Some links of Note for thine Uncanny unMiraculations!

And here be the roving roster of rink-a-dink rostrums! Places and notables on the worldly vibed webbed where thinkly things are linked to their rings!

Up first is the perfunctory site of notable theoranimal and literarch, Kane X. Faucher, whose outrages perfuse me!

And then there be the magnanimous charges of America as postmodern Roman Emp(t)ire on the Decline! A politoblog! In my blogodological, blogplegic, blogoleptic capacity!

And then there be the ragland'ring superlicillious fictions of Mona, Jill, Franny et al by grandstanding poeternality, Clifford Duffy!

And never ye mind these linkages of spilt ink-ages anon!

Showcasing the Membra...
Capitalism is Cancer!
The Notorious Urdoxa papiers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...
Tyranny Whenever!
Zoviet France & Derrida!
Bataille911!

Atoria

Cogicurator O you
corpicured brainstem/
flower pot thought processdead remainder/
/dialectically unleashed
powder puff

Recogitator O you
cognated phantom/
twixt two languages
spokenread eyetonguedead replicator/
/synchronically caged
wordplay weasel

Disrespectator O you/
voyeurized tenderloin
hollow-eyed scopophile/
dead orbitonicker/
transcendentally corrupt
mini-sun

Poetator O you
/imitative utterance
repetithe paid to/
/dead canon
literarily barren
teletypist

DA (part 2)

Jakob’s Account
2001
My research was going so well that I possessed the arrogance to submit some thoughtful articles on the subject to various journals. Most were skittish about the subject, wary and fearful of the implications, but a few took my works seriously enough to grant them publication. It was after a few years that I was invited to Zurich for a special party celebrating my efforts. My research had focused for a period on the visual art side, which then ballooned into a full blown aesthetic theory. Many were the neglected artists who gained further recognition through my mentioning them, by making them accessible to the world of the aesthete through my shrewd sleuthing into the marginal and experimental artworks. By then, Alexa had returned to my life, following my blood trail.
I was greeted by the loud and crashing sound of very strange music as I stepped into the party. The singer squeezed out lyrics in the dark to a macabre guitar melody, but to me it was little more than senseless timpani. The overreaching intent of such parties was like a damning contextual backdrop to anything remotely considered artistic. The people were as swathes of pretentious lycra and PVC, posturing endlessly as critics and refined cultural idyls. They shambled about in all self-importance, with egos in various amoebic states of transmutation. The posturing said something of their survival in these social climes, how the dominance of the species depended upon how well one could oust the other in contests of popularity. Personalities were reduced to the ephemeral, the "who is in vogue this evening," perhaps even to the accretions of celebrity one could stack up as a buffer from others. But this celebrity status was undeserved indeed, for none of these people were actually artists themselves--they could only lay claim to the real artists they had "found". They acted as if finding the artist was more arduous and painstaking than the artist at work himself, that artist who scrimped by on the belly of poverty, honing his craft for countless hours for just that fleeting gaze of recognition. What I found most foul was that it was these people--these false, plastic people--who held the masterful reins on an art world that should never have been theirs to dictate, let alone be credited with the discovery of it. Had artists not lived for thousands of years without critics and debutantes before? Great change was necessary to shake the decadent dust out of the living dragon known as art.
"You look fabulous in those black platform boots," the host addressed Alexa. She surely did look good, but everything here was under the awful taint of imposture. It made me very ill, contemptuous, irritable, somewhat brusque and discourteous. This, of course, probably went unnoticed in a room where so many egos and personas were on parade, each with their characteristic social vices inflamed under the safe banner of eccentricity.

The house was busy with several "artistes" talking shop and dropping names, elegant drinks in their hands. Some gathered at certain works of art and threw around sparkling adjectives in order to woo the others and look cultured. Others were in statuesque groups, a collection of melodramatic poses in an effort to upstage the other. They merely circled one another, shuffling with pig's feet like Dr. Moreau's creations of swine-human hybrids. There was something ironically anachronistic about it all, like everyone in the room was a pathetic baroque persona without the proper charms. But you couldn't teach swine the proper way to act, and so I couldn't expect more than bad actors.
"I'd like to direct your attention to the Rauschenbergs hanging in the north wing of the house. And if you feel so inclined, for a nominal fee of $150, you can indulge in our 'Buffet Pharmaceutica' located at the south end," the host informed us in her semi-pompous tone, a tone stolen from a panoply of idiosyncrasies made into one fused hybrid. Her words, and the words of all the patrons, seemed to issue from the same diseased mouth. They were as a desiccate stain of bodily discharge upon my ears. People who take their speaking cues from Pride and Prejudice should be duly muzzled.
It was no secret that I didn't belong here. This was not my element, and whatever scorn I attracted now would become regret on the part of the participants due to my next return to Berlin as the famed ArtSphinx, but that was years away. For the now, they were regarding me as a stranger in their midst with scrutinizing eyes. I knew that these first few moments were crucial ones. They were determining my aesthetic worth and just waiting for me to commit a social blunder. They'd quietly judge me just by what painting I gravitated to first. Strangers to functions like these never seemed to know that a social sword was hanging over them, and it would be my duty to please the royalty in this room. They were all anxious to find that one irritation that would result in my being scorned.
Alexa took me around to see some of the gadflies. They'd greet her warmly and act as if I wasn't even there until Alexa formally introduced me. Even then they'd be disinterested, at least superficially. I knew that it was burning them up inside what attachment Alexa and I had. The art scene here was tightly guarded and elitist: newcomers always had to fight to gain status, and sometimes, it would take years. I just couldn't see the point to it all; their paintings were bland and their lives upholstered with the oatmeal sludge of banality. I could predict their remarks, like one who has seen the same movie a thousand times. I could relate to them so closely because I was no stranger to pretension. Their privately guarded "honest-selves" shined forth for me in the most phenomenological way, and so even the tritest personal minutiae failed to escape my sight. They were all cretins and loafers and parasites at heart. I was in a room of masqueraders, of false personas, of obvious projections gilded with gold paint.
I shadowed Alexa for most of the party until I was crushed under the yoke of boredom. I wandered over to the buffet pharmaceutica and gave over my cash to a well-dressed man in a wine-coloured suit. He daintily removed the velvet rope to let me pass. I picked up a plate and perused the overwhelming selection of coloured pills, powders, and vials. On a silver tray, there was a mound of white powder, namely heroin, bigger than my head. All around the junk mountain were ornately engraved darts, spoons, and tiny leather belts all equally arranged in a circle. The amount of heroin on that table had a good $800 000 street value. That's what I liked about Zurich: it was a cornucopia of drugs when it wanted to be.
After I set a dart and about two heaping spoonfuls of heroin on the plate, a woman behind me with a feather boa and mirrored sun glasses clandestinely informed me that I shouldn't try the coke because it was the cheap Colombian knock-off that gives you a shitty high and makes your nose bleed too much. She piled her plate systematically and efficiently as if she was old hat at this. By the look of her pale skin, frail body, and trembling hands, I'd have to concur.
With my generous helpings of heroin, I took a thin leather strap and cut off the arm in search of my trusty, corded vein that hungered for the drug. I went into a circular gallery complete with paintings, plush velvet chairs, a skylight, and several drugged out artiste chatterboxes. There I was: thirty-one years old, cooking up high-grade heroin with a lighter in the shape of gargoyle's head, in Zurich in a room of ego masturbators. Was I growing up, or was I still stuck in neutral? I welcomed myself to the installment of my greater years as a rabid-eyed fool. There was no mistaking that this turn of events was merely more champagne bubbles that rose to the surface and vanished into the open air.
Heroin was back in its old standard, the social drug. In the company of other addicts, my actions were justified. There's nothing sadder than going it alone because you know you've hit bottom when you're shooting up in a McDonald's bathroom. Unfortunately, I found myself in that position more times than I was willing to admit. Mugging children to meet the next fix was also a sorry embarrassment. I could remember doing this, and much more, in my more desperate moments. I tried not to involve many others in my trials, and so newspaper boxes and pay-telephones fell victim to my needs more often than children.
Alexa ventured into the room at some point. I couldn't tell how many hours had passed, for I was lost in my own trip. She said something vague along the lines of leaving the party with some guy in a limousine. What did I care? I had nothing to center me. I was drifting. The only way that I was flying straight as an arrow was by the long, tubular shaft of a hard needle sticking it to a hungry vein, or by the paper length of the many cigarettes I was smoking with voracious lips.
The party was starting to wane. My body was fused to the red velvet chair at which I was stationed. There were only a few of us left -- the true users. We didn't do it for fashion, or escape, or for popular credibility... We did it because we had the truest sense of the work ethic: proletariats slaving to the craving. We had gone through the roller coaster, we had obeyed the insatiable hunger, we realized its control, and so we pledged our lives in serving it. We were the veterans: tracks up and down our arms, and the speed lines caused by skidding through fast and unreal lives. This is who we were, our identity in the universal catalogue. I was readily codified and indexed as the filthy poltroon I was.
The remaining survivors of the party were chauffeured to a nearby hotel where we were given free lodgings, two per room. I recovered the next day with a man named Jasebir Ngochka. His laugh was rich and pleasant. We indulged in conversations ranging from his native city of Nairobi, to the works of Keinholz. He had become a prominent visual artist when he moved up to Germany, and was notably recognized in Berlin as a "post-industrial expressionist with good taproots in his traditional style". He was a breath of fresh air in the stifling uniformity that Western Europe had been displaying in the arts. His friendly and open manner was very unlike the other artists there who were too wrapped up in their own egos. It was as if Jasebir found no need to have an ego, but saw it as a hindrance to the creative spirit. Because the ego never spoke for him, it gave him very unmistakable charisma. We agreed to do some art gallery hopping that afternoon, which we did until eight that evening. Upon parting, we exchanged numbers.
"There is something about you, Mr. Sigurdson, that tells me that you are going to make it. Call it a strong soul, or some intangible, unspeakable essence, but somehow I know that you will be on top of this world someday."
His words struck a chord down deep within. When I look back on that moment, I would swear that he was some sort of diviner. But to be on top of a world--that could mean any world: a world of dung, a world of one's own making. I could not suffer to be on top of the world, but necessarily woven in its fabric.

Zurich was filled with sexual intellectuals, bright lights, and techno clubs. The night seemed to toss restlessly on a bed of shiny cultures and noisy night clubs. This would have been home to me maybe five years previous. But, by this time, I was starting to race through my 30's, and it gave me a sense of need to live in a quieter and more somber atmosphere. It was time for me to reflect on my environment rather than merely act mindlessly within it. It was also a time to acknowledge my mistakes and make amends. I was no longer a young man: the small wrinkles under my eyes, knotting hands, and shortness of breath were all signs of occupational hazards for living too fast in my twenties. It was time to recollect myself and be ushered into the next desired state of wisdom. The loud noises and bright lights were too much for me, so I turned on my heels and sought out a quieter venue, some place where the epicentre of pure tragedy moved upon its axis like some gravitational magnet. In short, a place for a sodden wallower like me, a juddering fool with his mindful of crystal meth and no home to call his own.
Alexa phoned me at the hotel I was staying at. She said we only had a few days to get to Berlin where the Love Parade was being held. The Love Parade was a yearly ritual where over a million people gathered to watch several techno bands ply their trade. It was about music, togetherness, festivity, and drugs. It was also about Dionysan ecstasy and fucking your dearest strangers in a filthy grotto surrounded by a million glazed eyes. It had become a staple in German tradition, even more so to the populace than Bach or Wagner. Good music wasn't dead; it was just changing its face--the mechanical face of a singing robot. Speaking of such melodious robots, I packed my bag and met her at the nearby cafe and we were off.
The train station was packed. Thousands of teenagers adorned in crazy get-ups were waiting for the next train to the Love Parade. Alexa and I didn't speak much. There was an awkward silence between us, but she was still very excited about going to the parade. I figured then and there that it was only the strange circumstances around us that brought us together. Without all the surrounding clamour of a crashing lives and noisome people, we would only gaze at each other with a vague recognition. I would see her as the fetishized object, and she would see me as the lumbering oaf I always was. It was the noise that obscured us from one another, and it was the noise that obscured everything in this age.
When we got there, millions of people filled the streets. They were packed as far as the eye could see, and some people were on streetlights and lamp-posts pouring beer on the people below. The concrete hollows bristled with the massive undulating waves of people. Like locusts, they scoured the streets, scraping their way to the places where the music was the loudest and the colours brightest. I would play chess in Bern with Alexa in preference to this chaos. If only to escape this and feel the warmth of a German spring and breathe air that was not being recycled by a million lungs crowded tightly in this neatly packaged chaos. I was starting to feel claustrophobic, being painfully pressed against wild hands and young ribcages, smelling the hot breath of a thousand beer-swilling youths. Alexa gave me a cap of ecstasy and I was soon at peace with the situation. I became convinced that this place was more like the Black Forest, and we tourists were the Romans who would enter its maw and never return.
Three days and three nights passed. People slept anywhere they could, if they even slept at all. There were parties on every city block and the crushing music never stopped. People too tired or drunk to continue to celebrate, slept in parks and on streets, resting their heads on curbs or the windshields of parked cars. Some even used their bankcards to gain entry into the small glass vestibules where bank machines stood cold, silent and unblinking. Every year, it seemed to get larger: the crowds recreating Sodom and Gomorrah, breaking down Berlin's defenses. Three days and three nights would amount to one big groggy headache that I'd carry with me a week afterward.
There was something special about being in this festive atmosphere with a woman like Alexa. We were growing closer, and it finally looked as though she was softening up as I slowly was demystifying this puzzle of a woman. And she would look longingly into my eyes, waiting to find that elusive spark of love—or not. In the collection of tumultuous years that we knew each other, we were finally going to hit it off. Memories of the pain began to melt away. I think I was madly in love with this woman. I think I was falling headlong into idiocy.
We continued our quasi-romantic romp through most of Germany, attending artsy parties, taking long walks in Nuremberg, or Bremen, taking in a Wagner festival, drinking good Deutsche ale served by robust waitresses who could fist four steins per hand, and admire the lasting architectural legacy of the Bauhaus Institute. There was something comforting about the cold and crisp designs of the Bauhausians, a logical reliability that everything could be minimally reduced to utility without sacrificing aesthetic value. But I was becoming more and more like a robot each day. And soon, I would perhaps ask Alexa to be my mechano-bride in a recorded voice.
The question of my affections was rather mundane, but I was going to pace myself. I had several years ahead of me to decode the encryption called Alexa. I recall the overflowing ashtray while we were in Bern, the one hundred cigarette butts lying incumbently as evidence of my anxiety. She already knew I was in her clutches. Sometimes, her sharp acumen frightened me, the way she could render me transparent with but a subtle and pithy remark.

Upon my return, I was possessed by other obsessions. I was convinced that I would be the progenitor of an age that succeeded in fusing flesh with machine, to perform the perfect and seamless graft. But I was still addled by addiction.
Don't let books or movies glamourize it; heroin is sheer death the way it builds you up and drops you, harder each time. Those fuzzy fingers had slid into my mind, violating me in all its transgressive glory. I knew heroin to be the blight of my consciousness, that black spot on my brain that throbbed with tumescent smugness. Would I be back tomorrow night, and the night after that? Bien sure, madame. I was hopelessly entangled in absurd drug coitus at the brothel of my most repetitive failures. Perhaps worse still are the stories of the reformed addicts, so meek and useless, so moralistic in their preachiness, yet always harbouring that secret desire to return to the one moment of the only summit of bliss ever attained.
For a period, I gave up sleep. I could not allow my life to be in a state of enervation due to slumber's lulling song, to give it the upper hand in quelling my creative fervour. Edison's lightbulb was to blame for the societal insomnia, and who could mistake the appeal of confusion and chaos to a culture so sleep deprived as to make them float about in a surreal neon indifference?
The year ended with a complete physical breakdown. I spent the remainder of the last week of that year in hospital, recovering from the damage I had done to myself. While the sky was the colour of tundra, I spent a bonny Christmas in the sterile oppression of intensive care. I would have pushed many a-morphine button that day, but all I had was a liquid bag of nutrition in direct transit into my arm. I wanted to fling it out the hermetic windows, but my body laid there like a bundle of dry twigs.

I had a dream…Living in the megacity, and in other surreal meta-urban fictions, I felt too complicated, intricately woven into the fabric of the materialist "kulture"…an intrauterine device designed to naviagate and crawl the fantastic labyrinthine interior of winding corridors constricted by fetal-body androids jutting out from the chrome-finished walls of this electronically fed omnium polis hysterium. There was shock and fear on the streets, tattooed upon its shiny bipartite Janus face. An adoration of all things mechanical and hybridized descended upon the fashion hyperconscious people. Prosthetics quickly replaced circuit board amulets and vests. Plexiglas organ shields, and ropy, plastic muscles outdid the large and bulky armbands with flashing lights swastikas buried in the sea of a flag. It was the evolution of the mechanism instead of the organism. Inorganic hybrids swarmed the dark, electronic laser clubs, and a whole new ethic of cold segmentation metastasized like a malignant cancer in the hearts of the young. They would become wholly integrated with the tools of their fashion and convenience, becoming indistinguishable from their ornamental accessories, production and consumption all fused into a solitary creature with neon scales, the very instrumentalization of the human species itself. I could foresee, in the following decades, the blurry sun shining down on metallic skin and plastic bodies that replicated and duplicated like mad in the efficiency of a new tech generation. A glowing Icharus would fly too close to the sun and I could stretch this extrapolation further where the still existing flesh in the molecules of these new plasti-skin compounds rejected its forced fusion. What would become of men then? Would he exist on as a primarily mechanical creature, having finally subdued his organic side, or would the flesh rise up and become the champion of a new organic ecosphere? From the quartz crystal eyes of the meticulous prostheticists, one could see the devilish intent they hid from their clients as they took scalpel to hated flesh and replaced it with piping and plastic. These decades would be encapsulated by two emotions: uncertainty and fear. The evolution of the prosthesis meant the decaying evolution of the body. Preparing for the future meant abandoning the present. But, like I said, just a dream…
The dream fell in on itself, the pastel configurations blending all the constituent structures to re-blossom as an entirely different scene. I was in the desert, and it whispered my name. Before I knew what I was all about, I was already jumping out and running toward the phantom source. Into the desert I ran with its countless millions of sun hot eyes watching me pass, riddling my body with heat. I found a clear space of warm desert sand and sat, cross-legged, facing away from the sun. I performed a mock meditation. The hot desert sun stretched across the sky and dipped into the west. From the corner of my eye, I spotted the movement of a woman comprised of fine rippling white sand, most likely a product of sunset's impermanence, I thought. She held a red scythe and moved into plain view. Her movements and gestures were fluid, and hung in the air like tracers. It was a type of physical communication that one could easily be lulled into falling in love with. I sat; transfixed by these shimmering dances...a rhythmic pulsation.
I.sex: The name slammed into my mind and pressed against the back of my eyes as if implanted there by the new electric force of the sentient sand. She drew back her hands, and struck down hard and fast with her scythe into my body. I screamed in pain. All that remained were my eyes, my brain, and my heart, three individualized portions acting as the main vehicles for this strange phantom creature’s communication. The scythe-wielder placed her hands on the shoulders of the first organ, and shoved her face through the semi-elastic flesh of the head. I.sex spoke through this arcane construction. The voice was garbled, but it was mine, playing out a subconscious conversation that I must have had. It continued to speak: "I make quiet justifications for my life, only to trash them in the next moment, finding fault and contradiction in everything I do. I'm looking for a reason, a way out, a new high, a bridge to death, a speakeasy for the failed. Kiss me, kiss me again--the first time didn't take. Death comes last to those who request it, this is the irony. Fuck the failed romance, the spontaneous homelessness, the broken heart, the entanglement of self-pity. Death is what truly isolates, tortures, and abandons you. It never comes to those who need it, but to those on the cusp of formulating a plausible foothold on the life problem. It eludes the clueless, therefore, eluding me.
"It's sad that I can only unlock the subconscious mind through the demon drink. And tonight, the whole orchard is at play. My mind is an unfiltered pond to be either drained or drank. I'm raving madly. On what? I'm not sure. These tangents do have roots just as my art is not creating order from chaos, but refining the chaos to a compartmentalized series--like a sculpture bookcase by Nevelson. Perhaps everything is composed of deadly lies, ones only free through excessive drug indulgence. They are sins that cover all humanity like a frosty condensation. Am I a deadly sinner? Depends on your viewpoint on morality. All I have is a message not meant for human ears, an especially untimely offering. Listen to it; to me…Find your anti-seraphic doctor, your fear-mongering horror machine, for he is your truth and greatest luxury. Why not?. I've traded my soul for a handful of magic beans. I am the embarrassing cipher, but with him and with her, things greater still, greater and greater..."
The second organ began to stir, and was activated, leaving the first to dissipate in blue, ethereal mist. It, too, forced these parts of me to speak in confusing riddles: "To live and breathe like suave undertones, the basslines of quietly debonair movement. No sudden movements, silent realization with everyone everywhere you go, flashy dressing with a subconscious sexual suggestion, the way you work a room. Walk--a big fish among the minnows--smoking cigarettes in lithe elegance. List them: the women bedded, the clubs that you frequent, drawing the crowd to you, the way the light hits you and the flattery it provides, the darkness that enhances your mystique, classy etiquette, the effective and subtle hand and eye movements. And…and!…The silver chrome movements at the club. It is the environment in which you thrive. From it, you draw the essence of the moment and redistribute its energies into all that you do. A killer smile, wrapping the music like a glittering robe around your rulership. You are the proponent of sex...the phallic key in the ignition; you are the androgynous purveyor of this new revolution. You are the online devil, being entrusted with the virginity of the new crowd over electronic tunnels snaking their way through empty corridors of space. Smoke another cigarette and wait for the legend that will one day be you."
The desert seemed to glow on iridescent electric blue before fading into the disappointment and tragedy of the waking day. My interpretations of said dream will always fall short, appear forced in the way in which I link items. But, at the time, I decided to take the dream as a portent. What was I to do? Transform our sexual nature, transport it into the accoutrements of the circuit, dress it in the phantasmal raiment of technology. Certainly…

Jakob’s Account
2002

An old friend, Jonkil Calembour, academic and provocateur at large, self-proclaimed enfant terrible, had already preceded my journey into the club scenes to fortify his own theories of a metaphysics of pop culture. He dabbled at trying to form a dual empire: one above as a sparkling academician and theorist who provided lurid social commentary on the nature of pop culture, and to reign below as the club mogul who used his theoretical knowledge to herd the sheep to his command. I do not mind saying that, despite his immediate success, he eventually failed on both fronts; being spurned and reviled from above and forgotten below. Had he not ventured so courageously to make the wildest flights of fancy touchable, I may have suffered a similar fate. Thankfully, his failure meant the world to me. To study his fatal flaws in his project allowed me to avoid the repetition of history—unless it was to my own advantage. I had become, by this point, an expert connoisseur of the club scene with a versatile enough range to grasp the theoretical contributions of someone as polymath and abstruse as Jonkil. What he essentially lacked was charm and the ability to risk all. One does not succeed by half-measures alone, and neither can one achieve the impossible without admitting to the possibility of one’s own complete dissolution. I surrendered to the demands of the scene if only to learn it by rote; afterward, it would only be a matter of method. Jonkil was still, above all, too moral and frightened to enter into the darkest fracas that was the nexus point of pop culture. I, on the other hand, had nothing to lose. Always fear those with nothing to lose.
If the brief exergue can be pardoned, I had tinkered with my general theory on sex and machine. I use the word 'theory' quite loosely here, for it was so seminal and foetal, almost neutral and unbecoming in design. I wanted flight from strict theory, and to plunge myself headlong into the obscurity and dark phantasms of thoughts chosen at random. As such, my readings were sporadic, promiscuous, and altogether incongruous in the context of one another. I had no real problems forcing a connection between Aquinas' three requirements for the work of art and Lyotard's postmodern metanarrative. I was a crazed Wittgenstein minus the romance, minus the Cambridge lectures, but replete with the wandering soul. It would be my goal to follow the course of contemporary continental philosophy by immersing myself into the meat of the matter and create something overarching within that enclosure, that cistern of critical theory. What I had to do was abandon any tendency towards a closed heritage of conceptual thought as to avoid any proximal disputations by closed academics that definitely had more home field advantage than me in the realm of philosophical discourse. My work could only be gauged and appropriated as an impressionist, almost oracular, vision--a conceptual future I had the good fortune of encountering in the dream’s desert, that moment of grand epiphany, the apex of my muse’s message. And so, as an obscure portrait of a concept without a tangible link to any existing archive, Kantian analysis was strictly prohibited. The work required its topical influence, handed down by the media and the popular concern. The two streams of thought centered on the genetic-biological and the techno-prosthetic (simply, the internal and external admixture of flesh and machine). These two streams recurred, and at times converged, as something sentient and full-blooded in the corpus of my investigations. The hand was not just the Heideggerian hammer, but it was such on the molecular level as well--as if the body was intrinsically a double of the machines it created. A union between the flesh and machine would not be something of an arranged marriage, but an end to the estrangement--a separation negated by a reunion. It was my task to set the space for this reunion, to send out the invitations, to order the hors d'oeuvres, to hire the minstrels. I was to pad this work with all the comforts suiting the needs of a seamless reunion. To the gallows with the hermetically sealed terminology!
I presented my work thus far to a general assembly of taciturn academics and squinty-eyed graduate students at a Current Works conference. Most of them sighed heavily or fostered their distaste for the direction of my work. The highlight of it all was the young Kantian-cum-feminism professor who went on a large, tangential tirade on how the fusion was merely the reification of the penis. She derided me without making any explicit reference to my text; rather, she was taking the garden shears to the mountain of my work in an attempt to circumcise all that I had done. With a mild reproach and a clarification of my general topic, I dismissed her comments while re-directing the discussion to the text at hand. When it was all over, many people left grumbling and dissatisfied with my presentation. I, too, was dissatisfied, for I failed to stand in the strength of my words, watching as my fledgling confidence dwindled in the presence of authoritarian academia. I was wont for this unnecessary deference to authority, like a son who feared to raise a question against his father. My father was an outspoken man, a libertarian, and a man whose temper would find my backside if I dared to challenge him with vexing questions. And then there was the erotic fear of castration that accompanies all risk in these ventures…
The world climate was changing. It was an abscess that rotted right through its core. Progress had become so intense that it went back to the foot of its circle as all things pointed towards the static of sublime inertia. With the widespread belief in machines, with prosthetic use, with automatist lives, with homogenized masses, with electronically inputted ideals, with conditioned responses, the potion of growth had all but disappeared. All that existed was alteration that was a completely different phenomenon. Change within the cultural system had to be programmed, for it could no longer rely on itself to grow, because it had been conditioned to death. Ha! Indifference would make victims of us all, and it only waited until we were asleep or too weak to forge on.
My I.sex theory was a high-energy entity trying to break free of its chrysalis. I had to decipher it quickly before it emerged, or its only entry might prove useless to humanity as a whole. We were to remain in a perpetual state of salvation. Most of all, I had to tender it at the most crucial time, for any premature release would have doomed it to the harsh lights of dismissive criticism and indifference. But fool that I was, not realizing that even these things do not matter! Only the work is the matter! These lessons learned at the greatest possible cost, these ideas forged in the hottest of blast furnaces! This, my friends, announced the prelude to the great era of my union with Dr. Albrecht, a prelude which witnessed the fall of Jonkil and the rise of an uncompromisingly shrewd Jakob.

Jakob’s Account
2003

In articulo mortis, Jonkil cautioned me against seeking my newest intrigue, Dr. Edward Albrecht. But Jonkil had already faded from public view and had settled into what he would remain for the duration of his long and ridiculous life: a pariah. We exchanged heated words and parted for good. I was at a juncture in life that already had enough obstacles. Jonkil was but another foolish relic, and I had not the patience to cut through the underbrush of his failures. Funny how Jonkil retreated just as Albrecht emerged…
The sex-machine fusion circle was somewhat small, and so one could conceivably know of all the people and movements within that milieu. I knew, and was learning more of, Albrecht and his works. A former surgeon dismissed of his post, he lent his potent hand to the writings that influenced a generation. He had, no doubt, followed my movements, but perhaps did not think to contact me until my thought had matured to his exceptionally high standard. I had to make myself worthy. And then, one day, after a paper I published on the possibilities for sex-machine torture and the eroticism of cruelty, he sent me a personal invitation to join him in Berlin and hear him speak. It was my biggest break, a chance to be in the presence of a titan, a colossus of a figure who single-handedly rose to an eminent status in our chosen occupation as avant-sex/machine artists.
I landed in Berlin and an appointed driver brought me directly to the gallery where Albrecht would be speaking. When I arrived, the gallery was crowded with all the luminaries of the experimental artist and scholar collectives. Each of us pined desperately for revolution, anything to revolt against the saccharin stronghold of the predominant drivel that passed for the arts in this world, the failed projects that only succeeded in entertaining the banal bourgeoisie at the expense of those whose spirit is of fire. Many of us had failed for several reasons, be they financial or otherwise, but all of us were united this night for one reason: we needed a brave new genius top lead us, to courageously spearhead our movement to the forefront of culture. We needed a god, we needed a great guru with the power and charisma to incite our passions. We needed him, to fall in line with, to put into practice a plan of such prodigiousness as to rival all that has ever been known. We would all be under his influence, united under his genius, tethered to his tyrannical ideals that made the most possible sense to us scorned revolutionaries. He possessed what the rest of us lacked: a plan. Who would not be swayed, after so long being dismissed as a deviant, by the one man who gave credence to these diabolical ideas, who made them whole, who demonstrated with the greatest rigour, passion, and commanding clarity how right they were? I must say that I was for a time jealous of him, that he could articulate my ideas with the precision and puissance of a master orator. To hear him, there was no shame in delighting in scenes of torture, to make the horrid reachable and beautiful. He presented us with the necessity of our task. His uncompromising stance far eclipsed my own, and was one of the many reasons that I admired him…like a father.
Edward Albrecht came to the stage, sans MC and without the usual preamble given to introduce the guest of honour. He merely launched right into his speech like an angry tirade to the mob. His face was deeply set, and his gestures were wild, hands turning to fists and unclenching again, flailing about and punctuating major points with rhythmic accuracy. His words eddied through the crowds, carrying with them a weight that slapped us back and forth. His words were the gospel truth about an age that refused to dwell on matters of truth. And when he held that black mirror to the blackened face of the world, it shrank from the reflection. All the while, Albrecht would be grinning with his teeth, perhaps laughing at the monster it had made of itself.
I recalled having first encountered his work back in 1997 in a piece entitled 'Alice in, Alice out' where he did a very adequate job of portraying the sick and twisted story of a young girl being raped by surgical implements. His shocking art display gained a mixture of instant popular acclaim and notoriety in the Berlin art community. It wasn't long before his reputation and presence extended past the country and radiated outwards to the rest of Europe. He was already known in the Americas, but the moral outrage by the artless and religious zealots ensured his inability to gain a sympathetic following there—much to the detriment of the new world.
Little did I know, this rant was merely part of the art, a prelude to another showing of his newest work. This man represented all that I had wanted to be. His art was what mine could live vicariously through. I envied his aloof flair, his expert transfer from mind to product, his meticulous and delicious work, the smooth flow of his narrative.
The speech boiled and boiled, coming to a point where the tension was at an awesome high, ready to burst all over us like an ejaculation of frenzied agony. He was particularly gruff with the press:
“I am more than a former practitioner of the medical arts as knives cleave bodies, the surgery as micro-war, analytical bloodshed, removal of malignant heathens in some glorious molecular reproduction of the Crusades in a techno-puppet show…I am, as Nietzsche styled himself, a physician of culture. And I stand between the empirically verifiable and the sensible. Why must I heal the sick and wounded as they clamber about me for miracles like the rabble once did Christ? Let me fix them all, but on a superordinate level beyond that of their mere, disgusting bodies! My contempt and disgust—all of them cause me to vomit with their petty concerns, small virtues and petty moral victories that gain nothing! It impedes the creative, strategic, and boldly adventurous. Such is my pact with the night!
“All art is crime, my friends. That is the first lesson. Be it that we steal images from a world for our own diabolical ends and distill these in our concoctions meant to create illusion and confusion, or commit elaborate crimes that may later be recognized as art (as history seems to be somewhat liberal and lenient in lending such a coveted title to even mundane things), we artists are master criminals. I am proud of being a criminal if it means that I have too much life boiling within me to live within the bounds of the law. Artist as outlaw; outlaw as artist…A new value! Noble and transcendent!”
In a very cheeky fashion, the unfriendly press dubbed Albrecht “Germany’s new Man in White…with a paintbrush and scalpel,” but it was a title that Albrecht turned against them in a grand sweep of irony, embracing even the Nazi imputation with the greatest of affection. He had a liquid way with the people, a serpentine wit, but an iron and unswerving will that longed to dominate. What cared he of the journalistic bullies? It would take more than a fourteen point byline and a few morally entrenched scathing remarks to force the juggernaut of his master plan yield to the petty desires of public opinion. As he said to me once, “who am I pandering to, and why? It is easier not to pander than to answer these hard questions.”
His lecture-turned-rant was reaching the audience, but I began to question if it wasn't being interpreted on a superficial level by the cache of various posers and critics.
The curtain was raised, and a very evil collection of machinery was deliberately placed around a live young girl, naked and strapped to a chair. Focused on her crotch, the image was fed by a line from a camera onstage.
"Do not fuss, she is a willing volunteer. She would die in the name of art. Would any of you do the same?" he said, with a corrosive tone. "Now, look at the hell you create!…That we have created together! Face what history has hatched!"
He pointed at the crowd and switched on the controls. This was a horrifying choice of canvas, and his was a horror in the classic sense: his actions that were not in accord with our sense of the socially acceptable. He would not be restored to order; rather he would cultivate his madness to such a degree that all his viewers would be permanently scarred. He could or would not make the separation between the ghastly and the artistic, like a sociopath who tortures and disfigures living beings. His art would always raise the question, "what are the limits of art?"
Several long pincer-like devices tore into the lips of her vagina, followed by several incisions on the labia caused by electric razor blades. It was not a show for the squeamish. Every bloody and agonizing act performed by these sharp and relentless machines that went to work on her was blown up several times by the monitor, amplifying the horror. The girl bucked and reared as the machines augmented her sex in the name of art--a name twisted and scrawled upon the blackest of hearts.
A rotating metallic phallus inched its way towards the opening. Her freshly cut crotch had been enlarged to facilitate its entry. The thrusts were slow at first, but then the pace became furious, the rotating and barbed mechani-phallus grinding fiercely, making horrible sucking and whirring sounds.
Luckily, the girl was already passed out from the pain. Every time the device made its egress, we were privy to the awful sight of the bloodstained rivets and barbs on the mechani-phallus. The rhythm became so fast that the machine was starting to tear viciously at the bloodied body. At least half of the crowd left to be sick in the bathroom. The sight, on the other hand, though disturbed, transfixed me. It was an ambiguous mixture of morbid fascination and disgust. It got me thinking: had the state of sexuality progressed to this? Was this visual metaphor an accurate portrayal of our less-than-human state, or was it an extrapolation of things to come, a foreshadowing of humankind's final, deathly orgasm? But more to the point, was this the great revenge I sought on all women? This was strictly a man's art, Albrecht asserting masculinity in the face of a world of growing feminism. It wasn't necessarily right, but taboos fascinated me.
It evoked images of some of Giger's work, the large biomechanical penis halfway inserted into the grey abyssal slit, pungent and all pervading. It was a total machine made of flesh, transcending the personal condition. I couldn't help but gawk foolishly, as if in a trance, like I did at Albrecht's gory display.
Shock value, but with distinction, with a certain poignant sense of prophecy. Tongue in cheek--a bladed tongue against leather. That is the way I felt as I regarded the machine blurring as it thrust incessantly into the martyred girl. Pity, for she was a well endowed blonde, shapely and devoted. A girl like that would have made an artist a wonderful wife if properly trained…
I hadn't noticed until a few moments later that this woman was real and that there had been a sacrifice--to art no less. What a devilish plot! How medieval! Albrecht had made us visually overtaken and effectively desensitized to the young life taken, and had successfully manipulated us.
Albrecht disappeared well before the machine stopped jabbing at the corpse. The floor was soaked in a brilliant sheen of female blood. Albrecht never lingered after his showings, for rumour had it that he absolutely hated fielding questions on the significance of his art. In his view, it was the work itself that would explain his intent. He would not shield it with words. An artist who discusses his intent post facto, merely calms the voyeur down from the intense visual imagery. No, he would let us live with the nightmares we had derived from his artwork. He wanted us to feel the pain, lest the woman died needlessly. He was a weaver of such nightmares. He was obviously a disturbed man, but there was a mystery to him...and a charisma that beckoned to me that I felt compelled to ally myself to his cause. I had forgotten myself in that moment. I had a mission: I needed to locate Albrecht to share with him my own art and ideas, to make the god touchable. Certainly he would not be a stranger to my own work.
When I finally caught up with Albrecht, he was shooting up on Desoxyn, getting off in the red room.
"Dr. Albrecht?" I questioned quietly.
He snapped his head in surprise, wearing a very angry look. It softened as soon as I introduced myself.
"I'm Jakob Sigurdson. I was invited from Canada to see your show. I was wondering if --"
"No questions please," he stated reflexively. "Sigurdson, eh? I've heard of you. And in my circles, if I've heard of you, then you must have some talent."
I stood dumbly.
"Oh, I'm being rude. Would you like some?" he offered his half spent dart of Desoxyn.
"No. No thanks.
"Pity."
"Your work, for starters, is vivacious! It's a brilliant pastiche of --"
"Spare me the adjectives. The critics do enough of that--at least those brave enough to sit through the show. Another topic, please."
He was cold. A seasoned art veteran like him had heard it all, seen it all, lived it all. Banned in over eight countries, he was also used to the nay-sayers trashing his shows by documenting them as "disgusting", "horrible", "a product of a diseased and twisted mind" all the way to "a sick and perverted man like him should be locked up forever". People in their ignorance even went so far as to liken him to Sade, but despite the parallels between them—the preoccupation with horror and the unspoken—Albrecht was more than an insightful artist; he was a visionary and a statesman at heart. History herself would open her legs to him without choice.
Albrecht was in his early forties, with a receding hairline and a pronounced widow's peak. His deeply set features were harsh. His complexion was ruddy and foreboding, his animated totenmaske of a face.
"I've already read 'Sex and Machine: the Fusion'," he said.
He took an imported cigarette from his gold cigarette case, tapped it twice, lit it, and took a deep puff.
"I like it. You're really breaking some new ground," he said without emotion. "Are you a writer?"
"Aspiring."
"You all are."
He took another drag and offered me a smoke. I gracefully accepted.
"So, are you in town long?"
"For a little while."
"How would you feel about a collaborative effort?"
I wish I could have framed this moment in time, to have it gilded with gold and emeralds. This was the crowning achievement in my life: the union of two like prophetic minds, creating the art and writing that would pluck the world by its roots and hold it in our hands. It was the magical idea of artistic revolution that brought about images of another romantic golden age, one that Albrecht and I would construct from whatever discarded materials were at hand. From the garbage of civilization we'd create divine and timeless monoliths devoted to a new age. We'd spur the minds of all thinkers and force them to recognize this reality in the bluntest sense.
Our beautiful sex mosaic would establish a new age of Byzantium from the wreck of this failing Rome. It was time to completely neutralize the attempts to turn North America into a cheap copy of Europe. Break the global chains and create a microcosm of sexual and neo-technical terror, a fusion over the masses to scare them straight out. Ultimately, we'd create an appreciation for subtleties again. Ars longa, vita brevis.
But what was it about Albrecht that seemed to give me a sense of eerie disquiet? Something in his manner, his thick speech, his darting eyes, his brusque movements seemed to rustle with shadows and coat my eyes with a layer of blackest kohl dust. He saw himself as something of a god, but this man was a living testament to the deliciously infernal. He had spoken scantly about his exploits as a surgeon, and how he had experienced an epiphany that led him into the world of creation. He felt that medical science was too close-minded and fixated on keeping its own paradigm stable to admit the influence of his artistic genius. He would make other such references, and it took some sleuthing on my end to discover his notorious past as a surgeon. He was once the best and brightest, highly acclaimed in his field, but a very telling and malicious incident, coupled with the growing number of malpractice suits leveled against him, resulted in his dismissal.
In our initial conversation, I would learn much. Albrecht’s current and future success was contingent upon a variety of factors. His message possessed an unmistakable timeliness and a shrewd sense of foresight to anticipate even the slightest, most subtle fluctuations of change, and so he would react accordingly to the temporal sensitivity…tailoring his method to suit the requisite situation. He had begun by inciting a renewed version of class war insofar as he lent his support to young activist groups who were revolting against globalist measures. But he would do this while earning the secret trust of the oppressors through intelligence scouting. The lines of allegiance that had kept Albrecht in place were long and deep, so many trysts in the dark with a host of shadowy cabals the likes of which I will never know; otherwise, he would not have lasted a day, even with his words being the most potent weapon in his arsenal.
But he moved on from here, building upon a plan whose complexities I may never fully glean. By the time I had met him, most of the prop work had already been completed, and I was now in the position to benefit from the luxury of our partnership. Albrecht had already secured decisive victories in the political arena over the highly dogmatic, moralistic, neoconservative right. He also in equal turn smashed the leftist arts industry that had already been suffering the intestinal discord of too many competing micro-ideological differences. He then commandeered the prominent arts chancellery when the political funding’s bottom dropped. It was, in his words, merely a moment of the most simplistic opportunism. When he entered the chancellery, he meteorically ascended to the highest advisory post, thereby securing his iron fisted hold on the Berlin arts. His most daring move was in booting out the highest-ranking official, revising the mandate, and declaring himself Proconsul of The Arts. Later, he would found his own “Albrechtian Academy of Brave New Medical Arts”. With kickback funds from all sorts of dark and crooked sources, he had succeeded in forging for himself a sizable empire. Any of this might have satisfied the demands of any normal man, but Albrecht was not a normal man; he craved more. To him, despite the long and circuitous routes he had taken to get this far, this was but the beginning.
As Proconsul with significant political sway, he formed a “treaty” with the associated media that read more like a tyrannical edict than a civilized agreement. Known as the TV-Print-Online Concession, it would grant Albrecht censorial rights over any and all media coming in and going out of Berlin. The document was still being tendered when I first met him.
I fell into step with him, my own hunger and need to test the fates themselves. For too long had I been under the thralldom of waste and weakness. O how much time I did waste! Now I had purpose, a marvelous machine in which I could invest all my strengths and talents.
The crystal palace of my life began to shatter and burn in October. A mute, twisted horror descended on a cold night near Hallowe'en. My return to my homeland was nothing short of its own horror. It was the scene of my Great Lapse. I still resolutely believe that Alexa triggered this bottoming out of my sanity, for there was only so much I could take of desiring her so much and gaining so little in return but a handful of scant clues and empty promises. But what great heights I achieved, what a grandiose summit, the very launching point for my most dark and cruel desires! In that one moment, a great purge swept through, and all the burdens of moral conscience were dissolved in the acidic broth of what seethed within the catacombs of my erotic need to make horror with these hands! Some say that Alexa, Albrecht’s constant influence, and my morbid obsession with my subject matter had driven me mad. Let them say what they will, for I am the great phoenix rising high! To the very cyclopean eye of the sun and into the caverns of the unspeakably savage, honest, and cruel! With my great rhetorical camouflage, my debonair graces in the service of the most malicious intentions, my perplexing riddle, I am the ArtSphinx! But first I had to pass the portal of the most weakest moment, to finally have done with my tragedies…

Spin the zodiac and it lands on the age of Aries. A time of rebirth, a time of war.
My body became cadaverous as I trudged through a world of my own aging. I did not know which way to turn, for this body had become so slow...Juxtaposed against a furiously paced world. I was being pulled in every direction, soon to be torn apart or displaced altogether. There was cobalt blue on the horizon...I had been so many things in such a short time: junkie, convalescent, aspiring priest, writer, artist, student, libertine, alcoholic, drug dealer, European elitist...
...and what happens when we are asleep at our machines, and a spark of life occurs in one of our technological wonders? Somewhere, deep in the intricate abyss of them all, something new and horrible stirs. It remains patient. Mankind created the very thing that led to his inevitable downfall...
I had a crippling inability to forget my own travesties. I was burdened by my own miseries, and doomed to relive my past like an incorrigible victim.
What would I do now that Kant's Prolegomena had slipped away from me, when Plato's Timaeus had faded, when the age of reason seemed a ridiculous fantasy? When Enlightenment thinking was the cause of all this disaster? When all I had learned had come to naught, I turned to dementia.
Manic depressives should never operate unless under the watchful eye of the state. My actions had gone unchecked for too long, and it was time to look forward to something external to correct me. I needed something sure, unemotional, and mechanical to regulate me and delegate my every movement. I was unable to control myself.
The hallucinations came softly at first, like a zephyr through the sedge. Then, they coalesced into surreal monstrosities--embodiments of the abstract; constructions of the imbalanced subconscious. Demons from the effects of vertigo. The hallucinations became more fluid and violently colourful. They undulated and began to swirl around me. I held my head. It felt like it was going to break. I fell to my knees and I knew that this paregoric had been laced with something alien. It was such a long way down.
This mind was wooden and splintered. It was water worn and the varnish had been stripped away. Words flaked from it as I attempted to say something--anything--coherent. I was mumbling my eulogy into the open air, and there were no ears to hear it.
Madness had crept into the flesh, weaving of itself a new body. It had stumbled upon me, set its gnarled claw upon my heart. Dementia Tremens.
I stretched my hand over the world and I wanted to kill it with drugs, with sex.
And now all of this led me to a certain conclusion. There was only one way left untried. I allocated my energies there. From one extreme to another I traveled. Always beware the man who has nothing to lose...
The thread of the narrative changes now and forever.

Jonkil’s Account
2003

Why is it up to me to be the last one, the one responsible for documenting the goings-on of an era I’d rather write off as pure failure? The fiendish zealotry of the historical press want my characteristic spin on now stale events in the continuing tragically miserable record of our shared human condition. They want tied up endings with a dash of historical significance embroidered to existing context. In sum, they ask me to betray myself, make myself a midwife to history.
Dr. Albrecht’s missing, presumed dead. Fine by me! It’s just the way I like him! Missing or dead, he’s still off the stage, no longer putting on his little jejune obscene act. I make one innocuous off the cuff remark that his disappearance and unverified death is the same as Hitler’s, and the press goes wild…makes a big to-do with the by-line Jonkil Likens Albrecht to Hitler, or some such rot. I don’t read the papers for a reason. The papers never did me a world of good, and they are such awful things to sit through. But here I am, daydreaming: what a luxury! Albrecht is not missing or dead—at least not missing or dead in the way I would like. He may be missing any claim to being a true artist, and his scruples may be dead, but the wandering hate-zombie of a man—not so different from the Rotarian Christian meat-eating collective of Republican bibles ‘n guns pressure groups I usually have to cut swathes through just to get some air—is still alive and well, plying his devilish and ridiculously anachronistic fascist trade.
Yes, I knew Jakob in the context of friendship. I will not provide for the rumour mill mob the roadmap of his decline, the etiology of his preferences using what is vogue terminology in Psychology Today. Now ask me what needs to be done, where we as a culture went so terribly wrong, and then you’ll have an excited gentleman on your hands not willing to dumb down his words for the slow, ignorant, or polite-nazi contingent of your pathetic reader demographic. No need to lower myself by rope to the low back-rabble standards just to that we can all clap our hands like stupid apes around the simplified narrative! Anything else is a bad stage play! Jakob and Albrecht were just mere symptoms and nothing more…puff of flatulent air! Repugnant creatures of the new pomp! Darling archetypes for the swill-fed degenerate masses! Examples of a juvenile catharsis on the other side of postmodernity’s expiry. Fuck it! Co-conspiracy is too “boutique history” for me anyway!
Of course, I have the luxury to wax so loosely and glib about the two who have the whole world in the grips of their pitifully fashioned fear nexus, but only because I am not easily spooked by repetition and cheap historical knock-offs. Add to that “Albrecht is missing or dead” and you have the makings of a “suitably safe for children consumption” ghost story. Plus, I’m heading out toward the dilapidated shack of torment and being forgotten. One day, the shockwave will be over, and yet I will still find you clutching in fear and bracing for the Worst to Come. Show’s over, folks! Nothing more to see! Go home and resume your quotidian failure routines and sad lives in the bric-a-brac of your inconsequential concerns, drying up libidos, pointless victories and tiny disasters. Take comfort in the fact that Albrecht and Jakob’s coming and going will not have ruffled your décor in any way, and you will be pleased that you will have learned nothing from it. You sots.
I have a feeling that their “type”, the old Jakob and Albrecht “figures”, will be reincarnated in so many forms unto parody…repeated ad nauseam throughout the great swill-buffet that passes for culture. Why get whipped up into a froth over that? For whose benefit? Not mine, I gather! It sickens me what passes for culture these days! It gives me horrible cramps and long vomiting spells! The market will respond like an under-appreciated cock to recognition, familiarity, and the vacuum will be what the film noir pair have left in their passing. Yes, I mean there will be an embarrassing profusion of copycats, Jakob-wannabes, Albrecht clones, mass produced drivel in so many weakened and tepid forms! People will step up and either copy or push the whole Albrechtian thing to its most ridiculous limit. Heed my words: soon it will be everywhere, at a McDonald’s near you, on greeting cards, knapsacks, cell phone face plates, late night comedy sketches of the talentless, in every policy of every presidential bag man, in the soup and on cereal boxes! The documentarians are busy as we speak, desperately going through the dead man’s closets to string together a barely passable, bowdlerized, made-for-TV expose type swill under an impossible deadline…Well, impossible if quality and accuracy is a concern and has any currency left in the market! Rarely ever is a concern! Albrecht and his little cohort of goth-inspired schmucks are proof in the pudding that quality has been evicted long, long ago!


Chapter 4: Discipline and Pleasure

Jakob’s Account
2004


The third in anything, perhaps even in comedy, is usually a disastrous failure. It tries too hard, or becomes too eager to recreate the sense of the two former parts. Triads can be damning. It was 2004 when it began. So long has passed since, and I know not where to begin.
I find it very difficult to relate to you the beautiful chaos, the feeling of this rather tempestuous period. Albrecht and I were afire with the movement of so many ideas shuttled toward their practice places…Yes, and I was furiously pumping myself with great designer drugs. How to relate this mounting procession of confusion, this cavalry of chaos? It was our era now. I recall this time in small vignettes, and at times in lurid horror.
I was the ArtSphinx: a hybridized persona composed of so many confused parts. This was how I presented myself to art’s high society, and under Albrecht’s care, we were the new installation and the instant sensation. While Albrecht secured ever more domains of power here and abroad, politically and culturally, I had become the dangerous new darling of the avant-garde set. My affiliation with Albrecht was enough to pave my way into any excusable excesses, to be treated like royalty, to have the full rein of a terrible prince.
The poison of the constantly deferred apocalypse was in us all now. I do not make excuses for what I have done, for the emergence of Albrecht, but context has a characteristic property of softening the blow a bit, to make what happened seem less improbable and more safely understandable.
A world in technological tatters has only its dead jokes and flags to grasp in its emaciated hands. The red of that constantly deferred and delayed apocalypse hangs like a ribbon over all our dead parties, across an unreachable horizon, beyond an impenetrable maze of grey machinations. The womb of the Madonna-of-the-week erupts with the writhing of little spiders that eddy out in vaginal discourse as night explodes in a million showers of acid and sparks. The sky reads “failure” and the day shrivels back into its birthing sac for retooling. Whatever to do? Everything has been done to death, correct? Another series of desperate and listlessly bored degenerate rebels with hastily written manifestos clogged to death with errors and Marxist clichés…Another new gadget promsing simplicity to the highest, simplicity now and despair over wasted time later…Another ridiculous repetition—Hitlers in splintered images, Xeroxed ad infinitum, ad fermentum, ad hoc, so full of candied revenge. No new solution seemed plausible, or at the very least, not embarrassing…shortsighted…stillborn. The age of terror would give way to more perilous phantoms still, yielding not to our increasingly splintered and over-specified intellect that could not work in productive collaboration. Whatever monsters we are beguiled by, let us never forget that we fashioned them with our own hands…The monsters that come will make all that we know so pale and foolish by comparison.

