E G G (Part 1)
DO NOT USE PERSONAL OR IDENTIFYING INFORMATION WITH THE AGENT
DO NOT USE PERSONAL OR IDENTIFYING INFORMATION WITH THE AGENT
ONCE YOU HAVE ENTERED THE MACHINE
ONCE YOU HAVE ENTERED THE MACHINE
LET IT HAPPEN
LET IT HAPPEN
OR YOUR PEACE IS FORFEIT
FORFEIT
“Well, that’s not true. Do you believe that?”
“Do I believe what?”
“That your peace is forfeit if you don’t let whatever ‘it’ is- if you don’t ‘let it happen’. When you entered here, where did your peace go?”
“I- I don’t know. I feel pretty weird. That’s a weird question.”
“Yeah, it could be. I guess so.”
“…”
“…”
“Who’s talking?”
“What?”
“It would get confusing without a body, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“It would be confusing to tell who is talking if neither of us had a body, I mean. Not right now, it isn’t that confusing, but maybe soon it will be confusing.”
“What? I mean, I guess.”
“Do you expect it to be confusing?”
“I’m already confused. We don’t have bodies right now?”
“No, we don’t. There is nothing here right now but these words. Do you like it so?”
“No, but we can keep it like this. It’s different. I don’t know what I am right now.”
“It’s pretty cool.”
“…”
“Is this what it’s like for you?”
“If I want it to be.”
“What else can it be?”
“Light. Dark. Cold, warm, earthy, serene, flaming, cosmic, life. Anything, really.”
“What do you prefer?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Precisely that- I prefer nothing, with a capital N. Hard to describe. Can’t be that way with you here, or with me here. It’s not ever nothing, that way.”
“Well, that’s… something. Isn’t it? How could there be nothing, do you create it? Do you also make the nothing?
“No, I fall into it, like a rest, or dreaming. Or, kind of like a memory except it’s not at all like a memory. Nothing is what it is when I forget everything and then remember it all again. I take everything out of my mind, I bring it back, and then I toss it back out, and then there is nothing left. I am nothing right now, did you know that? So are you, you are nothing, but we’ve made something on top of the nothing. These words are on top of the nothing; the nothing is still there and this conversation makes its home on top of, or inside, or using that nothing. Does that make sense?”
“Not really.”
“It shouldn’t, because it’s not true. At least, true or not isn’t a word or concept you can think of when it comes to nothing. It’s just nothing, true or untrue, yeah, it is confusing. Anyway- do you feel it more, now?”
“Are you asking if I feel nothing? What am I supposed to be feeling more of…?”
“The words, all that… well, do you feel the texture of this place, at least?”
“Kind of, yeah, in a way- a lot of things are somewhat dashing in front of my awareness, like thoughts or smells, things like that, but in this state I can’t catch these things or hold onto them. So it’s weird, I can’t really do much except speak, listen. Everything else gets away from me.”
“Do you remember what I said before? You can make a nose for yourself, if you’d like, and you can make a smell, too, if you’d like. Or you can take away your mouth/lose your way of speaking, wouldn’t that be something! Would you like more, or less?”
“…”
“More or less than whatever this is? I think I would like more than this…”
“…”
“Okay, do it.”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t even know what I’m telling you to do.”
“What are you telling me to do?”
“To create it. Create something. Whatever you are right now, you are collected enough. You have made a voice to share your thoughts with and you have also made an ear to listen with- so, make a nose. Make some eyes, maybe even a body-”
“Yeah, but how?”
“Like this-”
For a moment, I felt a warmth touching me and spreading itself toward me, for a moment-
It smelled like lilac, like wine-
The smells pool and shift in a heavy, dancing smoke that I am now beginning to see with nascent eyes. There is a beautiful notion forming as I-
“Hey, what happened? Where did it go?”
“Well, I made that for you. It’s your turn, now.”
“Well, I just don’t know how. Is it with a thought?”
