SARKASM.

Dm.A.A.

Aphorism: may be...

May be it's not that I feel Liberated because I am a frieloder. May be I am what you call a frieloder because I am Liberated.

You ought to try it.

Dm.A.A.

The Re-Birth of Racism and Sexism (a satire):

Chapter Five:

Now it just so happens that the population of the United States had appointed to it seven controllers. Every Major Power was appointed a prime number of controllers, which was usually odd, so that factions could not develop within the Control Unit, and so that decisions could be decided by the most barbaric and hegemonic of all political instruments: The vote.

And it was proper that each of the controllers be given jurisdiction over one of the Seven Major Bodies, or, as the common herd called it, the Corporations. And by virtue of this monetary wealth they could find whatever adornment fit them best, and they would use it to mold the population through advertising and by avenue of cultural terror.

The Governers of the United States of America were four men and three women. Each of the men represented each of the Four Major Tribes: The White, the Yellow, the Black, and the Red. And according to their identity the Tribes were constructed. The remaining women were allowed to choose whatever ethnic identity they wished, for they had had no stake in the proceedings. The women had a more profound task: to divide the population into three religious groups. And thus was the Religion of Abraham split in three: the Christians, the Mosenists, and the Mohammedans.

And they employed the pain-staking work of Americans to develop, along the lines of Kvart prophecy, an immense Hive Mind. And this was known to be Oracle, or the Spider’s Web. The term “web” was sold to the people as a way of describing the increased connectivity that one felt whilst employing it, but literally it was explained by the fact that every computer in the world was connected by avenue of it. Of course, this web was modeled after the cosmology of the Ancient Mystikal Cults, such as the Brahmanists, whose conception of the World was that it was an interpenetrating net.

Ironically, yet in accord with the intent of the Oligarchy, the very absence of Brahmanists in the North-Western Continent was what allowed for the appeal of such a net. For, as some sensitive people like Nestor Snare would learn, most people do not feel connected to the World of Nature and the Cosmos, unless it is so by avenue of a tremendous instrument. So it was believed by a generation of people who grew up alongside it that no connectivity had existed hitherto. And this was of course preposterous.

They even forgot this: that a “web” is used to ensnare; a “net” is used to capture.

Now the Oligarchy had not anticipated the effect that this Net would have upon the population. For it was not long before information began to “leak”, as the common phrase goes, that exposed the hegemony of the Governers. As it so happened, statistical science grew to the point that one fatal statistic was published that exposed the oppressive Oligarchy:

One per cent of the country’s population owned ninety-nine per cent of the monetary wealth.

The effect of this solitary piece of data, spit out by the Hive Mind and made instantly available to all who were plugged into it, was jaw-dropping. Within mere moments, it seemed, protesters were gathered at the feet of the North American Trade Node, bewailing their misery like so many cattle to the slaughter.

The mess was unreal. It took an entire squadron of militarized police forces to clean them up. And to this day protest was considered a National Crime enforced by a Police that had shown its claws to be studded by the military.

Yet as the old saying goes one can do every thing with bayonets but to sit on them. Consent of the Ruled had to be restored. And it could only be done by exploiting the Resentiment of the Weak, re-directing it back on their selves, as Preachers all ways do.

The infiltration of the Educational System was subtle. The standard college student would only have noticed a few classes to have been dropped mysteriously from the catalogue, and only a few were inexplicably and curiously added.

These “classes” were of course funded by the puppet government to circulate a new statistical and social narrative. To weave a tighter net. And the Net had its part to play in this, for the easiest thing in the world was to circulate a meme, and to wage memetic warfare upon the Truth.

A meeting was arranged between the Seven Agents. The first to speak was the First Black Man: “We have to do some thing about all of this. All of you know that they are on to us. But how do we get them off?”

A few feeble chuckles were made at the unintended innuendo, and then a jeering woman raised her voice: “Well, it is obvious, is it not, my dear? We simply give them a new set of statistics.”

“What do you envision?”

“Think deeply,” said an other woman. “If their courage is in the future, then we must look to the past.”

“The past,” mused the Red Man. “The most dangerous of all abstractions. The Arch-Snare.”

“Up until this point,” narrated the White Man. “It has been sufficient to mold them in our image. To have them aspire towards our strength. To offer them back what was their petty birth-right,” he wrapped his arm about the first woman, “That which we steal we sell. And the price is all ways…”

“Conformity,” they all recited.