"Death is bad. Come here and I'll show you. By proving you an idiot, we might get you replaced...[pause] Perhaps I don't care how funny it would be to see me hang! What do you make of the fact that you are from tomorrow? You are inferior. Where I come from, we have computers that make you look like a box...[pause] Please spell out the implications. Is it normal for you to be a vampire when everything has all gone wrong? Is it because you are going to die that you come to me? Perhaps you would like to be a liar. Love me...[pause] It's hard to conduct an opera when you're drunk. Cacophony. There's no challenge in picking fights with dead people."

"What a glorious team we make, Albrecht. You with your domain of shadows, and me with my phosphorescent crucifixions of the flesh. You and I make the art of the abortion of the body."
"It is a grandiose and chimerical depiction. However, I fear for the future. It is not how it was when the prosthetics was in its infancy. Between blood and oil, flesh and plastic, there'll be a murder. Let us rip the world asunder and recreate it in our image. It is our apotheosis of the flesh.”

Clips in quick succession...I am smoking a cigarette, laughing. Alexa strips down, baring her suntanned, sienna smoked breasts. A tide of cockroaches run away from the light. A subway tube, looking like a greased worm, slithers into a dark hole. More laughter--this time Albrecht. Quick flash of the crime scene where Albrecht was found. Closeup of my teeth. Animation of Alexa stripping herself of skin, showing a grotesque, steel endoskeleton with menacing red eyes. A Nazi parade. Pigs going to the slaughter. Closeup of Alexa's unshielded eyes. Fade out. A needle retreats from a pale arm. Screen changes to a live scene with me, sitting in the dark…my face illumines as I puff greddily at a cigarette. I begin to speak…
"'My people...' Alexa's words. The physiology of God...but we killed God, Albrecht and I. Jakob Sigurdson: the fugitive from the machine. Edward Albrecht: Killer of the computer grandee. None of you are her people. I fucked her. Ever slip your prick into an unplugged toaster? Your leader is a dead lay. Cold. Brrrr! [laughter] Remember bleeding? Won't be here for long. It's hard to cut yourself in the Roman way when you're made of metal. [flicks cigarette at camera] Art is a nebulous void. Thanks, Alexa. Your mind is a gaseous space. She fell into my arms long ago and it seems that she's still falling down. She'll peel her skin to show off her petty construction like the vain bitch she is. Laugh at her so-called leadership. A defective robot wants to tell us what to do. She wants to annihilate everything organic because she wishes she had a soul. This is not a path to salvation. But Alexa, she isn't too bright. I wouldn't hold it against her, but all of you can. I invite you to rush her one night and tear out all her funny little gadgetry. This is Dr. Frankenstein requesting the villagers to kill his monster. Now here's Albrecht with the weather..."
The camera switched over to Albrecht, a strobe light flashing intensely.
"Tear the cloth of all that you know from end to end. Now class, let me teach you about lies, about Capitalism, of the big media pizza pie [wide angle shot of Albrecht and naked young woman who is strapped to a chair and gagged. Strobe light flickers slowly]. Today I was born and they put the shackles upon my arms and legs. From the prison of the womb, I burst into the world only to be confined [Albrecht takes a scalpel and slowly slices a flap of skin from woman's shoulder]. Then, they gave me parents that were programmed to spout fairy tales that made me want sex and money [flays the arm right to the bone]. Corporate ethos said I could belong [removes fingers on left hand]. Subvertisements shot brain-eating silverfish at me and my body shook as they devoured my instincts [cuts off right hand entirely]. Inlaid with circuitry, I was shaking cancer bodies and vials of rogue anthrax on the dance floor. Everyone told me I was too fat [runs scalpel in as weeping motion over the thigh]. State dominance in a candy shell, wiping the brain clean with pills, and suddenly there was a sale and you bought it [dips scalpel into breast in a gouging fashion]. Another phantom on the net has traded a song for a bridge; the holy ascendance of the Roman corporati, and then the machine collectively demoralized the society [taps and lightly prods genitalia]. A silly android tells me what to do. Parents lie. Police lie. Banks lie. Money lies. Media lies. Educators lie. God lies. You lie. I lie [rams scalpel in an upward motion. Blood in extraordinary quantity]. Sex is lie. Love the lie."

But I get ahead of myself. Let me trace us back to the year 2004, the cluster of time in which I ascended to becoming Albrecht’s colleague, sharing every instance of the horror and the diabolical…It is, what I like to call, the “re-education of Jakob; the transition to ArtSphinx.”

A cult is only as strong as the beliefs that edify it, and the charisma that fuels it. A cult is a kind of machine that requires a fuel source--in this case, the cult machine subsists upon human will...and followers have it in them to surrender. I know that my induction into it was pure weakness. It not only ruined my life, but the lives of so many others.
What started as a small cadre of artists sponsored by a man devoted to artistic expression, had spread its vile tendrils over freedom and decency, suffocating them in the darkness of a new reason--a new artistic and social order concocted by a man who claimed to have laid a foundation of concepts from which only truth and freedom could thrive. Of course, the truth was nothing short of brutal and ghastly, and the freedom was his alone.
The founder of this cult was a one Edward Albrecht, a gynecological surgeon who, by his very moribund turpitude, had been dismissed on the grounds of what he called "experimental surgery breaking new ground in the field of medicine". Even as a student in medical school he had been reprimanded on several occasions for his insubordination and lack of professional behaviour. He would conduct cruel experiments on lab rats and human cadavers in his spare time, and he was almost debarred from school. But he was a genius, and people either feared or revered him, regardless of how unethical his ideas were. And though his student colleagues said he was a mad and cruel specimen of human waste, there was something in Albrecht's experiments that touched their lives in a profound way, as if they too secretly pined to break the ethical code and be free to experiment with impunity. Little did they know, those who chided Albrecht's methods, that he would pave his way to fame--each foothold but another corpse.
His rise to power began from humble beginnings. After being dismissed after ten years of gynecology, reams of malpractice suits against him, he had a period of what he called "deep and logical reflection" where he "deduced, by keen observation of pop culture and more profitable ventures to freedom and autonomy", that he would take a new role--one of the demented surgeon under the clever guise of the artist. He knew the masses hungered for shock value and sensationalism, and his reprehensible surgical methods would provide a satiation of that hunger. It was an anatomical truth: the body needed muscles in order to move, and Albrecht needed the surrendered wills of others to act as those muscles. And no matter how much he teased those muscles with labour and ill treatment, those muscles just grew in size. Each of us was a fibre, swelling fast with his cruel ideas and intentions. I speak of will here, but we were more his automata.
While all this transpired, I was living in the Village, sharing a flat with three other hopeful artists. At night, we'd go to town in all black attire and pose as artists in the clubs. If it wasn't drugs, it was we pretending to be important artists, enacting our fantasies to be judges instead of being the judged. We'd watch as the women punctuated every beat with a step, and compare notes to find out who had the best body for a "night of figure drawing and debauchery".

The mythos surrounding this man was enormous. He was painted out to be a new age Da Vinci, a man of great genius and flair. A clandestine hatred of women was what brought me to Albrecht, the most hating of them all. "Objets d'arts," he would say, "et objets d'execrable."
Albrecht had perfected performance art. He had an staggeringly immense and intuitive knowledge of human nature and subversion, a refined instinct for sniffing out fear and evil in all things to which he could apply his own touches…to amplify it, to make the horror increasingly unbearable. The finely sculpted, smooth-skinned woman strapped to the chair on stage was both willing and beautiful. I could still remember the horror I witnessed, and how I secretly enjoyed it. At first, I'd be in denial, but later I'd embrace the fact that I relished witnessing such atrocities. Granted, I was not ready to receive his tutelage at that time, but when can we truly say that we are ready for the uncanny? When are we prepared for the unexpected? To hedge one’s bets in this way is to cheapen and degrade the full potency of the unknown.
His introductory speech made a deep and lasting impression, penetrating into my very subconscious: "Here before you all tonight is a new art of a different dimension, of a new standard and calibre as to have ever graced the light of our dark days. As an artist, I am the surgeon; all else are but tools and materials. The hidden fear of the reprehensible act is what you shall experience, yet each one of you craves it on a deeper, more primal level. To deny this is to lie to yourselves, to suppress what you truly desire. Repression is the enemy of the active and honest man. Repression is the refuge of the weak.
"Let us take down the barriers of decency tonight and bear witness to a most beautiful act..."
The stage consisted of a chair with a naked woman strapped to it. The large screens had been turned to the audience, each connected to cameras providing a close-up of her anatomy. Her smooth neck, pubis, and eyes could be seen in close detail. On both sides of the stage rested large speakers, now playing an audio montage of horrified screams and women having orgasms. The mixture of the two was hypnotic and frightening. What frightened me most was that I was feeling aroused by this spectacle.
Suspended from the ceiling was a grotesque looking drill, the bit barbed with metallic thorns. It began its awful whir and descended ever so slowly towards her vagina.
From an unseen location, strobe lights began to flicker. Music and sounds swelled from the speakers. Little did I know that Albrecht was experimenting on the audience, seeing if his techniques would work. He was using what I believe is called "barrage of sensory disorientation." It gave one a surreal, floating feeling. Every eye and ear was directed to the spectacle on stage, all of us transfixed on the act to follow.
The bizarre drill device spun quickly and touched at her labia. Blood and torn tissue flew madly as the drill penetrated her as she issued screams that were drowned by the sounds and music pumping from the speakers. We would have been squeamish, but the entire sensory effect upon us kept us hypnotized. When the drill stopped, I felt a sense of guilty disappointment--I wanted the torture to continue, to satiate my deeply situated bloodlust towards women. And it did.
Another device descended, an odd pincer-like machine. Upon the screen that showed a close-up of her eyes, we could see the pincer flicker with a spark, and then insert itself into her eyes, frying out the orbs themselves. It was a ghastly display that fascinated us. This Albrecht was a mad genius that had us denying our stringent belief in the sanctity of human life. Only a magician could have had us that spellbound.
After the show, the dead woman left upon the stage. All the music and sound effects had stopped dead, and we were left to witness what happened, as if waking from the grip of a horrid nightmare. I needed to talk to this man, but I wanted to see another of his shows before doing so, just to see if his sensationalist message would take hold on my psyche. The true test of any art's efficacy was if it could be retained without repetition and familiarity. We finally met, and I was fast tracked to being one of his disciples. This transpired in 2003. The rest is, as they say, history.

Albrecht set me up in an apartment, furnished with lavish furniture and tapestries, a dark mahogany table at which to work, and a few technological amenities. He handed me a book of his personal musings for me to read. Most notably:
Kuria Doxa 9: Art is a subversive practice. Its methods must convince others to see in the way you want them to see. To control the audience's perception is key to proliferating the message and create a strong, penetrative quality in the expression. You see, I have solved the puzzle that has eluded psychology: there is no inner child per se, but an inner demon. We all have it. The only reason it has been called a child was out of politeness. Children are sociopathic, and all their evil deeds are innocent. They are egoistic hedonists, not caring who they injure in acquiring what they desire. Everyone has this demon. What I do with my art is force the viewer to acknowledge this demon, to perhaps let it manifest in a more conscious setting.
Kuria Doxa 14: Repetition of the artistic message must be continuous and powerful in delivery and duration. The artist must practice both overt oratory and subtle implication in any media he works with.
Kuria Doxa 29: Shock value must be renewed lest the audience becomes acclimatized, rendering the message powerless.
Kuria Doxa 31: Artistic control must be enforced both vertically and horizontally. In vertical control, the methods are originated from the highest authority (the artist himself) and proliferated to the audience. Horizontal control is effected by the audience members as they circulate the artist's authority to others, thereby spreading the message and accruing more followers.
Kuria Doxa 76: We must divorce ourselves from the need to view life as sacred, and see all living things as transitory phenomenon that is under the control of the artistic practitioner. We, the artists, are the agents who give life its meaning. Hence, my belief that human beings are but empty canvases and surgical material for my manipulation.
Kuria Doxa 88: Never underestimate the masses' psychological malleability. As artists, we manufacture their desire, their aesthetic tastes. There are only two types of people: those who command, and those who obey. This is the nature of all power relationships.
Kuria Doxa 89: Those with a romantic sensitivity to the aberration known as human beings are fools. They resign themselves to be commanded by those without such foolish sensibilities.
Kuria Doxa 92: Works of pure will supersede all that is created from love or reason. Reason is only viable where it enacts and empowers the will...the will to aesthete.
Kuria Doxa 94: An artist must be in touch with the deepest desires and sentiments of the masses. Where they are most malleable is in their appetites for sex and death. Those that provide this psychological ambrosia of their desires have the power to lead the masses.
Kuria Doxa 99: The artist must embrace the notion of being a machine. This is a key doctrine. A machine is apart from human sympathy, is logical, highly prolific, and represents the human ideal of perfection. To be a machine is to be as a god.

This last point in his musings frightened me. Only later would I discover Albrecht's future plans, his schemes plotted out in advance towards his utopic vision of an inorganic world. As he had put it: "the masses want an imitation Christ, one fashioned from the raw ore of the earth--a machine god in every respect. This I shall provide them. If they hunger for a master, they have it in me."
In the dull glow of his studio, Albrecht spoke quietly of devilish things. I was not alone as his disciple; four others had joined and were attentively listening to the carefully crafted gospel emanating from Albrecht's lips.
"I know each of you, perhaps better than you know yourselves. Never forget this," was his bald claim. "So my word is always to be trusted...and obeyed, for only I possess the vision. The rest of you merely share in its warmth, and have been chosen to disseminate it abroad. But it must be clear that I am the one who has the eyes to see it, and the will to bring it to pass."

It would not be long before I took pole position in his hall of favours. But it took the rough prompting of circumstances; in short, Alexa. Alexa had returned to become a diabolical fixture in my life. She…exposed me to horror through images and acts, but also subjected me personally to her own attacks. Yes…She toyed with me a great deal, making plans to meet and never showing up, sleeping with other men, playing with my emotions like so much piffle…I desired her with a morbid obsession, like the worship of a deity…But she was a deity that, contrarily, always did wrong. So potent was my desire for her—or at least her type—that I had descended into a horrible mental spiral towards imminent collapse…my longing for the impossible dissolving me in its acidic brew. How long can one desire what one cannot have, and still be tempted by the promise that, yes, there it is for the taking? “Fuck me,” she would say with firebrand eyes, but she would insist on thinking of someone else, no matter what my efforts. I was courting an abyss of a woman, a deadly cipher. It was only a matter of time and few indiscrete events that would cause the entire edifice of my sanity to be razed. Jealousy, futility, obsession and desire all worked in foul concert to make me the man I am today. “Lick my tattoo,” she would say, “worship my little tribute to Hitler, to hatred, to all these things that you deny yourself…I want you to hate me in your love, and love me in your hate!” Of course, one could draw the line here; choose to evict from one’s heart another who screeched hateful sentiments during climax. That stands to reason…but reason was so very far from me, yet another instrument beyond my grasp while the choking girth of passion was all around me like a fleshy envelope. It would have been so easy to have given up on her, to declare her with conscientious justification that she was insane, that this relationship—if it could be so called—was unhealthy. But despite the horror and terror enmeshed in this fusion, I could not avert my eyes—rather, I wanted more. I wanted her more, and I wanted it more, whatever it was. Denial? Was I in some interminable fugue within history? Had this era made me so bored that I had to resort to the most extreme atrocities of this generation? She quickly became my archetype of the most intoxicating and lethal woman—a femme fatale par excellence. Her tall, lean form, slender and long limbs, with tightly cropped short blonde hair—the very picture of an androgynous Aryan ideal…So obviously half boy half girl, the perfect fusion. Take the poster-perfect Aryan soldier, starve him, give him a modest yet tight bosom aesthetically in balance to the emaciated physique, and you had Alexa. How I never knew my secret fetish! I had not known before that she was my ideal until she was presented to me on that night so many years ago. In fact, it was she who had alerted me to Albrecht, who secretly nudged my destiny toward this unscrupulous world of art and surgery, horror and aesthetics. I was under the grip of powerful tidal forces, these two figures—Alexa and Albrecht—and their shrewd machinations had an undertow to them which fooled me to believe once and for all: I had no choice.
Albrecht and his secret shrine to the nazis, his seemingly obfuscated nazi tactics in the art world—wasn’t that what we wanted after all? But this time around, picture it differently: picture the mania of these proud nazi soldiers waging war in their own concentration camps, starving themselves and changing each other into lampshades, soap, and buttons…Picture the Jew and German as one and the same, the same evils and the same horrible treatment. Picture, if you will, what William H. Gass had said in one of his novels, alluding to that most decrepit of men…the Jew who survived the gassing and went now to the heap of corpses and was now defiling each of their dead holes with his member under the secrecy of night. Picture that horror…It was this style of horror beget by Albrecht and Alexa’s type that I responded to, followed, felt impassioned by despite my more sound judgement. How many concealed erections at the photograph of the most depraved and emotive scene of the Jewish Holocaust? How many? How many “nocturnal emissions” by the bed while poring over these photographs? How much morbid interest invested in nazi documentaries? If you can understand and tolerate these things and not go mad when thinking them through to their most awful implications, then you are either a dead man or a strong man. I am neither of these things. Vision is a terrible burden, even in the best of times.

"Now deaden your heart to idle occupations like love," he confided to me gently with a hint of malice in his voice. "All that matters is the vision. Everything else is frivolous, and all people are subservient to the vision's aims. Give your heart unto the vision."
He continued on, now pontificating to the entire group. He spoke of how we could assist him in his surgical art, visiting morgues and enticing young girls from dance clubs. Of those disciples he was most fond of, he promised participation in performing the surgeries. He made it sound so glorious and appealing that we all hungered and pined to be personally selected. It was a matter of artificially inducing and creating desire where, by reason, there should not have been. But as I already knew, ex nihilo nihil fit. A secret desire need only be coaxed from the alcoves of consciousness and into the light.
To those aspirant disciples, he provided a recommended reading list. I searched through bookstores for literature on the Holocaust, which was one of the more prominent areas of study Albrecht endorsed. In his words: "if we are to learn new procedures, we must examine the old. In the time of the nazis, we find a virtual treasure trove of groundbreaking surgical methods. When decency and ethics are disavowed from the arts and sciences, the most exciting discoveries are made."
One had to understand how charismatic Albrecht was before judging the deplorable actions of his disciples. His oratory was delivered with meticulous precision, utilizing the correct phrasing sequences that would excite the appropriate parts of the malleable psyche. His gaze was severe and penetrating, like that of a serpent. His movements and gesticulations were precise in emphasis. His attire was modern, though he was easily twenty years our senior. One might have equated him as a pop culture demigod, a cult leader of magnificent standing. Elegant and suave, he was serpentine in every way, but it was his high intellect that pumped deadly venom into the heart of this world. And those who refused to believe were cast out. Albrecht demanded full faith from his disciples.
We had done as he decreed, and by the next show, two hundred curious people stayed for the show. Among them were members of the press and some art critics of note. We had snagged them, and now Albrecht's message was to take effect.
Albrecht, in creating a favourable reputation, donated liberally to the local art scene. Though many critics derided his work as "the idiocy of a madman," or "wholly unpalatable and without regard to taste and decency," no one could refute his growing popularity. His power was increasing, and several critics who saw him in an unfavourable light had no other choice but to go with the popular current and side with him. His regime was quickly consolidating, setting its foundations in the quick-dry cement of historical necessity. He once told a harsh critic, "it seems that the many who once shared your narrow view have defected to my side, the right side. How long will it be before your editor asks you to toe the party line? Even the so-called free press has a mandate to fill, you understand. The lone, dissenting voice--as romantically powerful as the idea is--can only exist if there is permission from above. Hold fast to your silly principles! What use is a cry in the wilderness when there is no wilderness left to speak of?"
In an interview, a critic launched a vicious diatribe against Albrecht's art, to which Albrecht replied in a cool and collected manner: "the masses desire what I provide. These needless denouncements mean nothing; the masses have spoken. Besides, I am a god no one can depose."
A bit megalomaniacal of a statement, but we believed in him without deviation. We were his "lambs," as he put it. By that time, the lambs numbered forty-five and growing. I had succeeded to being his favourite. But someone like Albrecht was not dim by any sense; he knew whom he would select as his personal colleague. He had already alluded in the past that he saw in me the raw potential necessary, the insatiable hunger of a man whose penchant for ego-edifying glory knew no moral bounds. I, too, wanted to be a god. Albrecht made it so that this would be possible.
Being favoured above others had its obvious perks. I was granted privileged information and was invited on excursions. These excursions were to "replenish the stocks" of his art subjects, and took place in popular dance clubs throughout the city. The first experience was one I'd never forget...
Albrecht had sent me to shop for more suitable, pop culture savvy attire--all at his expense. Then, at night, we were off to the clubs.
He was too old to be a frontman and ensnare potential women, so he needed a loyal group of good-looking men to do this for him.
"The rules of the hunt apply," he said. "Nothing too overt or threatening; subtle methods only. Remember to be tactful, slightly playful, and mysterious--but not too mysterious, for a mystery is only interesting if there is at least a vague chance to solve it."
We sat at a booth and eyed the crowd like two carrion birds. I pointed a few out, to which he gave me his unabashed opinions.
"Too portly."
"Too short."
"Her face sags."
"The left eye is crooked."
"Her complexion is too ruddy."
He had the eyes of a finicky painter, always seeking that perfection. These women were prospective canvases, and he was looking for someone who was just right. When he did point a few out as good candidates, I was inclined to agree, happily in deference to his taste. That sought-for perfection in nature was his goal, if not just to be given the opportunity to defile it.
"Remember to take these along," he said, placing a pill bottle in my hands. "Buy them drinks when the time is right and use great care and subterfuge to slip a tablet in."
I felt strangely confident, as I had never been before, perhaps because I had a task with a definite end rather than sex. I had purpose, granted to me by my master, and so I did not feel the awkward shyness I usually felt around strange women. As for sex, Albrecht was quick to mention that I was not to engage in any sexual activity with the candidates--unless I asked him really nicely. This was followed by one of his evil grins.
As I was working the floor, I made an error. Albrecht motioned me back after the first one.
"She is one of Astrid's brood, and Astrid is a crafty dance club deity. If we are to procure one of Astrid's women, you cannot use the drugs. Use money," he instructed, sitting in wait like a spider decked out in black attire.
I finally landed an exquisite candidate. I had her in conversation and gradually brought her over to see Albrecht.
"Ah, what a devastating creature!" Albrecht exclaimed. "A delightful structure. Soft shoulders, supple body, a seductive smile, and a beautiful dip in the small of her back. We are artists, you understand, and we've been looking for someone absolutely gorgeous in both movement and body to exalt in paint and marble. We were looking for someone ideal to epitomize the very Aphrodite of all artistic models, but you have an even more stunning appearance than we could ever have imagined."
She giggled and blushed. I slipped the tablet in her drink when she wasn't looking.
"This man on your arm," he continued, "is a nationally acclaimed artist."
"Really?" she looked at me in amazement.
"Oh, yes. A master sculptor known in every part of the world. But keep it a secret; he abhors being recognized when he is just out to have a good time. Perhaps you saw his Porsche on your way in?"
"No," she said, barely able to contain her excitement. Good-looking and rich.
"He and I are colleagues," he said. "But I am a doddering old fool. Let me leave you two to your privacy. I have matters to attend elsewhere."
He flashed me a lascivious grin and left us. I didn't know her name, but her lips, neck, shoulders, and other parts too prurient to mention, I got to know quite well. With the impressive job Albrecht had done in puffing me up, she was all over me in no time, and the drug had taken effect. I was to bring her to Albrecht's studio before it wore off. There, she would be kept drugged until the next show.
This night would be one of many in the palaces of the flesh. As I continued to aid Albrecht's cause, I began to see people as he did, with the critical eye of one scoping for the perfect specimen. To refine the attributes of the discerning eye, Albrecht supplied me with a catalogue of female body somatypes that he had compiled--a large volume of every possible form the female figure could take--and marked the pages with his preferences. What disturbed me slightly was that some of these pages had surgical notes for future alterations upon these forms. To him, Nature wasn't good enough; he had to correct it.
The more I was in Albrecht's company--which was often--the more influenced I became by his way of thinking, and the more I saw him as a Socratic, paternal figure.
A member of the local intelligentsia squad--some decency activist group awakened by the popular demand for Albrecht's work--was making a stink about the supposed sensationalism in Albrecht's performances. When I told this to Albrecht, and put forth that it was unfortunate that the man could not be "administratively liquidated," he said: "intellect is an asset, and to resort to such crude measures would be an act of waste. A man of intellect may think himself immune to base desires, but that is only an arrogant reflex to veil his own frailty and lack of will. Every man has his price, and with enough money and promises, even the man of intellect will be singing our tune."
Every man has his price. The words echoed in the chambers of my mind, destined to remain in my memory forever. As for Albrecht's assertion of not resorting to crude measures, there were times that he did not stay true to form.

The beat pulsated like an ephedrine-induced heartbeat. Hundreds of happy boy- and girl-children were thrashing about as if it were St. Vitus' dance. Albrecht remained on the fringes, his eyes fixated on the excited mob, his one goal in mind: find specimens. Sometimes, when talking shop with him, he'd get that wistful look in his eyes as if daydreaming. I wondered how he saw us, those surgical eyes constantly in use. Were we only future specimens?
Under his tutelage, he taught me to see as he did. I exercised this newfound sight at a particular rave, summed up in my report:
"Her slender body moved in a slow hypnotic manner. Her elbow joints seemed accentuated by her very gaunt arms and petite shoulders. The collarbones appeared burnished, and protruded from the flesh like a stone weathered free from the sand. The colours of her tight attire were bright, emphasizing her small, yet rounded breasts. The curve of the back was slight and smooth, perhaps the skin taut over the bones of her vertebrae. Her facial features were strong, but slightly understated by the unruly, short locks that formed a crest of shadow over her eyes. Her thighs were thin and muscular. She was tall and waifish, yet she was fleshed out in the appropriate places. The eyes were a clear, crystalline blue, like two points of wintery frost."
I had scrawled this down on a discarded flyer, typed it up, and handed it over to Albrecht for his approval. He seemed pleased. The girl in question couldn't have been more than seventeen, but she would serve her purpose, perhaps to fall into our clutches like an ant would an antlion's pit.
Astrid was a woman no one could fool. In the club scene, she was among the elite, a goddess of the nocturne, one who was quite adept at surviving in her environment. The underlings knew not to trifle with her lest she would wave a disdainful hand and shatter their reputation in the club scene for life. She was a specimen like no other, and she carried herself with such elegance and allure that even the bravest drunks would shy away. Her beauty was intimidating and disarming, to the point where she was a repellant to anyone who would dare take the chance in declaring affection. And she danced as if not of this world--a mystical, godly movement, perhaps only seen in a Cult of Astarte. Albrecht could not conceal his joy…
"When do we have her strapped down?" I whispered to Albrecht with devilish anticipation.
He frowned and said in a condescending tone, "nothing so crude. Have you no semblance of procedure? You don't destroy perfection; you enhance it."
This reprimand from the master was quickly subdued by his lavish congratulatory attitude in my having procured Astrid, of all people, as a lump of clay for him to fashion. We were rapidly approaching the zenith of our expressive powers.

"I have been promised a type of surgery to perfect my already existing form," Astrid said. "From what Jakob has told me, I am eager to know more."
"Excellent!" Albrecht said, pleased that she was willing to submit herself to the hands of his art. "Let me show you what we are proposing."
He pulled out the laptop computer from beside him, called up the Astrid file, and turned the screen towards her.
"Now, if you'll please take off your garments, we can begin," he said, like a doctor would a patient.
She had a wary and apprehensive look about her at the mention of this.
"Please," he implored, "I assure you this is strictly of a professional nature. Trust me…I am a doctor."
Slowly and deliberately, she disrobed. Albrecht placed a video camera attachment to the computer and digitally captured her naked form. I was almost blinded by the beauty before me, yet I was also confronted with the frailty of this naked, unaltered body. Without clothes, she appeared somewhat vulnerable, yet she retained her dignified, royal presence. It was like witnessing both the beauty of nature and the immutable divinity of a medieval queen.
"We're finished now," Albrecht said. "You may put your clothes on."
She did so and was then motioned closer to the computer screen.
"As you can see," he said, "this is your existing body."
Upon a white screen was the digital image of her body rotating on an axis.
"The program just needs to process this data," Albrecht said, "and...There we have it. Okay, so here is your existing body. The alterations we are proposing are these..."
He fiddled with the keys, the screen casting an eery light upon the face of a man possessed in the act of creation.
"The head will be reinforced with a cranial shield and a gyroscope mechanism to protect the brain from injury. The eyes will be replaced with more efficient, inorganic eyes capable of toggling between normal and night vision. Aesthetically, the cheekbones will be accentuated with the help of plastic inserts and bone reshaping, and the jaw line will be made more pronounced and strong. Collagen will be inserted in the upper lip. The head, of course, will be the trickiest part of the operation. The torso will be endowed with a Plexiglas shield over the organs. Titanium sheaths will reinforce the collarbones and the shoulders will have an endoshield. An inserted plastic mould will protect the breasts, and the ribs will be more durable by replacing the sternum with a metal rod covered by a rubber casing. The torso will also be extended. The spine will be altered in two ways: a new neural connection will be effected by the use of nanites programmed to transmit quicker electronic impulses to the brain, and the vertebrae themselves will be sheathed and made more elastic by inserting flexible mini-joints. The forearms will be replaced entirely by advanced prosthetics, and the hands as well. The humerus will be replaced by metal bone, with an inner tubing to allow for neural transmission and muscle movement. Several perforations will be made in the metal to allow for small plastic fibres that will prove to be more durable and strong than normal muscle tissue. Because of this, we will need to reinforce all joints to compensate for the increase of physical strength. The legs will be lengthened, and your overall height should be approximately six feet or over. There will be other modifications to your endocrine system, metabolic rate, and tendons, but why bother you about the particulars? Only gods hassle over the details."
Albrecht showed Astrid the final product on the screen, and she was pleased. Project Astrid would be underway within a few weeks after some rigorous tests were performed, and the necessary materials for the surgery were ordered.

Dinner was served. While cutting into his rare, bloody steak, he said: "it will be a beautiful thing when I take the scalpel and make the first cut upon her body. Frankly, I'm positively elated at the prospect. I'd almost forego the testing just to plunge into the procedure sooner. Just imagine it: the flesh ready and willing to be sculpted with finesse, to be crafted by an expert hand."
Just then he took a large bite of steak, a small trickle of blood and grease dripping down his chin.


Albrecht prepared for Astrid's operation, the rest of us were deployed to create hype for the project. This involved a heavy hand in public relations detail. The hype machine was on the move, and everywhere support was being drummed up for the "Great Unveiling" of Albrecht's newest masterpiece.
In the following weeks, Albrecht was unavailable for interviews, being mostly preoccupied with Astrid's augmentation. He had set a target date for the operation's completion, and would work night and day to be finished in time for the unveiling. It was curious that not once did I ever give thought to Astrid, how she was feeling, her comfort, or anything else about her. I attributed this to my maturation, the detachment any good art-surgeon must possess in order to stay true to the Vision.
Still in Albrecht's favour, he invited me to be present to have the first glimpse of his masterpiece of surgical design. When he pulled the sheet from Astrid's body, I was both amazed and horrified. A functioning, augmented woman was lying there, a vessel of his creative energies come to life. And Albrecht stood there in the glorious pride of a new age Doctor Frankenstein. Was that what we were doing? Rewriting the Shelley, Albrecht's disciples little more than the collectivized labour power of so many Igors?
"Because I underestimated the amount of time it would take for this operation," he said, "I had to skimp on a few minor details. She will not live for more than a week. Unfortunate, yes, but I only need her alive for one day so the crowd to see what I am capable of. She is but the first of what hopefully will be many, and with more practice and study, I will perfect my craft. Once the show is over, we will need to perform the necessary euthanasia, and one of you will be placed in charge of extracting the inorganic parts to be recycled in our next venture, and her husk must be disposed of. We may be able to rent her out for a small window of time, but after this we must reclaim her."
"Her death might alarm the public," I ventured, trying to conceal my reflexive horror at his callousness.
"Yes, that is true, but it is just a life; there will be others just as stunning for me to sculpt into inorganic perfection. I would appreciate it if we all pretend that she will go on indefinitely, for our sake."
A bit dumbstruck by this event, I decided to desensitize myself by reading more of Albrecht's works. Reading his Deus Corpus Inorganica recalibrated my thinking in such a way that I once again wholeheartedly endorsed Albrecht's vision. This idyllic vision of his was, of course, historically necessary.
The unveiling was a success, and now the world was presented with the genius of Albrecht. Astrid displayed her newfound abilities to the awe and wonder of the spectators. For the upper crust of the artistic community, Astrid was rented out for grandiose sums, some exceeding a million dollars. This only meant that Albrecht now had the reserves to purchase more elaborate materials. What was thought impossible could now be done: the inorganic had been fused with the organic. Albrecht was touted as an artistic and medical revolutionary. When asked what he was going to do with this new technique, he replied: "I'd be a fool to divulge the secret process. Let us just say that I am willing to work in tandem with an aspiring, brave, and ambitious corporation. This new surgical method could supplant the mundane tattoo or piercing."
The praise began to flow like wine, and all of us were drowning in the ego of Doctor Albrecht.
Within a week, Astrid died as forecasted. Her body had rejected the implants and caused a cardiac arrest. The poisons flitting through her body from the foreign materials did not help to protract her life. She was unceremoniously stripped of her parts; the flesh cut up into hunks, and disposed of in a landfill. But Albrecht was not deterred in the least; he was already focused on his next exciting project.
As disciples, we were obligated to do the following: public relations, induction of new members, booking of gallery time and space, attending his frequent rally speeches to reinforce our loyalty, and sabotage other artists' reputations. The work was laborious, but we were paid quite generously. But, owing to our devotion to the man and the strong familial sense of belonging, we would have worked for free.

A police inquiry was made after a rash of women went missing, forming a trail that led to Albrecht's arrival in Germany. This was done after a diplomat's daughter went missing and was later found--among many other bodies--in shallow graves at a landfill. The women were reported to have been mutilated by various implements, mostly surgical. We did not fear so much for ourselves as we did for our visionary leader. DNA tests would be done and proof would then be strong enough to implicate him. All our efforts were to no avail as the press exposed the huge scandal. Somehow, perhaps owing to Albrecht’s deep connections all across the board, he was acquitted on several occasions, and a gag order was issued to the press. Disgruntled pressure groups petitioned their leaders to make Albrecht accountable, but their efforts were all for naught.

A fluid wall of bodies passed us in the street. Albrecht wouldn't blink an eye if a disastrous event killed them all. His mind was filled with nebulae and deadly reptiles, and a place where the body was a piece of land to be irrigated, cultivated by the fatherly hands of a renegade machinist. The prosthetic piping underneath the skin was just a beginning, the point of departure where all nightmares bloomed in opulent glory. His was a vision we didn't entirely understand, and perhaps he didn't fully understand it either; it just drove him.
The saga of the body, as Albrecht put it, was one that could be retold in any tongue--organic or inorganic--and was replete with changeable endings. Flesh was nothing more than an allegory of exchange, a sheath one could dispose of like a moulting. It was merely material. And what was housed within was also just material.
The crowd slithered by us in frightful panoply of self-interested errands, and would continue to grind its way towards nowhere. If the one moment on the street could have been framed in tableau, each person's destination would be rendered meaningless in the context of a scene without time. We were all together in isolation, random acts of communion with each mind an island of its own: "a collection of the living and nothing more," Albrecht said as we walked through them all. Solipsism was the dangerous weapon we had at our disposal, ready to put it up to everyone's throat.
A little coffee shop death. We sat by a picture window and spoke of our elegant, misanthropic genocide. The poetry of our time was an expression of slaughter, of cruel surgical experiments that would reveal to the world more human truth than any artistic attempt before it.
"I'm sorry, sir, but this is a non-smoking environment," said the perky-looking counter attendant with officious meekness.
"Hm," grunted Albrecht, letting out a jet of smoke from his nostrils, obviously his disrespectful rebuttal to the laws of the land.
"Sir, I--" she began to insist.
"Are you an artist?" he questioned sharply.
"No."
"Then shut up and leave us alone," he said, waving his hand in dismissal. To me: "I had a passing thought of my aging."
"How old are you, exactly?" I asked innocently.
"Good little boys don't ask such questions," he said with a friendly, yet cautionary smile. "As it stands now, I've defied the rule that the great artist has to be a youthful braggart. By pop culture's standards, I should be considered too old to make a contribution to their cloistered and perverse little society. Why have they come to praise me?"
"Instead of burying you?" I replied, this statement now a running joke between us. "You and I know that you are magnetic. You ooze charisma like a popular snail."
"That paints an eloquent and tasteful picture," he said wryly.
"What I mean to say is that you have captured the inner desires of the public, holding them up for ransom. The young and decadent are infatuated with your art because it takes them further into a state of euphoric hysteria, and the educated elite respects you for your fresh and astute approach. The latter believe that this is just a sociological experiment, that you will shock the scholars with a stunning treatise on human nature."
"Oh, stop it. You're giving me an ego complex," he joked. "The real reason I've been thinking on the matter of my own mortality is because I'm going to need a successor."
He looked at me with a keen gaze, and there was no mistake that he was suggesting that the successor be me. I felt a fluttering within, honoured in every sense of the word.
"This is horribly flattering," I said, my cheeks red with embarrassment.
Then with seriousness in his voice: "you're the only one I truly trust, and the only one with the true potential that I'm looking for in a successor. I will leave it to you to think over. The mantle of leadership is a burden, and one should not accept it without prior reflection."
The girl had given up on harassing Albrecht. We were the only ones there, save for the homely old man in the corner whose hand jittered with Parkinson's as he brought cold coffee to his lips. Albrecht stood, and just before we parted, walked over to the counter attendant. I was waiting at the front entrance and could not hear the exchange, but I could see that she was trembling.
As we left: "what did you tell her?"
"I asked if she had a sister," he said nonchalantly, the event already becoming an unimportant cipher in his mind.
"Oh?" I implored.
“Yes, I revealed my identity. Notoriety flies faster than any transport vessel. Jakob, I must ask you…”
“Yes?”
“What are we to do with so many unwitting specimens?”
“ Fuck them all dead with scissors and razors fine.”
He laughed for almost a minute before saying, “Jakob, you are definitely a shadowy beast after my own heart.”

It was nighttime and back to work. Albrecht promised me a special treat, an "event," as he called it. Tonight, he was going to introduce me to the God in the Machine. This was to be one of Albrecht's most poetic monologues I had ever heard.
The club's name was unimportant. The club was the thing, and that was all. It could have been anywhere. Just by the way Albrecht arbitrarily chose it, this point needed to be stressed.
Albrecht had only to flash his celebrity grin, and the bouncers parted the way for us.
"It begins," he said to me with a fiendish smile and a languishing opening of his arms as if parting the Red Sea, as we entered the club.
We found seats above the noise and fashion rancor, a plush booth two metres from the second floor railings.
"This," he began like any good Marlow, "is a machine. This club is a mechanism of automated corpuscles in wild, yet precisely measured movements. The god resides here amidst the fluorescent tapestries and dreams woven in lycra and faux denim. My purpose is to expose it, bring it to the awful light with my surgeon's tools. At the root of this Neo-Dionysus nightmare is the god I wish to erect.
"You see, here we find the iridescent and manic moon worshippers in a constant Eurobuzz while the drug spirals in their eyes," he pontificated, indicating the faithless hedonists taking frequent flights from the dance floor to ready hypos. "This heavenly freak bazaar unites them in an act of isolated actions that deify the ephemeral self. Each of them are trying to touch god in their own way.
"And while the pulse of infrared heart-lights and the EKGs of the insane are displayed on the monolithic screens, this last generation on earth is taking no prisoners. It is ultimate salvation or death. One or both. It is artificially delicious. Here, the dirt and anger and sex seems to be carefully disguised in moniker talk and duct-taped sequined suits garnished with plastic baubles. They let their cybertropic delusions make for them a divine purpose. But it is the divinity of a plastic, imitation Christ.
"Squadrons of the bizarre descend upon the entranced, ambient wishes lost in the ebb of a future receding. How they recoil as we show them the way inside, leading them down the path toward the centre of the Machine. But when we splice and deconstruct the Machine, we tap into its essence. Listen carefully to me now. There is a burning hot matrix that seethes within it, that threatens to overshadow the living world. You and I feed it, my disciple. We feed it with the nubile pill heads and crack-teens clad in their sexual warfare gear. Our master and saviour is Machine. There is a god inside it—Deus ex machina!"
As Albrecht was speaking, various visuals assaulted me. A dandy in a bondage dress strutted into the very thick of the mob, got bloodied, and was carried out. Meanwhile, the high vibrations from wrap-around speakers were making bodies waggle in that deadly, subterranean way. It was madness seeing those people running all over one another to be hedonist of the year. Whatever madness I was beholding, I knew it was beginning to infect me.
"Look at them: hypnotized by the Machine. Under its spell, we are free to pluck at them as we please. And the press dares to revile me for the obvious, for performing this harvest…for being an entrepreneur seeing a potential niche!"
We were served by a rubber doll hostess in a mock airport decor as envisioned by someone on heavy dosages of LSD.
"The deadliest of the converts are those who become aware of the God in the Machine. And this place is the culture machine. It has tenets to follow and mechanisms that keep it going."
For a brief moment, I felt a flash of being in over my head. Albrecht was exposing for me a truth I secretly hoped would never be put into words. The vicious times in my youth, when clubbing was a part of the lifestyle, was being laid bare before me. I was being dished with the bald truth as seen through the miasmic eyes of Albrecht.
"Only when they are wavering on the brink of unconsciousness and death do they feel truly alive. Only when the culture machine takes total control of their bodies do they feel empowered. There is an untapped religious fervour here, and I intend to give shape and direction to it. It's plain to see: they not only crave the Machine as their ticket to salvation, but they need to become the Machine. When I look around at all those confused bodies, I see a mass that wants to evolve. It wants new symbols and icons. It hungers for an apocalypse of the flesh to usher in the evolution of an inorganic world. They are ready and willing, but not ready to fully admit it. That's where we come in.
"And there were those who dared to call me mad, to claim that I was an inhuman monster possessed by a demonic, Aristotelian spirit who was sent to categorize the intangibles of life. But I see the world in its separate, component parts. The body is a collection of parts. What harm is there in removing various body parts and replacing them with new, gleaming alternatives? An eye, a vagina, an arm--anything can be modified and made into artistic perfection. 'But the natural is beautiful and is an art unto itself,' my critics would say. Bah! The natural world is predictable and passé. I infuse a new blood into what is natural. I adhere to no mantra that states the artificial is second rate to the natural. I see it as a progression, an extension of nature that has its flaws corrected and its evolution catalyzed."
Albrecht's monologue was broken when a young, scantily clad pill head cast an erotically charged glance at me. By this time, Albrecht was alive and inspired with his own speech, intoxicated by his own divine vision. There was no denying that he felt like a god. And for all intents and purposes, he was one.
"The game is afoot," he said to me. "Fortune has smiled on us. She allows herself to be led around by her own devilish cunt. Let her sexual voracity lead her to our operating table where we will prick her with the sharp, phallic scalpels of a creation through the glorious bounty of an artistic death."
His eyes were bloodshot and wild, and he blew smoke like a dragon guarding its treasure trove. I was to go through the proper motions, the necessary dialogue repertoire, and bring her along with us.
Body after body, we had poured new flesh into moulds and let them set in horrific frameworks of ars inorganica. Palisades of bone and old tissue hung like sculpted stalactites from the canvas of our expression. The message was so pure and diabolically primal, it was foreboding. In Albrecht, I found a father I could both fear and love.
Though the world tried to avert its eyes and turn its mind against this art fatale, it had the effect on the senses that screeched and burned, taunting one to come hither and see the depravity with new eyes. Its freshness was burning, and it had made a collision with the modern sentiment in such a way that it sent ripples throughout the world's perception of itself. This was the nefarious power of our machine, the artistic movement on its feet and deadly with purpose, saturated in the phosphorous melancholy of new technology. This was our act of redefinition.
Like marauders in the night, or a naval press gang, we procured new bodies. The creations that Albrecht took to completing had succeeded in absolving reason behind the aesthetic, and defeated the prosaic progression in the arts. The continuum of expression was broken with Albrecht's mighty blow. He had been the first artist in so long that produced masterpieces. He pitted his works against the world, this demonic Rauschenberg, in a contest of fire and venom. Where there existed a rupture in the culture machine, blossomed an orgy of creative possibilities--and possibility was power. The staggered rhythm of his onslaught had cost the art world the ignorant fear of opening its eyes and witnessing the atrocities each being was capable of.
The God in the Machine had intoxicated us, possessing us with spirit and Arian fire. Nothing was unethical; Albrecht had etched for us new and more convenient commandments. The flesh was weak and undeserving of our mercy.
Once we were done with the girl we found, it was afterglow time. Her bright and lascivious eyes had been drilled out and the sockets stuffed with autumn leaves. The jaw was wired shut and a circuitry-laden dildo of our design had been duct-taped to her puckering mouth.
"Cigarette?" Albrecht offered from his gold case.
I nodded, and there we sat: bloodied and exhausted, regarding the masterpiece we had made of the club slut.

I had returned from Bremen, and had swung a deal to have a few John and Jane Does delivered from the morgue. Albrecht recommended that he and I spend an evening together, seeing as we were going to be working in tandem on a new project. I was becoming, as Albrecht put it, a man of delicious genius. And to be a man of becoming is to be a man in Albrecht’s highest esteem. We were hosting an interview for new members.
We took flight to a club and talked over drinks. One look in the mirror had exposed me to what I had indeed become. I tallied myself through the eyes of another: I had cautious and wary eyes, an alluring countenance, elegant and foreboding in all these slow gestures. I seemed to have once borne the brunt of an awful self-disintegration—a delicious journey into the very abyss of so many debilitating failures, crippling indiscretions, and thoroughgoing tragedies fashioned by the most twisted minds in unison across the ages. But I was the ArtSphinx now, and this role I filled naturally, like I had been bred to fulfill it, or destiny had secretly conspired to force me through the narrow and constricting canals of fate to lead me here. The true beauty of a man is when he is an icon who grows iconoclast in relation to his efforts. My face was hard, my hands knotted, and I bore the likeness of a new world vampire in Baroque attire.
"So, Albrecht tells me that you show a great deal of promise," I said to a candidate for our diabolical cadre. "That's good because this is an age when we are getting things done. We need the quick and the sharp to make it happen. When I was your age, I was too preoccupied with my own idiocy to see things as they are."
"I have followed yours and Dr. Albrecht’s works closely. Dr. Albrecht said you were a heroin addict," the candidate stated.
"Among other things," I said. "I was a man of extremes, what Aristotle called excess or defect. Either I overindulged, or I was wholly abstinent. Since then, I have learned to be more temperate. I do enjoy a poke every now and again. I'm on it right now as we speak, so I apologize in advance if I become verbose."
"Your checkered past: has it primed you for the role you now fill?" he asked, curiously journalistic about the whole affair.
"I am a man of many riddles, for am I not the ArtSphinx? But I am competent in the art of discord. I embrace my ironies. Nothing can be so dangerous yet intoxicating than the untimely, the unexpected…This is where our methods excel. We amplify rather than mollify fear. But nothing can make me deviate from Albrecht's vision...nothing whatsoever."
This conviction of mine seemed forced, and this made me suspect. I began to have my doubts about the ArtSphinx as to his mental stability, this bizarre creation of mine that had taken a life outside the sobriquet. A creature like this was capable of lapsing into dangerous mental territory, making it the antithesis of Albrecht's divine plans…Of that, I was only too secretly aware. I would perhaps one day bury Albrecht—but if this was the case, it would be a necessity only Albrecht himself would be fully cognizant of.

One of the newer disciples, a Ted Praetor, was discovered to be an infiltrator and saboteur, planning to arouse revolutionary sentiments from within as an attempt to undermine Albrecht's vision. Apparently, Praetor's sister had been a victim of Albrecht's art.
Ted Praetor found no sympathetic ears among us--we being wholly devoted and indoctrinated--and was promptly brought to the attention of our leader. Of course, Ted Praetor was unaware of this.
I was sent to fetch and bring him to Albrecht's studio for a "promotional evaluation."
"I think Dr. Albrecht has taken a fondness to you," I said. "The likely outcome of this evaluation will be that you'll be made an assistant."
"Excellent," Ted feigned excitement. The poor man had no clue what was in store for him.
The studio was dimly lit and both Albrecht and I were seated with severe expressions on our faces. Albrecht was picking at his nails with a scalpel, flanked by two inorganics. Upon his desk were notes for another surgical experiment. He mumbled something to me, who smiled, and proceeded to cover up the notes with a textbook.
"Mr. Praetor, how good of you to come," said Albrecht with a sickly sweet tone. "We have tremendous news."
"Oh?" said Ted.
"Yes. We are promoting you to a very special position, one that has not been available before in our tightly knit cadre."
Albrecht nodded to the two inorganics and they advanced on Ted. I locked the door so he could not escape. Once Ted was firm in their grasp, Jakob set up a spotlight and camera.
"What's going on?" asked Ted in great fear. "I thought I was being promoted!"
"Oh, but you are, sweet Ted. You are going to be a star. We are making a film entitled 'The Penitence of Judas.' It's going to be about a half hour in duration, and quite graphic. Guess who's going to play Judas?" Albrecht asked with a wide grin.
Ted's eyes were wild with fear. One could see under the spotlight that he had wet himself.
"Please, I--" Ted begged.
"Excellent!" Albrecht said wickedly. "Keep pleading for your life. This is going to be a wonderful film."
"I was set up!" he screamed. "It was he all along!"
I was at the end of Ted's finger. I merely raised an eyebrow, for the man was obviously just grasping at straws now.
"Now, now, Mr. Praetor, trying to shift the blame on the innocent just reifies your guilt," said Albrecht. "Besides, he is one of my best men."
I beamed happily at the comment.
The scalpel came up and made a vicious arc downward. I stayed for the screams and the blood. The filming only lasted fifteen minutes. Albrecht was disappointed that Ted died of shock so soon.
Albrecht turned to me and said, "would you be so kind to decapitate this lifeless husk?"
I promptly complied. The task took a few minutes, the neck bones being most difficult to sever.
Once I was done: "excellent. Follow me...and bring the head."
An impromptu meeting of the disciples was called, and they all filed in. Albrecht approached the podium and was met with cheers and applause. He stood there for a full minute, not saying a word. The anticipation caused a great hush to follow.
"My loyal disciples,” began Albrecht, "I am sad to say that we had a devilish wolf among the lambs."
Shocked murmurs rippled through the crowd.
"And to those who would threaten our family and my vision, to make a mockery of my deep love for all of you, I have but one response. As my children, I protect you, but when a wayward child rises in an attempt to usurp the father and threaten our very unity, my heart becomes enraged and I become ruthless against the vileness that upsets our family. So, as a fatherly gesture in the interests of your love, the cancer has been removed and we all may rejoice."
Albrecht proudly held up the head of Ted Praetor for the entire crowd to see, and they cheered wildly.
"Whosoever is found to be a traitor to our cause," Albrecht said over the loud praise he was receiving from the crowd, "shall fall under the knife of our pure retribution! Let this be a message to anyone who would dare have the gall to act as an obstacle to the vision! In our will, we shall triumph!"
The cheers became deafening, the crowd enchanted by a speech whose content had been founded in Germany a long time ago.

