Tale of the Patriarch:

Tale of the Patriarch:

Some men pretend towards authority. They accrue the projections of authority so that one comes to despise authority its self as one despises them. But when one strives to take that authority back one unveils a mirror. And so one sees within one's own self the hated authority. Only because the authority is now in its proper domain can it be redeemed in its glory. When the wrong man uses the right means, they work in the wrong ways. But the pompousness of Western men was that any one could weild any sword. And under the banner of egalitarianism it became evil to disarm any one of authority nor to question their entitlement to it. So equality became self-entitlement...

The manipulator-traitor can only affect the clever with his cunning insofar as the clever man asks his self: is this bastard really as foolish as he looks? Or does he take me for a fool? Does he expect me to believe him because he himself believes this? Or because he does NOT?...

Pity cleaves us to him. But this simply affords him two faces. One is that of the domineering patriarchal imbecile that at times of strength one sees to be a scoundrel con artist. But what then? Then the plaint turns to pity. And one feels ashamed for having hurt him. As though this were not its self an other ruse! As though he had not so orchestrated it. As though all myths did not convey this same treachery!...

But when one takes back one's projection, owning it, it serves its alchemical purpose. The foolish magician is unriddled, his kingdom of salt left exposed, and you return to the throne of your own life. And your kingdom is the world. And he is again your vassal.

Dm.A.A.

What is the most profound philosophical question?

What is the most profound philosophical question?

Dm.A.A.

A Sea of Fears.

A Sea of Fears:

Tom used to dive from piers

And he would out-drink

Out-think all his peers.

He said: just keep your

Feet down and together.

He would weather

Nights and days at sea.

And fell asleep upon a

Stove and lost the feeling

In each hand.

Only drank and drove to the next bar

And drank and worked back home on land.

And Tom would say the sons and daughters

Of today stay out of reach.

Like when you told me not to go into the water

The day that we all went to the beach.

He found it laughable that

You would hold it all against me.

And I find it affable

That he’s just as incensed as me.

He fought the bullies back in school.

And wouldn’t ever have been made a fool.

And stuck a guy’s head in the oven.

And I know that it seems cruel.

But he grew up in times of loyalty

When men were mavericks.

When bullies were not royalty

And we don’t bow before the dicks.

Do you remember when we walked that night

And passed that lengthy pier?

And I thought: one day we’ll race to test our might

To there from here?

Where is that spirit now?

In crystal meth?

Or chasing death in suicide?

The pride of dead end jobs.

The muffled voice of mobs

And traitors justified?

Just if I’d known how prone

You were to lie and cheat.

I would have helped you to atone

For your aloneness and deceit.

And the conceit: that you want U.S.A.

To be like in the good old days.

But you still hold the beach against me

To this very day.

I speak to you directly:

Want to best me? We can take it to the beach.

We do not need to fight it out.

Just swim as far as we can reach.

And all of the experience

That I’ve accrued over the years.

Will keep me from passing delirious

Into a sea of fears.

Dm.A.A.

Survivor's Guilt.

Survivor's Guilt:

All the walls that have been built
To keep us safe
And thus at bay.
Cannot stall survivor's guilt.
Cannot make it all okay.

Blood is spilt
The roses wilt.
Mothers cry out in dismay.
Hopes that took long to be built
Die out and are blown away.

I long for bombs to fall upon
Our soil. No more toil.
No more foreign oil.
Let it fall apart. It was an error.
From the start.

At heart we are the terrorist.
For our part we should not
Exist. But this won't be
A global suicide. I long
To see the day the bully died.

We clench our fist
Our heroes drenched in mist.
To hide what they had seen.
The gist of this zeitgeist
Is that like ghosts we
Fade into a dream.

I know it's mean but once or twice
We tell our sons and daughters
Understand: you live upon the
Bones of slaughter. Take my hand.

And at the bar they thank the
Soldiers for making thus possible
Our hell.
A place where we can drink in peace
Upon a throne of bone we dwell.

I long for bombs to fall
And lay deceased all that we've built.
For till we grieve like all
The rest you can't arrest
Survivor's guilt.

And those who know this evil best
Insist it's in our own defense.
Or may be we police the world.
And that is not to you pretense.

And may be you can twist my words
And set them against common sense.
But in your hearts you know just how
Absurd it was to commit such offense.

