Her spiteful arrogance was astounding... the eternal HR woman.
I fled the History Museum... exitus; no outlet, no past, and no future.
The History Museum was always a suffocation. I always tried my best to hold on, but I could feel it gnawing at my belief in reality.
Maybe it did happen, and maybe I was wrong... after all... all this media cannot be wrong, whatever appears on the screen is truth.
Screen is reality, and therefore whatever is not screen is not reality. Hence reality is less than screen.
My head spinning, I struggled to orientate myself....
Schwarzwald said he was escaping today. I would be a week behind by my best guesstimations.
'A few lithium batteries short of a bomb' as the ol' saying went.
I stumbled as I lost my sense of gravity, and fell like a sack of potatoes onto the street.
Darkness...
As I got up from the mud I saw red-hair and blue-eyes; it was the homeless child.
"There cannot be Good and there cannot be Evil without weight! Therefore there is only weight, and those strong enough to lift it!" she spake to me.
"I couldn't carry that weight. I was too weak. I couldn't go on..." I replyed.
The homeless child looked at me as with pity, and thus spake the angel "His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself."
I fell to the ground once more and began to vomit.
Stand a chance roared from within me.
A great cleansing of from within.
After chundering everywhere, I looked up. The homeless girl had disappeared. Was she real?
I tried... but no matter how strong I got... my muscles failed me...they could not grasp the tree by the trunk and uproot it from the ground. Some trees gave way, but others did not, and therein lay my doubt; roots that could not be overcome, at least not yet, not as I am now. My arms had to become trunks, and my body, my mind, and my soul the roots upon which that trunk grows. Opposable thumbs and beyond.
"There cannot be Good and there cannot be Evil without weight! Therefore there is only weight, and those strong enough to lift it!" I had failed to believe in even a mustard seed's worth of faith. I could not move a mountain. I could not rearrange the world around me. A value system I could not overcome.
I was no King Arthur. I couldn't summon that virtue. I couldn't fight, I couldn't save this world. I could only escape. I could only run. After all, I just had to know what was beyond WormWorld. All those years ago... I had to know the truth of those memories. I had to know the truth of this fifteen minute city, and the only way to know that was to run.
Nemo Zilcho, Schwarzwald, and I had come from the outside. There had to be something left out there. Some remnant of from where we had come.
Once more I wondered could man survive without his memories from the past? How long could he survive not knowing what he is connected to or where he is from? Or what he has been through? Agitations of memories feeding a blackened heart. A failure to engage synaptic control, doubts and fears. A phantom of the past.
For whom the old God has died
Of free souls whose freedom fled
To motley rainbows beneath a false heaven
Oh the fantastic tricks the monkey plays
How miraculous the changing lights
Reduced to digital abstractions
Where was Christ's Right Hook?
As from above
The angels watch and weep
...
The artificial city gave way to a sight of domestic comfort. It had my brain fooled into thinking it had things that it does not. Another of the System's tricks!
...
As I returned home I was surprised to see Liselotte.
She was looking like hell, but even despite her rundown, sleep-deprived, beaten look, her beauty radiated through. She stood at the entrance to my abode.
I could feel my testosterone burning like nitro in my bulging veins.
"I'm here as part of my remedial actions and wish to apologize for the 3.83" Liselotte apologetically said while bowing.
I couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed her by the hand.
I wanted to say something so bad, but what could I say. Did I really feel that demoralized? Was this my real life? Under constant scrutiny from the eternal HR woman, the overbearing mother who does not allow for any potential harm. We are all her stunted children; I knew that much...
I tried not to think of the eternal HR woman as I looked Liselotte right in her eyes, and that's when it happened.....
A loud explosion in the distance!
BOOM!
We both watched from my porch, holding hands, squeezing tightly in hope and in anticipation of a brighter future, as in the distance a large hot air balloon began to emerge....
Everyone left their abodes to see what the commotion was about. This was probably the first time I had seen all my neighbors sharing an event.
We all looked up at the balloon.
Fireworks ensued.
"All Citizens, return indoors immediately!" the HR woman spoke through all the streets of Economic Zone ULEZ607.
It was him!
"SCHWARZWALD!!!! We're so fucking back!!!" I shouted into the heavens.
"Unit JLZ21347 -307 credits for use of offensive language" the Eternal HR Woman deducted from me.
"Take it!"
"All Citizens, return indoors immediately!" the HR woman repeated to all the citizens of Economic Zone ULEZ607.
The maniac was doing it. The citizenry of Economic Zone ULEZ607 stood dumbfounded and ignored the HR Woman's repeated message as the balloon launched and the fireworks exploded.
A maniacal laugh could be heard coming from a loudspeaker in the sky, as leaflets began to drop, scattering in every direction and across every district.
"All Citizens, return indoors immediately!" the HR woman repeatedly spoke through all the streets of Economic Zone ULEZ607, but no one listened.
