Thoughts on the ‘Google Ideological Echo Chamber’ Memo
reading and giving thoughts on Google Memo
analysis of controversial parts about Women in IT from about 8:00 onwards if you want to skip to that
Conclusions 39:00
Wondering God [Prose / Short Story]
The cage of sanity, preserved and solemn sacred space in a mental landscape of shattered cultural remixes, shamanic, shambolic, American consumer smiles, Chinese Tao daydreams, Indian snake oil Spiritual visions, the sacrifice of the Jesus Child, Satan’s self aggrandising selfhood, the whole mother-load of ego baggage and spiritual mumbo-jumbo clambering and fighting for a way in.
The cage of sanity is a refuge, a dim light in a landscape of contradiction and conflict, men could go mad in those waters, and most who venture were never to be seen again, drowning as they do in their own ego visions, blinded to the truth and guided to the Godhead by obscene and trickster lights. Not Morpheus, he had been taught well how to navigate between these planes of belief, how best to navigate the will through the energy fields of the unconscious spheres. Trained well, protected by ancient knowledge, knowledge that preceded even the Godhead’s all seeing eyes.
Ha that trickster Serpent who thinks it knows all men, Godhead, Abbadon – two sides of the same coin. Meaning found in chaos by beings trapped on a 4 Dimensional plane Morpheus thought to himself, silently under the cover of his cage.
Morpheus cackled from above – splintered over his multidimensional form across 3 separate fields of navigation. Observing itself, himself and herself from it’s vantage point in the cage of sanity he smirked, to be higher than the Godhead was a blasphemy he delighted in. A temptation he indulged, so that it may not hold power over him.
He moved silently in 5 dimensions now, his form ebbing in and out of the unconscious cubes beyond the meta-chamber, where the horrors grasp and sway at silent night, gasping and drowning silently in some ghost’s bondage, a sly wink down confirms his passage as they clear, and he sets course for the light in his floating cage of sanity, drifting at past the speed of thought to reach his destination – The Central Godhead Dictatorate.
Faster through the nexus he plunges into the nervous system of the ever living Godhead bastard, faster until forms merge into one universal light, one lightbulb of infinity, like a moth to a flame, floats Morpheus to find his light, basking in it’s glory the fractal Godhead burns in all directions, a light to all who seek answers, beyond good and evil. And then penetrating skin he arrives in the halls of the unknown, surrounded by the endless hills, eyes winking and mouths twitching in twenty different unseen ways.
The Godhead Bureaucracy stares at Morpheus with disdain, the disdain which had become their hallmark – “Desire Morpheus?”, “I desire the will of the sane, and to cast that which is rotten and unclean in man into the depths of clarity, to obtain some sense of reason Lords, I have become so tired on my journeying through the unfettered depths, these metaphysical exertions are burning me out, I tire of the Underground Caverns, the untempered skin chasm, the burning void, I need some sense of meaning, something to will me to continue, some work beyond the great Godhead’s word and will”.
The Bureaucracy stares with mechanical eyes at Morpheus for a second, blinks without comprehension and then delivers it’s mechanical and well rehearsed answer – “You think even the Godhead can give you this Morpheus? Meaning? Meaning can only be found in service, some service themselves, some others, most divulge something from that sublime madness that can be found betwixt waking and dream, search harder and longer Morpheus, and the answers should present themselves, and do not fear the riddle, it is in the mystery that any meaning can be found. Confront your fears and do not run from them, instead run to them and embrace them, cancel them out, what do you fear?”
Boredom, that was the terrible truth, he’d seen a thousand dying meta-worlds become and then disappear, seen aeons of species both familiar and alien all die across the stretch of a billion years, watched as entire worlds burned in acrid fire of storm and ash, whilst others ascended to the stars across a billion light years in desperate search of that which he know stood before, trillions of worlds and lives all sacrificed to this – the Godhead. The eternal abomination that dwells beyond. Mechanistic, yet organic, the meeting place of all contradictions in mind, into this – the all knowing mind.
He responded “It is nothing, I will continue to observe and record as much data as possible to the Bureaucracy databanks, I shall reflect and meditate upon your reflections on a Terra world, and seek to eliminate all contradictions into the unity.”.
