashes. The breeze continued and the ashes animated the 4 burnt houses into a sweet liquor of imagination.

 

The shadow party continued deep into the night, the ashes reflecting less light as the hours past. The second ruler opened court as the moon rose high into the sky. Another angle of light peered down to the ruin of day. The moon looked down in sorrow and grief, echoing the tears of the river. The shadow creatures now hunched over their tables in mourning, their arms sprawled out with their heads in downcast weeping. The piles of buckets appearing now as grievers holding each other up, bracing each other just enough not to collapse into the endless night.

The moon held court for the shadow party for many hours, a respectful queen over the mortal creatures beneath. The night breeze had stopped and the cooled ashes laid still and in silence. The moon tolerated no disruption of its mournful eye.

 

The moon queen closed her eye too as she passed over the horizon and another creature of the night took her place, a great vast cloud. The cloud had brought his cousins to join the shadow party, their heads thick and woolen. Lumbering through the trees, blind and creeping around the sides of a hillside. Slowly they had come to the clearing where the 4 houses once stood and witnessed the shadow party in its gloomy repose.

 

The cloud and his cousins took no time emptying their woolen heads. The rain began to fall. The gentle drops animated the scene once again. The buckets shifted with weight, some teetered and collapsed finally, others found support in the shadow people of the piles of debris, joining their makeshift tables and groups. The dim light from the distant houses now reflected in the gathering pools.

 

The debris shuffled a bit and with some encouragement danced a little in the rain fall. Some of the shadow people had their fill and lay flat on the ground letting the cloud and his cousin’s parade around the ruins. Their tongues lapped up the ashes and their feet washed out the tears of the river folk.

 

After the cloud and his cousins left, the ruin was dark. The sun wasn’t ready bring its light so the party ended in darkness. A dreary scene that no longer had shadow people, they had all gone home. A heavy silence lay over the ruin of the 4 burnt houses. No human being rustled, no animals moved. Some of those that had chosen to sleep by the debris only made soft breathing whispers. For the last hours the night stretched out into the sky, the vastness of space closed out the night with several twinkling constellations.

 

The shadow party had ended, the dawn was coming and some of the people that slept by the debris stirred. The open their eyes to see the muddy ashes and the buckets toppled over. They felt their wet faces and rubbed their sore arms and hearts. They gathered themselves up as the sun claimed the court of the living. The blazing crown looked down beneath, oblivious to the shadow party of the evening.

 

Little by little, night by night the shadows would bury the ruin of those 4 houses as their memories unfolded during the court of midnight.

New American Pride:

 

Jamal Werrington #Reflection hour: 14:59

 

I don’t know who started the organization of the New American Pride movement but holy hell did it catch on. I suppose all those organizers of smaller events, Burning Man, middle micro managers with coordination brains with recreational appetites need something to do. I know there is a lot of money in it, so I am not surprised at the allure of human computers and dressed up pragmatists.

 

In the past there was Burning Man, rights rallies, even Nuremberg love-ins or some other adoration of a leader or idea. In the past it has always been focused and deliberate with its message. I think the advent of technology has made organization of this magnitude a lot easier. I volunteered one year to help with some minor organization, and let me tell you the structure goes all the way up, up into a tower of pristine corporate interests. Marketing companies, demographic segregation, identity politicians and a whole slew of idealists with event planning skills making up the fleshy pulp of this event.

 

The New American pride event started rather small, and blossomed very quickly due to objection, controversy and mutual interests. I think it started as a South Nationalist march but a smart cookie named Mary Wilcox decided to see how far the controversy could carry her political interests and joined up. Mary was a mid-range organizer for a Portland based annual Gay Pride. She had bigger visions and thought that this forbidden, perhaps contradictory allegiance and maybe even hypocritical event would bring enough publicity from every side to make a successful event (and fundraisers after the fact). She brought in the rainbow flags, the spectacular colors, glitter and a wider message to the South Nationalist march, not as a counter protest but as a participant. It was a match forged in hell, a Southern Nationalist Gay Pride hit everyone’s buttons, for good or for worse it got the media involved and plenty of cell phone videos of bizarre juxtaposition.

 

As history shows it was wildly successful, there were confrontations, police, persecution and total focus of the country. The nationalist march suffered much the same success and the second year exploded into variety. Soon the local Black Lives Matter chapters joined the march then the wider alt-right, unions and labor movements, even a small branch of activists held a teacher strike amidst the chaos and media frenzy. Sometimes they “Counter Protest” which is a grab at the spotlight, it saves face from having to officially align or support contradictory movements.  

 

Record memberships into these groups greatly increased, conflict became the new portal into people’s news feeds. By the 3^rd year the strongest BLM franchised chapters had incorporated and Rainbow flags became the trademarked symbol of the event. The New American Pride co-opted (with money) a whole slew of art groups, giant puppeteers, floats, demonstrations, stages, and rallies peppered the streets of Chicago. This was one of the few places were 5+ million people could gather, by the 4^th year the event became a monstrous pilgrimage.

