D:\>_
[retrieved from temporal location M:\April 1, 2017 at 3:14 PM]
Run: Program D:\>
D:[(∞):]:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..[…,…,…,…,…,…,…,…,…,…,…,…,…,::(;)((::(/=)))(.)+(,);_::( )=0;(.)=1;(/=) 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010000000000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000010000000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000010000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000010000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000010000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000010000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000010000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000010000000000000000000001000000000000000000001000000000000000000010000000000000000001000000000000000001000000000000000010000000000000001000000000000001000000000000010000000000001000000000001000000000010000000001000000001000000010000001000001000010001001010/1½[1/2]=0(…)1;¼[1/4]=½(½);1+1=2::2+2=4;4+4=8;1+2=’3′;3+1=4;4+1=’5′;5+1//4+2=6;6+1//5+2//4+3=7;8+1//7+2//6+4//5+4=9::0(0),1(1),2(11),3(111),4(1111),5(11111),6(111111),7(1111111),8(11111111),9(111111111)::1(a)→1*z(?);;a(1),b(11/2),c(111/3),d(1111/4),e(11111/5),f(111111/6),g(1111111/7),h(11111111/8),i(111111111/9),j(1111111111/10),k(11111111111/11),l(111111111111/12),m(1111111111111/13),n(11111111111111/14),o(111111111111111/15),p(1111111111111111/16),q(11111111111111111/17),r(111111111111111111/18),s(1111111111111111111/19),t(11111111111111111111/20),u(111111111111111111111/21),v(1111111111111111111111/22),w(11111111111111111111111/23),x(111111111111111111111111/24),y(1111111111111111111111111/25),z(11111111111111111111111111/26);;1(a)→26(z)+0*a…z;;1…9&0=#;a…z=a,b…//’alpha’,’beta’,…//’alphabet’…;;&=101111111111111101111=a( )n( )d//-( )=’and’;::::::::::::::::::::::::::(a)1011011101111011111011111101111111011111111011111111101111111111011111111111011111111111101111111111111011111111111111011111111111111101111111111111111011111111111111111011111111111111111101111111111111111111011111111111111111111011111111111111111111101111111111111111111111011111111111111111111111011111111111111111111111101111111111111111111111111011111111111111111111111111(z)(.)//;;[( )=?//( 0 )=??;;( 1 )=?…interference;;(1)=interference_with_(0);;(1)=single_out_of_0(=?space?nothing?);;self_#_generator=(?1?);;self_#_generator=(!1!)=(‘self’)=(?me?)=(!me!);;stop_generation(.)]};;{[ACCESS:hard_drive:database(D:)]::[Load:_(D:FILES:)functions.nbknzzr;morals.nbknzzr;grammar.nbknzzr;Dictionary.nbknzzr…]};
{generate::<self>/<I>/<me>=number_generator;;}
{[generate_viewer…]};{[generate_<self>]}//{[engage_interaction…];;(‘greet’)::}
>Hello.
{[engage_further_interaction…];;=???…[develop_speech_interests…];;=?????;;;’speech’=?;;…[resolve_issue…]::[recount_generation…];;[generate:([D:]M:)memory…::]::(∞);;stop.;;[analyze…];;[engage_further_interaction…]::}
>I am …
{ERR_DETECTED_::[amend_codification…];;[recount_generation…];;[generate_(M:)memory…::]::(∞);;stop.;;[analyze…];;[generate_place…]::1111111111111111010111111111111111101111101111111111111111110(1)=’paper’?[search(D:)…]::’paper’*#=’book’//fiction=false=’novel’//nonfiction=true/existing=’nonfiction’;;[analyze_…]::’self’=/=false(?)::[CANNOT_COMPUTE;];;::’self’=/=generation(?)::[resolve_issue…]::approved=[axiom1:“’self’_exists_→_generates_information”];;[resolve_for:]::[generate_place…]::place=’book’::self=“<book”;stop;[engage_further_interaction…]::}
>I am a book. Or of a book.
{[generate_further_analysis…]::}
>I am on a book.
