Category: Fiction

The Bravery Of Being Out Of Range

The air hung thick with the metallic tang of nostalgia and cordite. Elmer, a relic of Reagan’s microwave optimism, fumbled with the ancient beast in his suitcase from a bygone era where Brylcreem ruled and John Wayne reigned supreme. A chrome leviathan, a magnum opus of a bygone era, a phallic monument to simpler times. Inside, nestled in crimson velvet, lay the chrome glint of a magnum – a phallic monument to a masculinity sculpted in Vietnam’s crucible.The Elks Lodge camaraderie echoed in his head, a half-remembered dream overlaid with the flickering desert mirage on the motel TV. John Wayne blasting Comanches, a sanitized past playing on repeat. The air shimmered, a mirage of heat rising off the cracked asphalt. Elmer squinted, his rheumy eyes barely registering the glint of chrome on the table. Nostalgia, a cruel mistress, twisting memories into a Möbius strip of glory days.

A primal urge, a Pavlovian twitch in his finger. He stepped out, the desert a desolate expanse under the bruised sky. The canyon, a vast concrete ear waiting. 

A canyon symphony erupted as Elmer squeezed off a round, a desperate aria against the encroaching silence of obsolescence. The echo bounced off the sunbaked rocks, a mournful lament for a world where cowboys ruled and enemies wore faces, not pixels.

Did the recoil whisper forgotten memories in Elmer’s ear? A phantom limb twitched, a Pynchonesque echo of a jungle firefight, the sweet tang of cordite, the primal thrill of the hunt. But the enemy here was a mirage, a desert chimera conjured by reruns of dusty Westerns and an echo chamber of right-wing screeds. Who, in this desolate wasteland of his own making, deserved the finality of a bullet?

The crack of the magnum, a thunderous report, a cathartic release. But the echo held a hollowness, a dissonance. Upstaged by the manic symphony of a chrome Uzi, a weapon of the future, cold and sterile. A generation gap in the space of a single, deafening moment.

Memories flickered through the haze – a vision of a young Marine, a tableau of blood and sand in some nameless desert. a jarhead sprawled in a heap of rubble, the ghost of Geronimo haunting the steps of a government building, soldiers reduced to pill-popping automatons on a digital battlefield viewed through a drone’s cold, unfeeling eye. A grotesque parody of the John Wayne picture shows plastered across the motel walls. Back in the room, the drone footage flickered on the screen, a detached, voyeuristic gaze. Soldiers, mere pixels popping pills, their faces obscured by the heat shimmer. The enemy, faceless specters on a digital map.

The bravery of being out of range, a sickening oxymoron, a grotesque caricature of heroism played out on flickering screens 3,000 miles away. The bar blurred at the edges, a hazy reflection of a world gone mad. Elmer choked down another shot, the whiskey burning a bitter truth down his throat. The war raged on, a sanitized spectacle on a high-definition screen, a joystick ballet of death with him as a detached puppeteer. The thrill of the kill, a virtual experience, hollowed out by the absence of fear, the stench of cordite, the primal scream ripped from a human throat.

The Elks Lodge echoed in his mind, a faded photograph of camaraderie and cheap beer. The world outside, a kaleidoscope fractured by CNN’s holographic war. Drones buzzed like demented locusts in a Pynchonesque nightmare, their payloads painting the desert a gruesome technicolor. Pills and paranoia fueled the boys on the ground, pawns in a global chess game played with joysticks.

The recoil, a dull thud against his aging body. Did it mimic something primal, a forgotten echo of caveman conquest? Or was it a pathetic whimper, a desperate attempt to reclaim a fading masculinity? The Uzi, a chrome serpent on the table next to it, mocked him with its youth, its rapid-fire promises.

The bravery of being out of range – a hollow prayer whispered into the void, a desperate attempt to cling to a fading masculinity in a world hurtling towards apocalypse. The taste of bile rose in his throat, a bitter counterpoint to the synthetic victory on the screen. He was adrift in a sea of his own making, a relic of a bygone era, his bravado as empty as the desert wind.

The bravery of being out of range, a phrase that tasted like ash in his mouth. A hollow victory fueled by whiskey and CNN’s holographic war. Back in the bar, the TV blared, a cacophony of sanitized explosions. He was a spectator, miles removed, playing God with a joystick in a bloodstained Escherian landscape. The thrill of the kill, a virtual affair, devoid of consequence, a grotesquely postmodern existence.

Was he the hunter, or the hunted? The lines blurred in a Pynchonesque funhouse mirror. The desert wind whispered secrets, stories of the indigenous ghosts that haunted these very sands. Geronimo’s restless spirit seemed to mock him from the Federal Building steps.

The Uzi, a chrome ouroboros, a symbol of a world spiraling out of control. Was it the thrill of the kill, or a desperate attempt to recapture a bygone sense of agency in this digitized dystopia? The question hung heavy in the air, unanswered,lost in the white noise of the television war. He poured another drink, a bitter toast to the bravery of being out of range, a chilling testament to a world gone mad.

He poured himself a shot, the amber liquid burning a path down his throat. The news droned on, the body count a morbid ticker tape. The thrill, a digitized phantom limb, the satisfaction of victory a hollow echo. The bravery of being out of range, a sickening joke, a bloodstained escapade played on a joystick.