The bully knows he wears
His victim's clothes.
And has their blood upon
His hilt.

And when he cuts his
Self his woes are
All survivor's
Guilt.

Dm.A.A.

A Song of Haters:

Haters.

There are people who are haters.

And they live in hellish craters.

And they say to well-wishing crusaders:

You are space invaders!

And these people. They are traitors.

Bent on power and position.

And they herd the sheep towards slaughter

Just to satiate their blind ambition.

And these people, who are haters.

They are all so Great Equators.

Who say who are you to judge us?

How is it you can begrudge us?

You are just as meek and selfish

As the most self-seeking shellfish.

And your pretense towards well wishing

Is just meant to hide your true ambition.

As though any glimpse of light

Stood just as evidence for dark.

And as though all sort of wrong and right

Are only meant to leave a mark.

These people who are haters.

Never disembark from their hell holes.

But only spew their hate and

In the darkness say:

Don’t judge our souls!

And some haters come around

And come upon a realisation.

And they see that they’re profoundly flawed

And they are so driven.

To be near to God and then the haters

Beg to be forgiven.

And their victims would deliver them

And give them what it takes.

Their infractions do not hinder them;

They’ve learned from their mistakes.

And so all of the apologies

That I’ve accrued over the years.

All add to my philosophy

So I can go on without fear.

And do not brood on the hypocrisy

Of trained manipulators.

Who invade my space and jade this place.

I do not fear to face the haters.

They try to persuade me

That I see within them my own cunning.

Then they all evade me

And I only find it stunning.

That the loving people never made me

Feel within this way.

So what do they have to say to me?

What more is there to say?

They all warn me that one day I will

See error in my ways.

But they who tell me of this terror

Are the ones who wreak such terror on my days.

And if half of them wake up and they

Proclaim the errors of their past.

Then can’t I just as safely say

The other half won’t ever last?

And even if they never wake up

In the confines of this life.

I won’t apologise to them

Nor take them up on all the strife

They have to offer. Why must good men suffer

For the swine?

They Chose to live this sort of life.

And I chose the Divine.

So when judgement comes I know right now

As much as ever I had known

That all those haters had been in the wrong

Who had come to atone.

That I won’t be the one to say

Forgive me, all you haters.

But it will be those who hurt me.

Though it may happen much later.

And then once they have admitted it

Whom will I answer to?

I know what is owed to me

And just as well, what’s due

To you.

So do not think that due to you

I will lose sleep. Hiding within a crater.

Like a sacrificial sheep.

In the slaughterhouse of haters.

(And may be I see it now.

Though they shall only see it later.

But inside they know it anyhow.

So I say to equators:

I have learned from their mistakes.

And I am totally at peace.

And I won’t suffer for their sakes.

Nor buffer them much longer in my fleece.)

Dm.A.A.

INTERFERENCE. Part One: Chapter Six.

Chapter six

Fritz had a certain disregard for women. He hid it fairly well, in his opinion, but his mother had given him a bad first impression of them. He acknowledged that his prejudice was illogical. He reasoned that it must have been some aspect of his psyche that was irrational and emotional, and so he regarded it with a certain sentimental lenience. So long as he was sure that no judgement that he passed on anyone was unmerited, he could allow himself to FEEL however he chose regarding his boss, for instance, because he knew that feelings were inconsequential.

This defense mechanism worked very well in defending his sanctity of mind when he had to put up with his boss's entirely irrational blame for what had happened with his computer. He admitted to Stephanie Barker that he had probably been the last person to use his desktop, presumably.

“Presumably?” she glared at him with a maniacal look that, whilst he acknowledged the validity of her reasoning, seemed a bit too controlling for his tastes. Stephanie's bespectacled, mathematical eyes, fixed perpetually in an analytical and almost tired hardness that juxtaposed the gentleness of their physical form, always made him question her sanity somewhat. “Don't be sarcastic,” she ordered.

He decided to surrender arguing with his boss. He could not, however, hide his aggression, and he could tell that Steph was reading him.

“Now I need for you to find a way of restoring your hardware to working order within the day, or disciplinary action Will be taken,” she said in almost a mockery of gentleness, effectively removing her fate from his, leaving him wide-eyed in disbelief.

