"It should be a cult," Adabeie said, smiling and rocking his chair forward to rest his palms on the table before him. "It's the only way to make sure that no one can call us credible."
Manahem considered Adabeie for a moment before laughing. "It's brilliant, really," he said, "And furthermore we should explicitly deny any association with truth or fact or whatever else have you..."
Adabeie filled his glass with more port before offering the bottle to Manahem. "I suppose the others would probably agree, don't you think?"
"Well, the basis of your guess seems to be the overhwelming reason this little philosophy of yours has gotten to be as interesting as it is. So why stop now?"
Jonathan came to the door and looked over to the seated men, his face blank.
"Yes?" Adabeie inquired.
"Something's happened. You should come and see for yourself."
Adabeie looked at Manahem before rising, his face tense with anxiety. "Let's hope it doesn't have anything to do with the core."
...............................................................................
The three of them entered the lounge.
"The problem's here?" asked Adabeie. "I thought we would end up in the lab."
"Nothing's wrong with the core, if that's what you mean," said Jonathan. "Although this might be worse." He pointed to the holoscreen and then out towards the horizon where the greater superstructure of Las Taoste lay. Adabeie could see smoke arising from the geometric monolith, smoke sufficiently thick to be clear from this distance.
"According to the news, there's a problem with the nullspace projects," Jonathan said.
Adabeie frowned. "I wasn't aware that those projects were made public."
"It was deemed in the public interest, but only recently. What they're saying indicates that there's been a slow meltdown for some time."
Manahem asked, "Isn't this something we would have known about even if they chose to keep it from us? Wouldn't we experience some blackout, some power drain, something?"
Jonathan shook his head. "It's not like that. We'd experience something in the lab if there was some issue with the feedback mechanism, but what seems to be happening... has nothing to do with that."
Adabeie looked to Manahem. "It could only be..." Adabeie stopped.
"No," he whispered.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Eie explained further
"We recognized a need for a stable system in the world.. one which would not be subject to objections of truth or fact, one which did not suffer from the vagaries of 'universal' application and 'ultimate' origin...
So we took the Fictional path and admitted the Triviality of it all, and forged a form which we named 'Arbitrary,' a clever form which was useful, having been grounded in image, in language, in written diagrammatical dialectic.. it was a form which was Oneself and Other, commingled to actuate a single Linear Cycle which was both those things once called East and West.
I am all, all, I am: Eieamwho, Whoameie.
We partook of the greatest blasphemy of the ignorant world and declared ourselves fledgling gods, and we no longer feared the Judgment, knowing ourselves to be Judges. We no longer feared Damnation, having been freed; having been freed, we no longer clamored for Redemption.
Our statement is our question: Who am I? I who am! Am I who I am? Am I? I am!
Eie, merged with the first singular Person, I: This is our golden key, our Philosophical Body examined."
- From the writings of Ad af'Adabeie
So we took the Fictional path and admitted the Triviality of it all, and forged a form which we named 'Arbitrary,' a clever form which was useful, having been grounded in image, in language, in written diagrammatical dialectic.. it was a form which was Oneself and Other, commingled to actuate a single Linear Cycle which was both those things once called East and West.
I am all, all, I am: Eieamwho, Whoameie.
We partook of the greatest blasphemy of the ignorant world and declared ourselves fledgling gods, and we no longer feared the Judgment, knowing ourselves to be Judges. We no longer feared Damnation, having been freed; having been freed, we no longer clamored for Redemption.
Our statement is our question: Who am I? I who am! Am I who I am? Am I? I am!
Eie, merged with the first singular Person, I: This is our golden key, our Philosophical Body examined."
- From the writings of Ad af'Adabeie
A first encounter
The hollow, skittering squeaks of metal on slate tile filled the long, cold corridor. I peered around the corner to see two boys hunched over, chipping at scraping the tiles and grout, aimlessly engaged in their task. One of them looked ruefully upwards and saw me, saying, "Hello, teacher," and giving a slight nod before continuing at what was a common punishment for misbehavior.
They seemed to make little progress. and at the angle they were working it must have been impossible to actually remove the gum and grit that they were supposed to.. but their aim was to work as slowly as possible and thus miss as much class as possible while accomplishing as little as possible.
I walked over, and leaned down, motioning to hand me on of their thin, warped chisels. I said, "You've got to make like you're prying it up, go in like this," showing them a different way which effortlessly lifted a grey mass of filth from the floor tile. They hummed in mumbled agreement as I handed the chisel back to them, leaving them to wonder why I should know how to clean the gum from floor tiles. It should be beneath a teacher to know such things.
I stood and walked off as they said, "See you again," and got back to scraping the tiles.
I have been here for about three weeks, having been recruited from an intermittent assistantship to a full-time assistantship aiding teachers and office staff at the main community college in the Outer City, the one place where one might have a last chance to gain entry to the Inner City. My tasks are simple, mainly clerical, and occasionally I fill in for one of the instructors, as I have discovered that there are certain subjects in common with the education one might receive in the outer township.. Primarily this similarity is related to subjects like philosophy, literature, and music.. the sciences of the Outer Township which are presently delineated into two schools, that of the Void and that of the Eie, are, or would be regarded with suspicion here, as cults of any kind are unlawful. Some churches of the archaic persuasions remain, temples and mosques here and there as well, but they are largely cultural gatherings with no spiritual identity.. they were too easily regarded as cancerous at the City's inception, and so were stripped of anything which might differentiate one from another.. texts were re-edited, and now one may attend the fundamentalist orthodox Our Lady of Eternal Sorrow on Third and Euclid and hear the same message as the evangelical microchurches which are often held in the basements of individual residences. (Though evangelism is no longer practiced, nor would it be permitted if anyone bothered to express such a vocation anymore.)
But a crucial difference in that one bron in the desert learns from birth.. natural birth is no longer practiced in the city, but has long since been replaced with labnaisence, or conception and cultivation from gamete-lines constructed and stored in for-profit retailers scattered about town. People who are born and raised in Autopia are naturally sterile, and therefore the population is very much a controlled genetic experiment, not in crossbreeding but in metagenetic actuation, the way in which phenotypes interact with the physical environment.
When one dies in this city, the body is reclaimed by the labnaiscent techs, and evaluated by comparing the initial genetic structure of the pre-conceived organism and the resulting individual body, complete with social history and epigenetic markers which indicate how one's behavior implemented or ignored certain genetic traits or predispositions.
None of the Outer Autopians know this, however, though this is common knowledge in the Inner City.
They seemed to make little progress. and at the angle they were working it must have been impossible to actually remove the gum and grit that they were supposed to.. but their aim was to work as slowly as possible and thus miss as much class as possible while accomplishing as little as possible.
I walked over, and leaned down, motioning to hand me on of their thin, warped chisels. I said, "You've got to make like you're prying it up, go in like this," showing them a different way which effortlessly lifted a grey mass of filth from the floor tile. They hummed in mumbled agreement as I handed the chisel back to them, leaving them to wonder why I should know how to clean the gum from floor tiles. It should be beneath a teacher to know such things.
I stood and walked off as they said, "See you again," and got back to scraping the tiles.
