military

The Apparatus

“The Phenomena Inquiry Team (PIT) was an elite committee of scientists formed in 2016. They touted themselves as ‘dedicated to innovative research in the fields of biochemistry and neuroscience’ but were selling body parts to billionaires on the black market for alternative medicine.” — Ralph Lambrecht, Arkhaiologos, Ancient Science in Modern Times

The dictatorship of the factual was rule by the obvious. To attach power or control to facts was to submit to the obvious.

The ventriloquist was undone. The voice said murder and the sale of weaponry were incompatible with Art so the ventriloquist believed they would be doomed to peddling the methods of killing forever. They installed a mock funeral after pretending to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. A mysterious young woman arrived uninvited wearing a leather jacket with alchemical insignia on the back.

Everything commonplace had become commonplace.

Lakshmi turned over again and finally got some sleep in the motel.

It was said that there was nothing new under the sun so it was the personal responsibility of every citizen to recycle the past to save the future.

“Remember Summer ‘05? I blossomed like a flower. I’d overcome knowledge.”

(more…)

Paradise is Where I Am

“The accretion of delusions engendered by the myths of capital and labor imposes a diabolical doctrine of competition and respectability which amplifies commodification to no end.” — Eugénie Villiers, The Meta-Psyche of Capital and Labor

On a bright cold day in April, in a land where everybody forgot technology equalled control, machine personae deepfaked the human category. It was not self-evident.

Their realness going forward pixel by pixel, bystanders began to take on the appearance of houses. Little fortresses were shielded against the elements. In the shelter of wayward appetites, structures of organic / machinic toil — produce — were couched in fabric, offset against buildings observing each other in the environment in queues and lanes and clusters. Plots of land divided into units each attached to different pairs of hands.

“Is identity the same as character?” wondered N.

(more…)

To Hell with Protocol

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“The primary model for human relations in consumer society is the ‘contactless’ tap or swipe.” — Milda Tinguali, The Consumer Vortex

Nasrul awoke to the news that the town square had been firebombed and the area cordoned off by military police. Interferences and disturbances had become commonplace in the last few days of the dying of the embers of the empire of the senses.

There were those who said there was a panicked, frenzied grasping for the familiarity of undying chaos and slaughter.

The electricity supply ran out, making it impossible to uphold data transfer rates in another region where the in-communicability of the known impressed itself, rendering members of the general populace speechless, while some stared into space for hours on end, only pausing to eat. Without servility and submission to enterprise, there was nothing left for anyone to speak about, nothing to communicate. (more…)