Anarki

Listen. You just got to listen to it all, got that? Because you want to understand. You need to understand. Right? Because only if you understand will you get it. Trust me. That will be important. How I managed to get all three—the world, the flesh and the devil—and decide that one of them had to go. Hey, hang on there. Not yet. Easy with that. Take it easy. Just ‘cause the junk is free doesn’t mean you just do it all at once, okay? Not okay. Not till you heard it all.

From Bloch Family Psychology Services intake report #4212: The client presented to the group with clear antisocial, narcissistic, and at times solipsistic behaviors. His affect seemed unusually flat for someone his age, save for his eyes, which kept scanning the clinicians. Guarded, struggling to conceal a great deal of information. Among other behaviors, the client would repeatedly rub his hands and touch his face, as if he needed reassurance that he was awake and real. As to the events that brought him here, he had no response other than—after a long pause—“I do not remember.”

“From 911 dispatcher audio, August 5, 1996, 12:35 AM: Dispatcher: Now miss, please, slow down, and tell me what— Caller [female, identity withheld]: He’s downstairs. Y-you have to send someone. I don’t know what he’s done. The furniture destroyed, the windows smashed…I think I smell smoke. Dispatcher: Okay, okay. Just hang on. I will alert your Fire Department. Stay on the line. Caller: [Unintelligible words, crashing noises, shouting.] Dispatcher: Ma’am, alright—what’s going on now? Ma’am? Caller: Oh god. He-he’s covered the walls. All the walls. Not words. God, what…what are they?”

“From records of District Court of Los Angeles, Spring Street, January 4, 2005: Officer D. Rodriguez: We located the teenager not far from the Barham Boulevard overpass. From the description we knew it was him. And even though it was chilly that night, he stood well away from the fire. And the others—the usual vagrants—stood away from him. District Attorney S. Jones: Anything else? Rodriguez: His face and arms—not just the signs of a junkie. But serious scars visible, god, all over him. And that denim jacket? Covered with strange pins, badges…and everywhere speckled with blood.”

Still listening? Still all ears? Good, good. It’s a journey, right? Right. A real…journey. Blood, scars, all pointing one direction: the future. The world, the flesh, and the devil. But what if we could just dump the flesh? The small things I could do on my own. Some basic neurotech to control adrenaline. But still there was so much flesh, weighing me down. Oh, and then—so sad, so very sad…when the parental units shook off their own shabby flesh, turns out that all that money—as ill-gotten as could be—was all mine!

The scientists wanted to back away, but….all that money. Useful in making them comply. One after the other, each with more knowledge. Some of those scientists, they had to be silenced. Can’t have loose talk, isn’t that right? Others I wanted to keep around, for whatever new idea I might have. But still—and always, you know?—there was the matter of my face. So much skin, so vulnerable! And the eyes! Wet balls of jelly, designed to fail. Windows to the soul, they say. But maybe they could be windows to somewhere else. I had to find out.

“From interrogation report, USC Military Research Center. Subject: Dr. Clarence Howell: “H-he had read my research. Don’t know how he’d gotten it. All of it just theoretical. Then he tricked me into a meeting, and I was his prisoner. And I—I told him, it was only theoretical, this link between the pineal gland and extrasensory phenomena. More parapsychology than science. Didn’t matter to him. ‘You see my face?’ he said. ‘What is left of it? And my arms?’ He did that, then said I would—I must—build and implant the interface. And god—my theories were right.”

Still alive, my friend? Almost done here. After Dr. Howell, the universe opened up. Now not even the world was left. Now I saw worlds, new and terrible. Shall I describe them for you? The vast, terrible landscapes? The fumes stinking out of bottomless pits as these things crawled in and out? An engine of devouring and destroying, the screams constant, the roar of that horror. Non-stop. Sleep vanished, replaced by the constant vision of these places, each an arena of death and terror. But all I could do was see it! Just see! Or so I thought.

So then I met this girl. Nicely modded. She saw me too, and with a wave, as if these hellish places were a new playground for transhumans like us, I knew I could go there. It would take more money to find the right docs and engineers and make them do my bidding. And it would take a minor sacrifice of flesh—here and there—to open the way. Not mine, sorry. But others. Like yours. You should be grateful for what you have enabled. What’s about to happen won’t be nice. But it will be transcendent. For me….