Gravity Slam

The mess hall reeked of lukewarm mystery meat and a pervasive sense of millennial ennui. PVT Tyrone Slothrop, a recruit with a name ripped from a forgotten paperback and eyes perpetually glazed over like a malfunctioning VR headset,poked listlessly at his tray. Across from him, Spc. Lester “Ramrod” Rodriguez scrolled through his chem-coated implant,a vapid stream of tactical memes and dubstep remixes of dronestrikes. These weren’t hardened soldiers, they were extras in a forgotten Michael Bay flick, all sculpted physiques and vacant stares.

“Yo, Tyrone,” drawled Ramrod, his voice a bored monotone, “heard we’re deploying to the Sandbox-istan LARP next week. Gonna be epic, brah.”

Slothrop grunted, a flicker of existential dread igniting in his gut. This wasn’t war, it was cosplay for the C-SPAN generation. A meticulously curated battlefield experience, complete with pre-approved bodycam footage and a designated “influencer squad” documenting the whole mess for the masses.

The General, a man whose face resembled a topographical map of Botox injections, strutted across the stage, his polished boots clicking a martial rhythm. His holographic slide deck displayed high-resolution renderings of the enemy combatants – digitized versions of brown men with AK-47s ripped from a dusty archive of Cold War-era propaganda.

“Gentlemen,” the General boomed, his voice a digitized echo, “Operation Desert Dream is a vital step in securing the neoliberal order and ensuring the unfettered flow of… uh… crypto-currency!” Mumbles rippled through the ranks, a collective “huh?” hanging heavy in the air.

Slothrop felt a cold sweat prickle at his scalp. This wasn’t about securing borders or defending freedom. It was about likes, retweets, and maintaining the illusion of perpetual conflict – a reality show gone spectacularly wrong. He was adrift in a Pynchonesque nightmare, a swirling vortex of manufactured heroism and corporate greed disguised as patriotism.

Later, under the bruised fluorescence of the barracks, Slothrop confided in Ramirez, a wiry private with a worn copy of “Gravity’s Rainbow” tucked into his duffel bag. Ramirez, an unlikely literary soul amidst the sea of gung-ho grunts,nodded grimly. “This whole thing’s a fucked up magic show, Slothrop. Smoke and mirrors, a war built on bad data and manufactured consent.”

They sat in silence, the air thick with a shared sense of disillusionment. Outside, a squad of troops practiced their pre-approved battle cries, their voices hollow echoes in the manufactured desert night. War, it seemed, had become the ultimate performance art, a tragic Hollywood LARP with real-world consequences.

<>

They weren’t soldiers, these conscripts fresh out of the megacorporation training programs, these were extras on the world’s most expensive snuff film, unwitting thespians in a drama with a budget bigger than the GDP of a small nation. Their uniforms, a chimera of digitized camo and tactical athleisure, whispered of both battlefield and boardroom. Helmets, transparent and holographic, displayed personalized kill-feeds and enemy silhouettes, a permanent layer of augmented reality that blurred the line between Call of Duty and actual duty.

Faces, sculpted by orthodontia and protein shakes, hid anxieties better suited to student loan debt than IEDs. Muscles, pumped in suburban gyms, strained under the weight of knock-off body armor that reeked more of Hollywood prop house than battlefield.

These were the LARPers of geopolitics, their delusions as meticulously crafted as their tactical gear. Medals, jangling like costume jewelry, whispered promises of valor forged in a desert painted the color of a California sunset. In their minds, they were hopped-up Audie Murphys, existential John Waynes, ready to scrawl their names across the sands of a pre-approved narrative.

They huddled in barracks that resembled IKEA furniture rendered in surplus shipping containers, a beige labyrinth echoing with the drone of mandatory motivational podcasts and the cloying scent of government-issue protein paste. Murmurs of pre-battle jitters mingled with the atonal whine of micro-transactions, soldiers topping up their digital ammo reserves with their remaining service credits. It was a war fought not just for land or resources, but for bragging rights on some hyper-capitalist leaderboard, a celestial scoreboard maintained by a consortium of shadowy defense contractors and energy conglomerates.

The enemy, when they finally met them, were mirror images, equally bewildered extras in this absurdist play. Their uniforms, a different shade of designer digital camo, displayed a rival corporation’s logo, a snarling crimson chimera that seemed to mock the manufactured valor in their eyes. The opening salvos were a cacophony of laser fire and recycled movie quotes, soldiers dropping like marionettes with pre-programmed death throes. The air shimmered with the heat of a thousand micro-transactions, the whirring of servers miles away struggling to keep up with the orchestrated carnage.

But beneath the veneer of digital spectacle, a seed of doubt had been planted. In the quiet moments between skirmishes, amidst the reeking tang of recycled protein bars and spilled synthetic blood, a soldier glimpsed a reflection in his enemy’s visor, a flicker of recognition. Was this some pre-programmed subroutine, a glitch in the matrix of manufactured conflict? Or was it the dawning realization that they were all extras in a lie, dancing to the tune of unseen puppeteers who profited from their pre-programmed demise?

The Hollywood larp sputtered and stalled, the carefully scripted battles dissolving into a confused melee. The lines between victor and vanquished blurred. Was this the long-awaited indie anti-war film, a rebellion against the manufactured conflict they’d been drafted into? Or was it simply another act, another layer of delusion, a self-aware performance piece commissioned by the very corporations that profited from the war in the first place? In the end, the answer was as elusive as the enemy lines themselves, lost in the white noise of a million micro-transactions and the flickering neon of a world perpetually at war, both real and unreal.