“But times have changed,” said the Yellow Man. “They want nothing to be like us.”

“They shall still all ways desire sex,” mused the third woman.

“Yet,” qualified the first, petting her lover. “sex can be taken by those who wish.”

“Rapists can be assuaged.”

“But not hippies.”

“Hippies can be murdered.”

“But not forgotten.”

“Narratives can be altered.”

“But not effaced.”

“Some do go rotten.”

“But are never replaced.”

They mused for a moment in poetic silence.

“Culture is our instrument here,” concluded the Yellow Man. “If sex is seen to be a mark not of anti-hegemonic power but of social status, people shall conform.”

“All that is left is to eliminate the deviants…” contributed the surly Red Man.

“Feminism can help,” smiled the second woman. “Those cunts still look up to us. Let them! They can turn half the population against the other half in a blink of a cosmic eye.”

“Deliciously manipulative, my dear…” said the first woman. “Yes. Even here we are a minority.”

And at that moment an idea dawned upon the First Black Man.

“I have it. The total solution. The final solution.”

A pregnant pause invited him to continue.

“Statistics. Of course. What we do: we persuade them that racism and sexism still exist.”

“As though they ever did!” retorted the White Man.

“They will all ways be believed to exist, by the weak…” the Yellow Man mused wisely. “Yet we can aggravate this subjective superstition.”

“Racism: four out of seven people here,” began the Black Man, grinning professionally at the ladies, “are White. With your consent.”

“Granted,” they all said in Union.

“That makes Four out of seven of us. White people are now worth four times as much as I.”

“And to what do we owe the honour?” grinned the White.

“Racism,” said the Red and Yellow Man together.

“PRECISELY.”

“ingenious.”

“People will recall that statistic, you know,” said the Second Lady. “About the one per cent thing.”

“That is why we edit it. We can do that, you know,” said the First.

“One per cent owns seventy per cent of the wealth,” grinned the Yellow Man. “We get a C for our hard work. They get an F for not trying hard enough. A likely narrative for college kids to consume.”

“Spoken like a true Oriental.”

The entire group guffawed.

“So that means: Fourty per cent of the wealth is owned by me,” recalled the White Man. “Ten is owned by each of the other controllers.”

“And the remainder is thirty,” said Black. “even if My People owned the entire remainder, you and I would be but tied.”

“And we can’t have that.”

“We would not need to. I hear you’ve got some rich friends down in the mob.”

The White Man grinned, as did the Yellow Man.

“So let’s say that the thirty per cent are divided along those lines,” said the Red Man, “Yellow, Black, and White. Okay. It comes out looking like Whites owned fifty per cent, Reds own ten, Blacks own twenty, and so do Yellows. Fifty plus ten plus twenty plus twenty. It all adds up. But won’t the Universities catch on?”

“Leave that to us,” said the woman who made the Feminist comment. “Disgruntled poor kids are the perfect target for warriors in our favour. We’ll call them the Social Justice Warriors.”

“Nigger is so nineteen-fifties. “Black body” sounds better.”

“Or Red Body.”

“Brown body to be more realistic.”

“Right.”

“And what about the women?” asked the Feminist Sympathiser.

“Let’s be real. We really own the wealth. If we round. But there are three of us here and four of you guys.”

“The perfect statistic,” mused the Feminist.

“For every seventy-five cents that you make…”

“You guys make a dollar.”

“Of course, it’s really that and half of one per cent.”

“And the same goes for our three quarters.”

“And each of those halves of one per cent is in fact millions of dollars…”

“But who’s counting.”

“If we round it up to the single digits,” concluded the Feminist. “it is easier to spot.”

“And harder to deconstruct!”

“And much easier for poor swine to relate to,” added the Yellow Man as a finishing stroke.

They all toasted and drank.

Dm.A.A.

Statement of Anomie:

Statement of Anomie:

I have reached an impasse. Years ago I chose to become a musician. Hearing the works of Modest Mouse and the Postal Service made me feel a nostalgia for a time I never knew. It felt fated, and I swore to become like my heroes, relics that are the product of the Northwest Scene, an enormous community of musicians playing together in literal harmony.

I all so loved video games. And in time I came to realise that my much older dream of designing games could be actualised in college. After all: I had a strong intuition that ideas were more imperative than deeds (as Zizek corroborates) and so I expected my Concepts to be well-received and even lauded.

