Friday, November 16, 2018

'38 Rue Utopia ~ Ep.33

Tell me what happened to the opium of your word
Let me put my finger in the cavern of his mouth
~ Nakhane ‘Interloper’ 2018

Incident at the Edge of Town ~ Simon Stålenhag

All those years of fracking have badly fucked the water-table.
Mud’s the common language of earth and liquid; it’s the lingua franca of the lowlands, exacerbated by the lack of sunlight’s dehydrating force.
The mud gets blacker as they approach Bigmark’s perimeter; black and smelly, like the workshop where they keep the tractor; oleaginous and rusting.
It is reported, on the wires, that the watchtowers are the biggest hurdle for those who would enter Bigmark without a permission chip.
The watchtowers are the ultimate fence, or so Bigmarkian Security believes. Since none of those who entering or escaping Bigmark will ever have any way of enlightening BS to the ineffectualness of their pretty laser-beam fence, and since the Kulture doesn’t really care whether you go or stay within its loving arms, and since the only way to tell if someone is not chipped is by directly observing them while checking for a chip, and since the watchtowers contain any number of cameras and chip-readers, BS are content with the efficiency of their immigration measures.
No chip?
Black mud.
Black clothing.
A dash of code fetish.
Hello Bigmark.
Past the watchtowers Daniel and Alec still have some way to go to reach the slab upon which Bigmark topside is built but soon there will be tracks, then roads, such as they are.
Alec looks back at the watchtower, a single spotlight describing arcs in a seemingly random pattern. He never thought he’d ever come back, no after all they’d had to give up getting away.
The heavy odour of crude marks their proximity to the tank farms and the refinery beyond. It will require a 20km detour around the gigantic plant since the security fence there, unbolstered by BS propaganda, is lethal.
At least walking is easier on the slab.


Nakhane
Interloper

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