I have been here for about three weeks, having been recruited from an intermittent assistantship to a full-time assistantship aiding teachers and office staff at the main community college in the Outer City, the one place where one might have a last chance to gain entry to the Inner City. My tasks are simple, mainly clerical, and occasionally I fill in for one of the instructors, as I have discovered that there are certain subjects in common with the education one might receive in the outer township.. Primarily this similarity is related to subjects like philosophy, literature, and music.. the sciences of the Outer Township which are presently delineated into two schools, that of the Void and that of the Eie, are, or would be regarded with suspicion here, as cults of any kind are unlawful. Some churches of the archaic persuasions remain, temples and mosques here and there as well, but they are largely cultural gatherings with no spiritual identity.. they were too easily regarded as cancerous at the City's inception, and so were stripped of anything which might differentiate one from another.. texts were re-edited, and now one may attend the fundamentalist orthodox Our Lady of Eternal Sorrow on Third and Euclid and hear the same message as the evangelical microchurches which are often held in the basements of individual residences. (Though evangelism is no longer practiced, nor would it be permitted if anyone bothered to express such a vocation anymore.)
But a crucial difference in that one bron in the desert learns from birth.. natural birth is no longer practiced in the city, but has long since been replaced with labnaisence, or conception and cultivation from gamete-lines constructed and stored in for-profit retailers scattered about town. People who are born and raised in Autopia are naturally sterile, and therefore the population is very much a controlled genetic experiment, not in crossbreeding but in metagenetic actuation, the way in which phenotypes interact with the physical environment.
When one dies in this city, the body is reclaimed by the labnaiscent techs, and evaluated by comparing the initial genetic structure of the pre-conceived organism and the resulting individual body, complete with social history and epigenetic markers which indicate how one's behavior implemented or ignored certain genetic traits or predispositions.
None of the Outer Autopians know this, however, though this is common knowledge in the Inner City.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Eie
Eie is our greatest resource, the golden key given to us by he of my same name who helped to found the desert community of the Outer Township nearly two hundred years ago.
Having realized that there was no internal coherence to any human truth; that no religion or philosophical system would bear greater fruit than any other, and that any given system of sufficient power, be it metaphorical or mathematical, would yield similar results in the view of ultimacy; that no single system of thought was any more prior or necessary than any other: these reasons and realizations compelled Ad af'Adabeie to resolve the Arbitrary Philosophy.
His system revolved around oneself; that there was nothing but Self, and that there was no limit or delineation of Selfhood: infinite extent, infinite intent. Adabeie was compelled to resolve that further there was no inherence of this Selfhood, nor that this Selfhood was necessary or fundamental: it was merely useful, a fiction, a figment of the eternal imagination wherein possibility coalesces with experience and thus forms the first filaments of the future, along which we are drawn, filaments which have no necessary end or association, filaments which may disperse as we traverse them or which may remain constant.
His view was purposefully Western in its intent but decidedly Eastern in its awareness. He felt that current systems of his time could not be reformed, and that none could be saved; that indeed there was not only no reason for salvation either by religion or by realization, only freedom from delusion but recognizing delusion and making use of it as one recognizes skills upon learning a new instrument, or partaking in a new activity. There was no coherent Self to worry about: no damnation, no redemption. Only freedom in the emptiness of That Which Is Arbitrary.
Adabeie then set out to develop his freedom, and at this time he was employed in a physics laboratory embedded into what we now call the Autopian Range. He and others regularly experimented with high-energy fields and particles, and as such his realization regarding the arbitrary nature of the abstract world (this of course was only made possible by the much ignored Catastrophe of Von Neumann centuries earlier) found a fertile field in which to develop, through wandering arguments and conversations.
At this time the lab began to operate independently, as the Ismist government, recently elected and compelled to suspend all secular studies withdrew funding and advocated a full-shutdown of the lab's properties. This was a time of great upheaval for the City which came to be Autopia, for its mass was such that it could not sustain itself. It was so vast that it would neither feed itself nor expel its own waste sufficiently.. it was analogous to a cell which has become bloated and sickly, restrained by an inability to innovate and evolve.
Autopia clearly survived, mainly by differentiating, whereby a ruthless sieving of the populace was held, those who were suitable, both in interest and ability, to the new goals of what is now called the Inner City, and those who resisted or were unable to envision or stomach the new ideals were left in the Outer City.. those of the latter category had in many ways a greater freedom, but freedom without structure (and the two need not conflict) is aimlessness, and it was the utter extend of possible lives which left the Outer City adrift.
The purpose of those living in the Inner City was unknown to the outer half as the two began to associate less and less, neighbors though they were.
All the while, the laboratory in the desert was forgotten, and by the time the cataclysm happened, Autopia had a rudimentary Cradle, and was thus mostly spared by that horrendous belching of the earth's bowels which toppled entire continental shelves and vacuumed away entire seas into vast caverns underground.
The deserters, as they now called themselves, had sheared away from any pretense of identity; among them were enlightened Christians, Mohists, Taoists, and others; none were observant of these divisions, nor had any who bothered to call themselves this or that had done so out of that obligation to familial inheritance, but rather out of exploration and curiosity. It seemed no mistake then that they, detached as they were from ideas of the past and now from any duty to serve the City which had set them loose, should explore a new, hilariously untruthful philosophy fostered by the very members of their community.. they were ripe for the Eie.
..........................................................................................................................................................................
We say that the Eie begins where you are, and to find out where you are, you must begin by choosing to stand on the spot where you are and circumnavigate that point.
Are you further from your foot than you are from your hand?
If one standing across the room can see you, it is not because some part of you extends to them, thus connecting you? One might say, "My Self reflects light," but we might say, "Nothing is reflected, nothing reflects."
Thus the distinction that you draw, arm extended and finger pointing outwards, slowly turning, is not one which severs you from the world around you but rather binds you to it, a seed of recognition. The Eie is not so much defined as it is experienced.
We say that as far as abstract truths are concerned, all is fiction: as soon as the mind moves, one has already lied; it is for this reason that lies are not crime in our philosophy, as lies are essential to communication.. it is rather good faith that we adhere to, not truth. It is also for this reason that the more advanced esoterics of the Greater school and the major prophets do not deign to speak.. they have more to say than words allow.
This is likewise the reason for our calligraphic script and our meandering intonations, which do not make use of grammar as typically conceived. There is nothing prescriptive about who we are or what we are doing, or how what we are doing should be done.
Abadie therefore made use of the notion of the Philosophical Body, or rather, That Which Eie Examines.. it is the subject of the inquiry, and the Eie is what dissects the Philosophical Body.
All of this is Arbitrary, and insomuch as it is Arbitrary it is also Consistent. But this consistency adheres to not outer or inner law, no necessity, no expectation.
It is our New Science.
It is the source of our technology and our power.. it is how we encountered Void.
Having realized that there was no internal coherence to any human truth; that no religion or philosophical system would bear greater fruit than any other, and that any given system of sufficient power, be it metaphorical or mathematical, would yield similar results in the view of ultimacy; that no single system of thought was any more prior or necessary than any other: these reasons and realizations compelled Ad af'Adabeie to resolve the Arbitrary Philosophy.