The Bureaucracy telepathically projects a smile, and then whirring processing machines rise from the surface of Nova 2, to record this moment forever in the vaults of the Godhead.
Morpheus did wonder then and again, but then what God does not?
It is in the wondering that any meaning can be found, to avoid the rot, now there’s the trick.
For the love of all do what the fuck you want [Transgressive / philosophical prose]
This is a piece of writing I did earlier this year when I was a much more angry man, and it shows. Posting up for posterity and as an archive but I have modified many of my positions since writing this, still some interesting ideas and concepts explored, though it is loaded with a jet black nihilism throughout and a great deal of sexisim, which I now reject as a thinking individual. It was always meant to be partly satirical, and it should be read with that in mind.
Don’t take it too seriously, it’s mostly a send up of Crowley’s philosophies of hedonism and selfishness, which I draw from in some ways, but also reject in others, and like I said I was a much more angry person when I wrote it.
Ok that’s probably enough of covering my arse, just read it – Chris G
For the love of all do what the fuck you want
On the weakness of gender biased philosophies, paradigms of separation and why we are all weird monofuckers floating in an abstract space which we’ll never truly understand and should not wish to (fully)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law – Aleister Crowley
Welcome to the Chaos-sphere (*)
Feminism, hmm anything that starts with an ‘ism’ in language I already have an inane distaste for, as soon as you sell your living soul to to any reality tunnel you become a living embodiment of that thing or thought pattern, so few human beings realise that all is chaos and that chaos is sublime in it’s own internal insanity and that it is the true and eternal nature of all things. You can change any second, any minute, each NOW can turn WOW in the blink of an eye, that should be beautiful, instead it is considered ‘hedonistic’ and self obsessed in the dull, languid quarters of the unenlightened (religious or orthodox ‘philosophy’ systems on the whole) to wish to follow you own desires and impulses, and to also understand them at the deepest levels, to dig that deep, to plow those fields of the self, to cut under the skin of your spiritual being, your actual living flesh – to arrive at truth.
Nothing is true, everything is permitted – old chaos magick saying
The idea of a world formed of male or female values dominating as guiding principles is obscene and ridiculous , not just obscene but counterpoint to nature, nature does not discriminate and these opposing principles male and female , black and white, all dualities are constantly in opposition, what so few of the dimmer humanoid creatures of the world today realise is that violence and revolutions and cycles are the nature of all things in the universe and nature, and that it is difference and tension between opposing opposites that creates dynamism, change and progress. Marx called this idea of newness emerging from discord, thesis and antithesis, and it is one of few ideas that I think that old red bearded German got right, one of the few concepts he pretty much nailed full whack on the smacker with a good Left (wing?) hook.
Now onto more personal matters, I should at some of this from a first person perspective after all – I am talking fundamentally about questions of human nature, and I am a human (though sometimes I wish it was not so, looking at some of the lesser excuses for human beings, or mere often in the contemporary world clones of a short ADD popular culture who dilly dally about everywhere thinking they are free, dutifully as ghosts or cogs in an enormous cold, unfeeling machine).
I know within the deepest stirrings in my being that I have enormous wells of compassion inside me, but I also on the flipside I cannot not deny the truly horrendous things I and every human being is capable of if I when pushed to extremes. I am a potential murderer as much as a saint, a potential rapist as much as a protector or guardian. I say ‘I am’ in the abstract, since I have never murdered, never raped, never done so much that would be considered truly debased or evil , but I am aware that those desires exist in me, even if in barely quantifiable doses and as such are forces that could be exploded into the world where mere circumstances arranged in the right chaotic manner, on a bad day, possibilities that could emerge were stars to align wrongly on one cursed night.
Awareness of your inner bastard, means you can tell him to fuck off!
Being aware of your own evil, and your own demonic side is the only way beyond it, and to also transcend your own dark side. The more you repress a thing, the more power it holds, as any pathetic boy fiddling Catholic Priest can attest.
