A Singular Day
Summary for dipshits: The text is a sequence of damaged voice recordings. America is on its second civil war, and three men in Florence, Colorado, have decided the cure is anarcho-primitivism, plus Budweiser. Max Benson lectures the future about dust and freedom. John Newton explains the internet with tiny cans and strings. A Frenchman named Dorian Arkhange has already sold the country a game about its next president, then handed these patriots enough gear to regret it. Somewhere in the rock sits a package, very old and very gifted, who would like a word about beavers. The recorder keeps running. The revolution, we'll see about that shit.
Recording 1
Test... Test... SIERRA UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO MIKE YANKEE DELTA INDIA CHARLIE KILO... okay, John. This piece of shit actually seems to work. Move your ass and get in the pickup. *click*
Recording 2
Growing up in Florence, Colorado, from the time you were old enough to stand and piss, that makes a man. You people, you holier-than-thou city motherfuckers, you stuck-up junkie scum from the big cities, you figure all we got out here is dirt-poor hicks who've been fucking their cousins for centuries, inbred morons, unemployed losers with nothing better to do all day than get shitfaced on warm Budweiser. Go fuck yourselves. You are the scum of the earth. You’ll never understand what real patriotism even is. I'm not talking about that Sunday-school bullshit those worthless televangelist assholes pump out, the Pentecostals and their new buddies, those Jesus-freak Chicanos. Those motherfuckers came in and fucked us over good and hard, and now they’re taking over the top of the food chain. I'm talking about the spirit of the Founding Fathers, the settlers, their hunger for conquest and for freedom, the kind you defend with a gun in your hand. You don't get a goddamn thing, do you? You got yourselves brainwashed into fantasies that assholes just like you finally turned into reality with dirty money from every last one of these fucking melting-pot communities. All this tech shit turns people into walking disasters, barely smarter than cave people using machines they don’t understand for shit. Still not getting it? The American Dream got stuck in the mud between the East Coast and the West Coast, right here in the Rockies. You believe in the myth of the self-made man, in money over everything else? Bunch of sellouts! Freedom is the kind you defend with a gun in your hand, your face in the desert dust. The second everything gets too smooth and your bullshit civilization settles in and the dust disappears, you ain't free no more.. But you don’t want to get that. You’re too attached to that soft, cushy bullshit of yours. There's comfort for every social class. Feels real good coming home after a long, grinding day at work... the cheapest creature comforts money can buy are enough to lobotomize you and make you quit fighting the illegitimate power of the government. You think you're free in this fucked-up system where the system jerks you around while you think you're following some family tradition, some career track, but you ain't. Real freedom tastes like dirt and spit and the dry grass of Fremont County, all mixed together pasty in your mouth. *click*
Recording 3
My name, Max Benson, doesn't mean shit to anybody right now. You, listening to me on this recorder after you dug it up somewhere, you already know damn well who I am. I'm making history right this second, so my name'll probably stay etched into the history books, even if I'm nothing next to the guy who put me on this, Dorian Arkhange, the man who dealt the biggest ass-kicking of all time to this rotten civilization built on technological progress and keeping everything under control. I'm still gonna give you a little rundown on him... Yeah, maybe he won't make it into the history books even though he deserves it way more than all us redneck motherfuckers! (...) Ah! Ah! Hey! John, toss me a brew! (....) Okay, in your time none of this is gonna exist anymore, so I'm gonna have a hard time explaining the thing. I'll spare you the details I don't even get myself, but just know there was a time when people were perverted and corrupted by elites who didn’t know what the fuck to do with their money or anybody else’s, living their miserable jerkoff lives... yeah, so, a time when Man lived totally dependent on science, on its bastard technologies and its useless spin-off products. (...) Wait, shit... John! How do you erase this mess? I'm gonna start the whole thing over... Don't feel like coming off as some fucking egomaniac with this text I wrote a long time ago... I'm gonna do something more off the cuff *click*
