The winter months had felt lonelier than ever before.
Since the disappearance of Mr. Friend Vix had just fallen into a new kind of psychic coma. The days blurred together and nothing seemed to be important enough to even think about doing.
He knew that this couldn’t go on for much longer.
He’d lost interest in most of the things he used to care about, and the blurry window to the world that was his computer screen gradually lost its transparency as the days passed. Now he could spot his own reflection in the glossy screen more often than he would get transported through it and out into the vast world of digitized information.
The only bookmark he had added during the last few months read: ‘Okinawa’.
It all started when he stumbled upon a travel site by chance, and found himself clicking around on different holiday pictures of scenic views and clear, green waters.
Instantly he had thought of the usual disasters lurking behind such poisoned eye-candy: tsunamis, typhoons, earthquakes and the like.
But then he had found one picture, all these thoughts had disappeared, and he found himself strangely at ease just looking at the picture.
Above it, bright red letters spelled out: ‘Okinawa’.
Soon the word would become a magical mantra for Vix.
At any time he felt uneasy, which wasn’t really that often anymore, as he was too indifferent to even feel uneasy at most times. Maybe the feeling was more restlessness than unease when he came to think of it. But anyway, when this feeling of unease turned into restlessness crept in, he would simply say the word ‘Okinawa’, and everything would be OK again.
Although it had become a way out of his waves of restlessness, the magic of saying ‘Okinawa’ only transported him back to the grey, muddy soup that was his daily life, and somehow this wasn’t enough.
He almost missed the fear and panic attacks from the time before that day when he let it all rip and let so much of the fear out of his system.
He didn’t really miss it that much, though.
Around him, it had become summer again without him taking further notice. It only gave him a feeling it wasn’t the first time this had happened to him, and that this wasn’t a particularly good realization. Next thing he would know, the winter would do the same, and then he would be really screwed. He knew he couldn’t stand yet another winter in this place.
He had to do something about his situation.
Some major changes had to be made.
And he was up for it.
There was nothing more to lose anymore.
The more he contemplated on this thought, the more euphoric he felt, like a rush building from pure thought and entering his bloodstream.
He got out of his chair and stood in the middle of the room.
Then he said: “Either you follow the rules, or you break the rules.”
He straightened out his back as if to hold a public speech – his first ever - and added: “Or you make the rules!”
Then he went over to the washing basin on the wall, and stood facing the dirty mirror above it.
It was there, in front of the dusty blur of his own reflection, that Vix made up his mind that, before the end of the summer, he would be moving on.
“I am Salmon”, he said out loud to the mirror.
And in that very instant, Vix decided to change his life forever.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Darkness approaching the whiteness
Mac was sweating.
Shaking.
Freezing cold.
Weak.
He could see the House Witch sitting beside him on the cave floor. She was holding his hand.
He tried to rush to his feet, but his body wasn’t able to move an inch. He tried to shout at her, but there was barely a whisper coming from his mouth.
She watched him. Calmly. With empathetic eyes.
She didn’t look very hostile to him, being his captive and all. Something must have gone very, very wrong.
“What have you done to me?” he whispered.
She didn’t reply, she just kept stroking his hand, then lifted his head gently up and gave him some water. He couldn’t believe the rush she must have gotten from seeing him this humiliated and knocked out by her fucked-up witchcraft. Obviously there was no end to the evil ways of these primitive people.
Only her appearance and actions confused him.
Why didn’t she just finish him off? There was no way he could give her any resistance in his present state.
Or maybe he had been totally wrong about her? She didn’t really look like someone capable of hurting anyone at all.
The more he looked at her while lying here in this terrible shape, the more he thought she rather had some otherworldly beauty about her.
Of course! That was part of her spell. After all she was the one who had put him in this state to begin with.
He had never before experienced anything like this before, to lose his power like this. It was like his body didn’t belong to himself anymore. It had just turned into this large, cold heap of flesh and bones attached to the back of his mind somehow.
“You must relax”, the Witch said, and gently laid his head back down.
He tried to reply, but couldn’t fill his lungs with enough air to speak. He closed his eyes. They felt so heavy.
Then all went quiet.
Shaking.
Freezing cold.
Weak.
He could see the House Witch sitting beside him on the cave floor. She was holding his hand.
He tried to rush to his feet, but his body wasn’t able to move an inch. He tried to shout at her, but there was barely a whisper coming from his mouth.
She watched him. Calmly. With empathetic eyes.
She didn’t look very hostile to him, being his captive and all. Something must have gone very, very wrong.
“What have you done to me?” he whispered.
She didn’t reply, she just kept stroking his hand, then lifted his head gently up and gave him some water. He couldn’t believe the rush she must have gotten from seeing him this humiliated and knocked out by her fucked-up witchcraft. Obviously there was no end to the evil ways of these primitive people.
Only her appearance and actions confused him.
Why didn’t she just finish him off? There was no way he could give her any resistance in his present state.
Or maybe he had been totally wrong about her? She didn’t really look like someone capable of hurting anyone at all.
The more he looked at her while lying here in this terrible shape, the more he thought she rather had some otherworldly beauty about her.
Of course! That was part of her spell. After all she was the one who had put him in this state to begin with.
He had never before experienced anything like this before, to lose his power like this. It was like his body didn’t belong to himself anymore. It had just turned into this large, cold heap of flesh and bones attached to the back of his mind somehow.
“You must relax”, the Witch said, and gently laid his head back down.
He tried to reply, but couldn’t fill his lungs with enough air to speak. He closed his eyes. They felt so heavy.
Then all went quiet.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Seeing an old friend off
It had been one of those really strange days in the city.
The traffic had jammed to a complete standstill, even though it was Sunday and Vix had been caught on the top deck of a bus for more than ninety minutes, slowly freezing in the still, confined air.
Everything went slower than usual today, but the people he observed outside the bus window had seemed more relaxed and easy-minded, even happier than usual, and Vix had - like many times before - wondered whether it was really true that it was down to all the simple things in life to make it safely through the day.
It certainly seemed a hell of a lot more agreeable than being bombarded with the whirlwinds of information and those wild and sometimes quite scary, experiences that seemed to fill his own days.
Maybe it was this information in itself that kept him from experiencing such carefree days as others seemed to enjoy today?
Then again, he couldn't be sure that all his insecurities and all this weirdness didn't fill everyone's life, but that some were better built to handle it than others? Or at least hide their internal noise more successfully.
He finally made it to the station, escaped the claustrophobic bus, and got on the train.
There were no paranoid, stern-looking old ladies clutching their handbags on the train today. And no agro-looking blokes trying to stare him down or forcing him to turn his attention in the direction of the train window, where he would desperately try to stay fixed on his own reflection in the window or the dancing cables on the tunnel wall outside.
No. Today, the world seemed almost to smile at him.
At least it had stopped screaming at him just for a moment.
But, in all this positivity, something had been bothering him ever since he got up that morning.
Now that he was on his way out to the Village it surfaced again.
It was a strange mix. A feeling of melancholy mixed with a feeling of relief of some sort. Not that he wasn't used to strange mixes when it came to emotions, but this one was different from the usual chaotic turmoil of fear, desperation, anger and a dozen other - usually quite contradictory - feelings.
This special mixture felt more real, even like something he imagined other people could have felt. People who had no trouble with telling one feeling from another. Real people.
Anyway, he didn't want to go too far into it, especially on a day like today, when he felt so much at ease with the world around him.
He got off at the station and started walking down Mortal Road.
He thought about how much he liked this road. It was such an easy road for him to relate to, with all its to-the-point little shops and buildings. There was nothing unnecessary here, and that felt like such a great relief.
He got to the coffee shop, walked over to the counter and ordered his usual. Then he walked over to the window table and sat down. Surely Mr. Friend would be here any minute now.
More often than not it would be the other way around, that Vix would be the one to enter last, only to get a tiny sarcastic remark about timing.
He didn't really bother. It somehow felt right that Mr. Friend as the older, and far more sharply dressed gentleman of the two should give him a little heat for being late.
But not today.
He drank his coffee while looking out the window, just letting his thoughts wander. There had been some great Sundays during this time. It was as though he couldn't remember exactly how his life had been before Mr. Friend showed up in it.
Still, their friendship had changed somehow over the last few months. Or had it been years? Not that he cared that much for time anymore with all the new weirdness taking place concerning reality going all wobbly on him and Vix being hurled through freaky tunnels and all.
But he couldn't help but think that although Mr. Friend had started out seeming a very wise old man, someone with a lot of answers, and Vix' obvious superior when it came down to general wisdom - the more Vix got to know him, the more he felt like challenging his opinions.
Of course he would never admit to any feeling of inferiority to Mr. Friend's face from the start, but still, all his recent protests to Mr. Friend's matter-of-fact explanations of history had become less straining. It was almost like before he had to file his protests to Mr. Friend's opinions and at the same time convince himself of the validity of his own protests, but that recently he had just opened his mouth and 'talked back' with whatever he felt like saying, simply expressing his own beliefs and opinions as he got them.
This made him feel good. Even thinking about it made him feel good.
Of course Vix had already forgotten how their last conversation ended.
He couldn’t get away from the notion that talking to Mr. Friend was almost as if he had really been talking to himself, but that he had badly needed to say it all out loud instead of keeping this dialogue inside.
This is how well they knew eachother.
“What a great thing to have happened to me, meeting Mr. Friend”, he thought, as he sipped the remains of lukewarm coffee in the cup.
He realized he'd been sitting here for quite a while already.
Strange. This was very unlike Mr. Friend.
He ordered another cup of coffee.
"Whatever", he thought "it’ll give me more time to figure out what to hit the old bastard with when he eventually shows up."
He reckoned he should tell Mr. Friend about the 'weather photoblog' he stumbled across the other night. It was a project initiated by some artists where they'd invited people to take photos related to the weather at whatever spot they lived on the planet.
They had been set up in couples, where each had to post one photo a day over a period of a few weeks. This meant that they could only communicate through pictures - pictures of the weather. This would make for great conversation with Mr. Friend. Him, with his preoccupation with the weather.
Then maybe this would please him and make him feel all right about himself and go all 'what did I tell you' on Vix?
The smug fool.
And then Vix would hit him and tear him down again with some bland celebrity-news, or some new statistics on the global rise of entertainment-consumption.
This would surely make the old man go mad and get all agitated about the world again.
Only he would have to show up first.
Vix could feel the hollow sensation from earlier swell up in his chest. If someone would've asked him to guess, he'd say it was some kind of sorrow.
Not that he was an expert.
After the fourth cup of coffee and the dusk creeping in outside the window, Vix got up and decided to leave the coffee-shop.
He felt very sad now.
At least he was sure about that now.
He walked slowly along Mortal Road, across the bridge and down to the river.
The evening sky had the most wonderful colours all across.
At the river bank he sat down on a bench.
He was alone, and everything around him was beautiful.
Vix started crying.
He couldn't remember the last time he had cried. It must have been when he was still a child. The salty taste in his mouth made him feel real, and inside himself.
It was endlessly sad, but in a strange way also kind of warming. He tried to smile through his tears, but was overcome by another wave of grief.
Something had ended today - something that had made him very happy as it went on. He knew this now.
He had been left alone once again.
The moon shone when he walked back from the bus stop.
He got inside, didn't bother to take his coat off but walked straight over to his desk, opened the computer and logged in to the blog.
Then he wrote:
Today I may have lost a friend that I cared more for than I ever knew. It makes me very sad.
Then he posted the track "Tunglskin" by Mental Overdrive.
He googled the foreign-sounding track title, and found that it was Icelandic for 'Moonshine'. Then he found a picture of the full moon and put it in the post.
This felt appropriate.
He continued staring blankly at the screen when he was done.
His eyes were sore from crying and he badly needed some sleep, but he didn't want to lie down and get overcome with these emotions in the dark.
When he had googled the song, he had also found this competition by the artist’s label. They announced that anyone who managed to decode a 'backwards' message hidden on one of the tracks from the same artist's new album would be granted a lifetime free subscription to the label's output in the future.
He thought this was a nice gesture more than a good deal; of course, he could just download all their tracks for free from one of the torrent services if he wanted to.
But he gave them points for trying to engage him, though, and he badly needed something to steer his brain into more logical waters this evening.
He downloaded the whole album in question and opened every single track in his free audio editor. Then he reversed all of them, and put them in a playlist from the first till the last track.
After more than one hour listening to backwards music on headphones, he suddenly spotted a pitched-down voice deep in the mix on the last track of the album.
The tune was called "End", and the voice repeated:
It was a very strange message, or combination of messages, he thought. But then listening to a whole album backwards wasn't exactly mainstream culture either.
He quickly wrote an email to the label with his answer to the competition, then he downloaded the album artwork, inverted and flipped it in Photoshop, and uploaded it to the blog.
Usually he didn't like double posts, but today he decided he didn't really care much about such silly details or stubborn principles.
Then Vix fell asleep in the chair.
With his coat still on.
And one less friend in the world.
The traffic had jammed to a complete standstill, even though it was Sunday and Vix had been caught on the top deck of a bus for more than ninety minutes, slowly freezing in the still, confined air.
Everything went slower than usual today, but the people he observed outside the bus window had seemed more relaxed and easy-minded, even happier than usual, and Vix had - like many times before - wondered whether it was really true that it was down to all the simple things in life to make it safely through the day.
It certainly seemed a hell of a lot more agreeable than being bombarded with the whirlwinds of information and those wild and sometimes quite scary, experiences that seemed to fill his own days.
Maybe it was this information in itself that kept him from experiencing such carefree days as others seemed to enjoy today?
Then again, he couldn't be sure that all his insecurities and all this weirdness didn't fill everyone's life, but that some were better built to handle it than others? Or at least hide their internal noise more successfully.
He finally made it to the station, escaped the claustrophobic bus, and got on the train.
There were no paranoid, stern-looking old ladies clutching their handbags on the train today. And no agro-looking blokes trying to stare him down or forcing him to turn his attention in the direction of the train window, where he would desperately try to stay fixed on his own reflection in the window or the dancing cables on the tunnel wall outside.
No. Today, the world seemed almost to smile at him.
At least it had stopped screaming at him just for a moment.
But, in all this positivity, something had been bothering him ever since he got up that morning.
Now that he was on his way out to the Village it surfaced again.
It was a strange mix. A feeling of melancholy mixed with a feeling of relief of some sort. Not that he wasn't used to strange mixes when it came to emotions, but this one was different from the usual chaotic turmoil of fear, desperation, anger and a dozen other - usually quite contradictory - feelings.
This special mixture felt more real, even like something he imagined other people could have felt. People who had no trouble with telling one feeling from another. Real people.
Anyway, he didn't want to go too far into it, especially on a day like today, when he felt so much at ease with the world around him.
He got off at the station and started walking down Mortal Road.
He thought about how much he liked this road. It was such an easy road for him to relate to, with all its to-the-point little shops and buildings. There was nothing unnecessary here, and that felt like such a great relief.
He got to the coffee shop, walked over to the counter and ordered his usual. Then he walked over to the window table and sat down. Surely Mr. Friend would be here any minute now.