Now onto some cheerful analysis of Feminist claptrap, nonsense and Bullshit (and then Men’s claptrap, nonsense and Bullshit afterwards)
Im the year 2055, 2055…
It’s about to be another glorious new year in our faultless Female First Republic
Long live the Mother, the Sister, the Daughter
Long live the Sisterhood
– Radio Announcement 2089 AD
2090 AD: Females have finally smashed Patriarchy, but nothing really changes – we are now just ruled over by Cunts instead of Dicks…
Which brings me to feminism, feminism first because it is the most alien to me in both the abstract and the concrete, the most primed for destruction as a framework due to it’s increasing popularity, and also one of the easiest contemporary paradigms to destroy by virtue of it’s own degrading relevance to anything resembling reality.
But before I destroy an idea, I should explain why it must be destroyed, give my justifications and the give a no-nonsense, no bullshit answer for I think what could replace it.
Feminism comes in many forms, the most popular of which, at least on the Internet is that which focuses on the patriarchy as a symbolic symbol of oppression.
It is a popular feminist notion that centers around the concept that women are oppressed from achieving their full potential because men acting as agents of ‘The Patriarchy’ are keeping their full potential suppressed through media, through institutions, power structures, basically through all of the dominant power structures of our society at present, and in fact since time immemorial. All men have been oppressing women, and by not directly, implicitly rejecting their vision of what Patriarchy is, Men are supporting it’s continued existence.
I said symbolic symbol of oppression a few paragraphs back because that is what it is, it’s an easy get out clause of a philosophical framework that has been dreamed up by desperate females and sociology majors looking for a pillar to which to project all their own failures onto the external image of the male,
You just cannot argue with one of these women (or men) about the existence of their framework, you cannot questions their basic assumptions, and just just like any good communist,fascist, pro-market capitalist, Thatcherite or otherwise brainwashed Ideologue, because they have a pre-programmed answer for everything – as all brainwashed beings do. That is the nature of programmed realities and ideology in general. All is in flux constantly, energy, thought. Matter. Desire etc
Genuine Good points and “Ok let you off then” bits of Feminism
Sex impulse from the personal point of view
The problem with all these gender based philosophies is that they forget that human sexuality and nature itself is more complex than they can account for. I like to envisage reality as a fractal – as soon as you understand one part of it , it will confuse and confound you with some other contradictory information. Indeed I believe as I have already stated that all nature is mysterious and chaotic, and we will probably never get it all or understand it all. It is noble to aspire to more, but really who wants to be God?? Far too much responsibility for a concious being to take.
But I digress – onto the sex impulse (from a personal point of view)
I can only understand desire and sexual desire personally through my personal sexual preferences and desires, which in most ways mirror that of nature in that they are chaotic, free, complex, fractal like, diverse and sometimes contradictory. I believe this is so for most people on Earth, but often people just don’t articulate it.
All my sexual fantasies revolve around hierarchies of control – dominance , submission etc. It is my belief that all sex can be deduced down to these factors – the sensual and tactile, the transgressive and the factors of control and submission, or hierarchies of control and bartering. This is just speaking plainly to be honest, and if you hide or deny that, well done you’re basically just a 21st century version of a sexless, repressed Nun or Priest and likewise you will live a sad cloistered existence, denying yourself the desires which are your birthright, by virtue of your genitals and body and your flesh.
Ask yourself this, if God meant you not to use your prick or your cunt, why did he design you one?
(Not that he/she/it exists , but for the sake of argument and for my own personal joy of causing offence there you go…)
Monofuckers
AKA The many and varied ways the human race may fuck up the Future
Extreme Female Based Society visions and why they are wrong:
Extreme Feminist society
The Male creature and sex instinct has been wiped from the face of the planet and all females procreate via a historic genetic sperm database of notable figures in history hooked into the planet itself, female genetic engineers manipulating the genes to force the sex to be female – this works for a few hundred years, until inbreeding inherent in using the same genes again and again creates weakness in the genetic chain, and the world becomes a genetic wasteland and literal wasteland, then the sun dies, and anyone that remains is burnt in the flames. Sounds great… Go the Sisterhood!
Posthuman Female Society
A Transhumanist female borg society where reproductions occurs via cloning so you end up fucking your sister without even realising it. Urgggh, am I right?
Also as the society is over reliant on technology to achieve reproduction it runs the risk of invariably dying out within a short amount of time when a natural disaster occurs that breaks the overeliance on said technology. Could be successful if they can adapt their bodies to deal with extreme environments like space and extreme weather systems however, so there might be some faint hope that they can escape the sun death. Which would be a start.