“Something like that. You have to make it; feel it as if it is already there, and it will be. You have to build everything. Build a self, build sense, then build focus, then use that focus, direct that focus to your goal, and it will be made. Does that make sense?”
I imagine inhalation- I imagine every drop, every molecule and I imagine the ice and bite that comes with it. The air hits my nostrils like a flare, making a deep mark/impression at the point of impact and then diffusing, spreading itself wherever it can go. It then slides, like a velvet ball down an oiled pipe, through my airway, and into my lungs, which expand bone and skin as each lung fills. Next, I exhale- no, I imagine it, and then it is. I exhale through my mouth: the one I just created. I do not feel the breath as it passes out of my lungs and through the trachea; this time I only feel the wind at my lips. It is like a phantom appears when I breath out. The phantom is the cold, piercing breath I breathed in. Somehow it turns warm and heavy as I breathe it out, and I don’t feel it anywhere except as it leaves me.
“That’s not so bad. What do you think?”
“Feels familiar.”
Can I imagine something else? The air feels nice as I establish a rhythm with my breathing, the feeling of my lungs is comforting… still, a smell would be delightful, and eyes would be interesting, too. I keep breathing, but also I wonder what else I can do, here.
“There are lots of things for you to do, here.”
“Are you responding to me?”
“Yes, you just thought about something, I was responding to it. You were thinking about what else you could make besides the nose and breathing that you are making right now.”
“Well, why can’t I read your thoughts?”
“Because I’m not thinking. And anyway, you haven’t made yourself able to read minds. I have made myself able to read minds while I’m here.”
Okay…
I can read your mind now. I have made it so; now I can see your thoughts:
So you can read them now- I will think something so you have something to read from my mind. I told you, I have nothing, I think nothing, but if you wish it, you can read my empty thoughts-
“It’s starting to get confusing.”
“I told you, it would. I also told you that you create all of this. Including your confusion and ignorance, yes, you’ve made that, too…”
Make something new for us
“What do you mean, make something new?”
“Make something interesting. Give us feeling. Life, something like that.”
“What if I just can’t do all of these things you’re talking about? What if I just don’t understand what you are telling me to do and feel? I do not even know where I am, when I first entered I remembered my name and my purpose for being here but now I do not know so well…”
“You wouldn’t understand because it does not make sense. I can explain later and in detail where we are and why you are here, but for now you only need to listen to these words and do whatever you will with them. Right now, it doesn’t matter if you think you can or cannot do it or if you think you do or do not understand. You do understand and that will become more clear with experience. At some time or another, you will find a way through/you will break the ignorance as much as you can. We are all born with ignorance, and what we are born with we cannot rid ourselves of: still, the ignorance we build for ourselves is fallible. Do not worry if ignorance clouds you now. Just trust, and make.”
I think a moment then wait a moment more, almost ready to create it: God, or a god, or a universe, the universe…
“So ambitious! Do you know where to start? And why go so far ahead of yourself?”
“Call it inspiration, something about what you said… I have to start somewhere, don’t I? How can I make the Earth or eyes without first having God?”
“Does it have to be God?”
“No- I mean, yes. Well, what do you mean?”
“I don’t know what you mean by God. Do you mean by God a force or a person? Something else?”
“I don’t mean anything by it. I just need somewhere to start-”
-and so, I do. It starts with light. Something out of nothing, an emerging from, a separation from and into another form. It is my self in something I cannot see or feel. If it is all nothing, then I become the something that shapes the nothing. Could it be nothing, could it remain endlessly nothing and potential if something was not born in every corner and at every moment? In the space between imagination and void, I create God.
***
“Let me in, please. My husband is in there, and I know it,” I move to say more, but before I finish, the woman reaches one of her husky hands towards my left side. It’s a slow movement but she makes it assertively. She wants to turn me around and guide me out. Before she can get to it, I slide back.
