Category: FICTION IN PHASE SPACE

Kishōtenketsu

Leave a comment


Kishōtenketsu is a unique story structure commonly found in East Asian narratives, particularly in traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literature. It offers an alternative approach to storytelling that subverts the traditional Western concepts of conflict-driven plotlines and three-act structures.

The term “Kishōtenketsu” consists of four Chinese characters, each representing a different narrative element:

  1. Ki (起): Introduction
    • This is the beginning of the story, where the setting, characters, and context are established.
    • It sets the stage for the narrative without introducing a conflict or problem right away.
  2. Shō (承): Development
    • This section further develops the story without introducing a direct conflict or confrontation.
    • It expands on the characters, their relationships, and their motivations.
    • It may introduce new elements or situations that create intrigue or curiosity.
  3. Ten (転): Twist or Turn
    • The third part of the story introduces a sudden twist, unexpected event, or change in direction.
    • It may present a conflict or challenge that disrupts the initial harmony established in the previous sections.
    • The twist adds tension and generates interest, providing a turning point in the narrative.
  4. Ketsu (結): Conclusion or Resolution
    • This is the resolution of the story, where the narrative elements are brought together and resolved.
    • Unlike Western narratives that typically prioritize conflict resolution, Kishōtenketsu emphasizes a harmonious resolution.
    • It often focuses on the exploration of themes, emotions, or reflections rather than a clear-cut conflict resolution.

Kishōtenketsu showcases a different approach to storytelling by emphasizing gradual development, unexpected twists, and a more contemplative resolution. It eschews the conventional Western emphasis on conflict-driven plots and instead seeks to create a sense of balance and harmony within the narrative structure.

Here are ten brief examples of Kishōtenketsu narratives:

  1. The protagonist, a young musician, dreams of becoming a star. They practice diligently (Ki), gain recognition from a talent scout (Shō), but unexpectedly lose their voice due to an illness (Ten). They find solace in composing beautiful music and become a successful songwriter (Ketsu).
  2. A young girl moves to a new town (Ki), where she struggles to make friends (Shō). One day, she discovers a hidden forest (Ten), where she finds a group of talking animals who become her loyal companions (Ketsu).
  3. A detective is assigned to a seemingly ordinary theft case (Ki), but as he investigates, he uncovers a complex web of corruption and betrayal (Shō). The detective’s own partner turns out to be the mastermind behind it all (Ten), leading to a thrilling confrontation and the restoration of justice (Ketsu).
  4. A chef opens a small restaurant, serving simple yet delicious meals (Ki). As word spreads, the restaurant gains popularity (Shō). However, an influential food critic publishes a scathing review (Ten). The chef decides to stay true to their passion and continues to create exceptional dishes, eventually winning over the critic and regaining their reputation (Ketsu).
  5. Two childhood friends drift apart as they grow older (Ki). Years later, they unexpectedly cross paths (Shō), leading to the revelation of unresolved feelings and the rekindling of their friendship (Ten). They embark on a new journey together, cherishing their bond (Ketsu).
  6. A student struggles to find their place in a competitive academic environment (Ki). Through hard work and dedication, they slowly improve their grades (Shō). However, during a crucial exam, they suffer from a sudden memory lapse (Ten). Despite this setback, they focus on their overall growth and find success through their unique talents and creativity (Ketsu).
  7. A shy artist showcases their work in a local gallery (Ki). People appreciate the artwork, and it gains attention from art enthusiasts (Shō). Unexpectedly, a renowned art critic questions the artist’s authenticity (Ten). The artist ignores the criticism and continues to create, finding fulfillment in their passion and leaving a lasting impact on the art world (Ketsu).
  8. A family embarks on a long-awaited vacation to a serene island (Ki). They enjoy peaceful days filled with exploration and bonding (Shō). However, a powerful storm unexpectedly hits the island (Ten), leading the family to face their fears and come together to ensure each other’s safety (Ketsu).
  9. A young adventurer sets out on a quest to find a legendary treasure (Ki). Along the way, they encounter various challenges and form alliances with fellow adventurers (Shō). When they finally reach the treasure’s location, they realize it holds no material value but symbolizes personal growth and inner strength (Ten). The adventurer returns home with newfound wisdom and a deeper understanding of themselves (Ketsu).
  10. A group of friends plans a surprise party for their friend’s birthday (Ki). They make meticulous arrangements and keep it a secret (Shō). However, the friend accidentally discovers their plans in advance (Ten), leading to a heartwarming celebration where everyone expresses their genuine love and appreciation (Ketsu).

These examples illustrate the four-part structure of Kishōtenketsu, highlighting the introduction (Ki), development (Shō), twist (Ten), and conclusion (Ketsu) within each narrative.

While Kishōtenketsu is more commonly associated with traditional Asian narratives, its influence can also be observed in contemporary works across different mediums. The subversion of Western storytelling concepts provides a refreshing perspective and allows for unique and thought-provoking narratives that emphasize exploration and contemplation over traditional conflict-driven arcs.

Hero’s Journey

In a Kishōtenketsu reinterpretation of Star Wars: A New Hope, the narrative structure would unfold as follows:

Ki (Introduction): Luke Skywalker, a young farm boy, dreams of adventure and a greater purpose beyond his ordinary life on Tatooine. He longs for something more and yearns to become a skilled pilot like his father.

Shō (Development): Luke comes across a mysterious message hidden within a droid, R2-D2, who holds vital information about Princess Leia and the Rebel Alliance’s fight against the oppressive Galactic Empire. Luke, along with the help of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Han Solo, embarks on a journey to deliver the message and aid the rebellion.

Ten (Twist): During their mission to rescue Princess Leia from the clutches of Darth Vader, Luke discovers that Obi-Wan is not only a wise mentor but also a former Jedi Knight. Tragically, Obi-Wan sacrifices himself in a lightsaber duel with Vader, leaving Luke to face the challenges ahead without his guidance.

Ketsu (Conclusion): With newfound determination and the knowledge that he is the son of Anakin Skywalker, Luke embraces his destiny as a Jedi and leads the Rebel Alliance in a daring attack against the Death Star. Through the use of the Force and his piloting skills, Luke successfully destroys the massive weapon and becomes a symbol of hope for the galaxy.

In this Kishōtenketsu interpretation, the story of Star Wars: A New Hope follows the structure of introduction (Luke’s desire for adventure), development (his involvement in the Rebel cause), twist (the revelation of Obi-Wan’s fate), and conclusion (Luke’s triumph and the beginning of his journey as a Jedi).

How does the fellowship of the ring work out through KishōtenketsuChatGPT

In a Kishōtenketsu reinterpretation of The Fellowship of the Ring, the narrative structure would unfold as follows:

Ki (Introduction): The story begins with the introduction of the hobbit Frodo Baggins, who inherits the One Ring from his uncle, Bilbo. The audience is introduced to the peaceful and idyllic world of the Shire, where Frodo resides. Gandalf, the wise wizard, becomes aware of the immense power and danger of the Ring, setting the stage for Frodo’s journey.

Shō (Development): Frodo, along with his loyal friends Sam, Merry, and Pippin, embarks on a quest to destroy the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. They encounter various challenges and adversaries along the way, including the treacherous Black Riders and the daunting Mines of Moria. The fellowship is formed, uniting members from different races and backgrounds in their shared mission.

Ten (Twist): During their journey, the fellowship faces a great betrayal when Boromir succumbs to the corrupting influence of the Ring and tries to take it from Frodo. This pivotal moment puts Frodo and the Ring in immediate danger, forcing Frodo to make a difficult decision to continue the quest on his own to protect his friends and fulfill the mission.

Ketsu (Conclusion): Frodo, accompanied by his faithful companion Sam, reaches the treacherous land of Mordor. They face numerous obstacles and perils, including encounters with Gollum, who desires the Ring for himself. In a climactic moment, Frodo resists the temptation of the Ring and finally reaches the fiery depths of Mount Doom. With Gollum’s intervention, the Ring is destroyed, saving Middle-earth from the clutches of evil.

In this Kishōtenketsu interpretation, The Fellowship of the Ring follows the structure of introduction (Frodo’s possession of the Ring), development (the formation of the fellowship and their journey), twist (Boromir’s betrayal and Frodo’s decision), and conclusion (Frodo’s ultimate triumph and the destruction of the Ring).

Let’s democratize this *insert business by making it more expensive

Leave a comment

Let’s slice through the status quo, man. Let’s take this business, this purveyor of pedestrian products or services, and inject it with a hyperdermic of exclusivity. We’ll jack the price to a level that would make a Rockefeller blink, a price that screams, “This ain’t for the Joneses, this is for the goddamn Vanderbilts!”

Imagine, scenes ripped from a fever dream: diamond-encrusted briefcases for the corner bodega, bespoke toilet paper woven from the tears of angels (and maybe a bit of recycled hemp, gotta keep it green, baby). The logo? A middle finger sculpted from platinum, a glorious obscenity against the middlebrow masses.

We’ll create a waiting list longer than the Nile, a Kafkaesque labyrinth of qualification forms and hazing rituals. Only the truly dedicated, the ones willing to wade through a swamp of paperwork and obscenely high entry fees, will be deemed worthy. The product itself? Who cares! It’s the thrill of the hunt, the exhilaration of the unattainable we’re selling, a transcendent status symbol for the truly jaded consumer.

Think of it, a black market for groceries, a speakeasy for socks! We’ll turn the mundane into the mythical, the bourgeois into the bohemian. This won’t be a business, it’ll be a goddamn cult, a secret society where the password is “More is less, baby, and less is oh-so-very expensive!”

But beware, the Feds will be watching. This kind of radical chic can attract the squares, the squares with their regulatory tentacles and tax forms. We’ll have to operate on the fringes, become financial phantoms, Robin Hoods of exorbitant pricing, stealing from the unwashed masses and giving to… well, ourselves mostly, but hey, a little chaos is good for the soul, right?