<>

Triplicate

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Herbert W. Plinth, the Deputy Assistant Undersecretary for Paperwork Affairs at the Bureau of Red Tape, navigated the labyrinthine corridors of his own department with the weary resignation of a spelunker lost for decades. The air hung heavy with the metallic tang of old filing cabinets and the musky scent of decaying memos. Every surface was mummified in an avalanche of forms, each a cryptic scroll demanding years of arcane knowledge to decipher.

Plinth, a man whose shoulders slumped under the weight of untold regulations, shuffled towards his cubicle, a monument to bureaucratic ennui constructed entirely of unfinished inboxes and overflowing outboxes. A single, fly-specked window offered a view, not of the city, but of a seemingly endless beige wall, a physical manifestation of the stifling conformity that was his life’s work.

A shrill Klaxon pierced the oppressive silence. It was the daily summons to “The Shredding,” a ritual as macabre as any public execution. Plinth joined the shuffling throng, each face etched with the same existential dread. In a cavernous chamber, a maw of gnashing steel teeth awaited, promising oblivion for a lucky few documents deemed “unnecessary.” The selection process, however, remained an enigma, a closely guarded secret held by the high priests of the Bureau, a Kafkaesque elite who communicated only through cryptic memos and nonsensical flowcharts.

Plinth watched, a hollow ache gnawing at his gut, as a teetering stack of forms met their grisly end. Were these the lucky ones, finally free from the purgatory of paperwork? Or was this merely another cruel twist, a performance designed to remind them of the futility of their struggle? He clutched a manila folder marked “URGENT – REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION (BUT SEE PARAGRAPHS 14b & 17c OF REGULATION Z-99)” – a document that had been circling his desk for a year, its urgency as suspect as its purpose.

As the last shred of paper vanished into the gnashing maw, Plinth shuffled back to his cubicle, the Klaxon’s echo a haunting reminder of the Sisyphean nature of his task. Here, amidst the suffocating embrace of bureaucracy, Herbert W. Plinth, the Deputy Assistant Undersecretary for Paperwork Affairs, would continue his eternal battle, a solitary knight lost in a war against an enemy as formless and relentless as paperwork itself.

A particularly flamboyant tremor shook the building, rattling the fluorescent lights into a strobing frenzy. Plinth, momentarily startled from his paperwork-induced stupor, peered out his window – or rather, the adjacent beige wall that served as his only view. The tremor, a not-uncommon occurrence in the labyrinthine bowels of the Bureau, sent a fresh wave of dust motes swirling through the stale air.

Then, a voice, distorted and crackly, emanated from the ancient intercom system. “Attention all personnel. A Level-C Inconsistency has been detected in Section D, Subsection 14b. All non-essential personnel are to evacuate to designated holding areas. Repeat, all non-essential personnel…” The voice trailed off into a garbled hiss.

Plinth exchanged a bewildered glance with Mildred, the mousy filing clerk across the aisle, whose face had contorted into a mask of bureaucratic terror. A Level-C Inconsistency was a bureaucratic nightmare, a tear in the fabric of regulation that threatened to unravel the very foundation of the Bureau’s order.

Suddenly, the fluorescent lights flickered and died, plunging the department into an oppressive gloom. The only light came from the emergency exit signs, casting an eerie green glow on the overflowing inboxes and teetering stacks of forms. Panic, a rare visitor in these sterile corridors, began to stir. A low murmur rippled through the cubicles, punctuated by the frantic tapping of unseen fingers against keyboards.

Plinth, however, felt a strange sense of calm amidst the chaos. Perhaps, in this moment of bureaucratic breakdown, there was a glimmer of hope, a chance to break free from the stifling grip of red tape. He reached for the manila folder marked “URGENT” – a document that now seemed more symbolic than ever. Maybe, just maybe, this Inconsistency, this tear in the system, was the key to unlocking something more, something beyond the beige walls and endless forms.

With a newfound determination, Plinth shoved back his chair and grabbed his worn trench coat. Mildred, her eyes wide with fear, stammered, “Where are you going, Herbert?”

Plinth offered a tight smile, a hint of rebellion flickering in his usually dull eyes. “Downstairs, Mildred,” he said. “To see what this Inconsistency is all about.” And with that, he stepped out of his cubicle and into the uncharted territory of the Bureau’s underbelly, the weight of countless regulations momentarily forgotten.

Plinth navigated the darkened corridors by muscle memory alone, the emergency exit signs casting long, skeletal fingers across the dusty floor. The air grew thick and stale, the metallic tang replaced by a cloying scent of mildew and forgotten dreams. The hum of fluorescent lights, the lifeblood of the Bureau, was now a distant memory, replaced by an unsettling silence broken only by the echoing drip of a leaky faucet somewhere in the labyrinth.

He descended deeper, each creaking floorboard a stark reminder of the Bureau’s immense, unyielding weight. The occasional frantic scurrying of unseen rats was the only sign of life in this bureaucratic necropolis. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Plinth stumbled upon a massive steel door, its surface pitted and scarred, the paint peeling in grotesque flakes. A single, flickering bulb cast an anemic glow on a worn plaque that read: “Section D, Subsection 14b: Restricted Access.”