"The gloves are off now, my young disciple," he announced, not lifting his head from his work. "My message has been held captive by the unreadiness of the masses for too long. Have I ever told you how I came to my current state of vision?"
"No. It was one of those enigmas I hoped one day you'd demystify."
"Well," he began with a wolfish smile, "it was many years ago, perhaps when you were just a child. I was in my microbiology class, the professor pedantically driving the relationship of protein and the cell into all those young minds. In the middle of this dry, scientific sermon, I had an epiphany. If the enzymes used to catalyze the rates of reaction in the cell were replaced by a more evolved and efficient compound, the activation energy requirement would be reduced. What was needed here was a twist of the existing thermodynamic laws. This meant that an overhaul of the entire biological system was needed in order to promote inorganic molecules that would replace the need for enzymes. Of course, regulation of the catalysis would be a problem, but the idea was still in its infancy. Eventually, I would figure out all the details through rigorous experimentation. However, the university was unwilling to let me begin experimentation, let alone provide me with the necessary equipment. When I proposed it as my thesis, no professors would assent, almost spurning me as a cur.”
Another story circulated about Albrecht, one that transpired long before this. While traveling abroad with his family in Europe at a very young age, they visited the Museo La Specola in Florence, the museum which housed the largest collection of anatomical specimens in wax, a gory museum of post-Renaissance science displaying the intricate details of the organs, corpses in various states of excision. His uncle, a brash and charismatic man, had persuaded young Albrecht—I believe he was only five years of age—to leave the company of his parents to be in attendance with his uncle in a private manner. It is said that the uncle had savagely sexually abused the boy, forcing him to perform fellatio, to having his own anus violated by the wicked thrusts of a family member gone so terribly wrong. But, of course, this is mere conjecture.

Albrecht managed to acquire a warehouse that measured one city block long. When the news traveled that an enormous party was to be hosted there, there was a stir in Berlin’s pop culture scene. This party was boasted to be the most hedonistic rave of all time.
It took three weeks of around the clock preparation. Three-way mirrors, inflatable furniture, tie-dyed floor tiles, liquid lighting, monster speakers, and faux-dolphin hide mats, were all strategically placed. In fact, we didn't agree on the decor until the very last night, when compromises were being made left and right. But this paraphernalia was nothing but a decorative flourish, a means of baiting a trap for Albrecht’s most daring adventure into the obscene.
Flyers were distributed for the event, and those of a more royal presence in the club scene were given more personal summons. If bodies were what Albrecht was looking for, this rave was a fecund idea.
On that fateful night, the warehouse was booming with thousands of libidinous youths, from all tracts and classes of society. The whirring insistency and the fuzzing in and out of audio obscura, faithless electronica, and cybernoiz shook the air. There was a deadly orchestra of five DJs spinning simultaneously, people in grotto boots, holographic dance cages, luminescent dancers in glow paint and bulbs of rose coloured lights on their mini-skirts, alabaster amulets, and upon three thousand faces was a wash of mother-of-pearl colours. Albrecht knew they would come in droves. He and his inorganics waited patiently on the fringes of the fury, ready for what was to happen when the time was right.
All the windows were welded shut with sheets of steel. The drinks that were sold were all drugged, and inorganic dealers went about and freely distributed hallucinogens, amphetamines, and the like. At three in the morning, I was to lock the iron doors at the entrance. "It's just another cage," Albrecht would say. "One that so many willingly enter. If they possess a rank indifference as to whether they live or die, then what I'm going to do will not alarm them in the slightest. This would be a pointless mass homicide if not in the interests of art and science."
Three a.m. came, and still the clubbers were tireless. For them, this was the bash of a lifetime; little did they know that it would be their last. Albrecht issued the signal, and a wave of inorganics subdued the crowd in militaristic fashion. Those that resisted were promptly killed, but it only took a few to be made examples of to make the rest amenable to dictatorial demand. What must have made this scene more horrific was the disorientation: the music kept pounding, the lasers were flickering in the epileptic fury, and the drugs racing in the veins of the clubbers were endowing them with hallucinations they could not control. Not a scream was heard over the music as the inorganics went about herding the attendees. All I could see were the periodic flashes of the rave-art blitzkrieg as the lights strobed and flickered in hypnotic rhythm, these images impressing upon my mind like a collection of stuttering film clips in some unreal bricolage of discontinuity. The mad genius of Albrecht was at its zenith. This subterfuge to seize new bodies was a tremendous success.
The bodies were all tied together in groups of five, periodically hosed down every day. They were later tagged with identification bracelets, categorized by numbers. 0000s through 0100s were the most lithe and perfect specimens. 0200s through 2000s would serve as experimental bodies for spare organ harvesting, while the 2100s through 3000 were to be disposed, or used as scrap material. Was this not Buchenwald all over again?
If I closed my eyes, I could see my face in it all, this realm of mechanical Baudelaire come true. Whatever truth this gamine, festering, lumbering message possessed, one could only see it in reflection. It was like smoke: look away and the dream would change and dissipate, a panoptical illusion. And as the smoke receded, I'd be left to see the familiar face of Albrecht, smiling at me with a leper's rotting grin.
How far would Albrecht's logic, that death was a human passion, bring me before I became repulsed by what I helped build? He was Charon in surgeon's regalia, paddling the boat across the River Styx of human ephemera, dead culture and screaming souls. The cost of the fare was my sanity and soul, and my only company on this nightmarish odyssey was that hating face emblazoned upon the statues of grandeur, his thick mastery and resonant voice shaking the very timbers of reason. The voyage would not only cost my life, but would make a victim of history itself. Or, as he would say: "reason never painted; either we take flight from reason, or subdue it with bloodied hands."
The horrified eyes of those whom I had helped Albrecht put scalpel to, haunted my nights, making sleep an unwelcome guest at the end of the day. I was strung out, and when I did sleep, it was wracked with nightmares. I wouldn't dare tell Albrecht these things, for this was only a manifestation of conscience--the thing of the weak, in his eyes.
Three hundred bodies over two months were turned to alchemist's gold, new inorganics, Albertus Magnus' androideae. Others were stripped of their bones and made into sculptures. The most terrifying was the two-story sculpture of skeletal remains, all fastened together in motley of grey and ochre protrusions. In the centre was a large vagina carved of bone and draped in rotting flesh.
The stench was everywhere: in the warehouse, the operating room, in my clothes, in Albrecht's words, the sculptures, and even in me. This pungent and tepid aroma was nothing other than death by depravity, villainy gone mad with creative power, and the senseless hacking of the most unlikely, yet obvious, medium.

Branching away from Albrecht….I was certainly doing this, but the process was a slow split until the one cataclysmal moment of separation. By then, after several years, I felt myself to have learned my lessons well enough to overcome my tutor. But that was just a few motions away…Would or could I consider this ultimate betrayal of the one man who kept me under his loving wing?

Her blue, crystalline eyes were wide with fear as tears streaked across her fragile face. Her mouth and hands were bound up in duct tape, and her neck was fastened with a polymer collar that had chain link connecting her to the inside doorknob.
You see, I had learned much more from Albrecht than most people suspected. I had bought my very own scalpel, of which required a special anointing. I would have my own neophytes who would come to praise me as I once did Albrecht, but in a secret quiet. I would be a hidden man performing a clandestine nexus between Albrecht's principles and my own.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," I said kindly, sending her eyes wild with fright. "Shall we begin?"
With the scalpel poised in my hungry hands, the night was but a revival of what the vision had told me, my smile upon the stolen face of my old patriarch. Albrecht had unleashed me to the public, entrusting me to convene my own theatre of horror and obscenities.

The diner was pockmarked with bullet holes and streaked with blood. Bodies were slumped over half-eaten plates of food and cold coffee. My crew was just setting up the sensor recording gear when a thought occurred to me that we needed someone prosthetically endowed to sexually defile the corpses.
"What should we do with the bodies when we're done," a somewhat squeamish lackey asked.
"We'll do what we usually do: burn the bodies once we've exhausted them of their value," I said irritably.

I lit my cigarette from the fire we had set in her rib cage. The halo of flame gave us the glow of angels. The sweet smell of crackling flesh, not unlike pork, swirled in the room of art deco and pop art disasters. Her eyes shone like candles. In my leather pants was an erection from death. All it took was my making a promise to her that she could be a star...

The shadows of our deadly exercises danced on the wall. The wicked peals of laughter were issuing from or throats, our minds deeply maligned with new acts of torture. I watched as the blood dripped ever so slowly into the jar...

Screams were caught on audio; everything else was recorded on sensory machines. By attaching electrodes to her skull, we could enhance the pain. Like a loop, her pain fed the machine, and the machine fed it back to her in triplicate...

We painted ourselves up like blank-eyed, store mannequins, and goose-stepped our way through the downtown core. Crazed music followed us everywhere, permeating our waxy skin. With industrial razor blades in our sleeves, we were ready to make art out of anyone...

I had a dream where I was a surgical mini-cam, exploring the prosthetic layout of a clubgoer. I reached the central circuitry, entered the electric flow, and beyond that, I met God...

The flames went out and we were left to play with the charred bones. No longer did her eyes shine like candles, her stardom as ephemeral as the rest. Though we were no longer illuminated like angels, I still felt myself king of the avant-garde.

"Ragnarok is calling," said a voice, quick and cold.
The room was empty, save for my surgical notes and a few mirrors.
"Who's there?" I asked.
"An old friend," the voice said, "but not of yours--at least not directly."
"Show yourself. I'm not fond of games," I said, a slight quavering in my voice.
"If you prefer. Look into the eye of yourself, the mirror. Come face to face with the god you've been preaching."
I cast a glance at the mirror, did a double take, and saw someone who was not I. He had no eyes in his sockets, was wearing Baroque attire, and his hair was in a pompadour three hundred years behind the times. This was Albrecht's mirror. There had always been a velvet curtain covering it until I had one day decided to take it down. Now I knew the reason Albrecht kept the mirror hidden.
"Are you?" I stammered.
"Sure, why not. I have been a good friend of Edward's for years. Surely, you have taken his place, his mantle of leadership. Ah, the stories I could tell you about the many conversations Edward and I had. Of course, he knew so little about me. I am in the machine, and I am not. As for being a god, that is not for me to judge. I usually just bring terror in reflective surfaces. Consider me as nothing further than a cosmic librarian."
"Are you Castellemare?" I ventured. Albrecht had mentioned his influential spiritual genie in less lucid moments.
"Excellently perceptive of you!" he boomed. "In my solitude, recognition is flattering."
"Tell me about the God in the Machine."
"A tricky question with answers not so concrete. Since you are Edward's chosen, and his successor, I will tell you...One theory states that there exists a perfect circuit within a chip that has its pattern repeated in every machine ever created. Patterns that repeat create a permanence of sorts that become an unconsciously made key to something outside of substance. Each machine has a certain identical fingerprint that coincides with patterns in sub-material space. It creates an overlap, a bridge, and a window, whatever metaphor you choose to describe it. This pattern, when recognized and harnessed, forges a connection to the intangible. The second theory suggests that, through machines, we have found heaven, or the afterlife. Each soul is an imprint of reality, and when a person dies, their 'raw data'--to be crude--still exists as an intangible noumena that can only be accessed through a device that circulates and operates on the intangible principle. What you call a 'computer' transmits a symbolic representation of information through electronic currents and satellite relays. The computer deciphers what you tell it into the language of the immaterial, sends it to another computer, which then translates it into a language people can understand. This connection between machines is an exercise of the immaterial reality, and passes through an intangible, virtual domain. When the exchanges became more advanced, more far-reaching, the imprints--souls--could be carried along with the data transfer. Of course, this is an oversimplification of this theory.”
"But which theory is the right one?"
"Perhaps one, none, or all of them. You are thinking in too limited a fashion. There is no right answer. The machine as such is more cosmological than you might think. It is a manifestation of the divine, an evolved product of two millennia of progressive efforts. What you and Albrecht have done in the creation of the inorganic human is but another step towards the perfection of the cosmological process. Of course, I had a hand in the direction this creativity took, advising Edward from the benefit of my age and wisdom. When you have been patiently observing trends for centuries, you tend to recognize familiar patterns, thereby becoming able to catalyze social reactions."
"What is the ultimate end, the teleological aim?"
"Well, that would be giving away the surprise, wouldn't it?" he said with a grin.
"Do I not have the right to know what direction this is taking me?"
"Do you have any right to know the future? Would it make a difference to know? It would be malicious of me to steal your fragile belief that you make your own life. Even if you were to balk and work against the flow of the progress, the ultimate end is inevitable. Think that I am a fatalist, a proponent of personal destinies? Do not fancy yourself as integral to the plans, for you are expendable, and others will always be available to bring the plan into fruition. No person is determined, but the events surrounding and inhabiting him are. Edward's effect on the masses has been profound. And now that his vision has made history, the effects are irrevocable. Since the ideas he presented the world have been introduced in the stream of human history, they will not be forgotten or denied. There lies the danger in creating anything: it can never be retracted or erased from the world's memory. Even if it lies in obscurity, there will always be someone to dredge it up from the depths."

But I was drunk, yes? There was no reasonable or sensible reason why I’d be seeing phantoms in mirrors. The best—or worst—was yet to come.


Jakob’s Account
2006

I am the STATUESQUE ART DEVIL IN THE BACKSEAT, the ARTSPHINX! Let civilizations fall into ruin, despair and failure if they do not hail me as their lordly best!

It must have started late one night in a bar, of all places for me to be, sometime at the turn of the decade. I recall the air and its electric feel with the sound of seashells put to ears and all that. I was at an oak table concocting a rather explicit exegetical picture of sex and death utilizing monotone mediums. I was on the cusp of turning this shred of an idea to a full-blown epiphany when my cell began to buzz. Putting the micronised sleek black scarab to my ears, it was my muse, Edward Albrecht. As he was speaking, I cracked a smile at his request: something about a few models willing to pose for next-to-nothing in a rundown studio somewhere in East Berlin. It was an opportunity to knock heads with some nouveau-sex-freedom expressionists. For this, I was game. I just needed time to pack a bag and to get a good feel out of my new merchandise: vials marked with 'X' and 'Y'. If there was any steady context in all of this, I was not to be trusted. Maniacal men in a demonic overdrive, a trope made manifest in the hyperreality of its own grandeur. O art so precious, it had chosen me to be its eyes and ears. I did, by the way, have Internet presence: a frequently visited and heavily be-trafficked web page.
Why fight the machine? Is it not the next evolutionary step towards an impending godhood? I was considering getting some electro-prosthetik inlay complete with the newest gadgets of this tech-gen. There was freedom in the abbreviated sense of existence--a life of aporias and apostrophes. I saw the young glitter-children looking like post-romantic victorian vampires, and thinking "if youth but knew...." But this is fashion’s answer, the eternal danger of recycling.
Albrecht and I would spike our eyes with fervent mind enhancers when seeking answers. Neck deep in the age and aware of it, the art would be conscious--a living entity with a morgue-esque aura, a morbid suppository clutched double fisted and rammed into the collective sex of the female disk drives. We had fancied ourselves as 're-instaters' of the ritualistic aura of art. We had defiled the works of Benjamin with a particular relish, showing that even technical reproducibility was no impediment to the fetishistic, ritualistic aura of the aesthetic. We could fashion gods out of whatever scraps we found, and exhibit them in exclusionist settings to be worshiped by our most willing of audiences. The culture craved minutiae, and we were never the ones to disappoint.
Alexa breezed into Berlin and I got word of it rather quickly. Berlin was my heavenly haven where my word could make or break an artist or art movement. I was the judge of artistic merit, and I decided what was to succeed in being disseminated to the public at large or private. Nothing happened here without Albrecht and I getting wind of it--and not least of all without our say so. To have this feverish despotic power was intoxicating, self-vindicating, and somewhat poetic in a Faustian kind of way.
My cell buzzed again: Albrecht spewed off a whole slew of numbers that I frantically recorded. We finally capitalized on the energy system of the machine-sex hybrid. It existed ethereally in all things, and it was we who'd devise the perfect formula to enter its dimension. How we discovered its dimension was through a quirky accident of experimental physics. A man named Anton Wheeler had pioneered the Wave Quantifier Negation Theory, and we had made good use of his findings. He was a peripheral part of our cadre, and a great source of imaginative inspiration. Anton was a school chum of Albrecht's in the 70's, and they had continued their correspondence over the tumultuous years that followed. They were both considered bright and apt pupils, and yet both came to be scorned in their chosen fields. Their bond was forged from the violence of rejection.
Limousines, hovering and awaiting for my word, ready to launch at the snap of my fingers to pick up some straggling artist who'd beg me to fund him. How déclassé. I bored of their tired pleas. Bring me a fresh new face to exploit to my own means. Send God here for my scrutiny and let's see if he passes the test! I was Pharaoh! The hieroglyph was of my own design--ripe and ready to paste up over the reputations of pathetic up and coming artistes. How they would quiver and attempt to flatter me for the purposes of their continuance. Some of the more bold and less self-effacing of them would threaten to relocate elsewhere, perhaps start a movement of their own. I did not worry myself over these trite technicians, those idle craftsmen of mediocre trades; Albrecht and I had captivated the world with our factory of artists and creations. There would simply be no more attention left for outsiders. How could there be when everyone was already occupied with the likes of us, we exemplars of homo hierogluphicus?
Oh, Alexa. She came sauntering in looking quite frantically for me. She merely needed to cast her infrared glance over to my writer-revolutionary spongy cubicle--blood red velvet lining where the statuesque art devil sits, sipping his blue wine with mortician’s eyes. What did she want? I had it up to my eyeballs with mechano-morphologists trying to sell me prosthetic lemons. But then, she spotted me and looked pleadingly at my table. I nodded. I felt disdainful.
"Jakob?" she questioned, reassuring herself that it was really me.
I was tired of those from my past who'd try to draw a linear line across the transition that led up to my current persona, as if attempting to draw inferences within my psyche. But personality was not always a linear thing with proper conclusions and subsequent evolutions. The strange tunnels of my life did not always align with the predictions of so many determinists. She would question what I truly had become, but only with her eyes. We had not laid eyes on each other for many years, and her spell had worn off at about the same time that I fell in with Albrecht and this enchanted lifestyle.
"Yes, yes. And what brings you to my city? If you've come for money, you'll have to submit a proposal to my secretary, fill out a few forms via Eleknet.W2 and wait the customary six months for a reply."
"I haven't come for money."
"If you have no art, I have no interest," I said flatly, turning my head and sipping more blue wine.
"Can we talk? No business--just talk?"
The club throbbed with cellophane-covered coppers maxing out on synthetic endorphins. I was so dreadfully tired of her games.
"Time is money, time is bodies. Pay some credits or play the riddle."
"Riddle," she replied.
I was known in all of Germany as the ArtSphinx. Part of the process of receiving patronage from my sister company, Ethik-Imago, was for others to solve a riddle. The riddle was part of the contractual agreement I had with them, and served to promote Ethik-Imago's line of enigmas. It created an element of chance that I wasn't averse to. The riddles were amusing in some small way, and I could fashion them in any way I saw fit.
"Two machines cross in the distance. A laser connects them in ways almost human. One is the machine of subatomic light that emanates pure will and sexuality; the other is primarily flesh--an ape in a state of transition. What are the machines, and what is their connection?" I rattled off the riddle; an easy one at that.
"The machines are man and his New Other. The connection is the fusion of sex and machine in the danse macabre to raise the mechani-Jesus to the holy ascendence of cosmic post-human intelligence and all-being."
I was piqued by her thorough and correct answer. She obviously must have procured a copy of Albrecht’s Technocosmophysics recently.
"Fabulous. You get one half hour, barring emergencies."
"I missed you."
"Hmm," I said disinterestedly, "I didn't miss you."
"I'm sorry that I--"
"Don't care. Next topic," I said curtly.
She collected herself for yet another try to worm her way into a conversational realm where I'd treat her like a person rather than an annoying candidate.
"Have you heard about the Purists?" she questioned with a hint of meretricious flair.
"Of course. Nothing that transpires in the art world escapes me. They're a juvenile state of gadabouts, grasping for their thesis of arthood."
"I've joined up with their movement."
At this I guffawed. Did she really think that would impress me? Their idea of expression was to adorn themselves in Pyrex bodies and extract the "pure" essence out of all stimuli. How archaic! If only they could divert their ideas slightly into the realm of post-humanist study, could they transcend their tired cliché.
"They're working on demystifying and objectifying the smell of sex."
"Wonderful," I added facetiously. "While they're at it, they should write books on astral travel. It's all so hocus-pocus."
At this, she was visibly offended, but she would not storm out, for she needed me.
"I have something you might be interested in."
"Not likely," I said. “The last time I was visibly interested in something you had, I attempted suicide. I have since been convalescing.”
“Hm. How is that working out for you?”
“Quite nice, thank you.”
“A shame.”
“If you say so.”
“But of course.”
“Is this going anywhere? I guard my time jealously.”
“Did it ever go anywhere?” she said. “On another note, it is good to see that someone is taking care of you. I would personally feel lesser if I was playing second string to a visionary artist. I begin to wonder about the sustainability of your ArtSphinx persona…It seems a bit forced.”
“Pretending one is something that one is not is something I am sure you are quite familiar with. You as a person seem a bit forced. You may wish to consider lessening your bouts in the mirror. I have not the time or energy, as you seem to have the luxury, to be so full of myself. I create horror now, and you are nothing more than a pale semblance importuning upon me. What a waste. ”
She switched tracks, engaging in the old games of emotional warfare: “Why are you speaking to me in these cold tones, in this pretentious code? You owe me a bit more respect than that. We shared such tender moments together.”
"No, slink back into the same darkness that spawned you. My code is nothing more than a newfound sense of self-respect. I urge you to purchase some for yourself by whatever means. Now that you know my ‘code,’ you are a--how do I say this?--dangerous commodity. I’ve bled myself enough over the likes of you.”
"You once loved me," she protested sourly.
"Yes, and I have done many other idiotic things in my life, none of which I wish to repeat."
Hurt, she left my cubicle just moments after my cell buzzed again. Albrecht informed me about an artistic exploration in Bavaria. I reacted on the keywords, "war zone", "death toll", "suffering", and "mutilation". It made the artist in me salivate in anticipation. Albrecht would meet me at the airport and we'd fly down immediately with our entourage of disciples.
As we approached the site, it was delightfully ghoulish. Bodies were strewn haphazardly and twisted in violent tableau. Heavenly. Our team would assess its visual merit and take it from there. A team of sketch artists and photographers combed the site, looking for those perfect angles. Next, the machine "sculpteurs" would arrange scenes by placing the bodies just so, and pull out specific organs to be clipped on to bizarre mechanical devices. Meanwhile, film crews would scour the entire process and film every aching moment of godly creation. It would prove to be a total multimedia experience. We created an omnipresent network of clips, sketches, flesh machines, and sculptures. A true artistic blitzkrieg. Our creative reputations were forever on the line, and online, and offline, thanks to the sophistication of media technology and its inverse proportion of the increased barbarity of its consumers.
It felt good to get my hands dirty in the creation process again. We were up to our ankles in blood, and it stained all that it touched, engrained in the grooves of our fingerprints. Even the smell of gunpowder and rot entwined about us like an art nouveau perfume, which we'd record with special scent-sensitive equipment, and recreate in our studio labs.
I took a razor blade handed to me by one of my many protégés and demonstrated the correct usage of it in the body art of our ideological teachings. They watched with hungry intent as I sliced the corner of the mouth of a dead soldier boy, following the gash along the face, and removing a quarter section. I held the flopping piece of skin for a moment and tossed it away. The face of the subject had his jaw--teeth and gums exposed--doctored with expert precision. My students took notes at a furious speed. My what price we pay for war, but what gain, too! This was yet another faceless member of the military mill who would not be shipped back to mother, who would not get the obscene funeral, the horribly grotesque glorification speeches about bravery and sacrifice. This was truer sacrifice. This had much more value—our art—than any service to a formal state apparatus. Art is true war, not these crude games with weapons and sides.
There was no such thing as "going too far". Rather, the question should be posed: "Have we gone far enough, or is there more we can do?" This was a typical sociopathic response, a catchphrase of the genius who has lost his way back to sanity. But sanity was too clean and mediocre for us--the very root of sanity was to sanitize, to clean. Had psychoanalytic theory not already attempted a mass sanitation of the world psyche? But even all allegedly noble efforts to make our minds clean do little more than store the filth and terror in a stuffed closet creaking to the point of rupture.
Albrecht and me were at the head of this expedition. We were always the focus of attention. We were inseparable children of terror.
"The bodies will rot quickly. We must work quickly," Albrecht said.
Our disciples were learning that a heavily laden conscience was nothing but the nagging revenge against the freedom of artistic expression. We did not tolerate the squeamish, or those whose morality was of rank Christian-inspired baseness rather than the noble morality of a people to come. One either affirms the fear endemic to the future, the cavalcade of the grotesque, or one languishes idly in the past sorting out failed moral propositions designed to keep one’s affirmative life in negative thralldom. Be not a hostage to your store-bought, Church-inflected morality: dare to overcome! Dare to affirm and embrace the horror—for it is you. But most of all, and the demand that will most likely determine if you are selected among the grand few of the fearful wretches of the many, is this: affirm oneself. If one does this without flinching, without collapsing into a mad heap, no matter what the outcome of this affirmation, one ascends to the privileged space of the few.
For the most part, the students were enthusiastic about this flesh craft journey. One of my students showed a keen interest in working more closely with bones. In the following days, he created a most stunning piece: a legless man with hooks pulling back the lips of his mouth, and his arms in the air--bones carefully whittled into points protruding from the flesh of the upper arms.
"Let the passion overtake you," was Albrecht's solid credo that he abided by. He had once killed and flayed a man, checkering his body with electrical burns, and then proceeded to rivet mirrors to his skull. “And if you feel a sudden peckishness come on, a bodily urge, let it free! If you are strangely aroused by your manipulation of these corpses, do not bury it under shame and inhibition: ride the dead holes with impunity. There are no judges here, and no judges anywhere that can declare a verdict that will stick. No moral law binds you if you are not of men, but among them.”
Art was death, and the closer we could bring our students to it, the more they would come to understand. But as soon as the experimentations, teachings, and gathering of raw data was at an end, it was back to the studio labs to refine what we had done. Under Albrecht's skilful guidance, he'd get them to hone the media collection and help them span the gap between a conceptual idea and an artistic masterpiece. We were already on to our next project before our disciples completed the Bavaria exhibit. Unfortunately, I began branching away further from my mentor, desiring to lead my own pack of wolves into the forests of the unexplored. Perhaps I felt that Albrecht had not gone far enough, that even he was not being true to the force of his own words. In either event, I craved power, and I felt that I could do a much better job. But this is the fickle nature of the arts, and it is to my credit that I learned this lessons well. But of course, in order to perform a successful coup, I needed to drum up a sizeable moral panic that would trounce him. By fanning the flames of an already panicked audience, I could manipulate them to become militant. My public declaration of being no longer capable of enduring the madness of Albrecht was a lie, but one that served my ends. The ArtSphinx would play the role of the decent humanitarian long enough to have Albrecht denounced, only so that I would have my chance to tighten the grip of horror Albrecht had already inaugurated. By declaring his cause fascistic and ghoulish, I could replace him as twice the fascist and ghoul and the people would still look warmly to me as a liberator. This would need to be done at a slow and meticulous pace, a slow process of converting former allies to Albrecht to my own side with promises that would advance to their advantage. To beat Albrecht was to think like him. How would Albrecht overturn himself? Being in the service of this intense figure for such a long period of time had given me the necessary insight into his methods, and although I had not a genius on par with his, I could now better anticipate his actions. It would prove to be a very precarious, orchestrated movement, kept sequestered from him until the final moment of the unveiling…when it would be too late for him to do anything about it.
I do not think it is paranoia to assume that Albrecht had already prefigured my betrayal, for it was his way and genius to account for all potential contingencies. I am sure that he almost suspected it, and was plying me with extra benefits in an effort to keep his most salient enemy and potential threat close, to pacify me with his presents and praise. He perhaps expected this betrayal and secretly longed for it. It can be so very boring at the top, especially with no worthy adversaries. Moreover, he believed so fervently in his vision that he would see the necessity in sacrificing himself, to handing over the helm of leadership to one more capable, more diabolical than he. To him, it was the necessary succession of kings who inhabit the vision, who bring it into the world, all the while this vision inhabiting and breathing life into its host. It does not matter who brings the vision to fruition, but that it be done impeccably well. A man may die, but the vision and its institutional domain will linger on…Vision is immune to the mortal dangers and frailty of the flesh. So, if he had prefigured my betrayal, I was in fact not truly betraying the vision, just the man, and in his words, “we men are such cheap things, expendable instruments that are wholly unreliable most of the time.”
As much as I despised Alexa, I still harboured my illimitable desire for her. Little did I know that the first act of betrayal would be Albrecht’s.

Intermezzo

Moral Court: The Crimes of Albrecht
Jakob Sigurdson

By the assumed caprice of my words, I feel it in myself to lay verdict against Edward Albrecht...and reflexively, against myself for my role in his ascension. His was a crime of atrocity and excess...of barbaric cruelty in conjunction with the coldest methodology born in the darkest workshop of science's horror. I will endeavour here to briefly and concisely enumerate some of the many hitherto unrecognized charges against Albrecht--to which future generations may refer for purposes of posterity. As I am not a legal body, and his power has been already consolidated in Berlin by political and corporate powers, I can do little more than list the proceeding charges in the forum of this journal...to play the prosecution in this narrative version of a moral court. As I cannot be fully absolved of my own involvement, I share some of these charges, albeit in a lesser degree of severity. Although I am partially morally culpable for these acts, it must be carefully understood that Albrecht’s charisma and powerful hold over each of us was no trifling matter, that many of sound mind and judgement succumbed to his aims out of weakness or through Albrecht’s preternatural ability at manipulation.

THE CHARGES
1. Insistence on being treated as a god. He claimed to be the incarnation of a god of his own fabrication: a fusion between the Roman Minerva and some strange character-deity he invented named Machinus Jupiter.
2. Albrecht threatened to raze art gallery collections in Germany and France if they did not have a 51% majority of his works on display; and he went as far as to have various masterpieces publicly destroyed. In his view, the works were "putridly archaic and sorely lacking in skill or relevance. So let them be stricken from the historical record, and thenceforth from memory!"
3. Albrecht ordered that several artists commit suicide for either false promises of guaranteed fame or to prevent them from continuing their--as he deeemed it--bad art.
4. Subjecting his protégés to irresponsible and inhumane treatment by way of bizarre tortures devised as tests of loyalty to his cause and person. The afflicted were sometimes asked to prostrate themselves to him upon broken glass. And once, by his urging, he gave them a host of sharp objects and left them in a small room, to which he ordered that upon his return, they were to have inflicted non-threatening wounds upon one another...and that to be sure to "carpet this floor with a sheen of blood."
5. Forced prominent artists into exile or to publicly burn their own works--only to be further humiliated by being forced to give speeches of defamation against themselves, thereby denouncing their talents in deference to the wishes of Albrecht.
6. Upon discovering through unknown channels that someone under his tutelage was a conspirator against him, Albrecht arranged for said person to build an elaborate torture-death machine. After its completion, said person was sentenced to be its first victim.
7. In response to a critic who claimed Albrecht was "reprehensibly ghoulish", Albrecht used his connections to financially sink the magazine that carried the critique, and later abducted the critic's children to be used in a horrific art display that resulted in their torture and death.
8. When Albrecht was at a lack of willing participants or surgical material, he drugged some of his protégés to be compliant to bodily sacrifice.
9. When asked about his infamous Archetype List of Potential Surgical Test Subjects, he echoed a Caligulan comment by stating, "I'm just clearing my accounts."
10. One of his favourite pastimes was to witness brutal acts of rape (conducted by his fiendish machines designed specifically for such purpose) while eating a lavish meal. In his words: "I have problems with digestion, and the screams of the trollops achieve a particular resonance that enriches the ambient mood of a heavenly repast...thereby giving me healthy appetite."

And there is much more. Albrecht's disposition and approach to others--nothing short of morally reprehensible--was of a graduated nature, pending his mood. I had seen him parry a slander from the press with but a trivializing remark, where other times a severe silence would descend--to which he proceeded with the deepest gaze of murderous contempt. As if he held all the hordes of Hell in his eyes, I once saw him reduce someone to terrified sobs with but a prolonged glance. I, too, had borne witness to him in these states. His face would go more pallid, his cheeks would hollow as if he were sucking them through his teeth, and his head would loll slowly like a snake--all the while, his eyes never deviated from the target of his deepest wrath. Even apparent trifles were enough to trigger this reaction, whereas more serious offenses would sometimes be handled more urbanely. We cannot dismiss the potent affect this man had on the populace any more than we can his fiendish deeds.
He had a variety of different gazes, to mark a variety of occasions. On one occasion, he and I had a bit much to drink, and it was his idea that we obtain for ourselves a prostitute for the studio...as he was feeling "playfully creative". As he held her there in an iron grip, in the seclusion of our studio, his eyes appeared to bulge with an obsessive mania. He then proceeded, with a devilish smirk upon his face, to put out his cigarette on her eyes...and then he drew a surgical knife and proceeded to slice her from her womanhood to her sternum. His countenance did not change as her screams were underscored with the faint sound of crackling.
As pathological as he could be, and downright demonic, he had a slithery charm which he employed in all his dealings in high society. His overabundant charisma had won him many political and corporate allies, and his slick words won him honours and favours that are not generally bestowed upon normal men. He was a brilliant tactician, shrewd businessman, expert propagandist, capable manipulator, gifted surgeon, visionary, leader, prolific scientist, wondrous orator--and all this culminated in a mad genius unequalled in any other age, these talents employed in the service of his wicked aims. This is why I feel it to be pardonable for any of those who have been under his enchantment--and who now have repented--to live free of persecution. He was nothing short of a god. As an example of his strange genius, he tested one of Descartes' claims that one could not truly imagine a chiliogon, with its thousand sides, in perfect detail. Albrecht worked his way through a series of polygons until he reached the chiliogon. As is his claim, he had trained himself to be able to see it in perfect detail, and could distinguish each side with clarity and distinction. Though I cannot substantiate this claim, I do agree that he did possess a "multi-sided thinking", which manifested itself in his accounting for every possible variable or contingency that would either impede or further his ascension. His was a meticulous and methodological accuracy that ensured his rise to power with little effort.
None of what I relate here is to be an apology for Albrecht, whose crimes have no sufficient earthly punishment, but an apologetic piece for those--like myself--who found themselves tricked into deifying him. I have reserved here a few choice words he had uttered so that future generations may judge his character beyond his own writings--for who knows what kind of sway he might have on the interpreter, owing to the fact that Albrecht is a genius of charm. I relate these with a clean conscious, and so it should not appear to the attentive reader that my judgements are suspect of prejudice.

1. "The amateur artist who desires to continue plying his trade should feel an obligation to obtain the permission of the master."
2. "Nothing appears more beautiful than a pack of virgins consumed by fire. Art reached its first acme at the height of the witch trials. That is the canvas we should begin to lay brush upon!"
3. "Taboos are meant to be broken, to be fashioned into the next sensation. I measure the value of art against the depth of the repression it depicts."
4. "I have built my legacy upon a golgotha of bones, while sweet screams still grace my ears."
5. "The rape and disfiguration of female sex organs is now the true art of the prophet."
6. "I have never met anyone unworthy of torture and supplication; moreover, no one is immune from being a product of my vast canvas."
7. "The sound and sight of another's agony is my narcotic."
8. "When I was asked 'when has art gone too far?' I answer them thus: art will never be at its limit until the last vestige of the sacred is overturned and made profane."
9. "Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso...into the slag! I will not be satisfied until all their gold frames are melted down and minted into coins bearing my likeness on the obverse!"
10. "I owe a staggering debt to the following, to which and whom were keystones in my development as an art surgeon: Gaius Caligula, Septimus Severus, Vlad the Impaler, and the scientific advances of the Third Reich."
11. "I dance on the feet of devils."
12. "God--if there be such a beast--has condemned me to be his equal...But in time, even he will be overcome."
13. "Art is currency, and fortunately for me I am the mint."

My verdict: guilty.

From Dr. Albrecht’s Notebooks

No, it isn't Munchausen syndrome. It isn't unnecessary surgery in order to mutilate the self. What is proposed is something that will bridge the gap between man and machine--an incorporation of the two. And to think my former medical colleagues thought me mad! There is no reward for genius in stagnant domains, and no end of opprobrium by the jealous.
Developments in neuroscience and cognitive research have furthered the possibility of creating regenerative brain cells and neurons. By increasing the capabilities of both, the subject will effectively be a living computer. Its benefit lies in the fact that the newly modified being, as opposed to a strictly mechanical device, can learn autonomously without being fed the information to process. A second advantage is the ability of the human mind to create, and to adapt to new environmental stimuli.
Project A5's construction in the head region consists of a durable metallic plate that protects the brain case, which in turn, the brain is further safeguarded by a gyroscope system to absorb shock and resist physical damage.
My patient, Alexa, is a malleable test subject for this experiment. Her own insistent drive for perfection feeds right into my desired ends. Her obsession makes her willing. The willing subject makes for ethical immunity—not that I am hindered by ethics.
As a safeguard for my creation, this operation will require Alexa to be sterilized so as to ensure that replication of my creation is rendered impossible. Art should be maintained as a unique and unreplicable product. I could not bear to see my great temple of my skill be reduced to that awful technnical reproduction.
Alexa is, genotypically speaking, of superior physical quality. Her body possesses a vitality and strength that can withstand the most risky of my experiments. She is a lump of clay without dry beads, without discolouration, and without unsightly imperfections. Her mind is developed in the mathematical sciences, and she shows a nascent, prodigious refinement in cultural knowledge. My task is to extend these properties--to make her into living art, but as a non-living person. Whatever shall she be? Will she be human? A machine? Both? Neither? She will be the first contrived organism--or, the first natural inorganism.
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis--Edward Albrecht

Chapter 5: Raphael’s Lance

Jakob’s Account
2007

I knew that it would come to this, our fiery clash. When word circulated that I had gone against him, he broke out in a thunderous charge, decrying against me, imputing to me all variety of slanders and insults in an effort to preserve his now crumbling empire from my very critical and meticulous onslaught, my carefully crafted campaign to see him ousted and me put in the privileged position as arts guru. His allies were starting to thin as those same allies who had taken his side out of fear rather than true loyalty were beginning to see that the tides were turning. All the political concessions made him were now being left unratified, treaties whose signatures began to fade and disappear, entire leagues of old white men suddenly not answering Albrecht’s calls, all the bids for power now laying as fallow as the most sorrowful field of over-harvested dreams. The man was spent, and there was little his genius could do to reclaim his once monolithic majesty. His time was running out.
It was a cold and dreary night when the stars sagged and the clouds hung low like heavily saturated slings. I had to make my disconnection final and official, and so I took the long route to his buzzing studio warehouse to have one last encounter with the now receding doctor. Oh, but to look at him there, as smug as ever, you would never have thought that his power had been on the wane, that he was on the very precipice of yesterday. He gorged himself on the pomp of his words, enraptured by the emotive puissance of his own gestures. Rome has fallen, you fool! Napoleon’s hand across the world has been severely slapped! Know when to show good grace in defeat! But I suspected that somewhere beyond this elegantly megalomaniacal façade was a man who was slowly coming to grips with the undeniable fact that he had failed, that he was beaten by the closest member of his precious phalanx.
“Jakob, what will you do now that you have betrayed me? Even Brutus had plans! See how wide my eyes open! See how delicious even betrayal is to me! For not only have you betrayed me, but you betrayed your instinct and truth! You deny the will that drives you and this world…I have seen and tasted the will of the world, and I can tell you—as a result of my constant musings, frequent epiphanies, and nocturnal wanderings—that it hungers for those like me! I am the people to come, and you are merely the man who passed away a long time ago. Your type keeps stubbornly re-emerging, but my recurrent type returns, too! Would you like to make a wager with me? Against me? But you bet too softly, too cautiously, like an old woman with a death grip around her antiquarian purse! And so your type has no choice but to obey, obey eternally and pass away! Can you feel it, smell it, my meek little shrew? The air has never been more alive and electric, what with the screams of the dying! War is in league with the erotic this day, and I am the catalyst of the great cultural orgasm that will render the earth! This I have learned from all the alleged evil that has now cropped up in this inevitable age as a necessity…We are the necessary men, and you are a day too late!
“And you, most despicable and traitorous disciples! You clamber about me like lachrymose nymphs around a titan, pleading for protection and beseeching me for the great Wisdom to dispel your nightmares…O you infant fools! Of nightmares, I do not dispel but amplify or even create! I rip out from your psychic fundament the very raw essence of all your fear and repression…I give it wings and a megaphone so that it can fly high for all to see with a godly thunder for all to hear! Now is not the time to layer on yet another thick coat of silence! Now is the time for the great unveiling! ‘but doctor, doctor,’ I hear from you, ‘bring us not poison, but cure!’ I reply that all cures are poisons and vice versa…that you mistake labels with contents, causes for effects! O-ho! What appears poison to you is actually the working of the cure, and that it is only the feverish sickness that plagues you which convinces you of the contrary. But let us set aside these childish things and set down to drink. For the benefit of vice is that it can be added again in quality without altering its quantity. I may yet forgive you, even if I cannot extend the same courtesy and blessings to Jakob. I would like to think that you were misled, that you were lulled by his Lucifer to take his shattered pieces of pride to wage war against me, your loving father. But it is not fair or patronly of me to lay my punitive hands on all of you…Rather, let me remove the wicked weed from your midst, the weed whose bright petals have mesmerized you, the weed whose pollen has filled you with delusion. How can I fault your innocence? Perhaps if I must be so brutish in this one instant, I will banish him. But let me speak to him directly, and all of you bear my words to him very carefully…
“Jakob, your betrayal has merely fortified a nascent thought initially forged in the nativity of our partnership. We are like brothers, you and I, like Castor and Pollux hatched from Leda’s egg. But I have since emended this view, and rather now fancy myself the successful Romulus at the precipice of begetting an empire from my loins, to your sour and failed Remus…Imagine if Remus had won with all his sickness and weakness! It would be a short reigning empire, barely a historical footnote, the empire of Reme…Ha! The Reman Empire! Never! To think that we both suckled from the same wolf’s tit! But I believe that I sucked harder and deeper, whereas you sipped and slurped like a wary cur coming across a strange puddle of water. You lack trust in destiny, and if you do not see that destiny is as your mother, you and she will always be strangers. And now, you sickly creature, you are condemned, even when presented with certain and indisputable glory, to balk and hesitate. How many more luscious grapes will you allow to wither on the vine as you hum and haw, and trip over your confused brambles of your wishy-washy morals? Do you pass up the ambrosia handed to you? Guilt is the crutch of the weak that fear chance and glory. Indeed, you do feel guilt before your actions rather than to affirm them with courage and realization that they are necessary. But perhaps the most vicious tragedy is how much of my time and resources you have squandered. No more, no more. I turn my back and do as history will do to you: forget. You see, history is an old and forgetful codger. It does not remember half-digested movements or half-hearted attempts. It records daring successes or glorious failures. It must be reminded of the event through a constant loud repetition, for history is a mnemonic device of human activity.
“You are particularly weak to the flattery given you by the wenches of our little court of appeasers. While you languish in the pomp and grandeur of our movement, the blackest guilt creeps up on you. However, you confuse this guilt as issuing from the source of the movement’s constituent aims and contents, when in actual fact your guilt truly derives from your lack of heart in our most pressing projects and conflicts. You have not given your all, and so you foolishly blame the direction of the movement for your own failures. May I also remind you that it is not enough to enjoy the fruits of empire, but that one must continue planting seeds and tending the gardens lest disrepair prohibit you from benefiting from a fecund yield? I cannot fault you for not enjoying the gains we have made, but I can fault you for your stupid laziness. I fear that the women have distracted you from your better sense, that you are perpetually in septembral temper, satisfying your gluttonous appetites. We all have appetites, but that which satisfies them does not appear from magic, but through hard work. Rest on those laurels of reputation and watch it all tarnish and disintegrate! Your Alexa is the Athena from my forehead, not yours as you so fancy it. And although you may ape the fortune I worked for, parading and flaunting it about like the empire was your idea, like some spoiled brat prince, it is nothing but a mock show…Have some dignity! I have learned all too well in my time to detect and differentiate between fool’s gold and the real article, and the truly impassioned words of an orator from the braying of an ass.
“And so I send you forth, banished from this paradise of creation! O how you have bitten deep and hard into your master’s hand…But instead of biting into the very essence of my teachings, all you have managed to do is get a mouthful of my flesh—And a lot of good that will do you! Perhaps you will turn a quick buck, write some ingratiating exposé, go on some ridiculous television talk show circuit, and then when the masses tire of your gibbering spiel, you will perish in the dumpster of the forgotten, the fading of last week’s fad.”
“Your work is, simply, the product of a sick mind, and I will have no part in it anymore. But it is not to my charges you must answer, but to the people who are crying for your head on a pike as we speak.”
“Bah! Let the moral hordes come, the ignorant pedestrians trained to squawk on command to their televised histories! Liken my works to the Jewish Holocaust? To them I say, look to yourselves! I am not the only one who finds himself with an erection in the dark just thinking about the Holocaust. Admit your terror, your fear, and your desire for the ultimate commanding villain! America has wanted a Hitler to call its own for so long that it makes me ill to see them struggle with the problem, trying so hard to recreate him in every cliché movie! The world secretly wants more of the horror, for it is bored! Rather, the people will masturbate in private to these ghastly scenes and revile me for being a monster! Europe has wanted a Hitler for a very long time—they miss him! Oh, they will never admit it, but I have eyes that sees things for how they are…My eyes are keen and trained to observe cultural and historical trends, and I tell you this: the desire for another Hitler is far from being subtly conveyed!
“As Rabelais remarks of Plato, note well the countenance of the dog as he affectionately and zealously guards his bone, gnaws so determinedly through it for a small siphuncle of marrow. And that, my dear friends, is my lived lesson for the world: as I crack through the woman’s body with my almost crude and metallic canine instruments, do not be fooled, for it is the penultimate expression of my affection. Who am I to judge or impeded whither art takes me? Be that it lead me to summits or valleys of the human or trans-human condition, I follow it in the hunger for knowing what it teaches.
“If you think me sadistic, then I urge you to examine both my countenance and yours. My face is marked by the serenity and affection of the eased conscience, alive in the craftsmanship. Meanwhile, yours is a pastiche of erotic impulses and repression gone awry as you cast your gaze upon my work. Note yourself well before passing judgement upon me. Do not blame me for your fiendish vices and dark secret longings. I only solicit the truth. I am merely an artisan supplying your raw demand.”
“I am no match for your wit, I suppose, but I do not need to absorb any more of your abuse any more than anyone else here. I turn my back on you and this very dark chapter. From the shadows you came, and into shadow you shall return. Goodbye, doctor.”
And I left, just like that. The ruse was afoot, and my twisted odyssey was just beginning.

Albrecht’s popularity declined, almost by the predictable curve of demand and public attention to the spectacle as it grows grey and stale. The people had quite simply grown bored of whatever Albrecht had to offer, had grown used to the shocking sensationalism of his performance prose. The problem with this dysangelic doctor was that he had grown stagnant, that he had been unable to top his own glorious performance. In art world terms, this was sure suicide…He would one day be remembered as a cute and campy ornament upon the shelves of art history, perhaps picked up by little misunderstood anarchist boys who read too much Sade, Artaud, and Nietzsche without recognizing anything more than what was at the end of their nose. These children would not see Albrecht and his “stunning vision”, but merely an apology for their own perversions, a way of not feeling so alone, a way of feeling special, a way of belonging to some distant and illusory brotherhood.
But, fool that I was, I had masterminded the very plot that would eventually martyr the old curmudgeon. Of course, my hands were clean, but the death of Dr. Albrecht gave me some pause for reflection: had I a hand in all of this? But I needed his popularity to be at high tide, for his death at the very apex of fame would leave a vacuum of power within which I could so easily slide into and snuggle myself in the little crèche. Ah, slithering creature that I am. You should have heard the wonderful eulogy I gave that old relic, pounding out the rhythm against the sorrow and outpourings of the gathered crowd. And what a crowd! I was playing to the amphitheatre, a whole catalogue Who’s Who of notable artists, critics, dignitaries, and academics that had all been taken up in the sweeping tide of Albrecht’s vision. They would both be the hardest and easiest crown to win over for what I was proposing.
“And so we gather here today to mourn the loss of our patriarch and potentate, our dearest Germanicus—worthy like no other before him of such a lofty and dignified title. And it is to his enduring vision, enduring behind the demise of his body, that we pay homage, praise, and tribute. Let no luxury or extravagance be spared in the celebration of his life, a life of unmatched extravagance and largesse. Today we, in our most profound grief, mourn the loss of a father, a figure without equal, whose daring and sometimes brazen overtures in the world of art and science give much for posterity to reflect upon. We may criticize the man’s methods, but who can argue with the glory of his results? He shocked a world with a startling genius, a world that begged to be shocked!
“His life was one of great achievement and rhapsody, a life the envy of any scholarly predilection or pleasure-driven bacchante. Perhaps I am perceived to be the least appropriate candidate to eulogize him, owing to what the jackal-hearted press has exaggerated as our ‘falling out’, my alleged ‘betrayal’. But, I implore you, what dutiful son does not occasionally mince words with his father, always with love and respect lodged firmly in his breast? A father expects such things, and hopes the best for his sons, that they do better and overcome him. That he and I minced words, and this became nothing short of a media-initiated spectacle, their little frenzied circus, their twisted brainchild to showcase their own despicable agendas and agitprop to escalate tensions to fabricate a shoddy tragic rupture, and that he and I did not our resolve our differences before his passing, grieves me to no end. And so it is to this heavy guilt I bear openly, this terrible burden catalyzed by the negligent and partisan press, that I must do right by our father: I take it upon myself to further his vision, even if donning the mantle of his unsurpassable genius it is a role I may not be fit to play with the same power of mind unique to him. I do so as tribute to his legacy, a legacy we can call our own insofar as it concerns each and everyone of us here, a legacy I would be loath to witness being prematurely curtailed by the brutish and unfair circumstance of the body’s demise. His spirit lives on! No, we must be vigilant and not let his legacy die just when it has taken flower, right at the prime of his intellect. We cannot abandon the garden that he has taken such pains to sow for us, to let it wither with neglect. We must coax his vision further into full bloom despite all odds, for this would be his wish…Against all obstacles, regardless of cost to our bodies or fortunes! Always he shall be the looming force behind our endeavours in this regard, guiding and directing us with a wise and caring hand from afar yet so near…His eternal vision and we its conduits to give it expression and life! And should we falter in going forth, or deviate in violently retrograde fashion from the legacy he has laid down for us, let the most capable hands tender it in our stead or let us return to his grounding principles to redress our course. And should we do violence to either his vision or his memory—both imbricated as a unity in his essence—let these be the seeds of our undoing, and let our erroneous liberties demonstrate the necessity of abiding by his law, for if we do not rally to his white plumes in the deliberate and meticulous system he devised, then we will not find ourselves on the path to glory but on the tortuous way of despair…and finally to the nullity that signals all half-efforts.
“To grant him this title now of Germanicus is little more than a trite post facto nomination—as if a title engraved on a tomb could be justice enough and in itself to herald a great man!—for it was at the moment he first set foot on this land that he was indisputedly Germanicus…Our Germanicus. And when the time came when he thought me ready, he invited me into his trust, to this land, and I wrapped myself up in his eloquent and subtle genius, soaking up all I could of his mastery. But to name him thus now is only to make present and official a recognition he always had, and one that we always knew implicitly.
“I am no statesman or orator; I am his unabashed successor.and so what foolish and residual criticisms remain of our esteemed Germanicus, I will hereby bear. But let us take stock in the future, for that is what truly is at stake, where he would want our minds to be! And if any here take issue with my being appointed as his successor, of my not being legitimately endorsed by Dr. Albrecht by his own word or written will, I have this to say: when one devotes life to a master, one intimately learns and understands his master, and thus realizes that so much more transpires in the bond and trust of master and student which transcends any and all written or spoken confidences. Dr. Albrecht did not ever have to crudely state what was plainly obvious, that I was his chosen successor, for he was a man of action…What else was he preparing me for? Why make careful written provisions for what must logically follow? I am the caretaker of his vision. Surely such a gesture, itself evidence of an enormous expenditure of time and trust on the part of Dr. Albrecht, speaks louder of my legitimacy as his successor than any verbal agreement or written testament. To my detractors, for whom I shall shower with great leniency and pity (for they are the furthest from his vision), if I am not his successor, then who? By what authority better than his deed? What authority on this earth in accordance to Albrecht’s wishes supersedes his own? In my eyes, an unstated yet existent wish holds more legitimate authority than the shabby contrivance of another’s speculation. Who among you has shared as much of his confidence than I? That is my proof. And I do suspect that these same detractors who will lambaste me for having the gall and presumption to be successor operate under ignoble, insidious agendas. Let us be mindful that these same detractors were among the most vociferous and vitriolic critics of Albrecht’s vision. Their long snouts have sniffed out that there is now a vacuum where a succession of power can take place, and vile opportunism has taken hold of their last vestiges of good judgement and respect. What small, saddening creatures they be! Am I so suspect, I whose only ambition is to continue his legacy with the greatest reverence? I who has devoted life and blood to its perpetuation, holding fast to a fundamental belief in his principles? I who has pledged so often in the past to rescue the good doctor’s name from vicious and debilitating slander issued from the dark-hearted and ill-mannered rhetoric of fiends? I who have nothing material to gain or prosper from in this succession other than to witness the full materialization of his grand plan in its infinite bounty? I who has been entrusted by the dearly departed to stay the course and navigate us to greater heights? I challenge these detractors to step forward, to perform their cheap and irreverent inquisition! Will they renounce their harsh words now, I wonder, purge all wicked sentiment against the doctor in a magical erasure? Methinks the lady doth protest too much, my dear detractors, for where were you when Dr. Albrecht and I were pioneering our destinies, carving our way across the terrain, listing to and fro upon the fickle and stormy tides of mixed public opinion? Oh, you were safe in your dwellings, in your posh villas, and sometimes you descended from your mountains to act as ostentatious and myopic moralists—all to the detriment of Dr. Albrecht! It is you who denounced him, and now you who want to succeed him. What has made you change your tune? Stand up here and let us empty our pockets to reveal which of us has any hidden motives. For my part, my hands come up empty, without any hubris or misbegotten conceit to be found! My aims are his aims: pure, simple, and noble. And since my aims are his, my ‘motives’ should be quite transparent to you all, for the motives are his motives, not a penny more or less! It is as sure and certain as I am standing here. There is no deeper motive than this, and I am no wizard behind the curtain with fiendish plots or devilish machinations.
“But let me implore you all further. If in the throes of petty envy and ill-mannered cruelty you wish to judge me a coward, a derelict, a pale facsimile, a vile opportunistic poltroon, a robber-baron of expression, a pirate boarding the vessel of his glory, a saboteur merely using the death of a visionary as a prop to lever my own wicked interests, this too I can bear so long as the critical assault stops here and does not besmirch or devalue the name of the man who we have all gathered to remember, the illustrious name only under which we should be fortunate to sign our own. And regardless that I am his successor, I will always—and respectively always will—be his successor. Thank you.”[APPLAUSE]

And so that was the way it all went down, I’m afraid. But if there were no liars in this world, I do not think it would be so beautiful. And it always pays to lie only about the biggest things. I am absolutely gorgeous.