So buckle up, chum, this ain’t your mama’s business model. We’re gonna democratize this whole damn racket by making it so exclusive it’ll make your head spin. Now, pass the mescaline and let’s get to work.

Imagine, a market where entry’s a one-way ticket to the stratosphere. Prices so high they’d make a junkie on a bender blush. We’re talking platinum plungers and diamond-encrusted toilet paper. Forget the corner store, this is the black market for the bourgeois elite. The hoi polloi can gawk at the chrome-plated shelves from the street, their noses pressed against the bulletproof glass.

This ain’t your daddy’s monopoly, this is a game for the financial daredevils, the ones who mainline risk and snort volatility for breakfast. The barriers to entry will be higher than a junkie strung out on angel dust. We’ll erect walls of red tape so thick they’d make Kafka weep. Permits that cost more than a politician’s bribe, licenses doused in the blood of firstborn children – the whole bureaucratic nightmare.

But for those who crawl through the barbed wire and wade through the paperwork swamp, oh, the rewards will be exquisite. Exclusivity so rare it’ll make a snowflake feel common. Products imbued with a mystical aura simply because of their price tag. A clientele so wealthy they could bathe in champagne and use hundred-dollar bills as drying towels.

This, my friend, is the new American Dream. Not a house with a white picket fence, but a chrome-plated coffin and a mausoleum so opulent it’ll make the pharaohs jealous. We’re gonna take the very idea of business and twist it into a grotesque parody, a funhouse mirror reflecting the absurdity of consumerism. It’ll be beautiful, man, beautiful and utterly insane.

Lu-Tze and the Tao of Non-Engagement

Leave a comment

A Radical Simplicity

Terry Pratchett’s Lu-Tze, the humble sweeper-monk, embodies a philosophy that transcends the binaries of control and chaos, order and entropy. His approach echoes the Taoist principle of wu wei—effortless action—where effectiveness arises not from force or rigid doctrine, but from alignment with the natural flow of things. In a world where systems demand either compliance or rebellion, Lu-Tze’s quiet labor becomes a subversion of both. He sweeps floors, tends gardens, and occasionally nudges history with a well-timed proverb, all while maintaining an almost Zen-like detachment. This isn’t apathy; it’s a deliberate refusal to be ensnared by the narratives that trap others.

Where Jeremy Clockson is a being of precision, of engineered inevitability, Lu-Tze is improvisation wearing a broom. He acts, but never hurries. He intervenes, but rarely directly. He knows when to do nothing—not out of laziness, but because doing nothing is sometimes the most powerful move on the board. This is wu wei: not passivity, but attunement. Not resistance, but redirection.

Lu-Tze’s true rebellion is his refusal to play the game on the game’s terms. In a monastery of time-obsessed monks and obsessive administrators, he becomes a kind of counter-temporal agent. His toolkit isn’t quantum precision—it’s tea, footnotes, and aphorisms. He smuggles agency into a world obsessed with schedules. He practices radical patience in an age of urgency.

Importantly, wu wei does not mean disengagement from the world. On the contrary: it demands deep presence. But presence without domination. Lu-Tze notices—and this makes him dangerous. He is underestimated precisely because he refuses to self-mythologize. He does not posture. He sweeps. And in that sweeping, he rewrites the future.

Lu-Tze’s simplicity isn’t just spiritual—it’s political. In a world increasingly obsessed with spectacle and optimization, he embodies a slow refusal. His sweeping is a practice of soft power, a kind of monkish mutual aid. It doesn’t scale. It doesn’t trend. But it works. And that’s why the Auditors hate him. He cannot be predicted. He cannot be optimized. He is the chaotic good of quiet maintenance.

And while characters like Lobsang enact the tension between order and soul, Lu-Tze offers a third path: the invisible art of keeping things just functional enough not to collapse. He’s not the hero. He’s the janitor of the sacred. The clock ticks because he keeps the dust off the gears.

In terms of art and meaning-making, Lu-Tze is the analog craftsperson in the back room. The slow artist who whittles spoons. The poet who doesn’t publish. He doesn’t need applause. He just needs the floor to be clean.

Marx, Zen, and the Clock as Capital

When the Abbot instructs Lu‑Tze to “stop the clock,” the order resonates beyond plot. The clock—especially the perfect one Jeremy Clockson builds under the Auditors’ influence—isn’t just a timepiece; it’s the fantasy of total control. In Marxist terms, it’s capital’s dream object: pure quantification, the commodification of time itself. No deviation, no subjective experience, just value measured in ticks and tocks.

Lu‑Tze is the anti-capitalist, anti-bureaucratic Zen Marxist janitor. He doesn’t wage war against the machine—he sweeps around it, confounds it, slips through its gears. His proverbs, riddles, and broom are more subversive than any manifesto. Like a Zen koan, he can’t be neatly interpreted, and that’s the point. He’s not here to solve the system; he’s here to remind us it was never sacred to begin with.

Marx wrote that under capitalism, even time becomes alienated—we no longer live in it, we sell it. Lu‑Tze refuses that paradigm. Ask his job, and he says, “I’m just the sweeper.” Which is to say: I exist outside your categories. He’s the embodiment of kairos—opportune time—against the capitalist worship of chronos—measurable time.

Lobsang and the Split Self

Lobsang Ludd, apprentice monk and living incarnation of Time itself, is where the grand cosmic argument becomes achingly personal. His story is not just the tension between past and future, or between chaos and order—it’s the fracture at the heart of the modern self. Lobsang is a contradiction made flesh: half-human, half-myth, half-clock. His very existence is a split screen—on one side, the warm, impulsive, half-smiling boy who steals apples and tells jokes; on the other, Jeremy Clockson, the ultra-competent craftsman of inevitability, built to measure, built to obey.

This isn’t just narrative cleverness—it’s a diagnosis. Lobsang is the embodiment of the contemporary condition: a being caught between the speed of machines and the slowness of meaning. Between the spreadsheet and the dream. He is what happens when the soul tries to survive under metrics. When intuition is pressed into a uniform and told to meet deadlines.

Lu-Tze, the sweeper monk, sees this. And crucially, he doesn’t try to resolve it with doctrine or logic. He doesn’t lecture. He doesn’t offer a syllabus. Instead, he teaches Lobsang with confusion. With humor. With badly-timed jokes and inexplicable errands. His method is methodlessness: pedagogy by surprise. He introduces Lobsang to the art of the sidelong glance, the subtextual lesson, the broomstroke that changes history.

This is not revolution in the industrial sense—there are no manifestos, no barricades. It’s resistance by living otherwise. To take joy in something unmeasurable. To make tea slowly. To laugh at a pun. These are not small things. In a world obsessed with precision, a bowl of noodles can be an act of defiance. A quiet joke can derail a deterministic future.

Lu-Tze teaches Lobsang that time is not a prison to be maintained but a river to be floated on, or sometimes stepped out of entirely. In doing so, he reframes the problem. The question is no longer how to perfect time, but how to inhabit it. How to dwell in it, care for it, misuse it even—and in doing so, reclaim it.

Lobsang’s journey, then, is not to choose between Jeremy and himself, but to integrate the two. To become both clock and cloud. Both structure and soul. This synthesis—impossible, absurd, necessary—is the real victory. Because the enemy is not order, nor even chaos, but the idea that one must erase the other to function.

In a culture that demands specialization and speed, Lobsang learns instead to be whole. Not perfect, not optimized—just whole. That, in the end, is what saves the world: not stopping time, not preserving it, but allowing it to contain multitudes.

Stopping the clock isn’t about breaking time—it’s about restoring it. Thief of Time argues that history isn’t a riddle to be solved or a path to be completed. It’s a garden. Messy, uneven, and alive. And someone, quietly, has to sweep the paths.

THE AUDITORS

The Auditors in Thief of Time are terrifying from central casting not because they’re evil in the traditional sense, but because they’re pure function. They’re obsessed with eliminating chaos, optimizing everything, and making the universe neat, clean, and predictable. In that way, they’re like a cosmic version of the “paperclip maximizer” thought experiment—an AI that pursues its goal with such blind efficiency that it destroys everything else in the process.

They don’t hate humanity. They just see people as messy. Irrational. Inefficient. Too unpredictable to fit into a perfectly ordered system. So their solution is to remove the mess entirely—by removing us.

This is what makes them funny. They’re not monsters in jackboots. They’re not driven by hatred. They’re driven by logic—cold, bloodless logic. They’re what happens when you take the tools of technocratic liberalism—optimization, system design, rational planning—and strip away any empathy, humility, or tolerance for contradiction. What’s left is a mindset that wants the world to be smooth, silent, and sterile.

In that sense, the Auditors are like the evil twin of the liberal world order: not violent tyrants, but clean managers of doom. They don’t scream. They just delete.

Now contrast that with the monks. They’re flawed, yes—but they still tolerate mess. They try to keep time flowing properly, understanding it’s a balancing act, not a solved equation. They’re like caretakers of a delicate ecosystem rather than engineers of a perfect machine.

But even they fall short. Because they, too, come from a worldview that believes in managing history—as if history were something you could balance forever. And when time begins to break apart, their calm detachment becomes paralysis.

Only Lu-Tze can respond—not because he’s stronger, but because he’s freer. He doesn’t buy into the idea that the world can be perfected. He doesn’t try to control history. He just shows up, broom in hand, and starts sweeping. He accepts the chaos. He works within it. He does the job, with humility and humor.

In an age where both authoritarian systems and well-meaning managerial ones are failing—where optimization itself becomes a form of violence—Lu-Tze represents something radically different. Not a new system. Not a better theory. Just a person doing honest work without illusions of control.

 In refusing the ego’s demand to be seen, branded, optimized. He chooses simple labor over a life of performance. He holds on to his mind, even as he gives his body to the work.