His system revolved around oneself; that there was nothing but Self, and that there was no limit or delineation of Selfhood: infinite extent, infinite intent. Adabeie was compelled to resolve that further there was no inherence of this Selfhood, nor that this Selfhood was necessary or fundamental: it was merely useful, a fiction, a figment of the eternal imagination wherein possibility coalesces with experience and thus forms the first filaments of the future, along which we are drawn, filaments which have no necessary end or association, filaments which may disperse as we traverse them or which may remain constant.
His view was purposefully Western in its intent but decidedly Eastern in its awareness. He felt that current systems of his time could not be reformed, and that none could be saved; that indeed there was not only no reason for salvation either by religion or by realization, only freedom from delusion but recognizing delusion and making use of it as one recognizes skills upon learning a new instrument, or partaking in a new activity. There was no coherent Self to worry about: no damnation, no redemption. Only freedom in the emptiness of That Which Is Arbitrary.
Adabeie then set out to develop his freedom, and at this time he was employed in a physics laboratory embedded into what we now call the Autopian Range. He and others regularly experimented with high-energy fields and particles, and as such his realization regarding the arbitrary nature of the abstract world (this of course was only made possible by the much ignored Catastrophe of Von Neumann centuries earlier) found a fertile field in which to develop, through wandering arguments and conversations.
At this time the lab began to operate independently, as the Ismist government, recently elected and compelled to suspend all secular studies withdrew funding and advocated a full-shutdown of the lab's properties. This was a time of great upheaval for the City which came to be Autopia, for its mass was such that it could not sustain itself. It was so vast that it would neither feed itself nor expel its own waste sufficiently.. it was analogous to a cell which has become bloated and sickly, restrained by an inability to innovate and evolve.
Autopia clearly survived, mainly by differentiating, whereby a ruthless sieving of the populace was held, those who were suitable, both in interest and ability, to the new goals of what is now called the Inner City, and those who resisted or were unable to envision or stomach the new ideals were left in the Outer City.. those of the latter category had in many ways a greater freedom, but freedom without structure (and the two need not conflict) is aimlessness, and it was the utter extend of possible lives which left the Outer City adrift.
The purpose of those living in the Inner City was unknown to the outer half as the two began to associate less and less, neighbors though they were.
All the while, the laboratory in the desert was forgotten, and by the time the cataclysm happened, Autopia had a rudimentary Cradle, and was thus mostly spared by that horrendous belching of the earth's bowels which toppled entire continental shelves and vacuumed away entire seas into vast caverns underground.
The deserters, as they now called themselves, had sheared away from any pretense of identity; among them were enlightened Christians, Mohists, Taoists, and others; none were observant of these divisions, nor had any who bothered to call themselves this or that had done so out of that obligation to familial inheritance, but rather out of exploration and curiosity. It seemed no mistake then that they, detached as they were from ideas of the past and now from any duty to serve the City which had set them loose, should explore a new, hilariously untruthful philosophy fostered by the very members of their community.. they were ripe for the Eie.
..........................................................................................................................................................................
We say that the Eie begins where you are, and to find out where you are, you must begin by choosing to stand on the spot where you are and circumnavigate that point.
Are you further from your foot than you are from your hand?
If one standing across the room can see you, it is not because some part of you extends to them, thus connecting you? One might say, "My Self reflects light," but we might say, "Nothing is reflected, nothing reflects."
Thus the distinction that you draw, arm extended and finger pointing outwards, slowly turning, is not one which severs you from the world around you but rather binds you to it, a seed of recognition. The Eie is not so much defined as it is experienced.
We say that as far as abstract truths are concerned, all is fiction: as soon as the mind moves, one has already lied; it is for this reason that lies are not crime in our philosophy, as lies are essential to communication.. it is rather good faith that we adhere to, not truth. It is also for this reason that the more advanced esoterics of the Greater school and the major prophets do not deign to speak.. they have more to say than words allow.
This is likewise the reason for our calligraphic script and our meandering intonations, which do not make use of grammar as typically conceived. There is nothing prescriptive about who we are or what we are doing, or how what we are doing should be done.
Abadie therefore made use of the notion of the Philosophical Body, or rather, That Which Eie Examines.. it is the subject of the inquiry, and the Eie is what dissects the Philosophical Body.
All of this is Arbitrary, and insomuch as it is Arbitrary it is also Consistent. But this consistency adheres to not outer or inner law, no necessity, no expectation.
It is our New Science.
It is the source of our technology and our power.. it is how we encountered Void.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
mr Soual, again
Anthea Soual wears a classical outfit, one which seems to be uncommon among the inhabitants of the Inner City. He wears a tailored vest, single-breasted, six buttons, matched to the rest of his suit which when I saw him was of the old continental style, double vent, his lapels peaked, every line in the brown pattern matching immaculately at every seam, his shirt beneath without a single rumple, collar perfectly symmetrical in a rich white cream contrasting the dark, sanguine purple and green striped tie. The effect was stunning, both by the very combination of such arresting elements; but also in that it set him clearly apart from his cohorts, they, clean and conservative, a dull background, and duly ignored (as was intended, not that anyone took care to note such things as intentions anymore).
His face is long, equine, but its proportions are such that they seem to be derived from abstract aesthetics: his appearance is at once uncontrived and yet unreal as though fashioned from a dream of something shocking when encountered in the mind only to be seen the very same day as imagined, and to find such that very same appearance ordinary and almost mundane (and therefore subtly unsettling). His hair is likewise fashionably styled, like a duck's ass, unmoving as he speaks.. his aristocratic air is then punctuated but not betrayed by his youth, which is indeterminate but definite, and while authoritative in his classicism the fact that he is presented strikingly is cause for consideration. This effect, of course, leave those whose company he keeps, unconsidered, and wholly unnoticed.
He appears like a picture, and is never shown in motion.. his speeches are articulate but unfeeling, his gaze slow and sweeping, his manner and direction of presentation glacial but fearsomely inevitable: if his eyes have not yet arrived at you they will, and though they may have passed, too surely will they return.
And though the teleosperes within Outer Autopia are attenuated to character instead of appearance, there is no reading of mr Soual's intent: it is as though he is an empty statue, speaking but unthinking, directed but unintending.
Quite the figurehead.
His face is long, equine, but its proportions are such that they seem to be derived from abstract aesthetics: his appearance is at once uncontrived and yet unreal as though fashioned from a dream of something shocking when encountered in the mind only to be seen the very same day as imagined, and to find such that very same appearance ordinary and almost mundane (and therefore subtly unsettling). His hair is likewise fashionably styled, like a duck's ass, unmoving as he speaks.. his aristocratic air is then punctuated but not betrayed by his youth, which is indeterminate but definite, and while authoritative in his classicism the fact that he is presented strikingly is cause for consideration. This effect, of course, leave those whose company he keeps, unconsidered, and wholly unnoticed.
He appears like a picture, and is never shown in motion.. his speeches are articulate but unfeeling, his gaze slow and sweeping, his manner and direction of presentation glacial but fearsomely inevitable: if his eyes have not yet arrived at you they will, and though they may have passed, too surely will they return.