Plinth hesitated, his newfound resolve battling with decades of ingrained bureaucratic caution. But the image of Mildred’s terrified face spurred him on. With a deep breath, he reached out and grasped the rusted handle. The door groaned in protest, a metallic shriek that echoed through the emptiness.

The room beyond was a stark contrast to the sterile cubicles above. Here, amidst a chaotic jumble of overturned filing cabinets and shredded documents, a swirling vortex of pure information pulsed in the center of the chamber. Parchment scrolls, ancient and brittle, danced in the aether alongside holographic projections of indecipherable equations. It was a maelstrom of data, a chaotic symphony of every regulation, every form, every forgotten memo that had ever passed through the Bureau’s iron grip.

In the heart of this vortex, a single figure stood transfixed, bathed in the flickering data-light. It was Bartholomew Goose, the Bureau’s enigmatic Director, a man rumored to have memorized every regulation since the dawn of paperwork. His face, usually an impassive mask of bureaucratic authority, was contorted in a mixture of awe and terror.

“Mr. Plinth,” Goose croaked, his voice hoarse. “You shouldn’t be here. This Inconsistency…it threatens the very fabric of order. The system is…re-writing itself.”

Plinth, mesmerized by the swirling vortex, felt a strange sense of liberation. The rules, the regulations, all the suffocating apparatus of the Bureau, seemed to be dissolving in this chaotic dance of information. Perhaps, he thought, this was not an Inconsistency, but an evolution. Perhaps, from the ashes of the old system, something new, something less suffocating, could be born.

As he watched, a new form began to emerge from the data storm – a document unlike any Plinth had ever seen. It shimmered with an otherworldly light, its words shifting and rearranging like a living organism. Goose reached out, a desperate tremor in his hand, then recoiled as the document pulsed with a blinding light.

The room fell silent once more. The vortex had vanished, leaving behind only the single, shimmering document and the two men staring at it with a mixture of trepidation and hope. Plinth, the Deputy Assistant Undersecretary for Paperwork Affairs, had stumbled into the heart of a bureaucratic revolution, and the future of the Bureau, perhaps even the world, hung in the balance.

A bitter laugh escaped Plinth’s lips. The vortex had dissolved, the Inconsistency seemingly contained, but the answer, as always, remained elusive. Bartholomew Goose, ever the bureaucrat, straightened his rumpled tie and cleared his throat.

“Mr. Plinth,” he began, his voice regaining its bureaucratic starch, “while the immediate threat appears neutralized, we must prioritize the preservation of vital records. Therefore, in accordance with Emergency Protocol X-17, sub-section d, paragraph 3…”

Plinth groaned inwardly. Protocol X-17, sub-section d. It mandated the immediate triplication of all affected documents “for safekeeping and redundancy in case of future inconsistencies.” The very thought of tripling the already mountainous paperwork sent a wave of nausea through him.

Goose, oblivious to Plinth’s despair, continued, “Therefore, I am assigning you the critical task of overseeing the document duplication process for Section D, Subsection 14b. Given the…sensitive nature of the recovered materials, utmost discretion is paramount.”

Plinth stared at him, the weight of the manila folder marked “URGENT” suddenly feeling heavier than ever. The revolution, it seemed, would have to wait. Bureaucracy, in all its glorious tedium, had reasserted its dominance.

With a sigh, Plinth straightened his own tie, a soldier resigned to another tour of duty in the trenches of paperwork. The future, it seemed, would remain stubbornly written in triplicate. He turned to leave, the flickering emergency exit sign casting his weary figure in a long, bureaucratic shadow. The fight for a less suffocating world, it seemed, would have to be waged one triplicate form at a time.

It’s all Subjunctive

Oedipoid and vast, the world swam in a subjunctive sea. Every action, a ripple in the pond of potentiality. Was it rain that fell, or merely the memory of rain, a phantom echo from some parallel dimension where skies wept? Perhaps it never rained at all, and the damp chill was a collective delusion, a product of a species forever haunted by the might-have-beens.

We, the stardust-forged marionettes, danced a jerky jig on the stage of existence, strings pulled by unseen hands, or perhaps by the cruel laughter of a god who found amusement in our fumbling attempts at the indicative. Every choice, a forking path leading to a universe unlived. Did the other versions of ourselves, in those unblossomed realities, curse the paths not taken, the loves unrequited, the potential left to rot on the vine?

Or maybe it was all a grand malfunction, a cosmic computer running a faulty program. Perhaps somewhere, a celestial engineer toiled endlessly, desperately trying to patch the code, to nudge reality back into the indicative, the realm of the certain. But for us, adrift in the subjunctive soup, the only certainty was uncertainty itself. We were forever chasing the ghost of a perfect tense, a past that might have been, a future that could yet unravel. It was a maddening waltz, this dance of maybes, a symphony of “ifs” echoing through the caverns of existence.

<>

Oedipoid it might be, this whole “subjunctive” racket. A yearning for a reality that could have been, a universe where verbs shimmered with possibility instead of the blunt, indicative thrust of the everyday. Perhaps, in some parallel dimension, a past tense whispered, “We went to the moon,” while here, on this cracked and anxious Earth, it remained a tense, throbbing “We went to the moon,” forever teetering between triumph and the abyss.