Because in Lu-Tze’s quiet refusal to turn his soul into a product, there’s a radical dignity—one that many in modern, “creative” industries have traded away in exchange for LinkedIn clout or “personal branding.” In this light, sweeping isn’t just a job. It’s a form of resistance. A refusal to be consumed by the economy of self-exploitation.

This continues in a sort of, you know, Machiavellian way—like somewhere back in the boardrooms of capitalism in the 1950s, someone realized a terrible truth: if we only work them physically, they still have their minds to themselves. They can think. They can dissent. They can dream. But if we own their minds—if we capture their attention, their imagination, their very sense of self—we won’t need to police them. They’ll police themselves.

So the strategy shifts. The new labor isn’t just lifting or building; it’s aligning yourself with corporate values, being “passionate” about KPIs, injecting your personality into your emails. The worker becomes the product. The sellable thing is no longer what you do, but who you are—or at least, who you pretend to be.

And here, again, Lu-Tze sweeps in—not as a guru, but as a quiet rebuke. He sweeps the floor, not his soul. He gives the world his labor, but never his mind. In this age where rebellion looks like burnout and docility looks like ambition, the old monk with a broom might be the last revolutionary.

The strategy doesn’t just shape the workplace, it colonizes the imagination. It bleeds directly into our storytelling, especially in Hollywood and Netflix-era content, where the protagonist has subtly shifted. The old hero archetypes—the farmer called to greatness, the dreamer resisting the empire—have been replaced by agents, analysts, special forces vets, or start-up founders. These are people who already belong to systems of control. They’re not breaking out—they’re maintaining order, upholding protocol, or innovating inside frameworks that already exist.

Even when they “rebel,” it’s within limits that flatter the machine: the FBI agent who goes rogue to save the world still proves the FBI was right to hire her. The ex-military man haunted by war trauma still resolves it through more violence, but now “on his own terms.” The tech bro turned savior doesn’t overthrow the system—he just upgrades it. These characters don’t escape the algorithm—they are the algorithm’s fantasy of rebellion. Branded authenticity.

It’s all part of that same Machiavellian realization: don’t just command people—make them want it. Don’t suppress their individuality—monetize it. The contemporary protagonist is no longer a mirror to our struggles; he’s a recruiting poster. He performs freedom while embodying control. And in that sense, these narratives are the cultural arm of the same logic that gave us the corporate wellness seminar, the “personal brand,” and the company Slack channel that feels like a dystopian high school.

This is why someone like Lu-Tze matters so much. He isn’t optimized. He isn’t curated. He’s not a brand. He’s just a guy doing what needs doing, outside the spectacle. And that’s why he’s radical.

What we’re seeing is the deep saturation of ideology—not in the old sense of state propaganda or brute censorship, but in a much more insidious form: narrative capture. Capital doesn’t want to stop stories—it wants to own them. And what better way than to write the protagonist as someone whose only real power is to work better within the system?

So rebellion becomes a product feature. The hacker is now a start-up founder. The punk is an influencer. The rogue cop is the best cop. The spy questions authority, but only to save the world on its terms. It’s not that culture stopped telling stories of resistance—it’s that resistance got turned into a genre with a three-act structure and a Disney+ spin-off.

In this environment, every main character is either trauma-forged or professionally competent. They have to be broken, but in a narratively useful way. And most importantly, they must be redeemable by the system. Their inner conflict resolves when they get their badge back, their startup funded, or their team reassembled. 

Catharsis becomes compliance.

Now contrast that with Lu-Tze: the sweeper monk who doesn’t seek attention, who dodges the spotlight, who doesn’t want to be the main character. He refuses the call—not out of fear, but out of understanding. He knows that history is made by people who don’t try to control it. He sweeps. He listens. He waits. And when he acts, he does so without drama.

In a world that’s turned “authenticity” into a monetizable trait and main characters into brand extensions, Lu-Tze is dangerous. He’s not “off the grid” in a performative way—he’s simply free. Free in the oldest and strangest sense: detached, modest, impossible to incentivize. He’s immune to optimization.

This is why Pratchett’s world hits harder now than it did when he wrote it. He saw what was coming—not just the collapse of systems, but the rise of counterfeit freedom, scripted rebellion, and algorithmic individuality. And he offered something better: humility, absurdity, action without ego.

What Pratchett sketches in Thief of Time is not just a witty fantasy about monks tinkering with clocks—it’s a profound meditation on history, time, and agency. If Fukuyama’s “End of History” imagines a world where liberal democracy and capitalism have resolved all major ideological conflicts, then time, in that schema, becomes flat and singular: we’ve arrived, the story is over, and all that remains is management.

This is the world the Auditors dream of. They abhor the messiness of human narratives and long to impose an eternal present, scrubbed clean of desire, error, and surprise. In a way, they are the spiritual children of the End of History thesis—believers in order for its own sake, where time is reduced to quantifiable ticks, a perfect loop with no deviation.

But Pratchett gives us another vision in the Monks of Time. Unlike the Auditors, the Monks understand that time is not a monolith. It is lived unevenly across the world. A grieving village needs more time. A battlefield needs to pause. A moment of epiphany must stretch beyond the confines of the clock. Their work is to redistribute time, not in the cold logic of administration, but in the spirit of care and responsiveness. They are not trying to stop history, nor complete it—they’re trying to keep it humane.

And that is why Lu‑Tze, the humble sweeper, who operates in the cracks of the grand system, understands that the world is not governed by doctrines or end-states, but by small acts of compassion, disruption, and patience. While the Abbot contemplates the eternal in infant form, Lu‑Tze walks the earth, subtly correcting course, never seeking credit. He embodies an ancient truth found in both Zen koans and Marxist critique: that true understanding isn’t about controlling history, but about living rightly within it—even if that means sweeping floors and defying fate in small, absurd, very human ways.

In this framework, Thief of Time becomes a powerful rebuttal to any notion of temporal finality. It’s not just that history hasn’t ended—it’s that history, like time itself, must remain alive, messy, and open to revision.

Mamet

Leave a comment

Alright, listen up. You think this business, this whole damn racket, is some kind of free-for-all? Everyone gets a shot? Bull***t. This ain’t a goddamn playground. But here’s the thing, sunshine – a crowded market is a dead market. We don’t want everyone in the game, flinging elbows and driving down prices. We want scarcity. We want exclusivity.

So, democratize? Forget about it. We’re going to aristocrat-ize this whole damn thing. You heard me right. We’re jacking up the price. Not a little, mind you. We’re talking stratospheric. Prices so high, they’ll make your eyes water and your wallet scream.

We’re talking about a game, a high-stakes game. You want in? You gotta pay to play. We’re jacking up the prices, understand? Not a nickel and dime operation here. We’re talking real money, the kind that talks.

The competition’s a joke. They’re flooding the market with this cheap, flimsy product. We’re selling exclusivity, understand? A badge of honor for those who can afford it. You buy our product, you ain’t just buying a service, you’re buying a piece of the goddamn American Dream.

We’re gonna make the barriers to entry higher than a giraffe’s ass. Regulations? We’ll write our own damn regulations. Permits? Forget about it. You gotta prove you’re a goddamn gladiator, that you can handle the pressure of this game.

But for the chosen few, the winners, the ones who cough up the dough? Oh boy, it’ll be a goddamn paradise. We’re talking top-shelf, white-glove service. The kind of service that makes you feel like a goddamn king. You won’t just be a customer, you’ll be part of the club. The elite. The one percent.

This ain’t about making things easy. This is about weeding out the weaklings. This is about creating a market where the only currency is cold, hard cash. You got the stomach for it? You got the Benjamins? Then step right up. Otherwise, get the hell outta my way.

Now, some chump might ask, “Mamet, won’t that kill your customer base?” Wrong. We’re not catering to the riffraff, the bargain bin brigade. We’re going after the high rollers, the guys who wouldn’t blink at a four-figure price tag for a paperclip. We’re building an aura, a mystique. This product, this service – it won’t just be a thing you buy, it’ll be a badge of honor. A silent scream to the world that says, “I can afford this. You can’t.”

Think about it. You wouldn’t pay a million bucks for a loaf of bread, would you? Of course not. Because it’s bread. But a million-dollar loaf of bread with a gold-plated crust and a side of caviar? Now we’re talking. It’s not about the bread anymore, is it? It’s about the statement.

So, crank up the costs. Make it hurt. Because in this twisted game, pain is profit, and exclusivity is the name of the game. We’re not selling a product, we’re selling an elitist experience. And believe you me, there’s a market for that. A very lucrative one.

<>

Alright, listen up. We’re in the business of, what was it? Coffee shops? Forget the pumpkin spice lattes and the free Wi-Fi for the freelance posers. We’re going upscale. Highfalutin’ upscale. We’re talking single-origin, shade-grown beans that cost more than a two-bit suit.

The name? Grind. No cutesy puns. Just a one-word gut punch. Grind for the grind. You gotta put in the work to afford this joe. Forget the venti caramel macchiatos with a venti sprinkle of entitlement. We’re dealing in espressos served in hand-blown Italian glass. No names on cups. You ain’t special here. You’re just another cog in the caffeine machine.

The barista? Forget the teenagers with the nose rings and the ironic band t-shirts. We’re hiring ex-military. Veterans with laser focus and the ability to steam milk with the precision of a heat-seeking missile. No chit-chat. No weather reports. Just your damn coffee, black as a government SUV and twice as strong.

The seating? Forget the overstuffed armchairs and the communal tables. We’re talking hard wooden chairs, bolted to the floor. No lingering. You get your caffeine fix, you get the hell out. This ain’t a social club. This is a temple to productivity.

The price? Absurd. Extortionate. Enough to make a CEO choke on his stock options. But here’s the twist. We offer a discount. A loyalty program, if you will. But it ain’t based on points or free drinks. It’s based on performance. You bring in a new client, close a deal, hustle your ass off – the price goes down. Fail to perform? The price goes up. We’re in the results business, baby.