And though the teleosperes within Outer Autopia are attenuated to character instead of appearance, there is no reading of mr Soual's intent: it is as though he is an empty statue, speaking but unthinking, directed but unintending.
Quite the figurehead.
Outing
To go out into this City, one must be comfortable and invisible. My tattoos must not show, as the few who recognize these symbols would be quick to ascertain the incongruity of my presence. This is easy to do: the City is cold, windy, damp. A crewneck sweater, hems unwinding stitch by stitch, over a long sleeved shirt, dark colors, not rich. Perhaps light grey, in order to show stains. Pockets will be necessary on the pants, and everything, from shoes to cap, must fit very well - the most basic requirement of this outfit is to be able to break into a sustained run at any time without leaving any trace, anything from which dna or other traces might be collected.
So it is in this uniform that I leave the house, lacing up well-worn black shoes, which show rings of salt from the City's many polluted rivulets which trickle through the streets, pulling a loosely woven cap over the hair which I have been growing out for some time.. the general attention to hygiene in this City is not what it is in the desert, though we all are perhaps more fastidious than the others in the presence of our community. With me I have technology so old I have had to spend days reacquainting myself with it: a folding computer, with individual keys assigned to letters, and a rollscreen. I have outfitted a more modern transmission device, so as to be able to reach the relay towers and therefore to commit my communications to the archives in the desert.. I cannot rely upon more contingent systems, as they may easily become corrupted should interest focus on my person or should something as simple as inclement weather render them unreliable.
Additionally I am taking with me, and hope to keep with me generally, supplies to ensure strength and health if deprived of home: nutrient bars, a small supply of compressed hydrogenate, a toothbrush but no razor. I have already become, at first glance, completely unrecognizable as one of the prophetics. But to let anyone see my body would ruin the illusion, even if they did not understand the meaning of the tattooed symbols: no one in the City bears tattoos, as conditions render proper sterilization impossible. For this reason as well there are no doctors, or what doctors there are to be found are those who would practice, either out of necessity and moral obligation or from unsolicited malice, out of the dankest cesspool.
Here I go - it will be some time before I see my cubicle again, as students (I am still registering, even as a cover for my increased forays into the nullfilms) are expected to commit at least eighteen hours of each day to either study or service to others. It is my hope that I can secure some form of income, as the supply so generously granted to me by those in the desert who had so long ago fled is becoming spare. Additionally, too much use of such old bills indicates that one has been in some sort of isolation, which here is quite suspicious: just as we patrol the Outer Township for soldiers of the City they keep careful watch against outsiders in general, though residents of the Outer Township are not suspected in particular.
Eie Whoam, Am Whoeie? Ameie, Eieam!
Adabeie
So it is in this uniform that I leave the house, lacing up well-worn black shoes, which show rings of salt from the City's many polluted rivulets which trickle through the streets, pulling a loosely woven cap over the hair which I have been growing out for some time.. the general attention to hygiene in this City is not what it is in the desert, though we all are perhaps more fastidious than the others in the presence of our community. With me I have technology so old I have had to spend days reacquainting myself with it: a folding computer, with individual keys assigned to letters, and a rollscreen. I have outfitted a more modern transmission device, so as to be able to reach the relay towers and therefore to commit my communications to the archives in the desert.. I cannot rely upon more contingent systems, as they may easily become corrupted should interest focus on my person or should something as simple as inclement weather render them unreliable.
Additionally I am taking with me, and hope to keep with me generally, supplies to ensure strength and health if deprived of home: nutrient bars, a small supply of compressed hydrogenate, a toothbrush but no razor. I have already become, at first glance, completely unrecognizable as one of the prophetics. But to let anyone see my body would ruin the illusion, even if they did not understand the meaning of the tattooed symbols: no one in the City bears tattoos, as conditions render proper sterilization impossible. For this reason as well there are no doctors, or what doctors there are to be found are those who would practice, either out of necessity and moral obligation or from unsolicited malice, out of the dankest cesspool.
Here I go - it will be some time before I see my cubicle again, as students (I am still registering, even as a cover for my increased forays into the nullfilms) are expected to commit at least eighteen hours of each day to either study or service to others. It is my hope that I can secure some form of income, as the supply so generously granted to me by those in the desert who had so long ago fled is becoming spare. Additionally, too much use of such old bills indicates that one has been in some sort of isolation, which here is quite suspicious: just as we patrol the Outer Township for soldiers of the City they keep careful watch against outsiders in general, though residents of the Outer Township are not suspected in particular.
Eie Whoam, Am Whoeie? Ameie, Eieam!
Adabeie
Musings, 3:24 a.m.
Memories of a mentor come to mind, the one known to most as Kiercl Elswise. Most know him, and most also know that he formed what we know today as desert blues.. I have no instrument with me here, in this small hovel, and I recall melodies through the circling smoke wafting upwards from the thin sweetgrass cigarette I hold. There are circles of chemists in the City, mostly in the Outer City, but these individuals create intense addictive synthetics used to, perhaps the best word is renovate, to forcefully renovate the minds of those who grow addicted. They are essentially gangs, rooted in a custom substance created to highten certain desirable traits, which also creates, over time, something that is more than a subculture.. perhaps we can call it a seed culture, for these circles have been in existence as long as this city, and it is how the various dynastic occupants of the chief industries and economies of the City maintain their power.
Such things cause me to curl up here, alone, surrounded and swimming in the free herb of our concotion, alive in the transient music quietly shimmering about in the wellspring of my soul.
The impossibility to share either the reminiscence or the longing for the freedom we have all discovered in the desert makes me, here, the deserted, not the deserter.
Such things cause me to curl up here, alone, surrounded and swimming in the free herb of our concotion, alive in the transient music quietly shimmering about in the wellspring of my soul.
The impossibility to share either the reminiscence or the longing for the freedom we have all discovered in the desert makes me, here, the deserted, not the deserter.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
mr Soual, part 2
For my part, I must suspect mr Soual's purpose to be associated with recent rumors about the final purpose of the City's cradle. This suspicion comes from acknowledging that while some survivors of the cataclysm simply pared down their lives and became basically nomadic (as we for the most part have in the desert) others reconstituted the broken cities around the globe and found ways the render those cities immune to further tectonic and environmental distress. Autopia's answer was to anchor itself to a flexible, super-redundant grid of electromagnetic sensors, capacitors, and actuators which respond dynamically to changes in weather and to changes in position.
We have seen that the continents recorded on the very rare antique maps which survived were broken in the event or perhaps even swallowed whole, and while Autopia's cradle would not survive the most catastrophic event, it is certainly strong enough to resist all but the most powerful disasters.
However, while Autopia finds itself powered by the gravimetric forces harnessed by this grid, it likewise remains tethered, and therefore mortal in a manner unbecoming of a City with such a self-image as the one the Inner City portrays. What remedy could there possibly be for such a situation?
