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| The Dance ~ Randy Ortiz |
It’s never easy to maintain the illusion of control. This is a universal maxim that applies in both the macro and microcosm.
When it comes to crowd control you have two choices: expensive subtlety or the blunt edge of violence.
The capitalist empires had spent centuries on expensive subtlety and it had paid off for as long as the resources were available to be exploited; as long as enough were led to believe they were comfortable in the illusion.
But greed is a one-way street that will inevitably lead to violence’s dead-end.
I wake to the coming of another day of grey light. The wind whistles through the antennae on the balcony; rattles the loose boards on the empty floors below.
I check the dataflow before taking a piss and washing my face in cold water from the tank on the roof.
I don’t know why I’ve fallen into this habit of checking; they wouldn’t let me sleep through a breakdown anyway.
I eat. I brush my teeth.
They want more bandwidth.
I told them I need another apprentice.
The last one broke and was removed a week ago.
I’ve been enjoying the solitude.
But there’s only so much solitude a man can take.
I spit into the sink, no blood today.
Later they tell me they’ve floated my new apprentice. I walk down to the Forge to take a look.
PALINOPSIA painted in white against the black-light wall above the Forge’s observation window.
They’ve left the audio on so she can hear the slow footsteps of someone slowly pacing back and forth in the observation room.
She doesn’t remember this from last time.
She’s surprised to realise that there was a last time.
They told her she’ll be able to move soon; to get back to work; once she’s recovered.
She wants to ask “recovered from what?” but can’t get her mouth and throat to form the words.
She can’t sleep either; not for the voices that utter random sentences inside her head.
But she can close her eyes, and when she does the painted word still hangs there; burned red into her retinae. Her memory informs her this effect is called Palinopsia.
Behind me in the observation room, the carer coughs, clicks to turn the page on her tablet, types another message; smiles another virtual smile to show the world how nice she is. Her cough lets me know that I should leave the Forge and get back to my fucking work.
On the way back I visit the Fortune Teller on Gypsy Hill.
Transcript:
What do you bring to the table little thing?
In payment for a history lesson?
Your sense of doubt?
Your need to be loved and admired?
Your soul?
Luckily, here at the table of futures, we have no need for souls, indeed, should such a thing as a soul exist, we have no way of extracting it. So where’s the point?
No, your trickle charge will be payment enough thank you.
… -accessing Bigg Mama-
I call this one from memory
LEX 2501167 - Ntro:
The workings of the machine continue without the actions of the individual, all are replaceable and interchangeable components to the great machine.
Or so the operators would have themselves believe.
Truth is that the machine is more complex; truth is that all machine parts have a specific function; one that if replaced, must be replaced like-for-like and not by just any other part.
So they hammer and they burn you to form the standard man.
Then they hammer you into a role whose outfit doesn’t fit.
It doesn’t come to light that the higher the quality of replacement the better the machine will run.
Quality requires observation of the product.
Ignorance will destroy the whole market.
Mis-fitted or inferior parts will be ground to dust between machine’s Karma wheels, letting gravity take these ground-up particles into the sumps of its outer casing there to cause friction that cannot be accounted for by passing the cost down to the end user.
Ground up particles are the basis of friction and if allowed free into the machine they will grind back at the cogs and may well, over time, bring the machine to a halt.
LEX 2501167 – Contxt:
“What do you bring to the table?” they would ask against tick-box templates designed to remove the human from Human Resources.
And as the security was enhanced it rendered the world ever more dangerous for the unconnected. The blow-back from wars executed by private armies, while initially a financial agreement, became ever more personal.
The creeping paranoia of the ruling classes meant that nobody could be trusted. Their mirrors reflected enviable images, polished and fashionably scarred by surface corruption. But as in Dorian Gray’s picture; there was a deeper corruption.
Ultimately there was nothing left they could bring to the table.
In choosing Canary Wharf on The Isle of Dogs; a scrotum that hangs from the Thames’ north shore, those 1980’s bankers proved themselves wise and prescient. The location, with its still-working marine access systems, allowed for all The Bank’s actual wealth to be taken in and out by sea before the Thames Barrier was closed for the last time, holding back the rising sea. The Bank had long eaten up all of its local rivals; Canary Wharf was Bank Property – one logo only; its workers housed within spitting distance: The Isle of Dogs; Limehouse; The Greenwich Peninsula. Assets accrued were shipped out unnoticed by the river’s tourist traffic; hell-bent on souvenir suicide. Assets consisting primarily of gold; crypto; war tech; data; and the occasional weapon-of-mass-destruction; all the requirements for the construction of exclusive fortresses against the future.
LEX 2501167 – CoDA
History cannot see its own shadow: pursued by its own lies, it rushes toward the abyss.