More often than not it would be the other way around, that Vix would be the one to enter last, only to get a tiny sarcastic remark about timing.
He didn't really bother. It somehow felt right that Mr. Friend as the older, and far more sharply dressed gentleman of the two should give him a little heat for being late.
But not today.
He drank his coffee while looking out the window, just letting his thoughts wander. There had been some great Sundays during this time. It was as though he couldn't remember exactly how his life had been before Mr. Friend showed up in it.
Still, their friendship had changed somehow over the last few months. Or had it been years? Not that he cared that much for time anymore with all the new weirdness taking place concerning reality going all wobbly on him and Vix being hurled through freaky tunnels and all.
But he couldn't help but think that although Mr. Friend had started out seeming a very wise old man, someone with a lot of answers, and Vix' obvious superior when it came down to general wisdom - the more Vix got to know him, the more he felt like challenging his opinions.
Of course he would never admit to any feeling of inferiority to Mr. Friend's face from the start, but still, all his recent protests to Mr. Friend's matter-of-fact explanations of history had become less straining. It was almost like before he had to file his protests to Mr. Friend's opinions and at the same time convince himself of the validity of his own protests, but that recently he had just opened his mouth and 'talked back' with whatever he felt like saying, simply expressing his own beliefs and opinions as he got them.
This made him feel good. Even thinking about it made him feel good.
Of course Vix had already forgotten how their last conversation ended.
He couldn’t get away from the notion that talking to Mr. Friend was almost as if he had really been talking to himself, but that he had badly needed to say it all out loud instead of keeping this dialogue inside.
This is how well they knew eachother.
“What a great thing to have happened to me, meeting Mr. Friend”, he thought, as he sipped the remains of lukewarm coffee in the cup.
He realized he'd been sitting here for quite a while already.
Strange. This was very unlike Mr. Friend.
He ordered another cup of coffee.
"Whatever", he thought "it’ll give me more time to figure out what to hit the old bastard with when he eventually shows up."
He reckoned he should tell Mr. Friend about the 'weather photoblog' he stumbled across the other night. It was a project initiated by some artists where they'd invited people to take photos related to the weather at whatever spot they lived on the planet.
They had been set up in couples, where each had to post one photo a day over a period of a few weeks. This meant that they could only communicate through pictures - pictures of the weather. This would make for great conversation with Mr. Friend. Him, with his preoccupation with the weather.
Then maybe this would please him and make him feel all right about himself and go all 'what did I tell you' on Vix?
The smug fool.
And then Vix would hit him and tear him down again with some bland celebrity-news, or some new statistics on the global rise of entertainment-consumption.
This would surely make the old man go mad and get all agitated about the world again.
Only he would have to show up first.
Vix could feel the hollow sensation from earlier swell up in his chest. If someone would've asked him to guess, he'd say it was some kind of sorrow.
Not that he was an expert.
After the fourth cup of coffee and the dusk creeping in outside the window, Vix got up and decided to leave the coffee-shop.
He felt very sad now.
At least he was sure about that now.
He walked slowly along Mortal Road, across the bridge and down to the river.
The evening sky had the most wonderful colours all across.
At the river bank he sat down on a bench.
He was alone, and everything around him was beautiful.
Vix started crying.
He couldn't remember the last time he had cried. It must have been when he was still a child. The salty taste in his mouth made him feel real, and inside himself.
It was endlessly sad, but in a strange way also kind of warming. He tried to smile through his tears, but was overcome by another wave of grief.
Something had ended today - something that had made him very happy as it went on. He knew this now.
He had been left alone once again.
The moon shone when he walked back from the bus stop.
He got inside, didn't bother to take his coat off but walked straight over to his desk, opened the computer and logged in to the blog.
Then he wrote:
Today I may have lost a friend that I cared more for than I ever knew. It makes me very sad.
Then he posted the track "Tunglskin" by Mental Overdrive.
He googled the foreign-sounding track title, and found that it was Icelandic for 'Moonshine'. Then he found a picture of the full moon and put it in the post.
This felt appropriate.
He continued staring blankly at the screen when he was done.
His eyes were sore from crying and he badly needed some sleep, but he didn't want to lie down and get overcome with these emotions in the dark.
When he had googled the song, he had also found this competition by the artist’s label. They announced that anyone who managed to decode a 'backwards' message hidden on one of the tracks from the same artist's new album would be granted a lifetime free subscription to the label's output in the future.
He thought this was a nice gesture more than a good deal; of course, he could just download all their tracks for free from one of the torrent services if he wanted to.
But he gave them points for trying to engage him, though, and he badly needed something to steer his brain into more logical waters this evening.
He downloaded the whole album in question and opened every single track in his free audio editor. Then he reversed all of them, and put them in a playlist from the first till the last track.
After more than one hour listening to backwards music on headphones, he suddenly spotted a pitched-down voice deep in the mix on the last track of the album.
The tune was called "End", and the voice repeated:
Nude mosaic.
Fist evil.
No way.
It was a very strange message, or combination of messages, he thought. But then listening to a whole album backwards wasn't exactly mainstream culture either.
He quickly wrote an email to the label with his answer to the competition, then he downloaded the album artwork, inverted and flipped it in Photoshop, and uploaded it to the blog.
Usually he didn't like double posts, but today he decided he didn't really care much about such silly details or stubborn principles.
Then Vix fell asleep in the chair.
With his coat still on.
And one less friend in the world.
Monday, December 7, 2009
The big cats have decided to leave
Vix stood at the bank of a wide river.
The slow waters passed by the sandy landscape in soundless, swirly patterns.
Countless big cats of every variety flanked him on the riverbank; tigers, panthers, lions, leopards, lynxes and cougars - every feline he could name seemed to be represented, and even some he didn't know the names for.
A big black cat turned to him and spoke in a booming voice, with unmoving lips:
"We have decided to leave now."
Vix didn't have a clue about what the cat was saying, but answered:
"That's very sad. I would have loved for you to stay."
"I'm sorry", the black cat said, "but there is nothing for us here anymore. There's simply no other way."
Vix felt the sadness grow inside as he heard the great black cat utter these words. He didn’t know why, but quietly replied:
"Ok then. I guess I won't be seeing you."
"No", the cat said.
One by one, the cats walked out into the river. As they entered the water, the elder cats laid their paws on the heads of the younger ones and pushed them beneath the surface. Then they forced them down until they could breathe no more.
There were some terrible sights. Some of the young ones were fighting and panicking under the weight of the elders, shuddering and flailing their paws under the water, struggling for air with their final strength of their will to live.
But one by one they ceased fighting, and as the movement of yet another animal faded, the stillness of the slow stream of the river became the only movement left.
Then the older cats then swam out into the middle of the river, and as they reached it he saw them giving up to the silent undertow one by one.
Vix stood on the riverbank watching the last big cat die.
He was crying.
Cats can't cry.
The slow waters passed by the sandy landscape in soundless, swirly patterns.
Countless big cats of every variety flanked him on the riverbank; tigers, panthers, lions, leopards, lynxes and cougars - every feline he could name seemed to be represented, and even some he didn't know the names for.
A big black cat turned to him and spoke in a booming voice, with unmoving lips:
"We have decided to leave now."
Vix didn't have a clue about what the cat was saying, but answered:
"That's very sad. I would have loved for you to stay."
"I'm sorry", the black cat said, "but there is nothing for us here anymore. There's simply no other way."
Vix felt the sadness grow inside as he heard the great black cat utter these words. He didn’t know why, but quietly replied:
"Ok then. I guess I won't be seeing you."
"No", the cat said.
One by one, the cats walked out into the river. As they entered the water, the elder cats laid their paws on the heads of the younger ones and pushed them beneath the surface. Then they forced them down until they could breathe no more.
There were some terrible sights. Some of the young ones were fighting and panicking under the weight of the elders, shuddering and flailing their paws under the water, struggling for air with their final strength of their will to live.
But one by one they ceased fighting, and as the movement of yet another animal faded, the stillness of the slow stream of the river became the only movement left.
Then the older cats then swam out into the middle of the river, and as they reached it he saw them giving up to the silent undertow one by one.
Vix stood on the riverbank watching the last big cat die.
He was crying.
Cats can't cry.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Bugs in the system
Mac twisted and turned on the snow cave floor.
He had woken seconds ago with a strange taste in the back of his throat, feeling terrible. He quickly got up on his feet, but almost fainted in the movement. He felt dizzy and cold. Freezing cold.
"What the hell is this?" he shouted. “What have you done?”
Njoro woke to the angry shouting of the Savage.
"What have you done to me?" he kept repeating.
She hesitated for a moment, then she sat up and lit the walrus fat lamp.
The Savage was standing upright in the cave, his body swaying from side to side. She could sense his confusion and desperation immediately.
"What do you mean?" she asked in her soft voice.
"What kind of witchcraft is this?"
"None that I know of. What exactly is the matter?"
The Savage sat down on the floor again.
"Hell, I don't know", he shouted. "Something is just not right, and whatever it is I'm sure you got something to do with it."
Njoro wasn't used to being exposed to aggression and accusations in this way, but the fact that she could feel his aggression was entirely rooted in fear, it made her feel calm and somehow on top of the situation.
"Now, I really don't know what you're talking about”, she said, “but if you let me make up a fire I can make us some hot water with peppermint leaves, and you can try to tell me what exactly is wrong."
"The hell I will! You'd probably poison me even more, and why on Earth would I give away anything to you, young witch? You're my prisoner, don't you forget about that!"
Njoro almost felt like smiling, but didn't.
"Very well", she said, then shut her mouth.
The Savage, who had said his name was Mac, got to his feet again, then sat down immediately, and then he started fumbling inside his sack.
He dragged out a container made of some very un-organic looking material, and took a sip of its liquid contents.
"There." he said to the cave wall and took a deep breath. "It'll do the trick."
Njoro said nothing, but merely looked at him with her deep gaze.
"I'm sure it will", she thought to herself and whoever cared to listen.
After sitting down for a while, the Savage called Mac got a distant look in his eyes, then leaned his upper body against the cave wall and said:
"I'm watching you, so no tricks."
A few moments later she could hear him snore.
At first she sat completely still, puzzled by the situation.
Here she was in the middle of the ice. Pi had disappeared. Her beloved friend Mungpuk unwillingly crossed to the other side far too young. Murdered in cold blood.
The awful man behind the attack had - without warning - turned into a scared child overnight, but was still trying to act out his overdeveloped masculine control attitude and imagined authority to her face.
Why?
She had The Vision. One of the strongest in The House of Lhasa, except maybe among some of the Elders. She could see straight into the soul of the rude, unbalanced, and now also quite frightened and strangely acting captivator. Easily.
But why couldn't she see Pi or any traces of him?
And why hadn't she seen all of this coming? It was her job to keep in touch with the Innerworld and to lead her entourage safely along the Path. This also meant that it was her job to know of such dangers, and to warn everybody when they were on the verge of disaster.
She had failed in this.
Why?
As she sat there letting the sudden helpless and a little self-pitying emotions pull and tear her insides, the Savage called Mac suddenly sprung to his feet with a moan.
Then he fell flat out on the cave floor.
"Oh dear", Njoro said.
She moved over to him and pulled him over to a reindeer skin.
It was the same place Mungpuk had been sleeping on the night of the attack. There were blood stains on it, but it couldn't be helped. She had to use all her physical strength. Mac the Savage was a large man.
She only got him halfway atop his new bed, but decided it would have to make do.
She went outside the cave. The weather had brightened up and the wind stilled. It was still biting cold, but the air was clear and the blueish light in its brightest hour and at its most intense for the day. That still meant it was dim as the early dawn would be back in Lhasa.
It was strangely quiet. At first she thought it was because the storm that had raged for the last days finally had stopped roaring, but then she sensed something else. Something terrible.
The dogs.
She rushed over to the other side of the cave entrance where the dogs had taken refuge during the storm.
All the dogs had died. Frozen to death in their sleep.
This tragedy was more complete than she could have imagined.
Njoro knelt down quietly in the snow.
She put her palm on the head of one of the dogs, and closed her eyes.
As she followed the spirit-trail of her defeated helper and companion, she arrived at an image of the Savage Mac once again.
He was behind this, too.
Was there no end to the damage a bewildered soul like his could do to his surroundings and fellow creatures? His destructive behaviour seemed to have no limits. How could he kill if it wasn’t out of necessity for food or survival? How could beings like this exist at all?
She'd been taught all her life that everything in the world was dependent on balance in order to exist. That every piece of reality had to have an inner balance, or at least to seek it - in order for it to find its place in the system of life. Every living thing, even every tiniest particle in the building-blocks of reality had to be whole in order to be able to find peace within this Universe.
Balance, and purpose.
So how could this creature called Mac be so totally polarized and out of touch with his own soul, barging into their corner of reality and slaughter pointlessly? It was a complete mystery, and a mystery that provoked a rising anger inside her.
Anger was something she didn't want inside her.
She stilled her heart, and focused on her lungs breathing the chilly, fresh air. She got to her feet, picked up the bag of snow, and returned to the cave.
Inside, she made a fire to melt the snow.
When the water was boiling, she poured some of it over the dried peppermint leaves in two wooden cups.
Then she gently woke her captivator.
"What are you doing? Get away from me!"
His voice was hoarse and weak, and his eyes were glass-like.
"I'm giving you something to regain your strength", she answered, and held the cup with the steaming brew under his nose.
"And why the hell would you do that?" Mac the Savage said worried.
"Because without it, you will probably go back to sleep, and I think it's not so wise to lie here without any nutrition in your body."
Mac looked at her with a blurry stare. She could feel the heat from his face and breath on the back of her hands holding the cup. His body-temperature had been rising. It, too, was out of balance now.
"Drink it.", she said in her soft, but now also quite determined voice.
Mac drank.
She put down the half-empty cup. Then she pulled away the rolled-up reindeer skin she'd used to hold his head high enough to get him drinking. As she did, she supported him with his left hand so he wouldn't fall back.
He already slept when his head reached the floor.
She moved over to the fire and topped up her own cup with some more peppermint brew. Then she cut a few slices of meat from the salted and dried lamb's leg they had been carrying along.
No point in rationalizing too hard anymore now that she was the only one left of the entourage. Especially considering the very dim future that lay ahead.
It felt like heaven, and a most welcome variation from the bear meat.
After eating and drinking she could feel some of her vitality coming back. Her system had been quite overthrown by the terrible events of the day and night before.
The Savage slept.
He didn't look good.
Not that he ever did.
He had woken seconds ago with a strange taste in the back of his throat, feeling terrible. He quickly got up on his feet, but almost fainted in the movement. He felt dizzy and cold. Freezing cold.
"What the hell is this?" he shouted. “What have you done?”
Njoro woke to the angry shouting of the Savage.
"What have you done to me?" he kept repeating.
She hesitated for a moment, then she sat up and lit the walrus fat lamp.
The Savage was standing upright in the cave, his body swaying from side to side. She could sense his confusion and desperation immediately.
"What do you mean?" she asked in her soft voice.
"What kind of witchcraft is this?"
"None that I know of. What exactly is the matter?"