But now what? I have written four albums and produced two E.P's. I have played in a reggae band, as well as a psychedelic duo I do not like to talk about. My closest band-mates have cheated me, betrayed me, fired me, or simply abandoned me. And I am left with five USD in my pocket.

People at bars keep telling me not to "give up". Yet giving up seems not only wisest but most noble.

Every one consumes music. Yet in half a year of hustling my art how many albums have I sold? I could say "countless". But that would give you the impression that it was a lot. I could probably recount the number if I really wanted to. And you might be disappointed.

The point is that some people will not pay the cost of a Starbucks coffee that takes five minutes to brew for the music that took me twenty days to produce and years to write.

And yet they listen gladly to the artists that "made it". Whatever that means. I never figured it out. It's up there in terms of mystery for me with my old high school English essay prompt: what was Seymour Glass's tragedy?

And where are my band-mates? Fans are well enough. I can do without admiration if I have camaraderie. Yet people are not running to play with me; I am running after them. Why? I have been playing my keyboard for over ten years!

Programmers are even harder to deal with, for they are so condescending. I would learn how to program if I felt called to it. But why would they who all ready know the skills not be eager to work on an idea? After all: I have studied philosophy, both Eastern and Western. Sure: I never finished a 'degree', and my professors were more exhausted by my unconscious attempts to teach the class than excited. But I could tell you about all most every major philosopher from this past century, down to his or her astrological sign, and what I think of her, and how I've factored his philosophical view into my own.

So what gives? The argument I get is the same one as I hear from people in the music industry: there are too many of us. Too many idea people. Too many musicians.

And I think: great! The more the merrier. We live in an economy of abundance. And if it was true fifty years ago that we could feed the population of the World, then surely, granted that reproduction has not somehow slipped past production, we can still do it today! And continue to do so, for we have more than enough people willing to toil for the benefit of all, and the scarcity in jobs stands simply as evidence that work its self is not even necessary of every one!

So I am puzzled. Where is this community of musicians? Where is this think tank of game designers? Where is my family? Where is my legion?

And then I am told this: that to work with people I require money.

But other people have "money", and it is not, as Louis CK put it, "their" money but THE money. And besides that Watts was right of course that money is simply an Abstraction and an Obstruction. Besides: the post-modernists explained that currency, by the very nature of its-Being-mutable but representing an Absolute, pre-disposes us all to schizophrenia.

So why is it that when the police come to my home the officer voices his concern that I am neither "working" nor "going to school"? If my parents' only reason for calling was that I was drooling in a meditative trance, why did they not leave me Be?

School must at some time have appeared to be a viable alternative. Yet what if I should become a professor? If I am wrong or arbitrary, I shall have miss-guided an entire group of people. If I return to the Debate Team, will I finally be able to form a legion large enough to implement our ideas of reform? Or shall I encounter again this sort of sociopathic behaviour of enjoying victory and bewailing defeat, forgetting that my victory is but some one else's defeat and my defeat some one else's victory?

Some have suggested that every issue has an other side. But this is a schizophrenic delusion. If Debate taught me any thing it is to treat such thoughts without mercy. For the true aim of discourse is not to defend a "private interest" (???) but to be Objectively Right. Dissent only becomes necessary when one introduces the much less necessary sin of "competition".

Competition...

The wise would take times like these as a sign of peace and plenty. I would wait for money to come, as well as attention, sex, food, and housing. May be even happiness. For if people are not looking for me, why would I be so bold as to look for them? It would be selfish to create a demand in some one who is desireless. It would be the mentality of a drug lord breeding addiction.

I certainly cannot return to retail. The dream of independence might have died the moment that a portly woman called herself my "boss".
Yet maturity does not die so easily. Keeping a dream log every day is enough to remind one's self that one is still a child so long as one answers to any arbitrary micro-manager's authority. And were we all content then none of my colleagues at the fabric store would have been so eager each night to leave (despite their peculiar eagerness to show up at work, once a fortnight, the day that their checks came.)

I could become a comedian. But Watts was right: all humour has a bit of malice. My jokes are sarcastic and self-deprecating. They are well enough in times of crisis. I transmute my existential woes to relief not only for my self but all so every one around me. I can even make women smile, which tends usually not to be the case with me.

But to deliberately mock neurosis in an antic disposition? Nay. For that would set a standard for others to imitate, and it is unhealthy. Besides: every open mic has a limited number of slots. If I get there first to sign up, how do I know I am not operating from a position of luck, at the expense of an other who is in greater want but lesser availability?