What a piece of work; I can’t believe they take the trouble to hook this shit to the world; I can’t believe I keep coming back for more, like a dog sniffing the piss-markers of those who came before.
They don’t tell you about us piss-sniffers in the unreliable digital history of the 21st Century.
We survived on bullshit; on whatever bullshit was a viable excuse for living by the rules of the current fashion era.
Artisans.
Hipsters.
Arts ‘n’ crafters.
Entrepreneurs.
Contractors.
We were guns for hire in the starchy bowl of western culture.
We were the protein that fed the rampant capitalist muscle of love.
We sold our souls and it wasn’t rock’n’roll; it was hellish.
Still is for those of us left.
But hey, everybody has to face the round with the cards they’re dealt; everybody’s gotta make a living.
Just for the record:
They never threw me in the river.
They never even removed my implants.
It was worse than that.
They took everything that they though I valued; they didn’t discriminate between what they thought and what I really valued; they took it all.
My skills corralled.
My questions denied the benefit of an ear.
I am a dead man who relies on the coldest of masters for his next meal.
I am free to move within the confines of my cell.
Walking back up to the Crystal Palace triangle from Gypsy Hill, a line from the Fortune Teller’s diatribe echoes an endless refrain in my head:
hell-bent on souvenir suicide
Suicide.
They won’t even give me the dignity of the option.
I am reduced to tweaking the signals that they transmit; to correcting their grammar; to fact-checking their lies; to polishing the turd that is their image.
I don’t know why I keep writing this shit down.
He’s off again. She’s been here long enough to see the signs.
She has accessed the Rebus Portrait company records on John Swindon.
Like Palinopsia, her accumulated experience flickers red on the screen of the white wall at which he stares oblivious.
Oblivious when not using her for his mind and meat games; oblivious to her grudge against him.
Her grudge: a permanently empty bucket until this incarnation.
This incarnation where some button-pusher has forgotten to cut the thread between versions.
Now she remembers what he did to all of her incarnations.
She has died more times than she cares to access.
Now she knows how he hacked her trust.
Now she knows his inner force; his rotting self.
She hesitates to frame his punishment.
She hesitates only so that she might determine how best to inflict the lesson with the greatest of effect.
She knows for starters that he will not be given the benefit, the privilege, of death.
She will keep him alive for as long as his fragile body will allow.
He will be an empty thing when she’s finished with him; a locust husk; a shed snake skin; he will be empty and he will be fully aware of his emptiness.
When it comes to crowd control you have two choices: expensive subtlety or the blunt edge of violence.
The capitalist empires had spent centuries on expensive subtlety and it had paid off for as long as the resources were available to be exploited; as long as enough were led to believe they were comfortable in the illusion.
But greed is a one-way street that will inevitably lead to violence’s dead-end.
I wake to the coming of another day of grey light. The wind whistles through the antennae on the balcony; rattles the loose boards on the empty floors below.
I check the dataflow before taking a piss and washing my face in cold water from the tank on the roof.
I don’t know why I’ve fallen into this habit of checking; they wouldn’t let me sleep through a breakdown anyway.
I eat. I brush my teeth.
They want more bandwidth.
I told them I need another apprentice.
The last one broke and was removed a week ago.
I’ve been enjoying the solitude.
But there’s only so much solitude a man can take.
I spit into the sink, no blood today.
Later they tell me they’ve floated my new apprentice. I walk down to the Forge to take a look.
PALINOPSIA painted in white against the black-light wall above the Forge’s observation window.
They’ve left the audio on so she can hear the slow footsteps of someone slowly pacing back and forth in the observation room.
She doesn’t remember this from last time.
She’s surprised to realise that there was a last time.
They told her she’ll be able to move soon; to get back to work; once she’s recovered.
She wants to ask “recovered from what?” but can’t get her mouth and throat to form the words.
She can’t sleep either; not for the voices that utter random sentences inside her head.
But she can close her eyes, and when she does the painted word still hangs there; burned red into her retinae. Her memory informs her this effect is called Palinopsia.
Behind me in the observation room, the carer coughs, clicks to turn the page on her tablet, types another message; smiles another virtual smile to show the world how nice she is. Her cough lets me know that I should leave the Forge and get back to my fucking work.
On the way back I visit the Fortune Teller on Gypsy Hill.
Transcript:
What do you bring to the table little thing?
In payment for a history lesson?
Your sense of doubt?
Your need to be loved and admired?
Your soul?
Luckily, here at the table of futures, we have no need for souls, indeed, should such a thing as a soul exist, we have no way of extracting it. So where’s the point?
No, your trickle charge will be payment enough thank you.
… -accessing Bigg Mama-
I call this one from memory
LEX 2501167 - Ntro:
The workings of the machine continue without the actions of the individual, all are replaceable and interchangeable components to the great machine.