The Savage sat down on the floor again.
"Hell, I don't know", he shouted. "Something is just not right, and whatever it is I'm sure you got something to do with it."
Njoro wasn't used to being exposed to aggression and accusations in this way, but the fact that she could feel his aggression was entirely rooted in fear, it made her feel calm and somehow on top of the situation.
"Now, I really don't know what you're talking about”, she said, “but if you let me make up a fire I can make us some hot water with peppermint leaves, and you can try to tell me what exactly is wrong."
"The hell I will! You'd probably poison me even more, and why on Earth would I give away anything to you, young witch? You're my prisoner, don't you forget about that!"
Njoro almost felt like smiling, but didn't.
"Very well", she said, then shut her mouth.
The Savage, who had said his name was Mac, got to his feet again, then sat down immediately, and then he started fumbling inside his sack.
He dragged out a container made of some very un-organic looking material, and took a sip of its liquid contents.
"There." he said to the cave wall and took a deep breath. "It'll do the trick."
Njoro said nothing, but merely looked at him with her deep gaze.
"I'm sure it will", she thought to herself and whoever cared to listen.
After sitting down for a while, the Savage called Mac got a distant look in his eyes, then leaned his upper body against the cave wall and said:
"I'm watching you, so no tricks."
A few moments later she could hear him snore.
At first she sat completely still, puzzled by the situation.
Here she was in the middle of the ice. Pi had disappeared. Her beloved friend Mungpuk unwillingly crossed to the other side far too young. Murdered in cold blood.
The awful man behind the attack had - without warning - turned into a scared child overnight, but was still trying to act out his overdeveloped masculine control attitude and imagined authority to her face.
Why?
She had The Vision. One of the strongest in The House of Lhasa, except maybe among some of the Elders. She could see straight into the soul of the rude, unbalanced, and now also quite frightened and strangely acting captivator. Easily.
But why couldn't she see Pi or any traces of him?
And why hadn't she seen all of this coming? It was her job to keep in touch with the Innerworld and to lead her entourage safely along the Path. This also meant that it was her job to know of such dangers, and to warn everybody when they were on the verge of disaster.
She had failed in this.
Why?
As she sat there letting the sudden helpless and a little self-pitying emotions pull and tear her insides, the Savage called Mac suddenly sprung to his feet with a moan.
Then he fell flat out on the cave floor.
"Oh dear", Njoro said.
She moved over to him and pulled him over to a reindeer skin.
It was the same place Mungpuk had been sleeping on the night of the attack. There were blood stains on it, but it couldn't be helped. She had to use all her physical strength. Mac the Savage was a large man.
She only got him halfway atop his new bed, but decided it would have to make do.
She went outside the cave. The weather had brightened up and the wind stilled. It was still biting cold, but the air was clear and the blueish light in its brightest hour and at its most intense for the day. That still meant it was dim as the early dawn would be back in Lhasa.
It was strangely quiet. At first she thought it was because the storm that had raged for the last days finally had stopped roaring, but then she sensed something else. Something terrible.
The dogs.
She rushed over to the other side of the cave entrance where the dogs had taken refuge during the storm.
All the dogs had died. Frozen to death in their sleep.
This tragedy was more complete than she could have imagined.
Njoro knelt down quietly in the snow.
She put her palm on the head of one of the dogs, and closed her eyes.
As she followed the spirit-trail of her defeated helper and companion, she arrived at an image of the Savage Mac once again.
He was behind this, too.
Was there no end to the damage a bewildered soul like his could do to his surroundings and fellow creatures? His destructive behaviour seemed to have no limits. How could he kill if it wasn’t out of necessity for food or survival? How could beings like this exist at all?
She'd been taught all her life that everything in the world was dependent on balance in order to exist. That every piece of reality had to have an inner balance, or at least to seek it - in order for it to find its place in the system of life. Every living thing, even every tiniest particle in the building-blocks of reality had to be whole in order to be able to find peace within this Universe.
Balance, and purpose.
So how could this creature called Mac be so totally polarized and out of touch with his own soul, barging into their corner of reality and slaughter pointlessly? It was a complete mystery, and a mystery that provoked a rising anger inside her.
Anger was something she didn't want inside her.
She stilled her heart, and focused on her lungs breathing the chilly, fresh air. She got to her feet, picked up the bag of snow, and returned to the cave.
Inside, she made a fire to melt the snow.
When the water was boiling, she poured some of it over the dried peppermint leaves in two wooden cups.
Then she gently woke her captivator.
"What are you doing? Get away from me!"
His voice was hoarse and weak, and his eyes were glass-like.
"I'm giving you something to regain your strength", she answered, and held the cup with the steaming brew under his nose.
"And why the hell would you do that?" Mac the Savage said worried.
"Because without it, you will probably go back to sleep, and I think it's not so wise to lie here without any nutrition in your body."
Mac looked at her with a blurry stare. She could feel the heat from his face and breath on the back of her hands holding the cup. His body-temperature had been rising. It, too, was out of balance now.
"Drink it.", she said in her soft, but now also quite determined voice.
Mac drank.
She put down the half-empty cup. Then she pulled away the rolled-up reindeer skin she'd used to hold his head high enough to get him drinking. As she did, she supported him with his left hand so he wouldn't fall back.
He already slept when his head reached the floor.
She moved over to the fire and topped up her own cup with some more peppermint brew. Then she cut a few slices of meat from the salted and dried lamb's leg they had been carrying along.
No point in rationalizing too hard anymore now that she was the only one left of the entourage. Especially considering the very dim future that lay ahead.
It felt like heaven, and a most welcome variation from the bear meat.
After eating and drinking she could feel some of her vitality coming back. Her system had been quite overthrown by the terrible events of the day and night before.
The Savage slept.
He didn't look good.
Not that he ever did.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Abducted
The vast night sky opened up above him.
All across it, stars were scattered like dark, fluorescent magic lanterns.
As he stared upwards into the infinity of his imprisonment, he suddenly saw them:
Huge dark shapes hovering a few miles above ground. Hiding like giant, black jellyfish with their massive undersides cunningly decorated with fake night sky.
Alien supreme technology.
Extra-terrestrial smoke and mirrors.
He enjoyed the sight, even though it gave him chills down his spine. It was still beautiful, and left him awestruck.
Little did he know that they would soon be onto him.
The blinding light seemed to shine from within every atom in the room. His limbs were frozen, and the most terrible fear he had ever encountered filled his whole being.
The Alien stood before him, as if hovering in the middle of the room, with sinister black endless eyes penetrating his earthbound mammalian nervous system like a razor.
Vix tried to scream, but the scream just backfired on him, and turned into yet another wave of horror inside him.
He could do nothing.
He was completely in the creature’s power. Alien power.
His fear was multiplied by his helplessness. What next? Probes? Visions of Apocalyptic horrors? Implants?
Or death?
“You are Salmon!” the creature suddenly said, mind to mind and soundless, his starman tongue messing around inside Vix’s head.
“S… salmon?” Vix thought back. Frozen.
“Salmon”, the Alien repeated, without the slightest trace of human emotion.
Vix stared as puzzled as he could possibly stare, unaided by functioning facial muscles, back at the creature.
“You are the Salmon of the Galaxy”, the Alien continued, and then added: “You know what Salmon is, right?”
“R…red..f…f…fish?”, Vix suggested.
“Never mind the colour. It is irrelevant. As most of your human associations usually are.” His black eyes and strict facial expression instantly made Vix agree. Then the starman said: “What does Salmon do?”
“S…wim?” Vix suggested.
“Swim”, The Alien repeated, then said; “Swim. And wander. Salmon wander. Their whole existence is dependent on their wandering, dependent on constant movement. They need to move, to obtain oxygen, and to be exposed to uncertainty. To be exposed to danger. They need all this in order to experience. To grow. Growth is the purpose of All. And Salmon, like all creatures, need purpose.”
Vix could feel his body lose a fraction of the weight of the paralysis - though just a fraction.
The Alien continued; “Instead, the human breed chooses the opposite. You choose to stay in confinement. To ‘settle down’. Build structures that weigh you down further. You rather choose to create an artificial world around you than to live in the one that’s already there. The one that would give you the lives that would allow you to be in tune with yourselves. The lives you were born to live.”
Vix tried to think “OK”, as if just to make sure they already agreed, but the Alien went on: “You call this artificial world your ‘culture’. Your ‘civilization’ - a system that facilitates communication from human to human, exclusive of all other life forms. A system that experiences nothing but what has already been experienced by the very same culture. Errors. Repeated. Multiplied. And you start confining other creatures too, like Salmon - another highly migratory species like yourselves.”
Vix started to fear he’d been abducted by some intergalactic fishing enthusiast, deeply unhappy with the way his prey had settled down and removed the cat-and-mouse factor from his hunting game.
“Do you know why the Salmon you breed in your fish farms are ridden with illness and defects?” the Alien asked.
“No”, Vix replied.
“Because of the very fact that you attempt to breed them in fish farms.”
“Oh.”
“It is the whole basic idea that is wrong. It is not some detail or some undiscovered ‘solution’. It is rotten at root-level. Like with your own lives. You only create fear for yourselves and the other creatures you trap inside your discordant culture. Don’t you see that?”
Vix didn’t see that.
The Alien stared at him and made him go back to the totally frozen state once more.
“What does it take to get through to you?” the spaceman shouted inside his mind, and Vix feared that his time as a Salmon-like organism in the Galaxy was up.
Instead, there was a long pause.
And then, the initially terrifying extra-terrestrial being clapped his hands, and some strange music started playing.
And before Vix could react to this sudden shift, the Alien had started dancing, and to an even greater shock, after a few more bars of music, he started singing:
These boots are made for walking
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these boots are gonna
Walk all over you
And then, everything went dark again.
All across it, stars were scattered like dark, fluorescent magic lanterns.
As he stared upwards into the infinity of his imprisonment, he suddenly saw them:
Huge dark shapes hovering a few miles above ground. Hiding like giant, black jellyfish with their massive undersides cunningly decorated with fake night sky.
Alien supreme technology.
Extra-terrestrial smoke and mirrors.
He enjoyed the sight, even though it gave him chills down his spine. It was still beautiful, and left him awestruck.
Little did he know that they would soon be onto him.
The blinding light seemed to shine from within every atom in the room. His limbs were frozen, and the most terrible fear he had ever encountered filled his whole being.
The Alien stood before him, as if hovering in the middle of the room, with sinister black endless eyes penetrating his earthbound mammalian nervous system like a razor.
Vix tried to scream, but the scream just backfired on him, and turned into yet another wave of horror inside him.
He could do nothing.
He was completely in the creature’s power. Alien power.
His fear was multiplied by his helplessness. What next? Probes? Visions of Apocalyptic horrors? Implants?
Or death?
“You are Salmon!” the creature suddenly said, mind to mind and soundless, his starman tongue messing around inside Vix’s head.
“S… salmon?” Vix thought back. Frozen.
“Salmon”, the Alien repeated, without the slightest trace of human emotion.
Vix stared as puzzled as he could possibly stare, unaided by functioning facial muscles, back at the creature.
“You are the Salmon of the Galaxy”, the Alien continued, and then added: “You know what Salmon is, right?”
“R…red..f…f…fish?”, Vix suggested.
“Never mind the colour. It is irrelevant. As most of your human associations usually are.” His black eyes and strict facial expression instantly made Vix agree. Then the starman said: “What does Salmon do?”
“S…wim?” Vix suggested.
“Swim”, The Alien repeated, then said; “Swim. And wander. Salmon wander. Their whole existence is dependent on their wandering, dependent on constant movement. They need to move, to obtain oxygen, and to be exposed to uncertainty. To be exposed to danger. They need all this in order to experience. To grow. Growth is the purpose of All. And Salmon, like all creatures, need purpose.”
Vix could feel his body lose a fraction of the weight of the paralysis - though just a fraction.
The Alien continued; “Instead, the human breed chooses the opposite. You choose to stay in confinement. To ‘settle down’. Build structures that weigh you down further. You rather choose to create an artificial world around you than to live in the one that’s already there. The one that would give you the lives that would allow you to be in tune with yourselves. The lives you were born to live.”
Vix tried to think “OK”, as if just to make sure they already agreed, but the Alien went on: “You call this artificial world your ‘culture’. Your ‘civilization’ - a system that facilitates communication from human to human, exclusive of all other life forms. A system that experiences nothing but what has already been experienced by the very same culture. Errors. Repeated. Multiplied. And you start confining other creatures too, like Salmon - another highly migratory species like yourselves.”
Vix started to fear he’d been abducted by some intergalactic fishing enthusiast, deeply unhappy with the way his prey had settled down and removed the cat-and-mouse factor from his hunting game.
“Do you know why the Salmon you breed in your fish farms are ridden with illness and defects?” the Alien asked.
“No”, Vix replied.
“Because of the very fact that you attempt to breed them in fish farms.”
“Oh.”
“It is the whole basic idea that is wrong. It is not some detail or some undiscovered ‘solution’. It is rotten at root-level. Like with your own lives. You only create fear for yourselves and the other creatures you trap inside your discordant culture. Don’t you see that?”
Vix didn’t see that.
The Alien stared at him and made him go back to the totally frozen state once more.
“What does it take to get through to you?” the spaceman shouted inside his mind, and Vix feared that his time as a Salmon-like organism in the Galaxy was up.
Instead, there was a long pause.
And then, the initially terrifying extra-terrestrial being clapped his hands, and some strange music started playing.
And before Vix could react to this sudden shift, the Alien had started dancing, and to an even greater shock, after a few more bars of music, he started singing:
These boots are made for walking
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these boots are gonna
Walk all over you
And then, everything went dark again.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Further solving the Chaos Cabal
Ever since he got up this morning, Vix felt uneasy.
It seemed certain that something unpleasant was waiting on the steps again.
Code red.
Not an unfamiliar feeling, of course, yet it was setting off his inner alarms as he’d been surprisingly OK for the last few weeks.
He got up and checked his usual websites.
Nothing too strange.
A few suicide bombings, famine, new threats of global terror, general decay, yet more desperate measures taken to try and rescue the world economy, recession, climate change, pandemics ...
No, nothing special, shocking or unusual.
Still the feeling lingered. Some really bad stuff was about to happen. He could tell. Or?
He checked in on his blog. No threats there. No traces of spooks tracking him down. He checked the stats. No wild escalations in the number of visitors. He ran the most recent IP's against the list of government IP's he'd found on an underground website that suggested such information was essential for survival.
No matches.
This increased his uneasiness. Invisible enemies were the worst sort. If you could identify the threat, half the job was done. With invisible dangers you were helpless.
He got up and put the kettle on. A nice cup of tea would surely calm him down. Or coffee? He rarely drank coffee at home. He didn't have the facilities to make any high standard brew here, he only kept some instant in the cupboard for emergencies.
This was an emergency, he thought.
But he quickly left the thought. It would probably make him feel even more wired.
Tea it was.
He put on some music. Ambient this time.
His nerves seemed to settle a tad, though mostly on the surface.
If nerves had surfaces.
Could it be his recent postings on Facebook?