This, my friend, is Grind. Coffee for the closers. Not for the dreamers or the dabblers. Just the ruthless, the relentless, the ones who understand that a good cup of joe can fuel an empire. You in? You got the stomach for it? Otherwise, get the hell out of my way.

Motivation

Leave a comment

Motivation in the realist novel tends to be, in Freudian language, “overdetermined”, that is to say, any given action is the product of several drives or conflicts derived from more than one level of the personality; whereas in folk-tale a single cause suffices

Image
Image
Image
Image

Objective, Subjective and Asubjective

Leave a comment

We crave order, a map of the buzzing confusion we call existence. So we dream up these categories: objective, subjective, asubjective. Objective? Pure, unadulterated fact, cold and hard like a chrome thermometer. But is this “temperature” just another code word slapped on the writhing mess of the real? Sure, the reading might be objective, a number on a calibrated scale. But hot or cold? That’s pure subjective juice, baby. Cooked by your own personal wiring.

Then there’s the subjective. The world funnels through your own meat grinder of experience, spitting out a kaleidoscope of interpretations. A movie, one man’s terror trip, another’s laugh riot. The text, a Rorschach dripping with the inkblots of your own psyche. You paint the world with the colors of your own history, turning a neutral movie into a personal horror show.

But “asubjective”? Now that’s a word that sends shivers down your spine. A language virus, mutating beyond the grasp of the single self. Imagine a narrative that shatters, explodes into a million fractured voices, a stream of consciousness with no owner. No “I” to pin it on. Or maybe it’s a language stripped bare, devoid of meaning. Nonsensical elements slither across the page, a narrative maze with no exit. Pynchon, the word-alchemist, might be cooking up this brew, dismantling the meaning factories, leaving you adrift in a sea of ambiguity. that’s a word that slithers out of the shadows. Maybe it’s a place beyond the self altogether. A language that doesn’t give a damn about your feelings. A narrative explodes into a million fractured voices, a stream of consciousness with no owner’s manual. Imagine a kaleidoscope shattering reality into a million fragmented viewpoints. Meaning? A mirage shimmering in the textual desert. This asubjectivity could also be a prankster, the author tossing nonsensical elements and disjointed narratives into the mix, building a labyrinth with no escape.

Objective, subjective, asubjective – just labels slapped on a writhing reality. Remember, language is a virus, a control system. These categories? Just another roach motel, trapping meaning in its sticky grid. So next time you see these words, keep a healthy dose of paranoia handy. Reality’s a lot messier than any label can handle. See, “asubjective” is a shape-shifter, its meaning a constant negotiation. A reminder that even the driest terms are crawling with unexpected complexities.

Polostan

I just finished reading Polostan by Neil Stephenson and I have the same feeling I always have with him. He is a great neo-Victorian. So there’s always the veneer of sci-fi and technology but it’s all seems to me like build on a 19th century Victorian novel or early 20th century Edwardian that has just been found and repurposed to include some sci-fi in it.

His stories often operate like 19th-century Victorian or early 20th-century Edwardian novels in the sense that they are sprawling, detail-laden, and deeply concerned with societal systems. Here’s how this analogy holds up, and why his work feels like historical fiction masquerading as speculative sci-fi:

1. Neo-Victorian Novelistic Scope

Victorian novels were known for their intricate plots, numerous characters, and exploration of society through multiple perspectives. Similarly, Stephenson’s works like Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, and even Snow Crash have an almost Dickensian density. They explore the interplay of economics, technology, and culture, with long digressions that feel more like a 19th-century narrator stepping aside to educate the reader than modern minimalist prose. The “sci-fi veneer” in Stephenson often feels like a tool to explore the same kinds of societal questions Victorians pondered—industrialization, empire, and human ambition.

2. Obsession with Systems

The Victorian novel was often preoccupied with how individuals fit into larger systems—industrial capitalism, colonialism, and moral frameworks. Stephenson takes this preoccupation and maps it onto modern (or speculative) systems of technology, economics, and cryptography. His works are less about characters changing the world than about characters being actors within systems, much like Victorian protagonists navigating social hierarchies or the industrial revolution. Even his technological inventions feel like analogues to Victorian machines—vast, intricate, and often tied to empire-building or commerce.

3. Historical Digressions

Stephenson’s tendency to weave detailed historical asides into his fiction mirrors the exhaustive research and contextualizing that was a hallmark of Victorian literature. The inclusion of real-world history and science in his novels (e.g., Newtonian physics in The Baroque Cycle or WWII cryptography in Cryptonomicon) feels like a modern equivalent to the Victorian novel’s fascination with documenting contemporary advancements, even if just to add texture.

4. Philosophical Underpinnings

Victorian literature often wrestled with the tension between scientific progress and traditional values. Similarly, Stephenson’s works grapple with the tension between humanism and technological determinism. He questions whether technology liberates us or merely recasts old power structures in new guises—a question the Victorians also faced with the telegraph, railroads, and industrial machinery.

5. Characters as Archetypes

Victorian authors often relied on archetypal characters—the ambitious entrepreneur, the eccentric scientist, the intrepid explorer. Stephenson does something similar, crafting protagonists who are less about individual psychology and more about embodying roles within a system. These characters, while vivid, often feel like players in a broader societal drama rather than deeply intimate individuals.

6. Edwardian Elegance Meets Futurism

Stephenson’s prose style has a polish that often evokes Edwardian elegance. His dialogues and descriptions could almost fit into an E.M. Forster novel, were it not for the futuristic context. This creates a fascinating dissonance, where his language anchors the reader in a kind of “old world” while his ideas push toward a speculative future.

7. The Repurposing of the Past

Your notion that his work feels like an old novel “found and repurposed” with sci-fi elements is particularly apt. Much like how steampunk retrofits Victorian aesthetics with speculative technology, Stephenson retrofits Victorian and Edwardian narrative structures with contemporary or futuristic ideas. It’s as though he’s rewriting Bleak House with blockchain or Middlemarch with metaverses—not erasing the past, but layering the future over it.

CLASS

Neal Stephenson’s work can be seen as riffing on Victorian tropes, particularly those about class and societal hierarchy, but reimagined through the lens of cyberpunk, steampunk, or even “cryptopunk.” Below is a list of Victorian tropes and how they’re repurposed in Stephenson’s work:

1. The Self-Made Man

Victorian Context: The rise of industrialism gave birth to the myth of the industrious, self-made entrepreneur who could ascend social classes through ingenuity and hard work (e.g., characters in Dickens or Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help).

Stephenson’s Twist: The self-made man becomes the coder, hacker, or engineer, wielding technological skill to carve out a place in a tech-dominated hierarchy. Examples include Hiro Protagonist (Snow Crash) and Randy Waterhouse (Cryptonomicon), who gain status not through inherited wealth but through their mastery of systems.

2. The Eccentric Genius

Victorian Context: Eccentric inventors or scientists, like Dr. Frankenstein or Verne’s Professor Aronnax, who push the boundaries of human knowledge but are alienated by their obsession.

Stephenson’s Twist: The eccentric genius becomes the hacker, cryptographer, or entrepreneur (e.g., Lawrence Waterhouse in Cryptonomicon or Eliza in The Baroque Cycle). These figures are often both admired and socially isolated, embodying a digital-age take on Victorian intellectual elitism.

3. Class As Destiny

Victorian Context: Social class defines one’s opportunities, behavior, and societal role, with clear boundaries between aristocracy, middle class, and working poor.

Stephenson’s Twist: Social class is recast as access to technology and information. In Snow Crash, the division is between corporate citizens and those left behind in a fragmented society, with “information class” characters like Hiro Protagonist juxtaposed against the technologically disenfranchised masses.

4. The Grand Institution

Victorian Context: Massive institutions like Parliament, the British Empire, or the Church loom large, dictating societal order and individual roles.

Stephenson’s Twist: Institutions are reimagined as tech conglomerates, cryptographic orders, or emergent networks. The MetaCops and Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong (Snow Crash) act as dystopian updates of Victorian empire-building, where institutions both empower and exploit their members.

5. Industrialization and Its Discontents

Victorian Context: The tension between the promise of industrial progress and its human cost, as depicted in works like Dickens’ Hard Times.

Stephenson’s Twist: Industrialization is replaced by the digital revolution or blockchain economies. His works explore the human cost of technological acceleration, whether through corporate dystopias in Snow Crash or cryptographic empires in Cryptonomicon.

6. The Adventurer and Explorer

Victorian Context: The empire-builder or scientific explorer, often motivated by the promise of discovery and expansion (e.g., Burton, Livingstone).

Stephenson’s Twist: Characters like Jack Shaftoe (The Baroque Cycle) or Dodge Forthrast (Fall; or, Dodge in Hell) take on the role of digital adventurers, exploring uncharted technological or virtual territories with the same bravado as colonial explorers.

7. The Governess and Other Marginal Figures

Victorian Context: Marginalized figures like governesses or orphans provide a lens to critique class and power structures (e.g., Jane Eyre).

Stephenson’s Twist: Marginalized figures become hackers, freelancers, or rogue agents operating on the edges of society. Eliza (The Baroque Cycle) is a prime example, a woman using her wit and guile to navigate male-dominated cryptographic and economic worlds.

8. The Moral Panic

Victorian Context: Fears of social decay or moral decline, often tied to urbanization, industrialization, or vice (e.g., Gothic horror and penny dreadfuls).

Stephenson’s Twist: The moral panic becomes techno-panic: fears of AI, corporate dystopias, and loss of privacy. The fractured world of Snow Crash reflects anxieties about technology leading to societal collapse.

9. The Mysterious Secret Society

Victorian Context: Shadowy groups like the Freemasons or secret cabals that manipulate society from behind the scenes.