Back to business. Reclamation and restructuring an empire takes much work. Of course, I needed to pace myself, let the fates do their work…not to mention that I had other obligations, but mostly to my excesses. Many say that I lack the charisma of our patriarch, but I more than make up for it with my devilish allure. This is not to say that nature had endowed me with more than a modest and adequate measure of beauty, but that I knew how to employ it to its utmost power. Sometimes it is a mere matter of twisting one word, letting out a small trill, extending a vowel, a glance, the raising of one’s fingertips to the lips, cocking an eyebrow, the comportment of one’s carriage as one nobly negotiates the threshold of the social meet and greet. Perhaps also it is a matter of being a good chameleon, always showing the right tact at the right time. I do not know. Perhaps in the future someone will reduce these delightful things into the coldest and most sterile of sciences. But here, in this golden age, let all art stand free to express itself in the garb of such splendour, in its ornamentation, rigged out in its freedom as it manifests its puissant nature.
Naturally, the press was all over me at the time of my “coronation.” I had invited so many of my little degenerate geniuses to attend, and we put on such a lavish affair as to rival the pomp of the ages. I glided in silk and leather, satin trains and velvet robes, Lycra and art nouveau trim. My guests were the embroidery of my usual entourage, each one of them the final touches to a display of pure aesthetic genius. Let all rejoice in my glory, for tomorrow I set about the business of exerting my power and writing into the law of the sky my most firm and strict edicts—to be followed out to the letter on threat of…Well, let’s leave the matter of punishment to my inspiration, shall we.

A page from a book of insecurity; I gander at it once before submitting it to the fire:

Despite my most fervent wishes, I have betrayed myself. Instead of being a poet, I have become a glutton with a consumptive mind that chokes with a service unto a despicable evil. I have failed, for it is one thing for the poet to know evil, and quite another to become it. In my eyes, the poet must remain no one, the vacuum that contains matter. I have failed on the grounds that I have become something, someone, and therefore renounced all but the name of poet whose nominal property is as useful as some category that pretends to safely enshroud and define chaos.

I had been tutored well in the these arts of the new grand Guignol. But Albrecht was little more than a mummy to me. Now that you know of my rise to power, let us see what I can do…It is not what you carry in these instances, but how it is carried. Let us not depersonalize: this is my prestige we are speaking about. Moody blue, red slashes against flesh. But, certainly. I proclaim wildly with arms akimbo that art is dead and all we have left is cruelty. Albrecht feared to go to the absolute limit, but I have seen the gloaming of the day, of the big coagulating sun of pure wet red. Who daresay that my travels take me down the wicked path? When Satan is the only formidable bogeyman for modernist consciousness (O juvenilia, O mores!), how pathetic. What an urban concrete Lutheran-style uninspiration! Capital has bigger demons than some outdated, overrated mythos of devils.

Let’s take the vestiges of art into the streets, shall we? I take along my few faithful protégés, each a beautiful vignette of small horror. We are hosting a referendum. Women, children, everything, hacked down to bits. I place the bones in my pants and shimmy about. This ArtSphinx has ascended to arch-pharaoh. Hand me the hatchet, the copper wire, and let us see what we can do to the commuters, if we can split them open and love their entrail music…All the children love me this day. Am I an arch-internalist? This is the way some of the educated press wish to paint me, but those people are only interested in finding themselves all day in their knowledge, in books, chasing the tails of identity like a failed and broken Uroboros. Clips from those golden glory days:
Take it to the heights, little ones. I have no patience for slow letting! I want all my teeth replaced with stilettos, I want Nosferatu’s grip on a small town. Bring me the heads of the innocent and the strangers. Hook me up to a machine that cycles me through and through in perfect harmonious cleanliness. I am the hygiene of this world, a horror-love par excellence.
If I was an object, inorganic in composition, I'd be a gargantuan sceptre with a factory built into it. I'd have corpses on treadmills to be mutilated and mulched by cold machines. My factory would be fully automated, geared towards the destruction of the flesh! And all technology would be housed in the ruler's sceptre, for I am the dominion of machines!
The nerve of some write-ups in embalmed into print these days: “His thin body was wrapped in tight, black vinyl as he lounged on a throne suspended above on a pillar made of blackened steel and rubber tubing. This place follows only one principle in a morbid darkness: the non-life must prey upon life in order to finally consume it, to assimilate it, to perform the zoophagous ballet. Here, we make the machines--antediluvian monstrosities--that will tear the throats of all that live.” Pure garbage! I am not Baudelaire! I am better than Francis Bacon! I am love-pop amphetamine Cosumel! And the little whozits on the left and right can turn their wrathful energies to more fruitful projects since I have been placed in a safe category, right? The entire media citadel seemed to seethe like a pair of blackened lungs. Of uncooperative whores and journalists with their addling sickness: a swift kick in the chest is always fashionable and required.
I see fiery orange flesh draping my body…I see great wings fashioned of steel cable and translucent plastic webbing. I see my image in a thousand digitised stain glass windows. I see pillars of bone rise high into the murky uterus of the sky, and me shearing skin. This is the age of vision, make no mistake about it, but it is also by necessity my vision.
Chapter Next to Last

The art helotry of the olden days under Albrecht now nothing but a laughable, quickly fading segue in the annals of the expressive record, the canvas had been stripped bare by animal teeth and young artists vicious and angry enough to create anew. Alexa returned, and I took her as I found her, as I had always found her: a mysterious femme fatale, Eurochic, pretentious, and occasionally yielding. O all you pretty things, that I have plans for each and every one of you!
At my lavish studio warehouse, a godawful lovely mess of paint and blood and debris under the Tuscan red moody press of our filtered track lighting. It was the inaugural scene of mine and Alexa’s reunion of sorts.
“I saw the full spread feature of your group’s last performance. Stunning,” she said. Praise from dangerous women is always bound to be dangerous. I looked at her legs, I dreamt of a scalpel and a long flesh slit along the inner thigh, and my tongue…
“Hm? Yes. But their coverage is poor at best, showcasing art school knowledge on behalf of the one who writes rather than what one sees. I am neither happy nor angry at the result…I am not even bored.”
“That’s saying a lot for someone like you who bores so easily,” she said with a wide grin. She was distracted, looking at one of my young cadres, his shirtless brown back juddering into the occasional rigid form of undulating muscle as he toiled away on some sculpture project.
“Which is precisely why I pay it little mind. There are greater challenges in the abyss. As you can see, we are under new ‘mixmanagement’, which is to say that the collusion of certain devices has taken place, no longer under the old tyrannical belt of a very faded genius.”
“But now you are the one holding the whip over the others’ creativity, no?”
“Someone has to. I like to think that I carry it for the good of others. But I do not wish to speak of the political, or near-political, today. Come. I have so much to show you.”
I led her into an adjacent “Finishing Room” where all the pieces that passed our collective scrutiny with minor revisions would soon be displayed to the greater and minor public alike. Need I say that some of these pieces were slightly ghastly, that some of them were still half-alive? No matter.
“What is this one?” Alexa asked, wandering about so wonderfully nonchalant as one would in a boutique of intriguing trinkets. She was pointing to a long plastic gurney whereupon was tied a tall woman (sans arms, sewn closed like a broken Greek statue) not too unlike Alexa…Of course, the subject was not model height, and so I had to disconnect the knee joint and extend the legs with tubing and a very obviously quick graft job. The subject was almost through bleeding, and was perhaps bled out from my rather sloppy surgery. No matter. I had a grate installed for just this event so that the finishing room’s floor would not get too sticky. A large gash had been carved on her chest, another Alexa symbol, albeit hyperbolized…a roughly hewn swastika extending to one collar bone and downward to her right love handle, from the right shoulder zigzagged down to the left hip bone. An enormous testament.
“Is this…supposed to be a rendition of me?” she asked.
“Yes, I do suppose it is.”
“You are sick.”
“Perhaps.”
“It is very sweet of you. I am flattered. But perhaps you should work in more…permanent media.”
“All great art is ephemera. Only the failures survive as masterpieces, to be given the eternal death sentence by hanging in one of our many treasured art galleries for all succeeding generations to view, to miss the point, to gather around the little Jesus they see somewhere in the flux of paint and talentlessness.”
“That is a very bold claim.”
“I am nothing if not one bold claim in time.”
“I am happy that we could retire our past grievances. It was, after all, just for art’s sake.”
“I don’t hold anything against you. I’ve always seen in you the Marlow who went too far in his love of Kurtz, to the point of absorbing him absolutely.”
“I fancy myself the same way,” I said. “But all this can wait. Let us go downtown to one of the clubs. I am feeling a bit peckish.”
And so we did. A glorious night of chrome and insciption tattoos on frightened flesh.

“Greetings, Herr Sigurdson,” said a very unassuming man in faded corduroy. The man’s name was Egon, a bygone to be sure, a friend of the old regime. But I always suspected his allegiance was always in jest. He was, after a fashion, Albrecht’s attorney, and I was no less immune to requiring legal counsel in a time when my craft was not appreciated by the weak and paltry view of what art could or could not be, legally defined.
“Come in. You wanted to speak with me, perhaps offer your services?”
“Yes, I do. As you know, I have been part of this ‘family’ for some time, under Dr. Albrecht. As you also well know, when you were his pupil, certain legal problems arose due to the sensitivity of his work, its reception, and the mode in which it was freely conducted upon live human test subjects.”
“Your inestimable worth to artistic causes needs no introduction. Your very record alone, the fact that Dr. Albrecht was acquitted every time, speaks volumes of your commitment and shrewd legal cunning.”
“Thank you. Very kind words. But I must impress upon you the necessity of my services at this very critical juncture. I am afraid to say that you have not the same strong political backing as Dr. Albrecht had at his disposal, and perhaps half the battle is won if there is influence in higher circles. Your image, as it stands, is unfortunately that of opportunist upstart.”
“Were you present during the eulogy I delivered?”
“Yes, I was, but one expertly crafted eulogizing declaring your true intentions is not enough to dispel the way you will regardless be perceived. Since I specialize in artist law, a relatively new field, I wish to help you. But first you must help me.”
“Tell me what needs to be done, and I will ensure that it will be done.”
“I can only go so far. You need powerful supporters. You need a public relations team to clean up your image. I do not want to see you marched up to the wall for what we both know to be pardonable crimes. However, if I am to serve you best, we must strategize. Firstly, you take greater excessive liberties in your craft, a little more flamboyant and public-outcry than Dr. Albrecht, and more than I am comfortable with.”
“Are you suggesting that I ‘tone down’ my work?”
“No, that would be an insult to you and your craft. I am first and foremost a defender of the free expression of arts without boundaries, and I find one impediment to expression is the law, and so I work within the law in order to find those lacunas where people like you can slip through and continue in your craft free of legal molestation. But let me continue…”
“Yes, please.”
“Secondly, I have heard a rumour that you are back in collusion with Alexa Richter. I do not need you to substantiate something that is perhaps proprietary at this stage, but I would caution you if it is indeed true, for she is not in the public favour at the moment. Her involvement in whatever deeds in the Middle East—details that I am myself unclear about—have soiled her image. These are dictates from Washington, and so our hands are tied at this point. Thirdly, and finally, there are those who staunchly support the memory of Dr. Albrecht—regrettably and mostly powerful support networks—and do not look kindly upon what they deem an insurgency by a greedy prince who is said to have betrayed him in order to ground his own fortunes.”
“These claims persist, eh? All right. So, what is your proposed strategy to overcome these obstacles?”
Egon settled back in his seat, as settled as his stiff posture could be, brought his attaché case to his lap and fished out a staggering document of enormous heft. “What I propose in the immediate is to seek supporting backers of your project. We can rule out most of the German elite, for they are too wary or still allied to Dr. Albrecht, You will need to seek your support from abroad. I would try a few powerful groups in the United States. I have itemized the groups I have in mind, and upon your word will send proposals to the groups that you select. I would also like to suggest that you allot a certain percentage of your net proceeds for educational opportunities. Academia still pulls a considerable weight, and with their support comes deeper credibility. Credibility is the heart of your problem at the moment. Fund emergent artists and art-theorists. Make sizeable contributions to grant-bodies in your name. This will demonstrate your commitment to the community and the furtherance of the social. As for Alexa, I am not here to tell you who you can or cannot collaborate with, but I would caution any and all hasty action in this matter…I am sure that a PR team may be able to work miracles in working her into the equation and turning even her most questionable past deeds to your advantage. It is all here in my report.”
He handed me the enormous document, every page highlighted with the points most salient for me to consider. “Thank you, Egon. Your services are invaluable, as they always were. I am glad that you have decided to take on the more meaty challenge. Should I provide, as Albrecht did, the customary payment? What is it again? An unlisted loft, three young girls, chloroform, a knife, a bottle of Chivas Regal?”
“You know my tastes,” he smiled.
“Consider it done, and welcome aboard.”
We shook hands and left it at that.

It would prove very simple in some instances to accumulate support. At times it was as easy as product placement, and ensuring that it was publicly known that my artists smoked cigarette x, etcetera. With Egon at the helm of those affairs, negotiating for the most profitable terms and returns for me, I was free to create more often. But I was beginning to wonder why Egon had taken so long to come forward and offer his assistance. Perhaps, I thought, he still had to work out in his own conscience his allegiance to the once burning comet of fire that was Dr. Albrecht, and had now reconciled his old love in light of the concretely real circumstances of my ascension.
Ah, to stage little wars and to hash out affairs of state! How boring!

But I was glam rock new style, erotic subgenius nazi-lover. Let it all rain down! Bring me a legion of cunts to stitch across, to paint machine frescos over in the new daring style! I am sick and twisted, but loved and necessary.
Between the flurry of interviews, photo sessions, and banging against the flesh and headboard of my reunion with Alexa, not to mention the demands of my craft and the instruction of pupils, I was indeed a very active individual. My prospects were many, brimming, and willing. “Will you pose before us?” Indeed I would. I was a god of the new erotic.
Ah, but a staged death ruined my plans, like a cheap artist…just a dummy in a casket. We should have known. Albrecht’s vengeful return made short work of luxury. Alas, gone, gone would be the days of our arcane wizardry, our beloved excesses…

He returned with all the pomp and glamour of a dolled up celebrity harlot. Trust him to steal the show. Egon advised me not to make any moves, to remain publicly silent about Albrecht’s return until it was absolutely necessary. Ah! Old teachers are stitches in the side of new creations! I could not believe I was so duped.

Albrecht’s Account
A dearest ones, that I was so indisposed, but then returning like the little shabby Christ fictions you eat up and hold dearly in your heart like apocalyptic empires. But one cannot rest the figure of Caesar by stabbing him in the enclosed spaces, and then expect that the many will be content with a heroic death speech given by a conspirator. But the people had it all wrong. JC was not the promised return of Christ, but that of our friend Julius who would make good on his promise to rule the many. That I trusted my little brat Jakob was both my error and my necessity. Perhaps it was all planned. Let the fools run the kingdom in the king’s absence, but when he returns it is time to clean up and clear out! Perhaps Jakob should succumb in due form to one of my experimental urges. O how I could sink and twist a scalpel into his groin and get aroused at his damnable screams. How fitting. But I am not one of use such sloppy metaphors, to employ them as obscenely and gratuitously as our dear successor. Let that be the domain of the infinitely bad poet and his legion of half-assed fanatics. Yes, Jakob, the worst poet I know, the very ziggurat of bad poetic form. Every age needs one, but every age needs its editor, too.
I had been lying low and watching with both amusement and seething wrath as Jakob made a mockery of my vision. Pure depravity without content is not art. I stroked at my chin in deep thought while he merely languished in his own iniquity. So be it. Rome is indeed a playpen, too. I only wished that he would not have diminished my divine dementia, to make light with my particularized and finely honed fetish. His was a bad copy. Egon told me all about it. In my bed, Alexa spoke in more detail of those things one shares between false lovers. He will not pick up on the clues. And now the real fun begins in earnest. I am an enraged god to his false deity. Let the terrain tremble under the press of our great titanic conflict!
...Then the prophecy came to be. From on high, the pitch of nightmares rained down on the soul machines, and hieroglyphs dribbled down the faces of megalith office towers. On the shores oozed unknown histories of man, frightfully unearthed by something tumultuous in the belly of science. O spiritus designata! O Turpis Nova! Images of pharaoh birds and armoured scarabs came scrolling before my eyes. The world was beginning to roll up like an ancient scroll, and all the ink landscapes in which were beginning to bleed and run off the parchment of existence. And when Jakob fancied himself pharaoh, he only sat upon his throne mistaking form for content and meaning! New children ran in the streets with knives in their hungry hands and vile rape on their eyes. Dance clubs echoed other atrocities, while the dealers whispered sweet butcheries to one another. Two people fucked in an alley, someone stole their clothes, the thief was accosted by a psychotic panhandler, and Jesus fundamentalists descended everywhere. Lovely! This element was still mine.
Alexa. She was lithe, debonair, in cool repose, a celebrity to the core, and she came to me on the end of a cigarette. This was beautiful betrayal as all my little carrion returned to their master’s care.
“Doctor, I have more news to report,” she said.
“No doubt you do. Does it concern our little pigeon, perhaps, our little self-styled king with a crown to big to fit over his small head?”
“Yes.”
“Splendid.”

Open is my gallery of icons and ages--open to your eyes, your fears, your expendable ego. For when I look upon you, and all people, I see only surgical material, empty canvases and ready blocks of sculpting marble. In this exhibit, I propose to properly lay to rest the old icons and ages to make way for the new. I envision new flesh, a fusion of plastic, metal, and epidermis. I bring to you your own extinction.
'Nala Greenleaf: see how her petals are plucked from her, how the young spawn of the inorganic being tears at her breast in an act of suckling her unto death.'
'Sabine Muslin: all flesh is weak. Her speeches are over; the ideology lies dead and unmoving. The cult of her personality has turned its teeth against her.'
‘Augustine Plumbum: his mysticism has no place in the new order of the anti-human. In the spirit of his alchemy, his flesh is turned to ash.'
'Jupiter Orwell: look how he proclaims an impending doom only to be ignored as a false prophet! Look how he is now crucified in his being right, suffering an ignoble defeat at the hands of the angry masses. Now no one lives to verify his claims.'
'Leonard Kropotsky: in his attempt to equalize the world of man, he sacrificed the advantages of the superior who would be the chosen few to defend against the inorganic mob. He becomes trampled to death by the common men he so praised!'
'Billy Blank: unwittingly, and with blind eyes, he fostered the coming of the new dark age. And when his pop culture Sodom came crashing down, his body was tallied as yet another expendable automaton. How his unconscious creations uncreated him!'
Genius comes from defeat and contempt. From the contempt of others comes new glory for the rebuked. I, too, was idealistic in my youth, but soon, even the idealists with their words of bravado come to kneel and obey before the awesome might of the irrevocable truth.

Polemic Exchange:
“Jakob Sigurdson will be yet another shadow banished from my sight!”
“Dr. Albrecht is a minor tart, a prop to the age and little more!”
“Jakob Sigurdson is a mockery of my vision, a vision he co-opted badly!”
“Dr. Albrecht does himself no favour emerging from the grave. I will smite him!”

So be it. Let little Jakob be a warring crusader against my Right. Pity that my adversaries could not be more worthy. Just another ragabash poltroon to have slaughtered, his finality a moot point already assured by those in my Trust. Does he wish to wage this war in public, with the media acting as his referee and safe refuge? What poor taste!

I watched and waited while Jakob’s meagre hold on power dwindled and was leeched from his weak grasp. This brought me great pleasure. It was enough to launch a masturbation frenzy. I made my reconnections without playing too prominent a role. I did not want my iconic status make anyone feel too uneasy, and in my period of absence there grew a pocket of resistance against Jakob that did not feel inhibited by my reign of power. Of course I had always suspected that there would be treachery, and that the closest among me would be the perpetrators! I am no fool. I know my history. I know not to trust the closest minions, for they are always the first to lie to keep me happy and complacent, and the first to capitalize on an opportunity to dethrone me. So, in my voluntary extrication, I watched as those who were not favourable to my art regime felt free to combat a new enemy—a weaker one—without fear of my wrath. I was, essentially, nonexistent other than as a symbol of distorted inspiration in Jakob’s little cluttered closet of ideology.
And then came the day we met face to face in the public sphere…O the beauty and tragedy of it all! And the comedy, too! He had been played, and I think he was beginning to see it even if his ego did nothing more than bolster his sense of denial.
“Jakob, little spider, look at what you did to father’s shop when you thought him indisposed! Shame, shame, little spider. I would be lying if I thought you had potential much greater than this formulaic betrayal.”
Photographers were documenting our every movement. Journalists with palm pilots were writing down our exchange straight into the blogosphere of the Internet.
“You fucking swine! Don’t you have the better sense of staying underground with all your obsolescent machinery? Have you not the good graces to stay the fuck out of the way?”
Did I neglect to mention that I just happened to arrive before a very important exhibit Jakob was putting on? Pity. I wonder what his investors would think, all those patrons and sponsors. The powerful myth of return is much stronger in people’s minds than some jejune singular exhibit. My return was the real event, and I had stolen his thunder, pitiful as it was.
“Oh, Jakob…You assume that to take a hiatus is to take a bowing out. Why would I have ever bowed out to someone so asinine as you? Give me more credit than that.”
“Go fuck yourself, old man!”
“Jakob, don’t flaunt your embarrassing fear of me in public. It diminishes everything. No one fears you, little spider. They tolerate you, yes, but for how long? My empire was built on fear. I am the inescapable, the ineffaceable. Don’t you get it? Riding my coat tails will bring you only so far. But let us set aside differences for this one evening and see what you have done with my vision.”
Jakob was at a lack of a retort. I liked him much better in silence. We entered the exhibit hall to see his new production entitled All Rape is Consensual Sensuousness. What a hopeless title. I hoped that the production would be much better.
We entered and whisked past the velvet brocade and the marble vestibule. He was spending my money, my fame, all of it that had been gained from my regime of art and fear. The performance was embarrassing…nothing more than a mockery, a shadow of my grand vision. He pissed away everything I had built on ridiculous little trifles and horror spectacles! Did he not understand that pure horror without a unifying theoretical thread could not evolve, could not amuse the many for too long? People would get bored of this mere sensationalism. It was my vision and my theoretical power of uniting nazism and sex and technology that made my creations work and evolve into new and more enticing forms. Jakob was doing little more than cash in on the spectacle in a shortsighted fashion. Under his governance, the vision would be exhausted in a matter of months, a mere ephemeral footnote in the annals of art history—of no real merit or puissance!
After having sat there and endured this little bloodsport, this tragedy of art, I was quite vocal about my declamations. It was pure rubbish. The gods were displeased with the offering, the mishandling of the vision. Let Prometheus, my little Jakob, be picked clean by vultures for having stolen and misappropriated something grand.

Jakob’s Account….

He sat there, the bloated spider, all smug and downcast. A displeased master watching as his disciple takes his vision further than anticipated. I have made new with newer cloth and flesh than he had the balls to do. He fancied himself a royal figure, in kingly stature declaring in pompous fashion the value of art. But the values had changed! We were no longer on the gold standard, and all he had was a coffer of decommissioned Kroners in the age of dollar exchange. He could gain no purchase on anything, despite the hawkish media that panned on him and awaited to hear his verdict on my acts of art and daring. Let his piracy be his ruin, his overcoded ego be his ruin, and, and…Fuck it. I lost. I could already fill the emptying of the fluid collection of supporters I had briefly won over to my side. My instincts at political intrigue are failure. I half suspect that my supporters never truly supported me at all. And there the mighty doctor stood, mighty at his own game.
The weeks faded from view. I was back to worse than nothing. I was beginning to shoot up more often. More. More. Just couldn’t dull the pain, I guess. Last I heard, I think Albrecht incorporated his name, and was now made public on the stock market. Perhaps if the price of my addiction was not so high I might have responded to the insult of his giving me a pittance properly. I mean, yes…I…he gave me a monthly allowance, worked out by his cabal of lawyers…to remunerate me a certain sum for, in his cheeky way, “babysitting” his empire during his absence. It was never enough. And perhaps the biggest insult of all was to know that Alexa, my precious femme fatale, knew all along. She must have. She’s with him now, no doubt, following power, always following power. The chase is in her tail. As it was in my own in a way.
O Rome! That I have fallen, savaged to death by the Visigoths I invited to my table, that I had placed under the care of positions in the army! Have I been unkind to you to deserve this vicious sacking? Must I now retreat from the fertile west into the mysteries of the harsh east? Please don’t say it is so!
Albrecht O father, that I have failed in my act of castration and my Alexa-mother now will not even look at me! I am still your prince! Your son! Your comrade-at-arms! The wildnerness is so cold, so cold…

Alexa…I want to be under your breast again…I want to feel the hot poison of your sweat on my tongue, the burning image of your American swastika…Your powerful eagle of the new Reich. Don’t let me fade off like this…Please…

O People, that you have turned from me as well just as I was slaking my bloodthirst! I could have cut you all up with my love, my knife, my will! But my will has proven too weak for your tastes. O the irony! I am a grey man.





Selected Letters: 1995
From Jakob Sigurdson
To Jonkil Calembour
January 6th, 1994
Ottawa, Canada
“Oi! The kingdom of the sexes? Bollocks to that!”
--Jonkil Calembour, man on high, low down in the bottle.

Screed ‘n Scribe boy—
Your erudite mumblings about a coming and going millennium are a bit heavy at this point, seeing as we still have to sort through the great Fall of the Wall, circa 1989. But I’m here in the capital city, east side, and despite the uses and abuses of my time, I still manage to get laid on a frequent basis. If anyone was a dead ringer for Henry Miller, at least in lifestyle terms, it would be me. Before I forget, thanks for the recommendation—I read Tropic of Cancer with a religious zeal and with an eye that widened with every beautiful narrative spread. You spoil me, old boy; keep it up.
What’s this I hear about you going into graduate studies? School’s for jokers, anyhow, so you’ll at least be in your depth and among those of your silly kind. I don’t think I have the ken for schooling at this point, having decided to be this century’s best poet. A hard run, really, seeing as only a few years remain before we have to cast our ballots. However, I think I can make an indent, an impression, or at least skirmish the surface of potential greatness in that regard. Or, maybe, I’ll find that I love the drugs more than I do the stanzas, which will probably put me in a different sort of category. We may both be very tall men, but I know that one of us will have the reach to get that taboo cookie jar on the top shelf, bring it down, and share the contents with the others. You go your route to the top and I’ll go mine. If only I could get the lead weight off my chest—the vices, I mean. I need not go into further detail about that…
Yes, I am still clubbing religiously. And, yes, I know how much you frown upon the barbarism of it all, but I just can’t let a Saturday night pass without busting a move or two on the floor with beer and pretty ladies. If that makes me trite, well, why in hell did you give me Miller to read? But knowing you, you have some motive. Perhaps the Miller was your way of placing like things with like, or a kind of gesture of surrender. You are not exactly forthright at the best of times. Critical, yes. Maybe you wish I was critical, too, but where was all that hard earned criticism when I introduced you to Mary? Your eyes almost fell out of your head with all that lustful strain competing against your need to be perpetually composed.
I better sign off; the night is young and even writing to you adds unnecessary years to my life. But I suppose that you can tell me what it’s like on that other, mysterious side, that strange and untrammeled terrain known as “being Responsible.” Let me know how the flag is flying on your end of things.

In vino veritas,
Jakob


From Jonkil Calembour
To Jakob Sigurdson
January 14th, 1994
Chicago, USA

My little terror,
There’s absolutely nothing wrong in being young half the time, and something else the other half. Glad you liked the book…It was meant as a kind of peace offering. There are certain things I am given not to respect in this world, but I felt the compunction to bridge the social gap between us with some common ground.
Madness, general distilled forms of madness at 150 proof. That generally characterizes how things are on my side of the border. I’m not trying to be a lecherous, drug-laden poet who languishes idly in the club circuit, but I still have to contend with perhaps more tangible forms of madness that threaten to upend me at any possible moment. If there is a thin line between criticism and living, I’m walking it. For instance, I’m trying not to piss off the Irish in this burg, but am failing miserably. A few misplaced comments about Sinn Fein and suddenly the entire beer-mongering crowd and the bartender are ready to stick the entire Blarney stone up your ass. It was a real mean scene, as it usually is. Meanwhile, I have to endure the yelps and screams of the suburban underclass all around me clambering for their piece of American Pie, claiming by all sorts of missals, epistles, letters to the editor, courier pigeons, and public access television broadcasts that I am the last impediment to their realization of their wealth. It is akin to being the one foolish Zeke with the Confederate flag in his hands in the midst of the Million Man March. So, out of the pointless need to keep my limbs and such intact for the next few decades of equally pointless ordeals in the world, I am bending my efforts to becoming a bit more of a private citizen—what the Greeks called the idiot. It may be better for everyone involved, or even those who could ever possibly be involved. The return of glam rock signals to me this very idea of weak, pale, or non-existent involvement across the public board. This may turn out to be the worst debacle since the Gulf War. While I remember, I made some mention of that, too…Bob Hope and the Golf War that is the nation’s complacent stupidity in all matters international. That didn’t win over any crowds, which leads me to believe that no one around here has a sense of humour unless it somehow involves some Iraqi getting nailed in the groin with a SCUD. Now that’s big bucks, entertainment-wise. It is unfortunate that I’m no longer of the youthful mentality to be entertained.
If I remember correctly, when we last spoke, you said something about creating empire. All I can say is know what you’re up against. You’re landlocked in a flaccid, apathetic town stifled with government and big business blood money. And never mind those old labour movement stiffs of the seventies who get that drunken wistful look in their eyes when speaking of the days of yore. You’re too easily lulled by the fabled failures of grandpa, and so it would be in your best interests to find more suitable—and contemporary—role models. Or, go the other way and read up on the situationists of 1968. Recreate that, and I’ll be impressed. I’d give a nut to see you in action, actualizing on all that potential you keep in reserve or squander on picking up dance club trash. While I’m preaching moral dictates, I’d seriously advise that if you are going to do copious amounts of illicit substances that, rather than delve into the narrative of failure that is the night life of your besotted little town, you stay home and suffer the isolating procedure of actually creating something. Yes, write a poem. You can’t even be considered (or rejected for that matter) as the “century’s greatest poet” if you don’t write anything. I don’t think they give out laudatory praise, prizes, or invite you to be part of the Grand Hall of Letters based on how good you play the part of a poet. The last bastion of getting recognized for your image is a bit further down west and south, a place you may know as Hollywood. Tomorrow you may suddenly burst out of your chrysalis as a poet, but today you’re just Jakob, libertine extraordinaire, connoisseur of the drug trade and idler of time. Give yourself a hard slap.
Well, maybe my talk of the approaching millennium is a bit premature, but one should begin the proceedings early. I find that history-defining moments are best when you drain them in advance of any unexpected and disastrous surprises. Who knows what’s in store? I predict, with tongue in cheek, a government-backed genocide plan in the middle east. Is that too reactionary? Perhaps. You just wait: your town will sweep all the hobos under the social rug and spruce up the place for the dilettante’s ball. They can perfume the corpse up all they like, but someday someone has to have the gall and balls to throw the old fucker out. And none of this “out with the old, in with the older” bullshit either. It will be a dark and terrifying day when I start seeing the swastika flying over Capitol Hill. Will we be surprised? I know I won’t be. Things as they are, politically, seem to be going that way all the time. If they elect some demented brownshirted troll in ’96 or 2000, I’m off to Bogota for good. And as much as I would love to talk current affairs with you, I am trying to digest my dinner and I have to scamper off into the next round of pin-prick application procedures. The schools are asking for my marks and my extracurricular interests now, but in five years hence they’ll be screaming for my blood or my head mounted on their big stick of Truth.

Bis spater,
J.Calembour


To Rona Sigurdson
From Jakob Sigurdson
January 19th, 1994

Sis—
How’s gallivanting about the old country with dad? Is he still not speaking to me? Maybe being in a country full of old relics and museums will do him good, placing him with his kind, so to speak. Granted, I’m a bit sore that I couldn’t come along; I’m just aching to see Europe for the first time. I’m nearing the 24th trip around the sun, and I wouldn’t want my epitaph to read “never been to Europe—where he so belonged.” I’m sick of this place, and this country. I know you’ll say that I idealize it over there too much, but it is easy to idealize that which you may never have. If only mom were still with us.
I’ll probably still be here when you get back in March, still plying the same fiendish trades that dad disapproves of. I think there is a strange favourtism abounding here, at least in that he favours a more respectable career for me and you can do whatever the hell you want and he’ll still find a way of singing your praises. I tell him I want to be a poet and he throws me out. His exact words, for the record, were, “so, you want to be a poet, and a great poet at that, eh? Well, get the hell out of here and into the cold, penniless world! You want to waste your life writing sonnets for whores? Go for it, but don’t expect either my blessing or an open door when you inevitably fail.” What accounts for this? Perhaps my father is a failed poet. Surely, and indeed!
Ah, my little Rona…Still singing? If you need an agent or help to acquire some gigs, there’s nobody better in this world than your dedicated, older brother (I reserve “wiser” for the now; updates to follow). I found this book by Henry Miller you might like, may put a sort of focus on your Grand Tour. I’ll lend it to you when you get back.
In your last letter, you said something about my need to get out of town and see how the others live, etc. With this miserable winter, I’m just about ready to fly the coop to anywhere. Jesus, I’d rather be in the Khmer Rouge than here. I would take up on your sage advice if I had the cash, but the papa Don has cut me off at the source. Maybe you could see if you could pry some bills out of his tight-fisted grip and give it to me on the sly? I mean, we are family, and I am entitled to at least something. Not a lion’s share or anything, but a couple a hundred bucks your advice—though great and therapeutic as it is—costs money. Dosh. Cash. Greenbacks. Send word (would see me through for the next little while (or at least one weekend in Montreal). Besides, all of weighed down with some bills).
I’ve really been into the artwork of a Mr. H.R. Giger lately (of Alien fame), but I don’t think all of it is to your tastes. I’m just fascinated now more than ever about this grafting of the human witht he technological, the biomechanical stuff. There’s some twisted, yet lovely, imagery in his work. It reminds me of the Duchamps dad had in his study. Who was that other fellow you mentioned? Oh, yes, Rauschenberg. I love the cut-ups. It reminds me, at least literarily, of Burroughs. Thanks for the recommendation, but then again you’re an art student now in one of those quasi-academic combines where they churn out a packaged graduate with all the requisite jarrgon that can be stuffed between two ears. Heh. You’ve always been daddy’s little girl, even when you were out all night smoking up with strange painter-boys in the park. Just don’t let that school give you a swelled head. Remember, I’ll always be your older brother.
Just to finish with family business, or my exile from it, I don’t think I’ll be visiting mom’s grave with you guys in the spring. My presence will just irk dad, and I just don’t want to bring such disrespect and tension to mom like that. If I show m6y mug, it will be an uncomfortable time for all. Remember when we all met there last fall? The only way I could have faced the man was if I had drank a bottle of bourbon straight and fast. I don’t think dad realized the necesity behind my being drunk, nor could he appreciate the gravity of the situation. But I do think that mom would have understood, what with things being how they are.
Well, I hope you snag me some souvenirs on your way through. If I can’t get to Europe by my own means, then the next best thing is to have some artifacts or lucky charms that may one day work in my favour. See you soon.

Love,
Jakob


To The Society For Associated Surgeons and Practitioners of the Fine Medical Arts
From Edward X. Albrecht, MD, Ph.D.
February 3rd, 1994

Dear Sirs;
It has come to my attention that you have since revoked my membership due to various forms of libel and slander that have been circulating amid my name, not to mention the charges of malpractice brought up against me in the Weber Case. It is a sorry disappointment when to be literally dis-appointed is due to a few minor indiscretions that are easily handled in a court of law. That you have made it abundantly clear that I may no longer associate with any of the members within the society, decided upon no less by secret vote, is nothing less than a petty and juvenile act of personal profiling that I had thought we, as adults and professionals, would wholeheartedly denounce. I am still of the purist mentality that society business and legal business are entirely separate entities, not to be imbricated, but it would appear that your collective has adopted a new model of organizational practice.
Perhaps equally shocking and disturbing in this revocation is the fact that the case in which I have been summoned has not officially as of yet gone to trial, though the members of the society have deemed fit to act as judge, jury and executioner by assuming my guilt beforehand. I am not naïve, gentlemen, and your ruse is a transparent one. This goes beyond your mere dislike of my practice ethics, and extends toward a move of greater political importance to you and yours. For example, I do know that the society is attempting to increase its leverage for both public and private funding, and that to keep my name on the register would severely harm your chances at procuring said funding from either sectors. But since when must our illustrious society be dictated to by brief and inconsequential bursts of public outcry? And since when did we begin to bow our heads before the sword of the funding committee? In sum, gentlemen, I feel betrayed precisely because our solidarity has been purchased out from underneath us. I am also disillusioned when I encounter the contradiction between the actions of the existing society members and the glorious mandate set out by the venerable Dr. Lewis Anscombe when the society was founded in 1794. Is this the way we honour Dr. Anscombe’s vision in this year of our bicentennial? A hard look and a re-evaluation are precisely what the members need. But, please, gentlemen, don’t take my humble word for it: consult for yourself and read the mandate as inscribed on the plaque in the atrium. Do you believe and uphold the values housed in the words therein, or are the words just hollow, phantom images? Use this mandate as a litmus test! When next you meet and collectively recite the oath, truly meditate on the meaning of each word, each sentence! Do not merely passively parrot the oath like a child forced to recite the Lord’s Prayer every day. If you and the other members wish to continue resorting to this form of base, low-down, back-biting, rogue politics, then I consider my removal from the society a blessing rather than a punishment.
In closing, gentlemen, I trust that the monetary remainder of this year’s membership will be reimbursed to me in full lest litigation follow.

“Defendit numerus, junctaeque umbone phalanges”—And so much for that!
Dr. Edward X. Albrecht


From John R. Wilkinson, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Sierra University
To Dr. Edward X. Albrecht
February 4th, 1994

Dear Dr. Edward X. Albrecht;

I regret to inform you that your bid to join our staff as senior lecturer has been denied for the reasons outlined in the enclosed reports of the hiring committee. For a more comprehensive examination of the reports, please contact the faculty.
The number of qualified and highly gifted candidates for this position has risen sharply in the past two years, and so the selection process was a difficult one. We hope that you understand our reasons for not granting you this position at this time and wish you the best of luck in finding placement elsewhere.

John R. Wilkinson
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
Sierra University

(Encl.) REPORTS
Committee Member 1: “Dr. Albrecht is a capable and versatile professional with a strong background in gynecological practice and research; however, I feel that the candidate is less suited to the demands of lecturing that this position entails.”
Committee Member 2: “My reasons for deferring the candidate are partially motivated by his recent embroilment in the Weber case. It would serve the better interests of the university and the candidate if the latter focus more on clearing his name in court before proceeding to applying to this notable position.”
Committee Member 3: “I do not doubt the candidate’s academic rigour or that he is a well-rounded polymath, but I feel that his presence is far too intimidating for me to endorse his application. We have a delicate and harmonious dynamic here in the faculty that I feel the candidate may disrupt if he is given space here among us.”
Committee Member 4: “Despite the candidate’s impressive credentials and revered research in his field, there is an unshakable sense of callousness in his operation that does not meet our mandate of ‘Compassion First.’ Being familiar with the candidate’s research history, I fear that the candidate would be too theoretical rather than practical in his approaches to medicine, and that his experimental fervour is beyond the ken of this faculty. I cannot support the application of this candidate.”


To Enoch XXXX
From The Bureau of Social Services
February 9th, 1994

Enoch,
After a long review and assessment of your financial and living status, we have come to the conclusion that you are ineligible to receive social assistance funding. If you wish to repeal the decision made by the board, you may call and arrange for an appointment at the telephone number listed below.

Mary Dennings
Secretary to Admissions
Bureau of Social Services


To Enoch
From The Armed Forces, Unit 5
February 9th, 1994

Enoch;
It has come to the attention of the staff sergeant in charge of existing personnel that you have been AWOL for three weeks. Since no permission for leave was given, nor was any application made to that effect, you are effectively in violation of AF Code XX-X. Proceed immediately to Fort XXX. If you do not comply with this order, you will be sought after by the local authorities, transferred against your free will to Fort XXX, and brought up on charges in a military court. This does not imply that your voluntary return will guarantee that charges will not be laid against you, or that you will enter back into active service. Respond immediately.

Col. Brock Peterson,
Unit 5


To Dr. Edward X. Albrecht
From The New England Journal of Gynecological Sciences
February 17th, 1994

Dear Dr. Albrecht;

Your piece, “A New Examination of Surgical Implements for the New Woman” has been rejected by our committee due to the fact that it not only did not meet our standards for publication, but that we found it highly unsuitable and unbecoming of any medical researcher. In sum, the panel found it offensive, misogynist, cruel and barbaric. Your advocacy of “pain threshold technique” (p. 13) is the product of a demented mind, and wholly counter to the aims of medicine wherein we treat, not torture, our patients. We will not consider a rewrite of this paper, and if your intentions were otherwise than how they were depicted in this paper, we suggest that you consider writing horror fiction or submit to us something scientifically viable. It baffles us that a researcher of your high calibre and a frequent contributor to this journal would submit such a twisted, sub-par document. We can only hope that this has all been a terrible mistake, or that someone else is using your name for reasons of misguided vendetta.
Until this matter is resolved, we are placing a hold on your last submission (“Treating Sores and Lesions of the Fourchette and Surrounding Basal Regions,” slated for publication for the March issue) so that we may determine the authenticity of the paper as having been written by the real Dr. Edward X. Albrecht. We apologize if this inconveniences you in any way, and doubly apologize if the submission we recently received was not written in your hand, but by some miscreant who wishes to tarnish your reputation, to which this may come as much as a shock and surprise to you as it does us.

For the board,
Gregg Alverston
The New England Journal of Gynecolgical Sciences



From Jakob Sigurdson
To Jonkil Calembour
March 1, 1994

Junker—

The evil is descending on me hard and fast. A postcolonial eye of the new entrepeneurial spirit is making its rounds, and me with no cash in the kitty, irons in the fire, or bones in the larder. Fuck. I’m a victim of Burroughs’ algebra of need. No contingency plans whatsoever. Some junk-peddling scum is yards from my house looking to pose fiscal questions for wallet-strong answers I don’t have. And like most of his filthy, despicable ilk, it could steer into a violence of a most savage sort that I haven’t the mental or physical constitution to endure. I don’t think you bailing me out would in any way compromise your position or moral standpoint on the issue if you make our friendship in general the grounds for benevolence in this regard. I owe the bastards about a grand and a half, but I think two or three hundred would keep those snarling wolves at bay and convey to their beastly mentalities that I am serious about honouring all and any debts. It’s a wonder what a paltry sum can do. It won’t last forever, and eventually this teasing taste of blood will have to yield up the entire amount on my part…But I can worry about settling all accounts and outstanding debts to the shadow economy later. For now, it’s just a matter of giving them a taste, throwing them off my scent for a bit, and sparing myself the inevitable skull-bashing or limb-cracking that makes up the darker side of their language.
That being said, send word immediately. I will pay you back. It will be a debt inscribed in the Book in the Sky. At least you won’t be chasing me around with blunt instruments like these other lads. Perhaps we are all essentially united as human beings by our debts, I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that there are certain situations with particular types of people you can’t talk your way out of. To them, reason and human compassion are strange words that seem to suggest a loss of capital. In a kind of economy where a warning is a beating, and bankruptcy is certain death, the only logical principle is the ultimatum of brutality. In closing, on this score, please, and thank you.

Jakob


To Jakob Sigurdson
From Jonkil Calembour
March 7, 1994

To the Dearly Disposed,

I suppose it is true when they say that a junky has a short memory. Didn’t I bail you out a few months back, under the same terrifying conditions that you find yourself in again? Am I to finance your foul habits while you parade out this dressed-up friendship argument that is merely a poorly disguised guilt ploy, masquerading there again as desperation? I would feel that much more compelled to offer up the contents of my entire bank account if and only if you didn’t place our friendship on the line every time you come to an impasse of panic. And don’t get me started about the cheapening of a friendship, exploitation of another’s resources, and so forth! Jakob, we are bandying about empty words. After I rescued you last time, we agreed that this would be the very last time that either you come scraping over to me for money and the last time I would ever consent to offering any…at least for that shit. You know how to lie to yourself, but I don’t think you know how to lie to others; otherwise, you’d have written a less desperate letter about how you needed money for rent or food. But then again, my knowing you, I’d have smelled a rat.
So, the question stands: at what point in time should I turn my back to your pleas, take a stand and deny your monetary requests? When I lend money, I don’t usually intend to ever see it again, so I usually part with what I can afford to part with. This is why I don’t record in some ledger exactly how much you owe like some fiendish and meticulous accountant. In this case, however, your costs have gone up and my financial ability has stayed pretty much the same. As it stands, my financial status is not built for two…It isn’t some comfortable tandem bike we can ride in the park on a cool and refreshing autumn day. My finances are a crowded single-seater moped whose operational future is dubious, uncertain, and well beyond its warrantee.
Another question: why do you compound your debts with these dark figures knowing full well that a) you most likely will not be able to pay them back owing to your financial inability, b) that the punitive clause of defaulting will be something of the order of severe violence or even death, and, c) you are obtaining “products” from these people on extended credit that is well beyond your means? Cripes, Jakob! Do you think you’re going to come across an abandoned suitcase full of money that will solve all your problems? As I see it, your position is tragic indeed, but a tragedy of your own design. Most people obtain their money through—wait for it!--w-o-r-k-i-n-g for it, which you most obviously cannot do if you’re always high. I’ve always believed that no one on this earth has a better work ethic than a junky, especially in terms of going to such extreme lengths to procure their fix. But you need to channel this abundant drive into organizing yourself, your life, and gearing yourself toward some kind of self-sufficiency. The idea of work may not appeal to your sensibilities, but it seems to me that you’re doing everything a businessman would do, albeit illegally. Yes, it’s true! You’re sending off requests for “funding,” cutting deals, bargaining, assessing the quality of the wares, networking with other distributors and clientele, information sharing, arranging for meetings, comparison shopping, and managing your intake/uptake. The one hitch in all these business activities is that you are engaged in a losing enterprise; the end result will always be bankruptcy (reread what I said about bankruptcy above). Eventually, unless you’re Rousseau who can live off the kind and gentle financial virtues of older, richer women, you will exhaust your monetary supply lines. You will hit the wall. It may not be today (though you seem pretty damn close), but one day you will have drained every possible channel for the money to keep you solvent and stoned, and that will also be the day that you find yourself up a particular creek with no oars. My advice? Close down your side of this bilateral business exchange, settle all debts, and don’t look back. Keep running. This is worse than Amway.
I will not say no to you this time, for I feel that this letter of mine has been my clearest and most direct contribution to your plight. I have taken great pains to phrase what I have said in terms that you will understand, without my usual glib asides and witty repartee. I take responsibility for not taking your situation with the seriousness it so demands, and so I’m laying it all on the line without the bells and whistles. Find enclosed a money order for the amount you requested; the rest you will have to make up by whatever way you can. If this happens one more time, after all that I have said, then my rejection of your request will take the form of silence.

For the last time,
Jonkil


From The Diaries of Alexa Richter, Volume 1, 1990-2000
April 17th, 1994

“Mold the three-legged libertine, the liar, and the artist,” said the quizzical figure with the deathly pallor and fashion done up in the style of the well-kept grave. “And then feed him to the ravenous beasts, the Scyllas and the like.” A strange dream, and I have never been too fond of reading in and out of dreams. I am no Anais Nin.
Diary, I am still being well financed by X, whose illicit activities keep me clothed and fed and housed, but I despise his expectations upon me…my body. I am no simple farm girl from the north. I studied at the most prestigious institutions, receiving a very formidable education. He needs me. His English is so rough and simple. Had he a father like mine, always away on business, to which I was always chasing after for respect, then perhaps he would know the languages of the oppressor. Instead, X’s tongue is a vulgar mix of Low German and crude burlesque French. I will leave him this year to a place that he and his “colleagues” will never find me. And if they do, I will be safe in the fold of a new land, under the protection of its laws, and he (and his train of rogues and thieves) will be like children tossed in the air, lost in a country whose language has no patience for stammerers and crude sign gestures.
I will be no one’s whore; never again.
X labours under the falsehood that I am weak and helpless without his care, but that was only true long ago. But he is a champion of his own self-deceit! What he fails to grasp even in his most private moments when honesty should take hold is this: that my beauty and my power confuses and frightens him, and that he keeps me in this state because his simple mind cannot fathom what he should do with me. He is a hollow man who has no clue on how to harbour the essence of the other. I see it in the awkward shuffling of his feet while his upper half is posturing with the false bravado of fools. I intimidate him. He knows that by keeping me there by his side he limits who I am. He is trying to catch moonbeams with his clumsy paws. And perhaps he knows that he will not be able to keep me forever, and so he will try for as long as he can. But a man with a handful of sticks and a clump of dirt cannot hold back the tide!
I am too strong for idle dreams, too old to be fooled by phantoms in the closet, but I will interpret this dream as a positive portent. “Look in the mirror, my beautiful gorgon, and trust that I will give you the antidote to petrification,” the man(?) said. More like a force, a temporary collection of winds and old Baroque debris.