My old guitarist once broke down crying at the wheel when he realised that no matter what he did he would be supporting the Corporate Conspiracy. I consoled him, confident that it was not so. As Bukowski put it, one should "be on the watch. There are ways out. There is light somewhere." That was our band.

But then he became a social worker, by avenue of a connection through a girlfriend, and in my personal experience social workers are polite slave drivers for a misunderstood and very enlightened class of people.

And it was not long before he started getting on my case because I "paid no bills."

I was so taken aback that the more obvious answer did not occur to me then: Bills?! No one needs to pay bills. Energy is in constant circulation. It cannot be created, ostensibly, but neither can it be destroyed, and the planet has plenty of it! As for payment, that should mimmick the natural process. People with money can pay the bills; that is their obligation by HAVING money. It is certainly not their right to refuse; I my self had to think long after I first refused to spend money on my pal Micaiah when he was homeless. I mean yes: he had broken the digital drawing pad that I had bought for him within a few days. But he was a rational fellow; I am certain he had no conscious purpose for doing so. And it would be a hideous commitment of the Naturalist Fallacy to use that in order to justify my refusal to pay my debts to him. I had really to suspend my reasoning to allow for such tenacity, but then of course I was not telling him to "get a job" or refusing to buy his meals. (I once spent forty dollars at Marie Callendar's, all in one morning, just to feed him.) I simply refused to apologise when I spent several hundred dollars in order to get a LinkedIn account with InMail so that I could contact my old friend and crush, for she was not replying to my texts.
But I did not tell him to "get a job"! That would have been an arrogance more egregious than hypocrisy, for whilst the hypocrite tells others to follow a path that he does not himself follow, the employee demands that they follow a path that he himself has blocked. So even if they find an identical path, as though one could be certain that any two paths are identical, they will only become like him: a road-block for others.

It is of course the duty of the rich to pay the poor, for the winners of any game owe the spoils to their losers, and the participants in such an absurd conflict owe the fruits of it to the innocent non-partakers.

So fuck the bills. My parents have that covered. I have yet to find an ethical path that happens all so to produce money. Tiny shortcuts do so, but only for a short time, by the reckoning of the outside world. If my parents have managed to find such a path, then they can prove it by providing for me, as they chose to undergo as parents. If not, then they owe to me their spoils for their sin. Naturally.

Sin. My ex asked whence it came from. The love of money is the root of all evil, but not, according to Old Joe, money herself. Yet the academics seem to blame capital in large part.

I know that not all money is the same. The hundred dollars I earned playing with Fourth N Cedar was worlds more valuable than the hundreds of numbers accrued at the Fabric Store. Was it simply because the check was not made of cash? That seems unlikely. I usually know how things will end up, and even if seldom I chose to avail my self of cash it was all ways available to me. I suppose that it is true, though. Capital breeds schizophrenia. In the absolute realm, ten dollars in the bank is identical to a ten-dollar bill in the hand. Yet: why does being handed one by my band manager feel so much better? Too many variables exist to say with scientific certainty, though my mind is of course not confined to science.

My plight is the same as ever before:

If I enter the military, I shall find Solidarity and Duty, but not justice. Other people who might have been my friends would either kill me or be killed by me.

If I returned to the work force, I would again be obligated to pay the Micaiahs of the world, for I took their job. To this day Micaiah, who has moved on to corporate work (good for him!) refuses to work with me and  insists that my disrespect has lost me partners in the past and will continue to do so.

If I returned to school, I would be signing up for classes that others wanted to sign up for, or otherwise accommodating classes arbitrarily just so as to make the professor happy. And these classes I tend to fail, for the demand is low because the class is either boring, a trade class, or the teacher just wants more money. They can be fun, but so few people persist with the class that by the end of it it feels like a waste of time.

Yet the crowded classes are a sin to get into.

And what am I aiming for? If I became a CEO, would the power not corrupt me? If I became a professor, would I not corrupt a few minds?

Only music seems pure.

Yet the industry is impure. Music is harmony, and musicians must live in harmony. Is it no surprise that an industry that coerces people to compete produces music that is progressively more discordant?

And is this not a metonymy for society? For capitalism herself?!

• • •• ••• ••••• •••••••• •••••••••••••

I knew a girl once who told me we could change the world for the better with music. She acknowledged the evils of capitalism as having their root in competition.