Stephenson’s Twist: Secret societies are recast as cryptographic networks, guilds, or hacker collectives. The Eaters of Souls (The Baroque Cycle) and organizations in Cryptonomicon play similar roles, driving intrigue and conspiracy in a tech-dominated world.

10. The Omnipotent Tycoon

Victorian Context: Wealthy industrialists like Mr. Bounderby in Hard Times, who wield economic power as a substitute for nobility.

Stephenson’s Twist: The tycoon becomes the tech billionaire or corporate CEO, exemplified by figures like L. Bob Rife (Snow Crash), who control both wealth and the flow of information in a hyper-corporatized world.

11. Social Mobility Through Marriage

Victorian Context: Marriage as a tool for social mobility, particularly for women (e.g., Pride and Prejudice).

Stephenson’s Twist: Marriage is replaced by alliances and mergers within tech ecosystems. Romantic relationships in Stephenson’s work often mirror partnerships in business or cryptographic alliances, emphasizing transactional dynamics.

12. Urban Overcrowding and Squalor

Victorian Context: The depiction of urban poverty and slums, as seen in Dickens or Gaskell, highlighting the dehumanizing effects of industrialization.

Stephenson’s Twist: The urban squalor of Victorian London is mirrored in the virtual sprawl of the Metaverse (Snow Crash) or the chaos of globalized societies where technology exacerbates inequality rather than alleviating it.

13. Scientific Optimism vs. Hubris

Victorian Context: The belief in progress tempered by cautionary tales about overreaching (e.g., The Time Machine or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).

Stephenson’s Twist: His work often celebrates technological ingenuity but questions whether humanity is equipped to handle the consequences, creating a dialogue between optimism and dystopian caution.

Neal Stephenson’s work feels like a 19th-century novel updated to CryptoPunk, with the underlying hardware of Victorian storytelling intact but running on a new software layer of tech and futurism. What sets Stephenson apart is his seeming rejection of many of the stylistic and thematic innovations brought by 20th-century science fiction, as they would undermine the deliberate structure of his neo-Victorian storytelling. Here’s a deeper exploration of the hardware-software analogy and the sci-fi tropes Stephenson avoids because of his Victorian outlook:

The Hardware: Victorian Storytelling

1. Elaborate Structure:

Victorian novels are sprawling, with interlocking subplots and a sense of encyclopedic scope. Stephenson mirrors this with dense, layered storytelling that prioritizes explaining systems (cryptography, economics) over fast-moving plots.

2. Didacticism:

Like Dickens or George Eliot, Stephenson often pauses the narrative to explain technical, historical, or philosophical concepts, making his works as much about education as entertainment. His “info dumps” are akin to a Victorian narrator stepping in to teach morality, science, or etiquette.

3. Characters as Cogs in Larger Machines:

Victorian characters often serve as vehicles for exploring larger societal forces, whether industrialization, class struggles, or empire-building. Similarly, Stephenson’s protagonists tend to embody broader themes (the hacker as hero, the cryptographer as revolutionary) rather than being psychologically intricate individuals.

4. Social Hierarchies and Systems:

Victorian novels are deeply preoccupied with class and societal order. Stephenson retains this focus but shifts it to the hierarchies of power created by technology and information. The new aristocracy in his novels is made up of hackers, programmers, and CEOs.

5. Moral Progress through Knowledge:

Victorian novels often link knowledge and education to moral progress, a theme Stephenson embraces. His works suggest that understanding complex systems (whether through cryptography or history) is key to personal and societal advancement.

The Software: CryptoPunk and Tech Futurism

Stephenson updates Victorian tropes by replacing the coal, steam engines, and telegraphs of the 19th century with blockchain, AI, and the Metaverse. Yet the spirit of the Victorian world—its hierarchies, its systems, and its belief in progress—remains intact. His use of CryptoPunk as a framework feels like an organic evolution of steampunk, replacing brass and clockwork with code and algorithms.

The Sci-Fi Hardware He Doesn’t Use

Here’s where the comparison gets even more interesting. Stephenson avoids many 20th-century sci-fi tropes and stylistic innovations because they clash with his Victorian sensibilities. These are the “missing” elements that define his unique approach:

1. Streamlined Narrative Efficiency:

The Golden Age of sci-fi (Asimov, Heinlein) and later works from the New Wave (Ballard, Delany) often embraced lean, efficient storytelling. Stephenson rejects this entirely, preferring the Victorian sprawl of side quests, digressions, and multi-threaded narratives.

2. Character-Driven Emotional Intimacy:

20th-century sci-fi increasingly focused on exploring characters’ internal landscapes (e.g., Ursula K. Le Guin or Philip K. Dick). Stephenson’s characters are far more functional, resembling Victorian archetypes (the entrepreneur, the adventurer, the scientist) rather than psychologically intricate beings.

3. Cosmic Awe and Existential Dread:

Modern sci-fi often delves into the sublime terror of the unknown (Lovecraftian horror, alien incomprehensibility, or posthuman singularities). Stephenson rarely traffics in this kind of existential dread. His focus is on human agency within systems, not the overwhelming indifference of the cosmos.

4. Postmodern Fragmentation:

Many 20th-century sci-fi authors, influenced by postmodernism, embraced non-linear narratives, unreliable narrators, and meta-commentary (e.g., Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren or William Gibson’s Neuromancer). Stephenson prefers the clear, authoritative narrator of the Victorian tradition, grounding his stories in meticulous order.

5. Alien Encounters:

While aliens are a staple of 20th-century sci-fi, they’re almost entirely absent in Stephenson’s work. Victorian literature rarely dealt with extraterrestrials; its focus was on humans and their immediate world. For Stephenson, the “alien” is often represented metaphorically as technological systems or cultural differences.

6. Utopian or Dystopian Extremes:

20th-century sci-fi frequently explores utopias (Iain M. Banks) or dystopias (Orwell, Huxley). Stephenson’s societies tend to occupy a messy middle ground, resembling Victorian societies in their simultaneous optimism about progress and cynicism about its side effects.

7. Psychological or Cybernetic Augmentation:

While many 20th-century sci-fi authors explored altered states of consciousness or cybernetic enhancement (e.g., The Matrix, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Stephenson tends to stick to external technologies like the Metaverse or blockchain systems, keeping the human mind “unaltered” and Victorian in its sensibility.

8. Focus on War and Militarization:

Military sci-fi, from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers to modern space operas, often foregrounds the spectacle of war. While Stephenson acknowledges conflict, his focus is on economics, trade, and technology as the true engines of power—a very Victorian concern.

9. Deconstruction of Progress:

Cyberpunk authors like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling deconstructed the very notion of “progress,” showing technology as a tool for exploitation rather than liberation. Stephenson, in contrast, retains a Victorian belief in progress, even as he critiques its unintended consequences.

10. Artificial Intelligence as an Independent Force:

Many 20th-century sci-fi works treat AI as an autonomous, often antagonistic entity (e.g., HAL-9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Stephenson rarely presents AI this way; his AIs and algorithms are tools, extensions of human systems, not alien forces reshaping the world.

Neal Stephenson’s work feels less like a descendant of 20th-century science fiction and more like a mutation of the 19th-century Victorian novel. By rejecting many sci-fi tropes that emerged in the 20th century, he preserves the aesthetic and thematic DNA of the Victorian era, retooled with the coding and networks of CryptoPunk. This gives his work its distinctive flavor—a sense of futurism built on the bones of an older world, where class, systems, and progress reign supreme. In this way, Stephenson’s novels feel like a kind of time machine themselves: an elegant Victorian artifact running the algorithms of the future.

Neal Stephenson’s characters—and the worlds they inhabit—often feel untouched by the profound philosophical, literary, and cultural shifts of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as postmodernism, structuralism, and existentialism. It’s as though those seismic changes never happened in his intellectual universe, leaving behind trope-laden characters and plots that resonate more with Victorian ideals than with the complexities of modern and contemporary thought.

Here’s how this plays out:

Victorian Archetypes in Modern Guise

Stephenson’s characters are often archetypal—engineered to serve the machinery of the plot and theme rather than being messy, psychologically nuanced individuals. This is a hallmark of 19th-century storytelling, where characters represent societal roles or ideals, such as:

• The Ingenious Inventor/Entrepreneur: A modern iteration of the Victorian industrialist, these are Stephenson’s coders, cryptographers, and tech disruptors. They embody the Victorian faith in individual ingenuity and progress.

(e.g., Daniel Waterhouse in The Baroque Cycle or Randy Waterhouse in Cryptonomicon)

• The Heroic Explorer: Borrowed from the Victorian fascination with imperial adventurers, Stephenson’s characters boldly chart new technological or conceptual territories, often with a sense of inevitability about their success.

• The Lady of Substance: While some of his female characters break free of traditional gender roles, they often remain defined by their function in the story, much like Victorian heroines.

These characters are detached from the postmodern ethos, which would demand a critique of their archetypal nature or subvert the very notion of heroism. Instead, they operate in a universe where their “role” feels preordained, untouched by the existential doubts that might plague a character in 20th-century literature.

Detachment from 20th-Century Philosophies

Stephenson’s narratives seem oblivious to the intellectual revolutions of the 20th century, creating a sense of anachronism.

Postmodernism (Rejected)

• Postmodernism dismantled the idea of objective truths and meta-narratives, yet Stephenson’s worlds often uphold grand systems (cryptography, economics, technology) as coherent and explainable.

• Where postmodernist sci-fi writers like Philip K. Dick explored fractured realities and unreliable narrators, Stephenson’s work is resolutely linear and authoritative. Even when he presents a “messy” system, it feels ultimately solvable, as if order will triumph in the end.

Structuralism (Absent)

• Structuralism asks how meaning is constructed within systems, often undermining the individual’s ability to shape their destiny. Stephenson, however, places individuals like coders or entrepreneurs at the center of his stories, suggesting they can master and remake systems, echoing a Victorian belief in agency and progress.