“If I get it fixed, does that mean you don't want me to finish my project today?” She shook her head in a sarcastic imitation of pity whose every betrayal of feminine tenderness only served to strike him as nothing short of conniving and bitchy. “Remember that it is your responsibility. Okay?” She looked at him with almost a kind of incisive flirtation. He felt a fleeting moment of attraction, a brief, intimate fantasy running across his mind, which an entirely different part of his mind hoped to Science that she could not see.

“Okay,” he continued, looking slightly away, trying to make his voice civil.

“I need you to look at me,” Stephanie said.

He looked up at her. How she had appeared attractive seconds before seemed lost to him now, as he saw merely a bucktoothed girl masquerading as an adult.

“Okay,” he resumed. “Does this mean that I can leave the building, so that I can get it fixed?”

Steph's eyes sunk again into their most unyielding tone. “I'm afraid not.”

Instinct betrayed him this time. His arms just seemed to fly up into the air involuntarily. Steph returned her gaze to her desk. “You have until eleven tonight. Understand?”

Naturally, he thought. You go home at nine, don't you?

Dm.A.A.

The Dead Goat:

O Queso dig this:

Satan represents the age of Capricorn. He is the District Attorney of Heaven, and his symbol is the goat. Mortals fear him because he is the District Attorney. So he gets a Bad Reputation.

Since Great Ages move in retrograde, Capricorn does not move on to Aquarius, but Regresses into Sagittarius. So Satan FALLS FROM HEAVEN. And the world descends into discord.

The Age of Aries is the intensification of this descent. But then the cycle begins again with the Age of Pisces. And Jesus is the representation and mystic of this Age.

The Age of Pisces is followed by the Age of Aquarius. Thus the Great Flood comes again. And then at the end of that age comes again the Age of Capricorn. So Satan returns, and there is a Last Judgement.

Satanists sacrifice a goat to represent the dominion of Satan. Little do they know that this Wiccan ritual was aimed not at praise for Satan but CONDAMNATION of him.

The Dead Goat represents the fall of Satan from power, and the descent into lawlessness. Witches, understanding Satan's heroic but tragic role in the Bible, as well as his promised return, rebel against both God and Satan.

God, Christ, and Satan are the enemies of the witches. This is the Holy Trinity. Satan, Lucifer or the Light-Bringer, is the Holy Spirit. He is Spirit of the law, whereas the Bible is the WORD of the law. But as with all mystikal texts, the Word REFERS to the Spirit, and makes clear that the Word is SECONDARY TO the Spirit!

"The Tao that can be Spoken is Not the Eternal Tao."

"Buddhism is a finger-pointing at the moon. Do not mistake the finger for the moon."

"If you think that you understand Brahman, you do not understand Brahman."

So Christianity is the story of God, Christ, and Satan! Lucifer is the light-bringer because he brings LAW to the kingdom of heaven. But with his fall the world descends into Darkness. And so those who fall into that darkness are punished by Satan. They are DAMNED, or con-DEMNED!

I would not be surprised to find that LIGHT, LUCIFER, LUMOS, and LAW all share-a-root.

Alanna believes Christ to be the Devil. Well. She was close. Half-way there. Can't say she was wrong. Just half-right.

Narrow minded "Christians" who dismiss astrological "superstitions" liken witches to Devil-worshippers. The irony: the Christians are the Devil-worshippers. And they do not even know it! The witches rebel against both deities, Christ and Satan. So in a way they understand the Christian myth by DEFIANCE better than the Christians understand it by COMPLIANCE!

Contemporary "Satanists" carry on the one-sided prejudices of the older church. They think that they are being-"cool" by worshipping "Satan" and talking about Goat Sacrifices and other Wiccan rituals. Yet the ironical FACT is that they are worshipping the same deity as Christians do -- Satan --, hiding this habit by appealing to the same one-sided clerical cosmology, and in fact at the same time CONDEMNING Satan by imitating the witches!!

Now it is no wonder the old church waged war on the witches. The witches not only defied the church. They reminded that church, by defiance rather than example, of its shadow: the critical role that Satan plays throughout the entire Bible.

In place of the Law the Buddhists invented the Dharma. It gave Buddhists protection throughout the course of the Ages ever since the end of the Age of Capricorn. But now we live in what Buddhists call the Latter Day of the Law. Here the Dharma dies, the Bodhisattvas go off into Nirvana (past the LESSER LIGHTS) and LUCIFER (by implication of both his name and the contrast with the lesser lights, he would be the GREATER LIGHT) returns. And a New Age of Law and Order follows. And all mortals are judged. Satan is the District Attorney. And Christ is the Defense Attorney. And God is the Judge.