Now, that's a scary thought. What if his little anti-capitalism activist meddlings had managed to rub against the hairs of some powerful beast?
No, this was too farfetched. There were millions and millions of people with accounts on Facebook. Surely no-one would take notice of his little campaign. Or?
He decided never to log-in again. Not from his home IP, anyway.
The same eerie notion was still there after four mugs of tea, Biosphere’s ‘Patashnik’ and KLF’s ‘Chill Out’. By no means a positive sign. What else could he possibly do?
Give in?
Surrender to the Darkness?
Yeah. Maybe that was it! He could just stop fighting. Let evil be evil, and let it enter his soul, rather than try to run away? Or fight it.
This was insane.
But what if it worked?
A chance in Hell?
But he had little choice. Something was lurking in the shadows.
He decided he had to try a new approach.
Whatever the cost.
He sat himself down in the pink inflatable chair, put on a gloomy face, and tried to let go.
Then he stared into the computer screen on the desk across the room as if it was a lost soul that had stumbled into the presence of the Master of Darkness.
He tried to let all his fear flow freely, and fill his whole being.
Then it all came.
The monsters crept out from where they had been hiding under his bed when he was a kid. The angry witch from the old white house with the overgrown garden from up the road came running after him.
Then the most twisted faces snuck out from the shadows. Demons stared at him from behind televised deceiving politician eyes. Space warped, and he knew he would be crushed and cease to exist if he couldn't hold his concentration on the will to endure his own existence.
This was fear. THE Fear. It was his fear, still it was far beyond his control now. He knew he couldn't have stopped it if he wanted to at this point.
Images from the depths of the most darkened parts of his tormented soul spilled out like from a burst dam at Hell's hills. A river of blood flowed towards him with every murder he'd ever witnessed – real, as in his dreams, or fabricated, as in the movies he'd seen and computer-games he'd played.
They were all real now.
He soon found himself all alone in a wide landscape, the only living soul in the Universe.
Afraid of Everything.
It was only Vix, and the Void.
Then he saw the contours of the Pyramid again.
It twisted and turned like an enraged animal, screaming with agony as it stumbled across the vast landscape of the expanded world of Vix’s mind. Large lumps of its triangular body were falling to the ground, as it struggled to keep itself from falling over. It seemed much smaller than last time he saw it, and everything about the image told Vix he was witnessing its death closing in.
"You're dying", he whispered, shaking with agony.
But the roars of the monster were so loud he couldn't hear himself.
“This is it. You’re dying!” he repeated.
Then, out of nowhere, everything went still.
Totally quiet.
And he felt calm.
Calm like he couldn't remember ever feeling before.
The images faded, and his insides soon turned into the most tranquil, peaceful little place on Earth he'd ever visited. It felt like he was sitting in a forest next to a happy little stream, listening to insects and birds on the most beautiful summer afternoon.
He just sat like that for a while, and even though he'd be happy to chose an eternity of this, he eventually opened his eyes.
And smiled.
He got up and walked over to the desk, logged on to the blog and decided to post something on his blog.
He scrolled through his recently played tunes, and decided to post a track by The Alien.
The Alien was one of those freaky artists that he had never been sure if was deadly serious - which would make him a very freaky figure indeed - or if it was merely a tongue-in-cheek type maneuver, with equal doses of wit and twistedness.
He still wasn't sure, but decided to post a track by him anyway.
He chose "Extract #4", supposedly a sample of East African rhythms 'abducted' by the artist and processed with alien technology.
Surely this couldn't be that serious?
But you never knew. There were freaks out there who believe they are far worse things than from outer space.
Then he flicked through his pictures folder, found a picture of Satan, uploaded it, and wrote:
I can face you now.
You're my own doing, aren't you?
He logged out of his blogger account.
Vix felt brave this evening.
He hesitated for a moment, then logged into his Facebook account, although he’d decided never to do so ever again.
Nothing unusual. One friend requests from a guy with a cigarette-smoking monkey as his profile picture, and two messages in his inbox.
One of the messages was from a guy who basically asked Vix if he could take over the administration of his group ‘Save the Rich’.
“Go make your own statement!” he thought, and decided to ignore the request.
The other comment was in a totally incomprehensible foreign language in a strange alphabet, and came from one Eno Ishtar.
One alarming thing was that Eno Ishtar had a profile picture that looked very much like The Alien, that he’d just posted a track from.
Weird.
But something he could live with.
More than one hundred members of his group ‘Save the Rich’, though! Things seem to get a life of their own inside these digital organisms, he thought.
Vix closed the computer down and walked back to the pink inflatable chair.
"Good.", he said aloud to the empty room, in an assuring voice.
"Or bad", he added.
Then he said:
"It doesn't matter, it's all the same now, anyway", with a tiny streak of triumph in his voice.
It seemed certain that something unpleasant was waiting on the steps again.
Code red.
Not an unfamiliar feeling, of course, yet it was setting off his inner alarms as he’d been surprisingly OK for the last few weeks.
He got up and checked his usual websites.
Nothing too strange.
A few suicide bombings, famine, new threats of global terror, general decay, yet more desperate measures taken to try and rescue the world economy, recession, climate change, pandemics ...
No, nothing special, shocking or unusual.
Still the feeling lingered. Some really bad stuff was about to happen. He could tell. Or?
He checked in on his blog. No threats there. No traces of spooks tracking him down. He checked the stats. No wild escalations in the number of visitors. He ran the most recent IP's against the list of government IP's he'd found on an underground website that suggested such information was essential for survival.
No matches.
This increased his uneasiness. Invisible enemies were the worst sort. If you could identify the threat, half the job was done. With invisible dangers you were helpless.
He got up and put the kettle on. A nice cup of tea would surely calm him down. Or coffee? He rarely drank coffee at home. He didn't have the facilities to make any high standard brew here, he only kept some instant in the cupboard for emergencies.
This was an emergency, he thought.
But he quickly left the thought. It would probably make him feel even more wired.
Tea it was.
He put on some music. Ambient this time.
His nerves seemed to settle a tad, though mostly on the surface.
If nerves had surfaces.
Could it be his recent postings on Facebook?
Now, that's a scary thought. What if his little anti-capitalism activist meddlings had managed to rub against the hairs of some powerful beast?
No, this was too farfetched. There were millions and millions of people with accounts on Facebook. Surely no-one would take notice of his little campaign. Or?
He decided never to log-in again. Not from his home IP, anyway.
The same eerie notion was still there after four mugs of tea, Biosphere’s ‘Patashnik’ and KLF’s ‘Chill Out’. By no means a positive sign. What else could he possibly do?
Give in?
Surrender to the Darkness?
Yeah. Maybe that was it! He could just stop fighting. Let evil be evil, and let it enter his soul, rather than try to run away? Or fight it.
This was insane.
But what if it worked?
A chance in Hell?
But he had little choice. Something was lurking in the shadows.
He decided he had to try a new approach.
Whatever the cost.
He sat himself down in the pink inflatable chair, put on a gloomy face, and tried to let go.
Then he stared into the computer screen on the desk across the room as if it was a lost soul that had stumbled into the presence of the Master of Darkness.
He tried to let all his fear flow freely, and fill his whole being.
Then it all came.
The monsters crept out from where they had been hiding under his bed when he was a kid. The angry witch from the old white house with the overgrown garden from up the road came running after him.
Then the most twisted faces snuck out from the shadows. Demons stared at him from behind televised deceiving politician eyes. Space warped, and he knew he would be crushed and cease to exist if he couldn't hold his concentration on the will to endure his own existence.
This was fear. THE Fear. It was his fear, still it was far beyond his control now. He knew he couldn't have stopped it if he wanted to at this point.
Images from the depths of the most darkened parts of his tormented soul spilled out like from a burst dam at Hell's hills. A river of blood flowed towards him with every murder he'd ever witnessed – real, as in his dreams, or fabricated, as in the movies he'd seen and computer-games he'd played.
They were all real now.
He soon found himself all alone in a wide landscape, the only living soul in the Universe.
Afraid of Everything.
It was only Vix, and the Void.
Then he saw the contours of the Pyramid again.
It twisted and turned like an enraged animal, screaming with agony as it stumbled across the vast landscape of the expanded world of Vix’s mind. Large lumps of its triangular body were falling to the ground, as it struggled to keep itself from falling over. It seemed much smaller than last time he saw it, and everything about the image told Vix he was witnessing its death closing in.
"You're dying", he whispered, shaking with agony.
But the roars of the monster were so loud he couldn't hear himself.
“This is it. You’re dying!” he repeated.
Then, out of nowhere, everything went still.
Totally quiet.
And he felt calm.
Calm like he couldn't remember ever feeling before.
The images faded, and his insides soon turned into the most tranquil, peaceful little place on Earth he'd ever visited. It felt like he was sitting in a forest next to a happy little stream, listening to insects and birds on the most beautiful summer afternoon.
He just sat like that for a while, and even though he'd be happy to chose an eternity of this, he eventually opened his eyes.
And smiled.
He got up and walked over to the desk, logged on to the blog and decided to post something on his blog.
He scrolled through his recently played tunes, and decided to post a track by The Alien.
The Alien was one of those freaky artists that he had never been sure if was deadly serious - which would make him a very freaky figure indeed - or if it was merely a tongue-in-cheek type maneuver, with equal doses of wit and twistedness.
He still wasn't sure, but decided to post a track by him anyway.
He chose "Extract #4", supposedly a sample of East African rhythms 'abducted' by the artist and processed with alien technology.
Surely this couldn't be that serious?
But you never knew. There were freaks out there who believe they are far worse things than from outer space.
Then he flicked through his pictures folder, found a picture of Satan, uploaded it, and wrote:
I can face you now.
You're my own doing, aren't you?
He logged out of his blogger account.
Vix felt brave this evening.
He hesitated for a moment, then logged into his Facebook account, although he’d decided never to do so ever again.
Nothing unusual. One friend requests from a guy with a cigarette-smoking monkey as his profile picture, and two messages in his inbox.
One of the messages was from a guy who basically asked Vix if he could take over the administration of his group ‘Save the Rich’.
“Go make your own statement!” he thought, and decided to ignore the request.
The other comment was in a totally incomprehensible foreign language in a strange alphabet, and came from one Eno Ishtar.
One alarming thing was that Eno Ishtar had a profile picture that looked very much like The Alien, that he’d just posted a track from.
Weird.
But something he could live with.
More than one hundred members of his group ‘Save the Rich’, though! Things seem to get a life of their own inside these digital organisms, he thought.
Vix closed the computer down and walked back to the pink inflatable chair.
"Good.", he said aloud to the empty room, in an assuring voice.
"Or bad", he added.
Then he said:
"It doesn't matter, it's all the same now, anyway", with a tiny streak of triumph in his voice.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Fire Dancing
The night sky was looming above him, warped and wonderful, like a huge black velvet juggler's hat with stars like shiny silver bells at the tip of every cone.
Everything was spinning: The sky, his body, his head.
He looked at his hands. Spirals of fire shot out of them like sparkling catherine wheels.
He looked at his feet.
He was dancing.
Dancing in space and the spaces in-between.
He was strong.
He was beautiful.
As he gazed upon the multi-coloured wheels of light that were flying out from his hands and disappearing above the city sky, he felt just right - for once.
This was his purpose.
This was his goal.
He felt the warm grass beneath his feet, and suddenly became aware of the Earth he stood upon.
This was his home. This caring blob of iron, mud, water and love that he travelled through life upon.
He never thought about how much he loved The Earth before.
He felt endlessly in love.
As he kneeled down to kiss her, the grass seemed to caress his whole body, and he closed his eyes and felt eternally safe.
Both at once, and forever.
He slowly awoke from lying on the grass, for a moment or the whole of eternity. His whole being was filled with bliss, and everything seemed to shine. He felt one with all that is, and an endless love for the whole Universe.
As he opened his eyes, he noticed the girl.
She looked at him with envy in her eyes.
She didn't like what she just saw.
What he just did.
She was jealous.
He decided not to care, got up, and walked back to the house. He felt wonderful.
He could feel the warmth of his own body, his own soul, his breath moving in and out of his lungs.
He was reconnected to the source.
Once again part of the dance.
When he got back, the house seemed different somehow, although he couldn't tell exactly how it was different.
The girl followed close behind him.
Her eyes were dark, and she was still alone in the world.
As he got inside, he noticed the darkness of the whole place.
He'd been in here every day for the last three years, but had never really seen how dark and sad this room really looked. It was as if it had no light at all, even with all his little lamps still on.
As he got up from the chair and walked over to the sink to make some tea, he noticed some little black flies that were buzzing around in the air beneath the big lamp in the middle of the ceiling.
It seemed as if they were dancing too.
He decided to try something: he stood right under the lamp, and then he started moving his arms back and forth with fingers outstretched.
He waved them in the air just below the flies in a set pattern, and in a moment, the insects started moving in the same way.
He changed the pattern, and the flies changed their movements, too.
He was now conducting their dance. He had become the Master of the Flies.
No! They were responding to him out of their own free will, that was it. They were dancing together with him, not because of him.
Or both.
This was fantastic.
"This is fantastic!" he said to himself, the flies, and the empty room.
He had forgotten about the girl.
He turned around.
She was standing in the far corner, like a dark void in the middle of the brightness, and had been watching him all along.
"You're leaving me." she said, with piercing, black eyes.
"I guess I am." he answered.
She laughed a short laugh. Not the merry kind of laugh, but the kind you spit out between your teeth. The sarcastic kind.
"You're so evil." she said.
"No I'm not." he answered.
He looked her straight in the eye. Her dark, bitter, envious eyes.
"It's not that bad. I'm only leaving. I have other things to do now that I'm free."
She just looked at him. It was obvious she hated him now.
He looked back at her intensely. Her face seemed to blur out the longer he stared at her. None of them said anything. Out loud.
Something strange was beginning to happen now. Instead of the figure he had just been looking at and talking to - the girl he had known for quite some time now, and finally seemed to have decided to leave - there stood a very different creature.
It was not as if she had changed shape as much as it was as if she had swapped places with something else. The creature had great black tinted eyes like dark rifts in the fabric of matter. It raged in the room like it was very tall, still it took no more space than the girl had done. It had greenish skin, like a snake, and everything about its being told Vix it was evil. Evil like nothing he had seen before.
It was a demon.
Not just any demon, but the Master Demon.
It was The Devil.
Vix stood speechless and stared at the creature. It was the scariest thing he had ever seen and all his senses were on overload, all the hairs in his neck sticking right out of his frozen skin.
"Who are you?" Vix said in a shaky voice.
"I am behind all this." The Devil finally said, without moving the narrow lips of its wide grin.
"You?" Vix thought back.
"Yes. I trapped you, and made you suffer for all this time." The Master Demon said, and laughed at him. Still soundless.
"But..." Vix couldn't think the right words.
"You're such an easy prey." it grinned.
This made Vix' bubble burst.
"You? You were behind all my misery? This feeling of confinement? The notion of always moving in the wrong direction? The detachment from other living things?"
"Yes." The Devil said matter-of-factly, and smiled its ugly lizard-like smile.