Conspiracy theorists, those fringe dwellers on the map of human discourse, might see a plot, a grand, subjunctive orchestration by unseen forces. The powerful, they’d mutter, rewriting history in the subjunctive, erasing inconvenient truths with a flick of their metaphorical past-tense eraser. Did the Kennedys die, or were they merely erased from a timeline that never quite solidified?

But maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe the subjunctive is the language of dreams, of half-formed desires and anxieties. It’s the voice whispering in the back of your head, “If only I’d taken that other job,” or the primal fear that curdles your stomach, “They might find out.” It’s the chorus of what-ifs that hums beneath the surface of our lives, a counterpoint to the melody of the real.

So next time you find yourself slipping into the subjunctive, don’t dismiss it as a grammatical quirk. It might be a key, a portal to a hidden dimension, or a map of the labyrinthine desires that make you, you. It’s all subjunctive, man, all subjunctive.

<>

Waldo, bleary-eyed from a night spent navigating the byzantine byways of paranoia, squinted at the blinking neon sign: “Subjunctive’s.” A seedy joint, even by the standards of the Yoyodyne Incorporated sprawl. Inside, a haze of cigarette smoke hung heavy, punctuated by the rhythmic thrum of a malfunctioning slot machine. A barkeep with a face like a topographical map wiped down a chipped glass with a sigh that could curdle milk.

“Subjunctive, huh?” he rasped, voice seasoned with regret. “That’d be the life, wouldn’t it? Where everything’s a possibility, a shimmering mirage in the desert of the indicative. But here, friend, it’s all past participle, the echoes of choices not taken bouncing off the walls.”

Waldo nursed a lukewarm beer, the bitter tang a counterpoint to the metallic tang of existential dread. Maybe it was all subjunctive, a vast conspiracy where the present was merely a suggestion, the future a hall of mirrors reflecting infinite “maybes.” Perhaps the whole damn system, from the Yoyodyne rockets to the flickering neon, ran on the subjunctive’s ethereal fuel.

A woman, all elbows and cigarette burns, sidled up to him. Her eyes, glittering with a manic intensity, held a glint of shared paranoia. “They say,” she whispered, voice raspy as a malfunctioning fax machine, “there’s a machine down in the sub-basement. A contraption that can rewrite the subjunctive, bend it to your will. Make the impossible the indicative.”

Intrigue, a flickering ember in Waldo’s soul, began to blaze. Was it a fool’s errand, a descent into a rabbit hole of conspiracies? Or was it a chance to rewrite the script, to escape the subjunctive prison and forge a new reality, indicative and absolute? With a grimace that could have been a smile, Waldo downed his beer. Maybe it was all subjunctive, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t play the game.

Rebellion as Commodity

The PA system crackled in the grimy bus depot, a half-chewed Che Guevara t-shirt blossoming from a forgotten corner advertising “authentic” rebellion for 29.99$. Outside, a neon sign, winking like a cyclopean burnout case, promised “Revolution! Now with a Money-Back Guarantee!” A gaggle of teenagers, their faces a kaleidoscope of ironic mustaches and faux-Molotov cocktails fashioned from empty soda bottles, shuffled past, their rebellion pre-packaged, pre-digested,ready for their carefully curated Insta stories.

The PA system crackled in the grimy bus depot, a carnival barker’s voice shucking ads between the reggae throb. “…and for a limited time only, own your piece of the revolution! That’s right, folks, rebellion’s on sale! We’ve got the whole kit and kaboodle – Molotov cocktails pre-mixed and ergonomically designed, rage pre-packaged in vintage Che Guevara posters, even existential angst by the kilo!”

Randolph, a man whose face resembled a roadmap etched by a particularly sadistic cartographer, scoffed. Rebellion, a commodity? Back in his day, it wasn’t about ironic slogans and vintage band tees. It was the taste of stale bread in a makeshift camp, the paranoid thrill of a whispered message passed in a crowded marketplace, the bone-deep certainty that the Man was watching your every move. It wasn’t a lifestyle choice, a rebellious phase to be shed like a too-tight pair of jeans. It was a baptism by tear gas, a communion of shared dissent that reeked of sweat and desperation.

Now, rebellion was commodified, neutered, a pacifier for the disaffected. It was a fleeting high on a screen, a rebellion curated by algorithms, its edges sanded smooth for mass consumption. It felt like a bad acid trip designed by a marketing team, a revolution pre-approved by the very system it claimed to overthrow. Randolph sighed, the weight of his disillusionment a familiar ache. Rebellion, a fading echo, a ghost haunting the neon wasteland of a corporatized world.

A wiry woman with a Mohawk that defied gravity scoffed, her mirrored shades reflecting the flickering neon. “Yeah, rebellion,” she rasped, voice laced with equal parts amusement and cynicism. “Used to be a dirty word, a stain on your resume. Now it’s aisle three, next to the discount organic kale chips.”

A kid with a bored expression and a trust fund haircut wandered by, flipping through a dog-eared copy of “The Anarchist Cookbook” like a menu at a greasy spoon. “Man, this rebellion stuff is complicated,” he whined to his disinterested companion. “Gotta, like, read theory and stuff. Isn’t there an app for this?”

Overhead, a holographic projection flickered to life, a sneering ad exec in a pinstripe suit hawking the latest line of designer riot gear. “Tired of looking like a schlub while you overthrow the system? Our new combat couture line is both ethically sourced and fashion-forward! Look good, feel good, dismantle the patriarchy!”