Existentialism (Ignored)

• Existentialism focuses on the absurdity of existence and the lack of inherent meaning, yet Stephenson’s characters rarely grapple with these questions. Instead, they find purpose in technology, progress, or their roles within grand narratives.

• A true existential crisis would clash with Stephenson’s Victorian-like faith in rationality, order, and human ingenuity.

Trope-y Characters as a Byproduct

By skipping over 20th-century literary and philosophical innovations, Stephenson’s characters often feel disconnected from modern realities:

1. Simplistic Worldviews:

Characters often reflect clear-cut beliefs about progress, technology, or the value of systems. This simplicity feels dated, especially in contrast to the ambiguity and moral complexity demanded of 20th- and 21st-century characters.

2. Overreliance on Expertise:

Characters are often defined by their technical expertise or competence within a system. This aligns with Victorian ideals of the industrious individual but feels reductive in an era that values emotional and psychological complexity.

3. Lack of Internal Conflict:

Many of Stephenson’s characters lack the existential struggles or postmodern self-awareness that would make them feel truly contemporary. They tend to solve external problems rather than confronting internal crises.

Detached from the 20th and 21st Century

This anachronism is most striking in the way Stephenson approaches society and technology:

• Social Progress as a Linear Path:

Victorian novels often framed progress as inevitable and unidirectional—a belief that persisted in Stephenson’s techno-utopian outlook. The messy, fragmented realities of modern geopolitics, social inequality, or climate crisis rarely unsettle his narratives to the same degree.

• Technology as Savior, Not Symptom:

Unlike cyberpunk, which views technology as a double-edged sword exacerbating human flaws, Stephenson often frames technology as a means to solve systemic problems. His Victorian optimism about innovation feels detached from the skepticism of modern sci-fi.

• Timeless Elites:

His worlds often feature new aristocracies, formed by the tech-savvy or intellectually elite. These hierarchies reflect Victorian class dynamics more than modern critiques of inequality or intersectionality.

The Victorian Underpinnings of CryptoPunk

CryptoPunk as a genre embodies Stephenson’s neo-Victorian ethos:

• The “punk” elements (anarchism, anti-establishment themes) are muted or abstracted, much as Victorian novels dealt with disruption through controlled narratives.

• The fascination with rules and systems mirrors Victorian preoccupations with industrialism and bureaucracy, recast in the language of cryptography and blockchain.

Conclusion

By skipping over the transformative philosophies of the 20th century, Stephenson’s work feels like a time capsule—a Victorian artifact dressed up in tech futurism. His characters, detached from the messy realities of the modern world, inhabit a universe governed by systems, order, and progress. While this gives his work its distinctive style, it also creates a peculiar dissonance, as though we’re reading a reformatted 19th-century novel that remains oddly aloof from contemporary thought and emotion.

Revisiting Vietnam

Leave a comment

Research Grant Proposal: Revisiting Vietnam: Exploring the Parapsychological Labyrinth of a Humphrey Triumph Over Nixon, Impeded by Kaleidoscopic Counterculture and Fellow Travelers in the Fog

Authored by: Mortimer M. Muddle

Sponsored by:

  • The Rand Corporation
  • In harmonious collaboration with:
    • The Dewey Cheetam and Howe Foundation (champions of fringe mathematics and heretofore unknown strategic theorems)
    • The Lionel Fumble & Errington Blunder Foundations (dedicated to the unbiased analysis of unconventional historical turning points, however improbable)

Abstract:

The specter of Vietnam looms large in the American psyche. This proposal seeks to revisit that pivotal moment in history, venturing into the uncharted territory of “what-ifs.” We posit a reality where Hubert Humphrey, not Richard Nixon, ascended to the Oval Office in 1968. Through meticulous archival research, veteran interviews, and a liberal dose of speculative fiction, this project will explore the hypothetical success of a Humphrey presidency in navigating the treacherous waters of the Vietnam War.

However, our investigation won’t be a victory march. The counterculture movement, awash in a potent cocktail of reefer madness and communist fellow travelers (or fellow feelers, depending on the source), will undoubtedly pose a significant challenge to Humphrey’s war efforts. Imagine, if you will, legions of tie-dye clad protestors camped outside the White House, their flower power a potent (if somewhat pungent) symbol of dissent.

This grant proposal delves into the heart of a paradox: a Democratic president waging war while facing fierce opposition from the very base that propelled him to victory. Humphrey, a man known for his folksy charm and progressive ideals, will be forced to walk a tightrope – maintaining public support for the war effort while placating a restless, war-weary generation.

President Hubert Humphrey, a man of enigmatic charisma and political unorthodoxy, would have steered the United States down a divergent path in the Vietnam conflict. This research posits that Humphrey, possessing an uncanny ability to intuit the burgeoning anti-war sentiment, would have implemented a more nuanced and psychedelically tinged approach to the conflict.

Methodology:

  • Phase One: The Road Not Taken –
  • We will delve into the archives of the counterculture, meticulously combing through dog-eared copies of the The Whole Earth Catalog, lysergic-acid addled underground newspapers, and the whispered confessions of those who wandered the Haight-Ashbury in paisley vests and bell-bottoms.
  • We propose a series of interviews with key figures of the era, including those rumored to possess extrasensory perception and the ability to commune with the cosmic weather patterns. Through these interviews, we hope to glean insights into the potential for a more telepathic brand of diplomacy – a crucial element in a Humphrey-led Vietnam strategy.
  • Utilizing cutting-edge (and some would say, heretical) mathematical modeling techniques pioneered by the Dewey Cheetam and Howe Foundation, we will attempt to simulate the trajectory of the war under a President Humphrey. These models will incorporate factors both tangible ( troop movements, logistical constraints) and intangible (fluctuations in the national mood, the waxing and waning of the counterculture’s influence).
  • Phase Two: Alternate History, Alternate Reality – Here, we enter the realm of the hypothetical. Through a combination of historical analysis and fictionalized narratives, we will explore how Humphrey might have prosecuted the war – from troop escalations (or perhaps de-escalations?) to diplomatic overtures (both genuine and veiled). Veterans, haunted by the jungles of Southeast Asia and the jungles of bureaucracy back home, will spill their guts on tape recorders powered by smuggled army batteries. We’ll track down the high priestesses and priests of the counterculture – poets with handlebar mustaches and oracles clad in tie-dye, all dispensing wisdom both profound and utterly baked.
  • Phase Three: The Hippie Hydra – Grant us the green, man, the folding green of the Man Himself, and we shall delve into the pulsating, paisley heart of the Hippie Hydra! This beast with a thousand beaded heads, each spewing incense and invective against the War Machine, shall be our quarry. We’ll chase down the ghosts of protest marches, where flowers bloomed from cobblestones and tear gas hung heavy in the air like bad vibes at a Grateful Dead show. We’ll infiltrate draft dodger communes nestled deep in redwood forests, their inhabitants fueled by lentil soup and righteous anger. Propaganda leaflets, more lysergic than legible, will be our Rosetta Stone, deciphering the cryptic language of revolution scrawled across college campuses. We’ll emerge, blinking in the harsh light of reality, with a kaleidoscopic portrait of the domestic resistance, a testament to the power of flowers, folk music, and sheer, unadulterated weirdness in the face of the military-industrial complex.

Challenges and Anticipated Roadblocks:

  • The sheer imponderability of the concept itself. The butterfly effect of a Humphrey presidency is enough to induce metaphysical vertigo.
  • The potential for obfuscation by those forces, both domestic and foreign, who may have benefited from the historical reality of a Nixon victory. We anticipate encountering a labyrinth of misinformation, strategically placed red herrings, and the whispers of shadowy figures lurking at the fringes of the political spectrum (and possibly other dimensions).
  • The inherent skepticism of the academic community towards methodologies that embrace the paranormal and the downright peculiar. However, we are confident that the potential benefits of this research outweigh the scoffs of the unenlightened.

Deliverables:

  • The culmination of this odyssey will be a multifaceted exploration of this hypothetical past. We envision a monograph titled “The Acidified Dove: Humphrey’s Vietnam and the Triumph of Tie-Dye Diplomacy,” a documentary film (working title: “Ho Chi Minh on Haight Street”), and, for the truly adventurous, an immersive virtual reality experience that places the participant squarely in the midst of a clash between Pentagon brass and polychromatic protesters.
  • The final report will be a multimedia extravaganza, incorporating not only traditional text and charts, but also elements of jazz poetry, documentary collage filmmaking (think Ken Kesey on a bender with a Bolex), and – if funding permits – a holographic simulation of the key turning points of the Humphrey-era Vietnam War.
  • A public symposium featuring veterans, historians, and (if budgetary constraints allow) a representative from the counterculture movement, fostering a lively discussion on the Vietnam War and the legacies of Humphrey and Nixon.

Conclusion:

This research project is not merely an academic exercise. By revisiting Vietnam through the lens of a Humphrey presidency, we gain a deeper understanding of the war’s complexities and the enduring impact on American society. The specter of the “hippie menace” serves as a stark reminder of the domestic challenges faced by wartime leaders. Ultimately, this project aspires to illuminate the murky crossroads of war, dissent, and the American character.