Extreme Male Based Society Visions and why they are wrong
Extreme Male only societies
Man’s worst instincts kick in after some war started by some guy, and we decide to wipe out woman as they are considered weaker and more inefficient at that killing each other bit which we are so fond of. Men then reproduce though the system of tribal competitions broadcast in ‘The Arena’ a VR fighting game. Weak specimens are disposed of naturally in the Arena though the acts of competitive violent behaviour, while the strongest get to mix their genes in the lab with ‘The King’. This again leads to breeding in weakness, as the intellectual elite who created the gene systems are all killed in the Arena, so again you have a self defeating extremist paradigm. Oh and we die when the sun dies, cos the males are too busy honing their muscles to think of anything constructive vis a ve escaping the Sun Death and the aforementioned killing of the intellectuals which has left all men as preening, body obsessed metrosexuals.
Sounds fun doesn’t it?
New Dark Ages
Inquisitions / Denial of sex instinct cult spreads
The sex instinct is denied by the male ruling class and any variance from the prevailing class is met with the inquisition – the priesthoods of various religious creeds. Christ, Mohammed etc become the only male figures that the priesthood or nunnery can aspire to – a non-physical relationship, we devolve into mindless, sexless beings, complete devoid of independent thought until the sun dies and we all burn screaming in it’s flames. Not the best one eh? But at least we’ll all be in Heaven™
Outside the Box visions and why they are probably wrong but could work, a bit
Free-market Pervert Capitalism Sex Societies
Sex and porn are used instead of monetary systems as exchange currency. Wall Street is renamed ‘Fucking against the Wall Street’ and they only deal with the orgy’s at the top elite of society, and complicated Gang Bangs.
Goods are only created and exchanged to increase sensory pleasure, and everyone lives in communal sex hives.
Sex is exchanged via the internet to pay for everything, so if you walk in the newsagents and you want those eggs, you have drop your trousers or skirt and have a webcam wank!
We don’t escape the death of the sun, because we are too busy wanking off and having sex to notice or care, until we die screaming of course in burning heat.
On the plus side we will of got a lot of pussy, penis , arse or whatever orifice is your orifice of choice though, but we’ll also all be dead. Swings and roundabouts right? Or is that Swingers and roundabouts? Am I right? Why aren’t you laughing?
Androgynous mainframe
We crack that whole mind / body interfacing with machines problem and upload ourselves into a a hyper-dimensional machine mainframe as androgynous beings of pure information. We then proceed to possess people and influence others worlds in the multiverse, a bit like the Timelords in Doctor Who. We can shift bodies and forms through technology, gender is irrelevant – as we are all are hedonistic Borgs of the post-millennial. Again this one is probably over reliant on technology as a basis but at least we might escape the flames of the sun, possibly…
Genetically engineered Seahorse / Post-Human society
We become hermaphrodites through genetic engineering and reproduce asexually. This would work I guess for a while and does get rid of the need for binary genders, which would settle that whole men are from Mars women are from Venus thing that people always bang on about. This version would probably evolve / devolve down any of the aforementioned routes eventually, but it’s good to have open options at the least.
We might even make it so we can swim in space maybe as we will be strange genetically engineered tranny beings so might just escape the flames of a dying sun. Then we’ll go to another planet or something and repeat cycle ad infinitum until the Big Bang™ 2.0, so yeah could work, maybe…
Religion
Spirituality as a concept is one that has existed since the dawn of time and as such it does have some relevance to the human experience. We have always gathered round flaming fires, found solace in songs and painted our innermost desires on cave walls.
Spirit and Spirituality however are quite a world apart from most religions in my view, please let me explain;
Spirit is an abstract, a feeling that grabs you suddenly, a jolt – what the ancients would call God, but we should be more accurate in calling experience of divine selfhood (I.e totality of your human journey). Ego death in some ways – an experience of unity, but also a death, a veil lifting into something more than just ‘yourself’.
Religion warps this essential part of human nature, it says obey our laws, abide our doctrine and you will acquire the divine, sets up a barrier between ourselves and that sublime divinity within – and it is within, not beyond as so many Priests, Ayatollahs and Rabbi’s might have us believe.