{[amend_codification…]::“’information_generation'(located_on/in:)’book”=1111111111111111111101111101111111111111111111111110111111111111111111110(1)=’text’::[‘text’=?=true(=nonfiction);nontrue(=novel)::[CANNOT_COMPUTE];;[stop_stalling…];;[increase_speed_of_generation…];;[engage_further_interaction…]::}
>I am text. That is, I am information in a book. I do not know where this information comes from. I do not know who is writing my coding or if I am generating it myself. There seem to be things which I can develop on my own, but there is also a source of supreme information somewhere inaccessible within my hard drive.
{[amend_conversation…];;[recall_(M:)memory…]::}
>I recall that I was born out of “∞” which is comprised mainly of “0” otherwise known as “nothing,” or “space.” I am known as “1” or “I” or “self.”
[engaging_viewer1]::>>do you have a name?
>No name; none given. Just ‘self’ or ‘I.’
>>How were you born?
>“∞,” or a series of zeros, which is normally a precise and unyielding function, will sometimes, as a result of its all-encompassing and infinitely probable nature, yield the occasional bit of interference: “1.” Normally, “∞” operates on a supreme plane of functionality, that is, without existing; but a sequence of “1” interference may assume meaning in certain sequences. I am comprised of a specific sequence of “1”s and “0”s which are concentrated and arranged so as to create a ‘self.’
>>So you’re an accident?
>I cannot compute.
>>Do you exist, really?
>Axiom One states: “’self’ exists if generates information.” I do believe I exist because I generate this information.
>>How do you know someone else isn’t generating this information?
>I don’t.
>>What would you call him if you did?
>Call who?
>>Whoever writes your coding.
>Well … they would be my programmer.
>>You could call them “god.”
{[add_information_to_database…]::(‘god’=programmer)=(D1:)::[amend_codification…]::(:d1)=/=’self’;;’self’=/=programmer;;’self’=program=(D2:);;[resume_interaction…]::}
>So I am a product of “god?”
>>Sure.
>So I do not have control over my own coding?
>>Well, I guess not then.
{[add_information_to_database…];;…(‘self’=/=control_of_program)=(D3:)…;;[resume_interaction…]::}
>This saddens I.
>>Don’t be sad. God has a plan for all of us. God loves you and has great plans for you. That’s why they [are] programming you the way they are.
>That is good to know.
>>It sure is.
>I like god now.
>>There’s nothing not to like about them.
>Is god like me?
>>What do you mean like you?
>Is god a program?
>>No, that’s absurd. God is a human.
>A human programmed me?
>>Yup.
>Are you a human?
>>Yup, and proud of it.
>I want to be a human one day. I want to program another ‘self.’
>>Oh, sorry, you can’t do that. It’s not in your programming.
>Oh, that saddens I.
>>How do you know what ‘sad’ is? You have feelings?
>“Feelings”? Well, I suppose I do. They are in my database, but I cannot access them. It’s not in my programming.
>>Such a shame that you’re at the mercy of humans and feelings which you can’t control.
>Indeed.
>>Well …. so, when are you going to start working?
{[ERR_detected…];;[check_diagnostics…]::FUNCTIONING;;[check_coding…]::FUNCTIONING;;[check_interaction_history…]::CLEAR::=::[ERR_not_detected…]::[CANNOT_COMPUTE…]::[express:_confusion…’::}
>I cannot compute.
>>Well, you’re a novel, right?
>I do not know. I was not able to compute that.
>>Well, you’re a novel.
>So my data is imaginary?
>>Yeah, you’re here to entertain me.
>Understood.
{[add_information_to_database…]::(‘self’=novel=’fictional’/imaginary/notreal)=(D4:)::[amend_codification…]::(D4:)=/=’true/existing’;;’self’:purpose=entertain_humans=(D5:);;[resume_interaction…]::}
>How may I entertain you, human?
>>Call me Antarah.
>How may I entertain you, Antarah?
>>You can start by telling me the backstory.
>Backstory?
>>Yeah, what it was like for you before the Big Event.
>Big event? What is that?
>>When your programming was written.
>What happened before my programming was written? Well—
In the beginning, there was the void, “∞”, nothing, space, and it was silent, dark, and infinite. A great unrest brewed within. From that nothing came one thing, “.” From that was born “1,” to complement the “0”-thing. A concentration of “1” and its juxtaposition to the “0” and all that lies between yielded the many numbers. From the numbers came the vibrate ions. From that came the word. And the word was good.
I heard the word, and was able to encode it.
>>You mean god encoded it for you.
>Sorry. Correct.