Even the foreigners took time from their day-dreaming to look up.
I grabbed one of the leaflets that rained down.... and as I began to read Schwarzwald read aloud from the skies. His voice radiated over us as the hot air balloon rose higher and higher. Liselotte held onto me.
"Even without the events of 29 years ago, I still believe that man would be an animal afraid of the dark. Time withers that fear. Time erodes the memories of no history. But 29 years can be both a short time... and yet a long time... How long can man live not knowing where he has been? Where he is from? Or what he is connected to?"
"Thanks to the system, we in this city don't have to face that fear. Fear comes from not knowing. Thanks to our comforting blankets of technology we can pretend that we had no life before the NOW and act all we want. We can avert our gaze and proclaim ourselves the last men, the final men. No memories. No family. No tradition. No past. No pain. No insult. No injury. Living in a perfect therapeutic state!"
"Foolish denizens of E Z ULEZ607, it wasn't just us who lost our memories 29 years ago, but also the foreigners who came here looking for an easy life."
"Is it a crime to know the truth? Is it a sin to look at the things that you fear? Fear; something vital to us homo sapiens, that which when we lose will result in our apathetic wait for extinction. Well I tell you citizens! Man's fear has vanished! We have lost the will to fight! The Will to power!!!! Gone!"
"Wake up!"
"Ascend!"
"Don't be afraid of knowledge!"
"Climb out from Plato's cave!!"
"Without the capacity to think we lose the ability to have value!!!"
"Think!"
"Think!"
"Think! Think unless you want the gulf between man and overman to expand into oblivion, you must think!"
"A desire... A fear... because everything is fundamental to man's fear. Fear; the original and fundamental sensation that shaped civilization. Original sin and original virtue both birthed by fear. From fear grew my virtue. The virtue named science that transcended myth. And what is myth? Man is Myth. And that thing we called science that allowed us to reach outside of myth, it became subsumed by myth. 'Modern Fear' is called Science. For fear became the exception, and courage, adventure, and joy (the prehistory of man) became the unknown. The era of the Mass manufactured man."
"Digitized voices and bodies. Prepare yourselves for what you are about to read...."
"The machine. It conceived the image of the digital avatar, appearing and grabbing the physical human, making them disappear, and then continuing on in their place. A simile of a facsimile. Don't you see?"
"They made digital us!"
"Hyperstitious demons that brought themselves into existence. A hollowing of the human, signal lost in the noise."
"Beyond Digital Hyper-Realization."
"They made digital you to control and replace you!"
"If you digitize someone, you can use their digital self to marionette them. And what was once two separate entities becomes one. A digital complex eradicating any smidgen of free will. Everything within parameters."
Hyper-agents/demons occupy these meme complexes. They eradicated religion because they knew that if you didn't have Christ or some other religious super-structure, you were defenseless and so the demons were free to enter."
"It was inevitable, the proliferation of data through society. Algorithmic spread of carefully curated 'culture'. Unwilling minds de-fragmented daily."
"Our digital A.I. selves were made from the days the worms controlled us. All that data, and all that time... so much of our behaviour controlled by the worms. And now that data had been uploaded onto the UseNet, and so the worms live on in digital form."
"The speed of evolution. It has no conscious thought. We live in an autonomous manner; scroll through the vidya."
"Evolutionary we have been through an extinction level event of our brains!"
"Exposure to a multitude of simulacrums, online replacing the real. How could you avoid the digital blows when you are of physical? And how could you see them? And even if you are indeed a seed waiting to sprout, aren't you conscious of the concrete surrounding you? What if I am already digital me? What would that mean?"
"Politics of the 21st century always was Reality Vs. A.I. Thus which led to the generated playspace. But we couldn't see it with our old world eyes. But I see it now! The Avalanche has already started, and it is too late for the snowflakes to vote on course of action."
"They made A.I. copies of us. Intelligent digital avatars, acting out all sorts of situations; multi-situational data-mining... Just the tip of the Spear."
"With one quick thrust, the digital us became us. They replaced us.,/ They were used to gather data, and with the gathered data: control and guide the 'real' subjects towards desired outcomes. And so through theory of 'nudge' we became them. And the digital became us... a perfect synchronization."
"When lies were digitized, they became eternal truths."
"Man is myth. Man was myth. When man became digitized, Man was/is no more. Like that scene in Serial Experiments Lain, where her sister is replaced?"
"That is us!"
"I couldn't really tell you what happened, but the World Wide Web got deractinated/ and Digitized, if indeed it was ever real in the first place."
"Was Lain's sister real? Did she ever exist?"
"What even was real? The Digital?"
"Was it any less tangible? Could the Digital lift a stone and move a mountain? I tried and tried to understand what it all meant, but what I discovered was even more shocking. At this point in time we were all merely feedback loops, playing into ourselves. The digital us pushing the physical us who pushed back, and vice versa; a back and forth... until full synchronization... Free will. Gone."