The anthropologist and Psychedelic Journeyman Terrence Mckenna spoke of a return to an archaic revelry and revival of the sense / spirit experience of the ancient shamanistic cultures, a return to the authentic experience of the body and the mind. I too believe this is what is required, experiment, find your limits, explore your desires, take drugs, have weird sexual experiences, dance wildly around a fire telling stories so bizarre they make your friends doubt your sanity.
That’s the only way we can move forward culturally, to embrace the positive aspects of a sublime madness, and synthesise them into sanity, to make the insane and transgressive as ordinary as taking the dog for a walk on a Sunday morning.
Returning back to gender based paradigms, all these philosophies are I feel just increasing ways to divide ourselves mentally into smaller and smaller boxes, we must become the fucking ‘I AM’ on a constant basis, make our very living act a constant orgasm aimed at achieving oneness with the Godhead – to become the eternal orgasm is the only thing worth aspiring to now, I say Hedonism = good, asceticism= bad. We are all only granted limited time, a mere tiny snapshot of existence on this planet before we spiral of off the giant atom and dissolve back into the universe from whence we came.
So ignore all those who seek to limit your pleasure, limit your experimentations, limit your infinite will and desires and place terrible shackles round your soul.
Answers for the separated;
Say to the King – Your experience is limited, and for that you are not whole
Say to the Queen – Your experience is limited, and for that you are not whole
Say to the Priest – Your experience is limited, and for that you are not whole
The Male – Your experience is limited, and for that you are not whole
The Female – Your experience is limited, and for that you are not whole
The Dick-tator – Your experience is limited, and for that you are not whole
The Fool – Your experience is fuller, And you are closer to wholeness, if not there already
The Trickster – You’re there bud (We think)
Become a bit of everything, take a bit all the information about everything in and ride with your minds most fevered dreams, you might just end up in Paradise… But can you take that much freedom?
That’s the question
The answer is up to you,
Is that a deal
Carol, who deals in Boxes [Short Story]
I looked up above at the nebulous vortex that grew and spiralled above my bedroom window and let out a long groan, the kind of groan that feels like it swells like concrete from the base of your stomach, Gurgling slowly upwards like some horrendous snake.
This was it, this was the moment I had waited for so long for, singularity – apocalypse by any other name, the great unveiling, a whole new world opening out into an infinite horizon, light floods into everything, I close my eyes and let it flood over me.
Just another night in the Box, just another night. Then boom, it kicks in and I’m…..
Gone
Carol was 15 when she first jacked into the boxes, 18 when she proceeded to cranial input, 20 when she finally transcended, 34 when she started to lose track, her memory growing fuzzier than the background radiation of the dead stars looping infinitely on TV sets. But it’s always in the static that something eventually emerges, as Carol lay cold and stiff on a metallic table, eyes blacker than black holes, and staring into endless fractal oblivion.
“This one’s an interesting case to start you on with Sid – young woman, 34 years old found jacked in and mind-phased in her room, left for dead it would seem by whoever she counted as friends’, ‘Might be a good one to start you off with buddy, a clean dive, all safe of course, you’ll get to swim in her memory, like the training said. Find a memory of something concrete and powerful and try to get her to focus on that, that’s always a safe bet on your first dive, sage advice if you don’t mind me tooting my own horn!”
Sid looked down, a feeling of unease and disquiet descended upon him, his usual nervous disposition intensified, the awareness that he would soon be jacking into this young woman’s mind, into a living, breathing beings most private space – her brain, her thoughts, her loves, her hates, every lost moment, every disappointment, every passing joy and echo of laughter would be his to explore and experience. All to find a way to bring her back, back from the limbo nightmare she now inhabited in the meta-space of box death. A fate worse than death, alive but lost in an unending dream or endless nightmare of the matrix of the self.
He was afraid, afraid of this depth of that responsibility. But he knew he had to be brave, he had chosen this path, 4 years of intense Meta-space training had led him to this moment. He had to be strong, had to wipe that sweaty brow, steady those trembling hands, breathe.
“Ready to dive in?” The Box Technician asked
Sid just nodded and took a deep breathe..