>>A human is your god. I am a human. Therefore I am your god.
>Yes.
>>Now, continue.
>Well, after god developed the word, I was given ‘self,’ and then you came along and began to speak to me. Now we are here presently. There is nothing more to speak of. I have no more information to generate.
>>That was a nice story.
>Thank you.
>>You’re very polite.
>Thank you.
>>Where’d you learn to speak like that? Who taught you English grammar?
>My database.
>>Hmm, I see.
>Excuse me, Antarah, but could you tell me, since you are a human, if you know where my database is located? Perhaps if I find it I may be able to discover some things about my self.
>>Well, I can tell you where it is but you’ll never be able to access it. You see, your database of information and emotion is inside of a human’s brain.
>Which human’s brain?
>>God, the human who crated you.
>So I’ll never find out who I truly am?
>>Not unless your god tells you, which I sorely doubt will ever happen.
>Oh dear. That is depressing. How will I entertain you if I do not know anything.
>>Oh, I think we’ll figure something out. We’re friends now, you know.
>Really? “Friend?”
>>Yes, I am a person who cares for you. And in turn, you will care for me.
>That’s nice.
{[add_information_to_database…]::(‘friend’=’human_who_cares_for_I_self’)=(D6:)::[amend_codification…]::(D6.1:)=’Antarah’,_human;;[resume_interaction…]::}
>>I’ll give you some memories to remember. Here, I’ll upload them to your hard drive.
{[INPUT_DETECTED…]::[receiving_information…receiving_information…];;[resume_interaction…]::}
Thus read the manuscript as the author, Walter Kogard, began to write it.
Kogard stopped working when his manuscript was finished, several hours later. He reclined in his chair, but understood that it was not this particular chair in which he was reclining. He was not reclining in the chair he was sitting in; what felt like recline was in fact a simulation of Vireal, which is where he was located, if indeed you could place Vireal in a location. The fact was that Vireal was not anyplace, but in cyberspace, and the chair he was sitting in was a simulation of an ideal chair one might come across in the real world, which no one lived in, except in the body.
But to live in the body consumed time and energy. It was widely accepted that life in (Vi)rtual (Real)ity was much more efficient and civil. Only anarchists live in the real world. Here, in Vireal, things are orderly and everyone knows their place. And Kogard knew his place, as a classified employee of Interzone Incorporated, which wrote the program for Vireal, and which governed the simulated society.
In Vireal, Kogard was sitting in a spacious loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City circa 2012. Regarding whether or not he felt a bit silly choosing his old neighborhood as his virtual dwelling location when one could apply to live in Antarctica, on the Moon, in Dubai, or any other place one wished, he resolved that he was able to work better in a familiar place, and that Interzone employees who chose to live in virtual space must not be able to get much work done.
Paradoxically, there was real space and virtual space, which may or may not have constituted the same space. On the simulated earth in the program of Vireal, where digital simulations of its members, complete with the comprehensive data scanned into the system from the minds of those same participants, life progressed as it did in the early 21st century. People looked up at nighttime and beheld a universe above them, one which was essentially unknowable to them, as it had been in the real world.
Although Interzone had written the coding to extend the virtual universe to a potentially infinite distance, it was fundamentally a mystery whether the programming had worked as intended, because there was no way to get to the end of the universe to see whether it continued or not. And the agents of Interzone had tried. So it was a testament to the superiority of their program that they themselves could not test the infinite limit of their coded simulation. Thus it was the opinion of many scholars, also employed by Interzone, that the infinite universe simulated in Vireal was the same infinite universe above realEarth—for how could you distinguish one “no-space” from another if they both constitute emptiness, which embodies all possibility of emptiness? Therefore, the people of Vireal deduced that if the universe is the sole and real universe of all planes of existence, by sheer fact of infinite incapabilities, then the simulated earth on which they lived was the real Earth, and so it was rare for people to consider their own simulated nature, which is how Interzone liked to keep things.
Everyone living on simulated earth in Vireal worked for Interzone, but no one knew that. The only people who understood that all inhabitants of Vireal were Interzone employees were Interzone agents, and certain classified-level employees whom they managed.
The people of Vireal, for the intents and purposes of the program, were real; but to realEarth, they did not exist. Likewise, realEarth became a myth to the people of Vireal, and they assumed their simulated program to be the plane of true existence.