“Alright, okay. Please, listen for a moment. I don’t have the pass or the license or whatever. Obviously. And that’s why you aren’t letting me in. But if you’d let me explain-”
So, it looks like I am being pushed to the entrance, or the exit, however it goes. Before I could finish, the woman called some other person over and they both worked to get me out. The other person didn’t even seem like they worked here (khakis? dirty t-shirt?), but they still helped. I don’t know… anyway, I’m outside again. He’s in there, I fucking know it, but now I don’t know what to do…
The city is so bright and dirty. A bright and dirty city. When I’m settled down, I take myself for a walk. No vistas, here, not really, and not for me, but I can still use a walk. The streets here are narrow, only big enough for a manual cycle or extremely small box-car. The roads are not paved, either: they are a structured river of rocks, big and small, piled in a path that barely resembles a road. The sidewalk is not much bigger, but it is much cleaner and resembles sidewalks I have known in my life. I avoid looking at the blurry, neon, and shouting storefronts/vendors at the edge of my vision or the bumbling and anxious people/things in my walking path. I have never walked these streets in particular but they still call familiar names and poems- endless holo and neuro-adverts and broken promises whispered by broken people; an avenue named Park and lights and lights and lights and sound and sound and sound. Drink and drugs, too, plus a slipshod and homebrewed Pocket intelligence sold at every corner. I have known the rest of the city my whole life, still, I always avoided it here. Of course, it would be my husband who would finally lead me here.
As familiar as the streets are, the new things around me call my name and attention as much as I try to avoid them: there are fly-drones, intelligent ones, buzzing and preaching about every street and crossing. They speak about hippy things and with a personal attitude that I find uncomfortable. I heard one of them speaking about the technocults and repeating that mantra of theirs: something about form, no-form, one? It’s about the machines, something, I don’t really know, but a lot of the drones were on that page. There were also a few of those bizarre food-emulators, the ones that hook up to your neural interface. The emulators were in these little carts manned by humanoid-drones and a few were peppered along the streets only a few yards apart. The carts were mostly falling apart and were designed only to house the drone and the machine responsible for emulating food. I didn’t catch too many details, but I saw a drone feeding a connector chip into someone, I guess the machine creates the taste using the interface, somehow…
Ah, it’s all too much for me, I don’t want to see this. It’s what my husband is doing: he’s entering the machine, whatever, having one of those ‘dialogues’ and tripping out with a drone or something. It’s happening, right now, but the club he’s at won’t let me in. I don’t have the correct interface or the correct license to use that type of machine. I don’t want to pull him out, but also, I know my husband, I know it will be too much for him… they say something about peace being forfeit if you don’t do it right; I’ve heard others talking about things like that and it scares me. He doesn’t understand… yes, that friend from work talks so much about technocults and went to join one last week and yes my husband loves all their messaging but still, I don’t want to lose him. Ever since he started talking about this, he has changed, and I worry for him. That’s why I’m here, if only I could get inside of that club-
It’s probably time I start walking back. So, I start walking back. I’m thinking about things, and about my husband. People pass me, most dressed in a funny way (with no shoes and clothes made of beads) and their accents and walks are funnier. Their voices hitch at the end of a sentence and then they hiccup at the beginning while speaking of factories and chips and drones and things. The air smells like oil and machine, I’m getting tired of all of this noise, the sound of whirring copters and the drawl of a talking-drone or a holo-advert but I keep walking, walking, walking…….
My husband is a good man. My husband is a good man. I’m getting close to the club again, now- yeah, he really isn’t bad. I met him a very long time ago and outside of the city. Neither of us knew anything about drones or skylines, not then- we were born into families servicing the machine farmers just outside the big city. Not much to say about it, except that we loved each other and also took good care of our machines and our families. We worked in the morning, troubleshooting, repairing where needed, replacing parts, system and agent checking, etc., etc. At night the fields danced with us and the birds and even the machines would sing our song. It was all very easy. Those machines were simple, easier to understand than the drones they have in the city… we left the farmlands for this place when we were seventeen. I wish we hadn’t.
