What the Hell Happened

Dervishy Daoud wonders what the hell happened. He sits and his back hurts. He remembers sort of how it happened. The Ludd Party started promoting "Bringing the Commons Together, Thru Technology." The Liberal Party joined with the Green Libertarian Party, and the Liberation Theology party joined with the Libertarian Green Party, and then they all joined each other into the United Party, and then any marginalized minority that wanted input into the system had to deal its way into the big machine. Somehow they figured out how to turn landfills back into something like crude oil, from which they could then extract "recycled energy" and fertilizers and pesticides. And the Bubble ballooned out of nowhere at the dawn of The MillenniumTM when The Great MallTM was re‑grand‑opened and everyone's screens were already always on and always connected, even when they were turned off. It wasn't long for the swarming chaos of information to surprisingly cohere into a higher order. But they still wouldn't allow prayer in the primordial ultra‑traditional soma‑sacrament manner. Not only not pray in schools, but especially not in schools. Kids who self‑initiated upon adolescence were quickly sniffed out by the tendrils and gently escorted to Kamp Kommunity. Many were rapidly reformed through the powerful entertaining mind‑sensitive The Infinite Domain. TID interfaces through screens and data grains and the Bubble which is a big screen of screens of screens. But some of those kids are wyrd and have the esoteric power to imagine themselves out of the Matrix. Then you find yourselves out on the Barrens. Be it the urbarrens of abandoned parking lots outside StanCity, or the Barrens way out there where a rich continent was plowed to desert and filled with trash. Patches of urbarrens litter the whole planet, oases of crumbling pavement among the sandy bedrock badlands deserts of Stanistan, all the way out to the Fringes. When you find yourself out on the Barrens you either run for your life back to the Bubble, or you begin to see reality and notice the cracks in the pavement and edible weeds and strange people half‑hidden smiling and prepared to welcome you if you greet them with peace.

Meanwhile, everyone inside is working along, powering the machine, believing what they're doing is somehow potentially hypothetically sustainable and just and they don't quite think about beauty very much. The screens everywhere always are projecting to each person a slightly appealing reality interlaced through and through with logos, jingles, and other advertising meant to perpetually attract consumers to the same old identical or nearly identical products, which are now all produced, distributed, and sold by subsidiaries of UniCorp, the corporation that finally bought all the other corporations, and then the government outsourced all its functions, so the Chamber of Commerce of StanCity really is the most powerful group of men in the world. But where does their power come from if not the Bubble‑screen‑fnords that surround them at all times, feeding them the information they want to know, or that TID thinks it should feed them based on its perception of what they think they want to know ....

And for many the only way out or way to cope is with qahve. The soma substitutes. Ranging from UniCorp.'s CLEERtm in its many guises, to independently produced and reciprocally gifted coffee, chai, chocolate, poppy milk, delicious homebrewed alcohol in many forms, Maricle (as ganja, charas, bhang & more), shrooms, isfand and so forth. A few people have the innate spiritual fortitude to focus themselves into transcendence and liberation through hole(s) in the Screen, but many find that soma‑sacraments not only help them along but may also instigate the tiny initial changes in condition that alter one's fate. Wyrd (the ability to alter fate). The forbidden wine‑qahve‑soma is what brings people together and brings the divine to people. Real religion. Real rebirth, revival, resurrection, insurrection, liberation. Your debts are forgotten. Shirk your duties to the unholy incompetent uninspired bungling burdensome Beast, and find yourself and your god all at once in your community of your friends, in your garden, you find yourself in the Garden. At least for a while, once in a while.

Dervishy Daoud feels he has taken one step in the right direction, and then one step off course, and he's disoriented and his face is still stuck to the screen a lot. He knows it won't make him enlightened. But the information .... so seductive .....