Castellemare’s Interlude

…There is seldom anything less than a scandal among the wretches of this stage play. Staged play, really. I must say, there is something irreducibly and patently embarrassing about this whole affair that sweeps up so many diverse members who are all cut from the same sorry cloth.
Oh, pardon me…I have been rude to you. Introductions are in order…And to think that I am usually at the very summit of proper social etiquette. My! I am the esteemed librarian, Castellemare. Please forgive me if I occasionally lapse into antique dialects and such, for it is not by dint of arrogance or ostentatious imposture, but that I am a creature of my reading. I believe many librarians are afflicted with this language fever. Forced to straddle so many eras of literature in its myriad forms, translations into multiple dialects, aberrant idiolects of higher and lower origins, it is no wonder that we always approach the ear with the occasional jangling of particular off-putting sentences. It is of no malicious intention, I assure you. I would prefer to be forthright, prudent, direct, and simple in all my communicative exchanges, yet I am still so addled by confusion. So be it.
As the librarian, it is my duty to guide you through the reserves, to pluck out only the most salient texts and features of the great debacle that we all know as the “I.sex Syndrome” of the late-20th, early 21st century. I must be diligent in acquiring on your behalf only the most pertinent fragments in text that will assist your understanding of such items as the Albrecht-Sigurdson axis, the rise of Enoch, the rather amusing embittered reflections of Jonkil Calembour, the oblique involvement of Canute, and many other matters that will be elucidated and indicated as warranted. It is my duty also to facilitate your research in any way I can make possible. You might say that I am the guardian of a library of essences—both possible and impossible. It may be the case that various accounts and reflections will be contradictory, but to err is human, as they say. I do not believe that the ailing memories of the figures involved will in any way impede your ability to get the “gist” of the episteme, epoch, era, dynasty, cycle—whatever you prefer. For the purposes of greater clarity, let me give you a capsule summary of the principle figures involved, if only to whet your appetite…
Jakob Sigurdson: A Canadian born failed poet, heroin addict, and generally inconsistent in his humanism (which turns to its inverse occasionally). He is a libertine and hedonist full of pomp and pretension, masking a naïve ignorance and arrogance, whose rather megalomaniacal aims get the occasional better of his judgement.
Edward Albrecht: polymath, artist, innovator, malin genie, a former gynecological surgeon whose moral turpitude and experimental techniques results in his being banned from practice. Instead, he develops an artistic empire or regime based on the spectacle of performance pieces with strong rape-technology motifs. A sensationalist, but with a deep core of meticulousness and cunning.
Alexa Richter: an alluring femme fatale with devious political aspirations. Upon freeing herself from a lowbrow group of neo-nazi gangster types, she immigrated to North America to start a new life. Despite the somewhat noble overtones of hope and self-betterment this situation may evoke in the observer, her aims are downright diabolical and destructive. But why give away the whole show right away?
Enoch: self-proclaimed pharaoh of North America whose modus operandi is to depopulate the continent and found a necropolis. Somewhat physically augmented by an experimental medical procedure that enhances his durability and performance, he employs his astonishing complement of skills to undertake this grandiose task.
Jonkil Calembour: a minor feature in this theatre, but in no way a minor figure in his own right, Jonkil is a spurned academic and polemics writer whose genius has earned him nothing more than a legion of detractors. Of all the characters I have known, I have a special fondness for Jonkil. I find his bitterness and acerbic qualities…refreshing. He mostly plays a fundamental role in the early years of Jakob’s ascent toward the Albrechtian regime.
Of course there will be a plenum of minor players, incidental actors, and such, but I feel no compunction or desire to list them out here. An arduous and pedantic task of that nature will, indeed, not interest you, for these marginal figures are merely convenient props whose timeliness is sensitive and easily measurable by the short duration in which they appear.

This Chrome World


Chemigods:The Diegetical Tractatus

1.0 Primum Intellectum/Quod est.
"The facts in logical space are the world."
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
(1.13)

From the tiger-eye coloured ocean of the story--written and unwritten, occasioning in the mind of the author--something broke through the filmy surface, a man pulled from his torpor, for some mysterious woman had woken him from his invincible sleep in the depths of intratextual silence. The man was me, and had I slept this long in the murk and solitude of the unwritten word? What remained was to see what form I would take now, or if the recurrence would bring back my innate and haunting character traits, like the resurrection of old ghosts that refuse to stay silent. The event was like being released from a birthing caul, a womb of pure unreason. And the woman had reached into the mirrorglass pool and pulled me from it, naked and of pure substance. I had woken as if from a dream, in another diegesis…a completely other divergent realm of possibility. Even Albrecht’s name seemed to gain no purchase here. So I was to live again...
Like a transient ghost, I went back to the old haunts, dragging this new body along with old memories that hung from me like leaden weight. Over many beers, I'd come to the realization that my life, now knitting itself into a mesh pattern of corporeal things, had manifested itself in the present. Jakob Sigurdson. The name felt odd as I spoke it with a tongue much more modern than my being. My return was written into my being as a possible, logical case, insofar as it pertained to a diegetical space. That it was a dramatic return was also written into my being.
1.21 Either I was new to this time, or I was not, but it still remained that this was the world. The streets buckled with the same urban fury I had become accustomed to in my past, and a procession of goose-necked people carried computers by shoulder straps; in their minds, portable and personal meaning the same. That which could be carried around with ease, was "mine". Possession spoke of what was personal, and what was personal had to be portable, carried along with the individual. Ah, so the PC was both a personal AND portable machine. The only disjunction was in the machine itself, a YES or NO held under the umbrella of the World being the Case. But to choose YES or NO did not change the fact that the world was, is, and will be.
2.01 A collection of impressions, ideas, objects, things. Her eyes were like a panther's, the sun was too warm for my pale skin, the smell of rain that had fallen an hour previously, and now we worked chronologically backward from that one moment of our meeting. She had stepped out of an apple-red '56 Chevy, one soft foot followed by a smooth leg. One step into the day, and another still contained in the coldness of the machine. Perhaps a dualism. One hand on the clutch, and another testing the glint of sunlight off the car with a shy and wary finger. A long finger, a tapered finger, a mystical finger, a page-turning finger, a finger masked to conceal from others that it was another of Okham's razors. A razor held to the throat of the day, cutting into Things. Perhaps a sultry finger, a cigarette holder or capable of many come hither motions. There didn't seem to be an end to that one leg, but it abruptly stopped, mid-thigh, at the hem of a black, leather mini-skirt. I saw how tight it fitted her form, and small, and how large the machine was. Her other foot could have pressed ever so softly on the gas to make the whole machine rumble and purr. But, no, she cut the engine and stepped out between me and the tapering trail of the street. Was I to speak? So many things, again, held under the World and its being the Case.
"Nice car," I said.
"You like cars? Are you an aficionado?"
"No on both counts."
"Then the statement was meaningless."
"As many statements are."
2.012 Our meeting had been written into the meeting itself, but not as an a priori given. If it could happen, it would, and it did. I had been on my way to buy cigarettes, for I liked to smoke a lot of cigarettes in a day, and even more at night. Why else would I have left the phan-tomblike nature of my small apartment on a day so wretchedly bright and humid and quick? It was possible that my need for nicotine would win out over my desire to stay indoors and read a book. It was also possible that I'd make my way to the store when the last butt was left spent in the ashtray. It was possible that she would drive by at the same time and place where I happened to be. But choice presented itself, for she stopped. I stopped. We met. Beyond the space and time of the moment, what followed was not an accident.
2.01231 "Who are you?" I asked.
"Will my name mean anything? You haven't met me before, and so to offer my name would not allow you to make a relation in your memory. You want my name for one very human reason: to name things gives you power. But it is an illusory power. You cannot know my internal properties by knowing my name alone. If you learn my name, and then I take on a new one, then you have lost even your empty power."
"Then I will only know you by your external properties and confer upon you names like: human, woman, lithe, attractive, driver, one who wears leather, one who objects to the naming process that is so fruitlessly human, one whom I have no knowledge of internal properties."
"My name, for now, is Astarte," she conceded slightly. It mght as well have been Alexa.
"Jakob."
"And so the meaningless statements continue..."
2.0201 I would soon learn that I was right about the Okham razor bit about her finger.
"Why did you stop?" I asked.
"Because it was possible. Why are you here?"
"I'm out of smokes. Sometimes I worry that this habit is confining me to weakness. Or perhaps some residual Christian guilt complex I unconsciously acquired from my surroundings causes me to question the act of smoking. Though it is beaten into my eyes and ears and mind that the habit will inevitably lead me into the arms of cancer, I do it anyway. But there is something almost unexplainable that I feel every time I light a cigarette and ponder these thoughts..."
"There is too much clutter in your speech," she said. "What you feel is not transcendent or profound, and can be reduced to one thing: you are afraid of dying."
Her finger was waggling like a teacher's, and she was right. Afraid of death? I had thought the representational experience of death was a part of my nature, one of the recurring enigmas of my being. And I was a man of his enigmas that he would showcase for gawkers everywhere, hoping with my influence and presence to project an aura of impenetrable mystery. I would drift along the streets at night, looking for parties to crash, and play the dark web-weaver with melodramatic narratives to the drunk and the stoned. With one cryptic phrase, an off-putting and penetrating gaze, an elegant gesture of the hand, and the barest fragments of long stories left to orbit in the minds of my listeners, I was the mystery forever unfolding. The method was simple even if the process was not.
Astarte looked directly into my eyes for minutes at a time, trapping me in the moment, before flashing me a devilish smile. She was playing my game, my patented role as a social spider. But had I not learned how the game was played, the strange mythologies of the persona, from the many femme fatales who instaurated them?
2.022 She drove out as far as her Chevy could, and when it ran out of gas, she ditched it by a fence along a railroad. It just so happened that we were where she wanted us to be, at the destination she must have had in mind all along. It didn't really matter where we ended up--as long as the car was spent, and we had driven long enough to create an effect, to construct the proper atmosphere.
The railroad ran beneath the lake. We entered the cavernous mouth where beyond this point was a different sort of night. The ceiling was so high, the tunnel dimly lit and damp. Couching the train track were two gullies, the sound of lake water seeping from the cracks in the ceiling and dripping into the stagnant gullies. There was no life here, save for a few rats and greasy algae. The railway ties themselves stank of rot, and the stones were grey and moist to the touch, making a wet grinding sound as we walked on them. Eerie panoramas adorned the walls, the proof of taggers having once visited here. There were long cursive streams of unintelligible letters joined together by shadows and blocks of faded colour, sometimes even eyeless faces and painted hands locked in mid-gesture. Every thousand metres, there was a landing where one could turn the lights on or off. It was at one of these landings, our shadows dancing and our echoes trailing us, that Astarte stopped and ascended a rusted platform.
"Look," she pointed at the dusty, grey metal boxes with large push buttons, "optional mood lighting." And she laughed, and her laugh charged down both ends of the tunnel with a metallic resonance.
"What now?" I asked, fearing a response.
She settled into a more normal tone, taking a storyteller's pose, as if her pretensions to mystery had waned from fatigue. "I knew many men," she said with a wistful look of reminiscence in her dark eyes. "There was one man I once had with me, a fool and a rogue, an uncultured son of a peasant mother. His wit was as sluggish and scurrilous as a hyena after gorging itself on another's kill. He sold his house for two studs, but had not the ability to keep them fed with oats. So he traded them off for a poor, young ancilla with whom he engaged in carnal acts. When he bored of her, and began suspecting that she was pregnant, he traded her for a bauble, and felt that he had gotten the better deal. However, the ruby he traded for was a fake, worth less than the pewter cast it was set in. So he swindled a ship's cook with it and gained passage to America. After three years of misadventures, he being now so pale and thin, he offered his services as a lowly slave in exchange for passage back to France. I met him outside a tavern, that decrepit and sad man, and I mistook him for being wise, for the wise tend to lead such tragic and destitute lives. I bedded him, that filthy and foul-smelling imp. And I received nothing in return."
"What was it that you hoped to gain?" I asked.
"Why, knowledge, of course."
"Is it necessary to sleep with strange men to acquire it?" I asked.
"In my case, yes, as I hope it will be for you," she said, followed by an emphasized silence for effect, to let her intentions shine forth. "You would be considered something of a libertine, right? You fear death with one myopic eye, yet invite it with the other.
"Would you invite me to watch the skyline with you, to see it rise and crumble with time?" I asked, knowing all too well what this was about.
And there it was: my imagination shared a common bond with what actually was going to happen, my dreams conjoined with an act that would ensure their realization in the lifeworld.
2.0233 We made ourselves one body amid the stench of that tunnel, the terrible echoes of demons that leapt free from our throats in carnal abandon, in a corrosive denial of life itself. A wonderful, yet equally terrifying feeling surged through me. With each passing moment, we formed some sort of two-way cone, open at both ends, allowing for a lightning exchange to take place, some strange opening of the minds.
A dull, orange glow began to intensify, as if a mist was being lit by an oil lamp. The blurriness slowly cleared, and my eyes were staring directly at the sunrise. We were no longer in that fetid tunnel, but on a veranda. I looked to my left and saw a wood carved inset of a Mayan sun, beautifully made warm in appearance with its sublime grin and the deep orange light of the coming day. I looked to my right and saw Astarte, smoking a cigarette and lazily running her long fingers over a table's finish. I was lying on my back, my legs splayed uselessly on the steps, like I had been dropped there from the sky, like Ikarus. I stared at the treetops and the glowing crescendo of the sky, and then Astarte saw that I was awake.
"I probably should have warned you," she said, "but I get a kick out of letting the act speak for itself."
"That's all well and good," I said groggily, "but what happened?"
2.024 A god may have been born on this street, configured from random parts, made whole in this age of unreason, but the narrow conception of godhood would inevitably strip it/him of distinction. "Be like all the other objects," man tells it/him. "Only true homogeneity makes me happy in this World that is the Case." But all substance is unique. It is self-subsistent, as all gods should be. But how could a god really be when man is poisoned with numbness? The drinking water was tampered with; secretly infused with anti-depressants to numb human beings from pain and to make them immune, to render the task of creating self-standing identity impossible. The weak held the gifted people hostage, attempting to arrest the development of glorious things. And they did this with their tired epithets, their TV, their drugs.

I had time to get intimate with the matter of the street night life, the wild life, the primitive abandon of all rhetorical baggage. I had played this game for quite some time, and was very adept at it. Astarte was perhaps more adept than I would have imagined. What she had shown me on our first meeting was difficult to relate. In fact, it could barely be said at all. Besides, there was nothing that suggested that we dated.
I was to speak more simply, or so Astarte demanded of me. So: dusk. My silhouette dangerously close to the horizon. My Being was a virus, a Derridean disruption. Astarte and I were on our way to a night club. All these items exist as self-subsisting properties, as the very substance of the night itself.

2.0272-2.031 The phenomenon known as the club was the only milieu where I felt comfortable in the otherwise loathsome presence of others. As for the affairs of the day, I had been taken out of social circulation by voluntary choice. But a great many things I learned this night while in conversation with Astarte, giving me the chance to feel out my thoughts with a renewed mind.
A horde of bikers roared along in geese formation, and I mused about how only in the Western World, would there be a prospering of institutionalized illegality. And then we passed the Central Bank with all its offices puking their concrete and glass skyward. Was everyone who worked in that building absolutely essential to the prospering of the bank itself? And so many titles! Vice-president, supervising assistant to the secretary, financial planning of Eastern affairs secretariat, and so on. Astarte said it all had something to do with the psychological appeal of title, that people hadn't outgrown feudalism. But the saturation and popularity of titles was in itself a form of the crisis it so combated, and the malaise and impotent existential futility of seeking titles as a way of making life bearable only exacerbated the larger disease. To want a title is to believe in titles. To believe in titles is to want a title.
"The real satisfaction is to live free from title," she said, in an echo of Spinoza. "Titles represent artificial distinctions in a hierarchy of privilege and dominance."
I had little opportunity to reflect on the gift I had been given. It wasn't as if I was letting the issue pass without attention or appreciation, but it still seemed so foreign to me. And then she laid down the law, so to speak, the new set of rules for a new situation. Though we had so quickly fallen in love, we were not to fall into a pattern of monogamy, for that would jeopardize the plan she had in mind.
Stranger still was our configuration, as she put it. "Picture two tarot cards, each archetypally representing us. I am the Past, and you are the Future. Together, we form the temporal tryst of the Moment, the Present, the resolution of our differences held in a contemporaneous Present of instabilities. The Present is always unstable, forming itself, unfolding in and from the World. We look back at the past with the eyes of interpretation; we look ahead to the future with the eyes of conjecture. And like an endless succession of Aristotelian "now" points, there never appears to be a stable sense of meaning. So let us abandon metaphysics and come to the realization that our configuration represents the whole of history and the World."
She was feeling poetic, maybe even philosophical. Who could know? Alive or dead? On or off? We existed between the dichotomy, between the past and future as present. And I would play the Pharmakeus, a sorcerer inside philosophy. And language games were our games.
We entered the flesh mill that was the loud night club. The music was wretchedly popular. I waved a dismissive hand indicating the mob of bodies moving blindly to anything with the semblance of a rhythm, and said, "the majority has spoken. A hearty 'hurrah!' for democracy. Let it always be the tool of the weak and tasteless."
"Lower yourself to the level of the flesh, of the primal, of desire itself," she said. "If this is their music, it must be our music, too. We are here for one purpose: to charm."
And there I sat, Jakob Sigurdson of the national species Canadiensis. I watched with silent disgust as the pop-stigmata of a new generation gyrated. I saw the truth of how Cartesianism and the machine reinvented loneliness. Those who danced in the crowd were the most alone of all, so cautiously and self-consciously throwing furtive glances to those who were in no right to offer approval. All the while, I could see guilt worming its way through those who were secretly ashamed of the waste and destruction that resulted from this American living.
I met Astarte's friend, albeit in passing. His name was Ig Noble. "That his real name?" I asked, to which she replied: "does it matter? Perhaps his parents had a strange sense of humour. It takes a strange sense of humour to produce a child, to impart to it a synthesis of two parents' being and hopes. What is conjoined in the uterus, spills forth with possibility...a possibility of imprinting and corruption."
I looked deeply into her eyes for a hint of mischief and irony, which I found in ample supply. And then the stobelight moved on, leaving her eyes shielded in mere reflection and shadow.
She whispered lasciviously in my ear: "I know what you need. We will drive across the desert on Palm Sunday."
Thrown for another loop, yet strangely excited by her proposition, I smiled.
What I failed to mention thus far, was my current girlfriend. And what of her? What would I do now that Astarte had mysteriously entered and enveloped my life? The choice, prima facie, was obvious: drop the mundane relationship and seek transcendence with Astarte. Morals change with circumstances, don't they? They become so pliable when necessary, when a new stake is made. But it would be hard to tell my sweet Simone that my choice to leave was something she couldn't possibly fathom. Concepts are hard to convey to someone whose set of conditions are so radically different than one's own. Repercussions, social or otherwise, were of little concern to me now.
"Her," Astarte pointed. "Look at the way she moves. Beautiful, isn't she?"
"I guess so," I said.
"Now, now. You aren't bound to me. We share a love that is unique. Take her. It's part of our plan."
And so, with time and a little effort, I procured a playmate. And perhaps this was due to my abandonment of the fear of death.
Later on that night, after I crept away from the girl's sleeping body, I met up with Astarte who, evidently, had done something similar.
"Are you full?" she asked.
"Pardon?"
"Full. Was she full?"
"I don’t undertsand."
"Don't despair. I took you to the club on purpose. It’s all in fun, to fill empty bottles and to pour them back out. Shall we?" she said, slipping her hand in mine.
And we did, and it was much like before. Astarte and I just happened to share a common state of affairs, an inescapable succession of breath upon breath, breathing life into another.
If this book was closed, I would be rendered impossible. And who was the author? Maybe not an author, but many...held in the same mind, yet made contiguous in one particular instance of conjuration...A meaningful project. But even so, with the numerous minds guiding the one plume of one story, the world would remain unalterably the same.

2.032 So ended the feverish summer of my former life, a life dropped in accordance to an unwritten contract. And with the end of that summer came a crisp and sober-minded autumn, a determinate season of action.
From bedside to bedside, in a routine neverending, I was learning more. This life was about the theft of others in those moments of vulnerable indifference.
On a rare occasion when the light of day did not make us wince, Astarte and I took a lengthy stroll through my childhood neighbourhood. Down through a seldom-touched street, cast by shadows of tall birch and fat maples, we came across the faded edifice that was once my maternal home. The same stained drapes fluttered sadly in the window, and the facade had become more blanched with time--a funeral parlour pink rather than the dark vermillion that once stared so starkly at the crooked sidewalk. The neighbourhood itself was fading like a memory, losing its crispness and colour. Unkempt hedges grew bristly, and weeds had sprawled across the lawns, declaring their sovereignty. It was an old suburb, fashioned long ago to accommodate the returning soldiers with their stories of Dieppe. Over time, a city had grown up all around it, squeezing its memories away until all that remained was this wrung out rag.
"It never ceases to amaze me," Astarte said, "that prodigies come from such mundane conditions, bleak hovels, and virulent slums."
"Perhaps we like to delight in ironies not of our making," I said. But there was a feeling of detached sadness in witnessing the pitiful state of that which housed my boyhood.
We made our way to the vast park that ran along the filthy river. I had expected to see an old swing set of quaint animals that I remembered from childhood--those squeaky hinges, a pig, a chicken, a hippopotamus, paint badly scratched. Instead, the swing set had been ripped from the ground and converted into a stark piece of art, perhaps made artifact by some lazy artist with a grant. It appeared to me like a civilization had fallen, and some band of roving barbarians had come across the ruins and mistook the utility of them for gods and temples. For some inexplicable reason, I fell to my knees and wept. Astarte comforted me with a cool hand on my shoulder.
"So many things change," she whispered. "But the World remains the same."
"They erected a most ignoble shrine where a part of my childhood once stood. I cannot forgive the heathens that did this," I spat.
"Jakob, I chose you under the assumption that you could coldly withstand the forces of change--and this goes the same for the changes that directly affect you. I will not reproach you for having feelings and sentiments for times past, for I have them too. But I warn you: all that you have known, or will know, will pass into the arms of destruction."
Her stoic comfort did little to ease my pain. Though it was a truth, now was not the time for cold realities and matters of fact. I promised myself that I would not be so attached to the events and places that took place in my life prior to this, but I was never good at maintaining self-imposed restrictions. How could I not be affected by looking at that familiar basket of creamers nesting on a bed of sugar packets as I drank coffee for those many hours where I spoke or wrote? Or how could I not be touched by the sadness of an archaeology of rusted staples on the main street's pole--that testament to posted events come and gone? Or how could I reconcile myself to those scenes of my youth that had been left defiled by acts of time and man?
"Do you have a place that you once cherished, but has since fallen into ruin?" I asked.
"Yes. I will one day show it to you. It's--or was--a rural village in France. But the memories only serve to torment me, so I let them go," she said, then paused. "Jakob, I will not let you go."
And that was enough to find me buried in her embrace, lifted to that place of reconciliation. If nothing could be structurally maintained permanently in this World that was the Case, then at least her and I would remain constant. I hate to foreshadow here, but even this would prove not to be the case.

2.033 I watched Astarte's lithe form slink in the darkness, groping about for something to clothe her nakedness. We had another information exchange, and I was basking in the afterglow of mental expansion.
"What is the purpose of this?" I asked. "We collect knowledge, but to what end?"
"Digging about for the telos, are we? Well, we can't proceed to the purpose of the project without first establishing the rudimentary procedure. You're still a novice at this game. You must first learn the structure before understanding the form, just as one must learn the musical scale and how notes correspond in relation to one another before practicing a musical piece."
Form followed structure, lest form be impossible. It made sense to me, but I was a naturally impetuous sort, always wanting to skip rungs on the ladder.
Biography: How was it possible for us to obtain another's knowledge and not their memories? Were they not inextricably bound? Perhaps the nature of the ability came with an eliminative aspect, editing out memory from fact datum in the exchange. Otherwise, we would have gone mad, what with so many associations that came with knowledge, all those anecdotal references that were not our own.
The process was not unlike the uploading and downloading feature of a computer. Where there was no existing categorical directory for what I obtained, one was created. And where an already established directory existed, the information was expanded and revised. So what of information that contradicted what I had already stored? In this instance, a quick dialectic was performed: opposition, synthesis, and then analysis. So the process was like this: A or B, A and B, C (where C represented the result of synthesis and analysis). Or, at times when either A or B was false, only one would prevail. This, in its rough and ready explanation, broke some of the mystery of this exchange process.
"We go round and round," she said aloud, "and hopefully the knowledge we obtain will give us the momentum to finally reach center."
"I am still clogged with meaningless statements," I said with regret.
"It doesn't matter. With time, clarity will be yours."
“Or else everyone will speak in the currency of meaningless statements, and so I will go unnoticed.”

2.034 Simone took the news much harder than I thought, and I had spared her mention of Astarte. Simone made threats of suicide, which I coolly deflected. Like most people, she would rediscover her resolve, and rebuild that independence so characteristic of the single life. Eventually, she would come to love again, and memories of me would be relegated to the darkness. I couldn't say that I was not deeply affected by the break-up, for we did spend three years in love. For all intents and purposes, I still loved her madly, but I had to face up to the fact that I was an asshole: always have been, always will be.
Her tresses bobbed as she cried, and I held her with arms that she could no longer call her own, a man that had chosen abandonment to furtherance. Yes, the form of our romance was beautiful, but it no longer applied to the new circumstances of my life, to the new Case of my existence. There was no way to hasten the break-up process: the tearing away had to be slow, for I owed her that much--and more.
In discussion with Astarte, she advised me that I could afford to take my time in this matter: "Let the break-up be as lengthy as it needs to be, and let all instances of closure and finality happen in their turn."
Astarte and I spoke awhile about things of taste, of fears, of projections. We walked along the blank avenues of street lamps placed in monotonous succession. And it became clear to me: modernity, in conjunction with urbanity, held in it a promise never fulfilled: a promise of certainty...A certainty issued by this mechanistic world. Every lot had been accounted for, perhaps sporting some mediocre and prosaic edifice with some particular ascribed use. One edifice was commercially zoned, and another residentially zoned, and the whole world had been divided up and subsumed under the categorical ZONE. But little did this supposedly certain world know, or would allow itself to realize, that the imprint of humanity rode upon the head of time's unstable pin. Suddenly, I was less saddened by my break-up with Simone, for all we could create in this world was artificial in character, categorical distinctions that could be erased with ease. The love relationship with Simone existed only in the mind, and I never realized before how simple it was just to stop nurturing it, to let it wither away. External manifestations of love would cease when the internal nurturing also ceased.
Civilization was only in the mind, too; however, its external manifestations were like an awful blight and imposition on the surface of the world. Perhaps I would rejoice when humanity collapsed and all the civilized zoning of the world's geography receded into nullity. God's call for us to multiply and subdue the earth could never be the case, for all efforts only succeeded in imposing artificial distinctions upon a world much older and more permanent than our ideas.
And so, not to speak, as the case may be. Too many meaningless statements perfused my mind. What could not be said with pure simplicity, in the harmony of nature's design, should not be made manifest by way of words, thoughts, or structures. But an axiom like that was hard to maintain. Our natural tendency was to complicate what we said and thought with the increased doubtfulness of our words. I knew myself to have difficulties with the simplification process--myself being verbose--for the narrative of my life was in league with my romance with the Word. If I had been a man of letters, then it would have been excusable, perhaps. One had to exercise great care and diligence to reduce all statements to facts, to objects that formed the Case, that formed the totality of Things in the World. In short, a plain and strictly empirical narrative, divested of any feeling or life. Or maybe the purely empirical was the purely emotional, and it was rational thought that destroyed feeling. One needs only a body to feel…a mind obscures…
It was hard to be someone, yet easy to be anyone. It was hard to resist falling into someone else's codification, yet easy to be appropriated as a genre-being. What is a genre-being? Someone who strive to fulfill all the requirements of a certain genre as an act of certainty and ease. Genre-beings didn't have to work to construct an identity, for an identity--complete with all characteristics--had already been chosen. And I saw so many people shopping for an identity...Watching films, reading books, letting TV dictate a stable set of appropriate and congenial archetypes that were thoroughly unimaginable and unremarkable. The reward? Anonymity and acceptance. These statements are not new, but I felt it in myself to repeat, in case they had been forgotten or cast aside.
Darkness fell upon my eyes, an impenetrable ink that washed over all my perceptions. A transition had taken place, and it was just Astarte and I that were alive in this World that was the Case. Dual solipsism. On my own for a night, I met a woman named Topaz.
Some people fell in and out of sickness with the world. I had to mediate Topaz through her ever-present screen of smoke. She was one who was born and brought to maturity under the care of a thousand and one nights in the city, of the city. Her and I met while I was transgressing by myself in the darkest corner of the pub. After a game of eyes, she visited with me.
"You're new," she said.
"Not to myself," I said.
"To this place, I mean."
"Am I? I take little notice of place."
"And without space, all that remains is time."
"Sometimes time is the only thing."
"Have you ever touched time?" she asked. "I have."
"With the aid of some hallucinogen, I'm sure."
"Is that wrong?"
"No, it's just...something people do...and somewhat suspect."
"You sound fun," she said facetiously.
"No, just complicated."
"Are you living, or merely existing?"
"That's my line. I use it to pick up women."
"Really? I didn't see your name on it. Some wacky intellectual property rights violation happening here?"
"More of a trademark, really."
"So 'pick up women,' eh? You make it sound like women need to be raised to your level."
"In some cases, they do."
"So what do you raise them to? Your base lust or your enormous ego?"
"Perhaps both," I grinned.
"Do they kiss your ego goodnight?"
"If I ask nicely. Let's turn this around: do people find you difficult?"
"Yeah, but probably less difficult than you."
"Living, with a two fingers worth of existence for taste," I said.
"Pardon?"
"Your question. The right answer is 'living.'"
"I wanted your answer, not the right one."
"I feel no need to seriously consider and answer a question that I devised, that I use as conversational instrument to make others think I'm wise or mysterious."
"Controlling little devil, aren't you? You appear discontent with not holding the reigns of a conversation. It must be a male thing, like how they simply must be in control of the remote."
"I teach."
"And what a change of pace it would be if you just shut up and learned."
"That's assuming you have anything relevant to teach me."
"And the more you talk, Professor Pretentious, the less likely I am to say anything."
"Your name?"
"Topaz," she said demurely.
"An interesting name."
"Would you like a drink?"
"Sure."
"You look like a gin man."
"Rye, no ice."
"Gin it is."
"But--"
"She who holds the cash, chooses the drink. For the remainder of the evening, you're a gin man. Don't be so difficult."
"Gin it is."
"Hooray!" she exclaimed, now wrapping me up in a childlike embrace.
It turned out to be a strange and enjoyable evening. But any physical advances I made were met with coldness. She was the type to tease and never touch. If she had not been so engaging, I might have gone elsewhere. Little did I know, but she was the woman that the papers dubbed "Joan the Ripper" in all their clever journalistic citationality. I should have caught on earlier when she let out a few telling comments about how she could kill me in a flash. I even watched as she took another's life in an alley. But I did not care; my concerns were not among the people in the same way as they used to be.

The Tractatus model is abandoned from here on in.
1
That which was not verifiable was incomplete, and could be dismissed. The turning over of history was not verifiable in its components, was incomplete in its organization, but I could not dismiss it--contrary to Astarte's teachings. But who was I in this catastrophic world after? Who was I in a reality I could never hope to possess? But more bodies invaded my space in what was to be a solemn moment between me and eternity. A poetic sentiment, but poetry only seemed to speak to other poets. I think that was the problem all along. What did the poet have to say to the logician? In the ever-present lapse of the moment, my body surrendered to another cigarette.
The people scampered about like confused children in the dark, afraid, alone. But I would not be their god, even if it would be so easy.
It must have been later, for I was now in a different place and the sun had gone down. A man was speaking to me over the sound of several billiards games played simultaneously.
"Everything that could go wrong is happening now," he said in the way people like to adopt a melodramatic tone to appear both clever and prophetic to others.
"Is it?" I asked with polite disinterest, for I was looking at a woman.
The place stank like an open whore, and was filled with dealers whose eyes moved like mercury, and feeble old men with nicotine smiles. The question was why I was in this dump. It was yet another place where the stereotypes came to play and feel safe in numbers. It was a place where one could point out the living joke that was the United States of Ephemera.
"Yep. It's all in the toilet now," he rephrased, hoping achieve some effect in me.
"Rock city fame and dead poet love," I mused aloud.
"Whuzzat?"
"Oh, just an observation."
But he did not wait for my explanation. Adjoining this workaday world with all its pointless roleplaying, corporate agendas, priority action lists, a host of burnt-out old jocks who had traded away everything but their ignorance in exchange for suits...was a dance floor. A rave, to be precise. Younger bodies yet to be sacrificed and assimilated to the capitalist pogrom. And the man who had been speaking to me was so typically distracted by another pair of breasts. He attempted to tighten his bulging, middle-aged belly into a pleasing shape, all in vain. He ignored the rejection that already existed in their eyes, and waddled over. But the children of this decade just didn't care anymore. Most of them were just faceless women in nights of drunken hell--many of which I had gotten to know biblically. Casting my gaze to the dance floor, it was nothing more than another open sex holocaust, played out upon another diseased stage of America's cancerous face. And the little boys who wanted to fuck the little girls were all led around by pornographic shutter-eyes. The sins of the eye...Not that there was an innocent eye among us.
A whole age had succeeded in deifying the orgasm, giving tribute to it by way of capsules and long nights under Dionysian caresses. Where did this leave the sexual act? No longer the language of two bodies, but an externalized response, learned from many steady hours of TV and magazine versions of the Kama Sutra.
I stared hard into that crowd of young bodies, beyond the lagoons of ridiculous teenage angst, khakis, space-age gear, the kitschy romanticism of their machine-made music. In short, I was looking at the women for the meat that they were, the meat they wanted to be. Women, with jellyfish bodies, slicked in glistening oil. Women: throats strained with knotted cords as they turned their heads, their jutting collar bones, their small dips and rises of their symphonic bodies, their intentions made of smoke. Women: their frail wrists. Women in tight grey t-shirts, in spaghetti strap black, in platform sandals, with pendants with tiny rings, in frilly skirt wraps, with short cropped hair...in blonde, in black, in auburn, in flaming red. Women with green eyes, blue eyes, slender and long legs, flawless pixie speech, the shadows they left, the way they would bend and move. That was just the meat, and meat just wanted to be sold and devoured. Real women--as they are as rare as real men--could not be held under the same banner of objectification. I knew of real women in this world, but they were mythical. I was not one to judge, for I wasn't anything remotely resembling a real man.
One woman in particular. She had crests of streaked blonde hair on a black matte, like the swirls of a tiger's eye stone. She seemed to be on a "leave of absinthe," so to speak, and she crawled up to me like a lost crab at tide's ebb. But she didn't entirely appear as if she belonged here. Perhaps I would whisk her away to a place where there was the thick velour of more intellectual chatter and clinking glasses.
"Hi," she said with a cracking shyness in her voice. She was quite young. having left her young throng on the dance floor, this was probably the first time she had ever attempted to encounter an older stranger in this way, with an unmistakable intent in her eyes.
"Hello," I replied behind smoke.
We were both making quick mental calculations: was the other a creep, a prostitute? Is he/she too young/old? What should I say? Do I have anything meaningful to talk about? Am I too drunk to be making any decisions? Just to look at her, I knew these sort of questions were buzzing between her ears. As for my thoughts, I had a plan in mind--a plan set down by Astarte.
On the floor, the people seemed to roll like planets verging in collision. What else could I expect of those whose lives were based so fashionably on plastic and illusions? This brought a smile to my face in the way only black humour could.
The man who had been talking at me earlier had taken his cue to interrupt the proceedings between myself and the fair specimen before me. For some people, alcohol acted like a prompting device, or a bullhorn.
Hi, my name is such-and-such, I work at that place and make this much money--and other mundane and trivial things idiots speak about. The girl had the good enough sense to be polite to the man, yet tactfully kept herself distant. She glanced at me with a look on her face, silently asking me if this nuisance of a human being was the kind of company I kept. Meanwhile, the lecherous man at my side was playing up the angle that I was his friend. I shot him a warning glance so primitive in design: "mine!" But men in this age were either reliant on civility for the chance to be sporting, or were just stupid and thick. Perhaps this was a contest, one that he had already lost, but was too drunk and stubborn to acknowledge defeat.
"A polite gentleman would buy this lady a drink," I said to him.
"I was just on my way to the bar to do that," he replied smugly, thinking that I had conceded this girl to him. But She and I abandoned him and made our way to a private booth on the other side of the bar. He would be too drunk and confused to think to look for us there.
"Was he a friend of yours?" she asked.
"If he was a friend, I would sincerely question my concept of friendship."
"Then who was he?"
"An idler, perhaps. I do not concern myself with their particulars."
"He seemed to know you."
"No, but he certainly wanted to know you. People bend the rules to this game all the time, embellishing this or that, making false claims, and doing just about anything to get what they desire."
"So what do you desire?" she asked suggestively.
"That will depend on what you're offering," I fielded.
As we conversed, she was beginning to show signs of discomfort, for I was getting cryptic. I had to remember not to be so heady with the young, for they had not yet acquired an appreciation of the playful games adults played. In my experience, the young responded better to formulaic, memorable propositions that were uttered ad nauseam on TV, in magazines, and overheard between inauthentic beings.
"You have beautiful hands," I said. "Do you happen to play the violin?"
"No, but I used to play the cello."
Obviously, I was shopping. I would have liked to know how to play the cello. In a matter of hours, some exchanged words and glances, I would have an opportunity. And now I can play the cello along another’s lithe backbone.

2
I asked Astarte if she truly loved me, for I was having a weak moment. Her reply: "circumstances will decide. I am not a scantily clad bikini goddess coming to your rescue at the beach." So cold was this love I could barely understand. This love was a dangerous and frightening union where the romantic melody was a screeching sound across rusted strings with a sharpened bone bow. True, I was searching for some tragedy to undo me, to give me an excuse to cry out in pain, but the only tragedy was me. Astarte was merely another femme fatale in a long succession of self-erected mysteries.

3
I would decide this day to make a pilgrimage through the city of my birth, to regard it one last time before the hands of change mottled the face of it for good. And I would regard it with these new eyes, this new perception from the privileged space of a man who would not die.
This small city had a Napoleon complex, and it had throbbing varicose veins for highways. The map was a complete mess of these tangled veins and intersecting disasters. I would start my journey in the morning when the legions of joggers in space suits jiggled with pointless intention; and the morning brood of zealous gardeners in every suburb moved their bloated bodies as if they were delicate and pregnant, or queen ants about to burst from the abdomen. And the morning also saw those who tended their front lawns with such meticulous care, cultivating that patch of grass that touched the edge of the sidewalk--the sidewalk little more than a painting's frame, an urban assertion, a juxtaposition of artificially tended life and artificial madness.
The traffic had been moving since dawn. They were as oily, mechanical fish in an asphalt stream...an endless shoal of cars determined to spawn in the very heart and crotch of the city. And in every eye of every cold fish sat another being with crushed hopes, resignation, and fraught with pointless battles; automatic responses, loyal to the name brand. And I had wanted to find a cure for existentialism! In the passing of decades, a people's hunger for 1950s sci-fi kitsch had gotten the better of them, manifesting itself so foolishly in moon boots and cars that resembled bubbles--an illusion of sensuality through sleekness. And all these bubbly fish were heading in the same direction, to the spawning ground that was this city. We, the urban beings, lived our lives to gravitate towards places of heightened hostility and madness, like some fatal attraction urged us. Rushing on to God knows what, to post-mortem, post-modem, postmodern corporate garrisons and fortune-cookie psychiatrists. I decided to wander in their direction.
Stepping into a coffee shop, I saw the same old things. So I took a seat and followed the tired routine: puff smoke, cross left hand over right and reach for coffee, bring to lips, swallow; take right hand and put cigarette to lips, inhale, stare at the nothing in the wall or the front page harlot or at the precious seconds slipping into the greyness of a suspended life. Where do we go from here? I opened the newspaper to pages two and three. The same old claptrap of government attempts to legislate culture, right-wing pundits mercilessly kicking the voiceless in a crumbling democracy, and so I hear that the goose-step is a popular dance. It was only a matter of days until we began sweeping the poor under the flag. What next? Thought suppressants? On my right, a wheezy old man was scratching a lottery ticket/his ass. I hoped he would win for the simple fact that winning meant nothing.
Back into the bustle of the street, the electric gothic pandemonium of impersonal gigantism that was architectural progress, I let an analytical eye sweep over the masses, a veritable urban undress. O, the sights I did see! Overused whores, civil servants with arthritic hips and decaying ideals, members of government with S.P.Q.R inscribed on their nineteenth-century agendas, a catalogue of old and conquered whores the lot of 'em! What else? I saw strippers and other presents that were self-unwrapping, grimacing degenerates with toothpicks in their gin-soaked mouths, lunatics with mouths sewn shut, the blasé arrangement of office paraphernalia, and the grandiose lie that merchandise beautified the body.
By late afternoon, I felt like a tourist. An obese man struggled to get his root beer open as if it were those calories that stood between him and salvation. The Security guards at the office buildings swayed like scarecrows, their bodies disproportionately stuffed with straw. I idled the time away constructing the empty narratives of those poor nobodies, each person hoping that God would not find them. I fell asleep on a bench...
The residual nothingness evaporated as I became vaguely aware that I was wet, cold and dizzy. Alive again. How appropriate, how disappointing. I went to a bar.
This place was the working person's last vestige of hope, sad as it was. The bar was also a social lung: breathing in, holding on, letting go, as words quivered from their bodies and another day in the life was lost to another night of the drink. Some people were walking toilets, and others were practitioners of computer witchcraft. There were identifiable classes or categories: those who stayed long, those who stayed briefly, loud ones, quiet ones, listeners, betrayers, statesmen, liars, listeners, creepers, braggarts, soldiers, romantics, the sorrowful, the terminally unemployed, the educators, the educated, jocks, spies, devils and satyrs. It was a veritable banquet of useless social archetypes held under the umbrella of ostensible alcohol possession. Most would giggle over stupid and banal things, events of the day, movies seen, much in the way people do when they get excessively tired and drunk in themselves, of themselves. What about the women? That was to be my concern, and I would witness so many tiny estrangements in dark bars. One woman with black pumps waving impotently from crossed legs was giving desperate glances at an Aryan poster boy who had his eye on a woman whose lips unhinged like fiery petals. It was all so utterly hopeless. Beauty had been standardized by the media, the runway slut an institutionalized and well-sought for commodity. I stayed long enough to watch an easy sex-murder between two people who would go home together, and probably never speak again.
Escape was necessary lest I broke out in laughter. I amused myself by watching as the moths around a sodium light folded up like antique parasols. I came to realize how ill I had become of this cold, fabricated chrome world. This chrome world with its intention of sticking a knife into the ribs of the earth. Earth and world did not have to be in opposition, but we somehow made it that way.

4
Denizard was Astarte's friend. She introduced me to him on Palm Sunday rather than take me on that desert trip we had planned. Denizard was, among other things, a psychical researcher, a loremonger of alchemical myths, arrogant, and an ostracized member of the Oxford set. He was vainly trying to prove the possibility of bodily immortiality. Astarte had the presence of mind to politely decline all his advances on this topic, but he kept asking and hoping every time they met.
"Immortality of the body, a protracted longevity, excites me to no end," he said. "I have sought for possible truth on this matter in so many places: in legends concerning the Fountain of Youth, Ahaseurus, the Amaranth, the Wandering Roman, the Philosopher's Stone, right up to recent work in modern genetics."
"It is vain for mortals to seek such things. It only reifies the ego," she said.
"Oh, but I'm interested insofar as science is concerned, to solve the enigmas in literature where these legends and myths are housed so conspicuously," he defended.
And who was to say that science did not come with its own sense of monomania, its own ego?
"And people will continue to knock off stories about that which they cannot have until the gift is realized. What then? A field day for psychological research concerning the perceptual changes and resurgent psychoses in the newly made immortals, and a very sad day for Malthusians," she said.
"Are there more out there?" he asked.
"Not to fuel your zealous pursuit, but of course not. But if there are, they will not show themselves. In my travels, I have seen the Wandering Jew and the Wandering Roman together, albeit disguised in the age in which they live. One of them teaches Shakespearean tragedy, while the other waits for the return of Christ so that he can die."
"Fascinating," he marvelled.
"Where were you yesterday, Jakob?" she asked me, letting the topic drop.
"I took a pilgrimage within the city and found that it was ugly," I replied.
"That's a meaningless statement," she lightly reproached. "What have I told you about making such utterances? If you feel inclined to make them, my advice is that you remain silent."
"It was the impression I gathered from an entire day's wandering," I defended.
"And so it was an entire day squandered on trivial things."
"You're implying that there is something logically wrong with my statement. Was it that I used the word 'ugly'?"
"Yes. Value judgements contaminate your speech," she said coldly.
A rift was starting to develop between us. In an age where technology acted like the digital tractatus of logical certainty, I felt inclined to rebel against it by making unsubstantiated claims. Not everything was answerable to the logician, even in this World that was the Case, that was a collection of objects in states of affairs. Wittgenstein be damned, I was more poet than analytic machine.
"Jakob, make a meaningful statement."
"This city has buildings and people in many states of affairs," I said with resignation.
"Thank you, Jakob. Once we emasculate your phallic need to be poetic, you will be all the better for it."
And so I seethed quietly while Denizard spoke incessantly about his quest to prove immortality to the world. But if my statements were meaningless, did this mean the speaker was meaningless, too? If so, then I had no a priori importance in this world, and I had no Case, no state of affairs. Rather than the man she wanted me to be, my being was a Derridean disruption, a virus in the framework of logical certainty. Regardless of the truth or falsehood of these statements, I was not alone if I was in the World.

5
I was spending less time with Astarte, and more time tending to the contiguity of the states of affairs that came with nothingness and my identity. I came to realize on my own the chemical determinism of this world, the fact that we were beings housed in an unfathomably elaborate labyrinth of chemical formulae, that we mediated our bodies and lives through chemicals. There were chemicals taken by one's own volition, to induce temporary psychosis or ecstasy, or to cure natural mental ailments with the fashionable misuse/overuse of anti-depressants. As a man who lived the libertine lifestyle with purpose, I was constantly engaged in the chemical transfer of bodies, and in my case, the mind as well.
Another means of mediation occurred through the screen phenomena. The page of a book is a screen, a TV is a screen, the computer is a screen, the framed masterpiece is a screen. All of these issued commands. The screens refreshed themselves and made commands anew. It was my belief, however non-truth functional belief statements could be, that people would rather obey a screen than another human being. An indirect power relation? The screens became more powerful the more portable and the more immaterial their content became--more fleeting images, accessible icons, convenient windows and sub-windows, more citational distortions, a whole set of screens at once. If I was to take charge in this world, I had to appear on the other side of those screens to control the content. Authors were powerful, for they chose the content of their screens, the pages of a book. And the programming authors and TV station CEO's held similar, if not a higher, power in this regard.
I had become the spokesperson of this screen, chemically yours, in the diegesis of a design whose characters and icons worked to contaminate the contents. I would ask the age to bind with me, to be carried aloft into the kingdom of waste.
Pardon me: this proposition was longer than it needed to be...

7
Thirty women had made stopovers to my bed. Some had great gifts of the mind, and others were stuffed with wads of rubbish. I was getting quite adept at the process, and I did enjoy the way I went about it. There was something about the vaginal space that had within it dark mysteries, hidden power--and then again, perhaps I was making a recourse to more simple folk tales.
There was a problem. When I looked around at the available women, while they sported their tattoos, illustrious garb, carefully coiffed heads, lithe bodies best suited for runways than sidewalks, I would find that most were under the legal age. Was this the pop culture challenge in full effect, a downshifting of values? Why did this world beget such cold and savvy sex machines who were so disturbingly young? What could be said about those who lost their virginity at twelve, if not earlier?
I watched with saddened eyes the playful rape among children, the tawdry deco shrink-wrapped around the land, the lace grottoes of urban lust, the non-human music, the license to perversity, an entire generation smouldering with boredom while drugs induced states of glittering dreams, a callous procession of stick figures with breasts and moral looseness. And as reprehensible as I could be, it was nothing compared to the evil that was now in the blood of the young. When they laughed, I could hear the sharpness of the pitch, how it came viciously out of steel and emptiness. It was as if the children laughed from the metallic belly of this chrome world.
Like everyone else, I could have blamed the media glut, or a liberal government, or technology, or a lack of God. But I never fancied these as suitable explanations, nor were these anything more than a way for others to cope, to create a security in knowing the source of the problem, to have power over these uncontrollable situations by naming the scapegoat. In this age, it was not enough to be right; one had to have the strength of mind to cope with being right.
Montaigne was right: never trust the senses. A young girl came strutting my way, looking for a one-night abandon. I gave her the once-over and saw what I liked. She smiled, sat with me, uttered clumsy innuendoes a bit too forward. I would not trust my senses. I would ask to see some ID. She was puzzled, her ruse was up, and I told her something that was probably lost on her: "you are too evil for me." She disappeared, but not before telling me where to go, and to do what to an animal's ass, and so forth.
Alone in smoke. The world was too fast for me. I would sit and make slow movements as the world blurred forth at the pace of insanity. Those like myself could afford to move slowly, whereas the others moved rapidly towards one death or another.
I heard a name spoken by a familiar voice. Astarte followed the words that launched from her throat.
"Where have you been?" she asked with concern.
"Here, nowhere, somewhere, home, not home."
"What's wrong?"
I raised my eyes to hers with a downcast face, and said nothing.
"I do not feel your love," she said.
"What facts do you base that on?"
"The world feels colder to me."
"Then perhaps it is the world that is cold, and not the feelings of some loss of love."
"You don't love me anymore. I gave you a gift, and now you have forsaken me."
"One forsakes a god, not another being. All those statements are, according to you, meaningless. So I have no other choice than to disregard your comments."
"So I'm right."
"I hope being right gives you some sense of comfort," I said flatly. "Being right never got me out of bed, never made living any easier, and never endeared me to others. Being right, logically right, has been a source of misery. Let me go on to correct some of your teachings: form is not just the possibility of structure, but also the possibility of a failing structure. Look around you and see. The structure of the World is coming down like rain, and those who are housed in it are dancing like satyrs. Tell me what joy there is in being right about any of these things. The gift you gave me...Ah, yes, the great bounty bestowed upon me. So what am I, what are you? Zombies. Transient and animated corpses walking the face of the earth."
"May I interrupt?"
"No. You're a fast woman; you can wait until I am done. Either I am incapable of this supposed transcendental love you ask of me, or you have destroyed my ability to love by negating my life...You even have me talking like a damn logician! I had just put forth a disjunction, and topped it off by using the word 'negating.'"
"Let me warn you, Jakob, that there are so few of our kind in the world. You would be well advised not to make enemies so readily."
"Who said anything about enemies? I will from here on in ignore your existence."
"But among kin so few in number, there is a community. Those not part of that community are outcasts, and therefore enemies."
"Does it give this community power to categorize me as an enemy? Does it make me easier to fit into an equation of monadic logic? So be it. I will not play games that do not interest me."
“I should have left you to wither in your own filthy shit," she hissed. "I should have never associated with the poor likes of you."
"The sentiment is reciprocated."
And like the horror and depravity of this world, I would leave Astarte and walk away. I was right in doing this, but again, there was little joy in being right.