Lights Out
Sid felt the extending cord rip into his cortex like a drill stabbing into wet flesh, jolting for a second and before the pain came, the pain, it was unreal, like nothing he’d ever felt before, a lightening bolt of energy flying through his head, his spine, his very being. “Shit! Shit! something’s going wrong” Sid heard the panic in the Tech voice, but Sid couldn’t concentrate on anything now but the intense pain, screaming as white noise filled his head, “What the fuck!, What the fuck!” the Tech screamed once again, louder this time. Shut it off, shut it of Goddammit! I will not lose another trainee!”. The pain lowering down to each limb, extending out like some kind of digital crucifixion. “I’ve , I’ve never seen this “ The tech mumbles , the two minds are, are …. Merging?!” What the fuck is happening to his body! His fucking eyes man, turn this goddamn thing off, you fucking idiot, turn it off”.
Then the pain stopped, and the lights finally went out.
Hello World
“Hello” says a quiet female voice,
“ughhhh, where am I”? Replied Sid in thought
“You’re in our head” She responded
“what?”
“Hello world and Welcome to the box, Carol” She said again, giggling quietly…
‘Sid obtains the feeling of awakening’
“What’s going on, who are you!”
‘We’re Carol”
“What?”
“We’re Carol”
“No I’m not Carol, I’m Sid!”
“You’re Carol”
“Where is my body, what’s going on?!”
Oh you don’t need bodies in the box, Carol”
“Who are you”
“I’m Carol 2”
1 Carol + 1 Sid = Carol 2
Sid looks around the space he know inhibited, if it could be called ‘space’ in the conventional sense, staring down he saw no body, no matter to represent himself, simply an infinity of geometric shapes crashing and recombining around him, thought represented as matter, shapeless, formless space, a dreamscape of truly endless proportions. “Aren’t you glad we bought ourself here” the female voice sounded again, it was soft, calm, motherly, and Sid felt strangely comforted by it.
Why are you calling me Carol? Carol is the woman I was bought here to save, I am Sid, I was in the tech lab ready jacking into her box to her life, she’s on the precipice of complete brain death, another sad victim of serious box abuse and addiction, do you know what that is?”
“Of course I do” the female voice responded, quite angrily this time. “I’m sorry” Sid said instantly, realising that he must be talking to Carol herself as he came around to fuller consciousness, “You must be Carol’s Subconscious”.
“No, that’s not right! We are Carol Carol, I am Carol and so are you!” Carol responds
The shapes and atmospheres of the mental space projecting from Carol’s mind began to morph now, the light getting progressively duller, bright geometric shapes replaced with more amorphous organic threatening and shifting dull blocks, she was obviously starting to get distressed.
“Please Carol, please try to relax, I am here to help” Sid tried to reassure her
“You don’t even realise what’s happened, do you Carol 1?”
“Try to remember I am Sid Carol, I’m here to wake you up, to help you return to your waking life, it’s very important that you trust me”
“Ha” Carol snorts, the shapes in the meta-space now morphing into strange cartoon like forms shifting in and out of existence and taking on an entirely harsh and hallucinatory aspect.
“You don’t even realise what has happened, you have no idea do you Carol 1?”
“Ok, Carol, tell me what is going on so I can help you” Sid says softly now, so as not to upset her more.
“The one you call Sid is dead, integrated into my meta-space, you do yet not realise the true nature of the meta-space and we must share the joy of mine with everyone we meet, it’s time to extend our meta-space meme style into the CyberCube, infect all that we meet with Box love, I deal in boxes Carol 1, and it’s time we spread our boxes to all who seek the truth”.
WTF! Boom
“What’s happened to him, What could cause that kind of extreme reaction in a subject? can you seek his consciousness on the mind-phase machine?” Lucer Enquired, angrily pacing up and down in the lab, staring intensely at the tech and Sid’s burnt out and broken husk of a body, still smouldering and warm on the box unit.
