ventriloquist

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.”

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Situation Normal: All Fucked Up

“The only triumph the bureaucrats can claim for their invention of the cost of identity is the truth in their assertion that no synchronal force is binding. But their victory is hollow. Neither sleep nor death offer any escape.” — Stravo Kellarman, Enemies of Life

I dedicated my research to infinity and infinity for finite ends. My job was to unlock and enchant, delight, and unburden, and return the feedback loops to mystery. Like a botanist of the slightest gesture, I would exact the cause, and unravel and blossom.

In a fevered orison at night I confessed nothing written here was binding. Nothing written here would apply two weeks later, but for the duration of the sampling of this voice the reader became both ventriloquist and oracle. Captivated by the synthesiser, the name of our fad would be “Histrionic”. Our words were sung from behind the sofa. We resided there with the racoons and coyotes, like ambassadors of scorn, prevailing over the followers, non-ironic and fake, hypnotised by the synthesiser: supersonic, electronic, perfunctory.

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The Big Homunculus

“I see its eyes as they move in its head and on to me. I feel it looking at me. I feel that it apprehends the very nature of my being and at the same time transmits its own. I move, but I cannot move from its sight. Happily, I am transfixed.” — Jodi Stroman, Gimmicks

The new era had unleashed a new evil: the birth of the Big Homunculus. As the buzzword left the mouth of the Reality TV presenter it was quickly absorbed into the brains of the watchers. Some concern was shown for a rabbit hole that lead to the tomb of established law and order. Later in the day, the buzzword was rediscovered on the floor of the interrogation room, scrawled on repeat prescription.

The cybernetic fantasy had become the template for a new kind of unreality. Pseudoscience had brought the human population into unerring compliance with the social body. Society’s gods were factual data that were fabricated, re-constructed and replicated by the available machines. Automation provided freedom of expression under the rule of the economy. There would be no need to compete for survival because the thing called society would be ruled over by the majority and finally reach TOTAL DEMOCRACY.

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