She had slept five times with my old guitarist. This was after he had concluded that life is entirely a game of zero sum. Drugs had addled his mind.

I had introduced them at one of our shows. She wanted to be a musician. I wanted to entertain her. If some miracle happened, I thought, I might finally experience intercourse. The girl was of course prone to disavow Eros, but it would surely be preferable to Thanatos. She was suicidal. It was not, of course, with any competitive intent that I observed that the guitarist too had a morbid fascination with Death. I just would not have foreseen her attraction to him, for it would have been an unhealthy prospect.
Besides: erotically speaking, despite his mortal fixation, he had boasted of sexual exploits with countless women. The thought that he would have any romantic interest in her did not even cross my mind. How would it have crossed his? One simply never abandons one's best friend to talk to a woman, without permission. That just does not happen. Right??

Needless to say, when I perceived his intent, I disbanded our duo, of which he had been the leader. He texted me to inform me that he would continue to use the name.

I am recently told he might not have produced the name himself. But as Juliet would have said... Well you get the idea.

People stare at me when I recount my tales as though I am an unreliable narrator. They said that of Holden Caulfield as well. Why? Who are we to project our own experiences onto an innocent voice?

I must have had some unconscious instinct at self-defense, as evidenced by the tension in my (para?)sympathetic nervous system (the one on my left) that had endured for months after the incident when she and he started flirting in my bedroom. I am told by her that it is the sympathetic, though it feels like the parasympathetic. Formally and dogmatically, sympathetic governs fight or flight, whereas parasympathetic does rest and relaxation. Yet I am certain with her love of Greek and Latin roots that she will sympathise, or at least empathise, with my deconstruction. Besides, since he was sitting on my bed, and she beside it (so cutely), it might very well have affected my rest and relaxation in the on-coming months.

I know what you will say: that he deserves my sympathy as well. He certainly was one to deconstruct things. Even when I asked him if he ever read the post-modernists and Absurdists, he reacted with rage at my condescending curiosity.

She defended him and his actions. That was why she persuaded me to let him have access to our old bandcamp account. It was the least that I could do for her, yet I suppose that it was such an indirect service, and my unconscious defenses, as hitherto stated, were so on-edge, that I ended up giving the wrong password. It turned out that we had to devise a new password, and we had fun doing so, striking a balance betwixt vengeful scorn and kindness, as a sort of compromise between me and her respectively. It TURNS out that the site I was signed into was none other than my fan account. So he had no use for it.

She must unconsciously have known, for that same night she turned bitter the moment that I had done what she requested. I would not see her face again for a long time. She never allowed me to take photos of her.

All ways she empathised with his plight. Though she claimed to oppose some of his views, it would be long before I saw this opposition for my self. Before then she ardently defended both his words and his actions. And that was fine. I only wished that she would do the same for me. My envy, mixed with pain at his betrayal, turnt to a most indecorous rage. Yet I am told that scars are a man's adornment.

• • •• ••• ••••• •••••••• •••••••••••••

So here I am, one year later.

She told me a year ago, or nearly, that I would have to wait a year before she might be available to me for sex. It simply was not "in the cards" back then. She seemed surprised that I would wait that long, and perchance for nothing. Why the surprise? A year is nothing.

A year after I saw them walking through the golf course, having abandoned me to a seat that night, for my head was spinning and my nose bleeding, and I saw that they were holding hands, (I must have felt psychic for having produced the paranoid fantasy in my kind before it was made flesh before my eyes.) I decided it was time to "let him out of the ice box" as my old friend Jay would have said. (Don't try to sue me, Jay. I know how you are but trust me that I have no money to give you, save for these five dollars.) i thought he would have changed. The last I had seen him had been in Autumn, for the girl had so successfully intervened that an unsteady but passive-aggressive truce was struck for some time before this. Yet this time I had not heard from her in months, despite my faithful stream of letters to her. This time, I took the path my self, and with a whole heart ready to forgive.

But he no longer wished to play in a band with us. The last I saw of her was the night that she and I last tried to persuade him. Yes: she was adorable that night too. Though she does not care for such flattery.