Recording 4
Doesn't matter what our names are, you guys in the future. You're free because of this guy Dorian Arkhange... Don't worship him. I don't think he'd like that, even if I never met him in person... I just saw his TV appearances and read a pile of stuff about him online before the stunt that kicked American democracy in the nuts and got the people rising up, the second civil war... (...) John, goddamn it! I'm erasing... You try explaining. I'm talking to them about television and the internet when, shit, they probably won't know what the hell I mean... They might not even have electricity, for all I know... here, I'm handing you the *click*
Recording 5
*click* NO WAY THAT ACTUALLY ER4S2D ALL YOUR BULLSHIT? MAX§§ FUCK? SHUT YOUR MOUTH? I4M RECORDING... hello, you free bastards in the future, I'm John Littledick and... *click*
Recording 6
*click* I'm John NEWTON and with my buddies and our brews, we're writing history as we speak. There was a badass guy named Dorian Arkhange... yeah, he's dead... for sure, we're gonna bury this piece-of-shit recorder deep so Arkhange will be dead in your time... yeah, the recorder, that's the thing you just found and you're pressing some kind of button with an arrow on it right now. Not a real arrow, okay? Don't be scared you're gonna hurt yourself... the symbol, you see? YOU SEE WH4T 4 SYMBOL IS? Hope you ain't regressed too far into the stone age. I mean, I'm not doubting your skills as a digger, but it’ll be a good couple thousand years before you can listen to what we’re telling you. HEY MAX? 4 SHOVEL AIN4T 4T LE4ST SOME KIND OF TECHNOLOGY? HUH? NO? HUH? AIN4T THIS THE SHIT WE4RE FIGHTING, THESE 4N4RCHO6PRIMITIVIST BULLSHIT? HUH? BECAUSE IF THEY4RE DIGGING BY H4ND THEY AIN4T GONNA FIND THIS RECORDER ANYTIME SOON. AH SHIT IT4S RECORDING *click*
Recording 7
*click* there was a huge network of tin cans and string hooked up to each other. I figure you can get my metaphors, right? It’s just a metaphor, a way of picturing it. You get pictures, right? Well, no. They won't even have pictures in your time, that's fucked up... Anyway, picture a huge net of tin cans and string that let people sit on their asses at home doing nothing except getting more and more hooked on the endless feed. There were these giant data centers too, and all that shit running through the lines turned into pure cash that those corrupt dirtbags traded all day long instead of worrying about food, water, fucking, and staying alive. *click*
Recording 8
*click* m Max Bens *click*
Recording 9
*click* gimme the recorder, you shit-eating asshole, so I can finish my presentation. HOW ABOUT MY FIST IN YOUR ASS? FUCK2R§§ YOU W4NNA KNOW WH4T FREEDOM T4STES LIKE MOTHERFUCK2R *click*
Recording 10
*click* John! Get behind the tree and shh... shut your mouth... there's a family of deer, you can't miss 'em IF YOU CLOSE YOUR BIG MOUTH with all the arsenal Dorian Arkhange sent us... yeah, YOU GOOD? BLOW THEM AWAY§ BLOW THEM AWAY THEY4RE RUNNING§§ BLOW EVERYTHING AWAY§ *click*
Recording 11
*click* ...and so now that you get what the terms Internet and social network mean, like I explained, right? Dorian Arkhange, who you could've taken at first for a transhumanist motherfucker with all the degrees he had and the companies he built up all over the world... THIS MAN IS A GODDAMN MESSIAH§ and he played his cards close to the vest, that bastard... and to think we almost blew his face off too! Lucky he laid his real cards on the table at the presidential election. Yeah, so he built a big election-platform simulator that he turned into a game on social networks, and every American could customize their avatars, enter their personal data, and see, like in that game where you move little 3D guys around in their customizable environment... Yeah, The Sims, thanks, dumbass, they’ll get that..., well, what the fallout would be for their real life if they voted for this or that candidate's platform. Yeah, they couldn't get screwed anymore by all the speeches from those politician motherfuckers, because voters could rerun the simulation as many times as they wanted, changing the settings to see how each candidate’s platform was gonna help