Floating cities have been reported, but no one seems to believe this is a long-term solution. They either rely on an earthbound power source which perpetuates the very weakness that they sought to escape while fabricating the illusion of true independence. Or, in some cases, the power source is onboard, self-sustaining, perhaps through fission or fusion reactors, but these likewise have failed during rapid fluctuations of the planet's magnetic core, which was previously assumed to be stable between slow phases of alteration (taking thousands of years, which could easily be compensated for by even rudimentary algorithms).
Thus while Autopia is not a true floating city, its footprint is suspended, in some places by mere millimeters, by the rejection and redirection of the natural forces which act upon its great heights. (And its heights are great indeed - stories of life within the Inner City include views of a vast networks of blues power lines, not lines which contain and channel energy but lines of energy itself, streaming between buildings so tall that from one side of the city the lights of the structures are mistaken for stars)
What middle way might Autopia be searching for? Will it compromise our existence in the desert? If the gravity wells of the nullfilms and the cradle are related to shockrot, will the alteration of these forces diminish or exacerbate the disease?
I feel it is imperative I redirect my exploration of this City to the inner portion, though to remain here for longer a continuous foothold must remain in the Outer City. Some of the stories I have heard of the Inner City sound to me as bizarre as the stories we tell those who are new to us in the desert, about the nagarene and other subdimensionals, the stories the prophetics tell about that which is called vastness...
The account I gave previously of mr Soual was incomplete. The teleospheres within the city are used more to transmit a general sense of character and intention than to illustrate dispassionately, as ours are frequently required to do. So perhaps I will go walking, to see what I can find on foot.
It may be some time before I can return.
We have seen that the continents recorded on the very rare antique maps which survived were broken in the event or perhaps even swallowed whole, and while Autopia's cradle would not survive the most catastrophic event, it is certainly strong enough to resist all but the most powerful disasters.
However, while Autopia finds itself powered by the gravimetric forces harnessed by this grid, it likewise remains tethered, and therefore mortal in a manner unbecoming of a City with such a self-image as the one the Inner City portrays. What remedy could there possibly be for such a situation?
Floating cities have been reported, but no one seems to believe this is a long-term solution. They either rely on an earthbound power source which perpetuates the very weakness that they sought to escape while fabricating the illusion of true independence. Or, in some cases, the power source is onboard, self-sustaining, perhaps through fission or fusion reactors, but these likewise have failed during rapid fluctuations of the planet's magnetic core, which was previously assumed to be stable between slow phases of alteration (taking thousands of years, which could easily be compensated for by even rudimentary algorithms).
Thus while Autopia is not a true floating city, its footprint is suspended, in some places by mere millimeters, by the rejection and redirection of the natural forces which act upon its great heights. (And its heights are great indeed - stories of life within the Inner City include views of a vast networks of blues power lines, not lines which contain and channel energy but lines of energy itself, streaming between buildings so tall that from one side of the city the lights of the structures are mistaken for stars)
What middle way might Autopia be searching for? Will it compromise our existence in the desert? If the gravity wells of the nullfilms and the cradle are related to shockrot, will the alteration of these forces diminish or exacerbate the disease?
I feel it is imperative I redirect my exploration of this City to the inner portion, though to remain here for longer a continuous foothold must remain in the Outer City. Some of the stories I have heard of the Inner City sound to me as bizarre as the stories we tell those who are new to us in the desert, about the nagarene and other subdimensionals, the stories the prophetics tell about that which is called vastness...
The account I gave previously of mr Soual was incomplete. The teleospheres within the city are used more to transmit a general sense of character and intention than to illustrate dispassionately, as ours are frequently required to do. So perhaps I will go walking, to see what I can find on foot.
It may be some time before I can return.
Anthea Soual
Readers,
Today I saw the City's executor, a man who is only rarely encountered, and who is generally witnessed from a distance, excepting of course those charged with the responsibility of managing the various ministries.
My own experience came via teleosphere (one is a shared by each floor, though these models lack the precision and distal clarity of our own models in the desert), and as I have known this technology only from my experience living in the desert, the experience was stunted, half-formed. The subaural and subvisual clarity was weak and intermittent, even with a meditative focus, and there was, for all my training and focal development, a distinct lack of separation between adherents. In this sense I was lucky to find myself alone in receiving the day's news, but interference from nearby spheres and other adherents even blocks away was a strong distraction.
There is a great argument now whether to deploy the policstat to the Outer City. While much of the depressingly polarized population has been vacuumed away by the nullfilms, those who remain are agitated, irate, and apparently, arming themselves. Even we who have grown up in the Outer Township have a certain awareness of the happenings in the City Autopia, most astutely of the Outer City, as the Inner City remains difficult for even the more adept prophetics to penetrate, despite a developed mindseie. (It is here that I must remark at the lack of the Philosophical Body within the City, even among the academics. It remains unknown, even in theory. Further, there is no emergent consciousness of the Eie, and therefore I must restrict my use of the ritual intonations to which we are generally accustomed. I find myself troublingly verbose, as conscious intention is something not easily granted to formal architectures, even those as amorphous as the contemporary tongue.)
The position of executor is one of arbitrary duration. Executors are selected by a group in order to carry out a plan which is generally unknown to them. An executor is a keystone in an arch which is foreign to their origins, and thus the succession of executors follows no known pattern, and historically, executors bear no likeness to one another from era to era. One executor was selected to expand from the Inner City to the outer section, modernizing ruins of the capital city of the former american continent known commonly as Las Vegas. This was perhaps approximately two hundred years ago, but as it came before the cataclysm we have no way of knowing. Hard records were mostly vaporized in the volcanic aftermath, and digital records were corrupted by the erratic and intense shift in magnetic fields. In any case, he, though nameless, is known anecdotally, not through the identity of his person, but rather through the association of his person with the events that characterized his rule.
Thus this character is known as the Great Expansion, or the First Reclamation. The former term is preferred by the standardized knowledge of the Inner City's inhabitant, whereas the second term is considered a vulgarization invented by the Outer City's inhabitants. Clearly there is truth to be had in either view.
Anthea Soual is young enough to be known by his own name, and there is great speculation about his purpose in office, though such topics are not politely allowed into conversation. It is one of the few exceptions to the attitude of irreverence and poignant irrelevance of the Outer City; the Inner City need not even discuss, for reasons which I hope will become clear to you all over time, just as the form and function of the Inner City is slowly becoming clear to me.
With luck I shall require fewer words next time.
Adabeie
Today I saw the City's executor, a man who is only rarely encountered, and who is generally witnessed from a distance, excepting of course those charged with the responsibility of managing the various ministries.
My own experience came via teleosphere (one is a shared by each floor, though these models lack the precision and distal clarity of our own models in the desert), and as I have known this technology only from my experience living in the desert, the experience was stunted, half-formed. The subaural and subvisual clarity was weak and intermittent, even with a meditative focus, and there was, for all my training and focal development, a distinct lack of separation between adherents. In this sense I was lucky to find myself alone in receiving the day's news, but interference from nearby spheres and other adherents even blocks away was a strong distraction.