Vix felt the most overwhelming feeling of anger building up inside him.
"You fucking bastard. You fucking sick, shitting, nasty, fucking arseholebastard!"
The Devil seemed very pleased.
"I fucking hate you." Vix finally thought.
"Well, thank you", The Devil said.
"But why? Why do this?"
"Why not?" the creature said.
"Just to be evil?"
"As you wish."
Vix couldn't believe the pure spitefulness of this thing. And the nerve it had to admit it all to his face, and even make sure to let him know it enjoyed every minute of it.
"But what did I do? Why me?"
"Oh, I guess it's just in my nature." The Devil said.
"Your nature. What a fucking splendid explanation." Vix was shaking with fury now.
"That, and the fact that you sold me your soul."
There was a deadly silence.
"Sold you my soul? What the hell are you talking about? Why would I do that?" Vix shouted at the hideous demon, now standing motionless staring back at him.
"To get advantages in life? To gain power? To cheat and get ahead in the big Game? How should I know? I'm just buying and selling. I'm no fucking personal advisory service." The Devil spat back at him straight into his mind's eye.
"This is fucking outrageous!" Vix said, and moved towards the demon as if to give him a good beating.
The Devil did the same.
They were standing very close now, staring eachother out. The air was charged with a terrible feeling of all-encompassing negativity.
"What kind of advantage have I ever gotten? I've got damn all money. No power, and when it comes to the Big Game you're talking about, I'm not even a player."
"As I said, it’s not my business to ask personal questions. I just do what I do. You sold me your soul, that's all I know. If you didn't get what you wanted out of it, I've only got two words for you: BAD DEAL!" The Beast laughed out at him. "But to stretch my jobdescription a little, I'll tell you this: What you say is not right at all."
"Not right? How is that?"
"You've got me here, for starters."
"Got you? What do you mean?"
"Well, I am here. I am evil. I have cheated and misled you all your life. I have done every little thing to meet your expectations of what I should be – that is, if I am not totally out of touch with altered reality."
"This is such bollocks!"
"Is it, now?" Satan moved one step closer, and Vix could feel the dark wind of his eternally damned being flowing against him. "And how is it 'bollocks', if I may ask?"
"It's just not true. Why would I want you to do that? Why would I want you to torment and punish me?"
"Hell! Who knows? I’m not the designer of this Game. I have no comprehension of why humans do what they do. I just do what you expect me to do. I am merely the mirror of your own darkness. Your will is my command, Master."
Vix couldn't believe his own ears. Here he was standing in the middle of his own house, speaking with Satan himself, who, to his great surprise addressed him as "Master". What on Earth was happening? He almost panicked now. This was freaking him out thoroughly. The demon radiated pure evil. Such deceitfulness, betrayal, spite and horror that for one second the only thing he wanted to do was to charge at him and become the angry animal that The Beast seemed to want to lure him into being; to rip the demon apart with his own hands and devour his flesh bit by bit and make him go away forever.
Then he remembered the girl. What would happen to her if he killed The Beast who had taken her place?
His heart was beating like mad and he was breathing heavily, fighting hard not to be overcome by fear and the urge to lose himself in rage.
Finally he managed to say:
"Prove it!"
"What?" The Devil said.
"Prove that I'm your master."
"And how would you have me prove that?" The demon hissed at him. He could feel The Devil would rather he'd attack him and try to rip him apart for some reason.
"Sell me my soul back." Vix said, gaining some calm.
There was a long pause, and the air stood still between them.
"And what would you offer me for it?" Satan finally said, sounding quite interested, and looking quite amused.
Vix thought for a second. A second that seemed like a damned eternity.
Then he said: "You can have all my fear. All my anger. All my regrets and bad conscience. Every tiny bit of hatred that hides at the bottom of my heart. My endless pessimism and all my bad habits. I'll even throw in my teenage jealousy for good measure. I guess that's the kind of stuff you thrive off."
Then he added.
"And if that's not enough, or if you run out of the stuff, you're welcome back for a top up. Anytime."
There was a short silence,
"Deal." The Devil said, and disappeared.
Everything was spinning: The sky, his body, his head.
He looked at his hands. Spirals of fire shot out of them like sparkling catherine wheels.
He looked at his feet.
He was dancing.
Dancing in space and the spaces in-between.
He was strong.
He was beautiful.
As he gazed upon the multi-coloured wheels of light that were flying out from his hands and disappearing above the city sky, he felt just right - for once.
This was his purpose.
This was his goal.
He felt the warm grass beneath his feet, and suddenly became aware of the Earth he stood upon.
This was his home. This caring blob of iron, mud, water and love that he travelled through life upon.
He never thought about how much he loved The Earth before.
He felt endlessly in love.
As he kneeled down to kiss her, the grass seemed to caress his whole body, and he closed his eyes and felt eternally safe.
Both at once, and forever.
He slowly awoke from lying on the grass, for a moment or the whole of eternity. His whole being was filled with bliss, and everything seemed to shine. He felt one with all that is, and an endless love for the whole Universe.
As he opened his eyes, he noticed the girl.
She looked at him with envy in her eyes.
She didn't like what she just saw.
What he just did.
She was jealous.
He decided not to care, got up, and walked back to the house. He felt wonderful.
He could feel the warmth of his own body, his own soul, his breath moving in and out of his lungs.
He was reconnected to the source.
Once again part of the dance.
When he got back, the house seemed different somehow, although he couldn't tell exactly how it was different.
The girl followed close behind him.
Her eyes were dark, and she was still alone in the world.
As he got inside, he noticed the darkness of the whole place.
He'd been in here every day for the last three years, but had never really seen how dark and sad this room really looked. It was as if it had no light at all, even with all his little lamps still on.
As he got up from the chair and walked over to the sink to make some tea, he noticed some little black flies that were buzzing around in the air beneath the big lamp in the middle of the ceiling.
It seemed as if they were dancing too.
He decided to try something: he stood right under the lamp, and then he started moving his arms back and forth with fingers outstretched.
He waved them in the air just below the flies in a set pattern, and in a moment, the insects started moving in the same way.
He changed the pattern, and the flies changed their movements, too.
He was now conducting their dance. He had become the Master of the Flies.
No! They were responding to him out of their own free will, that was it. They were dancing together with him, not because of him.
Or both.
This was fantastic.
"This is fantastic!" he said to himself, the flies, and the empty room.
He had forgotten about the girl.
He turned around.
She was standing in the far corner, like a dark void in the middle of the brightness, and had been watching him all along.
"You're leaving me." she said, with piercing, black eyes.
"I guess I am." he answered.
She laughed a short laugh. Not the merry kind of laugh, but the kind you spit out between your teeth. The sarcastic kind.
"You're so evil." she said.
"No I'm not." he answered.
He looked her straight in the eye. Her dark, bitter, envious eyes.
"It's not that bad. I'm only leaving. I have other things to do now that I'm free."
She just looked at him. It was obvious she hated him now.
He looked back at her intensely. Her face seemed to blur out the longer he stared at her. None of them said anything. Out loud.
Something strange was beginning to happen now. Instead of the figure he had just been looking at and talking to - the girl he had known for quite some time now, and finally seemed to have decided to leave - there stood a very different creature.
It was not as if she had changed shape as much as it was as if she had swapped places with something else. The creature had great black tinted eyes like dark rifts in the fabric of matter. It raged in the room like it was very tall, still it took no more space than the girl had done. It had greenish skin, like a snake, and everything about its being told Vix it was evil. Evil like nothing he had seen before.
It was a demon.
Not just any demon, but the Master Demon.
It was The Devil.
Vix stood speechless and stared at the creature. It was the scariest thing he had ever seen and all his senses were on overload, all the hairs in his neck sticking right out of his frozen skin.
"Who are you?" Vix said in a shaky voice.
"I am behind all this." The Devil finally said, without moving the narrow lips of its wide grin.
"You?" Vix thought back.
"Yes. I trapped you, and made you suffer for all this time." The Master Demon said, and laughed at him. Still soundless.
"But..." Vix couldn't think the right words.
"You're such an easy prey." it grinned.
This made Vix' bubble burst.
"You? You were behind all my misery? This feeling of confinement? The notion of always moving in the wrong direction? The detachment from other living things?"
"Yes." The Devil said matter-of-factly, and smiled its ugly lizard-like smile.
Vix felt the most overwhelming feeling of anger building up inside him.
"You fucking bastard. You fucking sick, shitting, nasty, fucking arseholebastard!"
The Devil seemed very pleased.
"I fucking hate you." Vix finally thought.
"Well, thank you", The Devil said.
"But why? Why do this?"
"Why not?" the creature said.
"Just to be evil?"
"As you wish."
Vix couldn't believe the pure spitefulness of this thing. And the nerve it had to admit it all to his face, and even make sure to let him know it enjoyed every minute of it.
"But what did I do? Why me?"
"Oh, I guess it's just in my nature." The Devil said.
"Your nature. What a fucking splendid explanation." Vix was shaking with fury now.
"That, and the fact that you sold me your soul."
There was a deadly silence.
"Sold you my soul? What the hell are you talking about? Why would I do that?" Vix shouted at the hideous demon, now standing motionless staring back at him.
"To get advantages in life? To gain power? To cheat and get ahead in the big Game? How should I know? I'm just buying and selling. I'm no fucking personal advisory service." The Devil spat back at him straight into his mind's eye.
"This is fucking outrageous!" Vix said, and moved towards the demon as if to give him a good beating.
The Devil did the same.
They were standing very close now, staring eachother out. The air was charged with a terrible feeling of all-encompassing negativity.
"What kind of advantage have I ever gotten? I've got damn all money. No power, and when it comes to the Big Game you're talking about, I'm not even a player."
"As I said, it’s not my business to ask personal questions. I just do what I do. You sold me your soul, that's all I know. If you didn't get what you wanted out of it, I've only got two words for you: BAD DEAL!" The Beast laughed out at him. "But to stretch my jobdescription a little, I'll tell you this: What you say is not right at all."
"Not right? How is that?"
"You've got me here, for starters."
"Got you? What do you mean?"
"Well, I am here. I am evil. I have cheated and misled you all your life. I have done every little thing to meet your expectations of what I should be – that is, if I am not totally out of touch with altered reality."
"This is such bollocks!"
"Is it, now?" Satan moved one step closer, and Vix could feel the dark wind of his eternally damned being flowing against him. "And how is it 'bollocks', if I may ask?"
"It's just not true. Why would I want you to do that? Why would I want you to torment and punish me?"
"Hell! Who knows? I’m not the designer of this Game. I have no comprehension of why humans do what they do. I just do what you expect me to do. I am merely the mirror of your own darkness. Your will is my command, Master."
Vix couldn't believe his own ears. Here he was standing in the middle of his own house, speaking with Satan himself, who, to his great surprise addressed him as "Master". What on Earth was happening? He almost panicked now. This was freaking him out thoroughly. The demon radiated pure evil. Such deceitfulness, betrayal, spite and horror that for one second the only thing he wanted to do was to charge at him and become the angry animal that The Beast seemed to want to lure him into being; to rip the demon apart with his own hands and devour his flesh bit by bit and make him go away forever.
Then he remembered the girl. What would happen to her if he killed The Beast who had taken her place?
His heart was beating like mad and he was breathing heavily, fighting hard not to be overcome by fear and the urge to lose himself in rage.
Finally he managed to say:
"Prove it!"
"What?" The Devil said.
"Prove that I'm your master."
"And how would you have me prove that?" The demon hissed at him. He could feel The Devil would rather he'd attack him and try to rip him apart for some reason.
"Sell me my soul back." Vix said, gaining some calm.
There was a long pause, and the air stood still between them.
"And what would you offer me for it?" Satan finally said, sounding quite interested, and looking quite amused.
Vix thought for a second. A second that seemed like a damned eternity.
Then he said: "You can have all my fear. All my anger. All my regrets and bad conscience. Every tiny bit of hatred that hides at the bottom of my heart. My endless pessimism and all my bad habits. I'll even throw in my teenage jealousy for good measure. I guess that's the kind of stuff you thrive off."
Then he added.
"And if that's not enough, or if you run out of the stuff, you're welcome back for a top up. Anytime."
There was a short silence,
"Deal." The Devil said, and disappeared.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Sleeping with the enemy
Njoro was sitting at the deep end of the cave on top of a reindeer skin.
The Savage had taken Mungpuk's body with him outside. She'd tried to insist that they should give him a worthy ceremony, but the Savage had dismissed her protests and just set off to dispose of the body some distance from the cave so it wouldn't attract any bears or tempt the dogs.
She had cried when he left, and when he told her there was no point in trying to set off on her own, as the storm would devour her and he would track her down with one of his devices, she barely listened but instead gave him a short, absent nod.
Maybe she should do just that. Set off. She would be sure to pass over to the Otherworld all too young, but it would leave him out here alone, and that would suit her well.
Still, when she came to think of it, he seemed to have already travelled all the way up here alone. He would probably just set off to hunt down the main party at the destination instead. Even if they had taken a separate route north from Lhasa there still was a risk that he would track them down and destroy the whole operation.
And a whole lot more.
She wondered where Pi was hiding. Maybe he was just waiting in a distance far enough from the cave so that neither her vision nor the Savage's devices could find him?
He might already be disarming the Savage this very minute, lying in ambush in the snow, grabbing him from underground as he walked by, struggling with the body of poor Mungpuk.
Yes. That was possible. And it would be quite a shock for that awful being.
But then again how could Pi have picked the exact spot where he would know the Savage would be passing by? After all, she was the Seer in this entourage.
Maybe Pi had just left her there? On her own. Trapped by a predator deep within the ice.
She almost felt sick at the thought.
Of course he would never...
She was blinded by the headlight coming through the cave entrance.
"That's that", the Savage said.
Njoro said nothing, and just looked down.
"It seems we'll have to spend the night together, there's no point trying to move on at this hour."
She still refused to respond.
"I guess I won't need to tie you up for the night as you haven’t already rushed off in some mysterious suicidal gesture while I was out? Kind of surprised me, as you people have so many incomprehensible ways. Incomprehensible to me, anyway."
Njoro stood still and hoped he would stop talking soon.
"Ah, pardon me. How indiscreet of me. We're not even introduced, and I'm babbling away like we were old friends. Mac here, pleased to meet you."
Njoro said nothing.
"I see. Let's not push it too far at our first date, then. You just keep your place in there, and I'll lay here out by the opening - in the more chilly parts. We're not savages, after all, are we?"
She wept quietly as he turned his headlight off.
"And! None of that witchcraft stuff while I'm asleep. You hear me?"
The Savage had taken Mungpuk's body with him outside. She'd tried to insist that they should give him a worthy ceremony, but the Savage had dismissed her protests and just set off to dispose of the body some distance from the cave so it wouldn't attract any bears or tempt the dogs.
She had cried when he left, and when he told her there was no point in trying to set off on her own, as the storm would devour her and he would track her down with one of his devices, she barely listened but instead gave him a short, absent nod.
Maybe she should do just that. Set off. She would be sure to pass over to the Otherworld all too young, but it would leave him out here alone, and that would suit her well.