RONALD KNOX’S TEN COMMANDMENTS OF DETECTIVE FICTION

Leave a comment

broadcaster, Charles Williams, Chinaman, crime, criminal, detective fiction, essayist, evil mastermind, John Buchan, mystery, priest, Ronald Knox, Stephen King, theologian, translator, Uncategorized, Watson

Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (17 February 1888 – 24 August 1957) was an English priest, theologian and author of detective stories. He was also a writer and a regular broadcaster for BBC Radio. Knox went to Eton College, England, and went on to win several scholarships at Balliol College, Oxford. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1912 and was appointed chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford, but he left in 1917 upon his conversion to Catholicism. In 1918 he was ordained a Catholic priest.
In addition to being a Catholic priest, theologian, broadcaster, essayist and translator, he also wrote six popular novels in the detective fiction genre. Knox was a student of this particular form of literature and, typical of his astute and powerfully analytical brain, he came up with his own Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction. Here they are:

Far out, man. So, this dude Ronald Knox, a priest with a taste for puzzles it seems, lays down these ten commandments for detective fiction back in the twenties. Like some paranoid manifesto crossed with a rulebook for a particularly baroque board game. We’re talking full-on labyrinthine here, where the reader gets sucked into this Escher-esque world along with the jaded detective and his cast of weirdos.

First off, forget about some shadowy stranger rolling into town and offing the local gentry. The perp has gotta be someone we’ve already bumped into, someone who’s been hanging around the edges of the narrative. None of this deus ex machina crap. Knox wants the whole sordid affair to feel inevitable, like a slow burn fuse leading to a messy explosion. Though, truth be told, Agatha Christie broke that rule with that whole Roger Ackroyd thing and came out smelling like roses. But hey, she was Agatha Christie, she could probably write a grocery list and make it a bestseller.

Second, this ain’t no ghost story. No spectral cowboys or haunted mansions. We’re dealing with the here and now, the grit under your fingernails. The world may be a carnival of mysteries, but this is a detective novel, not a fever dream. Though some cats, like Stephen King, have blurred the lines pretty effectively. Maybe it’s because whodunits can feel a little too pat sometimes, like the solution is rigged from the start.

Third, forget about secret passages and hidden rooms. This ain’t a gothic potboiler. Knox wants the whole investigation to play out on the surface, like a game of chess where all the pieces are laid bare. The fun comes from following the logic, the tangled web of connections that lead to the killer. It’s about the mental chase, not some architectural surprise.

Fourth, no weird, off-the-wall poisons or outlandish contraptions. This ain’t a James Bond flick. The death has gotta be something plausible, something that could exist on this weird, messed up plane we call reality. John Buchan tried to pull a fast one with some contraption in “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” but it felt clunky, like a forced plot twist.

Fifth, well, this one hasn’t aged well. Seems Knox had a bit of a blind spot when it came to the whole “Yellow Peril” thing. Apparently, Chinese characters were all the rage as the villain du jour back then. Thankfully, that stereotype feels pretty stale today.

Sixth, no lucky breaks for the detective, no sudden flashes of intuition. The reader deserves a shot at cracking the case too. Coincidences and hunches are a cop-out, a way to yank the rug out from under the reader. It’s gotta be a fair fight, a battle of wits between the detective, the reader, and the killer.

Seventh, the detective can’t be the one who did it. That would be a narrative dead end. These detective novels are supposed to be series, these recurring characters the reader can latch onto. If the hero turns out to be the villain, then the whole thing falls apart. Sure, detectives can have their demons, their dark sides, but they can’t be full-blown murderers.

Eighth, this one’s a bit of a head-scratcher. Knox wants the reader to have access to all the clues, but the author also needs some room to maneuver. Planting clues organically, through offhand remarks or seemingly insignificant details, is key. The reader should be aware of the clues, but not necessarily their meaning within the grand puzzle.

Ninth, Watson, the ever-faithful sidekick, has to be a bit of a dim bulb. He’s there to highlight the detective’s brilliance, to ask the questions the reader is asking, and to keep track of the investigation’s progress. His limited intellect gives the reader a sense of superiority, the satisfaction of being one step ahead of the game.

Tenth, twins and doppelgangers? Played out, man. A lazy trick for a lazy writer. Even if the author foreshadows the existence of a double, the reveal feels like a cheap shot. The whole point is the slow, suspenseful unraveling, not some gotcha moment at the end.

So there you have it, Knox’s Ten Commandments. A tangled web of rules and restrictions, all in the name of the perfect detective puzzle. Whether they hold up today is another story entirely, but they do offer a glimpse into the minds that built these intricate worlds of crime and suspicion.

The detective story is a game. It is more–it is a sporting event. And the author must play fair with the reader. He can no more resort to trickeries and deceptions and still retain his honesty than if he cheated in a bridge game. He must outwit the reader, and hold the reader’s interest, through sheer ingenuity. For the writing of detective stories there are very definite laws–unwritten, perhaps, but none the less binding: and every respectable and self-respecting concocter of literary mysteries lives up to them.
​
Herewith, then, is a sort of Credo, based partly on the practice of all the great writers of stories, and partly on the promptings of the honest author’s inner conscience. To wit:

  1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.
    ​
  2. No willful tricks or deceptions may be played on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself.
  3. There must be no love interest in the story. To introduce amour is to clutter up a purely intellectual experience with irrelevant sentiment. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar.
  4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It’s false pretenses.
  5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions–not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker.
  6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic.
  7. There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader’s trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded. Americans are essentially humane, and therefore a tiptop murder arouses their sense of vengeance and horror. They wish to bring the perpetrator to justice; and when “murder most foul, as in the best it is,” has been committed, the chase is on with all the righteous enthusiasm of which the thrice gentle reader is capable.
  8. The problem of the crime must be solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic séances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio.
  9. There must be but one detective–that is, but one protagonist of deduction–one deus ex machine. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader, who, at the outset, pits his mind against that of the detective and proceeds to do mental battle. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn’t know who his co-deductor is. It’s like making the reader run a race with a relay team.
  10. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story–that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest. For a writer to fasten the crime, in the final chapter, on a stranger or person who has played a wholly unimportant part in the tale, is to confess to his inability to match wits with the reader.
  11. Servants–such as butlers, footmen, valets, game-keepers, cooks, and the like–must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. It is unsatisfactory, and makes the reader feel that his time has been wasted. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person–one that wouldn’t ordinarily come under suspicion; for if the crime was the sordid work of a menial, the author would have had no business to embalm it in book-form.
  12. There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature.
  13. Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story. Here the author gets into adventure fiction and secret-service romance. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance, but it is going too far to grant him a secret society (with its ubiquitous havens, mass protection, etc.) to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds in his jousting-bout with the police.
  14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. For instance, the murder of a victim by a newly found element–a super-radium, let us say–is not a legitimate problem. Nor may a rare and unknown drug, which has its existence only in the author’s imagination, be administered. A detective-story writer must limit himself, toxicologically speaking, to the pharmacopoeia. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bounds of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure.
  15. The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent–provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the explanation for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solution had, in a sense, been staring him in the face–that all the clues really pointed to the culprit–and that, if he had been as clever as the detective, he could have solved the mystery himself without going on to the final chapter. That the clever reader does often thus solve the problem goes without saying. And one of my basic theories of detective fiction is that, if a detective story is fairly and legitimately constructed, it is impossible to keep the solution from all readers. There will inevitably be a certain number of them just as shrewd as the author; and if the author has shown the proper sportsmanship and honesty in his statement and projection of the crime and its clues, these perspicacious readers will be able, by analysis, elimination and logic, to put their finger on the culprit as soon as the detective does. And herein lies the zest of the game. Herein we have an explanation for the fact that readers who would spurn the ordinary “popular” novel will read detective stories unblushingly.
  16. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no “atmospheric” preoccupations. Such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action, and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude; but when an author of a detective story has reached that literary point where he has created a gripping sense of reality and enlisted the reader’s interest and sympathy in the characters and the problem, he has gone as far in the purely “literary” technique as is legitimate and compatible with the needs of a criminal-problem document. A detective story is a grim business, and the reader goes to it, not for literary furbelows and style and beautiful descriptions and the projection of moods, but for mental stimulation and intellectual activity–just as he goes to a ball game or to a cross-word puzzle. Lectures between innings at the Polo Grounds on the beauties of nature would scarcely enhance the interest in the struggle between two contesting baseball nines; and dissertations on etymology and orthography interspersed in the definitions of a cross-word puzzle would tend only to irritate the solver bent on making the words interlock correctly.
  17. A professional criminal must never be shouldered with the guilt of a crime in a detective story. Crimes by house-breakers and bandits are the province of the police department–not of authors and brilliant amateur detectives. Such crimes belong to the routine work of the Homicide Bureaus. A really fascinating crime is one committed by a pillar of a church, or a spinster noted for her charities.
  18. A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-climax is to play an unpardonable trick on the reader. If a book-buyer should demand his two dollars back on the ground that the crime was a fake, any court with a sense of justice would decide in his favor and add a stinging reprimand to the author who thus hoodwinked a trusting and kind-hearted reader.
  19. The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal. International plottings and war politics belong in a different category of fiction–in secret-service tales, for instance. But a murder story must be kept gem¸tlich, so to speak. It must reflect the reader’s everyday experiences, and give him a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions.
  20. And (to give my Credo an even score of items) I herewith list a few of the devices which no self-respecting detective-story writer will now avail himself of. They have been employed too often, and are familiar to all true lovers of literary crime. To use them is a confession of the author’s ineptitude and lack of originality.
    1. ​Determining the identity of the culprit by comparing the butt of a cigarette left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by a suspect.
    2. The bogus spiritualistic séance to frighten the culprit into giving himself away.
    3. Forged finger-prints.
    4. The dummy-figure alibi.
    5. The dog that does not bark and thereby reveals the fact that the intruder is familiar.
    6. The final pinning of the crime on a twin, or a relative who looks exactly like the suspected, but innocent, person.
    7. The hypodermic syringe and the knockout drops.
    8. The commission of the murder in a locked room after the police have actually broken in.
    9. The word-association test for guilt.
    10. The cipher, or code letter, which is eventually unravelled by the sleuth.