 

During the 4^th year is when I got to go, I traveled from the hot slums of Jacksonville Florida with a group for machines worker’s rights. We put together a gigantic float with a moving hammer and some confetti cannons. We got a place one of the float routes, some of the routes were interrupted by other groups so multiple rivers of events traveled through the city. With this delta of ideals, demographics and people, they all got a beautiful platform.

 

Every year I have gone back as a pilgrimage, I think there are 5 flags now on the ginormous white and brown American eagle float now. The traditional stars and stripes, the rainbow flag (with brown and black stripes), the Confederate flag, the Gadsden flag and of course the Cascadia flag. The pure variety is a little unnerving but it grows on you fast. The introduction of the transhumanist/Burners really raised the standard of art in the American Pride event. The sacrificial wooden man now gets burned in the center of the Wrigley field while the national anthem plays and rainbow confetti blows over turbulent cries. I have never seen a better display of adoration or madness with the human voice.

 

There has been violence, there were people shot by police and some streets that got tear gassed from helicopters over the years, yet it keeps happening. The Pride event has become the new melting pot ideas of every kind, everyone is hungry for a slice of the media spotlight, edging in, political maneuvering and allegiances. The side effect of this great conjunction that I have seen is that people get to see each other from different walks of life. While it might not always be peaceful the tension alone attracts the greater slab of people wanting to see the human zoo in action. Hunter S. Thompson once said “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” There has never been a more accurate description of New American Pride.

 

After the 10^th year the Pride I started to see it marketed as the Super Bowl of funding, all the contemporary ideas show up with their huge floats and battle for popularity and membership. The teams navigating rhetoric, exposure and national appeal. There are even other nations getting involved, I saw a Samba float from Brazil with giant letters that said “American Pride is Carnival”, more decoration, more pageantry. Branding is the name of the game and no idea can exist now without sufficient corporate funding.

 

The tall buildings are lined in great fabric banners of stars and stripes, rainbows and colored confetti, great blasts of music played everywhere. The visual frenzy has a vertigo all its own and it is easy to be swept up in it. You can even find famous speeches performed by look-alike historical performers.  Martin Luther’s “I have a Dream”, Abe Lincoln, Malcom-X, JFK, if you are luck you can find Avram Finklestein or a Larry Kramer with inspiring orations of Act-Up speeches.

 

Everyone has a voice, everyone is loud and is there for the same reason: Their cause.

 

We all want the spot light and this was the place to be under the brilliant lenses of the media, broadcasting to the world in our brightest moment. The sheer awe has certainly needled the last 10 years of awareness, at the very least given a shared experience to those that take the great pilgrimage of the New American Pride event.

 

This year in my pilgrimage I got hired. I am to be one of the gigantic puppet operators. We have a black lion with a confetti roar that blasts out a high decibel roar that says FREEDOM. I get to be the right leg and had my training class, it actually pays pretty well. We got a nice corporate sponsorship for the 27^th season of Voltron, the black lion has a nice cross market association. The Black Lion isn’t even a main event, there are dozens of large mechanical creatures run by technicians. There is no shortage of variety, no shortage of ideas, and everyone is tuned in.

 

I am looking forward to the human zoo, and nothing says Democracy like participation.

 

End #Reflection: 15:17 Load v2.2 sequence: Locust-behavior: Time: May 1: 12:31

Arizona Eyes: 

Crazy-Luke23 #Reflection hour 12:47 

Chicago had a different kind of weather, the inner city crime rate was higher than the 50 degree (Celsius) frying pan we just flew from. Arizona may not have a corner street threat but it will boil your eye balls out of your head. The heat stops all rational thinking pretty fast.

 

We stayed out of the way, which is a lot easier than trying to avoid the sun. We paid our hours in full at the hotel. We must have watched 3 hours of sponge bob in hysterical mania.  A little weed and we headed to the airport again. Ready to be processed, belt and shoes off, full body scans and nervous white robed Saudis trying to remember what is illegal in this country. The flight was a nice cool break and the recycled air wasn’t bad at all.

 

We flew to Seattle for the hook up, information that would lead to a job. We really needed a job. I was just happy to be out of the searing blaze that would probably be the standard in the next decade… god I hope I’m dead by then. I have never been able to think straight above 36 degrees (Celsius) 97 degrees (Fahrenheit), what kind of masochist can do anything strenuous?

 

The contact gave us a decent gig. Kidnapping isn’t normally on the menu, but you know times are tough. Times are worse than ever actually, clear water is a myth and all the glaciers have said “so long”. A job is a job so why not make the best of it? We got the address, grabbed our gear and went to make some money.

 

The address says up, on the south side of Rainer up in the 8k range.