I had a friend who was of Greek descent. His name was Kyle. His father celebrated Greek Orthodox Easter. Kyle told us that some how his father would all ways find a way to buy a full, dead goat to prepare for Easter. Kyle described it as the "most awkward thing in the world" to walk into the kitchen to find this dead goat, lying on its side on the kitchen table or counter, facing him with its lifeless eyes.

Leave it to the Greeks, the inventors of Astrology, and the original authors of the Bible, to celebrate Easter in this fashion: by representing the Age of Christ by sacrificing a GOAT.

Of course: THEIR ritual was and is probably somewhat less pretentious, contrarian, and misguided than those of the Satanists, Witches, and the Christian Church. Respectively.

Dm.A.A.

Racism as solution to Gangs. (Alternate Template.)

Racism as solution to Gangs.

1.  What the millennial generation describes as “racism” is the sum of efforts made to curb organised violence.

2.  Racism as Guilt-by-Association only applies in those communities where-in gangs are power full. (I.E. South Central Los Angeles.) These are all so communities (and agencies, such as the L.A.P.D.) with the most common reputation for their Being-“racist”. They are covered by media in a way that plays to the pit of the prejudiced stomach, justifying the gangs that run these territories by denouncing the legal authorities as “racist”.

3.  Guilt-by-Association can be escaped by two avenues:

a.  The elimination of the Gang Problem. OR

b.  Leaving the community.

4.  The Politically Correct movement, especially under Obama, has impeded this righteous process on both fronts.

a.  Gangs are glorified as “heroes” for their fight against “racism”. The organisations aimed at ending gangs by all means* necessary are accused of “institutional racism”. This urban myth is circulated via the education system.

The irony here is transparent:

                       i.   Gangs displace guilt by mental manipulation. No police officer has done this, for no police department needs to use mental manipulation in order to maintain power. Their authority is that of the law, and they are all so in its debt, for what they say or do not say can be used against them in court.

In the same way, guilt is displaced on a larger scale upon law enforcement where it rightfully belongs to the gangs.

                     ii.   The educational system is its self an oppressive institution. What is called “institutional racism” was invented or otherwise perpetuated and glorified by the educational system. It was glorified as a reactionary concept, but as a diagnosis of a mental problem (“racism”) it became its self the problem it aimed to eradicate. No such problem had existed hitherto on quite the same scale.

All of us who have been-victims-of oppression by an institution at least can pardon the officers of the law because we understand their INTENT as fundamentally noble.

Yet as blood-thirsty pragmatists, educators working in conjunction with other social degenerates only focus on ENDS.

1.  In their ruthlessness, using all means necessary* to attain their righteous ends, neo-liberals focus exclusively on bringing about the END of racism. Ironically: They are pursuing racism AS AN end.

2.  The debate community in particular reflects this arrogant Utilitarianism by assessing all arguments by “Harms”, “Net Benefits”, and “Impacts”. The Effects of racism are seen to be acts of unjustified violence. Yet the whole thing is an act of projection. The police are justified in violence towards minorities in urban ghettoes in their attempts to stop gangs. These gangs are as much a threat to the innocent members of that community as they are to any one else, and those innocent members of the community include the people who are guilty of guilt-by-association. These victims-of-racism are in fact GUILTY by association because they have not done their part to eliminate the Gang Problem, and must be held responsible TO their circumstances, even if not FOR them.

3.  The educational system only represents half of the proverbial story. They do not report the violence perpetrated by gangs except under the liberal excuse of “institutional racism”. In overlooking these details they shelter students from the Truth: that the gangs are imminently responsible. For whereas Law Enforcement uses questionable means to attain Noble Ends, the gangs’ ends cannot even pass for Noble, and this is reflected in their means. There is no boundary between ends and means in working with a manipulative and coercive entity. The very ends that a gangster PURPORTS cannot be-trusted, for it is only purported under the malevolent means of extortion. So the ends must be presumed to be venge-full and greedy, unlike the ends of a law enforcement officer who selflessly puts his life on the line to uphold social order.