Still, when she came to think of it, he seemed to have already travelled all the way up here alone. He would probably just set off to hunt down the main party at the destination instead. Even if they had taken a separate route north from Lhasa there still was a risk that he would track them down and destroy the whole operation.
And a whole lot more.
She wondered where Pi was hiding. Maybe he was just waiting in a distance far enough from the cave so that neither her vision nor the Savage's devices could find him?
He might already be disarming the Savage this very minute, lying in ambush in the snow, grabbing him from underground as he walked by, struggling with the body of poor Mungpuk.
Yes. That was possible. And it would be quite a shock for that awful being.
But then again how could Pi have picked the exact spot where he would know the Savage would be passing by? After all, she was the Seer in this entourage.
Maybe Pi had just left her there? On her own. Trapped by a predator deep within the ice.
She almost felt sick at the thought.
Of course he would never...
She was blinded by the headlight coming through the cave entrance.
"That's that", the Savage said.
Njoro said nothing, and just looked down.
"It seems we'll have to spend the night together, there's no point trying to move on at this hour."
She still refused to respond.
"I guess I won't need to tie you up for the night as you haven’t already rushed off in some mysterious suicidal gesture while I was out? Kind of surprised me, as you people have so many incomprehensible ways. Incomprehensible to me, anyway."
Njoro stood still and hoped he would stop talking soon.
"Ah, pardon me. How indiscreet of me. We're not even introduced, and I'm babbling away like we were old friends. Mac here, pleased to meet you."
Njoro said nothing.
"I see. Let's not push it too far at our first date, then. You just keep your place in there, and I'll lay here out by the opening - in the more chilly parts. We're not savages, after all, are we?"
She wept quietly as he turned his headlight off.
"And! None of that witchcraft stuff while I'm asleep. You hear me?"
Monday, October 19, 2009
The future ain't what it used to be
From the top of the pyramid Vix could look out across a great forest, with intensely green treetops surrounding him in every direction.
He was sitting on cold stone in the warm evening sun.
The air was dense and humid, and sounds of birds and stranger beasts lay atop the deep, humming sound from the Earth below.
Beneath him there were eight steps leading to the ninth – the one he was sitting on.
The top stone.
He felt calm and comfortable.
This had to be a dream.
It was.
It was Sunday again.
A chilly, late autumn Sunday, and Vix had once again travelled down to the Village.
He was happy he had taken up seeing Mr. Friend again on Sundays.
Every time spent in the Village made him look forward to next time, and the weeks in-between seemed to fly.
Mr. Friend was sitting in his usual chair, gesticulating with his right hand, as if chopping the air in a karate-like manner, or violently handshaking an invisible man.
Things had gotten rather hot already, as Vix had turned the conversation towards touching yet another subject where their personal views collided:
The one concerning the Future.
"There is only the moment, Victor. It’s the one thing that it is interesting to focus on. Always! Use your knowledge of the past to be the Master of the moment.”
“But everyone dreams of the future”, Vix said. “The future is where all the possibilities lie. It’s where dreams come true and change is possible.”
“Possibilities!? Look at what happened to all those who tried to escape the moment, Victor: the Futurists, all the science-fiction visionaries. They were all trying to escape into the future, and where did they end up?” Mr. Friend was fuming, and didn’t stop to wait for any answer from Vix; “I'll tell you where they ended up; they all ended up in the past! That's where you’ll find them now. No, I’ll give you some good advice: stick to the moment! Then you'll be on top of things."
Vix hastily took a sip of his coffee, sat it down again, and fired back:
"But the moment stinks! There's nothing for me in the moment. ‘The Now’ is far past its sell-by-date. Do you really think I’m so thick as to believe there is still a point in trying to stand up against all this shit surrounding me? Things seem pretty hopeless from the point where I'm sitting, all tied-up, chained to the present."
"Ok, yours is a particularly sorry case, so I'm almost tempted to agree. But the only hope is for the younger generations to open their eyes before they get too entwined in the messy frame of thought that is your inheritance. If you stick around in this mess for too long you’ll soon feel as if you’ve got too much to lose, which is of course just a silly self-deception, but it will make you end up just getting exhausted defending your own little piece of bad cake."
"So you, like a lot of old people who’ve had their share of fun, think it's the youth's responsibility to clean up the mess made by the generations who fucked up the whole scenery, emptied all the natural resources and left us with nothing but garbage?"
”Hah! Anger. Good stuff! It could well be the right road to take in order to find your way out of your ignorance.”
Vix found the old man particularly irritating today.
“Well it’s you who bring out the old punk in me.”, he said.
“Aren’t you a little too young to claim to be a ‘punk’?”
“Might well be. It still had an impact on me in retrospect. History you know.”
Mr. Friend didn’t listen. Instead he leaned back and smiled as he spoke:
“Ahh. Yes, the late seventies saw some pretty tough resistance awakening in the youth with all that punk rock and harsh political opposition spreading like a fire. And forgive me for saying this, but as much as I do believe this anger was a rightful manifestation of the intuitive feeling of injustice that young people felt at the time, with that sweet little slogan about the future… what was it, again?”
"No Future", Vix spat out.
“Yes! There you go. ‘No Future’. As I’m telling you. But as much as it summed up the whole situation at the time quite appropriately and was deeply and rightfully rooted in a will to change things, it all ended up as one of the greatest collective self-destruction cults the modern world has ever seen."
Vix couldn’t believe the nerve of the old bugger.
"So you're sitting here suggesting that Punk didn't amount to anything? I think you just might be able to get yourself a good beating if you dared to join me back into town and announce your views on this in public at the local pub. Especially to the people who had their lives severely touched, and maybe even completely changed by the whole movement of that day and age."
Mr. Friend laughed dryly.
"Yes. Yes. As a step on the ladder it might well be the best thing that ever happened at the time, but as evolution often shows that one extreme gets balanced out by the other in the next moment, I'm still not sure it can be viewed as a 'solution' to anything at all. And the destructiveness that backfired on the whole culture in the end just served the purpose of the very same authorities the whole movement sought out to oppose."
"In the end, maybe, whenever that might be. Hopefully we're not that close to it yet. I'm sure a lot of people got a hell of a lot out of your ‘self-destructing cult’.”
“And I’m sure you have a good example…” Mr. Friend folded his hands and leaned back in his chair. As always when he expected Vix to feel defeated.
“The DIY-thing, for one.”, Vix fired.
Mr. Friend gestured to hear more.
“The Do-it-yourself-thing.”, Vix repeated, and went on: “It seems like this ‘movement’ - if you insist on calling it that – inspired people to change a lot of the power-structures in music, fashion and various other aspects of youth culture back in the day. Of course this means a lot! It’s all about what and how you communicate with the world around you when you're at that age. And the way you think then will shape the way you think and act for the rest of your life.”
“Really?”, Mr. Friend put on an overly curious-looking face.
“Yeah. Really. It changed things.”
Vix felt very confident as he heard himself speak out to the old man.
There was a short pause. Then Mr. Friend said:
"Sure. But what if I pointed out that maybe someone saw this thing developing, someone quite smart, and that these smart someones made sure to exploit the whole movement and use it to their own advantage?”
“Like doing what?”
“Like dressing sheep in wolves' clothing, for a lack of better words. Or creating a kind of sub-cultural Trojan horse. You have to admit there's not that much left of DIY or anything with that spirit in today's pretty over-commercialised youth culture, only decades later?"
"Oh, that's the old ignorant fool speaking again. You don't think DIY had anything to do with things like electronic self-publishing and the whole open-source movement today?"
"Well, yes. Exactly. The open-source issue might actually be the best example here." Mr. Friend smiled smugly again.
"And how is that?"
"Well, I believe the initial idea was for people to be able to build open enterprise? Draw off eachothers resources, to create something without having to touch by corporate structures?"
"Something like that, yes."
“Free flow of information. Free sharing. Non-profit. Fancy slogans like that?”
“Spot on.”
"So what would happen if this thing gets off the ground, and becomes a bit threatening to the big corporations? Free enterprise can't be controlled and made profitable. A collision of intent is imminent. They would do what?"
"Try to stop it?"
"Now hear me here Victor, I'm not talking about the music industry alone. Unfortunately, as businesses go, it’s not known to be much of a MENSA stronghold. Their strategies of trying to strangle the public and close their eyes to new technology has done more to cement the aversion people have against them, than help them solve their profit problems? As desperate strategies go, theirs is like trying to minimize a balloon filled with water by squeezing it; you squeeze one end, and it expands in the other."
Vix wondered why Mr. Friend knew anything at all about the music industry.
"Guess you're right. At least they’ve helped us make music free."
Mr. Friend stared at him with his mouth half-open, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.
“Free?”
“Yes..”, Vix said. “Free.”
“You really think that’s what’s happening? That music is becoming ‘free’?”
“Ok, then. What would you suggest is happening?”
Vix’ confidence from a minute earlier had vanished.
“Do you know what one of the first things Mao Zedong made sure happened shortly after his ascent to power in the newly established People’s Republic of China?”
“No.”
“He made sure that they abandoned all copyright laws.”
“Why?”
“So that no artist opposing the authorities would be able to live off his or her art, or grow any bigger than totally irrelevant and non-influential outside of the system.”
“No shit?”
“Quite contrary: very shit! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you need to be part of this world’s economy in order to be a part of the world at all. Without sufficient backing you won’t have the strength to get up each morning and continue creating your personal little revolution. Or am I wrong again?”
Vix twisted on his chair, and said: “So what’s next? Mao Tse-Tung is behind the hidden global capitalist regime, too? And he personally invented the MP3 codec to disarm all cultural opposition by making each and everyone a starving artist without the energy to fight the power?”
“Your words, not mine.”
“Aw, come on! So all attempts at making something free will just tighten the chains?” Vix laughed and shook his head slowly.
"Ok, let’s talk about another industry, then - an industry where they make enough money to attract more brainpower than the music industry can dream of.”
“What industry?”
“The one containing the people who actually have made music abundant and worthless; the information technology industry.”
“OK?”
“Let’s move on to the software equivalent; your ‘open source’ movement.” Mr. Friend twisted like a cat getting ready to jump at a unknowing bird. “So, we have the people in the IT industries seeing this new development happening outside their own corporate structures, a clear threat to everything associated with their patents, monopolies, methods of gaining multiple payments for products that can be copied millionfold without any extra production cost. But contrary to the music biz they handle it right."
"How?"
"Simply by joining in. That's what they do. They join in, and say 'look, now we're sharing too'."
"But that's cool. That’s why some big software corps get kudos from independent programmers."
"Cool indeed. For those big corporations it is more than cool."
"Why not for all involved?"
"Because, Victor, do you really think an independent visionary young programmer would have one chance in hell against the marketing muscle that these enormous corporations have? If someone comes up with anything genial you're going to see their contribution get rapidly swallowed up in the machinery of the nice, big brother, who suddenly have become so 'eager to share'. I'm afraid it's a question of a drop of piss on one side, and an endless ocean on the other, and I'm sorry to say it'll be down to the idealistic, gifted, DIY-inspired young chap or chapess to play the part of the urinal variety in this equation."
This was another one of those moments where Mr. Friend managed to make Vix feel somehow young and stupid. He hated those moments, and didn't particularly want to see the smug old cat's point in those situations, even when he felt he might have been right. It felt like Mr. Friend stole something from him, something that was supposed to be his own.
He snapped back and hoped to change the subject by changing his approach:
"Whatever! That whole punk thing came long before my time as you pointed out yourself. I wasn't part of it, I don't even know anyone personally that was part of it. Punk today and the legacy of that period of time is mostly just a retro fashion thing, sold in readymade packages by the high street stores. And that's just entertainment - and not something I'd expect you to be in much favour of?"
As Vix changed his arguments, Mr. Friend did, too:
"Maybe. But it might have served a purpose up to a certain point.”
“And I guess one has to admit it doesn't come out as extremely intelligent-looking in hindsight… swearing on TV, knocking eachother over on the dancefloor, spitting in eachother's faces while sporting 'challenging' hairstyles…"
“No, the word ‘intelligent’ doesn’t quite spring to mind.”
Vix paused to think, now that they had buried the hatchets for a moment, then he said:
"But sometimes throwing some shit at someone, setting fire to something or just yelling at everything must feel pretty good. I think. Not that I would know, I've never done it myself, except maybe in my dreams."
"Well, I guess that's something." Mr. Friend grinned.
"Don't make me feel even worse about myself. It's heavy enough to have to face the daily obstacles I face."
"Are you really sure about that? I mean, are you sure it's not within yourself to define whether what you face is an obstacle or not?"
"Were you sent by the Scientologists, after all? Or some other sick band of opportunists? That kind of talk reminds me of those silly books by smiling authors with soft-filtered portraits on the back cover beneath quotes like 'this book changed the way I manage my life's resources' or 'I used to be a victim, and look at me now'."
"I love this skepticism, Victor. You really know how to make an old man happy, I must say. But then you knew that, didn't you?"
"Oh, get outta here. First you start by trying to convince me that fighting the power is a good idea by discrediting Punk, then you tell me to 'work on my attitude' like any other old fart. Next thing you'll tell me the second summer of love '88 and Acid House was the work of the C.I.A. or something?"
"Certainly not!”
Mr. Friend looked out the window.
Then he continued: “The Americans had nothing to do with that."
"Thanks."
"No, no, no. I believe there was mainly British intelligence involved in that one."
Vix let out a big sigh, then he stretched out on his chair, folded his hands on top of his head, and quickly let them down again.
"Oh, purr-LEASE! Come on." Vix was laughing out loud now.
Heads were turning inside the coffee-shop.
Mr. Friend looked at him in what he decided was an attempt on the ‘innocent-suggestion’-look.
"But surely you didn't expect that the fact that more than half of England's below 25's suddenly were raving around in fields in the middle of the night with their head stuffed with psychedelics would go unnoticed, did you?"
"But for God’s sake! You're trying to make me believe that British Intelligence invented it. You're such a fucking ace comedian. THAT’s what you are. That’s where you come from. You’re a retired comedian. It all makes sense now."
Mr. Friend ignored him.
"Victor! You see, we... they - those who'd like to be in control. Their kind never really invent stuff, not at all. It's a matter of being aware of what's inventing itself, then getting in the right position, and then finally make sure that it doesn't get out of control. Losing control, that's what it's all about. Not losing it. I mean."
Vix noticed that Mr. Friend seemed more than a little beside himself today. He also noticed the slight slip of the tongue, and the lack of the usual elegance in his desperate attempt at quickly getting back into style after the glitch. He was unsure about whether to arrest him on it there and then, but decided to let it lie and rather move on with the conversation. Even just to make things a little more interesting.
Mr. Friend continued: "You have to understand that what happened at the end of the eighties was something that had to be brought under some kind of control. Simple as that! Here you were facing a situation where the youth of the nation suddenly started creating new social bonds all on their own. Meeting in fields and unlicensed warehouses, engaging in ritualistic dance, accumulating real human power. And all this outside of the System - outside of where this kind of power was supposed to be. Recipe for disaster, if you ask me."