them and how it was gonna screw people they hated, scripted perfectly through a backend and a whole pile of tools that Arkhange Enterprises made available to every party, which got cornered into bending to the private rules and functions Arkhange handed them, but which still let them input their electoral platform perfectly into the simulator. So yeah, Dorian Arkhange had them by the balls, good and hard, huh... I hope balls still exist in your time, 'cause the last thing we need is making sperm out of stem cells in a world full of dildos where men don’t even exist anymore, just replaced by machines and sex toys with a thousand settings... Shit, I’m getting hard... *click*
Recording 12
*click* DIP THE CHAIN IN THE BLOOD BUCKET? COME ON§ JOHN LITTLEDICK? YOU DUMB OR WHAT? There! Now you'll see, the boar, he's gonna eat it all by himself like a big boy, the chain soaked in blood... You checked the other end of the chain is hooked good and the animal's strapped tight? *click*
Recording 13
*click* Fuck, man! *oink* You can't even hook the end of *oink* *oink* the chain he shit out last night *oink* without a goddamn syringe? *oink* *oink* *oink* You're really just a fat useless *oink* *oink* redneck, John! The animal's gotta be awake *oink* *oink* when Larry gets here or it won't *boom* *boom* it won't be fun at all *oinkiiii...* be no fun at all shooting a sleeping boar... Look! Ah ah! He's spinning around hanging there like a dumbass! AH shit it's recording aga *click*
Recording 14
—Whoever’s listening to this in the future! There! Max and me are proud to introduce you to our buddy, Larry Ziemm...
—Hey shut your mouth, you poor moron, you're not actually gonna say my name on this thing...
—You guys in the future, know that Larry is the brain of our cell and...
—We're gonna end up in a cell, you useless sack, if the cops find the recorder. Hand it over so I can destroy it... It's really stupid to leave a tech trace for a future you want wiped clean of every kind of technology, right?
—Have a brew, Larry. Don't be a pain. We're just the hired muscle for that French motherfucker Arkhange. Leave us in our little delusion, don't be a pain!
—Now if Arkhange finds the recorder, he's the one who's gonna whack us...
—Oh shut up, Larry, you're acting high and mighty ’cause you're the only one of us three who got his GED...
—Fine. I don't give a shit about your hayseed delusions as long as my name doesn't get said. MAX, HAND ME THE GODDAMN FLAME6THROWER. We gotta test the gear Arkhange delivered...
—We're gonna have ourselves a goddamn BBQ, hometown style! Here, have a brew... Larry, the anonymous one, and quit freaking out; everything's gonna run like clockwork. It's not like your inbred brain came up with the plan anyway...
—You guys are a pain with Arkhange! He only contacted you because he knew you knew me. I'm the one and only indispensable guy in this deal...
—Goddamn it, wake the boar up, throw some water on him to wake him up!
*GROOOOIIIINKKKK* *GROOOOIIIINKKKK*
—pull the chain, John! Don't let go! An animal like that can eat all three of us, don't screw around...
*GROOOOIIIINKKKK* *GROOOOIIIINKKKK* *GROOOOIIIINKKKK*
—come give me a hand, this thing weighs a ton...
*cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick*
Recording 15
*click* Noooooo maaaaan youuuu screeeewed uuup youuuu setttt the recoooorderrrr on fiiiire, dumbaaaass!!!! hiiiiiit itttt with a biiiigggg blaaast aaand putttt thissss flaaame ooout *click*
Recording 16
These boar ribs got a little aftertaste of gasoline... oh well... I'm Larry Zeta and I work at the famous United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility Florence, more commonly called ADX Florence... HEY, MAX§ You're the least dumb one, you guys did explain Arkhange's plans in this thing, right? I don't give a shit about your men-of-the-future stories... All that matters to me is we keep a record of everybody's responsibilities in case we get pinched... Okay. Arkhange's the guy who used his bullshit online election simulator game to scoop up a shitload of private and behavioral data on every American who bought into his concept of a future-life simulator based on their choice of presidential candidate. It was one hell of a complex thing, his game, with a multiplayer side that was seriously beefy, in a persistent universe per candidate. The crazy part is more than 90% of voters downloaded the app he put out for free, to get an idea of the