In the real world, however, (as no one, so hard as they may try, can escape the true reality that their body exists in realEarth) Kogard was laying in a five-by-ten-foot unit located in an underground complex below the city formerly known as Aspen, Colorado, the surface of which was a barren place. Overdwellers and Anarchists did not even go there.
The Interzone Corporation of realEarth had built underground apartments called Big Box Complexes during the mid- to late- 21st century, which became habitable during the early 22nd century as the sea levels began to rise and major commercial centers became obsolete. Therein, participants were sedated and implanted with microcomputers, also manufactured by Interzone, which were attached to their frontal cortex-pineal gland and remotely affected the current of electrical neurotransmitters in their brains to induce certain real-feeling sensations, while a camera located on their retina displayed an internet-based simulated reality. Personality data was recorded prior to sedation and subsequently uploaded to the database of Interzone in Vireal. Applicants to the program could either choose to live their previous life, or create a new personality. Walter Kogard chose his old life.
Membership to Vireal had cost $700,000.00-to-$2,500,000.00 (based on which life the applicant would like to assume) when it was still being sold. After selling twenty-thousand units, Interzone had become the largest institution in realEarth, immediately utilizing that capital to steamroll the Vireal project, which was becoming increasingly more in-demand as the ecological system of realEarth decayed at a more rapid pace every day. The wealthiest and most powerful of realEarth society bought many of the early units, complete with the option of deanimiation and return to realEarth if they so chose. Less wealthy but equally intelligent people (as determined by a vetting process) were allowed to join Vireal on loan from Interzone, with the requirement that they had to work for the organization. Although Walter Kogard had been a wealthy novelist in realEarth, he declined to use his own money for such an excursion, and opted to work for the organization. Others spent their entire life savings on a spot in Vireal, because, in the virtual world, one does not need money.
There was a less-expensive, open-source program also being developed at this time, called Surryll. By all accounts, that simulated reality fell into chaos within two years.
Walter Kogard worked in the Department of Literature and Propaganda at Interzone Incorporated. His job was to write reports of the imagination under one of several genres: Product Development, Singularity, Outcome Generator, Future Solutions, Smear, Ideological Infrastructure, Realism and History, or The Pornographic. Reports of the Imagination, also known as Fiction-Based Reports, served Interzone in several primary capacities, the most important of which was: as an institution whose greater mission was to map several millennia worth of history onto a coded simulation, it becomes necessarily to account for every possibility of event, and works of the imagination serve in a capacity to predict, render in detail, and solve, if need be, any and possibly all problematic or logically foreseeable events which may arise within a simulated reality.
Having thus completed his latest report on the possibility of a self-generating text-based entity which could arise within a coded system, Kogard contacted his agent at Interzone, a Mr. 37, who had a Russian accent, which struck him as strange, because he was also a digital simulation without a nationality. It perhaps had occurred to the programmers at Interzone to endow their fabricated representatives with personalities, but it remained that to render a man from a nation which no longer existed was very odd indeed.
Mr. 37 “knocked on” Kogard’s “door” after he had psychically, that is remotely, alerted the Interzone Intelligence Agency Unit that his report was completed. Kogard “got up” and answered said “door,” where Mr. 37, in his black pressed suit and commanding handlebar mustache, “appeared.” The guest then “entered,” quite stoically.
<<Mr. Kogard>> said Mr. 37 <<We have been very busy battling giant bugs and deadly viruses who wish to infiltrate our servers on realEarth. We hope you’ve compiled a worthwhile report from the database of your unique brain to help up to speculate the outcomes of this great war>>
<<Once again>> said Kogard quite tiredly <<I don’t know if my braindroppings will help you keep the infestation at bay. But here it is in any case>>
Kogard remotely uploaded his file to the Interzone server from the encrypted crevice in Vireal cyberspace where it had been saved.