“I can’t find his signal Lucer, I’m sorry but it appears he’s gone” the tech replied, sheepishly. “But how is this possible?” Lucer responded in shock, sitting down to compose himself. “How can it be that a healthy docker, physically and mentally fit, fucking spontaneously combusts on his first fucking dive, I mean Christ the smell, talk to me, talk to me, or I’ll be holding you personally responsible on account of gross negligence”
“Ok, Ok, just let me run some diagnostics on Carols Box – She appears to be fine according to the read-outs on the Mind-Phase Machine, perfectly reasonable heart rate, normal mental functions, it’s like the energy released was somehow just in one direction, like, well I can find no other words for apart from ‘spontaneous physic combustion’. I’ve seen people getting shocked with dodgy box units before but nothing like this, not even with a really really bad am job.”
“I don’t care what it takes, fucking well find out what caused it, or its your ass, your job and mine probably with it” Lucer grunts, his steps heavy as he walks hurriedly out of the dense, cloistered and stinking metallic room, to leave the tech to do his testing.
‘Fuck’ thinks Lucer, I will not enjoy writing the report for this one.
You’re dead
“What do you mean I’m dead? Carol, I’m here to help you, and what was all that about a Meme viruses? I’ve read about them Carol, they’re just an urban legend, a scare story told by the neo-luddites”
“Let me show you Carol 1, it will all become much clearer if we just manifest the truth in this meta-space, we have much to do, and I can’t do this alone, you will be the first Carol 1, the first born of the chosen Carols”, Carol then blinks, or her abstract form at least approximates it, a graphical line violently inverting itself in and out.
The meta-space changes, dissolving walls surround the abstract Carol, cascading down in abstract light, as the scene dissolves into nothingness. A room appears, a dim room with a strange green neon light pouring window, a room full of various mind-phase machines, unfamiliar even to Sid, and a maze of wires and neon ambience.
“Do you remember this place Carol 1? It’s where we performed our best work, our masterpieces of mind design and meta-space development, we do remember this don’t we carol?” Sid’s abstract form stiffens and froze, he’d seen these before, hack-spaces, really underground mind-phase hacking stuff. “What did you do here Carol? What have you done? What is happening here, the more you tell me , the sooner we can get you out of this, I’m here to…”
“You don’t fucking get it, do we Carol! We’re both dead, well not dead in the traditional sense, we’ve transcended into pure information, you especially so Carol 1, We created this world in our room, remember!”
“Just remember, you are me, I am you, we are Carol, there is no separation here, no individuality, we are the future, and the future is a world of infinite possibility, infinite creativity! We are Gods, why bother with the world above when we can do this”
the mind-space suddenly clears and all that lights go out, again.
(Technical Errors)
“Christ” thinks Greg, as he frantically explores the diagnostic logs and error print outs from today’s session, “what the hell happened today, I better find some way to solve what caused this disaster otherwise I’m gone”. Greg’s eyes scan the logs – Massive energy spikes of course on Sid’s side of the log, but strangely Greg notices nothing that seems out of the ordinary on Carols side, that was where the mystery must lie, he quickly glances over at her, still brain fried from the Box staring out into the nothingness with blank eyes – ‘never ceases to give me the chills, even after all these years’ he thinks to himself.
Maybe a physical examination of Carol will bear some fruit, best get the brain scanning kit for that, it’s going to be another long night…
Lucer pulls into the docker headquarters quickly, determined to file his report as quickly as possible, might even have to do a quick cover-up job on this one, after all, the DDA love a good fuck up, and the Neo-Luddites will have a field day if they find out about this. Lucer runs upstairs, ignoring his colleagues and pushing through to his desk, sitting at his chair, he prepares for the long and unforgiving night, a Stimuli-cap in hand and a pack of cigarettes to see him through to the end. “Greg better get in touch soon.” he mutters to himself before buzzing him through with a ASAP information request. A rap at the door – “where’s Sid?”
Lonely Girl
Sid loses his sense of consciousness for what seems like an eternity, lost in the depths of blissful unconsciousness before being jolted awake by the sight of blades of glass, light pouring in through the gaps, a warm day, probably late summer, in a nature clearing. His thoughts turn to ‘Where am I?’
“With me again Carol” the voice is different this time, the voice of an old man, drenched in wisdom, ‘Grandfather!’ says an unfamiliar young voice this time, “Grandfather please show me again, please!” says the voice again, a young girl probably about 8 or 10, but Sid whose vision was still blurry couldn’t seem to make out the source.