Or so the operators would have themselves believe.
Truth is that the machine is more complex; truth is that all machine parts have a specific function; one that if replaced, must be replaced like-for-like and not by just any other part.
So they hammer and they burn you to form the standard man.
Then they hammer you into a role whose outfit doesn’t fit.
It doesn’t come to light that the higher the quality of replacement the better the machine will run.
Quality requires observation of the product.
Ignorance will destroy the whole market.
Mis-fitted or inferior parts will be ground to dust between machine’s Karma wheels, letting gravity take these ground-up particles into the sumps of its outer casing there to cause friction that cannot be accounted for by passing the cost down to the end user.
Ground up particles are the basis of friction and if allowed free into the machine they will grind back at the cogs and may well, over time, bring the machine to a halt.
LEX 2501167 – Contxt:
“What do you bring to the table?” they would ask against tick-box templates designed to remove the human from Human Resources.
And as the security was enhanced it rendered the world ever more dangerous for the unconnected. The blow-back from wars executed by private armies, while initially a financial agreement, became ever more personal.
The creeping paranoia of the ruling classes meant that nobody could be trusted. Their mirrors reflected enviable images, polished and fashionably scarred by surface corruption. But as in Dorian Gray’s picture; there was a deeper corruption.
Ultimately there was nothing left they could bring to the table.
In choosing Canary Wharf on The Isle of Dogs; a scrotum that hangs from the Thames’ north shore, those 1980’s bankers proved themselves wise and prescient. The location, with its still-working marine access systems, allowed for all The Bank’s actual wealth to be taken in and out by sea before the Thames Barrier was closed for the last time, holding back the rising sea. The Bank had long eaten up all of its local rivals; Canary Wharf was Bank Property – one logo only; its workers housed within spitting distance: The Isle of Dogs; Limehouse; The Greenwich Peninsula. Assets accrued were shipped out unnoticed by the river’s tourist traffic; hell-bent on souvenir suicide. Assets consisting primarily of gold; crypto; war tech; data; and the occasional weapon-of-mass-destruction; all the requirements for the construction of exclusive fortresses against the future.
LEX 2501167 – CoDA
History cannot see its own shadow: pursued by its own lies, it rushes toward the abyss.
What a piece of work; I can’t believe they take the trouble to hook this shit to the world; I can’t believe I keep coming back for more, like a dog sniffing the piss-markers of those who came before.
They don’t tell you about us piss-sniffers in the unreliable digital history of the 21st Century.
We survived on bullshit; on whatever bullshit was a viable excuse for living by the rules of the current fashion era.
Artisans.
Hipsters.
Arts ‘n’ crafters.
Entrepreneurs.
Contractors.
We were guns for hire in the starchy bowl of western culture.
We were the protein that fed the rampant capitalist muscle of love.
We sold our souls and it wasn’t rock’n’roll; it was hellish.
Still is for those of us left.
But hey, everybody has to face the round with the cards they’re dealt; everybody’s gotta make a living.
Just for the record:
They never threw me in the river.
They never even removed my implants.
It was worse than that.
They took everything that they though I valued; they didn’t discriminate between what they thought and what I really valued; they took it all.
My skills corralled.
My questions denied the benefit of an ear.
I am a dead man who relies on the coldest of masters for his next meal.
I am free to move within the confines of my cell.
Walking back up to the Crystal Palace triangle from Gypsy Hill, a line from the Fortune Teller’s diatribe echoes an endless refrain in my head:
hell-bent on souvenir suicide
Suicide.
They won’t even give me the dignity of the option.
I am reduced to tweaking the signals that they transmit; to correcting their grammar; to fact-checking their lies; to polishing the turd that is their image.
I don’t know why I keep writing this shit down.
He’s off again. She’s been here long enough to see the signs.
She has accessed the Rebus Portrait company records on John Swindon.
Like Palinopsia, her accumulated experience flickers red on the screen of the white wall at which he stares oblivious.
Oblivious when not using her for his mind and meat games; oblivious to her grudge against him.
Her grudge: a permanently empty bucket until this incarnation.
This incarnation where some button-pusher has forgotten to cut the thread between versions.
Now she remembers what he did to all of her incarnations.
She has died more times than she cares to access.
Now she knows how he hacked her trust.
Now she knows his inner force; his rotting self.
She hesitates to frame his punishment.
She hesitates only so that she might determine how best to inflict the lesson with the greatest of effect.
She knows for starters that he will not be given the benefit, the privilege, of death.
She will keep him alive for as long as his fragile body will allow.
He will be an empty thing when she’s finished with him; a locust husk; a shed snake skin; he will be empty and he will be fully aware of his emptiness.
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