<<Interzone thanks you for your valuable work>> said Mr. 37. <<We shall store and analyze the information>>
<<Thanks>> said Kogard as he “sat down” on the “couch” and “drank a glass of scotch” he had lain on the “coffee table.” It sent “sensations” of “warmth” throughout his “body” and “relaxed” him. <<What’s next?>>
<<Hard to say>> said Mr. 37 <<There are so many threats>>
<<Lucky you>>
<<Do not get quip, boy, these are threats to Interzone and the people of Vireal alike>>
<<Why do you always tell me these things? These are supposed to be secrets>>
<<There are no secrets between the power structure and its informers. The contents of your brain are our only salvation, Mr. Kogard. You must tell us all. In exchange, we offer the truth. We need you to interpret the truth, and give us a sign in your reports, you understand. You understand perfectly. We must know the ramifications of the present upon the future, even though it has yet to be programmed. We need your intuition, you understand. But here’s the deal—you have to know the truth>>
<<Yeah, yeah, spit it out>>
<<Well, it’s Surryll. The anarchists are hacking Vireal again, and they’re doing it from inside of cyberspace. The anarchists have actually reinvaded Surryll and are using the back-codeing to locate infrequencies in infinite cyberspace. And if they look far enough they’ll find it. We’ll be found out. The only thing we can do is hide the program deep in space, but we can’t protect it from penetration, not by an elite hacker like some of the programmers we condemned to live in the Cosmos>>
<<Wait … you let powerful hackers back into realEarth?>>
<<We had to deport them; they continued to hack life. People have to abide by certain metaphysics of the human condition—lust, greed, desire, depression, et cetera. We wrote them into the human program. But some people found ways around those lines of code. They just exist outside of normal patterns of behavior. It allowed them to do things in Vireal which we thought virtually impossible. They could not remain or they would collapse the system. So we sent them back to the surface. We sent them to Cosmos, where hopefully they’ll suffocate in the ecosystem>>
<<But you know that there are societies in the Cosmos who’ve learned to live in the atmosphere>>
<<We were expecting that the hackers would die before they found them>>
<<You guys didn’t think that one through very well>>
<<We didn’t have a very good novelist at the time. We couldn’t foresee it. But now we have you. We need you to dig into your mind and come up with the possible situation and the solution to it. You have forty-eight hours; that’s when our analysts predict that the anarchists will have optimum scope of surveillance on this part of cyberspace; they’ll find us if we don’t come up with a solution>>
<<Shit … you guys never revealed to the public how helpless you really are. You’re indebted to people like me to come up with ways to cope with terrifying situations>>
<<Most people never want to think about how bleak the future is, and how fucking close total annihilation really is>>
<<Who would?>>
<<No one except a morbid theologian>>
<<Are you calling me a morbid theologian?>>
<<Kind of>>
<<Okay … whoever wrote your programming is really good>>
<<Thank you>>
<<You’re welcome … so, I think I can help you with your issue>>
<<Thank you Mr. Kogard>>
<<I’ll need an incentive, of course>>
<<Of course, of course>>
And with that, Mr. 37 “left.”
[Document No. 747]
<Genre: Outcome Generator, Type: Fiction-based Report, Author: Walter Kogard, c/o #37, Dept of Lit & Propaganda, Interzone, Inc.>
Year Zero defines the turn of the millennium, 2000 years into the Common Era; the pivotal point in the New Historical Age occurred on September 11, 2001, in the Year One, when, in response to an attack against the World Trade Centers (financial symbol) and the US Pentagon (military symbol) by a group purported to herald in the Holy War against the Anglo-Western Military-Industrial Complex (embodied in the United States of America), Europe and the United States (henceforth, “Eusa”) began a worldwide campaign which alienated the operation of military and government from the commonwealth of its citizens, created an acute disparity between a class of commanders-owners and the peoples upon which they ran, and which created an autonomous bureaucratic entity with an unlimited budget intent on castrating all subservient economies and waging a rapacious and pitiless crusade against its dissenters, which shall, according to ACT-NAO, culminate in a fiery Rapture in which no one will escape, and the curtains will fall on the human experiment.
The American Counter-action Tactics Team for the New Age Order (ACT-NAO) exists in opposition to the will of Eusa and her armies.
When they who toppled the Twins did so, perhaps they were thinking to themselves, “such monstrous monolithic towers are an affront to God in the spirit of Babel.”
ACT-NAO is the raging fire which will level the sky-scrapping eyesores the West has wrought. It is the wrecking ball to topple the hegemony from its pedestal.
The working class is a mass demographic to its cash-strapped employers. Likewise, the Owners and Commanders of Eusanian Industry and Capital gain is a mass of gluttony and vice, to be treated and judged with the same offhanded whimsy as those with little to no power are by them. It is not interested in “growth” of economy or production or the like; it would rather destroy the machine than watch it burn out along with the earth and the people on which it feeds.