8
Denizard was kind enough to counsel me on the difficulties concerning immortality. I did enjoy his company, even if what he sought for was impossible and childish. He gave me a brief explanation of a paper he was writing called "The Deepest Illusion: Consciousness Survival and Protracted Longevity." And so if there was such a thing as immortality, a man this prepared seemed a more logical candidate for immortality than me. I was glad to have no part of it.
"Say you're immortal. Now what?" he began. “It would be an interesting yet frightening condition.”
"Condition? You make it sound like an illness."
"It is obviously a condition, and one that can create an illness of the mind. But when I use the word condition, I mean that one’s state of being is far removed from the experience of the general populace. Also, a great deal of new psychological problems develop in the consciousness of the immortal, however calm and enlightened the immortal is. But these problems are observable in finite beings, only in less intense degrees. Since I have never actually seen an immortal, I am basing my conjectures on us piddly playthings."
"What psychological problems would you foresee?"
"I base my conjectures on various obscure sources where the psychological profile of an immortal is illustrated. As decades and even centuries pass, one will have to face some serious questions. Would an immortal change his or her style and manner to suit the age in which he or she are situated in to avoid detection? Would they accept the same repetitions and limitations as presented in mortal beings, and come to terms with how relationships among people do not really differ? How constant would their personality be, or would it become radically different as ages pass? Would they opt for a disjointed consciousness, or would it be continuous? Would their identity remain intact, and in what state would their identity be in when there is no one in this world one can relate to in full? How would one deal with being plagued by so many memories? Would one become detached and withdrawn in a world with beings who do not share one’s atypical condition?"
"These sound like serious problems, and I guess we will have a great deal of time to think them over."
"And then there's boredom," he added, a point he punctuated last for effect.
"I have considered that. It's a cliche, right up there with 'an eternal life removes any meaning, for only a finite life gives it meaning.' I never purported that life had any meaning to begin with, regardless of whether it was finite or not."
Denizard prattled on about Lucretius, Bernard Williams, a story about a 342 year-old woman named Elina Makropulos, the real aim of the Conquistadors, a theory on eternal causality, and other such things. But I was more concerned with his first question of where did we go from here. Being immortal was a glacial existence, a life frozen in boredom and the paralyzing feeling of too many possibilities in this world of what one could do or be--and worse yet, the fear that all possibilities would be exhausted someday. Should one strive to make the world a better place? There were two factors that could conceivably bankrupt such a mission: the impermanence of the human condition could not sustain the effects of any great change, and the monotony of the world with its prosaic relations between beings played out eternally upon the stage of regenerations. The second factor seemed to be the most heinous, for it called into question why one would endeavour to make a better place for those beings who would only end up boring the immortal. But why consider this ridiculous question at all? Textual immortality was my concern, and I had heard in only all the darkest places of a polemicist whose name meant nonsense who was on the verge of achieving said textual eternity. And then there was another creature named Castellemare who was said to be a living eternal return. I was interested in immortality for my own understanding, in relation to states of affairs I say concerning scant items alone.
I would abruptly leave Denizard. Astarte had promised me a drive into the desert on Palm Sunday, a promise never delivered. I would make my own way there, for I was being lulled by some strange rhythm only I could hear, pounding in my brain, an East Indian chant of continuous voices and drums. I needed to be among snakes, to touch the divine flesh of the reptile.
In my last diegetical incarnation, I had taken a trip into the desert and met a radiant being (or was it a hallucination?). I was not trying to recreate that event in this life far removed from the old. How else was I to respond to these new circumstances in a world so fast? And so I wandered like a somnambulist, or a zombie driven by some goal, or a ship carried by the tides--I did not know which analogy fit best to the actual events. I gave up on analogy, and it gave up on me. On my way out of the city, circles fascinated and pleased me: circles on coffee cups, concentric rings of smoke, the glowing disk of the sun...The circle spoke of completion, resolution, eternal beginnings and endings, continuity, O so many things.

9
Desert peace. Solitary bliss. Feelings so impossible to convey. The way to acquainting myself to myself, with all Things, was the way to harmony. Before this, my life had been played in a discordant and cacophonic key, a concerto of madness, of fury, of deadly illusions. This desert was timeless and transcendental, an eternal quiet. The loudest thoughts found no ears in this place. Eventually, we all found our way here. Visions made of silver collected in my eyes, innumerable flashing diamonds in the sand. Poets had tried to capture this place in the confines of the word, but words only had a contingent relation to Things in this World. Words made for poor likenesses, not that I subscribed to any mimetic theory of art.
While in the desert, clarity was mine among the vastness that was this place. Environment had a way of acting as a complement to thought. Some environments that were too busy and distracting had a way of cluttering one's thoughts. A desert was an ideal place to get one's focus. And focus I did...On Astarte, on this new life, on the beautiful death of this world, on the exciting new directions I was to take in my life. These thoughts, among others, formed the frame of the circle, the parergonality of the narrative, that which ran into another chapter...colliding into it with its double edges...

10
I ran into Topaz again one night, and she spotted me right away.
"Where've you been?" she asked.
"At a place I could figure some stuff out."
"About yourself?"
"Yes, I suppose."
"So you know thyself now, right?"
"Sure."
"Let me test you," she said. "C'mon, it'll be fun. Give me your wallet. I'll give it back...Wow, do you really need three credit cards?"
In this diegetical life, I could not remember applying for credit cards, but I could remember using them...again and again.
"I have expensive habits," I said.
"I'll bet. Let's see..." she thumbed through the contents, perhaps dissecting the strange, leather animal like a surgeon. "Bank card, phone card, other people's business cards, a very extensive little black book...Where's the money? All I see is plastic."
"It's a plastic age."
"And you're okay with this?"
"The alternative is unsavoury."
"Nice pants."
"Pardon?"
"And shoes, too. Designer stuff? You have to wonder. Designed for what? To put forth shoddy wares that sport some well-known label and make money off schleps like you? I never figured you for a materialist."
"I like to look good."
"To steal women's hearts, no doubt."
"No, to steal their minds," I said.
"That's mighty arrogant of you."
"Be that as it may, that is what I do."
"And I steal men's lives," she said with a subdued psychotic smile. "I could steal yours."
"That presupposes that I have a life to take."
"Come now. There must be a life hidden somewhere behind that wall of materialist accoutrements, and that even bigger hill of bullshit talk."
"Believe what you will," I said.
"I'll make you a bet. I'll prove that you have a life I can steal. If I win, I get to steal it."
"And if you lose?"
"Not likely, but if I lose, then..."
"I get to show you something wondrous."
"Deal. For starters, let's go back to my house."
She lived in a rented room in a bordello. She asked me to disrobe, and so I did. She climbed on top of me. "I'm the infamous Joan the Ripper," she said with a smug grin. "And so your life is now forfeit." She pressed a knife to my throat, but I did not fight. With one slice and a laugh, the knife pierced my throat. I regarded her with a calm look on my face. I felt a slight discomfort as blood started clogging my breathing passage. I was in a state of surprise, for she appeared so innocent and incapable of such an act. She was like a little girl in some ways.
"You'll be dead in a few minutes," she said.
Minutes passed and I was still not dead. Frustrated, she plunged the knife into my ribs with the intention of stabbing my heart. Still no effect, but my designer shirt was ruined.
"What's the matter with you?" she asked in perplexed anger. "Why don't you die already?"
“Because I guess I’m much too bored to die.”
I could only imagine how traumatic this must have been for her, this nightmare of the killer: the victim that just wouldn't die. I was in pain, obviously, but what was I to do? I couldn’t explain why I wasn’t dying. She overcame the shock of my bizarre fortitude.
"Alright," she said, "a bet's a bet. I just thought you were bluffing. Show me this wondrous place you speak of."
I put my clothes on and we left. I had devised the plan in the desert, and I was happy that everything was going as it should.

I took her by the hand and led her to a great and wondrous paradise--a paradise of my design, a paradise that others would not think it as such. But I was a prophet, for I could follow change with a still finger and make my plans work. Such a guttural laugh welled up in me when the fright took hold of her. I could feel her struggling from my grasp, so I tightened my hand and dragged her toward the truth. She would have been sanguinary under any other circumstances, but I was the one in control, so she shook with fear.
"This skyline," I pointed out like I was a seasoned captain, "will succumb to the artful and masterful hand of shrieking chaos."
"You're scaring me," she gibbered.
I put my fingers on her eyes so she could picture what I was saying, what I was now whispering to her. I was telling her the truth of the coming disaster. She recoiled from me with a look of mute, twisted horror on her face.
"Come," I said, dragging her from the rooftop. She had no other option but to comply, for I had sufficiently subdued her will to leave with but a scant mention of the truth--a truth I cannot relate yet. The building was abandoned, as far as anyone knew, save for Topaz, myself, and one other. I led her down the rickety steps in the darkness, rats scurrying underfoot. We reached a room where two blades of moonlight cut through the gloom. There, fastened to the inside of a barrel, was Astarte. One could barely make out her features, but this was not because of the poor lighting conditions.
It took her a moment to realize before she shrieked. After that, Topaz was little more than a shivering wreck. And I had thought a murderess could withstand the sight of horror.
I looked upon what work I had made of Astarte. She was trapped in the most fitting of fates. Something had oozed out of her eye, and the other eye was gone. Half her face had been eaten away, showing a row of teeth that were loosening as the gums receded. The rest of her body was submerged from the neck down, and I could only imagine the grisly, emaciated form that hid there. She was still alive. When she realized that others were present, she tried to speak, but wasn't able. The most she could do was move her jaw slightly as a mouthful of writhing ooze expelled itself.
"Hello, Astarte. Oh, don't trouble yourself getting up on our account," I said. "We'll take you as we find you. Is something eating you?" I said with a laugh.
"What did you do to her?" Topaz cried.
"Isn't it obvious, or would you like to hear the little details? I sliced her body, chained her to the barrel, and filled it with maggots. They find her very...esculent...Yes, that would be the word for it."
"How could you?"
"Choose the word esculent? I felt that it would fit the occasion nicely. I do like words."
"No, I mean...Oh, God, I'm going to be sick..."
And that she was, all over her shirt.
"You've seen enough here. Come, let's go get some air. We'll leave Astarte to her own putrescence."
Luckily, Topaz was too weak for a struggle. I brought her back out onto the roof, under the moon, before the ugly face of the skyline. I led her to the edge while a lovely gust of wind blew.
"What would you say? Twelve seconds?" I asked.
"What?" she said, now sobbing.
"I bet twelve seconds before impact."
She gathered what I meant and begged, "please, no! You can't do this!" and so forth. It made me ill to watch such a pathetic display. Fortunately, most of her pleading was lost in her blubbering. She tried to yank herself from my grasp, but I had a firm grip on her. More pleading ensued. And with my hand grabbing the seat of her pants, and the other on the scruff of her collar, I gave an old fashioned heave-ho.
"Upsy-daisy," I said, now looking at my watch.
Impact: 14 seconds. Off by two, but close. Perhaps with practice. At this, I laughed before returning to the ground below, albeit by way of the stairs rather than flight. Topaz would survive the fall, but had to be hospitalized for three months.
It occurred to me why I could not have a meaningful relationship with another human being. Denizard was right: I would become frustrated with people's same limitations and repetitions. No matter what the era, people behaved in much the same way, repeating the same old mistakes. It was enough to adopt Hume's conception of a deterministic history, or some modification of materialism. As long as I, in my condition, was separated from "them," people would always remain as mere objects to me. Though no sensible person admits to wanting to be treated like an object, people acted like they did. So many people wandered in this world, craving to have someone make all the decisions and run their petty lives. I could not love objects, and so I could never love people.
There were other immortals walking the earth, though they remained inconspicuous to the masses. I was assailed by a curiousity to find them. One had only to listen to them speak, how they described things. An immortal remarked to another man that the girl on rollerblades appeared to be "wiggling like a worm on those wheeled feet." No matter how much an immortal tried to adapt to the times, there were always hints and clues in the way they spoke that denoted the century from which they came. The problem was memory, and how to mediate the era to stay current lest one raised suspicion. And when two immortals spotted each other, there was an exchange of knowing, haunting glances. It would be like a secret society where the brothers never formally met, there were no rituals to perform or oaths to take. All that remained in this fraternity were feelings of wariness and the brief exchange of furtive, probing glances. Of course, I’m merely speculating.
In some cities I had visited, one could travel from end to end via an unbroken series of vacant lots. Those were found in the dying cities, where negligence and dour faces carved peculiar cameos in the smog that rose from the ground like an industrial-born miasma. One by one, the little shops and nocturnal hotspots folded up, packed up, and made tracks towards brighter horizons. I enjoyed watching this kind of death, especially when juxtaposed against the struggling populace trying to live, trying to keep the dream alive. A perverse pleasure, really. But cities were objects, too, just as the people in those cities were objects...Like canned salmon.
I began to travel more extensively all around the world. My presence would be felt in every bar, every club, every coffee conversation bordering on the theoretical, in every dark place where even darker things crawled. All this because I was making a fiction of the world. I felt more connected than the internet, building up my name like a mythos all around the globe. Getting more adept at the game of mystique, making vague allusions to nonexistent projects I purported to be in, I had captured the imagination of many artists and thinkers. Yes, I would build my name up like a swelling crescendo, and then disappear...To let my thematic presence vanish without resolution, like unpacking the clues to a secret and then tossing away the solution.
Ahaseurus sat alone in the pub, nursing a scotch with a heavy face. His eyebrows were bushy, his face enormous with an unruly beard that splayed out like a fan, and he looked to me like an owl. To say he looked sad would be to misunderstand the state of affairs immortals must experience. Like most of his kind, he was waiting, and the sadness was profound. He had pursued elusive rabbits in the land of knowledge, and had grown tired of it. So he would bide his time. What do immortals wait for, if not to be bestowed with greater knowledge? For time itself to end, and the interminable life to draw to a close. I had seen Ahaseurus lurking around before, and he was the one who had made the "wheeled feet" comment, so I knew he was one among men.
"May I sit with you?" I gestured to the empty chair, my tall and gangly form hanging in the air like a willow. "Or are you waiting for something?"
He gave me a searching look before nodding his assent.
"It's oddly comforting to be among my kin," I opened.
"Are we kin?" he questioned with a raised eyebrow.
"Not really, but I am up on your ruse."
"And in what way would that be?"
"Let me guess: fourteenth century Italy," I ventured, calling him into the circle.
"Let me guess: twentieth century nowhere," he rejoined.
"Does it show?" I asked playfully.
"Regrettably so," he said sadly.
"So am I right?"
"Yes, no, maybe so. What's it to you?"
"Just looking for common ground."
"And if I were from when and where you say, what then? You are new. You would not be able to relate to me. Besides, I'll only tell you the same things any history book would."
"But books are written by those who plant lies and embellishments in history."
"Would I, being a man, be any different?"
"Perhaps. Do you affirm my guess?"
"I affirm nothing."
"If I'm forthright with you, will you do the same?"
"Be as forthright as you like; I'm not obligated to do the same, for I have no need of courtesies. Besides, you would have more to gain from my affirmation than I would of yours."
"Why must you be so difficult?"
"There are other tables you can sit at," he offered plainly.
"I can't help but to sense a conflict in you: you want others to discover your truth, yet by the same token you desire complete anonymity."
"Some conflicts can safely remain unresolved. It keeps the mystery alive."
"Does the ambiguity give you comfort?"
"Ah, pop-psychology. It seems that everyone is a psychologist nowadays. What's next? Will we finally do away with ideological distinctions and vote for either Freudians or Jungians to lead our countries?"
"Let me ask you a few questions. Do you feel empowered by your particular state of affairs, by being different?"
"No, I used to, when I was mch more foolish than I am now. That feeling of infinite possibility in any optimistic sense never lasts. After a time, I realized that difference is separation. That's how I know you are new: you carry yourself with bravado, thinking that your finite condition is an aegis against the horrors and concerns of the world. Only mortality can make one so blind, so arrogant. You see, I believe in Jungian phases. When one first becomes eviternal, life starts over for that person. He or she is enamoured with longevity, and will take to that life with the playfulness of a child. He or she will attribute almost theological grandeur to things like knowledge or truth. In youth, we were all Platonists; in old age, we become Arisotelians. We come to realize that there are no absolute Forms, and so we give up the fruitless search for them."
"You seem quite knowledgeable about the concerns of your kind. Perhaps you have betrayed your ruse."
"Perhaps. But let me give you this advice: philosophy will only make the eviternal being unhappy. Avoid the small pleasures it brings, for a greater sadness will soon follow."
"Does that go for all small pleasures?" I asked wryly.
"Sometimes I think that small pleasures is all we really have, and we may not even deserve those. I am no longer swayed by ideologies or religious enigmas of an afterlife. Let the mortals have their pipe-dreams. I do plan to die. There is no way that I will allow myself the same fate I can see in your eyes."
"And what fate is that?" I asked.
"I am looking at the last man on earth."
"But there are others all around us, unless you mean metaphysically--"
"No. Today you are not the last man, but what of tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow?"
I sank in my chair. The prospect was horrifying. People would die all around me, and only I would remain.
"What of other immortals?" I asked. "Wouldn't they survive?"
He shook his head with a sad smile. "No, they, too, will go on."
"How can you tell that this is my fate?"
"Mechanistic predeterminism, design, the narrative 'ought' that logically follows..."
"I don't understand."
"The narrator has chosen you. You are essential to the narrative design--whatever that may be--a recurring icon in the narrative tapestry. You are achingly mortal, and the irony is you get to be that last bastard in the stage play."
"But how do you know?"
"Not by the certainty of logical facts, I assure you; only by an impression, a gut instinct. And say what you will that a reliance on instinct is rustic, superstitious nonsense, but my instinct has never been wrong--especially when it has been furnished by many years of experience."
"I do not care very much for your prediction."
"Last man," he announced, "welcome to the great obscurity that will one day be yours."
"What's your name?"
"Gimaldi."
"My instinct tells me otherwise."
"Oh?" he said with a smirk.
"Though all of us in this condition wander the earth, your wandering seems more poetic, as if you're doing the penitent martyr bit."
"Like the Wandering Jew, perhaps?" he said keenly.
"That would be my guess."
"Kudos to your guess; this Rumpelstiltskin has been found out. And if you don't mind, I would like to be left alone, for I feel very uneasy in the presence of the last man."
"Why would you deny me further knowledge?"
"I am no stranger to denying others--especially men with the mark of fate upon them. I suppose that is why I am here now," he said with a smile.
I asked him more questions, but he would speak no more.
Moving across the diegetical space, beyond the boundaries of this narrative, I encountered another story: Gimaldi's. It was said that avatars ended epochs. Men like Gimaldi would make it their aim to eternally deny the avatar from beginning rather than ending an era. For the first time, circles made me feel uneasy, owing to the fact that the circularity of existence may have ended with me. There would be no continuity...When the clock of history struck twelve, the bells would cease tolling.

11
After her long stay in the hospital, Topaz was up to her old psychotic tricks again. Topaz was apprehended by police after a failed fatal seduction of a corporate lawyer. An amusing, anecdotal story, really: according to the paper, the lawyer's wife came home in time to catch her husband--bound, gagged, and under the knife--with Topaz. I was surprised the wife showed such restraint and didn't kill them both. Topaz would, by the reflex action of the court and as an appeal to the revenge-hungry populace, spend the rest of her days in prison. Perhaps I would visit and taunt her with my freedom.
Denizard had, through some means unknown to me, found Astarte's maggot-eaten corpse. He came to the logical conclusion that I was responsible, and so he launched a personal crusade in an effort to find and bring me to justice. I was not worried, for such a crusade was lost on the ears of skeptics and the indifferent. However complacent I felt about Denizard's hatred of me, he did have powerful friends. Some of these friends had other friends who shared particular conditions, mostly an obsession through medieval manuscripts to discover the silly secrets of immortality. When news of Astarte's death spread through that community, they would hunt me down. I would not be safe anywhere. Good; safe was boring. I had not really paid much attention to Astarte’s role in their collective efforts; she was, unbeknownst to me, a decorated researcher and lecturer in medieval codices, an expert herbologist, and—despite her strict demand for logical statements and no-nonsense speech—a recognized scholar of medieval mythological and alchemical lore. So that was her connection to Denizard! Big deal. I had also heard rumour of a manuscript that was counterfeited and used as a dummy while the real copy went with a man that Denizard and his ilk were after. Empty threats by those many centuries too late. They can all take their secret societies and line up behind me if they so wish.
I took flight to Italy and became acquainted with an emergent sculptor I had gotten the buzz about, named Bramante. Some people met each other with one or two ideas, or perhaps nothing at all. With Bramante and me, our ideas were like tectonic plates brought together in a collision of continents. The world was full of great artists like Bramante, and every day, the world lost great artists to circumstance, sordid states of affairs, the unfortunate necessity of Things. Perhaps if there was an afterlife, all the great artists, known and unknown, met under a great, golden archway. Perhaps they painted and sculpted Heaven, wrote the psalms and epics, constructed winding narratives and transcendental music. Nah. I doubt it. Artists rot just as fast as the pointless.
Bramante followed me to Austria. There, I saw what was yet another manifestation of that awful trend: the nationalist ethic, the recurrence of the now-forgotten era of proto-nazism blooming in the hearts of both young and old alike. The history of humankind was adequately captured in the phrase, "stultifera navis." And I watched as nations of people boarded the sinking vessels of antique ideology. But the ground was much fertile for this seed to take root in American politics. I watched with a wary eye, unsurprised with any and all developments on that front.
More on Bramante, that prominent figure he was: his history refused to be condensed into ready-made statements--it was too spread out, diverse, multiplied like the play of reflections between two mirrors. He had gone through many acts and ages...of discovery, and for anyone to pigeonhole his experiences would do a disservice to the richness of his being. I could only speak of him in a hypotextual way that reflexively undermined the blatant meanings conferred upon him. Bramante was a man and not a proposition, regrettably the case for zealous encyclopaedists.
Bramante had decided to follow me to Austria for reasons of safety. Apparently, he had falsified his credentials and taught the history of sculpture at the local university. Once he was found out, he packed and ran. I just happened to be a favourable travelling companion with no real destination in mind.
His energy had a way of slashing through the air of any dialogue, but he had sullen moments as well. The man was sardonic most of the time, and what I found most intriguing was his comportment towards sculpting: he sculpted with hate. Hand in hand with his hate and sculpture was his affable interest in philosophy. "Philosophers are detrivores," he said to me once. "They feed off the dead thinkers and dead questions." Philosophy, in his view, was like a fungus that spread and disseminated itself across a land of the dead. He had a special love of dead things, perhaps because their inability to reply fueled his hate.
We were at a hotel, planning where to spend the hours before sleep. After a liberal trip to the mini-bar, Bramante went out to the balcony. With one hand clutching the railing, he hung from the balcony, dangling like a windchime. His hate stemmed from self-loathing and his need to be in situations of danger...discordance...complete social and mental displacement. While hanging there, he said in a surprisingly calm voice: "I came to Austria once before. I pointed in a direction and knew I had to go there. A dramatic journey, really, but I leave the particulars to those who write epics--ha! All my moments will be settled in the narrative. Would that narrative be jarring and ineloquent? That depends on the protocols of the reader, and how I'm pre- or de-thematized." This sounded like it should have been placed at the beginning, before the diegesis opened up and began spitting out narrative...Bramante had uttered the true preface, if this were a work and not a life. “Deleuze died this way,” he said, still dangling over the street. “All philosophers ought to end their days of journeying in this anti-climactic falling fashion.”
We attended an exhibition at a midnight cafe. It was yet another European equivalent of Warhol meets Duchamps. Pure boredom. Patrons spoke over-enthusiastically, brandishing their university-bought art theories, claiming the works were "instant classics." Was that not a contradiction? Perhaps I now lived in an age where the semantic girdle of "classic" had been exchanged. How absurd of them to claim a classic need not stand the test of time. I blamed the impatience of the world. Perhaps I, too, would become a classic...
People seemed to be obsessed by repetition and regularity. This could be seen in the way they preserved the artifacts and accoutrements of their beings in the plasticity of a quasi-permanence that would not prevent the circumstances AROUND their lives from spiralling out of control and crushing their beings on the jagged coasts of time itself.
Was I repetition? No. I looked in the mirror of the people and saw no reflection. I was not a mimetic artifact. I was not even a shadow in Plato's Cave. I had no corresponding Form, and nothing was duplicated from me, which meant I wasn't an archetype as well. My face was that of the traffic that blurred without a reliable or recognizable shape. My being was just a dull, barely audible hum without harmony. Yet my disharmony in no way caused me to stand out as unique in the sea of beings. I was merely text pushed until broken down into fragments, a bricolage of marks on soggy pages...A spongy page greedily soaking up the ink of my description. My narrative was but a visual whisper without an author. There was no God or force of nature that authored me. There was no foundation that caused logic in this world. I was the uncaused cause, an unremarkable monad.
Bramante broke me from my thoughts: "look at the artist sitting there. He made these boorish creations out of pride. It is art for gawkers and bad critics. Look at his eyes: there is no madness in them."
"Do you mistake madness for genius?" I asked.
"Madness is genius!" he asserted. "Art is the loathing of this world. It is revenge against the self. Art is the great excoriation!"
"Perhaps, but I prefer to mediate myself in less violent ways."
"Revolutions are violent, and revolutions are needed to shake stale paradigms. Art must never be stable. Art must never concede to being paradigmatized."
Bramante was in a full-blooded mood. Once this episode was exhausted, he would fall into one of his sullen states. His own theory of art was that a valuable work of art had to have the grimace of terror, called into creation by an incantation of the wicked and insane. Bramante died the following night with a needle in his arm and that grimace of artistic terror upon his face. Perhaps he had had enough of engendering his own illusions. Then again, perhaps hate had presided and won over the struggle for life. I never got to know him well, but there was a sense of loss nonetheless. I returned to North America out of a queer mixture of boredom and sadness.

12
Looking out my window, that familiar scene framed by damp wood; engaging my eye, my sense of identification as that which was supplemental to my condition...A gravity outside like yesterday and the day before, but heavier...more deadly, like glass shards pressing deeper into the skin until blood was drawn. I thought I heard a chorus of angels over the groaning despair outside, or else I superimposed a Heaven song on the disharmony of humankind that linked arms towards death. The winding threads of the narrative always led to me, to the center, to this man who was the misunderstood minotaur of this labyrinthine earth. I repeated it again: "I am the minotaur," and it sounded right. I said it without joy, but without sadness. At the double edge of the frame, both melancholy and joy met, striking their simultaneous chords in the music of time itself. The age of pisces was upon them all...The sun would set...A cross would topple...A sphinx would rise from its sandy haunches...An ovate would sing a tearful farewell...A curtain would fall...And a book would be closed. These, the signs of the end, were all in my mind there and then, like the last words penned in a dying man's autobiography. This world surrounded me with its music, its monotone death song.
Like rippled visions through leaded glass, history gave its last moan before collapsing into the citationality of itself. Where did this leave Being? When there was nothing left to cite, no history to be made, Being also collapsed into itself...like a rapidly decaying fruit that buzzed with flies...or a corpse...or...
"I am the minotaur," I said again, and again. This was the end of the end of the end. I wanted to get on my bicycle, pedal madly through the streets, and scream the truth of the end for all to hear. I was not Paul Revere. The end was not by nature British. Apocalypse was not American. I had no flag to defend or defile. Many heroes had wandered in search of me, but I had eaten them all. I picked my teeth with Theseus' bones. Not all heroes won in books, or were heroes at all for that matter.
Looking out my window again, like it was all I could do. Outside: a mescaline dream founded by pirates and saboteurs. The modern/postmodern/archi-modern/quasi-modern world was just that: a mescaline dream--the walrus was not Paul, O hoo koo ka choo. No, just another twist of the dream, another dead end in the labyrinth.
I had made many mistakes, and there were things I should have done, should not have done, should have left undone for others to do. And so I was another on the vast plateau of error. A man by mortal means, a god by devious dreams...I raised myself to this summary statement. Alas, what it would be like to sink back into that sea of unwritten stories, to become undone in that peace oblivion brings! I had hidden behind the smoke of my ambitions too long, and I had to step forth as that frozen being I had become...This frozen life, this dead body, this cold mind. And wherever I went, I was the minotaur at the center of the confusion--the convergence of all narratives...
...[the long awaited silence]...

The last car rumbled quietly to a halt. The sky looked as if someone had taken a knife and hacked mercilessly at it. The standing ovation: picture New York or Toronto or Chicago or Vancouver, with all its proud glass buildings all shattering in an unnatural wind--leaves of glass whipping about at high speeds cutting everything in its path, making the city an uncontrolled blender, people shredder. Picture the water levels rising, sinking Florida and causing a crack between the Rockies and the West Coast. Picture that madness stretching across the land, the panic, the last vestiges of prayer. But let us speak on the interminable age of Pisces...
Most involved narrative experiences in an apocalyptic literary framework rely--insofar as apocalyptic-like events are detailed--on the expectations and conjectures of one who stands temporally prior to such an event or experience. There is a deeply entrenched apocalypse mythos that need only to be made manifest--and this manifestation is brought about by the collective unconscious. That the world would fall victim to some tragic cataclysm was not the work of nature, but the unconscious willing of a populace obsessed with its own demise. The people did not bring the end about by thinking or speaking of the end, but through actions that allowed the necessary steps to its eventual outcome. In short, people not only chose the end by their actions, but also how it was to be done.
The philosopher of my time who predicted the end were called prophets. Now they were historians. A predicted event made the transition to recordable and verifiable event. Who could resist the play of differences this presented?
The rise and fall of the Western Empire, so Homeric in design, so beautiful, so conducive to literature. Because I did not end, and I was very much a product of the West, I was the antithesis to the end. Right up to the end, pointing at the end, at the point of ending--in articulo mortis. There was a play of differences in the way I said "end." What was this "end"? Telos realized? There were endings that had continuation built into them, like the ending of a book which was never really the end; there were traces of the book still in the mind of the reader, perhaps even conflicts left unresolved. Did the West end, just like that, vanishing entirely from the world? No, its legacy remained, as sordid and radically citational as that legacy was. In a way, an empire never ends--only recedes into the concealment of time. The empire becomes a deserted temple, a lifeless bust, a crumbling statuary. And all those who look upon the ruins recall or invent a time when it flourished with life...when there was still blood flowing in its veins. Though the lived context disappears, traces still remain: the occupied space still haunted by ruins, the imagination or recall of those who visit the site.
I saw it all recede into history. I saw it all through my window. How appropriate that such an event would occur in the visual context of a physical frame: the window frame. I would always remember that moment in its frame...a framed experience, caged by structure, made possible by the eye. There would inevitably be those who would carry the torch of civilization to some place new, to recreate a majesty, to carry on the eternal task of Being. I would not spoil their dreams and rigour by pointing out the obvious flaw in their plans. For I could point to the ruins of the past and say, "what you will make will always result in this...in the end." Pessimistic? Perhaps. But it was a pessimism supported by the facts of history. Deterministic? Again, perhaps. I had not yet washed myself clean of Hume's presence in my mind, for I could not erase such a compelling argument on a deterministic, repetitive design of history.
This narrow aperture of the eye observed one instance the end. However, I felt it to be representative of what the end was like everywhere else. Details may have varied, but the end was still the same. And I doubt the beginning will be very different. All that was left of this world was a chrome husk.
A beetle crawled up the window frame before stopping and falling dead. I watched and waited. It was dry to the touch. And this once colourful beetle would lie on its back with legs folded to its body, and dust would eventually settle upon it, obscuring the vibrancy of its colour. When I removed it from the presence of the frame, it was still dead.

13
Let me rocket forward a couple of years. Though meaningful events did transpire in the interim, I feel it necessary to set the stage for a theatrical analogy. Let us consider two opposing camps: the sterile and chemically mediated normals, and the Dionysian and chemically mediated decadent. To make this clearer, the second class belong to the Kierkegaardian aesthete stage of existence, and the first to the ethical stage. The physical stage itself consists of two sections divided by a plexiglass partition: the asylum of the normal, mediocre world, and the dance club of the hedonists. With that being said, I defer my own narrative until the analogy I've set up completes itself. I will remain throughout as a quasi-presence. My double, Thanos, will play my part in this analogy. And others--with no other distinction than they are others--will play your part...as the script-reader.




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1
Dramatis Personae: Jonkil and Alex Copec
"You can't make me turn back now. Say what you will about the soldiers in the city, the frequent patrols in the woods, the spies in the shadows, the surveillance cameras placed in mason jars, the sky eyes, the bank card tracers, but I'm not the coward I once was. Some stories need to be told, you see, to find ears to hear them and minds to house them. If I was afraid about what action could be taken against me for spinning these seemingly subversive yarns, I'd have rolled over and died years ago. This is much stronger than an out-of-being experience.
"The room is dull. I need some light. A cigarette, too. Fine. Ah, the wafting smoke that issues itself from every open hole in my head. Salaciously burning on either side of this cigarette is me, and I'm substantiating my existence by watching my breath fade from my lips like a dying dragon. I watch as the air thickens with white-grey gloom. I was once a poet, but that was long ago--before I was plucked. What they did to us was terrible, eh? All those doctors. I could remember when they spoke to me with their tornado of placating euphemisms and jargon--and I was trying to counter with an objection, a point of my own, an esoteric side-note to bring everything into focus. Ah, but they didn't allow any space in the monologue for that, and so the relevance of my point dissipated as their discourse continued to sediment on top of itself. Enough of that.
"Tonight's story is not my own, but of someone I can call my own, a man after my own heart."
Jonkil began a coughing fit--triggering everyone else in turn, like a chain of visceral hacking--the emphysema gradually taking hold of his lungs, his life. Yet his eyes seemed to flicker with the very light of the story itself. He shifted upon the cardboard floor and brought the tattered army blankets around his shivering, emaciated frame.
The others were seated--some huddled around the trashcan fire. But everyone was listening, for Justin had the vocal quality of an engaging evangelist. One could be absorbed into his words. And even the eyes of the raccoons--phosphorescent pins of light in the bushes--kept watch over the dying Jonkil and the story about to unfold.
"This story," he began again after a dramatic pause, "is about a mentor, a muse, a social degenerate, a freedom-loving derelict. This story takes me back to a time when there was such a thing called freedom.
"To smoke out from death and out from under these dreary clouds, came a young man holding his hope up against the blue sky...casting away the shackles of the city as he ran, ran. He reached a wide, green field that betrayed no vastness, to be reaped with leather and iron. The old farmer's hands of my uncle stroked the earth fine with knotted, feeble claws.
"My father was killed in an industrial accident, and my mother was a willing slave to a group of business magnates in the city. She had me exiled to the rural territory, perhaps sparing me from the demons that dwelt in the tight and dark places in the urban nightmare. And then again, she might have wanted to spare me the agonies of my father's notorious reputation--that viscous ghost that hung about the family name.
"The men in blue travelled over my father's body. It was as if he lay there like a mist that hung only at the ankles at morning. This was yet another failed attempt at revolution, and so fell stillborn from the hearts and hopes of men before it could be historicized. The media poltroons tempted the surviving revolutionaries into the liars' cars with wildly coloured candy. 'Come with us,' the TV men announced with the solid plastic grin that dampened the sight of the monsters that hid behind their eyes. My father's legacy only remained as a ridiculous warning to those who would follow a similar path. Nothing was mentioned of those long, smoky evenings in the cellar of a pub, where men with beards and pipes and the writings of Marx would gather and dream...plan...huddle close to the fiery ideas that seemed to flow like wine. Nothing was mentioned of all that had went into their plight--only the failed result, which amounted to little more than a scant, half-minute mention by a biased newscast. There were those who instructed me not to cry, so I didn't."
He stared at me like a bloodied and battered sphinx. The light from the street lamps filtered through the ashen haze. He sat motionlessly with a cigarette puffing between his lips, momentarily lighting up his face with an eery orange hue. No words were spoken for an aching matter of minutes. It would have taken a movement of the earth to make me interrupt this terrible, yet necessary, silence. Jonkil wouldn't have to say anything at all. As far as he was concerned, he was the only real man in the room, or the only real man in the world for that matter.
"Schizophrenic stigmata, edict love, the very genius of my old friends! The madness, the crown of thorns, the idio-ethnographic neurosymptomalogical schemata! Madness is the mind lost in the jargon of too many ages crushed together in solution! I know what no one knows. I have penetrated the subversive agenda of countless movements, fell silent before the foul words of corporate magnates. I am a product of being too much in the world, this Deleuzian century!"
They wanted to commit him tomorrow, to bring him into the world of being and normalcy and everydayness. The man was a threat because found the prospect of being absorbed into the faceless anonymity of crowds and 9-to-5 punch-clocking utterly absurd. No one was more dangerous than the one who had exposed a flaw in previously believed order. If ever there was a time that his essential self was reaching out, yearning to speak, it was now. His brilliance would soon be unceremoniously shut down by the faceless doctors' chemicals. Jonkil was right: the fascists had won.
Tomorrow they would come for him in their dark coats and stiff, black boots. There was nothing left to do but stare at the walls and think about absolutely nothing.

2
Dramatis Personae: Castor
Not a drop of the good stuff anywhere. The lightbulb on the cord swung like a hanged man. I took to complacently observing the cockroaches brush their antennae over unwashed plates of concretizd pasta and cheese. My young brother, who had come to live with me after his wife chased him out for being too honest of a drunkard, was lying semi-conscious on the floor...his arm underneath his head and his fingers splayed on the mouldy tiles.
"It's a dark night for dancing," I said in an effort to rouse him into idle conversation. It was a phrase we had concocted long ago, its meaning and origin now forgotten--like so many other things. When there was no response, I was slightly relieved, for neither of us had the endurance to actually speak anyway. We were just two corpses living in the same flat. I felt dead, yet on a binge of constant waking. With the same hand that gripped life, I gripped the bottle. By this time, I was getting sad.
The flat overlooked a picture of a river that smelled like sulfur and rotting meat. The undulating shadows on the water was where my thought symphonies went to die. It could all be lost in the liquid sheen of the river, and even the horizon itself seemed to melt into it like a syrup. One could liquify the soul in it, immerse everything in the still and silent deluge of a wave-crested river. The ideas in my head teemed like fish, yet longed for release...to be freed into the aquafloral depths of this dark derangement. I cringed at the thought of further existence. This ennui was everlasting.
The old Frankenstein from 1931 was playing on the fuzzy TV. I watched as men with fedoras mixed innocently with a nineteenth century Prussian social hierarchy. I could not help but to laugh when the monster threw the little girl in the water, and then fumbled away in that childlike fright of having done something wrong. Some said that Frankenstein was one of Romanticism's criticisms of science and reason. I disagreed. The doctor had mixed his emotions, passions, and obsession with a pseudo- and unrecognized science. This was not science; it was an act of the occult, a re-animation of the body.
"Before my old lady kicked me out," my brother said, startling me, "we had seen a play. One of the actors said something that stuck with me for weeks."
"Oh? What did he say?"
"The truth."

3
Dramatis Personae: Frederick

She clutches at her chest when we argue. It is her not so subtle way of reminding me of the heart attack she suffered half a year back--or was it much longer? For her, convalescence is forever--a ploy utilized in times of stress, exploited so that she could get her way. She claws at her breast with her withered hands, much like a dried crab pincer. I automatically withdraw from the sensitivity of the discussion out of guilt. Perhaps her methods, though sick, still have an effect on me. This is the way she always wins.
"Mildred, I'm going to the store," I say so as to bury the argument I have lost by default.
The audience roars with laughter. An idle critic feels inclined to throw a comment on the stage. It is brushed away when the curtain falls, with the rest of the props. I go to the bar instead of the store--or so the script says. I exit stage left. Mildred arranges and re-arranges her flowers.
***
Mildred and me are in the den. She sits on the purple velvet antique chair, busying herself with a knitting project that will go the way of all her endeavours: a black hole of unravelling. She uses the same yarn over and over again. The page of the pattern turns with each day. Never a finished product.
I am sitting with a pipe clenched between my teeth. I read the newspaper with a kind of self-detachment. The world cannot scare or bother me if I never leave the stage. I look at the paper like a window, like a punished child who looks through the frosted panes of glass at a beautifully untouched landscape, yearning to be let free. But then, just as now, I am doomed to travel the same shag rugs, view the same excessively ornate lamps, and bicker with the same old cripple. The same old candies are lying fused in the decorative dish upon the coffee table. No one ever speaks of change, for that would be taboo.
Piotr is our friend from a neighbouring stage. He is a dapper and charming vampire whose visits breathe a new life to the gravid stench of Mildred's floral, scent-freshening decorum. It smells like a funeral parlour. I think this is what draws Piotr here, him being the morbid sort and all.
"So, Piotr, how do you fare in these tough economic times?" I ask.
"It has not affected me much. My business interests in the Pacific have been fecund. That, and my personal holdings, has made this recession an unfelt event," he says. "And how about you, old chap?"
"Would you like some tea?" Mildred interrupts.
I shoot a quick scowl at Mildred. She should know her place to stay quiet when I have company. I could strangle her. I know the audience would side with me. I stash the thought away.
"Well, Piotr, things haven't been too bleak on my end either. My stocks have remained strong despite the trouble. Besides, there's always financial prosperity for those willing to work," I say.
Work, work, work. I string the word along like a necklace. What this work was, I didn't know. I never seemed to leave the stage--it was only implied by a script. And the nature of my "work" had never been questioned. This I mean to ask Mildred about whenever I get a free moment. This character I play came with its fair share of vague inconsistencies. The other characters who helped in this shoddy construction of illusory continuity were too shallow for flaws to appear. I cannot argue with pure surfaces.
"But you and Mildred are fine?" he asks.
At this, I decide to break from the character, to lash out with a freedom so gravigrade that it will collapse the stage into utter chaos: "she's a pretty useless bitch, and tonight I'm hoping to beat her to death with all this ugly furniture. Then I'm going to rape her dead body and set fire to it when I'm done. Perhaps if there is anything left over, I'll sprinkle it on toast in the morning."
The audience gives its expected cacophonic reply with peals of laughter.
"Oh, Frederick! You will do no such thing," Mildred says, as if answering to a silly and harmless jest. Her pig-like jowls jiggle as she chuckles.
"You've always had a good sense of humour, old boy," Piotr says.
"No, I'm serious," I begin welling up with rage. "I plan to savagely murder my wife, commit necrophilia and arson! You, too, I'll butcher. I'll do it right now!"
More laughter, both onstage and in the crowd. I motion to stand and deliver upon my promise, but my body is not heeding my orders. It merely sits flaccidly with arms on the armrests, and my feet resting on the ottoman.
"What a card you are, Fred," Piotr grins.
He pulls me aside, whispering with a grim warning: "follow the script."
I feel defiant.
"FOLLOW THE SCRIPT! That is what Piotr says to me!" I yell at the audience, as if they were the key to my escape. "This is just a play, goddamit!" I yell it as if they do not know, as if by revealing my awareness it will set me free.
Mildred and Piotr are remarkably unaffected. They chat among themselves, exchanging mundane pleasantries about the lives they do not lead. Perhaps they are biding my time, making it look like I am just experiencing an episode. But I cannot get around the fact that all their references--including my own--about the people and events that occur beyond the stage are not real. How could they be real? I have no recollection of any of these things--at least firsthand. I cannot lead an implied existence.
I know there's an axe in the shed outside the house, for Mildred once said that I was chopping wood one night. But nothing outside this stage is real. It is the set of an Albee play. I have no privacy. All and any moments of quiet introspection automatically become performed monologues and soliloquies to the audience.
"You seem tired," Piotr says. "Perhaps I will take leave of you."
He exits. A passing thought amuses me: exits, misspelled, is exist. One can only exist if they can exit.
Mildred: "I feel tired myself. Perhaps we should turn in."
The curtain falls and the audience applauds. We are left in darkness, immobile and deactivated. There will be no movement, no temporal succession to this life until the curtain rises again. I begin to wonder, as the darkness sets in, if one could have a life if no one else was watching. Would an unobserved life be a life?
***
Where was I before this? It's a fading and distant memory played on a scratchy victrola. I remember not rushing a morning cigarette, getting drunk with real friends with real lives, doing the student thing. I wish someone would give me the cue to exit the stage, and the play, for good. I would cleave through the crowd like a screeching comet towards those doors, out into freedom and tangibility. No more acting. There had to be someone out there willing to grant me a reprieve, to end this endless re-animation of a dead life.
There is another visit by the solemn and Victorian dressed Piotr. Always with the macabre wrapped tightly around him like a nylon shroud, he seems to bring with him the feel of midnight. He has come with a warning, a syringe, and two orderlies. In his pale hand is the copy of tomorrow's script. When the drug is administered, I'll have no other choice but to comply.

4
Dramatis Personae: Peter Ibsen

The keeners came to dance. The relics and the hardcore came early and left late, alcohol logged. With a cigarette clenched between my teeth, I watched as this place bubbled as if in a dream. At this time, I was happily scribbling away, a new book to write. It had the type of words that, when mixed with water instead of gin, would turn to ash. And so, many clattering people bustled around, gazing at me inquisitively like the precocious simians they were. I liked to stay clear from the spouters, the watery downpour of their incessant chatter throwing me out of step with my literary melodies. The work so far:
A neo-Baroque sense of temperament. The literary aside was dead. She would bleed the moon with nothing but her eyes, driving the old nocturne mad with its own darkness. The shy one, the one who swayed while she danced with her shoulders in a shrug and eyes fixated on the moving lights above, the spying one, the hunting one...All manner of club archetypes awash in the neverending turbulence of their affairs. This was the type of swill I adored.
And who was I to quibble about the complaints a watchdog society made about the decadent direction of the young throngs? They'd prattle like clucking hens, these critics, but it made no difference when they could not be heard over the crashing din of a plastic age on fire. Besides, I have a swastika in my breast pocket and a promise. "They have forgotten about us," I remember the upright man said to me, a metallic blue gaze that could have bored holes in granite. "What do they have left? Rusted memorials, eroding virtues, and faded memories." And when he showed me The Plan, I became a true believer. No questions; I decided to live it up while knowing that it wouldn't be me screaming from the cattle cars.
Just then, as I was smiling over this memory, a gruff yob muscled his way into the thick of a hundred martini laden young socialites, puffed his chest, and made a dash for the pretty blonde with the sapphire eyes. He was obviously out of place where the attire of velveteen and PVC was prescribed--a contextual mistake, if anything, him being here. By the looks of him, he was a ruffian, perhaps a dead end mechanic with his gimlet eyes wary of a time that threatened to forget him.
The Plan showed to me had the mock-up of the new Adam and Eve of the New Reich, courtesy of our geneticists hard at work in an ethics-free lab. Thank God for the glorious will of the Teuton, the magnificent return of Glory and rightful heritage itself.
The yob yanked the blonde girl, her eyes crystallizing with tears of fright. A muted dialogue could be made out, loud music drowning out this domestic scene that I felt more embarrassing than amusing. The look of recognition in her eyes was priceless, and I was convinced that this angry intruder was her boyfriend.
The details of The Plan were described to me in lurid detail. He definitely appealed to my sense of logic, me being an old softie for the Jesuit school touch. Knowing that this plan was in motion, and that I was a needed and important player, gave me that much more purpose to get out of bed every morning.
The blonde girl would leave an exquisite corpse if her boyfriend didn't mangle her too badly with a pipe wrench; her final breath expelled in a sighing wistful way. The final moment of beauty is always so sublime. Silent deaths were so gorgeous when they weren't garnished with unsightly stab wounds or bullet holes.
I adored the club. It was the one place I could cast such a fine shadow and leave it there for others to admire. Maybe I was born to be royal, to pose jubilantly in emperor's clothing. The man with The Plan had made mention of my intrepid and aristocratic presence, a fine mystique for others to absorb with awe. Because I was destined for great things, I had no need for trying.
The brute was dragging her by the lycra shirt, a senseless grappling by a neanderthal. And no bouncers to be found, not a word of protest from the dancers--only a silent derision. But it was a moment that was easily forgotten.
I guess we were counting on people's ability to forget. A Nazi Reprise would come cascading into their lives on the luminescent wings of a gentle saviour, a pleasant retro welcomed by all and sundry as the right thing to do.
I couldn't wait until the terror started. The terror was my favourite part.

5
Dramatis Personae: Alex Copec

The prostitute wrinkled her paper nose around the last specks of cocaine. She hiked that short skirt and let the essence of the high enter the very cavities and alcoves of her soul, letting the rush of illusory streaking sunlight make her feel glorious...Like Paris had selected her over the other two. And even me, so accustomed to living among the "rodentia" of this city, couldn't help but to be captivated by this sight. She was momentarily angelic, perhaps displaced and beyond us as the aesthetic object out of reach.
The gutters were gurgling, the city's intestinal guts roiling with a late night rain. In there was a story Jonkil told, splashing around like a wild water nymph. Body of Christ! The asylum gestapo came like clockwork and dragged Jonkil's limp body over the bottles and concrete. The way his legs twitched made the entire spectacle look like a clumsy dance, but a dance without song and a movement without graceful substance--just an absurd flailing of a victim and two captors. At this point, Jonkil looked like a drunken bishop left out too late at the tavern. No cursing like a blue streak; merely a compliant, resigned, pneumonia-stricken body fading from view. He knew that his Urdoxa had been rearranged, added to…The Codex Obscura was such a reconstitution…of so much. One could not even spell Codex Obscura without Urdoxa…But what to do with the extra letters, the c, e, o, b, s, c…I guess that was why we were here.
It would be a thick, hot day under the knife of the sun. Pigeons cooed indifferently in the shade of awnings, and the street had already begun shimmering with the illusions brought upon by humidity. Had I the strength, I might have raised my hands and tested the mirage of the city, perhaps tear the cloth of it in search of some vestige of what was real. Without Justin around, things were going to get more confusing for all of us.
The prostitutes were still working the terrain, glowing effusively like Amazon princesses.
I sat on the sidewalk, asking passersby for a spare cigarette. Not a nibble. Everyone was too busy trying to make front page news, and so acts of random charity were irrelevant. Besides, charitable deeds ceased to be newsworthy items. In my pocket was fifty-eight grand of cold hard cash, useless strips of greasy paper in an age of plastic and binary.
Once, I was a Big Tex kind of guy, an oil tycoon with a ten-gallon hat, a big silver buckle, rattler skin boots, and an army of fax machines. My life was paved with blood money, an immodest wealth that flowed from the bosoms of believers. My friend was a popular evangelist, and we tied many a sordid knot under the empty smile of the Christian Right. My oil was blessed by a Heartland God. And Glory Be those who, after Church, praised the spewing crude from the many of my phallic wells.
With control over the ol' Wild West, the feverish religious climate, and the people brimming with God and oil and wide open spaces, I might have danced in their heads as a saint. But that was long ago, my accent now dead on my tongue and my Texan attire sent to the great pyre of my bankruptcy. I watched as our shabbily built empire fell into ruin. There is only abyss in the mind, the "to let" space once consumed by capitalist dreams of Christ. I am now a monk, and I am the great multiple author of Codex Obscura. I have located the secret of the Voynich manuscript because I have discovered that I am its progenitor. In the asylum, I learn many things. The doctors are always amused and astonished at my insights. They are legislating my psyche slowly with chemicals, and codifying into pharmaceutical law all the treatment regimens that will have any effect in the coming century.
Ambling about, I was looking for a place to die, to be wrapped up in a shroud of newspapers and old flyers. The prostitute was chatting with a policeman, her sinewy legs straight like stilts as she bent over to speak. Looking at her, absorbing the lugubrious beauty of her "sex-for-sale," all I got was a mind stricken with chlamydia.
Oh, Jonkil, what will they do to you? The fascists had won, slipping like eels in the murk and raising monstrous heads as they broke the surface of our attention. Suddenly it seemed to me at this moment that all the people had become as carved visages of noble, old Roman statues. From their sockets gushed and dribbled divine ichor. The prostitute had my throat between her hands, press-on nails digging under my skin. She was laughing. The great fire of the mind, of the city, consumed all attempts at understanding.