"And I do ask."
"Well, of course this couldn't be accepted. Luckily past experience of handling similar matters both at the end of the sixties - when things went completely out of control for every party involved - and in, as we just talked about, the end of the seventies - where the self-destruction of the uproar cleaned up its own mess almost by itself. This past experience meant that this time a different solution was to be applied."
”And this is where you go on and tell me that the authorities were the real entrepreneurs behind the whole Acid House movement? Get outta here!”
"No. I’m not going to tell you that. Not at all. Not in the beginning, anyway... But you must understand that eventually measures had to be taken. This thing couldn't be left to grow out of proportion all by itself."
Vix looked lazily disapproving at Mr. Friend.
Then he said:
"Like it had to be aided out of proportion by some external force? How about just giving young people some cred for once for pulling a new culture off by their own force?"
Mr. Friend almost whined in a near wimpish manner, as he continued:
"Sure! At first I don't doubt one minute that this was something that came straight from the untamed creativity of young, restless, bored souls. But very quickly some tags had to be put on all these sudden new activities for the collective understanding to hang on to. And these would preferably be quite negative tags. Why do you think that was?"
"Dunno. Cause all people ever see is negativity? In everything."
"People see what they're being shown. With the situation of the national tabloids getting access to the 'crime-scene' before anyone else, we were all soon dealing with yet another irresponsible, carefree and ’hedonistic’ youth culture, obsessed with sex and drugs. Didn't you ever wonder why the British tabloids were the ones who insisted on that if you were to be attending this new craze you had to take all the new designer drugs?”
"Oh, come on. As if there weren't enough drugs there to start with. I've heard all the stories from the first and now 'legendary' parties, and we're not exactly talking Pimms and cigars either."
"Yes. Yes. But that's not my point."
"What exactly is your point, then?" Vix was starting to get bored, and doubted he would be able to follow Mr. Friend for much longer.
Yet he thought the old man had to be given the chance to explain what exactly his point was:
"That as soon as this newfound energy of youth started showing some real muscles, the only sensible thing to do was to sprinkle some gasoline on the nice, warming little bonfire."
"Why? To make it even stronger?"
"That, and to emphasize the aspects of this new 'movement' that could be perceived as negative or threatening to the public eye, and at the same time make it look attractive to the forces in society that would ensure its destruction, and therefore, destroy the chances of it making any real change"
"And who might these forces be?"
"Greedy drug dealers, gangster cartels and powers of hyper-commerce and a plain superficial set of values. All sure to make the scene implode on itself."
"You've almost started sounding like me now."
"Maybe we're not so different, then?"
"I beg to differ."
"Whatever you say. But the fact is that while the majority of young people lose themselves to computer games, repetitive music and pill-popping, others were free to go on with the restructuring of the world.”
"So you're basically saying the entire nineties can be written off as a decade of escapism blindfolding the youth while the whole world were being mislead once again? I think you might be well out of touch with the workings of young minds for once . Of course you took a pill when going to a rave. That was half the fun. And anyway it was part of rebelling against it all, not following the squareness of the herd. It was about dropping out, man.”
”With the capitalist-owned pharmaceutical industry acting as pusher, and the tabloid press acting as advertising companies? My guess is you’ve been thoroughly screwed in your youthful naivety, my friend.”
"Ah come on! This time you're too far out on a limb. And Pac Man was the Devil in disguise leading our souls further into damnation? Hah!"
"Think of this: It’s basically the same group of people who are the major shareholders in the arms industry, the oil industry, in Hollywood's entertainment business and in the computer gaming industry. And they have only one thing in common; they’re controlling the whole business of murder and human suffering and are making unimaginable amounts of money from it. The arms industry is still bigger than the whole oil industry in terms of yearly turnover, and anyway they're so closely linked together that you'd be very clever to separate the flow of money and power in and between them." Mr. Friend said. Sounding like Vix.
"And here you are directing all your fury towards the poor entertainment industry? If it's the same people putting money into leisure, at least that balances out some of the bad things they do with their money elsewhere. Don't you think?" Vix said, sounding like Mr. Friend.
"Did you ever ask yourself why most computer games are based on war and killing?"
"To enable young people to let of some steam, maybe?"
"Maybe, but if people were more balanced and fulfilled in their lives they wouldn't feel the need to slaughter imaginary members of their own species, would they?"
"I guess not. Never thought of it like that."
"Haven't you ever questioned why most young people are so interested in violence and warfare? That it might not be, as some might insist "part of their nature". Most frustrations in kids don't turn up until they're old enough to start understanding that the world they grow into is somehow off its hinges, and that's when they're presented with their first toy gun, or their first computer wargame. Make monsters, and give them something to kill with."
"You sound a bit like a whinging old woman, but fair enough. You say this too is all part of the same game?"
"Of course it is."
"And you tell me it's all willfully set up. Ruthlessly constructed, like a concentration camp in Germany under the Nazis?"
"Like a concentration camp in Siberia under Stalin, like a Japanese concentration camp in Manchuria, or a more modern one in Abu Grahib or Guantanamo Bay under God knows who. A thinking soul can get a really hard time trying to imagine what a man-made system is capable of doing to members of its own species, especially once it turns into a ’legal entity’ or any kind of soulless and 'formalized' gathering of men. People are cowards, but as soon as they're part of forming a whole that is larger and more powerful than any of its single building-blocks, they'll do almost anything and hope to get away with it.”
”The gathering of a human herd?”
”Not really. A human herd is still just a gathering of humans, and will continue to act as that; a quite unpredictable flock of humans. I’m talking about the monster that is created when every single soul accepts that one frame of thought, or a set of rules, that is allowed to overshadow anything on their personal level; from their human conscience via their ’common sense’ to their whole worldview.”
”Like a religion?”
”Like a religion. Or a political system. Or a commercial system with all of its ridiculous laws. Any kind of system that removes all traces of humane judgment, or allows for someone to hide behind a set of external rules. A hive is a perfect way for bees to organise themselves, but we are born totally different creatures with totally different skills. We're born to think for ourselves, act for ourselves, and judge by our own judgment. Together.”
”And not hide behind things such as communism or fascism?”
”Any –ism. Any external idea that is being accepted as an authority to what you deep within feel and know is ’the right thing’ – usually a thing that varies greatly from situation to situation in life, and that requires that you are in touch with yourself – something most people seem to be far from.”
”You think people would act otherwise if they were in touch with themselves? I've seen people who, if they were to get more in touch with themselves as they are already, would be even bigger walking disasters than they are now."
"You've got to give and take, Victor. Give some slack, as you like to put it yourself."
"Yeah, but seriously. Don't you think humankind need some kind of guidance when you see the messy state of people running things by themselves?"
"Sure. Just show me one example of people running things by themselves in modern society, and I'll judge from that."
“Victor.”, Mr. Friend said abruptly.
“Yes?”
“What exactly is it you want?”
“Want?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
Vix felt as if someone had poured a kilogram of flour into his mouth, and that his whole being went bloodless and dry.
“I…” he stuttered.
“Yes, you.”
“I want… JUSTICE!”
“Aha. Justice.”
Vix nodded frantically.
“What kind of justice?”
“Wh…”
“Justice as in equality for all in every aspect of life, here and now? Justice as in you’re a bastard in this life and get reincarnated as a rat in the next? By what measurement do you want justice?”
“I…”
Vix gave up, and let the conversation rest from there on.
Back at the Shelter, he stumbled across a new website.
It was called peacerael.org and had been started up by people from both sides of the Israel/Palestine tragedy, who were living in the troubled areas.
It was a kind of online forum, but instead of the usual fiery discussion boards, this one only allowed for people to post their poems.
This way, common people who were touched by the insane conflict had an opportunity to express their anger, sorrow and frustration without having to defend or argue for or against anything; it was just a place to express your personal feelings for the world to see.
There was pain, of course. Much pain. But those who posted here had in common that they just wanted to show what was actually happening on a human level, and by doing so hoped to build some kind of bridges directly between people, and not through any kind of system of politics or belief.
This evening a young mother from Ramallah had posted her words, and for some strange reason Vix felt that she hit him somewhere within his aching soul where he usually didn't feel any kind of response whatsoever.
It could have been guilt, but guilt caused by his own blindness, he concluded, and not just the usual guilt he struggled with everyday, the one that came from an old teacher, his parents, or the simple fact that he never amounted or aspired to anything in life.
Her poem read:
He noted down the events of the day, and backed up his main drive.
That night, Vix could feel the full weight of the world on his shoulders as he went to sleep.
He was sitting on cold stone in the warm evening sun.
The air was dense and humid, and sounds of birds and stranger beasts lay atop the deep, humming sound from the Earth below.
Beneath him there were eight steps leading to the ninth – the one he was sitting on.
The top stone.
He felt calm and comfortable.
This had to be a dream.
It was.
It was Sunday again.
A chilly, late autumn Sunday, and Vix had once again travelled down to the Village.
He was happy he had taken up seeing Mr. Friend again on Sundays.
Every time spent in the Village made him look forward to next time, and the weeks in-between seemed to fly.
Mr. Friend was sitting in his usual chair, gesticulating with his right hand, as if chopping the air in a karate-like manner, or violently handshaking an invisible man.
Things had gotten rather hot already, as Vix had turned the conversation towards touching yet another subject where their personal views collided:
The one concerning the Future.
"There is only the moment, Victor. It’s the one thing that it is interesting to focus on. Always! Use your knowledge of the past to be the Master of the moment.”
“But everyone dreams of the future”, Vix said. “The future is where all the possibilities lie. It’s where dreams come true and change is possible.”
“Possibilities!? Look at what happened to all those who tried to escape the moment, Victor: the Futurists, all the science-fiction visionaries. They were all trying to escape into the future, and where did they end up?” Mr. Friend was fuming, and didn’t stop to wait for any answer from Vix; “I'll tell you where they ended up; they all ended up in the past! That's where you’ll find them now. No, I’ll give you some good advice: stick to the moment! Then you'll be on top of things."
Vix hastily took a sip of his coffee, sat it down again, and fired back:
"But the moment stinks! There's nothing for me in the moment. ‘The Now’ is far past its sell-by-date. Do you really think I’m so thick as to believe there is still a point in trying to stand up against all this shit surrounding me? Things seem pretty hopeless from the point where I'm sitting, all tied-up, chained to the present."
"Ok, yours is a particularly sorry case, so I'm almost tempted to agree. But the only hope is for the younger generations to open their eyes before they get too entwined in the messy frame of thought that is your inheritance. If you stick around in this mess for too long you’ll soon feel as if you’ve got too much to lose, which is of course just a silly self-deception, but it will make you end up just getting exhausted defending your own little piece of bad cake."
"So you, like a lot of old people who’ve had their share of fun, think it's the youth's responsibility to clean up the mess made by the generations who fucked up the whole scenery, emptied all the natural resources and left us with nothing but garbage?"
”Hah! Anger. Good stuff! It could well be the right road to take in order to find your way out of your ignorance.”
Vix found the old man particularly irritating today.
“Well it’s you who bring out the old punk in me.”, he said.
“Aren’t you a little too young to claim to be a ‘punk’?”
“Might well be. It still had an impact on me in retrospect. History you know.”
Mr. Friend didn’t listen. Instead he leaned back and smiled as he spoke:
“Ahh. Yes, the late seventies saw some pretty tough resistance awakening in the youth with all that punk rock and harsh political opposition spreading like a fire. And forgive me for saying this, but as much as I do believe this anger was a rightful manifestation of the intuitive feeling of injustice that young people felt at the time, with that sweet little slogan about the future… what was it, again?”
"No Future", Vix spat out.
“Yes! There you go. ‘No Future’. As I’m telling you. But as much as it summed up the whole situation at the time quite appropriately and was deeply and rightfully rooted in a will to change things, it all ended up as one of the greatest collective self-destruction cults the modern world has ever seen."
Vix couldn’t believe the nerve of the old bugger.
"So you're sitting here suggesting that Punk didn't amount to anything? I think you just might be able to get yourself a good beating if you dared to join me back into town and announce your views on this in public at the local pub. Especially to the people who had their lives severely touched, and maybe even completely changed by the whole movement of that day and age."
Mr. Friend laughed dryly.
"Yes. Yes. As a step on the ladder it might well be the best thing that ever happened at the time, but as evolution often shows that one extreme gets balanced out by the other in the next moment, I'm still not sure it can be viewed as a 'solution' to anything at all. And the destructiveness that backfired on the whole culture in the end just served the purpose of the very same authorities the whole movement sought out to oppose."
"In the end, maybe, whenever that might be. Hopefully we're not that close to it yet. I'm sure a lot of people got a hell of a lot out of your ‘self-destructing cult’.”
“And I’m sure you have a good example…” Mr. Friend folded his hands and leaned back in his chair. As always when he expected Vix to feel defeated.
“The DIY-thing, for one.”, Vix fired.
Mr. Friend gestured to hear more.
“The Do-it-yourself-thing.”, Vix repeated, and went on: “It seems like this ‘movement’ - if you insist on calling it that – inspired people to change a lot of the power-structures in music, fashion and various other aspects of youth culture back in the day. Of course this means a lot! It’s all about what and how you communicate with the world around you when you're at that age. And the way you think then will shape the way you think and act for the rest of your life.”
“Really?”, Mr. Friend put on an overly curious-looking face.
“Yeah. Really. It changed things.”
Vix felt very confident as he heard himself speak out to the old man.
There was a short pause. Then Mr. Friend said:
"Sure. But what if I pointed out that maybe someone saw this thing developing, someone quite smart, and that these smart someones made sure to exploit the whole movement and use it to their own advantage?”
“Like doing what?”
“Like dressing sheep in wolves' clothing, for a lack of better words. Or creating a kind of sub-cultural Trojan horse. You have to admit there's not that much left of DIY or anything with that spirit in today's pretty over-commercialised youth culture, only decades later?"
"Oh, that's the old ignorant fool speaking again. You don't think DIY had anything to do with things like electronic self-publishing and the whole open-source movement today?"
"Well, yes. Exactly. The open-source issue might actually be the best example here." Mr. Friend smiled smugly again.
"And how is that?"
"Well, I believe the initial idea was for people to be able to build open enterprise? Draw off eachothers resources, to create something without having to touch by corporate structures?"
"Something like that, yes."
“Free flow of information. Free sharing. Non-profit. Fancy slogans like that?”
“Spot on.”
"So what would happen if this thing gets off the ground, and becomes a bit threatening to the big corporations? Free enterprise can't be controlled and made profitable. A collision of intent is imminent. They would do what?"
"Try to stop it?"
"Now hear me here Victor, I'm not talking about the music industry alone. Unfortunately, as businesses go, it’s not known to be much of a MENSA stronghold. Their strategies of trying to strangle the public and close their eyes to new technology has done more to cement the aversion people have against them, than help them solve their profit problems? As desperate strategies go, theirs is like trying to minimize a balloon filled with water by squeezing it; you squeeze one end, and it expands in the other."
Vix wondered why Mr. Friend knew anything at all about the music industry.
"Guess you're right. At least they’ve helped us make music free."