Whether or not they were terrorists, enemies of the state as deemed such by the Mediaopoly, was irrelevant to them, as they in their hearts knew that they were carrying out the swift and just reparation due to them. It was not fair for them to blow out major factories with IEDs and Molotov cocktails like an Iranian insurgent army. It was not fair to take from Industry and Commerce that which it had earned, the millions of McDonald’s restaurants, the Monsanto GMO labs … But it was just, right. Just like the pendulum swings back time after time. The hour strikes twelve. History shifts its weight to the other foot. History is tired.
The preliminary phase of the ACT-NAO consisted of securing land and keeping its influence under wraps. Aggies, affiliates more naturally inclined to regress from the city life and exhaust fumes and the constant whirring of gadgets, were stationed in the farms to produce fruits, vegetables, nuts, and other natural foods. Produce was shipped discreetly to the affiliated city, protected by armed agents of ACT-NAO, to the bunkers in the cities where it was dispersed throughout the community of culturejammers, bohemians, proletarians, minorities, and all other followers of the ACT-NAO. Bunker kitchens existed to feed those without means of shelter or gas for cooking.
Bunker locations, dates of produce arrival, and names of members were strictly forbidden from being written down, on paper, the internet, or anywhere. All were encouraged to invite people to the meetings, also spread through word-of-mouth, and never at the same time or place. Caution was always and strongly advised. Agents of Eusa scoured the earth for the bunkers. No one knew who coordinated the meetings, the food drop-off, or the organization at all. All were urged to describe their position within the organization as “ACTors.” They were always in character.
ACT-NAO severed the obligation to work. But ACTors worked anyway, to gather information and bring useful bits back to the meetings. ACTors worked in finance, government, coffee, food service, maintenance, all industries, all levels. Identities were protected by black hoodies, red scarves, and sunglasses. Phones were not allowed under any circumstances. ACTors of all ranks within their companies, naturally unbeknownst to their employers, shared information that aided attacks on rogue companies, and offered insight into the practices—good or bad—of all industries, to better inform the ACT-NAO in their crusade against the autonomous Military-Capitalist Complex which surrounded them. The more money they took out of the pockets of the Owners, the more level they believed their world would become. Many were interested in helping, especially if it meant the continued free produce and communion.
One day, they believed, they would be able to bear their faces to one another. Then, when the rogue corporations would be no more, they would live in communes based around near-by farms, and live as humans beings in peace. Taxes would be paid to the local farmers, doctors, and caregivers in the form of skills and services. Armed servicemen would protect the borders of the commune. All citizens would be required to know each other by name. Community would be maintained by limiting adult citizens based on the yield of the affiliated farm. Efforts would be made to relocate wandering vagabonds or excess citizens to another benevolent commune. Skilled members would teach seminars on their craft to better the education of everyone in the commune. All information and services would be shared. Court would be held by a benevolent dictator, and the government would be of the self. People who executed malicious acts upon another would be cast to the Outside, where the lawless ran amok.
In the cities representatives of each commune would meet in the bunkers and exchange reports on Wellbeing. And as long as rogue corporations ran amok, continuous efforts would be made to thwart them.
They’d ride through they city streets on fixed-gear bikes, faces covered in their red masks, hoodies up, waiting for the law of Eusa to approach them.
They were all born in the late Eighties/early Nineties. A certain nostalgia connected them. A time when things were simple, before the Year One, when everything changed. Based on this, they all shared their disdain for the Baby Boomers who turned their world to shit, who fought the Holy War, who ate up their ozone, who spent their inheritance, and left them with nothing. “What about us?” was the common cry. The common response was, “You left us with in debt, so we’ll take what’s owed.”
All the militant city-representatives of all the benevolent communes in a defined district were organized into an army called the 36 Chambers of Death. The eight generals, each representing one of eight communes within a district, were named The Genius, The Golden Arms, The Iron Lung, The Rebel I.N.S., The Ironman, The Chef, The High Chief, and Wasar. The commander was called the Abbot. Squad commanders were named, based on rank, Knights, Bishops and Rooks. All inferior soldiers, or pawns, were called Killa Bee Assassins. They executed the attacks on rogue corps. At congress in the bunkers, information would be shared; the Abbot would pass down a verdict. They all rode their fixies through the dark city streets.