There is a great argument now whether to deploy the policstat to the Outer City. While much of the depressingly polarized population has been vacuumed away by the nullfilms, those who remain are agitated, irate, and apparently, arming themselves. Even we who have grown up in the Outer Township have a certain awareness of the happenings in the City Autopia, most astutely of the Outer City, as the Inner City remains difficult for even the more adept prophetics to penetrate, despite a developed mindseie. (It is here that I must remark at the lack of the Philosophical Body within the City, even among the academics. It remains unknown, even in theory. Further, there is no emergent consciousness of the Eie, and therefore I must restrict my use of the ritual intonations to which we are generally accustomed. I find myself troublingly verbose, as conscious intention is something not easily granted to formal architectures, even those as amorphous as the contemporary tongue.)
The position of executor is one of arbitrary duration. Executors are selected by a group in order to carry out a plan which is generally unknown to them. An executor is a keystone in an arch which is foreign to their origins, and thus the succession of executors follows no known pattern, and historically, executors bear no likeness to one another from era to era. One executor was selected to expand from the Inner City to the outer section, modernizing ruins of the capital city of the former american continent known commonly as Las Vegas. This was perhaps approximately two hundred years ago, but as it came before the cataclysm we have no way of knowing. Hard records were mostly vaporized in the volcanic aftermath, and digital records were corrupted by the erratic and intense shift in magnetic fields. In any case, he, though nameless, is known anecdotally, not through the identity of his person, but rather through the association of his person with the events that characterized his rule.
Thus this character is known as the Great Expansion, or the First Reclamation. The former term is preferred by the standardized knowledge of the Inner City's inhabitant, whereas the second term is considered a vulgarization invented by the Outer City's inhabitants. Clearly there is truth to be had in either view.
Anthea Soual is young enough to be known by his own name, and there is great speculation about his purpose in office, though such topics are not politely allowed into conversation. It is one of the few exceptions to the attitude of irreverence and poignant irrelevance of the Outer City; the Inner City need not even discuss, for reasons which I hope will become clear to you all over time, just as the form and function of the Inner City is slowly becoming clear to me.
With luck I shall require fewer words next time.
Adabeie
Shockrot
Many are already acquainted with the experience or more generally, the observation of this disease. It appears slowly, and is generally ignored at first as it is blamed on muddled perception. The infected region, over a few weeks, grows to seem like little more than a mole on the skin. However, as the disease progresses, it is as though one has an imperfection in the visual field: eyesight is most frequently blamed before the true problem is recognized.
A localized blur, frequently no more than three fingers across, begins to slur the appearance of the body, and, as though an optical illusion were becoming manifest, any attempt to examine or treat the region becomes confounded: a doctor who attempts to touch the region will experience nausea and vertigo, and will experience a sensation akin to the feeling one gets when attempting to touch like poles of a powerful magnet. An instrument, be it wood, metal of any kind, or even fingers, will seem repelled, though such examination does not appear to be a factor in transmitting the disease.
While this blur begins to grow, the subject often experiences gaps in memory, high cognitive functions, and in conscious daily perception. Life begins to resemble a fragmented dream, but this seems like more than an aggravated case of agnosia. Core elements of the subject's identity become altered, yet the subject remains generally coherent, and as such we have, after consulting imaging of the brain tissues, eliminated any commonality with schizophrenia disorders. The subject's sense of personal history become altered, as though random portions of their experience are shared not by a single body, but by several. yet there is no disconnect of awareness: the subject invents bizarre stories connecting these shifts in perspective, and unlike schizophrenia, there is no sense of a fragmented self nor is there an awareness of changing perspective. The experience is continuous and uniform insofar as it is told by the subject. It is only to those familiar with the subject's personal history that these alterations are apparent. Likewise, when conversing with a subject, an examiner may be filled with a sense of confusion, not simply induced by an incoherence of the subject's narrative, but something exuded by an infected subject.
We believe shockrot is an epistemic illness rooted in personal teleology. Thus the reason for suspending the long-standing tradition of separation of the common community and the prophetics, many of whom have return from exile in the desert to assist us in examining this illness. As a direct result, I have been asked to examine cases in the City Autopia and to compare those cases with our own. We have long since drawn power from the City's gravity wells via the Outland capacitor, and we well know that abandoning this capacitor would not seem to permit the continuity of our accepted existence.
A localized blur, frequently no more than three fingers across, begins to slur the appearance of the body, and, as though an optical illusion were becoming manifest, any attempt to examine or treat the region becomes confounded: a doctor who attempts to touch the region will experience nausea and vertigo, and will experience a sensation akin to the feeling one gets when attempting to touch like poles of a powerful magnet. An instrument, be it wood, metal of any kind, or even fingers, will seem repelled, though such examination does not appear to be a factor in transmitting the disease.
While this blur begins to grow, the subject often experiences gaps in memory, high cognitive functions, and in conscious daily perception. Life begins to resemble a fragmented dream, but this seems like more than an aggravated case of agnosia. Core elements of the subject's identity become altered, yet the subject remains generally coherent, and as such we have, after consulting imaging of the brain tissues, eliminated any commonality with schizophrenia disorders. The subject's sense of personal history become altered, as though random portions of their experience are shared not by a single body, but by several. yet there is no disconnect of awareness: the subject invents bizarre stories connecting these shifts in perspective, and unlike schizophrenia, there is no sense of a fragmented self nor is there an awareness of changing perspective. The experience is continuous and uniform insofar as it is told by the subject. It is only to those familiar with the subject's personal history that these alterations are apparent. Likewise, when conversing with a subject, an examiner may be filled with a sense of confusion, not simply induced by an incoherence of the subject's narrative, but something exuded by an infected subject.
We believe shockrot is an epistemic illness rooted in personal teleology. Thus the reason for suspending the long-standing tradition of separation of the common community and the prophetics, many of whom have return from exile in the desert to assist us in examining this illness. As a direct result, I have been asked to examine cases in the City Autopia and to compare those cases with our own. We have long since drawn power from the City's gravity wells via the Outland capacitor, and we well know that abandoning this capacitor would not seem to permit the continuity of our accepted existence.
Thereafter, a home
I slept fitfully last night, though I was not plagued by any dreams. Instead there was a certain lulling distraction in my mind, the kind of sensation one has when something is left undone but the particulars continue to elude the mind.
My cubicle is not so generous as the cells which we prophetics are afforded in the desert. Here, three strides takes me from the loosely-hinged entryway to the back wall, which is blocked by a cot, comfortable enough for one but which would not permit any shared rest with another body. The elsewise length is two strides deeper, these two borders completed by a shutterless window opposite a kitchenette with one burner and an cubic icebox about an arm's length in each dimension. I do have a bathroom, though bathing will be done, somehow, using only the sink therein, which is the only sink in the cubicle. I have heard from my neighbors, who ruminate more than they speak, that these places were once called apartments until the gradual reduction in size seemed too absurd even for the landlords to claim, thus adopting the term cubicle, which was itself once reserved for the lifeless office-boxes in which a day's work was done.
I have packed up my desert garbs; they are locked away in my canvas satchel, stowed at the bottom of the one very shallow closet permitted by this space, which is adjacent to the door. The walls are weather-stained: I don't believe the coming winter shall be terribly comfortable, but having entered the profession which has taken me to this place, I no longer maintain any pretense of desiring comfort.