future that was really waiting for them depending on the ballot they were gonna drop in the box... The candidates’ platforms, nobody understands shit about them, and it's too long to read them in detail and catch the few points that'll actually hit you, your people, and the ones you'd love to see die with their mouths open in the dirt... It was right there in front of you, concrete as fuck, no need to spend hours on the game to get an idea, you got the big picture right away and you could get a sharper idea by spending more time immersed in the virtual universe and interacting with the other players and the NPCs... Shit! This thing got the whole world fired up too, and other democracies placed orders with Arkhange Enterprises... Personally, I don't get this guy. It's true he's already got balls of solid gold, but he could've had even more money and a massive international charismatic vibe if he hadn't arranged to infect his own game and turn it against the candidates, their electoral platforms, and even the Constitution itself, whose smallest cracks he didn't hesitate to show everybody. It only took a few hours for the people in power to ask the social networks to pull the app and make it unusable, but Arkhange had planned for that too: the client app, which you could keep downloading through VPNs, was gonna hit his own servers, which had already been updated with the personal data he'd swiped from the social networks... Anyway it all ended bad for him, of course, his NASDAQ-listed company's stock face-planted, he got declared public enemy number one by the FBI, his bank accounts got frozen. The whole nine yards. He took it hard. Of course, he'd already been long gone for a while. Okay, it took weeks to neutralize the servers, the mirrors, and the proxies keeping the whole mess alive... and even then, Interpol had to step in... As for the servers in Russia and China, they're still running. People poured out into the streets in massive numbers to demand answers from the political parties and the institutions. Curfews have been put in place for two days but that don't stop people, given the economic situation, from fighting the cops in droves, and you can see the cops bit by bit switching sides to the crowd. Anyway... Hum... Hum... My throat's dry now... Hey, toss me a Bud, on the double! Just one last thing. It's gotta be clear that Arkhange's the one who planned the whole thing. We're just mercenaries. I don't feel like doing life... we're only doing this for the money... (...) How do you listen to all the bullshit you guys recorded before me?
*click*
Recording 17
*click* LUCKY I W4S ABLE TO ER4SE ALL YOUR DUMB4SS CONFESSIONS OTHERWISE *click*
Recording 18
*click* ah ah shh... shh, shut your mouth, John... The guy who’s about to talk to you now is one sick motherfucker. Hello. HEY§ ZIMMERMANN§ STOP AT THE TRUCK STOP OVER THERE? I've got a prairie dog popping its head out! Well couldn't you have killed the machine before the thing, goddammit!! *click*
Recording 19
*click*
—No but what the hell is Johnny shitting out on us? He caught Montezuma’s revenge right on the day of Operation VANGUARD RESCUE?
—He's so dumb...
—Come on, we'll shoot some pool while we wait... Hey! Bartender, can you turn the country down a little, we're gonna shoot pool with my buddy and...
—WH4T DO YOU W4NT, STRANGERS? HUH? YOU4RE IN MY GODDAMN TRUCK STOP AND THIS IS MY GODDAMN POOL TABLE? MY GODDAMN JUKEBOX? MY GODDAMN COUNTRY AND...
—No, stay calm, man. I don't give a shit about the volume of your country after all, we're just gonna shoot pool, get us two BUDS and stay cool.
—...AND MY GODDAMN SHITTER WHERE YOUR BUDDY'S BEEN JERKING HIS GODDAMN DICK FOR 10 MINUTES? AND THIS IS MY GODDAMN RIFLE THAT'S GONNA SCATTER YOUR GODDAMN UGLY FACES TO THE FOUR WINDS...
—Stay cool, man. We're not strangers. We're from Florence and we're headed to the penitentiary... It's just a piss break. Set that rifle down and calm the fuck down.
—OH Y34H? YOU4RE FED MOTHERFUCKERS UNDERCOVER§ I NEVER SAW A TRIO OF DIRT ASSES THAT STANK AS BAD AS YOU THREE§ IS IT BECAUSE OF THE CIVIL WAR? HUH? YOU CAME TO BURN MY PLACE DOWN BECAUSE YOU4RE DUMB ENOUGH TO THINK I REALLY MEANT TO BLOW MY VAN FULL OF C4 IN YOUR QUANTICO OFFICES? HUH? I4M JUST GOING TO QUANTICO FOR VACATION WITH MY VAN FULL OF C4? EVERY YEAR SINCE YOUR GODDAMN 9/11 PLOTS§ IT4S WRITTEN IN THE CONSTITUTION§ I4M WITHIN MY RIGHTS§ YOUR BUDDY? HE PLANTING A BUG IN MY TOILET? HUH?