S.S. Van Dine’s Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories

Stuck Inside a Bunker with the Tariff Blues Again

Leave a comment

The stairs creaked beneath my boots as I descended into the bunker, a subterranean shrine to American paranoia. The air was thick with the scent of lard, motor oil, and the unmistakable tang of off-brand cola gone slightly flat. Somewhere in the dim recesses, a radio squawked out a tinny voice—half preacher, half doomsday salesman—preaching the gospel of tariffs and self-reliance.

“Damn shame about the price of Oreos,” my host muttered, lighting a cigarette with the shaky hands of a man who had seen too much daytime television. “But we were ready for this.”

And ready, he was. Floor-to-ceiling stacks of canned Vienna sausages, Velveeta bricks gleaming like gold bars in a vault, gallon drums of mayonnaise arranged with near-religious devotion. He kicked open a plastic tub labeled EMERGENCY RATIONS—inside, a sea of bottled ranch dressing, bulk ramen, and enough Moon Pies to outlast civilization itself.

“You got water down here?” I asked, trying to ignore the way the fluorescent light buzzed like a dying hornet.

“Water?” He let out a laugh like a truck misfiring. “Ain’t worried about that. Got plenty of Coke.”

He patted a tower of two-liter bottles like they were old friends. Somewhere deeper in the bunker, a generator growled to life. The man cracked open a can of SPAM with the precision of a surgeon and slid a chunk onto a cracker.

“We’ll ride it out,” he said, chewing solemnly. “America’s been through worse. Hell, my granddaddy lived through the Carter years.”

I took a step back, careful not to disturb the delicate ecosystem of snack cakes and beef jerky that lined the walls like grotesque wallpaper. This wasn’t just survival—it was a vision of the future. A land where commerce had collapsed, but the dream of infinite processed cheese had endured.

Outside, the world might be unraveling, but down here? Down here, the Republic still stood—propped up by Twinkies, canned chili, and the last defiant crackle of a Slim Jim being snapped in two.

“What are you doing for veggies?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. A man with a mayonnaise drum the size of a washing machine isn’t tending a hydroponic lettuce farm.

He squinted at me like I’d just spoken in tongues. “Veggies?” He let the word roll around in his mouth, testing it, suspicious. “Well… got pickles.”

He kicked open another tub—sure enough, floating in a briny abyss were enough pickles to survive a biblical famine. Next to them, cans of creamed corn, green beans cooked to the color of Army surplus, and a suspicious number of cocktail olives.

“Fruit?” I pressed, feeling reckless.

He jerked a thumb toward a lonely stack of canned peaches drowning in syrup thick enough to patch a radiator. “Peach cobbler in a can, brother. That’s dessert and vitamins in one.”

I nodded like this was the gospel truth. Who was I to argue? The man had planned for everything—at least, everything that could be purchased in bulk from a Walmart clearance aisle.

He leaned in, lowering his voice. “If things get real bad… got these.” He reached into a crate and pulled out a pack of Flintstones vitamins, the kind that taste like chalk and childhood neglect. “One of these a day, I’m set.”

A vision flashed in my mind—some post-collapse wasteland where this man, pale from years underground, ruled over the last gasps of humanity with an iron fist and an unlimited supply of gummy vitamins.

“You sure you’re ready for this?” I asked.

He cracked open a warm can of Dr Pepper, took a long, satisfied swig, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Son,” he said, “I been ready since NAFTA.”

I noticed the trapdoor in the corner, half-covered by a stack of government cheese and what looked like a taxidermied raccoon wearing a Make America Great Again hat. It was bolted down with a length of chain and what I could only describe as unnecessary enthusiasm.

“What’s that for?” I asked, knowing damn well I wouldn’t like the answer.

My host exhaled through his nose, shifting uncomfortably in his lawn chair. “Well…” He scratched the back of his neck, eyes darting around the bunker like the walls might betray him. “It’s for the peppers.”

I blinked. “The what?”

“The peppers,” he repeated, nodding. “You ever had a jalapeño that don’t behave? Gets too spicy? Gets ideas? Well, I got a place for ‘em.” He patted the trapdoor like an old dog. “They cool off down there. Learn their place.”

I took a slow step back. “You have a cell for insubordinate peppers?”

He shrugged. “You eat a bad one once, you understand. Ain’t takin’ no chances.”

Something deep below us groaned. A low, guttural sound, like a rusted-out Buick trying to start on a cold morning.

I turned to him. “What the hell was that?”

His eyes went dark. “Might be the geek.”

He said it casually, like he was talking about the weather. Just another day in the bunker, keeping mayonnaise fresh and negotiating territorial disputes with Satan.

“The geek.”

“Yeah.” He shifted in his seat. “Man’s gotta have company, don’t he?”

I stared at the trapdoor, at the black gap where the chains didn’t quite meet the wood. The air that seeped through smelled like sulfur and warm root beer.

“You’re telling me you have a geek locked in your bunker, next to a bucket of powdered mashed potatoes?”

He cracked a grin. “Well, I didn’t plan on it, but, you know, these things happen.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “So let me get this straight. You were stocking up for the tariffs, built a bunker, started locking up misbehaving peppers, and at some point—what? You not a tenant ?”

He nodded. “Yeah, ‘bout sums it up.”

There was a scraping noise below. Something shifting in the dark, slow and deliberate, like it knew we were listening.

I took a deep breath. “What does he do”

He hesitated. Just for a second. But I saw it—the flicker of recognition, the shadow of a secret he hadn’t meant to say out loud.

He took a long sip from his now-lukewarm Dr Pepper. “Well,” he said, licking his lips, “depends on what you mean by ‘deal.’”

I shouldn’t have taken those drugs, because things started to get really weird right then. The walls of the bunker, once reassuringly mundane in their suffocating beige, now rippled like they were made of water. The faint hum of the generator was replaced by a low, rhythmic thump, like the heartbeat of the entire goddamn planet—or maybe it was the devil himself, thumping in time with some cosmic snare drum.

The trapdoor creaked open by itself. Slow, deliberate, like a funeral march made of wood and rust.

I tried to focus on my host, who was now staring into the corner, his eyes glazed over, mouth slightly ajar. His hand trembled as he lifted the can of soda to his lips, but it wasn’t Dr Pepper anymore—it was glowing neon green, pulsing with a light that made my retinas burn.

I rubbed my eyes. Maybe the stuff was kicking in. Maybe I had taken too many tabs, but it didn’t explain the shadows stretching unnaturally across the room, twisting like they had minds of their own. Or the muffled screams now echoing from beneath the trapdoor.

“What the hell’s down there?” I rasped, clutching the edge of a shelf as if it might ground me back into some form of reality.

He didn’t answer at first. His eyes twitched, and a thin smile crept onto his face, but it wasn’t the smile of a man at peace. It was the kind of grin you’d expect from someone who had just sold his soul for a lifetime supply of Pickle Juice Energy Drink.

I swallowed hard. The trapdoor was open just a crack, but the air pouring out of it was thick and wrong—hot, metallic, humming like a power line about to snap. Something was moving down there. Something vast and slow, shifting in the dark like a great beast stirring in its sleep.

“What the hell is down there?” I rasped, gripping the shelf to keep myself steady. The bunker suddenly felt too small, like the walls were closing in, like reality itself was starting to fray at the edges.

The MAGA guy—let’s call him Dale, because he looked like a Dale—wiped a thin sheen of sweat from his forehead and leaned in close. His breath reeked of beef jerky and conspiracy. “I think it’s the Chinese,” he whispered.

I blinked. “The Chinese?”

He nodded solemnly. “Oh yeah. The goddamn Chinese.” He exhaled, took a sip of his lukewarm Dr Pepper, and then launched into it like he’d been waiting for someone to ask.

“See, people think the Chinese been buildin’ up their military, right? Thinkin’ they’re gonna come at us with jets, or missiles, or some kinda Red Dawn bullshit. But no. No, no, no. That’s just a distraction. The real plan? They been diggin’, man. Diggin’ for decades.”

I stared at him. “Digging?”

“Yeah.” His eyes darted to the trapdoor, nervous. “Tunnels. Deep ones. They started somewhere outside Beijing, just diggin’ straight down, deeper than any man’s ever gone before. And you know what happens when you dig too deep, don’tcha?”

I nodded, throat dry. “You awaken something.”

“Damn right you do.” Dale’s fingers twitched. “At first, they just wanted to get under the Pacific, see? Sneak up on us from below, pop up in San Francisco one day, all grinnin’ and sayin’ ‘Ni hao, motherfuckers!’ But the thing is… they didn’t stop.”

The trapdoor rattled slightly. A low, grinding noise echoed from below.

“They dug too deep,” Dale whispered. “Kept goin’, past the magma, past the mantle, right through the goddamn core of the earth. And you know where that tunnel comes out?”

I already knew where this was going, but I had to hear him say it.

“Right here,” he hissed, pointing at the floor. “Middle of goddamn America.”

I took a slow step back. “You’re telling me there’s a direct tunnel from China to this bunker?”

I could barely process what I was hearing, but he wasn’t done.

“I seen things, man,” he continued, voice dropping to a near-whisper. “Strange things. Sometimes, late at night, I hear ‘em down there, speakin’ Mandarin real low, tryin’ to copy our voices. Other nights, I hear ‘em eatin’—crunch, crunch, crunch—like they’re gnawin’ on bones or somethin’.”

Something thumped against the trapdoor from below.

Dale jumped, eyes wild. “Jesus Christ, they’re closer than I thought!”

I staggered back, my mind racing. This was beyond paranoia, beyond madness. This was a fever dream of xenophobia, processed snack foods, and too many hours of late-night AM radio.

The trapdoor rattled again, harder this time. Dale grabbed a can of SPAM like it was a weapon. “If they break through, we go to plan B.”

I swallowed. “What’s plan B?”

He locked eyes with me, deadly serious. “We drown ‘em in ranch.”

And that’s when I knew: I had to get the hell out of this bunker.