I shall be a student while I am here. Though the education is a free and open system, it is not compulsory for any age, nor does it maintain any standard of content or quality. For this reason I may attend unnoticed.
This project shall certainly take longer than any of us had anticipated. I hope to detail the incidents of shockrot the next time I contact you all. It is a disease whose propensity to spread is entirely unknown and whose design and course is alarmingly arbitrary. Perhaps a pattern to the growing infections shall emerge.
Adabeie
My cubicle is not so generous as the cells which we prophetics are afforded in the desert. Here, three strides takes me from the loosely-hinged entryway to the back wall, which is blocked by a cot, comfortable enough for one but which would not permit any shared rest with another body. The elsewise length is two strides deeper, these two borders completed by a shutterless window opposite a kitchenette with one burner and an cubic icebox about an arm's length in each dimension. I do have a bathroom, though bathing will be done, somehow, using only the sink therein, which is the only sink in the cubicle. I have heard from my neighbors, who ruminate more than they speak, that these places were once called apartments until the gradual reduction in size seemed too absurd even for the landlords to claim, thus adopting the term cubicle, which was itself once reserved for the lifeless office-boxes in which a day's work was done.
I have packed up my desert garbs; they are locked away in my canvas satchel, stowed at the bottom of the one very shallow closet permitted by this space, which is adjacent to the door. The walls are weather-stained: I don't believe the coming winter shall be terribly comfortable, but having entered the profession which has taken me to this place, I no longer maintain any pretense of desiring comfort.
I shall be a student while I am here. Though the education is a free and open system, it is not compulsory for any age, nor does it maintain any standard of content or quality. For this reason I may attend unnoticed.
This project shall certainly take longer than any of us had anticipated. I hope to detail the incidents of shockrot the next time I contact you all. It is a disease whose propensity to spread is entirely unknown and whose design and course is alarmingly arbitrary. Perhaps a pattern to the growing infections shall emerge.
Adabeie
A brief description of the nullfilms
Being as this was my first week in the Outer City, I hastened to acquaint myself with local customs, a task outlined by Manahem in his principle work, with which I presume many are already familiar. The gist of his reasoning is that in order to subvert a community, one must do so as an insider, as a member: it is of no great consequence for an outsider or newcomer to critique the values of direction of a community, but for a member of 'us' to dissent is to require an examination of one's self and of the community at large; thus, individuals will be more open to contentious relationships and suggestions, and additionally the communal feedback mechanism to check and contain dissent is weakened as individuals look inward for confirmation instead of to external authority. It is ironic that I should now use those faculties with which he fashioned our community to reclaim the one he fled so many years ago.
Scholarship aside, I had heard much about the nullfilms from certain members of our desert community who, despite their preference for their newfound life among us, find themselves drawn to the recollection of the nullfilms even years later. It may be important to note that the only ex-City dwellers who report no further nostalgia are those inducted into the prophetic order, and moreover those who have survived the requisite exile.
The nullfilms are transmitted (it is impossible to say 'shown,' as the transmission space, while contained, is essentially non-directional and in a contradictory sense, non-spatial, as while within the bounds of the nullfilms one's perspective is sufficiently skewed to render determination of spatial orientation impossible) within, well.. what to call that strange area?
I asked about the nullfilms while purchasing some basic items from the corner store, a shop where the aisles and goods sit askew, fog rising from meats in an open freezer, dry goods piled haphazardly in the back, and where even recently restocked items seem to cloud the air with dust when picked up. My selection of goods was inconscpicuous enough: dehydrated milk, bread, and coffee, one or two common spreads and a few narrow jars of pickled vegetables. But the question I asked was itself suspicious: there is no one in Autopia who lacks an instinct which guides the aimless to those.. spaces of consciousness.
The nullfilms are a vacuum to those who refuse to kill themselves, which in this city is a sizable number. After seeing them, I cannot say how it is we live with those who have been there. I still wonder how I managed to leave.
I wandered along a spit-spotted sidewalk which perpetually stank of urine and vomit, all the while surrounded by a chorus of retching and coughing. While the Inner City is reputed to be literally spotless, with gleaming surfaces comprised more commonly of energetic fields than solid matter, the Outer City is a different manner. Its construction is that of the era before ours, pre-cataclysm. One can find entryways inscribed with dates, like the muddy brick building in which I have taken residence. It reads, '1906 A.D.' I understand this was a common moniker of the christian era before the geopolitical rise of secular humanism and of the corresponding capital reduction. To see something written in such letters was a peculiar experience, which I could only call something like stepping into a myth. But such surreality was not to be limited to details like that.
Ahead of myself, as I passed beneath an elevated railway (indeed, here such transit systems still use tires, still made from rubber, now generally compressed soot from the carbon rendering plants), I noticed a sort of fog descending. I cannot find a suitable term to describe the experience. It was as if with every step the sky grew darker, but it was not only the sky. Though it was evening, it was not simply the sky that darkened, it was also any light around me, and the highlighted edges of ambient light at nighttime were to be found nowhere as I headed in the direction that I had been pointed, my groceries still in hand, contained in a rumpled canvas bag.
I felt a certain opiate weight to my body, a stiffness which gave me the sensation of being skeletal, which slowly passed and the weight in my muscles evaporated, along with any sense of having a body, or of having anything in my hands. I felt no bag in my hand; I felt no hand with which to grasp anything. I became aware of bodies in the deepening dark, a sort of milling crowd, sedate and listless. Though I gradually grew to be able to discern faces, this did not last: instead, I felt as though the ground had given way, in an absurdly slow motion, and felt myself laid back, though my visual orientation with the other faces I could see had not changed.
There were, perhaps, thousands of us. As I felt my attention drift skyward, my thoughts ceased and I witness a visual refraction, as though a prism was dividing and redirection the darkness around me.
Then, as if in a vivid, almost lucid dream, a story into which I became interjected. I cannot recall the plot, nor the characters, but only the quality of the experience: vivid, but detached, as though I was experiencing a tactile hallucination. Events seemed predestined, though something in the story had not yet happened, bit would, because, as I have grown to realize, the audience desired that the story do so: we were making the story. It was a gradual cycle of conflicted desires, somewhat democratically constructed, with the unexpected twist of farming the unconscious mind for plot elements, personal attributes of the characters, who were us, or we them, as we dreamed ourselves to be.
To say the experience was engrossing cannot provide adequate description, and while I have been vague I have done the best my memory will permit me: to those in our community with whom I have spoken, this is a crucial element of nullfilm addition. It is a complete sensory experience which captures every aspect of the typical conscious mind. Perhaps it is our collective peculiarity which resulted in my escape, though you all know that common knowledge recognizes my initiation into the lesser prophetics, which involves refinement of those aspects of the mind which grow so slavish in the nullfilms.
I emerged, or rather found that I had emerged, for I was unaware of myself until I realized once more that I had a body, that I could see my surroudings, and that I could clearly orient myself spatially.