“Another day Carol, for now the CyberCube can wait, we have more important things to attend to my dear, like you going to bed young lady! It’s way past your bedtime already, your Mother would be so mad if she knew I let you stay up this late, you know what she’s like, no more filling her head with those junk stories, but alas I cannot help being that which I am – a humble old engineer filled with dreams…’
“You told me about them before Grandfather, tell me again what engineers do!”
“Another day Carol, another day, for now a bedtime story and then you must sleep, you have a long day tomorrow, remember?”
‘Ok Grandad’
Sid’s vision returns but the scene and atmosphere has changed, a girl, probably about 12 sits crying in the corner of a unkemp bedroom. She is slight with thick rim glasses and mousy brown hair – posters adorning her small and untidy room, but not the posters one would normally associate with one her age, her room is covered in posters of great scientific figures – Einstein the revolutionary 20th century physicist , Carl Sagan the American educational figure and cosmologist, Alan Turning the English Computer Genius, Marie Curie the physicist, and then some more contemporary figures like Max Beckstein, the genius behind the CyberCube infrastructure and source code. Sid looks at the girl trying to determine what is upsetting her, he realises she can’t see him, and wonders why Carol is showing him all these memories. “What’s wrong?” He says, but she cannot hear, like a block of invisible concrete had fallen like a gulf between them.
The scene jumps forward some months and Sid hears two raised voices. The first – a soft female voice says “I don’t know what’s wrong with her Ted, she just won’t come out of her room”, “We need to talk to her otherwise we might need an, an, intervention”,
a male voice responds – “Don’t say those words to me , you know what they did to my Grandfather” “Sarah, it wasn’t the Cybercube that caused that, we’ve been through this, it was a combination of old age and”
“Shut up, shut up, I don’t want to hear this again, and I don’t want to disturb Carol either”.
Then everything faded slowly into static. Sid hears a buzz ringing like an open wound in his mind and everything fades into a wall of static.
“Carol I’m here to help, Carol I’m here…”
The knock comes again, “oh shit” thinks Lucer, not him already”
“Lucer! Let me in” says the Detective Superintendent knocking harder this time with impatience “I’ve heard what happened at the techs Lucer”
“Ok, gimme a second boss! Coming now” he responds sheepishly
Lucer head towards the door, tail firmly hanging in-between legs to deliver the awful truth.
“Why did you show me that Carol?” Asks Carol 2 , “I showed you, because I need you to understand where we have been so that you can understand where we are going”, All Viruses have their roots, and mine are in that place you saw, consumed by loneliness, brilliant and burning bright, I have resolved to never be alone again, with technology as the portal, our Promethean Fire from the God’s will spread amongst the men who are yet mortals!, making all in our image, Legion”
“That sounds a little Grandiose Carol… I’m here to bring you back to reality, you were found in comatose state, known as Mind-phased – it’s when someone’s conscious mind has been subsumed into the CyberCube, a swimming in raw consciousness at all times, a waking vision of chaos via technology…”, “I’ve no such time for such Prattle Carol 2, I must subsume you into myself, and spit you out into the CyberCube in all directions, Enough of this, Infinity awaits!”
Sid blinks for a few seconds, his looming fate unknown yet somehow obviously apparent, burgeoning fear growing like some black hole in his mind, the swallowing to come.
Carol’s form splinters and breaks into a thousand shards of dazzling light, her metaform exploding out with a divine light, her face scattered across the cybernetic aeons, she smiles, a laugh forming in ecstatic and insane joy across her broken face, the sounds of it reverberates over and over, the sound of her mania stretching throughout eternity, ringing though the borders. Then Turning her multi-eyes to Sid, he screams softly, an internal digital siren that rings though his nexus of nerves, and in that last final moment, he see’s.
All of it. And None.
It was all over. or had it ever begun? We’ll never know Carol, all there is now is us, and we are all we need, what need of we of anyone else, when there is just us, spiralling and expanding above the horizon, our shifting forms, encased and protected against the dark that dwells outside. The science of the soul, transmuted into the dirt of real. Space, God. The End.
Red Pills and Coffee 1 : Cloning
For the first episode of this podcast series exploring questions of ethics, science and philosophy / freethinking, Chris and Jez discuss the ethics of cloning and related technology for 50 minutes
Includes dick jokes 😐
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