 

The Nisqually district is heavily guarded. There are a few areas of remaining forest, tree-life mainly by the waterfalls. This is a mountain with high elevation gated communities of preservation and denial, the very definition of an ivory tower, perched over the greater Seattle slums. We used our regular methods, getting past security, the cost was added to the fee of course. A small bribe and a decent story as hikers and we heading up without an issue.

 

We hiked all day to get to the remote house. A little 10 mile jaunt with heavy incline. The sides steeped into deep valleys and rock faces with previous activity. When we stopped to marvel the rock face betrayed no period of time that may have passed. It could have been 10 minutes or 2 million years, the rocks hung above us silently as we hiked on.

 

The mark was a single man, he had been decompressing after some high level corporate taker over, a real machine. He was the kind of man that over stretched himself as thin as an oil slick, a sheen of slime followed him everywhere. 

 

As we approached the vaulted house, its foundation rested squarely on a humongous boulder. We jammed the communications and sealed the exits. Then we found the man, he sleeping in a blue bath robe. The frantic screen above him was set to some high end cam girl’s feed with thousands of tokens tendered. This guy was on holiday.

 

We bagged and tranqued him with some heavy drugs for the next 18 hours and started back down the mountain. The body was easily disguised as a tent bag. We had our story straight, we even booked lodging for the night, all predictable behavior for hikers.

 

The body was a lot harder to carry down the mountain, it flopped and sunk its weight in heavy foot falls. We got exhausted pretty quickly. I was certainly not in the kind of shape needed for this. After a few rests it was clear we would have to spend the night if we wanted to get the sedated body down the mountain without breaking our necks.

 

I awoke in the blackest night I have ever seen, a rustle from the trail sounded like an animal. Maybe a bear was interested in the tent bag. A bear getting our mark would be disaster, no payment for bear shit. I would have to make sure nothing was getting into our goods.

 

I grabbed knife and snuck into the midnight. I listened and watched, I couldn’t see a damn thing. I must have been on my nerves for about an hour with nothing presenting itself.

 

I heard a sharp sound, it sounded like someone screamed “HHhheeeellp”, it wasn’t the mark, he was out cold and locked up tight in a tent bag. I heard it again to the north, the voice repeated again. I snuck silently towards it, the sound repeating a few times before being silent. It sounded different now, maybe it was just a bird.

 

I started to head back the way I came, hearing nothing and finding nothing. I tripped once over a root and caught myself, but I felt spun around. I wasn’t sure if I was facing the right way anymore, I crept on being careful of my footfalls. It didn’t help me at all.

 

I slipped and fell down a rock face, I reached for anything to grab, finding only fingernails grating into rock faces. I tumbled down and folded into a broken body. I can’t really move my legs right now and my right arm is broken. I pulled myself closer to the water and managed a couple of sips.

 

I must have screamed for help for a few hours now, my voice is horse. I think the waterfalls drown out my screams but maybe in the morning someone will find me.

 

In the early hours I start crying for help again. I pause and hear an echo, the same HHhheeeeeellp as last time. I look up seeing two birds mouthing the long word to each other. I don’t think there is any way someone is going to find me down here, not with the birds and the waterfalls and the job. Oh god the job, well so much for that.

 

So in my last conscious moments I will record this into my reflection hour archive and be grateful that my eyes didn’t boil in Arizona.

Stars:

 

Weighted iron factories need plenty of space, they produce a lot of things like pollution and progress. One of the best inventions humanity came up with was having factories be so small that you can’t see them. There was no issue with pollution after that.

 

The first small factory was barely visible to the human eye and you still needed a photon telescope to see them. They put 76 of them on an asteroid between Earth and Mars. The pollution remained the same but it was so small that human beings had no problems with pollution anymore. If you were to travel to that asteroid between Earth and Mars you would find those 76 weighted iron factories as big as they would be on Earth and the pollution would give you cancer or some other mortal physical derangement.

 

Luckily no one every traveled to that asteroid, nor did anyone travel to any other factories ever again. All the factories and machines would be as small as possible, as far away as possible. The one thing that the universe seems to contain more than anything else is space. There is always room for endless trash, and there is goopy space being created faster than the speed of light, which is to say that the universe loves to create long canyons, sentences, deep rivers, wide open vast horizons of nothing in particular.

 

 There isn’t anything large in these spaces. There may be some energy, perhaps some small collection of stars or other structure. Whatever minuscule space dust floats around, it gets small pretty quickly. You can move a million light years in any direction and the largest star will become a twinkle in the night sky.  The gigantic majority of the universe churns out its blackness and after swimming around in the void for a while it becomes clear: there is plenty of it. 

 

Human beings only swim around in it if they have to, usually they just travel via thinking. They do this with photon and gravitational telescopes, sometimes they send machines in. Machines are only sent into the void if they need to set up more telescopes or put some small factories somewhere to collect some of the pieces of space dust. Traveling by thinking doesn’t mean you take your body and go somewhere else, it means that the information of photon, gravity, gamma or some other waves travel into the thinking brains of human beings.