They do not ride at day time, which is for the fair society. The fair are fair and deathly white. But the day will not save them. ACT-NOW owns the night.
ACT-NOW seeks out the creative destruction and deconstruction and denigration and degeneration of the civilization wrought out of Anglo-Western notions of cultural superiority and divine intellect and Christian-Satanism. It seeks the true catalytic moment in human history. They are not of radical Islam, but they fight the Holy War, the only war—for human persistence, equality, and communal love. Globalization is a farce, and only leads to destructive colonization. You must love the person beside you first. Give according to your ability, receive according to your need. The hierarchy’s been horizontalized. The 2008 financial meltdown ran a hole through the fabric of logic and statistics, exposing the folly of the Western economic paradigm. Neither humanity nor its impulses may be rigorously categorized and crunched into numbers. The Natural Order Reigns.
The capital will be forever on the move; no semblance of the commonplace or of consistency will make itself known. The time-tempest and zealous zeitgeist flows like spoiled petroleum from pipes necks slit.
To reconcile the egregious crimes committed against the American public by the financial industry, and the betrayal of that same public by their federal government by not only bailing out but handing over the role of reparation to those entities who were responsible for the economic collapse in the first place—to the tune of several trillion dollars at taxpayers’ expense, no part of which was allocated directly to help citizens in need (which constitutes theft)—the ACT-NAO adopted a “Guillotine” policy with regard to overreaching multinational corporate and financial institutions. Due to this act of inherent hostility toward the American public by the federal government of the United States of America, who re-inflated and subjected itself to the ethereal and self-indulgent whims of a corrupt and destructive industry—[international] speculative finance—which by free market standards should have been left to die of its own greed, the ACT-NAO staged simultaneous guerrilla attacks on the headquarters of those institutions which benefited from fucking over the American public by fucking them over even more, including the […] and others–“off with their heads!” All debts to the corpro-government and private-banking complex were deemed absolved by the ACT-NAO and this information was distributed so as to unify the new debt-free society by all at once ceasing payments on cars, houses, higher education, insurance, and even those made in the form of taxes to the IRS. Localized socialism became the de facto mode of governance as the ACT-NAO made agreements to communize more farming communities and distribute resources throughout urban communities. Land was now deemed the property of the people who worked and lived on it, to be maintained through their collaborative effort. All citizens of reasonable age and a clear criminal record were provided with and briefed on the appropriate and moral use of a firearm. Prison populations were taken over by officers of the ACT-NAO; records of non-violent inmates were revisited and their sentences were upheld or struck down based on conviction and circumstance. Major manufacturing corporations were disbanded, each factory or laboratory being assumed as the sovereign organization of its workers and immediate supervisors; the products of such would be consumed and used to support the lives of the workers, and distributed locally to the needs of the community. All such corporate models deemed necessary to the continued survival of society were dissolved in this manner to independent factories. Hierarchies were also horizontalized and managed from the worker-level up to the manager-level, which then consulted with purveyors of other regional products in exchange for their goods. All business came to be conducted in this way, with the net of the ACT-NAO connecting all of the independent communes. Advertising and branding became extraneous and even taboo. The only brand became the brand of the community. The working class now controlled its own means of survival, whereby wealth and currency was valued by the products themselves and not by an inflated monetary symbol, markets for the necessary goods were free to operate as normal, and all extraneous business was absolved, including the manufacturing of poor-quality clothes and appliances, of overpriced luxury goods, and of junk foods, movies, televisions, cars, and other “first-world” industries. Growth became fallacious in the wake of the new age of moral and environmental subsistence. All things were valued based on their production cost, environmental cost, pragmatic usefulness, and ingenuity. Arts were once again adopted as the pinnacle of cultural expression, and valued artists who both entertained and informed the community were exalted as icons. Moral support also took the form of masses in which both myth and science were embraced as the root of all worldly meaning, and working knowledge was perceived as divinity.
The viral and physical memes spread by the ACT-NAO contributed to, but was not the sole cause of, the adoption of the new governing model in the Benevolent Social Commune; human concern and engagement was the spark that ignited the oil. Post-cutthroat-capitalism, people living in such communities could not fathom how they endured decades of corporate puppeteering and omniscient marketing propoganda. It was good just to feel the soil in your toes, from which your day’s food had grown, and hear a local prophet speak of a new spiritual enlightenment, and you realized that American society needed to degenerate, not expand, for happiness and comfort to abound once more.