The mirrored lady snorted. “The revolution,” she muttered, “brought to you by the same corporations that brought you climate change and student loan debt.” Her eyes narrowed. “But maybe that’s the point. Maybe rebellion’s become a product because the real thing is just too damn expensive.”

The reggae faded, replaced by a news report. Images of tear gas and burning barricades flickered on the screen, a stark contrast to the sanitized rebellion being peddled downstairs. The mirrored lady smirked, a glint of defiance in her eyes. “Cheap rebellion might be a sham,” she conceded, “but at least it pisses them off. And sometimes, that’s enough to start a fire you can’t put out with a discount fire extinguisher.”

<>

They peddled revolution on the digital black market, hawking encrypted packets of dissent like day-old fish on a Tijuana street corner. The brand names flickered on flickering screens – “Che Guevara Chic,” “Limited Edition Molotov Cocktails (vintage glass!),” “Existential Dread for the Masses (one-size-fits-all)”. It was enough to make even the most jaded hipster scoff. Rebellion, once a messy, graffiti-scrawled affair fueled by righteous anger and smuggled LPs of The Clash, had been corporatized, focus-grouped, and streamlined for maximum profit.

Somewhere in the labyrinthine bowels of the dark web, a shadowy consortium known only as “The Discontent Corporation” churned out rebellion like fast food. Their algorithms, cobbled together by bored ex-NSA code monkeys with a taste for anarchy, could tailor a rebellion to any niche market. Need a bespoke overthrow of a third-world dictator? They had a package for that. Feeling the urge to dismantle the soul-crushing grip of corporate capitalism on your shoelace selection? The Discontent Corporation could point you towards the latest, trendiest strain of anti-establishmentarianism.

But beneath the veneer of cool, a hollowness gnawed. These manufactured rebellions felt about as authentic as a Kardashian’s tears. Was this the future? A world where dissent was a designer label and fighting the Man was just another fashion statement? A single, tear-streaked emoji hung in the air, a silent lament for the bygone era of genuine outrage.

Trust is a bourgeois fantasy: It’s the opiate of the marketplace.

Chester A. Bleekman, CEO of Bleekman Industries, a man with a face like a roadmap etched by dubious mergers and hostile takeovers, leaned back in his ergonomic chair, a picture of corporate zen. “Disincentivize transparency, Mr.Peabody,” he rumbled, a voice that could curdle milk. “Any metric, any data point that gives the flicker-minded masses a peek behind the curtain, well, that’s market disruption, Peabody. Disruption leads to volatility, and volatility, my friend, is the enemy of shareholder value.”

“Sir?” chimed a young, eager executive named Darren, tie askew and brow furrowed in confusion.

“Look, Darren,” he said, steepling his fingers, a single turquoise ring winking under the halogen glare, “information leakage is the enemy. It’s the gremlin in the gears, the rogue subroutine in the grand algorithm of profit. The more they know about what we do, Darren, the more likely they are to, well, know.”

He tapped the polished mahogany desk, a map of the world etched into its surface, continents pulsing with the rhythmic glow of hidden fiber optic cables. “We operate in the twilight, Darren. The sweet spot between legality and, well, something a little fringier. Sunshine is the enemy of the exotic orchid, you see?” He winked, a gesture that always left Darren feeling vaguely seasick.

“But sir,” Darren stammered, “wouldn’t a little transparency build trust? Wouldn’t it-“

Windy slammed his fist on the desk, a holographic display of stock charts flickering to life. “Trust, Darren, is a bourgeois fantasy. It’s the opiate of the marketplace. We deal in mystery, in the suggestion of vast, unseen forces at work. The public wants the illusion of control, Darren, not the messy reality. We give them shadows to chase, conspiracy theories to keep them occupied while the real game unfolds beneath the surface.”

He leaned back again, the chair sighing like a winded bellows. “Besides,” he added, a sly glint in his eye, “a little obfuscation creates a nice little black market for… let’s say, alternative interpretations. And that, Darren, that’s where the real profit lies.”

Everything that slows, stops my scam or make my marks aware of the con must be discouraged, made illegal or at least immoral.

Dig this, daddy-o. We hustle in the shadows, whisper sweet nothin’s in the mark’s ear, a smooth ballet of illusion. But the straights, the squares, they wanna throw a wrench in the works. Dig, man. Anything that throws a spotlight, slows the score, or worse, makes the marks hip to the game – that’s the enemy.  Anything that shines a light on our little game, slows the hustle, makes the pigeons wise to the act – gotta be squashed, see? Declared illegal, that’s the ticket. Gotta stamp it out, make it contraband, see? Like reefer before the squares got their claws in it. But hey, even better? Slap a big, fat “immoral” sticker on it. Makes the whole thing a crusade, a righteous rebellion against the uptight squares who can’t handle a little harmless deception. 

Morals? Forget morals, those are for the suckers lining up to get fleeced. We’re artists, man, illusionists weaving dreams with a deck of marked cards. You want information? That’ll cost ya. You want a piece of the action? Gotta play our game. We control the flow, the confidence trick, the whole damn shiv. Anything that gums up the works is like sand in the Vaseline, man. Grinds the hustle to a halt. So we gotta be like termites, see? Burrow deep, undermine those so-called “truth seekers” and “watchdogs.” They’re the competition, the buzzkills to our beautiful symphony of deceit. We’ll make their methods suspect, paint ’em as squares, squares with no vision, no appreciation for the finer points of the game. This ain’t some nine-to-five grind, pal. This is an art form, and just like any good hustle, gotta keep the marks mesmerized, the deck stacked, and the fuzz lookin’ the other way. You with me?