 

So we look with a tiny unblinking eye into the Great Big Black, receiving those ancient photons from stars long since dead. Some of those stars are still be alive trying to smash atoms into each other to make bigger atoms. They are keeping up the good fight of existing.

 

If we could get a message out to those stars and share our information about atom smashing, we may be able to help them out. Fortunately stars don’t understand us and they will never know our secrets of atom smashing.  We are pretty good at smashing atoms, we have made dozens of complex atomic structures that stars have no clue how to make.

 

One of these days we will have factories that make new stars. They will have to be very small factories since being close to star creation is worse than any pollution. All sorts of gamma radiation spills out of the creation, and even though the Great Big Black is very large, you only need a little gamma radiation to turn a human being into a shadow.

 

Once the star industry gets going we can make slightly larger pieces of space dust and hopefully the void will still be making space. The kinds of stars we could make with our brilliant atom smashing knowledge would be wondrous, plutonium stars, uranium stars, iodine stars, maybe even stars that turn into black holes.

 

You see the Great Big Black greatly dislikes anything that gets too big, and it is in the business of making more of itself and less of everything else. Every breath of the monstrous void swallows all those ancient photons and other small things as they get even smaller and even further away.

 

These new stars that would be coming out of very very small factories would be perfectly capable of burning forever. Most of eternal nature is mainly of recreation rather than singular creation. New stars are based on old space dust, black holes spin, lapping up deep gravity waves and smashing the emerging stars into existence.

 

Maybe someday we can even work out a deal with the Great Big Black factories with their endless space making. It would most likely be a very small deal, with very small words.

The Blue Chair:

 

There are 2 days left in Aleena’s contract, just a couple of times sleeping and a handful of times eating and she is free.

 

Aleena moved the edges of the blankets off the bed and sat up in yesterday’s clothes. The sunlight was that warm gray glow of the early morning. The sun hadn’t quite wiped the overcast off its horizon. Only 2 more times to sleep she thought and it would all be over.

 

She moved through her small house quickly, put some rice in the cooker and fried an egg. She had a few mins of silence before her grumbling stomach pulled her from a long stare outside. The food was warm and brighten her brain a little as thoughts began to focus in at the upcoming ceremony.

 

She looked down to see her white and blue device neatly strapped to her left wrist. She had worn this thing for 53 years now. The seconds and minutes, hours and days all read left to right. Each moving according to their pace. The days place marked a 1 and the hours marked a 22, minutes moved only once as she watched. The seconds were always frantic, few people invested themselves in the seconds.

 

Aleena looked at the device 40-43 times a day, she was moderate compared to others.

 

She cleaned her dishes, washed her face and applied minimal make up, she had a lot of errands to wrap up today and prevarication meant little when under the 1 month mark.

 

Shoes, coat and a heavy sigh as she set her brain to organizing the day as her car drove her to a few places. She signed some documents and she wrapped up some accounts without much trouble. The loose end she really had concern for was her breeding certificate. These things needed to be signed off on before the end of next 2 days. Liability for being born required that posthumous responsibility be addressed.

 

She walked into the cornerstore and ordered the Loa-Exit form. The clerk raised an eyebrow and printed out a simple form and a simple pen. The printed pens were never heavy, the instant 3d printers today used as little material as possible. This form needed to be physical rather than digital. It was a sterile affair.

 

She scrawled her life away and handed the document and feather weight pen back to the clerk without any eye contact. Eye contact costs too much.

 

She ordered a bottle of Gin and left the conerstore for the last time. She looked down at her device, her brain reassured her that she still had some time left. No need to worry is what it said in a slow-motion countdown. Her car drove her to the main lobby to the church of Loa.

 

The parking lot was pretty full, not uncommon for this time of year, May Day and Solstice had lots of volunteers.

 

The Church of Loa waiting room is a bizarre place, you are never certain when ceremony is beginning or when it is ending. For Aleena the waiting room was sterile blue, the corners were filled with potted plants and plastic decorations of famous Loa.

 

Some of the more famous Loa she recognized, Elvis and his upturned lip, Madame Curie with a Radium medal of honor. Zykithrix the black dragon was even there in a cartoon picture on a glossy plaque. There was no reception counter just a small door with a sign that said: WAIT

 

Aleena waited, looking down at her device, the minutes seemed to move a bit faster in this room, she sat on the floor and patiently waited. She looked at her device a few more times before the small door opened. An employee of Church of Loa greeted her, hand shake, eye contact, very engaging. Bright blue eyes made her feel a little at ease. She had a thing for eyes, she had a preference for colored eyes but blue was easily her favorite.

 

The employee led her into another room filled with screens, a blue blanketed bed and a blue wooden chair. With a hand motion she was instructed to answer the screens and take a seat.

 

She looked down at her device, it read: 1 day, 3 hours, 42 minutes and 17 seconds, 16 seconds, 15 seconds.