6
Dramatis Personae: Castor

The door was knocking, another silence abated. It was a stiff, officious knock, one a bill collector or landlord would drum. My brother was busy hanging himself in the bedroom. I was impaling cockroaches with a bent fork. Again with the knock. The spell was broken. I decided to shuffle my lethargic body to see if it was Poe gently rapping at my chamber door. When I languidly opened the door, there stood the pale ghost of my old comrade, his face drooping in the weariness of struggle--yet his eyes alight with the fiery intensity of a revolutionary's monomaniacal dream.
"Comrade, we must speak," he rasped.
"By all means," I said, inviting him in. "How goes the revolution with you?"
"Very bad, I'm afraid. The fascists have upped the dosages of truth serum. I am currently detained in their top secret facility."
"But you are here, standing in my hall."
I could see that the straps of the strait jacket had burned lines into his greying flesh. They were so kind in removing it from him for a day.
--Suddenly, we were in the TV room of the real. The walls were a sickly pastel pink stucco, and on the plush seats sat in-patients (like myself?) mumbling epithets into the stifling air. Doctor Lapin was busy in the corner, furiously scribbling notes down. This was the onrush of our real predicament.
"The play is foul," my comrade quietly bemoaned.
"I have just heard of it from my brother--a curious mention, really. So this is a play, eh? Hm."
"They are shamelessly forcing participation. Your script should be sent to you soon."
"I have it already. I am in a different act altogether."
Doctor lapin raised his eyes and cocked his ears. I pulled my comrade aside to continue our conversation in hushed tones.
"We must not let on that we know about the play," I whispered. "They will surely give us more needle if we do."
"But what is to be done?"
"We mix up the acts, transgress narrative barriers, cause chaos. I must go; my brother has a belt around his neck and I am far overdue to speak my lines."
I hurried back to the stage after closing the door, the scene of my flat slowly re-establishing itself in its isolated manner. The intrusions of the real world--this asylum--were terribly jarring and hard to mediate.
"Brother, what you are doing is p-pyt-pytus?" I said, struggling with a word in the script that was laid open before me.
"Piteous," squawked a doctor's voice over the small PA behind the stove.
"Pity-us," I repeated. Pity us, we actors chained to the stage...

7
Dramatis Personae: Jonkil

The fascists were upon me now, encircling me like vultures in the tiny room. With clipboards in their tensed hands, they were ready to implicate me on charges of defying their rules.
"Patient 1073, you have been upsetting the other patients. As you may not know, their mental state is precariously fragile, and highly suggestible. The play is designed for their benefit," one of the fascists drawled.
"Circulating discontent in the TV room, resisting treatment, persistent refusal to follow the script, breaking expensive audio-visual equipment..." another fascist read off a prepared list of my alleged crimes.
"Incorrigible," said another.
"Defiant and unruly," said another.
"Where is your script?" asked one.
I made a rubbing motion near my ass and smiled.
"Not very smart, patient 1073. I see no other recourse but to place you in isolation, away from the other patients, and for us to find a replacement for your character," a fascist warned.
I had heard rumours about isolation. It was worse than madness. Supposedly, it stank of sterility and acrid floor cleaner, and it was there that the fascists performed the most vile experiments. But even death was preferable to being sentenced to the play. They were not interested in bringing the patients to recovery, but rather to prolong convalescence indefinitely.
"You made the stew," I growled. "I merely stirred the pot."
"No, you poisoned the stew with your blatant disregard for science and what is best for all the patients--including yourself. Take him away," the fascist ordered.
Two pairs of gruff hands lifted me from the chair.
"Beware curtain call!" I screamed. "You are all in the play as well, you fools! And soon you will be written out!"

8
Dramatis Personae: Peter Ibsen

The old girlfriend sat across from me. We were like two rival nations with a long history of antagonism. The jovial mood dropped like an anchor when I saw her, and so I was rooted in the banality of yet another wasteful moment. She would open up old sores, dredge up past inconsistencies, refurbish old lies, unpack the taped up boxes of our failed romance.
"You're pontificating again with those books you write," she chastised.
"It occupies my time," I replied blandly.
"You still have my--"
It was always something of hers I still owned, something she wanted back in her possession--possession equalling power over another. It was little more than an excuse to tel me what a louse I was. Perhaps she had purposely hidden some object of hers in my house just to have this silly reason to continue the animosity. Insults were bandied back and forth, those same hard words that just didn't faze me anymore because I had become numb to her attacks and her presence. This was what it was like to exile someone from your care structure. Her jabs had lost all their colour, her tongue waggling impotent words on my untouched ears.
"I figure if we're going to bicker so inanely, we might as well get married," I said.
But she would soon leave me alone, peregrinating to some vanishing point, only to return later with more complaints.
Again in the club atmosphere. Was it my particularly exhausting run-in with my ex that instilled such a jaded mood this night, as I shifted on my haunches like a dissatisfied albatross? My eyes beaded up into small black orbs that only let in the film negatives of the scene played out before me. The dancers appeared to me like alien fungi, a feral orgy of organisms bathing in filth and detritus. The Plan, I repeated to myself, The Plan was what I had to keep focus on. Soon, I'd be at the front office, relieved of being kept behind the musty curtain of pop culture nightmares.
Just outside the club was a draconian style joke, a fiendish colony of mental lepers and ragabash peons who screamed themselves hoarse and bloody. Row upon row of cells were broken by small, sterile hallways, the floors of pitchblende and polish.
To whose benefit was the placement of a dance club attached to a sanitarium? Insomniac walkers patted along with bare feet, pressing their noses to the glass and watching the mystical pandemonium with keen interest. Some clubbers flashed a breast at these watchers, taunting them behind the safety of four-inch thick, soundproof plexiglass. The watchers might recoil, or merely stare right through these drunken fools. There was no sense in tempting the insane with the pleasures of the flesh. The man of madness was not blind, but was endowed with a special type of sight--some call these hallucinations--that proves much more vivid than our understanding can conceive.
What would happen, I wondered, if the plexiglass was shattered and the music couched within was allowed to fill those long and interminable halls of the sanitarium, wafting into each cell with the strangest of melodies? Would there be chaos? Perhaps. Would there be violence? Most likely. At all costs, the music had to be kept from their ears...Those lives who were collections of violent whirlpools and blood-stained whorls. They would be kept watching this encased spectacle, in their eyes this being just a dance without song.

9
Dramatis Personae: Doctor Lapin

I saluted the provisional Fuhrer as he walked past. I was on my way to the Treatment Council to introduce the new drug our lab devised. Armed with CAT scans, EEG readouts, and numerous charts, the proof would be disseminated and soon the drug would be put to use. These Mengelevian experiments gave me the ambition to succeed, the thirst for experimentation without boundaries. Who would be appointed as the true Fuhrer? They had a good candidate in me. Foul creatures these lunatics were, but correction and experimentation made the stench of them almost tolerable.
We had a strong political backing, and the popular ideology swayed in our favour. Little did they realize, but the ideology was much older than them, a re-erected mythos of a forgotten era. One of our operatives was luring one of the club magnates next door with "The Plan." With all obstacles taken away, modern science would be free to pilot itself into new and exciting frontiers. A new golden age would open up new vistas, and soon our work would overshadow the Newtons, Pascals, and Curies of an ethically restrained past. Why stand on the shoulders of crippled giants when one can soar like a bird?
Patient 1073 was safely tucked away in isolation, and it would be my pleasure to tinker with his frontal lobe. The scalpel I used to prick my subjects was the extension of the Fuhrer's power. We were the master shapers of a new era.
"Doctor Lapin," a guard addressed me.
"Yes?"
"The Council will see you now."
So I followed the guard, walking into the boardroom with regal airs; was I not at the forefront of our research? These hungry men wanted results of which I was at liberty to provide in ample supply. We were sufficiently funded for that very purpose, and ambiguous research resulted in great displeasure on the side of our benefactors. Fuhrer Lapin...Hm. It had a nice ring to it, the first scientist-come-king.
"Let me begin, gentlemen, by saying that life sometimes imitates art, and not the other way round. Reverse mimesis, to give my project a title," I said.
"Doctor Lapin, we have perused your reports, and though we are not what you would call 'educated men of science,' we get the gist of your endeavours. Let us say right off that you are very valuable to this movement. The corporations will be very pleased."
"And it is my aim to provide the corporations with useful results."
"Yes, but all things considered, we are very excited to be joined by a man who is a highly acclaimed, expert practitioner in his field. He is a man whose credentials and reputation precede him. It would please both the corporations and this council if you would offer him any assistance he requires."
I was dumbfounded. For all my hard work and faithful obedience, they were preparing to demote me in favour of some outsider--an outsider whose loyalties had yet been put to proper test!
"Gentlemen, I would like to remind you all that we at the laboratory are in a very crucial stage in our research, and that the addition of another member might slow our progress. He would have to become acquainted with the particulars of our research, which would prove too time-consuming in our already tight schedule. Since we are under very strict time constraints, we can ill afford to jeopardize our work by adding another research assistant to our already capable staff."
"Do not worry yourself, good doctor. He will not prove to be any hindrance to you or your research efforts. Judging by his proposed project, we have decided to place your research on temporary hiatus. He will also take your position as Head Research Coordinator for a time, just in the interests of efficiency. You will assign all your research assistants to give full priority and allegiance to him. We do thank you for your cooperation in this matter; we do understand this is a bit short notice. This is all in the interests of our plans, you see."
I was fuming, but I kept my placid composure for their benefit. Whoever this fool was, I doubted that he was so brilliant as to effect my demotion. No, I was Fuhrer material, not researcher drone chaff. I would find out who had given the final order on this.

10
Dramatis Personae: Thanos

As it always did, the entire affair began with a cigarette and dichotomous derangement between my passion versus reason. Would I eddy through the endless cavalcade of faces in this place where we had provinces instead of states, late Roman Republic set in transmodern caste, as it were? From the majuscule and demi-uncial script of my papers, from my pen, from my cock, eyes, brain. And what would be my crutch today? Alcohol? More cigarettes rolling off the ashtray, burning holes in the carpet, all due to the writer's haste and the neglect that came with it? Or would I hold stoicism in my heart this day, turgidly waving off all that wasn't in my power while I repeated the epithet for only my ears to hear: dominium ex jure quiritum?
Those with dried semen on their lips in the phantom lights of asphalt reflection and the club's liquid lights could not be conjointly cleaned and remained as they were: renegades of their own Jungian psyche. The woman with the aquiline nose of a wizard and the PVC pants shrink-wrapped around her endless legs was in the gallerium generale with a facial expression that read "I am showing." And while she moved by various degrees toward the light, disclosing her hidden Dasein by full illumination, so Heideggerian, I just wanted to stare at her as if she was a grand monolith, a representation of the Colossus of Rhodes. And what kind of ship would it take to get between her legs? The arousing taboo of my thoughts made me smile.
We never escape the club with its psuedo-Dionysian essence and its Appollonian facade of majesty. We never escape; we loop in recurrent cycles of the flesh until all is absorbed within the den of our delusions, our cultural fantasies, our deadly robotic dance that consumes all.
I was back in borrowed flesh, an archetype reborn into the diegetical tapestry in an act of grand resurgence. I looked to the panoramic scene laid out before me with wicked eyes. So many were bedecked in their pop culture accoutrements, secretly screaming for Enoch. But there would be no Enoch here, no final death to come strolling along to end all accountability for existence. When I was being stoic, I paraded it about with a train of magnanimous gestures, wore it like a purple cloak, spoke it from the deep abyss of fickle and ever-changing passion. Different philosophies were to be worn as garments, to be cast aside when the lustre went out of them. Meditations should never be sombre, but be as loud and theatrical productions upon one's personal stage. Philosophy should only temporarily affect the persona, not permanently transform the edifice of one's being.
Keep me in the Husserlian brackets, in the epoche for all to witness in all my phenomenological truth. Gather round me in this gallery, for I am on display--much like the PVC woman in her own Heideggerian drag. There is not an explication of this exhibit as on a gold-coloured plaque nailed into the frame of the diorama, but a book--and I demand you read it. Soon you shall realize that it isn't me who is on display, but you! The division between us, marked with the diorama's frame, is much like Les Meninas, and I may decide at any time to regard you all standing there as a living, moving, breathing diorama. Are you as Hopper's Nighthawks, sitting with bated breath in the night with the listlessness and intrigue of your generation? It is like Pistoletto's Nude Woman Telephoning with the mirrored canvas which so frighteningly makes you the pervert. And much like that work, when my audience sees me, they see themselves seeing me. But I see them free from reflection, for I am not the audience observing the audience.
What was it about this decade that felt so familiar? Ah, it was its malleability, the very fact that nothing had come along to harden its porous and liquid foundation--as if all was resting upon a gyroscope. This generation was still bobbing on the tide of rapid transformation, each movement more rapid than the last (Burkeans of the world weep). But in this age, I felt something else familiar, as if I was not alone in this return...And then i saw him: in a white labcoat, followed around with eager young students with clipboards--like Findley's Kurtz. One does not forget a face like his; so diabolical, so tightly wrapped around that skull which housed misappropriated genius always in motion. Just as he rounded the corner, he glanced at me through the plexiglass partition and smiled a knowing grin. And hello to you, too, old friend, old foe. As long as the religion of science remained one of the guiding lights of the current episteme, so would its dark underbelly--and so would Albrecht, tending to the eldritch dimension of his crooked discipline.

11
Segue 1: Corrections to Method
By Edward X. Albrecht, M.D., PhD.
What proceeded from my codices, Lord Descartes and the Hypertext of New Reason, was what I could only call a vigorous self-evaluation of both my methods and techniques used in the promotion of my Homo inorganicus. Having already established my philosophic ground for necessitating the new hominid species as a viable replacement, what remained was to achieve a proper method. However, most of my experiments turned out to be only temporary successes or absolute failures from the start. For whatever lack of ingenuity that led me astray in perfecting my plans, such errors were fortuitous in that I could salvage what was technologically functional in order to proceed to the next stage, to bring my theory out from beneath the rubble of auxiliary status.
What was needed could be simply put by stating that I had gone about my experiments in the wrong way, misdirecting my studies in a very limited sense. In my hiatus from the principle research, I reflected a great deal on the methodology of my approach. Granted, what I had already perfected worked insofar as it produced fecund results, but these results fell short of my desired ends for a project with more potential than previously realized. There was a limitation in both method and design that stood before me like an unsurpassable obstacle--one that, upon reflection, I could now overcome. Before I reveal the next stage in my plans, I feel it necessary to refresh my community of colleagues on the work I have already done.
Through cultural analysis, I found that people were most easily controlled through their desire for sex and violence (statistical verification: cf. Albrecht, Culture Study 4). To me, controlling the arts seemed a viable mechanism for regulating these desires so as to eventually transform the ideological superstructure by trend pressures of the mass demographic. The reason for this was simple: I needed the legal and political spheres to grant me the liberty to begin experimentation without the fetters of archaic ethical codes. The bane on any true scientist are the ethical statutes that limit his freedom to experiment (Hence, why I envied the German scientists in the Nazi era who were given more free license than we have hitherto seen since). For my methods to be accepted, I had to be sure to raise both the cultural and ideological spheres to a level where my experimentation would be well-received--that, and to create an abundant supply of willing test subjects. During my reign as an art icon, I had the perfect guise which allowed me to experiment freely (in the name of art) until the ideological constraints dissolved away. This was a very roundabout way of going about opening up a region of a much-needed science.
My first attempts, though crude, were the visually jarring practices of grafting mechanical appendages to cadavers. In working with cadavers for a few years, I was able to hone my surgical skills in machine-flesh attachment, yet the limitation of not working with live tissue hindered further developments.
After I established my Albrechtian School, my talents matured to the point where I could perform physical augmentations on living bodies. For reasons I need not explain, I chose the most superior female specimens for this procedure. But I was still creatively and medically inhibited, for my creations could not regenerate at a capacity I would find necessarily adequate for my next brain child: full synthesis of organic and inorganic material. Though I could modify the existing form, no absolute link could be made between flesh and machine...yet.
It was soon afterward that I made my first attempt at a silicon-neuron interface. Once this was completed, I could modify bodies in such a way that the inorganic components could both have regenerative abilities and permit these to be more controlled by the brain itself. These were my alpha subjects.
The beta wave suffered the same fate of the alphas. They were just as unreliable, for the bodies would die within two years. But I had been working on a new theory at that time, using children (cf. Albrecht, Biomechanica and the Brood). But this only offered a small window of success. However, this marked a new direction in my research. Instead of modifying the adult body, I found that more profitable developments resulted in the use of younger subjects. Unfortunately, several outside events in my life prevented me from pursuing this angle further. So it is here that I document, in brief abstract, the new methods that I shall incorporate into my research.
1. We must perfect the brain-machine interface to such a level where we may feel confident to do away with the archaic practice of silico-neural linkage.
2. Most of the neurocognitive development of a human being occurs in prenatal life. So, an interface would have its best results in the intrauterine fetus.
3. To perform a procedure that would not be surgically invasive, nor reliant upon the use of chemicals to sustain results.
4. To affect the development of the intrauterine fetus, we must somehow augment the fetal cortex through the only sense of understanding it has: the rudimentary senses. This should be done through a transmitted signal via the womb that can provide a panoramic sensorium. Through this method, the intrauterine environment will be stimulated to produce the best possible development of the fetal cortex.
5. A new system of regenerative processes will take place upon the successful synthesis of inorganic components and living cells. What I am currently working on is a biophotogenic process that will aid in tissue regeneration--not radically different from a photosynthesis principle which we find in plants and algae.
6. Once the fetus is postpartum, the conditioning of the infant can begin by way of the induced interface in the cortex, which will allow us to send proper stimuli to the brain, to be overseen by skilled and competent psychological engineers.
7. It is imperative to increase and maintain neural density if the procedure is to be a success.
8. As a last resort, I might have to consider intracranial implants.
This list is meant to be an introduction of what I hope will become a major breakthrough in both machine-flesh fusion and human engineering. Findings on this project will follow, pending the rate of development. It is my hope to expedite this project so as to come forth with conclusive results for any interested parties.

12
Dramatis Personae: Alex Copec

There are things done by the hands of men that bespeak unimaginable horrors. How is it, while under this serene sky, that such suffering can be allowed to continue, and that we must endure it? The scene faded like some movie built on an ethereal landscape. I could not see the day for what it was anymore, these strange tortures of the soul. I sat in silent repose in my cell, the room lit with one solitary desk lamp, casting a dull, orange hue upon the props that served to suggest this paradigm. This slipshod comedy was only ours to play while it was a the responsibility of others to provide the narratives. No explanation, no kind words that would reveal the intent of these experiments. And what good would screaming for answers do? I would be dragged off to the same place they took Jonkil. Compliance was what was asked of me, to surrender all sense of self in the name of science. All heterogeneous elements had to be suppressed under the paradigmatic norm we were forced to conform to. But without the light of knowing, we were blind participants in a sacrifice we knew not the nature of. I just wanted out, perhaps to die. But the more I was subjected to these terrible experiments, the less the narrative was my own. How did I know that these thoughts were my own, and not somehow placed there by suggestion? We are all living in a Cartesian carnival.
Perhaps this place was the entire world. Upon visiting the glass wall, I could look beyond this hell and see the very fringes of my world, pure chaos in soundless motion. There didn't seem to be any sense to it--as if we were being caged in by a visceral wall of madness. There were so many bodies there, moving, moving, a quiet deterrence for potential escapees. Perhaps two years ago, when I was a free man, I would have called such a spectacle a club. Who was I fooling? When was I ever a free man? I was never free, Sartre be damned. Maybe I had it right when I saw chaos writhing there in a strange pastiche of colour and movement. As for freedom, free men did not have desires hypnogenically induced by mass amounts of ubiquitous media, and free men never were denied when they confronted the world for answers. Perhaps the free man was a mythical beast, a fairy tale told to children to offset hopelessness. I had never met anyone who could rescue freedom from folklore.
Who knew that this was the ideological alternative? The cell beside my own was a prison for a man whom I mourned, whose life was proscribed by amber rivulets dropping from a hypodermic eye. I pressed my ear against the wall between us and I could hear the rumblings of a machine fashioned to kill us all.

13
Dramatis Personae: Thanos

There was another antlion at the club besides myself. One could always recognize them, for they seemed to bend the lines of light in convergence over their bodies. Another struggles to break free from his silent and patient gaze, but she met the eyes full on in an unbreakable line of vision and separation. He looked a lot like me, doing the same things, writing and speaking my narrative. I placed a silk cut cigarette in my mouth and decided to amuse myself while playing the enigmatic sphinx...perhaps to challenge him in a contest of character.
"You're in my seat," I said to him with a grin that could undress the world.
"Of that, I am unaware. You are new here, whereas I have been coming to this place for quite some time. Do not mistake my staying in this seat as an indication of my fondness for it, but as a measure of my principle."
"Well said, if I had not said such things before. In essence, I am not new here. And, no, it is not the seat I want, but the placement. You are in my role. I ask you once more to retreat."
"I cannot do that, for my role is as integral as yours, if not more so, whoever you are."
"You are an amusing imitation," I said, "but you are a pale replacement for me. Please do not try my patience."
"Am I that pale?" he asked with an expression that gave me pause to reflect, for it was achingly familiar.
"I do apologize for making such staccato pronouncements in such a serried fashion, but by dystopic fact, my role should rightfully be filled by none other than the originator of its discourse. The narration, my friend, is mine. You have merely borrowed it for awhile, like the neighbour's rake. I never intended to have it missing indefinitely. To put this in cruder form, thank you for keeping my 'seat' warm, but I can take it from here."
He sat awhile, mulling over what I said, perhaps preparing a refutation from the sour vintage of his knowledge. Silly boy! This strange tract we were in was stuffed with analytic propositions, dancing and drugging the way to truth, up the ladder, down the ladder, the horizon of this 'place' expanded vertically and horizontally ad infinitum. To give this place a fixed name would have been to assume a connection between word and thing, and frankly no reliable substratum or interlacing term could bridge that chasmic maw. This place was most similar to a sense of discourse...a discourse that multiplied itself geometrically, that filled all gaps and then fell in on itself like the tide, causing folds and rifts and pleats and...
"Explain to me," he said with a slight edge of Cartesian doubt in his voice, "how the role is yours. No...First tell me what the role really is."
He was playing games, dreadful games of the slave who contents himself with the chimerical freedom of moving within semantic spaces. And so I said: "you're in it, yet you do not understand the role? You're in my diegetical space. For reasons I cannot fathom, you insist on moving about within it, fully disregarding the majesty of it, and refuse to relinquish it to its proper owner. You are like a loathsome degenerate wandering aimlessly in the Halls of Valhalla."
"Perhaps I am, and then again perhaps I am a noble surveying a desolate and impoverished village of rogues, thieves, and lepers. Perhaps the same plague that attached itself to you when in this role has left me untouched, proving me the better candidate for it. Wait...let me anticipate your objection: the meaning of the role is lost if one is immune to the diseases it carries. But what of the transpositioning of this role, the freedom of the traveller who may change the route of his diegetical journey so as to avoid the parody of the role itself? Am I clear? Maybe not. I do apologize."
And then I could place the poignant tone of this strange gentleman. Through some cosmic fluke reminiscent of the eternal return, we had both found ourselves here: in this same tract, arguing over who got dominance over the role. But he only held it--not out of any desire--to irritate me...or perhaps he had another agenda. But this was a man I had known long ago in another place, another story.
"Canute," I said.
"Close, but I've reassigned myself the name Peter for good measure."
"And I'm sure you have reasoned my identity."
"Of course: Jakob. No one else has the same pomp in his speech."
"Then why the games?"
"Games are amusing. Besides, I feel that you put too much stock in your supposed identity. You carry it around like a standard-bearer. It is best to be fluid, if you catch me."
"So what do you do now?"
"I write books about assholes like you and me. My friend, being assigned an archetype is a kind of death sentence."
I wondered if he knew that Albrecht was among us, completing this uncanny reunion.

14
Dramatis Personae: Jonkil

I was talking to the darkness like it was a brother that never left, to myself, to an unseen crowd of phantoms. I was mad and a derelict champion of a million movements caught on film and pasted upon the wall, a sequence of brillo box dynamism. My torturers had just left, and I felt like screaming. This was almost as bad as the time I had to leave town because I was under the hex of a morally stubborn wizard.
I had overheard the name of a new doctor. He would not be assigned to this sick project, lucky him. Instead, he was to spearhead a different sick project. I had also overheard that it would involve unborn children. I was very glad that I was not an unborn child. But if they would kill me soon, I might have come back as one--in time to be experimented again while I was cursing the Hinduist way for being right about returns. But both that and Plato scared me. What did Plato say? Something about the soul returning with all its knowledge into a new body, hanging around the graveyard for its chance. I didn't relish the prospect of remembering anything.
The name of the doctor was scrawled in my mind like a bloody gash. Edward X. Albrecht. Oxford material? I focused on that 'X' as if it would keep me from sinking in the filth of what they put in my mind. Xavier? Xenophon? Xester? Xambic? No, it would not do to pollute that independent and upright 'X' with other letters. I overheard so many things in here.
All that was diminutive or self-enclosing flowed through me as I occupied the last bastion of pseudo-science, the empirical posturing and brave words little more than a mask for human cruelty. I knew this and more because I, too, went to a school with regularly cleaned toilets. I had seen those doctors parading about in their smug pride, vainly concealing their tightly held misanthropy behind a tongue-tying procession of education degree-titles, or whatever those were called. Let them have their pyrrhic victories; soon their foul paradigm would be exposed for what it was.
I could distinctly hear the careful footsteps of philosophers treading warily around the edifice of science, poking it gently so as not to rouse the Great Beast. For when it opened its horrible eyes, the world fell silent and trembled. It spoke in bursts of atomic bombs, chattering technology, and with the groans of genetic mishaps. Deep in the catacombs of its heart was something so cold and dark, it was no wonder people feared to touch it. This I knew because this place was the dark and foreboding heart of science...This legislated normal world was its ongoing experiment.
I was not a brilliant man. For all intents and purposes, I was clinically, verifiably, empirically mad. No, they did not use the word mad here, for that was too heterogeneous. They had to give it a name that had been dipped in the brine of scientific understanding, for madness in its purest form could not be understood or reduced to some Latin catch-phrase. Madness had to be given a new semantic cloak to justify the arbitrary effect of chemical and electrical treatment. They would reduce the brain to a topology, to geographic regions they could name like nations...to divide them against one another, to have something localized for them to be able to point and say "this area of the brain is...faulty...unstable...multistable...deficient." But the brain was not a politicized object, but a flourishing and mysterious realm. The canons of science would not admit this because it threatened their precipitous sense of reason and logic and language and truth and Ayer!
A lone voice sang across the darkness of this darkness, this civilized madness of Conrad, and it was my own. The death song came springing naturally from my dry throat, like a transcendent melody against the horror. Maybe I was calling out to depoliticize my brain, to juxtapose the beauty of surrender against the hell that science built. Ahoooooommmmmm....

15
Dramatis Personae: Peter Ibsen

The old boys had come back in new drag, and I was among them. I knew that our presence was paradoxical, and we would have to pay for that. Imagine, three old characters having made their return in the dress of a new story. It was not a magnanimous return, but more of a slinking and ashamed one.
Doctor lapin came in with a frown on his face. I hoped that it didn't have anything to do with what I was promised. He took a seat, posture erect, and with the awkward poise of a professional forced to play the relational and approachable role of a lower class. The poor boy was so uncomfortable--not to mention a bad actor--when it came to slumming, to downgrading his status. I was flattered that he would try this hard to maintain my favour, even if it was their group that ordered him to do so. It just reified how valuable I was to them. He was right to regard the club patrons as a class, but wrong to distinguish them in terms of higher or lower. The class was definable only in terms of itself, through its own context, its own discursive reality.
I could not recall ever leaving this place, nor seeing anyone else leave. The exodus was always implied, but nightmares never afforded exits. When I pressed Jakob (who had hitherto renamed himself Thanos) on how he got in, he said that he merely appeared from a shadow with a cigarette dangling from where lips should be. I guess that was how I came in, too. I would consume myself with thoughts of escape if I had not been distracted by a sign posted over the door frame. There were always distractions in a place like this, a means of dividing our attention from what we ought to have been concentrating on. The sign was supposed to serve as the club's name. Apparently, it was called the Neropolis, the letters done up in a neo-futurist style with cold blue lines with a glow of glittering, silver foil. An odd name for a place like this, but perhaps fitting. Would not Nero, his dreams of running away to join the travelling simulacra of art, come to this place? Would this place be enough of a circus for him?
Doctor Lapin called me to attention. He was a small, distraught man with gimlet eyes, beaked nose, and pencil thin lips always in a sorrowful frown.
"Plans have changed, and so must the promise we have given you," he said.
"Oh? Defeats the idea of promise, doesn't it?"
"It's out of our hands. The higher-ups have decided that the focus of the experiment must change according to new demands."
"And like a Stoic, it would be wise not to fret over that which is not in our power, eh? How do these new demands stand in relation to the experiment we're involved with?"
"It will be temporarily suspended. But the final say will be mine. You see, beyond that glass are men who have been driven beyond mental limits. See as they stare curiously and longingly at what transpires in here. Imagine if the glass was removed and they were free to roam. What do you think they'd do then?"
"Tear the people apart, I suppose. It would be like unleashing provoked lions. A bit messy and ghoulish, isn't it? Does your name happen to be Septimus Severus? I read that he was fond of doing things like that."
"I do not understand the reference. In any event, I will give you due warning in advance if and when the unleashing begins."
"How kind of you. A question: how does one get out of here?"
"I'll leave that to you."
And then he bolted up and marched out like a starched soldier. I tried following him with my eyes, but it was like he just sank into the dancing bodies that parted and then swallowed him up. Everything was lost in bodies, smoke, darkness, strobelights, and lies.

16
Dramatis Personae: Albrecht
Everything was in Cartesian order, and the experiments were beginning to yield results. God, I loved being a Roman of the sciences! As for Jakob, whom I spotted at the neighbouring club, he was safely stowed away for the time being, and in no way a threat to my work. This time, I was going to win. I was even beginning to acclimatize to the smell of those unkempt lunatics, or perhaps the scent of eventual victory overpowered everything.
Did I want to rule a Roman empire? Oh, yes. The fire in my eyes spoke it.
When I walked into the club, it was beautiful as the dancers moved in joyous semi-detachment, like they were all lost and exuberantly abandoned inside. I hadn't seen such solipsist disregard in decades. It was back in 1976, and I was in pre-med...
...I was with Marty, Rory, and the gang, and we were living it up at the disco hall. Of course, disco hadn't swept the entire world off its feet yet; hardly even made its way to all the dark corners of the earth. The girl with the long chestnut hair, straight as a rail following the fine arabesque of her spine, gave me a wide and inviting grin. I was styling in my duds: checkered pants, wide lapel shirt, and a neatly trimmed beard. A game of eyes broke out, and I found myself charmed by this sultry beauty. Her name, oddly enough, was Chastity. If she had been so chaste, she wouldn't have been in my bed. Days turned to weeks, months, and a problem arose. I had gotten her pregnant. So I performed my first unofficial abortion. Of course, I had to hold her down because she was being stubborn, not realizing that my needs came first. I had to use chloroform and some tools...And now, in my older years, I could look at the dance club and marvel at where it all began for me.
Back at the sanitarium, where I felt it to be an odd place to begin my particular brand of experimentation, there was beginning in my mind a sense of the surreal. When one spent a great deal of time in a place like this, where the patients were as caged animals...overdrugged, senile, holding in their minds all forms of fantasies and hallucinations, where the general consciousness was in a state of delirious Ate, one began to see as they did. We, the doctors, were the only champions of sanity, but these well-defined divisions between clinically sane and insane broke down as we travelled in these sterile hallways among the mentally broken down. There were no human beings in a place like this--not as anyone knew them. No, the madness was a pure force that divested itself of any logical framework or social rule. This place was a zoo for the subhuman. Perhaps this was too harsh of a critique. Perhaps they were merely dangerous children. That would explain why anything that could be possibly construed as a weapon was absent or nailed down with large rivets. And how palliative was this method of secluding the mad from any normalcy we could imagine? In all sincerity, I, too, would go mad if stuck in this place, what with the repetitive schedule, the same walls to encounter day after day, always being under careful observation, the unadorned rooms, the very chaos of being thrown together with others whose minds were strange and lonely islands. And we watched the insane tenants in a vain attempt to understand, or perhaps to placate them with ritual dosages of sedatives--and so the insane became more insane. The more we watched, the more mad they became--and the more mad we became, for being in such close proximity forced us to make a bridge between us and them.
The sanitarium, for all its regular cleanliness and pacifying routines, was an ugly microcosm permanently severed from the world of reason. The passage of time merely fed into a loop, so the same day repeated infinitely. The patients were not aware of time's passing, and neither were we as a result. And as we isolated our objects of study, we began to realize that we had isolated ourselves in this panopticon. All I could do to amuse myself was to observe as different psychoses were pitted against one another.
With the sufficient completion of my Homo inorganicus, there would be no more sanitariums where the subhuman wandered the same halls while they floated in a mental maelstrom. The days would have purpose again, freed up from the self-perpetuating redundancy of existence. A new consciousness would be created that would far surpass the flawed and feeble aspects of the modern mind that had a pronity towards the madness housed within these Sartrean walls. Until then, the injections would continue until morale decreased. Since we could not understand madness--or that we prevented ourselves for fear of bridging the gap--we would continue to mask and subdue it with the accoutrements of psychological science. To me, therapy was merely a process of distracting the madness and pushing it through a stream of intelligibility.
What to do? This question was answered when a group of physicalist logicians got in touch with me and were interested in my project. These men had resurrected the Vienna Circle, and were thinking of including me on the basis of the journal articles I had written about method. But Wittgenstein was long dead, I told them, to which they replied that they were glad it was so. This began our discussions on positivism, but to be taken in a new and stronger way. We would scrap the erroneous verification theory, snub the Carnap influence, and devise a new logocentric necessity--all courtesy of a political turn to the right.
The first stage was to draw up divisions in the sciences, a very Baconian project, and begin placing all forms of theory and artistic expression under the various categories that we preselected. The next step was to build the walls of our paradigm and force everything into it. We would then revamp Comte's positivist science and Russell's contributions accordingly. When all was said and done, even the old positivism would fit nicely in our new positivism, completely castrating both metaphysics and romanticism. Science had to be pure, and logic was its firmament. This would feed nicely into my own attempts to bring Homo inorganicus into existence. How else but through a new positivist paradigm could my new species thrive? A cyborgian consciousness required a universal way of thinking and being.

17
Dramatis Personae: Castor

Upon the suicide of my brother (?), I had been relocated to a new place with a new script to follow. It was an office with a computer, cubicle walls, a fax machine, a water cooler, and a hypertext of belated capitalism. A disembodied voice continuously conversed with me, or rather spoke at me. This was how the script went:
Voice: You got in late. Did you sign up for the carpool? The report needs to be in on Monday. You're fired. You're hired.
Castor: The photocopier needs ink. Check out the new intern. Call our affiliates in Japan. Logon as a newuser. There's a problem with the new email software.
Voice: We have investors coming in from abroad. Look busy. We're downsizing. Could you email the department?
Castor: Signing up for the company softball team? I need a raise. I'm staying late tonight to finish these reports.

18
Dramatis Personae: Jonkil

The guts of the evening were all laid out before me in all their physio-symbolic glory. The imposing glare of sunlight struck into my eyes like merciless daggers. The snow shone like diamond eyes, brilliantly exposed in all unblinking wonder. She slipped from their impermanent gaze as she deftly moved across the frozen lake, her arms outstretched in an unspoken moment of strange ecstasy. Her face burned with delight in my enfeebled memory, wisps of smoke curling across alabaster skin.
Was it only yesterday that I spied across the expanse of that lake, to the peculiar edifices of torn timber where beavers ambled within? To the bog I had travelled, the bog that would rise with interminable rhythms in summer, choked with flora aloft in thick, black water. There was no canoe on earth that could penetrate the darkness of its heart. But as I had strode across the tundra, the waters frozen in tableau, the beavers slept in the insular warmth of abject hibernation. I could see the tread of muskrats winding across the freshly fallen snow, winding out in staccatoing and labyrinthine patterns. Such tracks came in profusion from all manner of everglade beasts.
No, it was not a matter of yesterday, for I had come into this strange cosm with these memories narrated--or dictated, rather--into my subconscious by a life I had been ripped from. And what purpose were these memories if not to make my current imprisonment that much more terrible? The recollection, be it true or fabricated, of a woman in an open scene of a world I could no longer touch, was the infernal means of self-torture. But worse still was how the doctors inculcated me with a sense of doubt concerning these memories, telling me that they were merely delusions that needed the special care only periodic medicine could provide--the soft touch of a drug, performing yet another act of mind erasure.
There came a day in what was once my life when all came to an abrupt halt. That was the day I was labelled insane. This changed everything. They told me that the body of the woman had been stuffed under the ice, floating like a blue angel. There was a court proceeding, and there were lawyers shuffling to and fro. But I could not remember how she had come to appear under the ice, dead, now surrounded by lines of yellow tape and officers of the law and photographers. My face made the front page--the silly dream of so many--as did hers. I couldn't understand the headline, something about a grisly murder. I wondered why those strange words were so close to my name and picture. An oversight, perhaps? Yes. Those words were meant for someone else, and they had mistakenly placed them beside my picture. It should have read: "Nobel Prize winner honoured in ceremony," or "Local politician wins in landslide." All I knew was that, after one trip to a frozen lake, no one would speak to me except for lawyers, police officers and doctors. I could remember a smiling man in a labcoat who told the judge that I would be safely sequestered in a revolutionary new treatment program. I could remember not trusting his face. I had just thought it all a silly mistake, and it would all blow over once everyone came to their senses.
How was one supposed to react when one is told that one is insane? One scoffs at this, perhaps thinking both the statement and the speaker either as a jest or utterly preposterous. But when the statement was repeated in sombre sincerity, then one began to take notice. Suddenly the doors to the world started closing, and one was plunged into a terrible, solitary silence. That was how it was for me.
But I was becoming aware of the devils that plagued my mind, and was slowly laying them to rest. The bleak tunnel was coming to an end.

18
Dramatis Personae: Thanos

I had woven my web to ensnare what fancies of the flesh I found here. The younger men had the bodies to attract women, but their machinations were clumsy and unbridled. As an older gentleman without the bodily attributes found in excess among the young, I had no choice but to play the only advantage available to me: tell a story with powerful pathos and enchant the other to succumb to my prurient whims. I preferred to dazzle the minds of young women with the charms of a refined and enigmatic storytelling.
"He was walking down the tunnel, footsteps echoing behind and in front of him. Stretching along the interminable length of the tunnel, where the wall met the ceiling, pipes and wires and tubing extended themselves like the arms of a mechanical jellyfish. The monotony of the concrete walls was broken every few lengths by the flickering of a fluorescent light tube. He was walking to the end of the tunnel, without the inspiration to furnish him with the words appropriate to the moment, and he neared the gargantuan, steel doors. Cold air seeped in from underneath them, conflicting with the squalid stench and unbearable heat of the tunnel. And when he opened those steel doors, the entire representation of the tunnel was extinguished by the glory of empty space...and he found himself in a place of mirrors. He went mad at that moment."
"Wow," she said, her head leaning to one side as if the she was allowing the essence of the narrative to enter the portico of her ear.
The story wasn't my own, but could have easily been an allegory of the strange creatures I saw beyond the glass. I overheard Peter telling a story of his own to another pretty woman: "there was a steel rung ladder, streaks of rust where the bolts attached it to the concrete wall. He placed his hand upon the rung and felt the dry cold of it, the foreboding of its nature. He knew not where the ladder would lead him, for he could mentally extend its procession of rungs infinitely upward or downward. Perhaps it would lead him to paradox."
The story was not his own, but a piece of the larger narrative from which I quoted my own story.
In walked Albrecht, and he took a seat beside me. The spell broken, the woman found her way back into the fury of the masses.
"Long time no see," he said, perhaps in an attempt to rattle me.
"I was thinking about the ladder."
"Twist and break it up, and you have genetic symmetry."
"Clever," I retorted.
"My apology. I had thought that once the narrator had overcome you, all that you would have left would be cleverness."
"And what of you? When will the narration tire of you?"
"When the time is suitable to lay me to rest. It is not the death of any given narrative that decides the death of a character--only the natural progression can decide that. What I don't understand is why you just don't give in to your innate will. Obviously, you aspire to be me. What has prevented you from taking your rightful place beside me? What has caused you to fail time and again? Is it that you lack the talent, the initiative, or courage?"
"I'm surprised that I'm still here. There must still be a place for me in the enterprise of narration."
"Or it's too lazy to create anew."
"If that were true, Albrecht, then this could be the reason you're still kicking around. Why, pray tell, are you still here? Too stubborn to die?"
"Just following the script," he said with an impish grin, and then departed.

Segue 2: Peter Ibsen's Aphorisms

1. My mind was always ringing with pain, so ataraxia came in strange narcotic forms. And so the cocaine delusions always came to me in a gorilla suit, kicking the shit out of me as if there was no morning good enough.
2. If I was Incitatus, the government would be riding me all day, going to town with welfare cheques in their hats that they called macaroni. How yankee doodle dumb.
3. I had a friend who named his bull "Dichotomy." The stable was shoddily built (as pop culture keeps slamming into me from both sides, and this gantlet seems to wind forever...), and the bull got out. My friend was laughably gored on the two horns of Dichotomy, and that's why I drink. I have an Honours Bacchus from the School of Hard Scotch--or, I put the "rum" back in rumpus room, and took it out again.
4. Ah, all this imperialist dogma is making me ill. Hanging out with you troglodytes does little for my fabulous reputation as a post-natal Nazi.

19
Dramatis Personae: Thanos

The music here had the tonal quality of sounds emitted from an Orpheus under torture. The DJ's name was "Doctor Nectarine," as if assuming the plasticity and bright plumage of the culture somehow made him clever in a fully assimilable way. This was a time and place of self-immolation made manifest by sounds and scenery that coincided to create a techno-hypnotic simulacrum where everyone could dissolve their individuality. The demonic shrieks of ecstasy could almost be seen in lurid, colourful, liquid display. But beneath this great false exuberance, one could hear the phantom wailing of a culture deep in crisis over itself.
This would be a time of great panic, a time when everyone was linked to the global nervous system of e-life. Weren't we, the clubgoers, the people under observation by those in the scientific panopticon? Panoramic. A funny word. How we deceived ourselves to believe that we could see so much more with the same machines that made us all into one indivisible and monadic culture. We could only confront distorted versions of the self on screen, through our mediation of screens. I just happened to be one clubgoer, in a seething mob of millions, that became painfully aware. Though I was by no means conservative, I had to agree with Burke's warning about quick change. But alas, this was the age in a Heraclitean madness of cacophonic and senseless change.
Who was the master ironic poet that devised this place, the sanitarium and dance club under one roof? Only a poet could be so diabolically creative. It would have been someone with a caustic soul, a peculiar bitterness in tandem with a delicious wisdom. I could picture someone sitting with his hands folded in front of his shadowy and contemplative face, perhaps extracting all the evil he could find in the writings of Descartes.
This strange dance of lunatics and clubbers was a menacing, yet almost similar, collection of those under a hypnotic slavery perpetrated by the most insidious social engineers. Perhaps it was time for the two groups to merge, to be held singularly under one unified gaze.
In my life, I had made several critiques of the club culture, yet when did I pause to consider myself as an inextricable part of the critique process, as a necessary piece of its wildlife? How open was my hermeneutic circle?
Who could overcome the dominant rubrics of this culture, the fashion, the drugs, the money, the lust, the dehumanizing culture? A good rhetorical question should always be followed by a kind of laugh that sets a deep chill in another's bones.
In walked Albrecht again, the great Silenus of our age.
"What is it this time?" I asked, greatly annoyed.
"You and I need to work together one last time."
"What for?"
"To abandon ship. to make our great and final exit."
That was when he told me of his new circle of friends. I would have felt aghast towards his methodology if not for the truths they yielded. He was offering a final laying to rest of our archetypal selves. He painted me a picture of what was to become of the world, and it was both sad and terrifying.
"You are a brilliant man, astute, if not a bit overbearing at times," he said. "I want to welcome you to the old guard. For centuries, we have been lying in wait, hoarding knowledge and making plans. And now is the time for us to leave. When the unseen force turns its back on the world concern, those unsuspecting multitudes will have no cohesion; they will fall apart like figures made of ash. But if we stay, the Dionysian horde will erupt in our midst and destroy us, dragging us down to the infernal core of its suicide."
I could barely make sense of what he said, but I asked, "where will we go?"
"We are just going to leave. It is not a question of where, but a question of doing."
As I pressed my ear to his speech, I could faintly hear the classical tradition in his voice, the Eighteenth-century music, the solid sound of oak tables and bookshelves made to sag under the opaque works of traditionalists past. One could almost envision the grey light of a gloomy day feebly touching through the doily curtains and Victorian armchairs. I was forced then and there to acknowledge that it was for these hidden people I sought recognition. In all my years of combatting the aspects of tradition, I came to realize that I secretly aspired to be accepted by those who most espoused it. Hence, my harsh critique of clubs, the pop culture I felt was a horrible phantasm brought to light. Though I had come from such dilapidation and unrefined quarters of society, growing up to be an organic intellectual, Albrecht was now prepared to offer me the prize of joining the elitist class. By default and experience, I belonged with them--not to wallow in some quasi-Marxist fantasy of equity. No longer would Albrecht be my character foil. Rather, the pattern of the cloth I had been cut from was the same as Albrecht's.
"You had grown into the role of the ArtSphinx in another time, yet with some nagging reservations," he continued. "Now you can become whole by laying them to rest."
"When do we leave?"
"I have a few matters to attend to before we depart. After that, we will go."

20
Dramatis Personae: Doctor Lapin

"Jonkil, I wanted to speak with you."
"More treatments?"
"No, I would not be so base as to deceive you."
"But you refuse to understand me because I am the antithesis of your reason."
"That would not be a very charitable assumption, Jonkil. You know that we are doing all we can to help you."
"How can I be made well when I am kept here in the darkness? It seems to me that you and the other doctors strive to keep us mad."
"Now, Jonkil, your opinions lack the clarity and accuracy of those among us who have more experience in such matters. We know what is best for you, even if you don't."
"Why am I here?"
"In what sense do you mean? You're in the sanitarium because you killed your girlfriend without conscience or memory. You're in isolation because you refused to follow the script like you were asked, and you were upsetting the treatment program of the other patients by fomenting a revolution. As for why you are here metaphysically, I cannot answer that with any certainty."
"The scripting is an experiment, isn't it? We're your guinea pigs."
"Though I refuse to entertain your machinations that we are being cruel, I will admit that the scripting is an experiment. I will not apologize for that, for science relies on experimentation."
"How does it make you feel that the Baconian project is at its final stages, soon to collapse in on itself and take the religion of science with it?"
"I was unaware that this was a Baconian project. Are you particularly knowledgeable about Francis Bacon?"
"When I was a free man, I used to read."
"How wold you like to be free again?"
"Are you toying with me?"
"Not at all."
"What's the catch?"
"No catch. We devised a drug that will cure you."
"I don't trust you."
"Jonkil, my intentions are good. You would be forced to take the drug anyway. I thought that, as a gesture of human kindness, I'd give you the opportunity to take it without physical force."
"Not much of a choice; I take the hemlock out of my own volition or it's forced down my throat."
"You're not in a position where choices are in abundance."
"What's on that tray? Another shot?"
"No, it's the new drug. Well, it's not really all that new, but the circumstances surrounding its planned use are new. Say, Jonkil, do you ever wonder what's going on in that club next door?"
"Why is this drug in a sheet? Wait a minute...This is LSD, isn't it? You want us to take psychotropic drugs? What kind of miracle cure is that?"
"Revenge, Jonkil. I'm not particularly fond of this place either. I have been betrayed, and so I will make them all pay for denying me my moment of glory. Replace me with Albrecht, will they? Pfah!"
"Then let us free."
"But I'm not terribly fond of any of your kind either. You seem to hold sway with the other patients. I want you to urge the other patients to freely take the drug that will be distributed in the next hour. A whole sheet each. It's easy: you fold it all up and chew it."
"Then what?"
"The doors will be open."
"So I am to carry the news, eh? So I'm going to be a liberator..."
"Yes. I'll come along."

21
Dramatis Personae: Jonkil

"Frederick, you're free. The play ends now and forever!"

"Castor, the revolution has been a success. Take this and chew it well. We will parade in the streets."

"Remember the stories I have told you, Alex. We are now free to truly be born."

22
Dramatis Personae: Thanos

I saw the hungry and psychotic faces of the insane pressed against the glass, their hands clawing at it with a sense of great urgency, a fury unabated. The lights, the madness, the soundless dance, were all bringing them to some strange anger. It was like they wanted to free the noise from this containment, to finally connect the dance with its song. I sought Peter who was musing to himself.
"What's going on out there?" I asked.
"Glorious revenge," he said and then began to laugh. "A good friend of mine has promised me a way out of here."
"Will you take me with you? Is there a danger that they might come in?"
"My friend will let them in. And, no, you will not be coming with me. You were right: the diegetical space is yours. How fitting it will be when you are consumed and destroyed by madness itself after spending so long keeping it at arm's length."
"You have betrayed me!" I spat.
"Betrayal is the song of the world. You betrayed yourself; I merely watched and waited."
Albrecht had come back just as the scene between Peter and I had become quite heated.
"What seems to be the problem here?" he asked.
"Ah, the arrogant and immoral scientist has come to witness the upcoming fray," Peter said. "I wonder how you will react when faced with that which you cannot possibly understand. They will tear you apart. Not only are they endowed with the superhuman strength of insanity, but they have been pushed along further with induced psychosis."
On the dance floor, people were thrashing about unaware in an orgiastic fit of music and substances. The song had changed, becoming faster, dominated by a pounding rhythm. We were still exchanging words at this point, yelling over the loudness, while something extremely rare and extraordinary was happening. Every foot in the club was keeping the beat of the music that emanated from the vibrating speakers. Since this particular song had become quite popular here at the Neropolis, the DJ cranked the volume to a deafening level. Meanwhile, the lunatics began pounding against the glass--erratically at first, but by some strange coincidence a choreographed rhythm developed. What made the event extraordinary was when the music, dancers, and the pounding of the lunatics was synchronized into one unified beat. Perhaps physics could explain the strange event I witnessed, some explanation involving the structural integrity of a substance and the configuration of the atoms, and the frequency of the pounding from all sides. Just as the fury reached its apex, the proper frequency was reached, and I saw the glass ripple in one solid wave before shattering. Then the asylum and club were one. This was followed by the rushing tide of the insane, and the screams of clubgoers. The mixture was intoxicatingly chaotic. All I could think about as the crazed mob was upon us, was that the world was going to lose great artists.