4.  * Thus we must conclude that, whilst both educators and police use questionable means, the means of the law enforcement are ultimately pardonable. For while this is used as part of an effective paradigm to protect civilians, its only casualties guilty by association, educators do nothing to stop this problem, but are in effect an extension OF it. What casualties the police may outwardly have are nothing to the sin committed by the educational institution: that of oppressing the MIND. As Foucault pointed out, outward violence is never quite as evil. And the ends themselves are probably shadier than what they are purported to-be, rooted in karmic problems and in fact the same venge-fullness and greed that lead instructors to self-identify (and claim allegiance with) gangsters.

b.  Rather than being-encouraged to find shelter in more-civilised communities, people in a community are in fact regarded as guilty-by-association by the P.C. movement! For by being-identified-with the gangs by an illusory distinction of “race” (one which is only practical to law enforcement), they are discouraged from leaving for fear of finding “racism” in any other community. Thus the gang maintains its hold upon the sheep, and the sheep are used as the gang’s buffer. Manipulation and extortion become, on a large scale, “social justice”. The same people that could have left a civil war-zone are used by the gangs as an excuse, for now the gangs are not doing extortion by “championing the rights of a minority” against an established “villain”: the very Police that are trying to protect the miss-guided herd!

Dm.A.A. 

Racism as solution to Gangs.

Racism as solution to Gangs.

1.  What the millennial generation describes as “racism” is the sum of efforts made to curb organised violence.

2.  Racism as Guilt-by-Association only applies in those communities where-in gangs are power full. (I.E. South Central Los Angeles.) These are all so communities (and agencies, such as the L.A.P.D.) with the most common reputation for their Being-“racist”. They are covered by media in a way that plays to the pit of the prejudiced stomach, justifying the gangs that run these territories by denouncing the legal authorities as “racist”.

3.  Guilt-by-Association can be escaped by two avenues:

a.  The elimination of the Gang Problem. OR

b.  Leaving the community.

4.  The Politically Correct movement, especially under Obama, has impeded this righteous process on both fronts.

a.  Gangs are glorified as “heroes” for their fight against “racism”. The organisations aimed at ending gangs by all means* necessary are accused of “institutional racism”. This urban myth is circulated via the education system.

The irony here is transparent:

                       i.   Gangs displace guilt by mental manipulation. No police officer has done this, for no police department needs to use mental manipulation in order to maintain power. Their authority is that of the law, and they are all so in its debt, for what they say or do not say can be used against them in court.

In the same way, guilt is displaced on a larger scale upon law enforcement where it rightfully belongs to the gangs.

                     ii.   The educational system is its self an oppressive institution. What is called “institutional racism” was invented or otherwise perpetuated and glorified by the educational system. It was glorified as a reactionary concept, but as a diagnosis of a mental problem (“racism”) it became its self the problem it aimed to eradicate. No such problem had existed hitherto on quite the same scale.

b.  Rather than being-encouraged to find shelter in more-civilised communities, people in a community are in fact regarded as guilty-by-association by the P.C. movement! For by being-identified-with the gangs by an illusory distinction of “race” (one which is only practical to law enforcement), they are discouraged from leaving for fear of finding “racism” in any other community. Thus the gang maintains its hold upon the sheep, and the sheep are used as the gang’s buffer. Manipulation and extortion become, on a large scale, “social justice”. The same people that could have left a civil war-zone are used by the gangs as an excuse, for now the gangs are not doing extortion by “championing the rights of a minority” against an established “villain”: the very Police that are trying to protect the miss-guided herd!

5.  All of us who have been-victims-of oppression by an institution at least can pardon the officers of the law because we understand their INTENT as fundamentally noble.

Yet as blood-thirsty pragmatists, educators working in conjunction with other social degenerates only focus on ENDS.

a.  In their ruthlessness, using all means necessary* to attain their righteous ends, neo-liberals focus exclusively on bringing about the END of racism. Ironically: They are pursuing racism AS AN end.

b.  The debate community in particular reflects this arrogant Utilitarianism by assessing all arguments by “Harms”, “Net Benefits”, and “Impacts”. The Effects of racism are seen to be acts of unjustified violence. Yet the whole thing is an act of projection. The police are justified in violence towards minorities in urban ghettoes in their attempts to stop gangs. These gangs are as much a threat to the innocent members of that community as they are to any one else, and those innocent members of the community include the people who are guilty of guilt-by-association. These victims-of-racism are in fact GUILTY by association because they have not done their part to eliminate the Gang Problem, and must be held responsible TO their circumstances, even if not FOR them.