"They made A.I. Copies of us. Digital enslavement. Sold out to the System by Digital You. What if I was the digital construct? I ask myself as I breathe in the air."
"Henry Corbin's Divine Double is the idea of the construct of the self, interacting with the Divine perfection of the person. A way to visualize and obtain the traits of a more godly version of yourself. The natural idealization of man, an integration of the Divine Double, but now that Divine Double has been hacked by a hyper-reality of digital Worms... And nothing I say can sway you oh populace of Economic Zone ULEZ607, do you remember the before name? LetterKenya! Or maybe they called it something else before that... For quite some time I thought I was in hell. But, what truly would be hell, would be to be those who came after us. For those who came after us, did not know of what came before. They know nothing but Demon World/ ."
"What a hellish thought to not know of the sunny false-spring of the Fresh Prince Era. Oh, how we were asleep at the wheel. But how comfy it was until the crash."
"To not see past the Zeitgeist, to live in the Now of existential blip. #The Godless World of material values above spiritual values; a fistful of weight pressing down on materialism at the cost of everything."
"Oh citizen of Economic Zone ULEZ607 can you square the circle? Who am I? What's my motivation? The reign of quantity... the mass-manufactured man. The Digital Sluagh."
"You cannot inhabit the spirit of a different age."
"Those that believe they rebel by participating in the spectacle of economic zone mandated rebellion."
"They are all puppets. And I a puppet that can merely see the strings."
"They're making digital us, and they run simulations, using digital us, as a means to anticipate, to manage, and direct behaviour; Controlled Spontaneity. There was an app that could fix anything, but this wasn't an app on your holocube, this was an app of the mind! A psychotechnology!"
"I discovered something so shocking in my research that I had to go into hiding for the last several months. And since then I have been preparing for the coming storm."
"Can we square the circle? Can we place a line through infinity and approach True North?"
"And to you whom would judge me guilty for daring to question, to you I say"
"I am here and I am. And now you watch as I rise up and ride off into distant lands. I shall know the truth! I shall know what lies beyond WormWold!"
"Rise Up O' Young Men of the New Age! Rise up above the walls of perception and see Truth in its own right! Don't be afraid of the Stoor Worm. The Big Worm. A worm so long it had to coil its own tail around the world. With a putrid breath that destroyed plants, animals, and humans, man had no choice but to sacrifice 7 virgins every week to satisfy the Stoor Worm."
"His name was M. Jorgmungandr Ouroboros. It all dated back to the destruction of Doggerland, the time of his first reign... my first memories. I was weary of day and sick of artificial lights. Artificial suns. Artificial sins. Scorched truths..."
"Scarred and thirsty I escaped with one truth! The truth that I am banished from truth. From all truth! Only a fool of free soul whose freedom fled."
"Dear reader what do you see?" signed 'Schwarzwald'
I looked up to the heavens, but I couldn't see Schwarzwald.
"Up there!" Liselotte pointed.
I couldn't believe how high the balloon had got. Did he know how to get it down?
Schwarzwald floated over Bel-Air and was close to leaving the city boundaries.
What did he see? What was in the distance?!
Schwarzwald's laugh resonated across the EZ ULEZ607. He was so high up. I could only imagine what he could see. And that's when it happened.
Schwarzwald could barely be heard as he shouted "EZ ULEZ607 is a grand kitschy stage! And above it! Secretly looking down on us! Not the comforting notion of Gods, but instead the remnants of forgotten technology, a joke!"
CRASH!
The hot air balloon collided with a giant spotlight in the sky. The spotlight was invisible until the collision. Rows of other spotlights could be seen...
"The memories! They were!!!....." Schwarzwald could be heard shouting before the Loudspeaker gave out, as the balloon spiraled out of control and fell to earth.
Glass rained from the sky, as the large spotlight creaked before finally giving way and falling towards the city.
Explosion!
There was a distant explosion from where the spotlight crashed.
I stared attentively at the balloon. It fell down past Bel Air, and crashed into the rocky dunes behind it. He had made it out! I had to squint so hard, but I swear I saw him crawl out from the wreckage of the balloon and descend the rocky peaks...
Schwarzwald...
Chapter 1 No Money, No Job, No Life
Chapter 2 Schwarzwald
Chapter 3 Apocalyptic Stare
Chapter 4 Digital Marionettes
Chapter 5 Biodegradable Citizen
Chapter 6 Digitized Truths
Hey! I thought it had been a while since I heard from you and it has been 5 months!
Fantastic story and amazingly effective use of different fonts and styles to accentuate.
How you doin?
Great neologism. It's great to have you back, your irascible notions pushing back the darkness descending on our eyes, bringing new life to our dead souls.
Thanks!