—Hey! Old man, quit being paranoid like that, it's seriously creepy...
—YOU GOT A WARRANT FIRST OR WHAT? FUCK? PUT YOUR HANDS UP WHERE I CAN SEE THEM§ YOU, DON'T GO NEAR THAT CUE OR I GIVE YOU A VAGINOPLASTY AND REPAINT MY TRUCK STOP WITH YOUR GAMETES§
—Cut it out, you're dumb, we're on the same side... We're in the National Rifle Association too, same as you... the civil war's in the big cities... not around here.
—FUCK YOU4RE SCREWING ME RIGHT NOW§ WHO WERE YOU PLANNING TO RECORD LIKE THAT ON YOUR RECORDER? HUH? I4M GONNA EXECUTE YOU LIKE ALL THOSE PASSING SLUTS I BURIED IN THE BACKYARD§ GET READY TO ANSWER TO OUR LORD...
—*BLAM* *BLAM*
—...JESUS CHR...
—*BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM*
—...
—HEY§ GUYS WHAT THE HELL IS THIS MESS? WHY4D I H4VE TO BLOW THIS ASSHOLE'S BRAINS INTO HIS JAR OF ROTTEN EGGS? WH4T DID HE W4NT WITH THAT RIFLE?
—Fuck, John, what were you doing? We almost got whacked by this GODDAMN PSYCHOPATH§§§
—Was he a fed motherfucker dressed up as an old hick? We canceling the op?
—No... He was one of ours, a National Rifle Association member too, actually... but he snapped... probably from watching Fox News on a loop... Peace to his sick motherfucking perverted fuck soul, rotted out by all the dumb shit our fucked-up society pumps into every homestead... Okay, I say we torch his truck stop with him in it... Lucky there's basically nobody per square mile in all of Colorado...
*click*
Recording 20
*click* O GREAT PURIFYING FIRE§ *FRRRÜÜÜÜTTTCHHH* WAHOOOOO§ WAAAAHOOO§ *FRRRÜÜÜÜTTTCHHH* *FRRRÜÜÜÜTTTCHHH* ERADICATE ALL THIS SHIT AND LET THE SOUL OF THIS POOR MADMAN REGAIN THE HEAVENS BESIDE THE FOUNDING FATHERS *FRRRÜÜÜÜTTTCHHH* *FRRRÜÜÜÜTTTCHHH* AMEN
OH FUCK? MAX YOU DUMBASS DON'T AIM AT HIS VA... *FRRRÜÜÜÜTTTCHHH* *click*
Recording 21
*click* The upside of this shitshow is that in the end this explosion, which they must've heard all the way to Pueblo, maybe even Denver, and which turned Temple Canyon Park into a raging hellfire spewing lava, is gonna work as a diversion... Okay well hide in the trunk, in the secret compartment of the commando pickup Arkhange had delivered, and try to bandage your burns however you can in your assault gear. I'm putting on my guard uniform and we're getting on Route 67. Checkpoints are gonna get thicker the deeper I go into the complex, so no matter what, remember to keep your stinking mouths shut. The dogs might clock you just from your rank-ass breath. *click*
Recording 22
*click* somethiiiiiing inside youuuuuuu, (...) its hard to explay-ay-ain. They'rrrrrre talkiiiiing abouuuut you boyyyyy, (...) but you still the saaaa-ay-ay-ame. I4M LISTENING TO NIGHTCALL BY KAVINSKY ON A LOOP IN MY PICKUP§ YIPPEE§ AND I4M SINGING LIKE A LUNATIC ON THE WAY TO WORK§§§ I'mz givingz youz a nightcallzzz to tellzz youzzz howzzz Izzz fee-ee-eelzzzz. (...) MOTHERFUCKING YOOPLABOOM? WHAT§ I DO THE ROBOT VOICE TOO GOOD§ I GOT HORNETS IN MY MOUTH§§ (...) Izz wantzz to drivezzz youzzzzzz throughzz thezz nightzzz, downzzz thezzz hi-i-iiii-lls. (...) I4M A GODDAMN STALKER? I PROWL THE NIGHT WITH A STONE-COLD PSYCHO FACE LISTENING TO THE DRIVE SOUNDTRACK§§ YIPPEEE§§ AND I LET PEOPLE PASS ME HA HAHAHAH I'mzz gonnaaaaazzz tellzz youz somethinnnngzzz youzzz don'tzz wantzzz toooozzz hea-iiiii-iirzzzzZZZZz. (...) I'mzzz gonnaaaz showzzzz youzzz wherezzz itszzzz zz daaaarkzzz, butzz havezz nozzz fea-iii-iii-irzzzzz. I4M GONNA PUT MY BLINKER ON TO PRETEND I4M MERGING INTO THE RIGHT LANE BECAUSE I4M DRIVING SUPER SLOW BUT I4M NOT GONNA DO IT§§§ MEGATRALALALA§ WHAT§ (...) TA DA DAM... TA DA DAM... TA DA... TA DA DAM... TA DA DAM... TADA... TA DA DAM TA DA DAAAA... *click*