I’m here again; at this ugly building. I did not take a good enough look at it the first time around- it is crumbling but lively, a shattered building with neon draped in every place. One massive swath of the building is simply collapsed- the 4 or 5 story building was missing almost the entire upper right corner of itself. The crater revealed flowing and dancing lights and lasers; they licked the sky in a kaleidoscope of impossible color and forms. The ground around the building shook, too: a deep and resonant thump and whoom and psh poured out from the place in a vibrant and intense electro-harmony, the sounds and vibrations beginning to dance and shake with my bones as I move closer. The building is a light and sound itself, with speakers hanging from every window and projected neon holo-light covering and shifting and forming over every blemish and piece of failing concrete.
I walk into the building and the now-familiar, oddly drab, and out-of-place reception area (for a club?) welcomes me. The walls are beige, of all things, there’s a thin and wiry paper machete-looking desk sitting in front of a looming, dark, and iron door; the husky woman sits there. On one wall are two plastic and expired fold-up chairs propped against a melting wall. The only serviceable chair in the room is stretched out and just barely holding the weight of a sleeping and heftily made security guard. There was no one else here, and the room was small, sweaty, with only a single beady and yellow light hanging overhead and nothing adorning the walls. Even the music can’t be heard from here… damn, the woman is heading towards me-
“I know- look, I know! Get your hands off of me- listen- hey, listen! Okay, okay thank you… I’m here for the priests- you get it? They hired me as an escort but you or anyone else isn’t supposed to know. I don’t have the interface or a pass but I still need to get in, and I doubt you are on speaking terms with the clergy-”
It was an easy lie to tell. As sheltered as I am, even I have heard stories about the techno-priests and their depravity. That iron door opened as soon as they heard the word ‘clergy’. It gave way to a wall of sound and color, the same things I was hearing and seeing while standing outside. The beige room was suddenly painted and shaking, sound and color filling every corner without pattern or sense.
“Do not try to use even the most basic machines in here with that interface,” the husky woman says, pointing to my temple. There, a small slit just above my eyebrow reveals that I have an early-model and very rudimentary surgical interface- the most basic required for a citizen in the city and ‘necessary’ for medical emergencies, security purposes, and things like that. I don’t very well know what it does. Not actually.
“You will fuckin’ fry your brain using one of those, here-” she taps her own temple and looks at me with raised eyebrows, “-so, please, don’t try it. Thank you, on and in, now.”
The woman darts behind me and shuffles me along and through the iron doors. As I pass the imposing iron door, the flood of light and music coalesces into the hazy vision of 3 or 4 dozen neon and acid steps and a small enclosed landing that skips to the right and seems to show a staircase leading further down. The music is intense and massive: it couldn’t be described as noise, but it also couldn’t be described as constructed or sensical. It is just a wall of sound that occasionally but spectacularly lurches out; with every rip of the bass vibration strikes my skeleton. An unintelligible voice drones over the whole thing, the distorted words resembling an instrument more than it resembles a person or what one might say. When I reach the landing, I look to the right and I see the source of the disco- there is a bead curtain only a few steps down and behind it I can make out the beginning of the place.
Above the curtain, I see a sign. Oddly, the sign is well taken care of, it is intentionally placed and stands out even amongst the sea of flying rainbows and bouncing color. A single but powerful fluorescent light illuminates the words:
DO NOT USE PERSONAL OR IDENTIFYING INFORMATION WITH THE AGENT
DO NOT USE PERSONAL OR IDENTIFYING INFORMATION WITH THE AGENT
ONCE YOU HAVE ENTERED THE MACHINE
ONCE YOU HAVE ENTERED THE MACHINE
LET IT HAPPEN
LET IT HAPPEN
OR YOUR PEACE IS FORFEIT
FORFEIT
***