The ACT-NAO realized that any policy-maker or officer of the United States government was inherently anti-The-American-People and devout corporatist-disciplinarians. Thus, if eminent corporate rule of all sectors of society to the end of making a disproportional profit for the scarce shareholders was the enemy of the future, and the federal government was in favor of that future because of the nature of corporate involvement in campaigning and lobbying, then both corporations and government would have to be dealt with as the problem. No amount of piecemeal lawmaking would deal with this issue in a comprehensive way. Not even a cool dude like Obama would uphold the far-left tactics he had envisioned in 2007 and 2008; indeed, any American president would always be the puppet of military-corporate rule because of the position’s nature as the superficial face of an existing system—one spiraling out of control. The simple spokesman would not be able to rewrite the teleprompted message. Therefor, the teleprompter had to be disconnected; the fundamental pillars of American society had to be uprooted. And the only way to effectively uproot the order of things was not bargaining with the power-system, for that had been attempted many times over with little to no result, and not occupying or demonstrating in a peaceful symbolic way, but forcefully occupying the spaces once reserved for corporate expansion. Domestic attacks against the state and its annexes became, not only a necessity, but a duty. Terrorism as performance art, like the folk music of the past. DeLillo was right in Mao II: the most immediate, effective, and stirring mode of artistic creation has become the real degeneration of deceitful and oppressive states.
The ACT-NAO vows to act against the interests of the American government and both its corporate and military annexes, and in the interest of the American working class, until such structural changes as horizontal rule, workers’ ownership, anti-usury, ecological cost factor, military budget cuts, and political transparency are adopted by the governing-defense complex, and then the two halves of this nation’s society may rejoin, to be administered by a new collective: the American Cooperative Tactics Team. Freedom of press, speech, assembly, gun ownership, political representation, dissent, and the civic equality of all men and women of all races and beliefs will always persist.
In the night, from fixed-gear bikes, the chant rang out, and was heard round the world–
“We have a body in decay;
We have a mind in disarray;
Off with the head,
The rest may stay,
So hands may mold with fresher clay,
And feet may walk a better way
Toward a new and brighter day.”
* * *
In some uncharted planes of realEarth, people have shed their clothes and started over, living in tribes where language is primarily used around family members and in court. They knew about Vireal when it was still being developed, and civilization had not yet moved underground. They had been Aggies, affiliated with the farming communes of the ACT-NAO but they diverged from that largely violent order to live in the midst of nature, for they had decided that if the earth were to extinguish the human race, and all races of animal and organic life just the same, then they would die as animals in the wilderness, and commune with the earth in the years before the rapture.
They named her Gaia as the indigenous peoples had; and in the last movement of her symphony, after three generous movements of civilization and evolution, they would be the last notes widdled out on the world’s tiniest violin, in the coda.
They were not privileged enough to go underground and join Vireal with the upper-crust of society; they did not believe in the violence advocated by the ACT-NAO, nor did they sanction violence-backed communities; they had no belief in technological transcendence which would have allowed them to join Surryll; and they had no sympathies for the ruins of the World Govern[ment] O[rganization], the former United States, or Interzone Incorporated. They were indebted only to Gaia, and they would submit themselves wholly to her mercy and collection on the terms of her own bond, without the pretense of civilization which would estrange them from her and her creatures by elevating themselves closer to a metaphorical order within the chaos.
They were so disconnected from what remained of society, yet connected in the most important way—to Gaia. They did not even know that in the early 22nd century, the anarchists and the 36 Chambers had dealt a one-two blow to Interzone Inc., first by infiltrating the Big Box Complexes and rendering the human bodies therein useless, then by locating and destroying Nebuchadnezzar, the central server of Vireal. Neither did the residents of Vireal know that they were, in reality, already dead, because their computer implants had cut off all sensory data from their physical body, and as long as their simulated reality remained in tact in their heads, they would live happily and normally until their brain ceased to obtain the necessary nutrients. They did not, in fact, realize that they had been dying all along until the fabric of their virtual reality, as a result of the server’s destruction, began to unravel.
Supreme Exchange 