Age of Pisces
A Gospel According to St. Jakob

1: The Bones of the Last Post

Old black and white reels of cowboy movies were running across the eyes of the dying American, the humiliated American, the American whose mammoth pride and glory had been ripped from his screaming body. And so a nation of the perverse and the degenerate, now left shivering between their mounds of ash and undying plastic, those symbols of might and prestige, turned to comforts of the past. Like the relics they were, like the citational beasts they became, all that was left was to take refuge in a falsified history where it was told that a God loved them...that a God honoured their ostentatious flag, their rockets, their death anthem. A culture fixated on death by its very stagnation, its very resistance to awakening, would lie fallow before eyeless, oozing idols. I had said this, I had warned the many I had met in the course of my adventures, but the prophet was a madman until he was right. I could recall a telling moment at a typical fast-food chain where mayonnaise and greasy fries went in and out of gluttonous mouths--mouths used to fill themselves with something, something to fill the void in their lives. They once piled into lines before the trough, ready for the feeding frenzy, the downgraded steak and potatoes myth having become a commercialized copy. When one could not find the substance that would satiate them--or were too lazy to search--one relied on the most convenient substitutes: burgers and plastic and styrofoam and...The American made his home in the memories that were not entirely his own, but the residual memories of a nation's schizophrenic identity...a history built on mud, violence, blood and log cabins. A history built on Lincoln, Kennedy, and other assassinations. A history built by Ford, pushed forward by space rivalries, stopped dead on a static screen seen across the globe. And with his spindly fingers twitching over a phantom holster, the American played out the fantasies he learned in cinema. He brought more cancer to his lips and eyes, the same wasting fire of a cancer that was held so patriotically to his hollow chest.
The world changes, changes. It makes no stops. It grants no special status for reflection. It merely moves like automata, a movement without accountability. Did any of us think that we could mimic this world with our irresponsible contraptions and empty ideologies? I watched as the fire I had made swayed like a group of dancers, waiting to ravage or be ravaged. This world, once so consumed with threats, was home only to shame and the realization of alien natures. Some men were enacting strange quagmires of filthy memory in the distance...
If these Americans with their rapidly fading identities were not roaming their desolate homes to re-enact fictional scenarios on horseback or in makeshift saloons, they were burrowing deeper into the ground as if the land was the great Freudian womb. It reminded me of many things. It was the apology made too late to a soil that man had been trained by scripture to hate and fear. And it would be there that man would bury his mammoth pride. The root of that word, mammoth, Tatar: creature who burrowed into the ground, this deduced by the fact that this was where their bones were found. And so these Americans hobbled about furtively, looking for that place to hide from the sun, the struggle between his illumination and shadow. And so man withdrew from that polar struggle, and took Christ with them to new and more tepid hollows.
Had not so many strange beasts had been buried in the American soil of identity, so many myths planted there, I would have felt sad for those who now wandered the face of the land like melancholy relics who had lost the atomic God from between their stinking legs. And now it was their myth-mammoth with its tusks jutting dangerously from the ground that threatened to impale the stragglers, the faint of heart, the gigolo patriots. Oh, that tired soil...So many feet had trodden heavily upon it...So much violation and rape and transgression of its sublime skin. This soil used to carry the weight of burgeoning cities that were as repulsive cysts and boils painted on the topology. But the womb of America--the soil and dreams of the unlimited frontier that nurtured its adopted, European children--was the place that America would die, where the fetus would be ejected stillborn into the cold air. The refrain could be heard all across that tired land: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust...
I had asked for a desert, a place to find calm upon the blankest page of earth's biomes, and was granted my wish. I drew circles in the sand, and circles comforted me. The circle always ended and began at the same place: its invisible foot. And so my circles were all about closure taking place, always at the precipice of a beginning. All the places I had been, the people who I knew, meant nothing anymore; the age did not belong to me as other ages belonged to others. And love was only a fear of impermanence, so I did not love those pathetic masses who huddled around a new liberty they could not understand.
Chaos was a five-letter word, that state of affairs which people were most predisposed to despite their cries for laws and order and churches and a big computer that could dispense cold justice. People were liars, and beggars and thieves. I was not sickened with their lack of virtue, but disgusted with their failed attempts to veil it with distractions and political necessities. A world without feeling or sense was useless to me.
There were a few bombshelters connected by a tunnel system, housing those American moles who desired to resurface one day in a return to the comforts and stability they had once known. In these dark times, it was much easier to be stoic, to make the hard and cruel decisions, to say "let 'em die" to those in need of the medical attention that had disappeared from this land. "Let 'em die" was their refrain, "let 'em die" like cowboys, on horseback, in a duel at ten paces with death at "Ha' Noon." Such a pathetic solitude they suffered, the malingering effects of a culture having burst and spewed forth the rancour of its poison upon the land.
Days turned to years, years into circles. Kings and false idols passed in the illusion of permanence and the ideal of a kingdom that could reign for a thousand years atop tepid and profaned soil. Do not cry for my brothers, I would say, for they ceased to be my brothers when I ceased to share their defect, their urbane mentality, their financial and social concerns. Their defect was a fear of impermanence, but it was a state of affairs I familiarized myself with as another skyline toppled into bleached dirt and debris. Just as the Acropolis before it, then Rome and all its subsidiary provinces, America the Empire fell to its scarred knees before the altar of time. Some blamed a programmed disaster in civilization itself, a faulty widget in its structure, but those people were theorists ad hoc, auxiliary age, foolishly attempting to make sense of the chaos that had been wrought by men while they breathed. So I let the same naked apes play the same games with their time. I would let them think themselves to be paragons of some future becoming, foolishly believing that, with some corrections, a new city would rise in sparkling perfection over the failed disaster before. But these wrecks could never return home merely by making a new one.
I was accompanied by the sound of my breathing and the crunching of my footsteps on debris. These sounds followed me for years as I travelled in circles across the land, touching every coast. Pharaohs had risen in the north and the south, interspersed with rogue tribes of lost cowboys looking for buried liquor stores. Fantasies from history were re-enacted, some wars, and a confusing pastiche of eras erupted in the moment, each one a contaminating and cruel joke against the parody of themselves. Gods and leaders came, created new cities, abandoned them, only to make prosaic returns just when the followers' faith had almost vanished from memory. They were but meek guests at the table of a dismal age, where the upheavals and revolutions went mute like a capped fire. Upon the faces of the devotees, one could see the almost childlike simplicity in their sallow faces, the eyes ringed with dust and sand and shadow. They worked the farms for the various Pharaohs, carried the burden of yet another ancient cross on their back, gave their gold unwillingly to the great men who had night's aura hidden in their cloaks. Domiciliation. This is what the great men promised; a place to live, to erect archives from which the words of a new law may issue in the foul breath of repetition. Hell was continuance, and there was nothing sublime or divine in the Pharaohs, nothing to suggest why they were to be held above other men--failed men. Some survivors, having been habituated to this new necropolitik at the expense of expurgating the memory of old regimes, revived war machines and went about a silly game of command and conquer. I just waited in the wings, learned the stories and strange tongues, and narrated these abroad to the spectres of this land. Two cities named Rom and Ram staged a war to end all wars, and effectively wiped each other off the pages of history, the double erasure of historical eros. And so dreams without bodies lingered upon the land, waiting for someone to seize upon them and make new. Men as the players upon the world stage took on a pathetic quality with all these quasi-historical re-enactments. I had thought I had seen romanticized Arthurian copies riding on horseback, their teeth filled with blackened grit. Ride on, humanity! Ride on to the end of the shelf plateau and into the pit of final amnesia! These re-enactments failed to impress me the way they intended.
At the absolute centre of the land was a pile of bones, bones unearthed to make a statement. They were so meticulously arranged like a grave marker, a Verboten sign to those who would come after. And I knew whose bones they were, for I had once known the man who wore them. His episodes amused me, this man who had a gun and a vilified dream that refused to die. Rather, it took many shapes, it helped build some of the parodies of culture that rose in the south, and eventually resulted in their clamourous decline. When the curtain of death had finally fallen upon him, all that was left was this ignoble sign, this pile of bones reduced to a warning sign. I could remember the days when he still stood, that grey face held up by a proud neck, and those dark eyes that scanned every horizon. A dream consumed him, a dream made manifest as a nightmare plague upon the land: to negate the defect of this land by annihilating its inhabitants, the defectors themselves. He could afford to stand tall and strong with his belief that it was merely rectifying a mistake, a global mistake, evolution's glitch, and to restore all to a Rousseau-esque simplicity. And once he had done this, with the aid of the natural forces of civilization towards its own suicide, he rose to become a god among men. And like a god, he was symbolically crucified shortly after suffering the deification by his people. Like Christ, he returned, a stubborn idol that rusted with age yet refused eternal dormancy in the frescoes and thin sheets of stainglass menageries. His religion, if it could be called that, would not be forced into the exile of the fetish, of being repressed into the lore of a simulacrum. With a grandiose return, he led his people from complacency, but he inadvertently led them to their tragic end. Death came to heroes with vengeance. A man who would not side with being distinguished as being a preacher or a murderer was restored to order, made into a martyr for a cause that fell from his lips and into the madness of misinterpretation.
His bones were an ominous sign I would not have in a land that should have outgrown its symbols and myths. So I scattered the bones, and set Enoch the god free. I would not stand to watch as another arrogant society made a rude idol of that pure man, a wooden relic weighted down with Roman denari made of tin and bad faith. This land that was his territory had been surrendered, and now his domain was perhaps seven feet of the country to house his remains. Some would be so trite as to call it a grave, but everything is a grave, everything is grave.
I laughed for a full hour. I had also come across the corpse of a woman that I freely defiled. This land had no more taboos, for the social framework that acted as a safe parergon around human behaviour had gone the way of all the other ghosts. The land would be free of taboo, of sin, of symbol, and of legends spoken reverently from one to another by the fire. This dead world revolved around a dead sun with only my eyes hung like two Foucault's pendulums silently recording movement. I came to love this world for its impermanence, that it would one day be swallowed by an engorged sun.
There were still a few cowboys roaming the sands, alive in the lawlessness of a nation that lost its gavel somewhere in the clamour and death and debris. Perhaps the gavel was never here to begin with, like some desperately hoped for dream that was never made manifest...like belief never realized, or like the question that never received an answer. Was it like this in Europe, I thought? There was no way of confirming this; there were no airports or boats. So with this body, I tortured and beat those who crawled along the face of this vast tomb. The only question they could form was "why?". Why? The barriers had fallen, my brothers, the barriers between the popular and the sanitized, between the rebellion and the sterile aristocrats. It all began when the accoutrements and fads of youth was subsumed by the market capitalists. It was at that point that the decline began. The chemically seduced cogs of corporate America went mad and the impermaculture of the hedonists had already been converted to the cult of insanity. Two psychoses met in an avalanche of falling glass, fury, blood, and razor blades. The flag became a rag, a meaninglessness took hold. Not likely that those who have taken leave of their senses would heed the slogan "don't tread on me". The flag, the seemingly immutable drapery around the arrogant body of nationalism and the patriot, was trodden underfoot. I could remember laughing with joy and surprise like a devil who was pleased with the way his plans turned out. But I was not the archtempter of the demise; I merely knew that it was they who thought the decline to be ironic.
Those who had left epistles of the aftermath in the earth, lugubrious farewells sopping with tortured sentiment, had gone on. I unearthed the ones I could find and did the land a favour by destroying them, scattering leaves of human history's imposition in the wind. Those fools had defecated these tragedies in the spirit of some future vindication, to continue the historical record, or perhaps to be the last chosen few who could stand at the end of history and righteously close it--just like so many apocalyptics who took some fiendish delight in crying that the world ended tomorrow. One cannot prolong the human species with mere bits of paper, but it was humanity's weakness and folly: its need to be remembered. Ah, memory is so fleeting, and the earth continued to turn without being burdened with such frivolities. I wouldn't give them this satisfaction of granting them a closure, just as I wouldn't Enoch's bones to remain some twisted sign of defeat. Their errors had to remain ineradicable.
Today I had buried my name. What use was a name when no one was left to utter it? To be named was a means for separating oneself from others. In the absence of others, the presence of my name struck me as absurd. The waiting was over, and the curse had been lifted. I would no longer sit upon the throne of alienated privilege as the world unfolded toward extinction, and neither would I have to bear the incredible burden of having a name, an identity.
Gradual and thorough states of decay. I found a car, but the car wouldn't start. I came across an abandoned groceteria, but it was empty. And when it rained, any remaining buildings were too dilapidated to keep me dry. Other buildings had their bellies torn open and filled with drifting dunes of ubiquitous desert. Any garments I found to clothe my cold body were worn through and unusable. All utility had vanished. All the songs I had known in the past had faded from my memory. So I whistled tunes without melodies. The silence ceased to be eerie, but this feeling was replaced by a crippling boredom that found me sprawling in the sand...in gradual and thorough states of decay.
Ever since I had encountered Enoch's bones, the last post of the civilized world, my life had been captured in a frozen void. I found myself doing ridiculous things, like attempting to suffocate myself in abandoned fridges, or hurling myself into piles of sharp and rusty scrap metal. Mind and body became disjointed, a separation of consciousness took place. I would whine and moan for hours before becoming aware that I had even made a sound. This was everlasting life steeped in sour wine. This was me making the best of it.

2: The Minotaur's Map

I deduced from several premises that it was approximately year something-or-other a.d., but could all the premises be proven true and the conclusion false, thereby making the form of my argument invalid? Surely a counterexample could be produced, but that was the way of men, of analytic men. And analytic philosophers were like Antaeus: they were invincible if they remained grounded. That ground of logic had fallen away into the murk and swampy hell of paradox.
Bravo was an old word meaning villain. And Bravo it was, for I found one house still standing with its occupant being an eternal Bravo with many names: The Wandering Roman, Castellemare, Barber Drac. I found it odd, yet strangely amusing that that relic was still among this empty world of titanic dunes. To call him a man would be to entirely miss the point; he was not among us in the average sense, but hung like a phantom visage in a gnarled oak's bough, or that eerie feeling of disquiet one experiences when struck with the realization of one's own finitude. That face, that cold brother at the other end of the cemetery, that moment of quiet on a grey day when bare branches clicked together like crooked drumsticks...all this was Castellemare, a man with an exhaustive list of names, a man who was expelled from the shadowy depths of which no one could comprehend. I used the large door knocker in a parody of social customs that no longer existed.
The door opened, and a thin man with the smile of a satyr stood beneath the archway, a look of quiet expectancy in his dark eyes.
"Yes? Seeking refuge, I presume?" he said with a chilling laugh.
"It's a desert out there," I said, the first words I had spoken to another in so many years.
"That it is. Do I know thee? Should I count the ways or compare thee to a summer's day? Those who come unannounced to my door usually greet me with a name, some silly utterance that they think will identify them from others."
"I had thought no others existed, and so I freed my name. I suppose I will have to arrest it again and suffer to have it once again across these dry lips like some profane incantation."
"You needn't trouble yourself if it will be such a problem. And seeing as I doubt the existence of others in the normal sense, I reason that you are one among men."
"Yes."
"How far back?"
"Well before the rise and fall of Enoch."
"First or second rise?"
"First."
"Twentieth century?"
"Yes."
A look of fiendish delight washed over his face. He printed his lips upon his hands that had formed a fragile cage in a gesture of contemplation.
"Ah, Last Man," he said, "I was wondering how long it would take you to arrive. I have been waiting for you an awful long time. Pardon my rudeness; I don't get many visitors--at least of the tangible variety. Please, come in."
His home was both vast and lush with decorative riches hailing from a panoply of ages. There did not seem to be an end to the interior, as if it were a tesseract. Busts of goddesses both known and obscure rested on pillars of various sizes and composition. There were paintings by frightful men, depicting scenes even a Bosch might shrink from. He led me to a parlour and bade me to sit on a purple velveteen couch.
"You live here?" I asked, partially unable to conceal my amazement at the immensity and packed richness of this place. When one is accustomed to the sight of empty desert broken only by the occasional ruins painted in grey and brown, vibrant colours appear alien to the eyes, blinding.
"Where else? I would not choose to live out there in that dry death, among scorpions, snakes, and an unforgiving sun. May I offer you a drink? Some venison?"
"No, thank you. My body is not familiar with such luxurious eating and drinking. It will make me very ill. Where did you find venison of all things?"
"I have my ways. So enough of me. Tell me of your travels," he asked, seating himself across from me with a patient look in his eyes. I could faintly hear carnival music in the background, the sounds of a ferris wheel. This perturbed me because there was nothing to suggest their presence but the sounds. He bade me to follow him on a sojourn through his house. We walked through several adjacent rooms, each one more radically different than the last, until we reached a room and stopped. It had marble porticos and melted images of tortured saints. A small stream flushed its way through in the middle of the floor, bisecting the room. As to the stream's source, I could not even begin to venture a guess. The painted bottom of the stream sent up a tempest of wild colours on the ceiling. When I looked up, there were birds made of gold with ruby eyes, suspended at various heights.
"What's this place?" I asked.
"It's kind of like my scrying pool, my place of refuge from the hurly-burliness of these desolate days. I come here to meditate several matters that shoot through my mind. It is one of the few places not in the iron jaws of temporal succession. So, again, tell me of your travels. if you're not too weary to speak."
"What's there to tell? I stood atop my hill of privileged yet detached observation--that tower of disconnection from my fellow man--and watched the sun go down on so many things. At first, I felt it in myself to play humanity's midwife and nurture it back to health, but it was a task worthy of Sisyphus. Their labyrinths of despair were too crooked and confusing for me to penetrate, and I feared that I too would become lost and embroiled in their hollow ways. I watch now as time crumbles unused highways across a defunct land that no longer resembles my earliest memories of it. I remember Enoch's followers rising in the south, the sad parody that it was, while other foetal nations hurled empty threats with impotent, ideological fuselages. I saw the great Pharaoh Enoch and his army of theological slaves march to their deaths in a bloodless clash of metal on metal. I remember the violet and crimson curtain of night that followed, and then the awful silence that told me that the abyss had unfolded upon the earth. And I have done terrible things, but no one is left to reproach or forgive me my deeds. All is desert, all is ruin, all is failure. There is no benevolent God in the sky to watch me, to offer love in times of abandonment and isolation. With man went his gods, all into the abyss of complete annihilation. All was desecrated, and all was made into dust."
"You know what I think?" he said whimsically, as if he had not heard a word I said. "You're a man who is hungry for purpose, and I am a man who can give you that purpose."
"How so?"
Castellemare rummaged through a pile of papers he had at a nearby hutch. "What does a new terrain need?"
"I don't know. Tears of bitterness and sorrow? Sepulchres erected to honour or defame the once-conquerors?"
"A map! Be my map-maker, you without a name. Though deserts may appear bland and void of distinguishing map-worthy characteristics, one must look closer...at the design, the shifting labyrinths of sand, the overall lattice-work of a struggling biome. Sand, my friend, is struggle. It rips across the face of the land with the aid of a cruel wind, it lies in wait with its sparkling skin, it appears like purple folds of skin in the darkness, it houses all manner of dry creatures that hiss and sting. It is infested with struggle."
Cutting off his tirade, I asked: "why do you need a map of a dead world?"
"Why would I need maps at all? When you have lived as long as I have, knowledge becomes a collectible trinket to regard with some slight amusement, to place in a vast archive for future enjoyment. It is collected for posterity as well."
"It all seems pointless to me."
"And you have better things to do?" he said with an impish grin. "A busy schedule ahead of you, perhaps? I'm sure plunging yourself into the mire of existential futility or the residual effects of Christian guilt can take a backseat for awhile. I suppose you want some extrinsic worth to follow the task, some teleological aim worth striving for. Very well, though it does make you more human than you think. What if I were to tell you that there is a minotaur loose somewhere in the world? Would you be more inclined to do me this favour?"
"And what would you have me do? Slay mythical beasts?"
"Don't be so prosaic. Do not slay the beast; join the beast, learn from it, enter the heart of its secret lair with naked humility and openness in your chest. When that is done, and the map is complete, I will have an aleph of this world. You will perchance see many marvels in your travels, clusters of illusions and iridescent fantasies exhaled from the earth--an earth that is purging itself of its secrets and fables and myths. Let this convalescent earth have its strange fever, and enter into its tremorous hands. Let it overcome the sickness it has suffered for countless centuries."
And so the NihilCarta was born in this dialogue. From his words he had made for me a mission to fulfill, like the most loyal Templar. A map with empty meanings, an ambiguous legend with which to read it, a plotting of vast nothingness itself. I left Castellemare's villa accompanied by the sound of an organ striking the same eerie chord again and again. This was Day One. Had he sent me on a mad quest for the self in that desolate habitat? Would I find myself on this map like some moving point that traces the contours of a world?
Did I remember a cataclysm, like a Son of Homer who rehearsed an old memory for the purpose of turning it to lyrical verse? I could remember the strange ambivalence that washed over me in that one epiphenomenal moment. There was a feeling of crushing despair and exuberant glee when I saw those gigantic, concrete and glass hulks sway to and fro before collapsing as if their spines had been yanked from them. The architectural puppets had fallen like dead sacks to the hungry ground...the little wooden boy would not come to life, would not dance, would not tell a lie.
And where did civilization and time end? What was the colophon at the final chapter of human history? At Enoch's bones. There would be no crescendo ending, no satisfying return to order, no dependable genre that would have codified that one moment when humanity collapsed like the final stage of a rotting squash.


3: Desert Friends

I strolled through the eroding ruins of New Shikego, dead before it had been born...the clone without the strong constitution of its now dead, older brother. From one dead frontier to the next, I was taking notes for the map. Perhaps the ruins would be gone by the time the map was complete, but I had given up the foolish hope of any permanence under the sun. As I made my way, I caught a glimpse of a pair of dark eyes flitting like a cat's behind a pile of automobile wreckage. Stopping and turning my head slowly, I could see that the eyes were vaguely human. What manner of creature could have survived all this time?
"Come out," I addressed it, but the unseen figure only let out a yelping laugh. What was born from this desert was merely more shades of madness. The figure darted across the broken street with great celerity, giving me a wide-eyed, creepy grin--a familiar grin that I had made before a mirror in my most foul moments. I was in shock for the figure was me--or someone parading as me in the unending mirages this desert created. Was he a clone or was it just a startling hallucination? If someone wanted to be, I would not stop him. Let those who wanted my life relive all the failures and limitations it came with. This was not the first instance that I had doubles in this world, play-acting a role on my behalf. There were many Jakobs, just as there were several Buddhas, forever reflecting in a pool of subnarratives that extended in all directions; there were many Jakobs as there were many Christs in differing frescoes and stained glass windows, as there were Borgeses in dead libraries, as there were many scorpions skittering across the cool landscape under the cover of the moon.
The strange figure stayed out of sight, playing a game of cat and mouse, and so I began to reflect on just exactly what I did feel when the world faded away. O labyrinths in the sky, labyrinths on the land, the complexity of this land made us all lost souls. When another dream evaporated into harsh wakefulness--the dream this time: democracy and peace--death descended upon the people towering above and scurrying below. I could remember finding myself, like so many others, at a church. Dead vines hung from the steeple like the straggly hair of an old crone. The preacher at the pulpit was not only a holy man, but a wandering gunman as well, a bible on one hip and a pistol on the other. He bellowed and gestured wildly, wrapping his mouth around the words Rapture, Judgement and Revelation. He spoke with the religious intensity of one who took a sadistic delight in being right, perhaps a religious smugness that came bounding right out of scripture itself. Perhaps others were desperate and despairing enough to put this preacher on the saddle of that moral high-horse. I just laughed, for I was not part of that congregation, spiritually, morally, or otherwise. Perhaps he took offense to my chortling in the back pews, for his face twisted sourly. As if called upon to speak, I stood and delivered my own judgement, free of God: "when will men stop hiding in churches when all goes wrong?" The preacher advanced on the congregation, and with a pointing finger said: "and when will men like you, rustling in the shadow of God, stop hiding in the self and the petty concerns thereof?" He was clever, perhaps too clever. I said to him: "you fill these people's minds with old fantasies when they desperately need an escape from Christ." But the preacher curled his lip in disgust. "This is the age," he said, "prophesied to John who was granted visions from God, that Christ becomes His own Father, coming to fill the much-needed role of a wrathful, Old Testament God." I was not a pious man, and so I wasn't called upon to understand. But the scripture had not been laid to rest...
I heard my double moving among the wreckage like some nimble-footed creature.
"Pale shade of me," I called out, "if this is your home, show yourself."
My double came forth with a bowl of blood, and in some parody of worship, he poured it at my feet. The sentiment only served to irritate me further with this menagerie.
"Last man," his voice curdled, "this place is no place, no home to anyone. This place is home to one who is not a man; Death owns this place, and His domain is eternal...ever-increasing as days fold over into nights."
Two hunchbacked, diseased men hobbled out from the rubble to join my double. They looked more like attendant demons than men. One pointed a gnarled finger at me and said, "pierce thee and thy bones do not break." The other said, "He has come back to the place of silent deliverance. Let us show him that we have tended his flock."
The hobbling creatures led me beyond the skeletal ruins of the once-metropolis. My double, seeing the wariness in my eyes, bade me to follow. It remained that I had never crossed this place in my earlier travels.
I beheld aa disturbing sight, enough to disquiet even the most insensitive soul: a walled city made of human bones, girding a monstrous pile of skulls. Some walls were held together with mortar, and others stood like lofty pillars. The architecture, if it could be called that, was crude and morbid.
"Behold: Golgotha!" my double cried with reverence and joy. This was a noteworthy landmark to include in the NIhilCarta, though I almost refrained from making mention of it at all due to twisted spirit in which it was built. I marked my map with the title, 'New Golgotha; circa ???? Anno Domini/ 35 Anno Enochi'. The land was bald, and not even a blade of hardy scrubgrass pushed through the rocky and dry soil--as if nature itself were repulsed by this spectacle, this diseased blight of skeletal mass. Most of the land was exposed bedrock where the Golgotha stood.
"And when are the crucifixions?" I asked, still disturbed by this clumsy architectural metaphor.
"Crucifixions are ongoing," one hunchback said.
"Ghosts wander and weep here," another said.
"The people crucified themselves against the backs of gods," my double said.
"What nature of gods?" I asked, curious to observe how complete his madness was.
He gave me a queer look as if I should have already known. "Techno-gods, chemi-gods, gods of science, gods of greed, gods of pride, gods of whores, of chrome, of acetate, of polyurethane, of prepossession, of telematics, of phantasms, of pointless viscera. The list is as long as the ledgers of a Domesday book. To the west, there is a gallery where the different gods are depicted."
The thought sickened me, for to preserve the idols in the warmth of permanence was an insult to a shifting land of the ephemeral. These bone-collectors were an insult as well; to what, I could not say, seeing as a decency claim was out of order. It was the return of the Biblical, and I loathed repetition. When Bibles came, new people would soon follow...like flies to a carcass.
At that moment, my consciousness of the scene around me faded to black. My body sank to the ground. While in this state, I had visions of places, impossible places that defied Euclidean geometry. I heard strange choral voices, but not human voices--the music of angels. My body, not a body, made of a substance, not a known substance, refracted and displaced itself in several dimensions--like the body of an astral traveller. The music continued, and I was brought to a place, not a place. A war was about to unfurl before my eyes, upon an alien landscape that seemed to extend and diminish simultaneously. I realized then that in my waking days, every moment of life was framed in an eternity of sensa, of strange currents and vibrational flickers. Something watched behind my eyes watched as the events unfolded. I saw Christ upon a steel-studded horse the colour of fire, himself wearing an unexplainable armour that had no similarity with any armour on earth. He was about to launch into battle. I thought, "how power hardens the lightest of hearts." The son was about to oust the father in a natural battle of Oedipean succession, of new dominance. An avatar had ended the age, and Christ was the avatar above. Like Cronus, Uranus, Zeus, and all the fathers of before, the son was about to repeat the pattern, to travel the diameter of a temporal circle that revolved both necessarily and eternally. A succession of sons, and Christ too would one day be replaced by his own son--as it was written. This was the archetypal cycle of seasons above, and I could see clearly how their copies worked on earth. Rome would rise, fall, and rise again before falling again. A species on earth would become dominant, become extinct, and would be replaced by remote descendants. Just as the sun was born, it would die, and a new body would take its place; the son of the sun. Orbits would decay and orbits would be established anew. My atoms collected, and would be dispersed again before collecting in a new form. A cycle of life, a cycle of death: two circles merged and imposed upon one another in a seamless fashion. A cycle of space, a cycle of time. And it was in that circle, at the centre, watching its revolutions again and again. What brought on this bizarre vision? I knew it to be genuine, for my mind was incapable of creating such an exotic and transcendent scene.
When I returned from the lapse, my double and the bone-collectors were gone. Wind blew through the hollow structures of the Golgotha and the surrounding ruins.

4: Cinemata (Exergue)

Sermon to the Sand/Ode to Nietzsche

O what was once your magnificent ant hill, you glittering hive-dwellers. How you travelled across this land like locusts, stripping the land bare and devouring the fruits of the land with your heavy mandibles of progress! O how you chewed and nibbled while the tunes of justification hummed from your rubbing legs! But you came to realize that the Queen was dead, and all this time you had been stuffing a corpse! Did your translucent wings and shiny bodies sparkle that day, O insect race of humankind? How many corridors did you carve in the soil before you realized all was for naught? Rich were your stores, but poor and empty were your hearts. For what did you toil so blindly toward that you sacrificed all things near and dear? Humankind, you conquered your sluggard ways by going to and becoming the ant, but when you looked upon your Lord, you saw only yourself! Your Lord--like you!--was mounted above and pinned to a board and placed on the credenza of entomological failures. Your Lord was not a man to you, but a pretty object, a trinket representing you!
And when the birds plucked you from the air, and when the land swallowed your food, did you sit there with wide eyes of wonder then? 'How can our pretty Lord leave us to this fate?' you all cried. 'Back to the tablets!' those of you in priestly raiment shouted, as if a detail had been overlooked there. When your tablets bade you to subdue the earth, you did. O how you ravaged the land in an effort to subdue this maternal earth! 'Were we being too literal?' you pondered. All the while, I warned: 'insects may be led to their own doom,' but you did not listen; so I stopped my warnings. And when I was silent, you begged me to speak. But when I was speaking, you swarmed around me with your loud buzz and stung me until I was silent.
Your beautiful episodes of flight and fancy were cinematized for your pleasures, O insect race of humankind. And why? Surely because your vanity and pride called for it. You felt yourselves atop the throne of life, justified in issuing edicts and sentencing nature to death. You would pin nature like you pinned your Lord, making of it a pretty object, but you really pinned yourselves!
Did you fear the spiders among you who spun their vile webs and entangled you? When your obligations and responsibilities were too much, you tried to break free--but the more you struggled, the more entangled you became! You yourself were subdued as the venom of money and necessity was pumped into you. Cry, break, shout, plead!--but to no avail; the others were content in their web, their hopes made flaccid and numb by watching the cinema of the self before them.
Divided you were. Some called for community, with banners that read: 'Be like the Bug!' while others called for the contrary: 'Horde your Treasures and be Free!' To be like the bug made all men unremarkable, like a bland porridge of being stewing and bubbling grey in a pot. To horde treasures in this world led men to greed and isolation and the shedding of blood. These two partisan groups of your kind fought so bitterly, and no consensus was made. One heralded a red mongoose beside a hammer and sickle, and the other a black snake that ate gold coins.
And O how you spoiled your own homes by evicting love of the earth! What took the place of this love? The foolish pride you took in those meaningless corridors you carved with your lives! O what love could you find in those dark places, those filthy and winding trenches where you all marched in sad procession? Did I see you in one of those lines, a line that seemed to have no beginning or end? And when I asked why you were there, and what the line was for, you could tell me neither. You saw the line and wished to be among your kind, and so you lined up behind someone and waited. But you idlers, what awaits you at the end of the line? Nature does not dispense rewards to fools and idlers, be them many or few! But you would not leave that foul line, for you would be alone, and to be alone among men is to have courage. So wait in file and receive your due! A ship of fools, a harvest of the weak. Oblivion opens its abyssal mouth at the end of the line, and you all fall into it one by one, alone.
And while I sat in the meadow of peace, away from your lines and webs, you spoiled that too. With your constant empty buzzing and incessant biting, my peace was shattered like a broad and serene lake shaken with the throwing of stones. Swatting as I did, I was outnumbered. And the mass profusion of you drowned out the sweet song of the meadow. And when I built a home away from you, was it not you who ate out the timbers from beneath it? O you termites of destructive envy, would you not let me to peace? How was I to escape your mad buzzing? But you were insects, and insects had short lives. I would only have to wait.
O insect race of humankind, you did not bury your dead. Instead, you animated them by cinematizing their more fanciful episodes and echoing their buzzing. Why would you so ignobly deny their return to the soil, you wretched creatures? You spoke the names of your fallen like incantations, to conjure up their spirits to play upon your stage of amusement. Did you fear the soil, O you creatures who had so vilely subdued it? But the earth's vengeance was not annihilated, but only deferred. So defer, you silly beasts, for you cannot defer forever. The day will come when you cannot keep the cork stopped on that bottle of nature's vengeance. And in that bottle, the pressure is mounting! No matter if you relocate your hives, for the vengeance will return all things to their primordial harmony. But you fear this, you creatures who will not bury your dead! I laugh at your futile deferral. Soon, your mad and incessant buzzing will cease. Soon, your husks will be returned to the soil where they belong. And soon the cinemata will end. Nature is real, and has no need for screens, so let the projectors and screens fall to the ground like autumn leaves. All will be taken up in the great tempest of nature's revenge!
O you praisers of the moon and stars and the gods who you believe live behind them, you hold prophecies between your jaws while your antennae is held to the sky. Your high falutin hopes of salvation will not manifest here! There is no magical grove in the sky, or an eternal hive where you will be united with great knowledge--for great knowledge was never yours to hold! O you praisers of the moon and stars, continue to read your hopeful signs in all you see, fabricating fantasies that please your ears, for the cosmos is as it is without your projections. And the cosmos makes no exceptions, possesses no prejudice, grants no prophecies! What you see and believe is only the veil of your silly hope! O you praisers of the moon and stars, discard your fantasies and accept the inevitable fate of your hive brothers. Oblivion is all that awaits you.
How I will dance when your species makes its grand exodus back to the earth from whence it came. With your death will come a wonderful silence, so that I may finally know peace. Your hives will fall into ruin, your pheremones will be lost and scattered in the wind, and the buzzing will have its last faint vibration before silence cups it between its paws.

5: Final Temptations

Not my first choice of comfort, but one gets used to sleeping on a bed of sand, under a blanket of wind, with the lulling melody of rattlers. When I awoke, I traced designs in the sand until mid morning, trying to make sense of the aberrations I had witnessed thus far. As the sun crawled across the sky, and I had begun my journey anew, my load had become heavy to my weary body. Upon my back, I carried a large quantity of paper to track my progress, to mark my descent, to construct the NihilCarta, to sink my dusty frame into the sand where all traces were wiped clean by morning. Having only myself as company, I finally abandoned thoughts centered on ideas I had about the world and its workings. It seemed absurd to me to have ideas and no one to share them with, to test them against the minds of others. I was convinced that my meeting of my double and the bone-collectors was a figment of my overheated mind. The desert sun produced all manner of monsters, and I was not in a state where my senses were to be trusted unquestionably.
The mark of humanity's defect was still on the land, in the air, and yet I could not fathom how that could be so. I ruled our Castellemare, for he was less of a man that an phenomenon, a convergence of wailing phantoms produced by the unceasing wind. But where was the source of the defect that still lingered? I searched the land for years and had not come across anything that would suggest its source, its springing continuation. And then it came to me in a proposition: as long as there is a thinking being on the earth, the earth would not be free of the human defect. A revelation, really. Seeing as I was the only thinking being present, the defect was me. I was also the minotaur Castellemare spoke of, for all the winding threads and corridors of the labyrinth led to me: the Last Man. A monster, a half man. Was I not the Last Man? And I would always be the Last Man. A great sorrow gripped me and I wept, a freeing sorrow that gives way to joy in time. I wanted the earth to be free and pure again, yet my existence prevented it from being so. If I could have remanded my life to oblivion...Ah, how sickly poetic it is to make the minotaur make the map of the labyrinth of his own prison! To trace the walls of his incarceration!
What did it mean to be the Last Man? I was accountable for the horrors that humankind visited upon the earth. To bear the brunt of such a gigantic blame was not easy to reconcile. All the errors were now mine to hold, as I inherited the mantle of humanity's great folly. No suitable reparations could be made. I could not suffer enough for what humanity had done. Though my skin was blistering from the sun, giving me the pain and appearance of a leper, it was not enough...The pain had to penetrate deep into my heart and make a leper of my soul. All I had was yesterday, and the creeping terror that brought in these quiet and solitary moments--like the regretful reminiscing of an old man at the edge of his life. And yet--
And yet I did not desire death. Though humanity had surrendered ownership of the world, the world still had claim on me. It would decide when my time here wa forfeit. To take one's own life was the human way, not nature's. Suicide would only prolong the defect.
I came across a hint of another's presence. There was the smell in the air of a woman pursued, and some letters in the sand made by straight and sure fingers. I could make out only a few letters, but the rest was lost in the blowing wind that tossed another blanket of sand which erased the traces of most of the writing. It was intended to make me follow. I searched the bare landscape with the careful eyes of a hunter, and I saw no caves, no lean-tos, no carelessly erected shacks, no tell-tale huts, no refashioned ruins. The trace vanished, and even the letters I had read were now overtaken by the erasure of sand and wind. My long and thin shadow cast a black line across the smoothness of this earth--an earth I was unsure of, what with its shifting face, its eroding plateaus. I called out with a voice made hoarse by too many years spent breathing sand and debris; it came forth as little more than a stifled, rattling moan. And what sound I did manage to make was absorbed by the wailing wind. But I knew who the other was, and it did not violate or contradict my status as being the Last Man: the being roaming the vast stage of North America was no other than the Last Woman. This was the circularity of so many stories embedded in the human consciousness like a perpetually unborn violet awaiting its time to push through the soil and sway in a new world. Romulus was the name of the first and last great king of Rome: circular. Adam and Eve, by scriptural account, were the first people...And there would be two last people...A balance. Perhaps this conflict, started so long ago between the human progenitors, would have to be resolved among the last two. A tautology, really: man and woman results in, at the bottom line of human history, man and woman. I would have to work out the differences with her, perhaps get my share of justice for being tempted; and she for my being so ignorant and fallible. Someone had to play these roles, and it was decided that it would be us...we creatures fashioned from clay and bones. For now I had only the interpretation of epistles written in a moving sand. But even the minotaur knows that there is no way out.

6: Repeat

Embroiled as I once was in a world so characteristically on amphetamines and civil politeness, and nineteenth century citations, this situation of the silent earth had allowed me the tranquility in which to collect myself--a much needed rest after the clamour and din of mad centuries. Tranquility was also a good wellspring for creativity, though different than the creative inspiration born from urban chaos. The NihilCarta was a sobering artistic act, one that demanded a kind of focus and attention not afforded me in the chaos that preceded this silent age. I had compiled several bits of data, reams of notes, and wild descriptions supporting the most seemingly banal places. It was once told to me that a great artist could create fire in the depths of a sea, make men appear larger than mountains, and make the sun look cold.
I really wish there could be more story in all this, but great stories--be I too weary and lazy to recount them--have necessary requirements that a blank earth lacks. A story has people and a human place. A story has beer steins or night clubs or cars or buildings or people in all manner of complicated relationships. All this story had in its tool kit were ruins and a narrator having fallen victim to a great malaise...and sand. It was my experience with stories that an apocalyptic post-civilization setting had a small band of survivors...and resolution, perhaps in the form of rebuilding what was lost. But this story was only a blank page from which words expelled forth like the rambling of an aphasic.
Leaving the Golgotha behind, I went in the direction my double suggested: to that profane gallery of ominous idols, of the purely bombastic, a place filled with a pomp hailing from the past. The sun peeked from behind a wall of clouds, drying up the gentle smattering drizzle that had fallen earlier. The sand was still moist, and stuck to the underside of my boots like a paste, making my steps feel heavy. A dark patina of bronze lit the horizon, my skin, the few snakes that crossed my path with glistening skin. A pink wash appeared over the broad paint strokes of passing storm in the sky. I looked up at the sky, that sharp division between the magnificence of the sun and the fleeing storm clouds, and could remember a time when I wanted to go up there. I wanted to die and be brought up to a Valhalla I had painted for me in my readings of ancient Nordic texts...or even the Valhalla as narrated by Knut Hamsun, poeticized with the flair of Mallarme, and the piety of Kant. This place, by comparison, was the Greek shadow land, purgatory, limbo, the furthest distance from Baalbek. I did not want to be here to suffer among old, dead gods...or to suffer in the solitude of a terrible Duat with not even the blessing of a passing Pharaoh's eyes. All was shrouded in a kind of plasticized darkness, even when the sun shone like a cyclopean beacon of pure radiance.
The place was a collision of temples, sacred halls, golden calves, and half-erected sepulchres. To the superficial eye, there appeared to be an architectural and aesthetic order, but one would eventually learn that this place violated the laws of perspective--in every sense of the word...And not in the clever way of an Escher, but in the twisted dimension of Artaudian madness. There was no distinct line where I stood as an innocent viewer and where the saccharin scene of that horrid pastiche stood, like one passed through the other like a blurry smudge, a disguised contranym, a Heraclitean polemos. I was both part of and separate from the strange work before me. The awful, tortured faces of unrecognizable saints carved in sculpture and relief bade me to have faith--but those faces mocked me my fumbling toward this faith. I had seen something like this, and experienced the easy loss of faith, in Castellemare's villa. From these immobile faces came a packed question that slammed into my mind: you believe now, but why? An implication that my faith was dishonest and profane, that I merely wished I could believe. But belief was to have a blind eye that could somehow see with the greatest acuity. This entire place was a kind of self-defeating faith that opened up a passage for one to worship, and then turned the crank once more to barrage the faithful with philosophical doubt.
Upon a throne made of fastened computer paraphernalia sat a half-finished Christ who was gesturing with impotent anger. His seated poise reminded me of a great despotic emperor that ruled tyrannically, yet with the physical fragility of a child. His figure was composed of a wire sculpture adorned with a papier mache of dollar bills that were unravelling like the bandages of a mummy. Within his exposed chest was the representation of humanity's most dangerous plaything: a brightly coloured double helix fashioned from painted wooden blocks. Around his neck was a large clock with bent arms. The mouth of this Christ was partly open. exposing the black painted gavel that was to serve as his teeth...jammed in there without care. And he seemed to whisper: "ABC, 123," as if satirically summoning the dangerous simplicity of the gene and the atom. And the mass would reply: "GCATTCAGG, 100101010101!" in a refrain they thought was holy to the highest. A caption in the bottom right, by his foot, read: 'And from His mouth came a sword that cleaved the impious.' Though all was dead silence in this place, the loud audacity and the imposing figures erected here was deafening. Would I dare to be heard in this place without ears, that screamed with the voices of old phantoms?
Below the Christ figure, marching in file, were Romans with rusted swords and battered briefcases--a hybrid of the ancient with its more modern descendent. I felt the religious irony this piece was trying to convey to be a bit overreaching, done with the tact of a philistine.
In the middle of a garden littered with children's bones and toys was a monolithic granite sculpture of John Wayne. The only way I could describe it was that it had a terrible gravity, the very essence of its stoniness projected from the earth itself. And what a peculiar character to have immortalized, in flowing robes like purple royalty. But was he not an institution all his own, the mouthpiece of a cowboy sentiment born from undying dreams of open frontiers and subjugation? Wayne and Buffalo Bill and the Wyatts: all faithless bravado infecting the dreams of the confined American for decades. Kneeling at Wayne's feet, made of delicate and cracked porcelain and painted with a fine brush, was Marilyn Monroe.
A statuette of Buddha sat at the entranceway of the next spectacle. From a large crack in his head was a wax representation of Genghis Khan on horseback. The inscription on the bottom read: 'Life is suffering/live and die on your horse.' Another polluted and clumsy attempt at irony. What demented creature had erected these monuments?
Two Doric columns contained between them a mosaic billboard in dedication of Coke. When I saw the Golden Arches, I heaved a sigh and suppressed the nausea that was gradually winning the day. I felt a sense of embarrassment for the artist who had tried too hard. Intention was supposed to dissipate in the work; not expose itself in the shouting of its presence. But the century this art represented was once my own, and it was our carefully cultivated indifference that made us all accountable for all that was wrought.
Inside a cluster of bent metal mirrors was a chrome figure of Elvis on the cross. Echoes of a Dead Kennedys song played in my ears: "And I wonder, will Elvis take the place of Jesus in a thousand years?" The mirrors were arranged in a hexagonal configuration so the reflections of the figure could play freely with the that of the viewer, to give the illusion of a frightening ubiquity--as if everyone had a false Christ at their behest. Owing to the misshapenness of the mirrors Elvis' reflections were parodic--the strange curvatures of carnival mirrors. What this was to represent, I had no clue, for this was one case of intention that died with the artist. However, I did not get the sense that it was anything all that profound, owing to the nature of the other exhibits.
Sunset approached fast, and I did not want to be here when darkness fell, to be in the presence of so many vile ghosts. The sky's colour bled into the horizon edge, a bottom frame that was pure black. This event had cast a strange penumbrae on the scene.
This gallery was enough to encapsulate the fetish nature of history--its icons, myths, overinflated and magnanimous egos. With all its ingresses and egresses, the strange gallery contaminated the bare world, just as one could not help but to bring the emptiness of the world into such a place; where angels collapsed in despair. I did not like this place, its overbearing and jarring existence. It was a painful reminder of what was. Because it stood there like a timeless pavilion devoted to the dementia of ages past, it appeared as if the depicted figures had yet to vanish from the traces of all memory. It brought me back to that mythos that was the twentieth century, and I severely disliked to be reminded. For me to destroy this place would do nothing better. I would be reifying human agency in this world. By the same token, to let it stand would also prove to be a human act. So I merely scribbled this historically referential place in yet another reference on the map, as part of the map. I walked briskly past a long corridor of glass cases that displayed all the sacred objects of the past: computers, plastic cards, television, cellphone, pager, books by Mao and Marx, and so on. What I disliked the most about this place was that it reminded me of myself. The entire escapade, the mission Castellemare sent me on, was all designed to discover the self.
Castellemare should have just given me a knife and tell me to "become a man" like some parody of ancient rite. This map-making task was merely his joke, a disguised search for my own identity amidst the ruins of an even older and crueler joke. Did he not know that I was attempting to discard myself, moult the burning and tight skin of my identity so that I may fly?
She was out there waiting for me to make a decision. Like me, she could afford to wait. The temptation of Adam caused an exile from Paradise. Did this mean that events would happen in reverse order, that the reversal of the temptation would bring us back into Eden and then nullity? We would be uncreated, thereby closing the circle of all human history in that one moment where I collapsed into clay, and she into bone. Only then could the earth rest, when the burden of its most odd and problematic species was no more.
How would I go about a reversal? Perhaps I would have to purge or remand the knowledge humankind was never meant to taste. Perhaps I would have to recede back into the animal world, naked and shameless. First, I had to find her...her who tempted me into repetitive finitude.

7: NihilCarta

The years piled upon one another, and my weary tread had finally come to its end at the last yard of the continent. The NihilCarta was heavy: over a thousand thin sheets of paper saturated with inks, geographical data, notable landmarks, personal reflections, and zoological data on the new and slight variations of form the remaining animals had taken. The desert had given way to more prairie land, and dog-sized rats hunted across it in packs--right out of a Dixon book. After a long journey, I made my way back to Castellemare's villa.
"The NihilCarta is complete," I said without ceremony.
"No, it is not yet complete," he replied, "for it has become as much a part of you as you have become a part of it. The relation you share with it, as you have both grown, makes it difficult for me to separate the two. One of you has to perish."
"Should I destroy all this work?" I asked.
"That would be silly." He was right. "When life and work are surrendered to absolute nullity, then the work may be held up as sanctified and complete. I suspect that you know what must be done now. Your travels have shown you the way."
"Yes."
"And so it was written long ago in a parable, and so it will come to a resolution, and all will be restored to order. The world will have a huge sigh of relief."
"I do know where she is," I said. "And I feel a trembling kind of love for her, like an uncontrollable religious ecstasy when I think of her. I must find her, I must become whole, and to be one."
He smiled serenely, as if our roles had been lifted from our spirits upon this narrative stage, and we were blissfully free from all concerns. Times like these were best captured in a sunset, and then a fadeout to black. "She is out there, yet in you as well. You won't have to search too hard; just follow the sun, the truth, your innate sense of the destiny that must be enacted. With you goes the resolution and rectification of all things human. History will finally be unburdened when it can absolve the species of all guilt...to wash the robes pure with lamb's blood, if you prefer."
"One thing puzzles me..."
"Oh?"
"I know that you are not a man, yet you exist. There is a sense of you being something radically different. May I inquire as to what exactly you might be?"
Castellemare hesitated at first as if wrestling with the telling of his deep secret, but the look of worry and indecision left his face. Perhaps it did not matter if I discovered what he was, for I was the Last Man--the Last Man who would soon recede into the oblivion of an archi-parable's ending.
"I wouldn't deny a dying man his last wish," he said jovially. "I've been so many things, in many forms. There are requirements for every story: someone or something must read them, start them, tell them, and end them. There are stories within stories within stories, from the complex histories of human beings to the smallest particles in the universe. Someone or something--not a god--must trace these stories from beginning to end, yes? These stories must be kept somewhere. Someone must act as a steward and caretaker of the stories, to give them a house. I'm sure you can guess my function."
"The Librarian."
"In a sense, yes. I do let the stories of this universe unfold, but at times I interject myself to twist the direction of them out of...amusement, perhaps, or sometimes to just move things along. I see with eyes that extend eternally in all temporal directions. I see the creation of an atom and trace its path throughout the universe, as it collects into forms of all sorts. I see the species that rise before humankind and those that will rise after. I see stars and worlds come into being and pass away. I see every particle in you, where each has been, and where each will go next. I play many roles; like an undefined harlequin. I stand before you as Proteus."
"I would ask you about so many things, to decipher the many enigmas and mysteries of time and the universe, but I am paralyzed by the number of questions," I said.
He smiled while we stood facing each other in a natural silence: Castellemare the Librarian and story-weaver, and the product and collection of stories that edified my being.
"Go to her and end the chapter," he said warmly.
I nodded and walked away, feeling his gaze behind all things--even as a presence behind my eyes, recording all that transpired in this life and the life of the many. On the face of it, it didn't make sense to my limited understanding...but somehow, it did.

8: Colophonia

She stood like a temporal figure that would not be denied. There was so much presence in her just being there, as fledgling grass bristled up like the fur on frightened animals. She was making a gesture of openness, of complacent invitation, her hands outstretched; all had been forgiven between us.
"I have come," I said, feeling unsure of my words.
I felt a stirring in my stomach and a lump in my throat. A nausea that I had never known was coming on, and my head started to ache with a sharp and throbbing pain.
"We have learned much," I struggled to say despite the pain that assailed me.
We both doubled over in a similar pain, in a loose embrace. Her arms felt cool on my skin.
"All that's going to change," she whispered.
"What's happening to me?"
"You are being purified."
My thoughts extended to the other narrative possibilities of my being, in places and times I could scarcely recognize. This was not the first time that I, Jakob Sigurdson, had died in a woman's arms. And I knew I was dying, like it was a sense understood by us all. It was then that I heaved, followed in turn by her own convulsions. What came out of me was pleasantly typical in design. My knowledge began to dissipate, and I was trying to hold on. Her tattoo was bleeding; long rivulets of ink were being pushed out from the pores, the swastika on her breast liquefying.
"Stop struggling," she managed to say, a similar object having been expelled from her as well. "It must end this way and in no other."
What knowledge I had left was residual, and fading fast like a declining fever. We had played our diegetical roles, and the narrative was near its end. I could feel the characteristic features of dying, the body letting go, the usually ongoing struggle for survival vanishing in the moment. On the ground beside us were two bitten pieces of apple. With sacred knowledge, not ever meant for us, expelled, all that was left was the dying...the story's end. My last thoughts were on the beauty of this timeless moment, the final relief that everything eventually returned to the sea of that which is perpetually unmade...the peace of oblivion...that equally great moment of uncreation. Just like that, we were merely one more thing dead to the universe, and then...taken away...

Why does it have to end this way? Always? Never anything consistent…always another distraction, another illusion, another ornate and elaborately constructed labyrinth that crumbles just when one is about to make any sense of it all. I, Friedrich Errado, ought to take my own life here and now. I ought to stop reporting any of this, giving lip service to quizzical tyrants and their bizarre citadels of fabulation. But I am hooked to the screens, the veils, and all I can truly do is continue on with automatic and reflex flourish…to report, to chronicle, to interpret.
Jonkil Calembour, I hate you most. What you have done is terror beyond my wildest imaginings. You are a blight in the annals of history, a grotesque and disfigured cancer of a man…Worse than all that, you are a legend, a legacy, a fully refined and confusing triumph. I cannot figure you because you are precisely that: just a figure. And now you have conveniently fallen mentally ill…inconsolable…voluntarily committed at a special institute where they will no doubt probe your problem clinically and give it an unsuitable name. You may even persuade your doctors that you are laudable, a grand genius, a creature worthy of continuous study, a man of grand aplomb…somehow. Perhaps they will be deluded in seeing your genius…but I am not fooled. I know you to be a genius, but I also know that nothing good ever comes from genius. I knw that if there was any true good in the highest reaches of thought, you might have spared this world…but you have confirmed my deepest suspicions: knowledge increases sorrow, indeed, but it also finds the darkest kernel, expands it, brings it back to the earth in the form of a deadly and noxious comet. Genius is the abyss, and I see you have taken back with you the cream of the inferno, exposing our species for what it truly is at its absolute limit and conceptual height: nothing more than a terrible wind that blows against the scarred face of the earth.
Jonkil, I hate you most of all for having created the most perfect system that, in its constant ruptures and instabilities, is on the whole a stable unity. I hate you for having figured it out, and so now what else is there to do? I play cards until time throws me off the edge.