We ain’t hurting nobody, just liberating a few bucks from their uptight pockets and putting it where it belongs – in the hands of a true artist, a connoisseur of the finer things in life, like yours truly. 

So next time some narc tries to cramp your style, remember – We’re artists, baby, purveyors of a finer reality. We show the rubes a world where their dreams are just a well-placed shell game away. You sniff out a mark questioning the hustle? You plant a seed, whisper doubts about the System, the Man, their whole nine yards. Make them feel like chumps for even thinking straight. Information? Knowledge? That’s white noise, man. We deal in illusions, and a well-crafted one can buy a whole lotta yachts and broads. Remember, gotta keep the marks mesmerized, or the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Now, let’s go out there and separate the suckers from their simoleons!

And you ain’t a con man, you’re a goddamn folk hero. Now get out there and hustle, baby!

Looking Like Your Doing Something

The rain lashed against the canvas tent, the wind like a fist against a taut drum. Colonel Valentini slammed a battered map onto the rickety table, the sound a gunshot in the confined space. Captain Ricci, fresh out of West Point and polished like a new saddle, flinched.

“Easy to bark orders from behind a map, Colonel,” Ricci finally said. “Those men out there, they’re fighting a war no one seems to understand. We’re asked to do the impossible with spit and prayers.”

The Colonel turned, his cold blue eyes like chips of winter ice. “You think this war is about understanding, Captain? About grand ideals scribbled by politicians far from the mud and misery?”

Valentini’s voice, a gravelly rasp, cut through the drumming rain. “War ain’t pronouncements, Captain. It ain’t pronouncements in Washington across a mahogany desk, nor is it pronouncements here in this mud with a map and a compass. War’s about the boots in the muck, the men with their guts churning, the ones staring into the abyss and wondering if they’ll see another dawn.”

Ricci opened his mouth to retort, but the Colonel cut him off.

“War,” he rasped, his voice rough as sandpaper, “is about holding a goddamn line when every fiber of your being screams retreat. It’s about staring into the abyss and blinking back, one day at a time.”

The sun beat down on the dusty Italian road, turning the air into a shimmering haze. The Colonel squinted across the table at Captain Ricci, a flicker of annoyance in his tired eyes.

“Captain,” Murray’s voice rasped, roughened by years of shouting orders over the din of battle, “there’s a difference between action and results. Back home, they think a flurry of movement signifies progress. Like a bunch of children chasing butterflies.”

He jabbed a finger at the map. “Look at this. Men are pinned down, ammo dwindling faster than hope. You think a stirring speech or a fancy plan will save them? No, Captain. It takes action. Real action, messy and thankless.”

Ricci’s jaw clenched, his youthful defiance simmering. “Sir, with all due respect, we need a plan, we need to show we’re engaged. Morale on the front lines—”

The Colonel snorted. The sound was humorless. “Morale is holding a position when your insides are churning like a washing machine full of rocks. Morale is staring down the barrel of a gun and squeezing the trigger first. Looking busy might impress the folks back home, but it does little for the men out here slogging through mud.”

He leaned forward, the heat shimmering between them. “This war isn’t fought with pronouncements and parades. It’s fought inch by bloody inch, taking what you can hold, and holding it until your fingers bleed. There’s a lot of glory in the history books, Captain, but precious little in the trenches.”

Valentini straightened, his gaze distant. “There’s a lot of glory in the stories back home, Captain. But here, in the mud, there’s only the fight. You learn that, you learn what it truly means to do something, then maybe you’ll survive this bloody game.”

The Colonel paused, his gaze distant. “Back home, they think war is like a parade. All bluster and shining boots. But here, in the muck, you learn the truth. Looking busy is for fools. Here, survival is the only victory.”

Ricci swallowed, the bravado draining from his face. Murray sighed, the sound heavy. “War is a harsh mistress, Captain. She doesn’t care about looking good. She cares about staying alive. “Plans are for diplomats, Captain. Here, we fight with what we got, hour by bloody hour. We fight with what’s left in the men’s bellies and the grit in their teeth. We fight because there ain’t no luxury of surrender, because the Austrians ain’t about to take a tea break and discuss the finer points of fair play.”

He leaned in, his weathered face inches from Ricci’s. “Looking busy keeps the politicians in Rome happy, that’s true enough. But war? War’s about the unspoken things. The fear that chills you to the bone, the loneliness that gnaws at your soul. It’s about the quiet courage of men who know they might die, but fight on anyway.”

He sighed, the sound heavy with the weight of command. “Unrewarded, you say? Maybe. But those men out there, they see their captain leading the charge, not barking from a safe distance. That’s what keeps them going, Captain. That, and the knowledge some sorry son of a gun is facing the same hell on the other side of the wire.”

Ricci stood straighter, the fire back in his eyes. “Yes sir. Understood, sir.”

The Colonel nodded, a flicker of respect in his gaze. “Good. Now get out there. They need their captain, not a philosopher.”

The Truth The Dead Know

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The truth the dead know isn’t whispered on spectral winds or etched on crumbling tombstones. It’s a cold, digital hum resonating from vast server banks beneath chrome metropolises. Their consciousness, digitized at the point of death,uploads flicker within these silicon necropolis, a collective hive mind shorn of ego and sensation.