c.  The educational system only represents half of the proverbial story. They do not report the violence perpetrated by gangs except under the liberal excuse of “institutional racism”. In overlooking these details they shelter students from the Truth: that the gangs are imminently responsible. For whereas Law Enforcement uses questionable means to attain Noble Ends, the gangs’ ends cannot even pass for Noble, and this is reflected in their means. There is no boundary between ends and means in working with a manipulative and coercive entity. The very ends that a gangster PURPORTS cannot be-trusted, for it is only purported under the malevolent means of extortion. So the ends must be presumed to be venge-full and greedy, unlike the ends of a law enforcement officer who selflessly puts his life on the line to uphold social order.

d.  * Thus we must conclude that, whilst both educators and police use questionable means, the means of the law enforcement are ultimately pardonable. For while this is used as part of an effective paradigm to protect civilians, its only casualties guilty by association, educators do nothing to stop this problem, but are in effect an extension OF it. What casualties the police may outwardly have are nothing to the sin committed by the educational institution: that of oppressing the MIND. As Foucault pointed out, outward violence is never quite as evil. And the ends themselves are probably shadier than what they are purported to-be, rooted in karmic problems and in fact the same venge-fullness and greed that lead instructors to self-identify (and claim allegiance with) gangsters.

Dm.A.A. 

INTERFERENCE. Part One: Chapter Five.

Chapter five

Fritz checked with his landlady. She could not remember having heard him scream. He apologised for upsetting her, and she resumed her work. What still upset Fritz, however, was that his computer would not load. He also noticed that his phone was still missing.

Several hours later, Fritz was at a Starbucks trying to piece everything together. He ordered a Caramel Macchiato. He loved Starbucks because it was everywhere. He drank a Macchiato every time he visited. He would even drink Macchiatos in his homeless days. All Starbucks coffee tasted alike to him, but he always ordered this one.

His laptop in front of him, he was trying to piece together the events of the morning. His schematics were always proficient.

1. I awoke from the dream when I realised that I could fly (in the dream).

2. I saw the figure.

3. My phone was missing.

4. Claudia answered (first time).

5. She closed the door. I HEARD NO LOCK.

6. The curtains were closed.

7. I tried to turn on the computer. I waited for five minutes for it to load. I left the monitor turned on.

8. I gathered my belongings.

9. I tried to open the door, but it was locked.

10. I screamed.

11. Claudia opened the door (second time). She turned into a demoness. I ran for it.

12. I was falling through the sky.

13. I awoke again. (For real [?])

He had begun by thinking that this puzzle would only occupy a few seconds of his time. The next thing he knew, it had taken up several hours. He didn't care. He examined the paper upon which he had scrawled the events as he waited for the bus to take him to this Starbucks, far from his home. He still had all of his belongings with him. He compared it to his notes. He could not find any lapse in sequence.

Although Fritz was liberal in his points of view regarding his fellow man, preferring to keep an open mind, he could not efface a sense that people at the Starbucks were staring at him. One traveling bum with what looked like the content of a carpet store draped over him but what were really his clothes ambled in, looking intent upon some unknown goal. Fritz noted the wool hat and red scarf and then promptly looked away. That man couldn't have stolen his phone or damaged his computer. But at what time had these events occurred?

3 and 7. Those were the events. In between, Claudia had answered the door (event 4) and closed it again after a brief conversation (event 5). I then noticed that the curtains were closed (event 6). Had the curtains been closed when he awoke at event 13? Fritz still regretted that he had not checked before leaving home.

In the solace of a restroom, Fritz felt himself sufficiently removed from the hustle and bustle of the outside world to gather his thoughts. The spatial cubicle of the locked restroom mirrored his thoughts adequately. He was disappointed, however, when he heard a knock on the door outside. He opened it. A  young Mexican man who seemed too experienced in his profession and in life itself to be reckoned with told him, “Hey, man. I can't have you be in the bathroom if you got your backpack and everything. We don't know if you got a gun, you know?” Fritz apologised, hiding his anger, and ambled out. “Thanks, bro,” the employee said.

When Fritz emerged again into the general patronage of the coffee shop, he could not bear to set eyes on anyone. Anyone with whom he met eyes seemed to encroach upon his thoughts. Scorning the alcoholic smell of the hitchhiker as he passed, Fritz left the restaurant. He had work within thirty minutes.