Mr. Friend stared at him with his mouth half-open, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.
“Free?”
“Yes..”, Vix said. “Free.”
“You really think that’s what’s happening? That music is becoming ‘free’?”
“Ok, then. What would you suggest is happening?”
Vix’ confidence from a minute earlier had vanished.
“Do you know what one of the first things Mao Zedong made sure happened shortly after his ascent to power in the newly established People’s Republic of China?”
“No.”
“He made sure that they abandoned all copyright laws.”
“Why?”
“So that no artist opposing the authorities would be able to live off his or her art, or grow any bigger than totally irrelevant and non-influential outside of the system.”
“No shit?”
“Quite contrary: very shit! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you need to be part of this world’s economy in order to be a part of the world at all. Without sufficient backing you won’t have the strength to get up each morning and continue creating your personal little revolution. Or am I wrong again?”
Vix twisted on his chair, and said: “So what’s next? Mao Tse-Tung is behind the hidden global capitalist regime, too? And he personally invented the MP3 codec to disarm all cultural opposition by making each and everyone a starving artist without the energy to fight the power?”
“Your words, not mine.”
“Aw, come on! So all attempts at making something free will just tighten the chains?” Vix laughed and shook his head slowly.
"Ok, let’s talk about another industry, then - an industry where they make enough money to attract more brainpower than the music industry can dream of.”
“What industry?”
“The one containing the people who actually have made music abundant and worthless; the information technology industry.”
“OK?”
“Let’s move on to the software equivalent; your ‘open source’ movement.” Mr. Friend twisted like a cat getting ready to jump at a unknowing bird. “So, we have the people in the IT industries seeing this new development happening outside their own corporate structures, a clear threat to everything associated with their patents, monopolies, methods of gaining multiple payments for products that can be copied millionfold without any extra production cost. But contrary to the music biz they handle it right."
"How?"
"Simply by joining in. That's what they do. They join in, and say 'look, now we're sharing too'."
"But that's cool. That’s why some big software corps get kudos from independent programmers."
"Cool indeed. For those big corporations it is more than cool."
"Why not for all involved?"
"Because, Victor, do you really think an independent visionary young programmer would have one chance in hell against the marketing muscle that these enormous corporations have? If someone comes up with anything genial you're going to see their contribution get rapidly swallowed up in the machinery of the nice, big brother, who suddenly have become so 'eager to share'. I'm afraid it's a question of a drop of piss on one side, and an endless ocean on the other, and I'm sorry to say it'll be down to the idealistic, gifted, DIY-inspired young chap or chapess to play the part of the urinal variety in this equation."
This was another one of those moments where Mr. Friend managed to make Vix feel somehow young and stupid. He hated those moments, and didn't particularly want to see the smug old cat's point in those situations, even when he felt he might have been right. It felt like Mr. Friend stole something from him, something that was supposed to be his own.
He snapped back and hoped to change the subject by changing his approach:
"Whatever! That whole punk thing came long before my time as you pointed out yourself. I wasn't part of it, I don't even know anyone personally that was part of it. Punk today and the legacy of that period of time is mostly just a retro fashion thing, sold in readymade packages by the high street stores. And that's just entertainment - and not something I'd expect you to be in much favour of?"
As Vix changed his arguments, Mr. Friend did, too:
"Maybe. But it might have served a purpose up to a certain point.”
“And I guess one has to admit it doesn't come out as extremely intelligent-looking in hindsight… swearing on TV, knocking eachother over on the dancefloor, spitting in eachother's faces while sporting 'challenging' hairstyles…"
“No, the word ‘intelligent’ doesn’t quite spring to mind.”
Vix paused to think, now that they had buried the hatchets for a moment, then he said:
"But sometimes throwing some shit at someone, setting fire to something or just yelling at everything must feel pretty good. I think. Not that I would know, I've never done it myself, except maybe in my dreams."
"Well, I guess that's something." Mr. Friend grinned.
"Don't make me feel even worse about myself. It's heavy enough to have to face the daily obstacles I face."
"Are you really sure about that? I mean, are you sure it's not within yourself to define whether what you face is an obstacle or not?"
"Were you sent by the Scientologists, after all? Or some other sick band of opportunists? That kind of talk reminds me of those silly books by smiling authors with soft-filtered portraits on the back cover beneath quotes like 'this book changed the way I manage my life's resources' or 'I used to be a victim, and look at me now'."
"I love this skepticism, Victor. You really know how to make an old man happy, I must say. But then you knew that, didn't you?"
"Oh, get outta here. First you start by trying to convince me that fighting the power is a good idea by discrediting Punk, then you tell me to 'work on my attitude' like any other old fart. Next thing you'll tell me the second summer of love '88 and Acid House was the work of the C.I.A. or something?"
"Certainly not!”
Mr. Friend looked out the window.
Then he continued: “The Americans had nothing to do with that."
"Thanks."
"No, no, no. I believe there was mainly British intelligence involved in that one."
Vix let out a big sigh, then he stretched out on his chair, folded his hands on top of his head, and quickly let them down again.
"Oh, purr-LEASE! Come on." Vix was laughing out loud now.
Heads were turning inside the coffee-shop.
Mr. Friend looked at him in what he decided was an attempt on the ‘innocent-suggestion’-look.
"But surely you didn't expect that the fact that more than half of England's below 25's suddenly were raving around in fields in the middle of the night with their head stuffed with psychedelics would go unnoticed, did you?"
"But for God’s sake! You're trying to make me believe that British Intelligence invented it. You're such a fucking ace comedian. THAT’s what you are. That’s where you come from. You’re a retired comedian. It all makes sense now."
Mr. Friend ignored him.
"Victor! You see, we... they - those who'd like to be in control. Their kind never really invent stuff, not at all. It's a matter of being aware of what's inventing itself, then getting in the right position, and then finally make sure that it doesn't get out of control. Losing control, that's what it's all about. Not losing it. I mean."
Vix noticed that Mr. Friend seemed more than a little beside himself today. He also noticed the slight slip of the tongue, and the lack of the usual elegance in his desperate attempt at quickly getting back into style after the glitch. He was unsure about whether to arrest him on it there and then, but decided to let it lie and rather move on with the conversation. Even just to make things a little more interesting.
Mr. Friend continued: "You have to understand that what happened at the end of the eighties was something that had to be brought under some kind of control. Simple as that! Here you were facing a situation where the youth of the nation suddenly started creating new social bonds all on their own. Meeting in fields and unlicensed warehouses, engaging in ritualistic dance, accumulating real human power. And all this outside of the System - outside of where this kind of power was supposed to be. Recipe for disaster, if you ask me."
"And I do ask."
"Well, of course this couldn't be accepted. Luckily past experience of handling similar matters both at the end of the sixties - when things went completely out of control for every party involved - and in, as we just talked about, the end of the seventies - where the self-destruction of the uproar cleaned up its own mess almost by itself. This past experience meant that this time a different solution was to be applied."
”And this is where you go on and tell me that the authorities were the real entrepreneurs behind the whole Acid House movement? Get outta here!”
"No. I’m not going to tell you that. Not at all. Not in the beginning, anyway... But you must understand that eventually measures had to be taken. This thing couldn't be left to grow out of proportion all by itself."
Vix looked lazily disapproving at Mr. Friend.
Then he said:
"Like it had to be aided out of proportion by some external force? How about just giving young people some cred for once for pulling a new culture off by their own force?"
Mr. Friend almost whined in a near wimpish manner, as he continued:
"Sure! At first I don't doubt one minute that this was something that came straight from the untamed creativity of young, restless, bored souls. But very quickly some tags had to be put on all these sudden new activities for the collective understanding to hang on to. And these would preferably be quite negative tags. Why do you think that was?"
"Dunno. Cause all people ever see is negativity? In everything."
"People see what they're being shown. With the situation of the national tabloids getting access to the 'crime-scene' before anyone else, we were all soon dealing with yet another irresponsible, carefree and ’hedonistic’ youth culture, obsessed with sex and drugs. Didn't you ever wonder why the British tabloids were the ones who insisted on that if you were to be attending this new craze you had to take all the new designer drugs?”
"Oh, come on. As if there weren't enough drugs there to start with. I've heard all the stories from the first and now 'legendary' parties, and we're not exactly talking Pimms and cigars either."
"Yes. Yes. But that's not my point."
"What exactly is your point, then?" Vix was starting to get bored, and doubted he would be able to follow Mr. Friend for much longer.
Yet he thought the old man had to be given the chance to explain what exactly his point was:
"That as soon as this newfound energy of youth started showing some real muscles, the only sensible thing to do was to sprinkle some gasoline on the nice, warming little bonfire."
"Why? To make it even stronger?"
"That, and to emphasize the aspects of this new 'movement' that could be perceived as negative or threatening to the public eye, and at the same time make it look attractive to the forces in society that would ensure its destruction, and therefore, destroy the chances of it making any real change"
"And who might these forces be?"
"Greedy drug dealers, gangster cartels and powers of hyper-commerce and a plain superficial set of values. All sure to make the scene implode on itself."
"You've almost started sounding like me now."
"Maybe we're not so different, then?"
"I beg to differ."
"Whatever you say. But the fact is that while the majority of young people lose themselves to computer games, repetitive music and pill-popping, others were free to go on with the restructuring of the world.”
"So you're basically saying the entire nineties can be written off as a decade of escapism blindfolding the youth while the whole world were being mislead once again? I think you might be well out of touch with the workings of young minds for once . Of course you took a pill when going to a rave. That was half the fun. And anyway it was part of rebelling against it all, not following the squareness of the herd. It was about dropping out, man.”
”With the capitalist-owned pharmaceutical industry acting as pusher, and the tabloid press acting as advertising companies? My guess is you’ve been thoroughly screwed in your youthful naivety, my friend.”
"Ah come on! This time you're too far out on a limb. And Pac Man was the Devil in disguise leading our souls further into damnation? Hah!"
"Think of this: It’s basically the same group of people who are the major shareholders in the arms industry, the oil industry, in Hollywood's entertainment business and in the computer gaming industry. And they have only one thing in common; they’re controlling the whole business of murder and human suffering and are making unimaginable amounts of money from it. The arms industry is still bigger than the whole oil industry in terms of yearly turnover, and anyway they're so closely linked together that you'd be very clever to separate the flow of money and power in and between them." Mr. Friend said. Sounding like Vix.
"And here you are directing all your fury towards the poor entertainment industry? If it's the same people putting money into leisure, at least that balances out some of the bad things they do with their money elsewhere. Don't you think?" Vix said, sounding like Mr. Friend.
"Did you ever ask yourself why most computer games are based on war and killing?"
"To enable young people to let of some steam, maybe?"
"Maybe, but if people were more balanced and fulfilled in their lives they wouldn't feel the need to slaughter imaginary members of their own species, would they?"
"I guess not. Never thought of it like that."
"Haven't you ever questioned why most young people are so interested in violence and warfare? That it might not be, as some might insist "part of their nature". Most frustrations in kids don't turn up until they're old enough to start understanding that the world they grow into is somehow off its hinges, and that's when they're presented with their first toy gun, or their first computer wargame. Make monsters, and give them something to kill with."
"You sound a bit like a whinging old woman, but fair enough. You say this too is all part of the same game?"
"Of course it is."
"And you tell me it's all willfully set up. Ruthlessly constructed, like a concentration camp in Germany under the Nazis?"
"Like a concentration camp in Siberia under Stalin, like a Japanese concentration camp in Manchuria, or a more modern one in Abu Grahib or Guantanamo Bay under God knows who. A thinking soul can get a really hard time trying to imagine what a man-made system is capable of doing to members of its own species, especially once it turns into a ’legal entity’ or any kind of soulless and 'formalized' gathering of men. People are cowards, but as soon as they're part of forming a whole that is larger and more powerful than any of its single building-blocks, they'll do almost anything and hope to get away with it.”
”The gathering of a human herd?”
”Not really. A human herd is still just a gathering of humans, and will continue to act as that; a quite unpredictable flock of humans. I’m talking about the monster that is created when every single soul accepts that one frame of thought, or a set of rules, that is allowed to overshadow anything on their personal level; from their human conscience via their ’common sense’ to their whole worldview.”
”Like a religion?”
”Like a religion. Or a political system. Or a commercial system with all of its ridiculous laws. Any kind of system that removes all traces of humane judgment, or allows for someone to hide behind a set of external rules. A hive is a perfect way for bees to organise themselves, but we are born totally different creatures with totally different skills. We're born to think for ourselves, act for ourselves, and judge by our own judgment. Together.”
”And not hide behind things such as communism or fascism?”
”Any –ism. Any external idea that is being accepted as an authority to what you deep within feel and know is ’the right thing’ – usually a thing that varies greatly from situation to situation in life, and that requires that you are in touch with yourself – something most people seem to be far from.”
”You think people would act otherwise if they were in touch with themselves? I've seen people who, if they were to get more in touch with themselves as they are already, would be even bigger walking disasters than they are now."
"You've got to give and take, Victor. Give some slack, as you like to put it yourself."
"Yeah, but seriously. Don't you think humankind need some kind of guidance when you see the messy state of people running things by themselves?"
"Sure. Just show me one example of people running things by themselves in modern society, and I'll judge from that."
“Victor.”, Mr. Friend said abruptly.
“Yes?”
“What exactly is it you want?”
“Want?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
Vix felt as if someone had poured a kilogram of flour into his mouth, and that his whole being went bloodless and dry.
“I…” he stuttered.
“Yes, you.”
“I want… JUSTICE!”
“Aha. Justice.”
Vix nodded frantically.
“What kind of justice?”
“Wh…”
“Justice as in equality for all in every aspect of life, here and now? Justice as in you’re a bastard in this life and get reincarnated as a rat in the next? By what measurement do you want justice?”
“I…”
Vix gave up, and let the conversation rest from there on.
Back at the Shelter, he stumbled across a new website.
It was called peacerael.org and had been started up by people from both sides of the Israel/Palestine tragedy, who were living in the troubled areas.
It was a kind of online forum, but instead of the usual fiery discussion boards, this one only allowed for people to post their poems.
This way, common people who were touched by the insane conflict had an opportunity to express their anger, sorrow and frustration without having to defend or argue for or against anything; it was just a place to express your personal feelings for the world to see.
There was pain, of course. Much pain. But those who posted here had in common that they just wanted to show what was actually happening on a human level, and by doing so hoped to build some kind of bridges directly between people, and not through any kind of system of politics or belief.
This evening a young mother from Ramallah had posted her words, and for some strange reason Vix felt that she hit him somewhere within his aching soul where he usually didn't feel any kind of response whatsoever.
It could have been guilt, but guilt caused by his own blindness, he concluded, and not just the usual guilt he struggled with everyday, the one that came from an old teacher, his parents, or the simple fact that he never amounted or aspired to anything in life.
Her poem read:
WHILE YOU DANCED
While you danced
My life was shattered
Blood was shed
While the music played
I lost my only child
And faith in God
He noted down the events of the day, and backed up his main drive.
That night, Vix could feel the full weight of the world on his shoulders as he went to sleep.
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