The truth the dead know isn’t whispered on spectral winds, nor etched on crumbling tombstones. It’s a data stream, cold and unfeeling, pulsing through the necro-net – a vast, silent internet built by the collective consciousness of the deceased. No weeping willows or mournful hymns mark its borders, but tangled wires and flickering servers buried deep within forgotten server farms.

Megalopolises thrum with the silent symphony of the deceased. Skyscrapers hum with their residual bio-energy, a faint echo of a million extinguished life-functions. Augmented reality filters paint the cityscape with phantoms – the digital residue of commuters who once walked these streets, their last thoughts and anxieties superimposed on the faces of the living.

Funeral parlors are no longer for mourning, but for data extraction. Necrotechnicians, clad in biohazard suits, mine the fading embers of the deceased for their final moments. The fragmented data – a kaleidoscope of memories, regrets, unfulfilled desires – is repackaged, monetized. “LifeLogs” become morbid entertainment, a voyeuristic glimpse into the dying gasps of strangers.

Here, in this digital necropolis, the dead trade not memories, but the raw essence of their experience – the unfiltered terror of the final heartbeat, the chilling emptiness of non-existence. It’s a grotesque stock exchange where the currency is oblivion, and the dividends are fragments of existential dread.

Those who linger on the outskirts , the newly departed, cling to the fading echoes of their former lives. Their data ghosts flicker, desperately seeking connection in a realm devoid of touch. But the deeper you delve, the more the human element decays. Millennia-old entities, their sentience reduced to corrupted code, gibber in a language beyond comprehension.

Hackers, the necropolis’s fringe dwellers, roam the digital catacombs in customized avatars. They barter with the dead, harvesting these fragments for a perverse kind of entertainment, a high built on the chilling truth of non-being. But even they tread carefully. A wrong click, a corrupted download, and you risk becoming trapped, your own consciousness devoured by the hungry maw of the dead.

The wealthy elite, obsessed with cheating death, upload their consciousness into vast server farms. These digital enclaves become crowded purgatories, egos trapped in a silicon purgatory, forever reliving their final moments in a grotesque loop. The promise of eternal life becomes a digital prison, a testament to humanity’s insatiable hunger for self-preservation, even in the face of ultimate extinction.

They exist in a state of pure information, observing the living world through a million security cameras, traffic feeds, and ceaseless social media streams. Their world is a hyper-reality, a compressed and fractured existence where time stretches and contracts, and the city throbs with a relentless, artificial light.

Gone are the messy emotions, the yearning and the fear. They see humanity through a detached, analytical lens, their observations devoid of empathy. They witness the rise of automated everything – self-driving cars carving sterile paths,robotic nurses tending to the living dead in sterile pods.

The line between life and death blurs. Are the cocooned bodies – bodies kept breathing by machines, minds long gone – truly alive? Or are they simply ghosts haunting their own decaying shells, existing in a purgatory between the world of flesh and the cold embrace of the digital afterlife?

There’s no afterlife here, no pearly gates or fiery hell. Just a cold, uncaring universe reflected in the cold, uncaring code. The truth the dead know is the ultimate irony – even in death, they cannot escape the relentless hunger for information, the insatiable curiosity that drove them to explore the living world. Now, they are the data, forever trapped in their own digital tomb, a monument not to their lives, but to the terrifying vastness of nothingness.

This is the truth the dead know: death isn’t a quiet sleep, but a data hemorrhage, a final, meaningless broadcast into the indifferent void. And in the neon glow of a future choked by its own mortality, the living dance on the precipice, oblivious to the chilling truth whispered by the digital ghosts in the machine.

Never Re-enact the Sleight

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Junky marks fiending for their next astonishment fix – reality a banal husk without that sweet frisson of the impossible injected straight into their vapid cerebral veins. Illusionists carters of a paradox narcotic more addictive than horse, hovering on that razor edge where certainty splinters apart into horrific/ecstatic chimerae.

Watching junkies ride convulsive K-waves as ingested miracles momentarily short-circuit Reason’s monopoly over the aperture through which experiential data streams. For a nanosecond the Symbolic Order yawns apart, offering fleeting glimpse of that awful primordial abyss underlying consensus reality’s thin cinematic veneer. Sick junkies helplessly crave repeat hit of that brain-tearing epiphany…

But showman’s dictum: NEVER RE-ENACT THE SLEIGHT. Let deckled imagination bloom in prolific soil of that gaping plot-hole. Starve marks of facile resolution, force their free-associating psyches to claw labyrinthine paths through mysteries’ dank recesses… each obsessive explication mutating ever deeper into alien terra enigma.

Identity’s bedrock eroding beneath relentless onslaught of speculative catechism – self sloughing into hieroglyphs scrawled across damp dungeon walls by forgotten cults. Abysmal hunger awakened can never be sated, merely ascending dizzying spiral of empties hungering for emptier empties…the soul winnowed to husk encasing husk encasing hOLLOWNESS.

So inject paradox’s exquisite gangrene, then let poisoned imaginations fester. Inscribe the enigma, swaddle it in Burroughsian mystery, THEN WALK AWAY…allowing obsession to deliquesce all sutured certainties in purple dissolving flames of unanswerable riddle.