I know now that the nullfilms were not created for any particular purpose; rather, they are the unintended (?) result of the massive fields which the City's cradle exudes as a result of the great energy coursing though the matrix which supports the City. For those who are unaware of this architectural masterpiece, the Inner City of Autopia, that part of the city which is properly meant when one says, 'Autopia,' is actually not married to the Earth but is rather anchored to it, being suspended by an electromagnetic concourse which redirects the very gravity which draws the massive structure downward to propelling upward.
I have yet to find out whether the increasing incidents of shockrot in our community have anything to do with this force, but the parallels between the nullfilms and the vastness spoken of by the greater prophetics are impossible to ignore. Indeed, there seems to be a common element connecting the technology which powers the teleospheres, the nullrifles (which additionally share nomenclature with the nullfilms, though this may not be so much an epistemic relation as an experiential one, being that the creator of the nullspace technology was driven to do so by recurring nightmares of time spent in the nullfilms before his adventitious departure, here speaking of Manahem, of course) and additionally between the encounters of the prophetics in that which is called vastness and those trapped in the nullfilms.
I returned to my cubicle directly thereafter, and upon finding that the milk had spoiled and the bread had molded in the span of what turned out to be fifteen minutes (presuming the mechanism of my watch was uncorrupted) proceeded to drink some unsweetened coffee and dine on pickles and olives. To those who are following my progress in the city, I swear to not delay in pursuing the course of the disease we have hastened to name shockrot. I will report again as soon as there is some meaningful content to relay to you all.
Scholarship aside, I had heard much about the nullfilms from certain members of our desert community who, despite their preference for their newfound life among us, find themselves drawn to the recollection of the nullfilms even years later. It may be important to note that the only ex-City dwellers who report no further nostalgia are those inducted into the prophetic order, and moreover those who have survived the requisite exile.
The nullfilms are transmitted (it is impossible to say 'shown,' as the transmission space, while contained, is essentially non-directional and in a contradictory sense, non-spatial, as while within the bounds of the nullfilms one's perspective is sufficiently skewed to render determination of spatial orientation impossible) within, well.. what to call that strange area?
I asked about the nullfilms while purchasing some basic items from the corner store, a shop where the aisles and goods sit askew, fog rising from meats in an open freezer, dry goods piled haphazardly in the back, and where even recently restocked items seem to cloud the air with dust when picked up. My selection of goods was inconscpicuous enough: dehydrated milk, bread, and coffee, one or two common spreads and a few narrow jars of pickled vegetables. But the question I asked was itself suspicious: there is no one in Autopia who lacks an instinct which guides the aimless to those.. spaces of consciousness.
The nullfilms are a vacuum to those who refuse to kill themselves, which in this city is a sizable number. After seeing them, I cannot say how it is we live with those who have been there. I still wonder how I managed to leave.
I wandered along a spit-spotted sidewalk which perpetually stank of urine and vomit, all the while surrounded by a chorus of retching and coughing. While the Inner City is reputed to be literally spotless, with gleaming surfaces comprised more commonly of energetic fields than solid matter, the Outer City is a different manner. Its construction is that of the era before ours, pre-cataclysm. One can find entryways inscribed with dates, like the muddy brick building in which I have taken residence. It reads, '1906 A.D.' I understand this was a common moniker of the christian era before the geopolitical rise of secular humanism and of the corresponding capital reduction. To see something written in such letters was a peculiar experience, which I could only call something like stepping into a myth. But such surreality was not to be limited to details like that.
Ahead of myself, as I passed beneath an elevated railway (indeed, here such transit systems still use tires, still made from rubber, now generally compressed soot from the carbon rendering plants), I noticed a sort of fog descending. I cannot find a suitable term to describe the experience. It was as if with every step the sky grew darker, but it was not only the sky. Though it was evening, it was not simply the sky that darkened, it was also any light around me, and the highlighted edges of ambient light at nighttime were to be found nowhere as I headed in the direction that I had been pointed, my groceries still in hand, contained in a rumpled canvas bag.
I felt a certain opiate weight to my body, a stiffness which gave me the sensation of being skeletal, which slowly passed and the weight in my muscles evaporated, along with any sense of having a body, or of having anything in my hands. I felt no bag in my hand; I felt no hand with which to grasp anything. I became aware of bodies in the deepening dark, a sort of milling crowd, sedate and listless. Though I gradually grew to be able to discern faces, this did not last: instead, I felt as though the ground had given way, in an absurdly slow motion, and felt myself laid back, though my visual orientation with the other faces I could see had not changed.
There were, perhaps, thousands of us. As I felt my attention drift skyward, my thoughts ceased and I witness a visual refraction, as though a prism was dividing and redirection the darkness around me.
Then, as if in a vivid, almost lucid dream, a story into which I became interjected. I cannot recall the plot, nor the characters, but only the quality of the experience: vivid, but detached, as though I was experiencing a tactile hallucination. Events seemed predestined, though something in the story had not yet happened, bit would, because, as I have grown to realize, the audience desired that the story do so: we were making the story. It was a gradual cycle of conflicted desires, somewhat democratically constructed, with the unexpected twist of farming the unconscious mind for plot elements, personal attributes of the characters, who were us, or we them, as we dreamed ourselves to be.
To say the experience was engrossing cannot provide adequate description, and while I have been vague I have done the best my memory will permit me: to those in our community with whom I have spoken, this is a crucial element of nullfilm addition. It is a complete sensory experience which captures every aspect of the typical conscious mind. Perhaps it is our collective peculiarity which resulted in my escape, though you all know that common knowledge recognizes my initiation into the lesser prophetics, which involves refinement of those aspects of the mind which grow so slavish in the nullfilms.
I emerged, or rather found that I had emerged, for I was unaware of myself until I realized once more that I had a body, that I could see my surroudings, and that I could clearly orient myself spatially.
I know now that the nullfilms were not created for any particular purpose; rather, they are the unintended (?) result of the massive fields which the City's cradle exudes as a result of the great energy coursing though the matrix which supports the City. For those who are unaware of this architectural masterpiece, the Inner City of Autopia, that part of the city which is properly meant when one says, 'Autopia,' is actually not married to the Earth but is rather anchored to it, being suspended by an electromagnetic concourse which redirects the very gravity which draws the massive structure downward to propelling upward.
I have yet to find out whether the increasing incidents of shockrot in our community have anything to do with this force, but the parallels between the nullfilms and the vastness spoken of by the greater prophetics are impossible to ignore. Indeed, there seems to be a common element connecting the technology which powers the teleospheres, the nullrifles (which additionally share nomenclature with the nullfilms, though this may not be so much an epistemic relation as an experiential one, being that the creator of the nullspace technology was driven to do so by recurring nightmares of time spent in the nullfilms before his adventitious departure, here speaking of Manahem, of course) and additionally between the encounters of the prophetics in that which is called vastness and those trapped in the nullfilms.
I returned to my cubicle directly thereafter, and upon finding that the milk had spoiled and the bread had molded in the span of what turned out to be fifteen minutes (presuming the mechanism of my watch was uncorrupted) proceeded to drink some unsweetened coffee and dine on pickles and olives. To those who are following my progress in the city, I swear to not delay in pursuing the course of the disease we have hastened to name shockrot. I will report again as soon as there is some meaningful content to relay to you all.
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