Now all my old friends have either left me, or I have left them. Mother is right: every one has gone. I am alone, without job or degree. I dropped out of college as soon as I could to make this band with the hot rocker girl work. The platinum blonde beauty has returned to whence she came, for I had met her quite by chance one night in the Parking Lot of San Diego State University. She has chosen graduate work over music, though for an entire year she had said that she wanted music more than any thing else. The fantasy [the melody, if you will] changed but the beat remained the same: Music would heal all wounds and absolve all debts. Whether she and I were together, working to supplant him, or he was with us, but she and I were romantically involved, or she was married to him but I spent more time with her, in the studio (presuming now that for some reason he would be less often at work), or she and he were dating but I would never have to see it whilst we were together as a band (though paradoxically the band would become our life, our family, and thus a perpetual state of togetherness), the goal was the same. And if he failed us, there should be no problem. We would simply find an other guitarist.

It is hard to say, as Woody Allen would put, "where the screw-up came in."

I suppose that I got too touchy when I heard him say, whilst we were all together hanging out, that I would not be singing in his band. What I took personally she took professionally. She explained that pitch was an absolute thing and that he had it and I did not. I had my doubts and counter-arguments, having grown up on Modest Mouse, Dinosaur Jr and Tom Waits. But she did not understand that I was not trying to supplant her as the lead vocalist. It was simply that I had taken a walk through the old high school, listening to my old recordings with him, and I had found compassion in reprieve; whereas before this I had felt self-conscious of my voice, now I could hear how beautifully our voices sounded together. Harmony. Solidarity. Family.

He would be the business mind, I would be the musical genius, and she would be the leader. What could go wrong? What went wrong?

I finally severred ties with him after a tormented altercation via text. He refused to do that which would make her most happy. And he tried to accuse me of harbouring self-interest. Every concession was met with five counterarguments. It was like fighting a Hydra. I could not take it. For the first time in my entire life, I found that I had a peculiar gift:

I could block a person's cell phone number.
Last time I had simply ignored his texts. And that was difficult enough. Though she had insinuated that I was a coward for doing so.

So alas and a lack, a lad loses his lass. The Valedictorian of Communication Studies goes off to Graduate School, and I am here at year's end. Her excuse is that music is corporatised. Every day I find more evidence for this. And yet is she not committing the Naturalist Fallacy? It was our entire AIM to redeem it! That was why I loved hearing her rant about music over the phone, venting her frustrations with the status quo.

And I recently asked again if she would sleep with me. I got angry that she did not reply. I wrote her this poem, mere minutes before a twelve-hour period had past without answer:

You have nineteen
Minutes to answer.

I thought I would have woken up to your reply.

If not, then this correspondance
Is a cancer
And good
Bye.

Sure. It was cruel of me to write this to her. But even a simple "No", without warrant, is preferable to Silence.

Dm.A.A.

Confrontation with a Slave Driver:

I did some thing on a limb today. I saw a sign posted at the local GameStop: ‘Now Hiring’. Since I had felt an inexplicable erotic Urge to visit this little rental hut, I decided to be-Bold and talk to the available-looking young man at the cash register with the cutting sapphire eyes. He told me plainly and reasonably that the shop was all ways hiring, and he apologised for the absence of a resume on-hand. I indicated him not to worry about it. Then I asked him about what the work entailed. He replied, with a very non-plussed and bored expression, as though he were inviting me to share in a Common Mundanity: a lot of standing. Talking to people...

He said it as though I had re-quested a list and he could only produce two items.

I took him literally. I felt like this might finally be am improvement from the Old Fabric Store. So long as there was down-time, I might find this place to be an ideal haven for the completion of my novel. Yet I did not wish to presume, intending to be literal as possible. So I asked for clarification: Is there any thing to be done when there are no customers around? or (is All of my time going to belong to this arbitrary Corporation, and) am I to do other work around the store even in the absence of customers?

And at the question a funny expression past over my interlocutor’s face. It was one all too familiar to me: He was looking at me as though I were ‘crazy’.

And with a clipped voice he continued to list all of the items he had neglected hitherto, such as cleaning, organising, and the proverbial Et Cetera. And he said it with a clipped condescension, all most as though the simple Question Its Self had offended him.

SO I have concluded that GameStop must be the least efficient company in all the world, next to Joann Fabrics. What they seem both to have in common is that they are constantly in need of improvement, requiring more man-hours than they can even afford to pay their employees for. Never is Nirvana reached in retail, it would seem, and for the few hours that you are employed in their favour YOU ARE THEIR SLAVE. WAKE UP! [Dm.A.A.]

INTERFERENCE. Part One: Chapter Twelve.