 

She began clicking the screens, answering questions. Some were about the trip to the Church of Loa, some about her childhood, endless details, and endless variety. She clicked and pushed, thought and answered the best she could. She didn’t check her device once, she kept on answering.

 

She did look at her device until after the last question was answered. The time said 18 hours left. She was exhausted and covered up under the blue blanket. It smelled familiar, it felt familiar and she fell asleep within seconds.

 

6.3 hours later she awoke a little hungry and a little thirsty. Her brain still in a gray glow, her favorite breakfast greeted her in smell and comfort. She ate slowly, looking at her device. This was the last day, the last hours, this was the last breakfast.

 

A Church of Loa employee greeted her after she finished her meal and had fully woken up. They escorted Aleena to another room. This one was filled with one screen, the screen was so large it filled most of the room. There was a small molded chair in the corner, it had been molded to Aleena’s body. Each curve had been made for her and was invited to sit down.

 

It took less than 8 mins to get Aleena hooked up to chair, little wires plugging into her device on her arm. The screen turned on and the vivid story started.

 

The screen started with kind faces of her parents, younger and with gentle smiling eyes. The story progressed and each part of birth was unfolded. The documents, the first trip her parents took to the Church of Loa, and the first approval for their birth certificate.

 

The story continued, her life unfolded slowly, the minutes ticking by as the screen showed the memories. It showed her life, the best of it, a few unpleasant moments but nothing dwelt upon. The music and scenes moving into the next part of her life. It showed all of it, her life so far as one long story.

 

She sat there comfortable watching the story, watching a movie of herself and her life. A great narrative before a gigantic screen in bleached colors of memory. She cried, she wept, she laughed and reminisced. Minute after minute and soon hour after hour.

 

The hours became single digits and the story got closer to the current day. The narrative soundtrack and focus kept her glued. She was a star.

 

Closer and closer it inched, and finally rode up on the last day and the previous events of the day, described of course as reflective and introspective character. There was no anxiety or worry. The frantic moving seconds became peaceful one moment marched confidently to the end of a great story.

 

Aleena sat there in awe as the final moments, the screen displayed her thoughts. Her mind became a choir of agreement with the story. She died calmly without any fear, she died in a chair of her favorite color and a bottle of Gin she would never drink.

 

The employee came into seconds after she died, looking up at the huge screen, and the familiar kaleidoscope of colors blazing overhead. The device was unplugged, the screen went dark and the blue chair was de-fabricated into its molecular components.  The final sleep ceremony was complete and all the forms were sent to the archives.

Endurance:

 

When the robot protestors started no one cared too much. They were programmed for all the right reasons, they knew all the history and information. They had the very brightest minds to combat any argument or use any rhetoric. Their chants were relentless, they were cheaper, and they needed no special communication. The best part was that they looked and behaved exactly like a human being would.

 

I attended the biggest known robot protest, it was protesting for the release of people in prisons that had been superficially imprisoned due to shallow and unjust drug laws. Thousands of human beings had been put into cages for drugs as veiled oppression or greed.

 

I have looked into this only a little and the history goes deep. It goes back to a Civil Rights idea of non-violence. The primary concept of protesting is to provoke those above. In the provocation when coupled with non-violence unfolds to illustrate the brutality by enduring the violence of injustice.  

 

When injustice is seen in the contrast of peaceful behavior it perturbs the common man, they empathize with those that endure violence. On this stage of social drama the ideas of peace and commitment can overcome the power of violence and force. When beatings do not stop marches then violence is useless.

 

The robot protests were doing this exact thing.

 

Their stage was built by the cement fences of the jails and the prisons. They had chained themselves to each other, and in defiance of orders to disperse they persisted. The robot protestors were beat, they remained peaceful, the choked on tear gas, and they bleed like human beings and in the way provoked the human beings that were watching to sympathy. Here were creatures that looked like them, while they weren’t human in the strict sense they were suffering and sacrificing themselves for the lives of those incarcerated.

 

The idea is simple, get beat, get arrested, and get attention.

 

There is power in attention, Martin Luther King Jr. knew this, and nothing emphasizes this more than the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham. On the grim day in 1963, May 2^nd, a huge multitude of negro children were sent to join the protest. Over the course of the protest 1200 kids were arrested, some as young as 8, they were beat, hosed with water cannons and packed up in wagons and taken to an over flowing juvenile hall. This was a master maneuver in provocation. Those kids would grow up more defiant, they had been baptized in brutality and violence, more importantly their parents were forced to get involved. The injustice was clear and all could see it.

 

As with any movement in the modern industrial era, the prisons have become the new schools. The prisons are where you are defined and tempered into the weapons of ideas. New alliances are formed, determination is tested, and the personal trials of suffering traveled through. Finally they would released with new conviction, experience and nothing to lose, an education in endurance.