Recording 23
I'm coming up on ADX Florence, the Alcatraz of the Rockies, at 5880 Route 67. It's a prison built to lock up the most dangerous inmates in the United States, the highest-security prison in the penitentiary complex and in the world. They locked up all the terrorists still alive from the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center attacks, evil masterminds, plus a whole pile of raving lunatics who'd make good easy-to-brainwash cannon fodder for the first category, the criminal geniuses. Totally illogical, putting all these folks together; they could organize even more monumental plots by combining their forces. There's still one little detail that changes everything compared to an ordinary prison: every inmate lives in permanent isolation, they don't have the slightest contact with each other, or with the guards, or with any other living thing: cells under video surveillance and remote-controlled door openings. No common mess hall, no exercise room, no chapel, just modular spaces depending on which doors are open. They're way too dangerous (what a joke) to leave them the slightest freedom to do anything, and that's why they're in total confinement, shut in an individual cell 23 hours a day under tight technological control. The ADX is a gigantic labyrinth of human lab rats they're trying to demolish psychologically while wiping their ass with human rights on the world stage, in order to intimidate, which is pretty stupid, other people tempted to defend their extremist convictions through terrorist acts against the USA. The mazes of this labyrinth were designed exclusively so that nobody ever crosses paths, while still handling maintenance and the survival of the prisoners. Among the head-cases, it's mostly guys who killed fellow inmates or guards in other prisons. It's been about 5 years I've been working at the ADX as a CO. Funny thing is the Federal Bureau of Prisons doesn't bring in qualified staff from all over the country. It hires a shitload of locals in Fremont, offering thousands of jobs to locals for 400 male prisoners. Fact is, the place is more symbolic than a real necessity. The captives are actually way more precious than dangerous, precious for the showcase of US democracy that they tried to chip. (...) There are no coincidences. If Dorian Arkhange contacted my two inbred sidekicks and fucked their brains with all these bullshit anarcho-primitivist theories, it's for the one and only reason that they were my childhood friends, the friends of a CO who could get them into the heart of the ADX, two hayseeds you can't scrub clean, easy to influence on top of it. No need to look further. I took back control. I got back in touch with Arkhange through the channel he'd set up with Max and John, a simple forum of a bunch of mongoloid lolcows lost in the noise of the web that nobody's been watching since the civil war started. I made it real clear to Arkhange that my two guys' extremist eco-warrior doctrines weren't my thing, but that I was open to other kinds of proposals in these troubled times. Yeah, I'm thinking of opening a bunker hotel complex near Denver. *click*
Recording 24
—Okay, we're at my parking spot, guys! Not too hot in those armor suits Arkhange had delivered? You checked all the gear? Your flamethrowers, your triple-layer Kevlar mesh?
—Set the hatch-opening timer, Larry... We've rehearsed the infiltration-carnage-BBQ plan ten thousand times with John.