In the safety of his cubicle, he contemplated if, should something happen to his apartment, he could live in the comfort of the workplace. A brief moment of novelty seemed shed on the cubicle as though it had emanated from a window. He recalled visiting a cubicle akin to one of these with his father when he was very young. For a brief moment, he regretted that he and his father did not speak anymore.

The warm, invisible light seemed to fade as though blown out of the room by the purring ventilator. Fritz became focused on turning on his desktop.

The computer would not load. It began to load, but the same, haunting load screen stared at him for a solid five minutes. During these five minutes, he stared straight back at it. It continued to stare at him as he looked away from it. It continued to stare at him as he pulled his laptop from his briefcase. It continued to stare at him as his supervisor came by and asked why he wasn't using his desktop. He looked back and saw it, still loading ominously, as his supervisor ushered him out of the cubicle and towards the manager's office.

Dm.A.A.

INTERFERENCE. Part One: Chapter Four.

Chapter four

Fritz would become lucid one other time in his life. He lived, at this point, in an apartment in Downtown San Diego. He lived on the third floor, overlooking the Burger King on the edge of the city, from a diagonal angle. Behind a chain fence, the concrete went on for some time, passing under shops and either dissolving into grassy, unpopulated stretches or draining out into the highways. A bus would carry passengers down – or up – this stream.

He took particular precautions to lock away all of his items in a safe that only he knew the combination to. He kept a lock on the refrigerator. His computer was bolted to the desk. The legs of the desk were enclosed in cement blocks. His biggest fear was that some police officer would have to investigate his apartment one night in search of some suspect. Fritz would be innocent, of course, but there would be no way to escape the awkwardness of the police's inquisitiveness when asked to justify the blocks. As Fritz reasoned, the inexplicable presence of the blocks in his room would appear as just cause to the officer to arrest him.

Yet it was worth it.

The only part of his apartment, in fact, that was at all moveable was his cellular telephone. He kept it in a box beside his bed. He had bought the box in one of the colony of thrift stores that were fixed, fated to grow no more, in the corner of the city just past the great, monolythic skyscrapers through which buses and trolleys would pass as though through a mountain pass, depositing passengers.

The lid was under a thick book on programming.

He was flying an airplane. He was a pilot. All of a sudden, his parents barged into the cockpit. The stewardess apologised profusely, and to his profound frustration, claiming that she had done all that she could to prevent this. Breathing deeply, eyes staring in their trademark glares, he resolved himself to turn around and face their angry voices. He rubbed his eyes dramatically and then turned about.

They were complaining about their son. They said that he had pissed himself, and they refused to sit next to him. Breathing in deeply again, rubbing his eyes again, he explained that he had been their son, and that he was no longer sitting there. They acted as though they hadn't heard him. They continued to scream at him about how he should have installed restrooms in the seats. They said that everyone should be able to sit and piss in the seats when it so pleased them. He called them selfish. It was at this moment that he turned about to see his plane hurtling towards a missile. He ducked. The missile smashed through the window and traveled past both his parents, who leapt to either side of it. It blasted away the central aisle of the airplane.

The next thing he knew, he was pressed up against the door of the cockpit, which had swung shut when the airplane, following an explosion that sounded like a sonic boom, turned into a nose-dive. He watched the plane plummet downwards, with both of his parents huddled, more by virtue of the laws of physics than by the force of compassion, at either side of him.

All that he could think was, “Not again. I thought I secured that window thoroughly.”

The next thing he knew, he was falling through the air. He was no longer wearing his uniform.

He reached into his backpack. He extricated from it a key. Upon it was inscribed one word: “Fate.”

He thought, “But shouldn't it say 'lucid'?”

He then realised that he was sleeping. No sooner had he tried to take flight than he awoke.

There was a man in his apartment.

Within seconds, the silhouette disappeared. He seemed to disappear the moment Fritz screamed.

Fritz sprang from bed. The golden light of the streetlights looked in on his room. The steady, Piccassoesque blue of dawn was already somewhat present in his bedroom. His heart was pounding and his mind racing. He wondered what time it was. After turning on a sterile green light in his room and checking under his bed, he removed the book lying atop his box. He lifted the lid. His phone was missing.

Within the minute, someone was knocking on his door. At first, Fritz felt too disoriented to answer it.