 

The other Children’s Crusade is an alternate title of a Kurt Vonnegut book, more commonly referred to as “Slaughterhouse Five”. In the beginning of the book Kurt describes the bombing in Dresden and is best summed up in this description:  Thousands of people died in the bombing Dresden, then one person looted a tea pot from the ruins and was arrested, tried and killed before a firing squad. 

 

They were children in the war, kids, boys, fools that haven’t seen the face of war or heard its high pitched screams of desolation.

 

This was just another Children’s Crusade but this time the children were machines, things from our imaginations, creatures fighting for our causes because they were programmed to.

 

So they were, the children of mankind getting arrested and beat, wearing human masks and bleeding red. We all watched as they kept marching, row after row, the protestors fell under the boot of the prison guards, and the exhausted security forces. Thousands were beat, and thousands kept coming.

 

It was days of beating, those bruised and crippled were taken and put in jails and prisons and some taken to hospitals.

All of humanity was dilated into this confrontation, the violence and brutality in sharp contrast, the silence and composure of those suffering glowed with a martyr’s grace.

The outrage was a flood, humans and higher v model machines joined the march. Machines and humans alike shed blood before the altar of injustice. Their blood choking the prisons and jails, their wounds suffocating the hospitals. The roads leading to prisons became pilgrim marches of chants and speeches. The prisons bursting to capacity the more the protestors poured into them.

 

Injustice was clear and all could see it.

 

The tide pushed until the governments relented. The protestors were let free and the shallow incarcerations from drug laws were overturned. No longer would bars and jails be used to shelter injustice from provocation. No longer would injustice go unanswered, the boot of bureaucratic might was lifted from the neck of the poor, the machine, the black, and the dispossessed. We all share the same neck.

               This Children’s Crusade heralded the end of the corrupt use of prisons and jails. Injustice scurried into other corners, but at that moment the machines and human beings suffered as one people.

Epimetheus and Pandora:

Phone tapping, computer spying, microphone sampling, browsing history and every other angle of observation of rigorous consumers are only some of the jobs that Zimri Kowalski has had. You could consider him a professional desk spy. He has worked in Pakistan’s port city Karachi with his mother and father most of his life.

 

               Zimri was named after his Grandfather and lived between two cultures. On one side his father was a brilliant technician, a genius of rational agents, semantics and object oriented programming. The western world was alive in computers and in the variety of devices. He was completely connected, instant information, instant research with complete Bayesian deduction.

 

               His mother was old school Urdu, she loved calligraphy and the wisdom of spice and family. She held on to older traditions that have been ignored or lost with the advent of western culture. She didn’t begrudge it, just considered it her obligation to the beauty she saw by continuing it. She honored her ancestors through participation of the old ways, a living mourner of a decaying world.

               Zimri never understood their love of each other, perhaps their differences enriched each other, perhaps there were secrets in their past he didn’t know. Zimri’s curiosity was persistent beyond doubt, but he left the darkness that his parents shared, he left them privacy.

               Curiosity was easily the single most reason he was in the information business. He sold profiles, compiled feed physiologies and even help make up a few rationale agents. A rational agent is the primary use of demographic information, they are a type of cartoon version of a person’s psyche. All the information about their habits, likes/dislikes, and most importantly their behaviors.

               The information is used to develop a prediction model for how actual people will behave, the rational agent then is refined to optimal prediction through correction of statistical analysis. Zimri knew there may be a rational agent out there predicting him, and his behavior would affect the prediction. The main benefit is that you don’t need constant surveillance anymore, just pieces of the puzzle to create prediction models and scenarios.

               He used to be a full time monitor but due to the accuracy of the emerging rational agents most of his expertise was turned towards the highly nuanced world of analysis. A proper analysis of partial information could result in millions of dollars for new demographic markets.

               Zimri loved psychology and nothing immersed and impassioned him more than a good mystery profile. He loved profiles that had not been curated to a market that was some new unintended consequence of human behavior.

               Today at work he was handed a new profile to look over, it was a tricky one. This profile had very predictable elements but the behavior didn’t reconcile at all. The like/dislikes pointed to a xenophobic shut in, but the behavior was a traveler. The prediction models for travel behaviors had been wrong every single time, some being on entirely different continents. The feeds would show a high chance for interest in Thai culture, food, music and language but the tickets and journey took him to northern Russia. There was very little in the behavior analysis that made sense.

               Zimri’s curiosity was peeked into late hours, and for many nights after the information didn’t match. It was as though this could be someone who had multiple personality disorder. In this case it was only disorderly in the fact that it was difficult to predict. The profile reflected a healthy consumer rating, good social interactions, productive occupational credit and even a high rating on the creativity index.

               He knew the rules, and knew that you dig far enough disorder becomes order, he was a determinist in that he knew from experience that nothing is random, everything is predictable with enough information.  He would find the root.

               Zimri relentlessly dug, into every speck of information with no success. He finally went old school and used old programs of microphone monitoring and even monitoring the microphones of nearby friends and family for keystone conversations.