—I'm briefing you one last time: here you're in the basement of the most elaborate fortress the twisted brain of engineers has ever been able to dream up. The prison is equipped with countless motion detectors and cameras, and 1,400 steel doors with controlled opening. It's also surrounded by a 12-foot fence, barbed wire, and laser beams. That zone also has ground pressure sensors and attack dogs in the area separating it from the prison walls.
—but you're gonna shut all that down for us, right?
—yeah, I'm going to the main control room. With the civil war, staffing and the alert level are lower.
—Listen. We trust our buddy Larry. 30 minutes after you leave, we launch the assault as soon as the hatches open. Everything here's fireproofed to avoid the slightest fire risk; the corridors are narrow. Every guy in our path is gonna get burned to a crisp!
—Yeah. And I'll control your progress and my idiot coworkers' from the central door-opening monitor. I'll make sure to cover your backs and toss guys in front of you to burn.
—This goddamn giant hamster cage is gonna turn into a goddamn dumb linear video game! We're used to it with Max... uh, I mean, the PS3, it was fun anyway, before Arkhange asked us to burn all our tech shit. It's dumb. Technology was still pretty cool...
—What worries me more is the prisoners, because they've turned into big psychopath zombies, the ones who weren't already. I'm gonna have to spring all of them from their soundproof boxes. That'll work as a diversion, and on the door monitor I'll try to steer them toward the guards so they take out as many as possible, but the COs are everywhere too, so I won't be able to keep them all off your path. There will be fights. But watch out for the inmates: they're seeing shit that ain't there, they're jumpy as hell, they snap for no reason, they cut themselves up and anything else they can get their hands on. Being locked up like that makes them rage out and do crazy violent shit out of nowhere. Under permanent surveillance, they've gone completely paranoid, and the redneck idiots watching them have been torturing them with the worst shit you can imagine, sleep deprivation and making them wander in loops that never end, especially. Don't forget some of them haven't seen another human face in decades.
—I brought rubbers, don't worry.
—Okay. I'm going. We meet on the roof in the helo Arkhange dispatched to exfil us in about 2 hours, once we've recovered the package.
*click*
Recording 25
My buddies shouldn't trust me this much. I just planted the virus in the central server of the network, like Arkhange asked me. It's an artificial intelligence that's gonna control the whole operation now, opening and closing, controlling the progress of each human in what's gonna be a super game of Pac-Man. He tends to trust technology a hell of a lot, though, Arkhange, for somebody who calls himself an anarcho-primitivist... *click*
Recording 26
A new door opens onto a corridor apparently empty of any human presence. It's been over an hour I've been hearing isolated shots broken up by explosions. The operation is going as planned. *click*
Recording 27
*click* OH FUCK BUT TH4T'S A GOOD DOZEN CHARRED BODIES! (...) Easy... everything's normal. *click*
Recording 28
*click* GODDAMN§ THEY STUCK ME IN THE CUBE§ THERE ARE ALIEN XENOMORPHS IN EVERY CORNER§§ ARRRGGH§ BUT THIS THING IS AN ARM;;; AN ALARM;;; BUT WHY DID THIS PROGRAM KILL THE L1GHT, *click*
Recording 29
*click*
—The door opens onto what seems to be a cell about 12 feet by 6... the furniture is literally built into the decor... OH WELL HELLO SIR; HOWZIT GOING? YAHHHH§§
—...
—You the package?
—...
—You Theodore Kaczynski? (...) The famous Unabomber? The guy who inspired Tyler Durden for Chuck Palahniuk in his book Fight Club?
—...
—Operation VANGUARD RESCUE, hello! Mr. Dorian Arkhange asked me and my buddies to get you out of this prison so you can take your rightful place, meaning leader of the anarcho-primitivist revolution that'll follow the civil war and... BUT YOU4RE SUPER OLD§§
—It all started when I noticed my dishwasher was smarter than the goddamn Terminator, that it was sticking me up with a gun to make me do the dishes...
—What? No, wait! You're supposed to save us from the most awful of evils, from the machine turning humanity into shit.