“Que es?”

It was his landlady, Claudia. Fritz was almost enraged by her invasion of his privacy at this very dire moment. He opened the door, regardless. He muttered to her, as he opened it, quickly, “Did you just see a man running down the hall?! Was he holding anything? Did you call the cops?!”

To his discontent, he was met with only her blank, almost macho, impenetrable glare. “Lo siento, Senor Franz. Didn't see no one. I only heard the noise.” She seemed only slightly bewildered, a condition that unnerved him even more.

“Well, okay.” He was furious now. “Can you go, then?”

She kept staring. Why?

“Fritz. I don't want to hear any more screaming.”

“Well, I'm sorry, but I think, honestly, that you should call the police, because there's an intruder in the building.”

Her grinning glare seemed to yield for one moment as she, Fritz hoped, considered investigating.

“I didn't hear nothing. No footsteps. Maybe you had a bad dream.”

Fritz could not argue, but this was unsettling. He told her again to go away. She yielded, but not before giving him a look of stern recognition he could not understand at all. He had no interest in doing so. He shut the door and bolted it shut.

Why only the cell phone? Wait.

He unbolted the door and opened it again. She was passing down the bleak green aisle. He yelled after her.

“Hey!” She turned about abruptly, but her complexion seemed unphased.

“What time is it?”

Her eyebrows sank into a perceptive, gently sarcastic stare. “Que hora?” She checked her watch. “Four.” She raised four fingers innocently, as though to dissuade the uncertainty and disbelief that his face still showed. He thanked her formally and shut the door again.

The curtains were closed. He had not done that. He turned on his monitor. For the first time in three years, he had to wait for more than several seconds as the tiny bars that lined up in a row to show that the OS was loading made a solid snake twelve bars long and then disappeared to begin again. In fact, the computer did not finish loading. He waited for something like five minutes, meanwhile trying to gather his bearings. He was prepared to take to the streets again.

Drumming up enough courage, he cast the curtains aside. The window was locked. A green, Oceanic light, tempering its own intensity, leant a bleakness to these familiar streets which, even despite his knowledge of the area and its dangers, felt comforting to walk along in the daytime and to look out at from the third story from behind a bolted window.

He perused the room, examining every corner as though to find some crevasse through which the intruder might have passed. He walked back and forth between the main room and the kitchen innumerable times. His mind was too frantic to question his own sanity in doing this. All that was on his mind was survival.

After several hours had elapsed, he had to resolve himself to going to work. He took his briefcase from his safe. He packed all of his prized belongings, including the programming book, with the exception of his computer and his refrigerator. He unbolted the refrigerator. No food was missing, thankfully. He loaded it into a backpack that hung in his closet.

It was not until he was just at the door that he noticed that it would not budge. He panicked. Was he dreaming? He tried to become lucid. He jumped to see if he could fly. The efforts were fruitless. He began to bang against the door, yelling for someone to open up.

Claudia opened it again. She looked bewildered, unnerved, and furious. All Mexicans, as far as Fritz was concerned, were proficient multi-taskers where emotions were concerned. She told him that he had bolted the door shut. He asked how that could be so if she had opened it. She began to stare at him. All of a sudden, her grin became enormous. Her head swelled to the size of a pumpkin and her eyes were ablaze with a manic kind of malice. Terrified, Fritz withdrew into the room. He would have closed the door, but she was already halfway in.

He had no choice. Turning abruptly about, he broke into a run for the window. He would throw himself through it. He could hear her running after him. A demonic scream emanated from behind him.

He crashed through the window, determined to fly away. He could not, however. He was falling through the sky again. He was wearing his backpack. He tried to open the backpack and to extricate from it the key. Instead, his clothes flew out, unfurling. They made a parachute.

Penetrating the black haze, he sank into the lighted part of the sky as though he had dived into a swimming-pool.

The parachute upheld Fritz, but he still plummeted with incredible velocity. He knew that his legs would probably not break if he remembered how to do a tuck-and-roll. He had never attempted this before, but he had heard of people doing this successfully. He tucked his legs into a ring created by his arms. Pressing the knees into his chest, he prepared to tuck his head inwards and to roll into a run upon impact with the ground. But by the time that his shaking knees were secure in his arms, the grassy wall that was the ground smashed into him and he awoke yet again.

Dm.A.A.