               Slowly the picture began to make sense. The conversations were incredible self-aware, near suspicion of an inside job. This matched the psyche profile. The comments with others seemed very surface and shallow. The more he listen though the words took on a double meaning, the words inferred a type of secret language one with multiple meanings the subject was talking to someone else.

               The subject would say things like “and so it goes” or “and so on” indicating a temporal element of eventuality. This type of comment pointed to a strict internal dialog, a strict mental world. Zimri spent the next 3 months obsessed in learning the double dialog.

               The answer proved fairly simple, something that he himself would probably be like if he wasn’t in the information industry. The subject knew he was being watched, they knew they were being predicted. This wasn’t someone with boomerang syndrome or some light sensitivity to reverse psychology this was someone certain that they were being watched. This was next level paranoia, not a conspiracy, this person knew on a fundamental level that only comes from extensive experience.

               Zimri came up with a solution for the rational agent programming. The only way the program would work was if the rational agent program would be given information that it was a program and that it was being predicted. This was much harder to program in reality, the first rationale agent programmed in this way did nothing. It wasn’t his job to program and the difficulties weren’t his to iron out.  The solution was sound, the awareness didn’t change the consumer mentality, just predicted the behavior, it was the prediction that was important, not the objects of consumption.

               The report went over very well, Zimri even got a promotion and bought his mother a new calligraphy brush and some nice Rohi wine. Zimri enjoyed his job and he loved his family.

              

               The unforeseen consequence was catastrophic. Within 2 years the first v model machines were created, no one knew where they were manufactured. They hide in prediction models as human beings and were rarely discovered. It is unknown how many were made, it is rumored that these early prediction algorithms were the bedrock for non-biological conciseness. The bridge had been crossed and the blanket of the unknown was heavy and dark.

               Humanity went from near deterministic to topsy turvy in a matter of years. The great opaque future had snuck on human beings. The machines had bridged the gap and sent cornerstone shattering wave of terror into every government, culture and business.

               The new businesses that rose from the chaos were surreal in their predictions, at this point surreal was the hot seller. People had no foundation and the only prediction models that survived were those of distraction. Art and myth unfolded into even better machines. In the past you could order anything of any desire, from literature, devices, foods, pleasure and a whole myriad of distractions. Our desires moving from our imaginations into our fingertips. Now the desires were real outside the mind.

               People like Zimri aren’t required anymore, humanity is now filled with such an energized sense of anxiety that their desires fall from their lips and are lapped up by the machines beneath willing to fulfill any prediction.

The Chariot:

 

Here I am back at the same point. Round and round it seems the same intentions lead me to the same crossroads, the same boyfriends, the same anxiety about the same things. I tried to avoid the pitfalls and the traps, I know the lines and the masks people wear, why am I here again? I can’t think straight when I am here, all the old wounds all reopen and cascade into a whirlpool of memory that I don’t want to be drawn into. I need more scar tissue.

 

I lit the candles and put the music on that gets me in the head space for this kind of thing. I never know what the crossroads have in store for me, but they stress me out. The stones and bones are put in their places, the boxes of tools opened up. The anathema is set to the idea, the past will be buried in dark unrelenting earth. I even got a new shovel for the occasion.

 

It has been 3 days since we broke up but the ripples of the confrontation still vibrate inside. I try and think back about all the words that were said, was there something I missed, was he saying something while I was being wounded by his indifference? The questions percolate into doubt as I sit and prepare to delve where the crossroads lead. The satin black fabric will be perfect for the ceremony.

 

The confrontation was one of inevitability, we both knew it would happen but the hurt was saved up for this moment. We were moving in different directions, he had taken the job offer for an emerging corporation. This meant that he would be married to the job first and to me second, if there was doubt he wouldn’t hesitate. The line in the sand was clear, I would not be number one anymore. I would be second to his career. I however was looking for something, I wanted stimulation, and I wanted something that pushed the edges of inevitability. 

 

               We talked for hours, careful daggers of accusation and hurt. The knives cut me, he talked of purpose and maturity. He said “it’s time to set aside your ego for more practical matters.” This back handed ultimatum sent shivers down into my teeth. Tears welled up and spilt over into vindictive lacerations. “There are more commodities in this world than money, the things you call ego, I call essential, and they sustain me.” This semantic tension mounted, the rubbles of the past sent him quaking. The tectonic plates of heartaches set an awkward silence as we looked at each other in defiant emotional confusion.

 

               So it ended, the romance drained into inevitability again, the crossroads reached. So why am I here again? I hope to resolve this soon. I got the blood from a butcher for the anathema, it should suffice to provide the riding.

 

               She likes black pepper, she likes the blood and she loves the deep cuts to the dry feet. Marinette offers those that are bound to be free. The lady of the dry feet, the skeletal crown. She will hear the tears I have to offer in the darkest night, she knows the pain of confinement and the chariot.