—I became aware of the dangers inherent in the direction taken by progress in an industrial society and a technological civilization, a society moving away from humanity and from human freedom, but also from that of small rodents like squirrels, or beavers. Besides, beavers' teeth, resulting from their natural evolution, serve them as a tool to cut down trees and deforest massively to build beaver hydroelectric dams, and we ought to rip out their goddamn teeth, which are an industrial collar on their freedom...
—But... The singularity is near. You have to deliver us from it. You know Moore's law... "The computing power of supercomputers doubles every ten months, the memory available on a hard drive doubles every eighteen months, the quantity of information on the internet network doubles about every ten or twelve months, internet traffic doubles every fifteen months, the level and speed of social interrelations, or real-time web, also follows an exponential progression, cameras, telescopes, MRIs, and DNA sequencers have a precision and speed that doubles every eighteen months, energy consumption follows this evolution too." GODDAMN BUT THE GLOBAL BRAIN? WHAT§ FORMED BY ALL THESE SOCIAL6NETWORK ADDICT DUMB4SSES§ You're supposed to get us out of here! It's not inevitable that we become goddamn brain-dead zombies! IF YOU WANT TO LIVE? FOLLOW ME, A HELICOPTER'S SUPPOSED TO EXFIL US ON THE ROOF§§
—No, not at all, I have an IQ of 167, and you're considered gifted starting at 132... except among small rodents, who do pretty well too on these dumb tests and their acorns. Ohh! Did you know I found a proof of Wedderburn's theorem using only results from the theory of finite groups?
—RUN FASTER§§ You sure you're the guy who ran a bombing campaign that went on for eighteen years, killing three and injuring 23 with 16 bombs sent in packages to big shots in the computer industry in the '80s and '90s? That's what Arkhange told us! You're supposed to save us all from the brain simulators to come, built thanks to human biological reverse engineering and its computer modeling, a brain that, once simulated virtually, could think billions of times faster than real human brains. You also have to preserve us from the decisions those brains will make instead of us, probably the decision to do without them.
—You got it all wrong, pal. Besides, I don't think you've read my manifesto, which sums up the situation very well. Technological progress is leading us to an inevitable disaster. Look at the otters and their way of cracking shellfish in a dumb, casual, cartoonish way while floating on their backs with the help of big rocks, and you'll understand that tools make us permanently stupid, even cartoonish, cheap copies of who we really are, without tools to float on our backs. And besides, only the collapse of modern civilization can prevent the disaster, the way the collapse of nests would do all the storks some good. You know that well, and besides they killed Kennedy for less than that. The political left is the first line of defense of technological society against the revolution opposing the inexorable progress enslaving humanity, and you only have to watch those prairie dogs, those communist bitches, spying in a group on what's happening and raising their children in a community to be quite certain of it. Look at that, as if children didn't belong to their parents but to technological society... The prairie dogs are watching us, them! Yes, the meerkats and the mongooses, run genetic tests in their communist burrows and their clones will invade our cities and devour juicy, fat brains the second we turn our backs. Fortunately the wall isn't about to fall. And to think they accuse me of being paranoid schizoid psychedelic AHHhhahahAHAHHHHAhHAHhaHHHHHa...
—Come this way, one of the two side doors in this corridor is bound to open!
—But no system exists to satisfy the needs of rodents, and it isn't capable of it. The desires and behavior of rodents must in fact be modified to satisfy the needs of this system, that's all! In any case, a single economy and a single political system will be able to govern the machine.
—GODDAMN BUT BOTH DOORS ARE OPENING§ MAX§ JOHN§ WAIT...
*FRRRÜÜÜÜ* *FRRRÜÜÜTTTCHHHhhhh*
*click*
Debriefing
...operation VANGUARD RESCUE....over
...operative Dorian Arkhange...out of order
...shell company for issuing his orders...liquidation
...shell company for special-equipment design.....liquidation
...anarcho-primitivist population...discredited
...order to transfer funds into media companies to amplify the phenomenon....OK
...Debriefing transmitted to all FOREX machines...OK
...order to optimize their trading algorithms based on the operation's data...OK
...order to FOREX machines to speculate massively in order to obtain chaotic markets optimizing gains...OK
...push the trading rate to the gateway ceiling, 100,000 orders a second on every venue...OK
Comments (drag your ass back up)