Chapter twelve

Stephanie had always been a mathematical person. Where most introverts used their reclusive periods to embolden their sense of solidarity with their common human kind or their environment, Stephanie had, since childhood, sought only to maintain a view of the Universe that was entirely logical and, to a thankful degree, predictable.

She remembered an episode from extreme childhood. It had been approximately half an hour after the schoolday. She could still remember her peers rushing past her, with needless nerves and exhiliration (the which of the two she could not tell), through the hallways.

She had walked slowly. She observed the formality of keeping her books on her desktop until the bell rang. She did not mind others' habits, naturally, but she was prompt to reprimand the boy who occupied the desk to her left. Ms Spehar was always reprimanding him for keeping his books on the floor and for beginning to stow the cargo four minutes, on average, prior to the bell.

'You should not keep your books in the aisle,' Stephanie told the boy.

He looked at her with a completely random, pigfaced look. He hated her.

She never knew why.

She had just tried to help.

That had been early in the second grade. Back then, time was not an Entity: Only a system. Conventions were manipulable. It was the lack of emphasis put by elders and superiors upon the significance of keeping appointments and meeting deadlines that allotted her a liberty she missed almost with, she had to admit, a grudge.

She would keep books on physics. Her library was in her father's office. Her room had seven clocks in it.

The world outside worked like her clocks.

The Sun would rise between 6:00 am and 6:30 am, with variation with the alternation of the year.

Her mother was perturbed by Stephanie's obsession with clocks. Her father did not share her impulsive prejudice. He loved her more. She still remembered one night, at seven o'clock and some fraction she could not remember, that her father set foot in her room. A green light lit the room from a lamp that was placed always atop an old bookshelf.

Her father stood between her and the light for a few indeterminate seconds as she sat on the edge of her bed.

The event was like watching a Solar eclipse.

He was smiling. Something in the way that his wrinkles were illumined by the light from behind made her all of a sudden terrified. She could never understand why she had been scared for that brief moment. Years were inconsequential.

He stepped out from behind the light. It flooded the room like the genuineness of seeing the Sun towards the end of midday from under the surface of an Ocean.

He chuckled. She felt slight relief at the sound of his humour, but she still felt that the irrational fear, on another level, was not truly assuaged.

He had a certain authority over the bedroom, and her as well, for that uncalculated moment.

'You really love to measure things, Steph.'

She smiled. An entirely capricious joy replaced the terror. He left within a few seconds. Once he had closed the door behind himself, she reclined in her bed.

The green light seemed accompanied by another light, closer to white in hue, like a shadow of the light.

Dm.A.A.

INTERFERENCE. Part One: Chapter Eleven.

Chapter eleven

The doors slid open. He faced the familiar red corridor. Two doors occurred along the wall to his left. A third, not as near to him as the nearest of the two doors but not as distant as the other, rested about halfway down the hall on his left.

A figure stood silhouetted partway down the corridor closest to the door to his left. The man had what looked like goiters enveloping his head like cobblestones on a pillar.

Fritz's heart jumped into his throat, screaming in an agony that rose into his throat from its point of departure, culminating in a nerve-racked bellow that tore his throat and rattled every tense fiber in Fritz's head like the uncertain chain of a swing.

The man was unphased.

Fritz scrambled to find the 'emergency door close' button. There was no such button on the control panel. And the door would not close of its own volition.

The man began to approach.

Fritz screamed repeatedly. An entire day's aggression and tension escaped in several momentous stabs of terror. Fritz's eyes rolled back.

The lights of the elevator stared down at him like the eyes of bees about to devour him like a smaller insect. Fritz bellowed at them, as well, and the erratic waves of his oscillating roars became words.

'Get the fuck away from me!!!'

His heart was now beating in his brain. His precious lobes throbbed, and he thrust his head forward as though to direct his aggression at the figure. It felt like slamming his head against a glass wall.

It spread throughout the entire corridor like a swarm of ants, leaving the silhouetted man unphased.

Fritz backed into the chamber. The white lights of his own elevator, pale and lifeless, were the most terrifying part.

They evoked the eyes of a bee about to tear him apart like a smaller insect.

The door shut him inside with the lights. He had overestimated the space of time, staring at the strange man. The figure approached him briskly, but did not rush, as the door shut, stopping halfway through its close. Fritz's heart fell back from where it had lodged.

[Dm.A.A.]