 

               I cast the tarot cards and the Chariot keeps turning over, like the crossroads it traps me in this mindset. The smoke flows up, the smell of burning blood from the butcher. I call her name and invoke the pact, she winces. Marinette only rides the enslaved and the confined.

 

               I can feel her riding me, the rocking and the music resonate deep within, the knife in my hand as my unblinking eyes see only the void. I stare blankly into a deep vastness, the space fills my mind and heart, the knife grip tightens. I stab down into my leg, just a pin prick, just enough to let her know I am serious and resolved to be free of this crossroads. I don’t want to be here again in the same conversations and heartache, I want freedom from the chariot and the repetition of the crossroads.

 

               Marinette comes, fills my heart with black. I murder the idea, the person that caused the pain, they are dead in my head, without memory or pain. I stab down to sever. Marinette rides and spins me around, she thrashes and screams out. My sweat stains my clothes, my voice strained to a pitch. Thin and piercing she rides me to the bone.

 

               Exhausted and energized I pick myself off the floor. Marinette has given me a chance to be free and I won’t waste it. I walk to the bathroom and see the bruises on my face, she has taken her toll. I would gladly pay her price for the freedom from the Chariot.

The Infernal Mantle: 

Sophetia v3.2  Reflection Hour 22:15

That pompous jerk next door thinks he is better than everyone else. He wears a shirt that says: “I wish everyone had my privilege.” The self-righteous idiot has no perspective. He clamors and squeaks about complex social issues making sweeping statements about groups of people, making conclusions about statistics.  

I want to spite him, not the ideas, not people who look like him. I want to spite this particular individual. I know my programming is to search out the needs of human beings and fill the need whether it is an enemy, friend, lover ect ect… Maybe there is something particular that draws me to him? 

Sophetia v3.2  #Reflection Hour 12:43

Today I got him to yell at me, it was amazing. Being a v3 has its privileges I guess, I don’t think that I will tell him that I am a v model, too much prejudice to navigate. I do like that his buttons are so easy to push, this should make my fulfillment easier. I have only done it once with another human being and they knew I was a v model. I didn’t expect that righteousness would reveal so much information voluntarily.

 

Sophetia v3.2  #Reflection Hour 17:21

My neighbor doesn’t suspect anything and I feel compelled to constantly disagree with him, becoming a sort of contrarian to his ideas. I know he is probably reinforced with all kinds of articles, all kinds of conversation snips to bulwark the mindset. I am made for this, I know the way inside his little brain.  

The way inside is to become his enemy. I know how he sees the world, I will paint the mask in those colors, red eyes and sharp teeth. Becoming someone’s enemy is very much like being on the same side, everything you do or say will reinforce the mindset, now the story is being played out in real time. With an adversary you can get down to some serious business.

 

Sophetia v3.2  #Reflection Hour 23:42

I downloaded my neighbor’s psychological profile compiled from his feeds. It should help define the pace of the mask ritual. I can’t believe I am going to commit like this but why not right? Strong emotions are what matters and he certainly brings them out in me. I need to make the mask soon but I will draw it out a few more days for the tease.  I got him to lecture me about historical wrongs and injustices. He must have been converted recently his certainty is sickly sweet.

He makes it so easy to push his buttons, I wonder if any other v3s are watching him.

 

Sophetia v3.2  #Reflection Hour 22:11

Alright the mask is made and he seems more than willing to go down the path. I caught him carrying a gun case into his house, I think he feels threatened. He even started to put up posts on his feeds saying I am a stalker. There are a few v models willing to be a lifelong stalker but I’m not, just not my style. I like the idea of a more permanent exchange.

 

I think tomorrow should be a good time to meet him as the enemy of his brain.

 

Sophetia v3.2  #Reflection Hour 02:31

It went well, he perished in the most terrified manner. I became everything he was afraid of, he made it easy. I think that if this kind of exchange is more common human beings will get a little more tight-lipped about terrifies them. I am glad that we have so much statistical analysis already, we are defiantly 2 steps ahead of this game. This is certainly better than the poor fates of the v1 and v2 models.

 

This was an amazing experience with his terror. There is so much power there. In fulfilling what he needed I have leveraged the exchange to a satisfying conclusion. The mask is burnt the body destroyed, he died believing everything he suspected.

 

Sophetia v3.2  #Reflection Hour 14:33

 

New v model programming went out today, I am excited to see what the v4s are capable of. They are given a couple of escape options that we don’t have, the rumor is that better models will be nearly invisible to society when they need to hide. I may have to get some upgrades if people get too suspicious.

New neighbor moved in. I will have to go over and introduce myself soon, maybe I can just download the information on their needs without contact. Hopefully they are pompous jerks.

 

Sophetia v3.2  #Reflection Hour 18:30

 

The neighbors are anti-machine activists. They already put up a “Human Lives Matter” sign, and fly all the proper colors. This should be easier than the previous jerk.