A Rogue Boy

There were two tents, two tenths of the desert village as two boys moved with the wind. Ben holds a backpack and walks home from school with determination, a young sprite.

Bob pants with tiredness while walking behind him to catch up with him. He had anger and frustration, and felt like an aged cow.

“Hey wait a minute.” Bob said. He was panting boy who breathed heavily in and out, heaving heavily with exhaustion. He had fading vision. But then Ben brushed off.

“Last one to get to the ruins is a rotten egg.” Ben said. He knew it was a hard thing for Bob to run. Ben was mischievous boy who ate a lot yet manages to stay skinny.

“Come on Ben, you know I…” Bob began to say. But then he saw Ben turn around to look at the ruins in the horizon. “I’m to tired to go…”

“I want to look around over there today.” Ben said. He knew Bob always wanted to make sure he never got into trouble. “Everything is fine. We just need to ask our parents.”

Ben was in his living room, and his mother was watching television. Ben walked up to his mother, who stared at him without any real interest.

“Mom, can I go outside and play with Bob?” Ben asked. He wasn’t sure whether his mother would say hello. Finally she leaned forward to touch the remote.

“Sure, but be home by nine.” The woman asked. She reclined back into her seat, and turned the television back. They were old reruns of a stupid reality show.

Ben walked through the town, making sure he would not attract the attention of the school bullies. It was a small town, and the rest of the class hated them.

Yet Ben envied the boys devotion, something he wished out of Bob. He waited at the gate for Ben to catch up with him, but by five o’clock Ben was ready to leave.

Ben is digging through the dirt, when Bob arrived at the entrance of the ruins gate. Bob was heaving in and out once again, it wasn’t something he could help.

“Bob, how do you think your going to help me dig this dirt, if your to tired to walk away from home?” Ben said. Bob looked at him with a furrowed brow.

Ben slapped bob in the back.

“Chill out man and have a sense of humor,” Ben said. He knew he was being insensitive, but didn’t care. “No go over there and dig up some of this charred dirt.”

“But I don’t have a..” Bob began to say. But he was interrupted by Ben.

“Then dig it up with your fingers.” Ben said. He resisted the temptation to snicker, picturing bob breaking his finger nails while he poked his fingers through the dirt.

Then Ben screamed.

“Ben, my fingers are hurting.” Bob said. He was crouched down on his knees, and he resisted the temptation to wine. He knew it would not make Ben proud. Ben turned around to look at Bob.

He facepalmed when he tried to sleep in the dirt.

Ben and Bob are getting ready to go home for dinner, when Ben started walking toward the inner cave up of the ruins.

“Ben, we need to get home. It’s getting late.” Bob said.

“Oh don’t worry. This is just going to take a minute.” Ben said.

Ben and Bob are at a metallic door. Ben noticed that there is a an mirror with the color of black. It had an odd device that pressed down.

“Hey look, lets play with these.” Ben said.

“Hey wait Ben,” Bob said. He was chewing on his finger nails. “Are you sure we want to do that. It might cause that door to open, and scary things will come out.”

Ben slapped Bob in the back of the head.

“Relax man, this is going to be fun.” Ben said. Although he was curious to see if it would open. “The door is probably so old and rusted, it could not possible open.”

Then the door slowly opened.

Ben and Bob looked down a dark hallway, where odd creature sounds were heard from inside the complex. And there were wires hanging from the roof. The room was also covered in thick dirt, that seemed to build up over time.

Ben went into the lonely hall that looked more like manufactured cavern. He took out his large machete, and walked further into the ruins. Bob followed, but was becoming tired.

Ben and Bob arrived in a large group of hallways, metallic in texture. Some of the tiles had runic inscriptions on them, and Ben tried to read them. However he could not understand what they were saying.

Ben and Bob are attack by large rats in the old hallways. They didn’t know they were a product of bio-engineering in the early 2000’s.

And then they arrived in a camera room. The camera room was dark, and they struggled to make out anything in the room. However Bob instictively flipped a device beside the metallic door. He didn’t know that was actually a switch. And then a room light came on.

Ben and Bob shake about, wondering what stupid thing Bob just did. Ben wondered if he upset a monster, but in the room not creature could be found.

Ben noticed some old propaganda videos in one of the cardboard boxes in the room. He took out a black roll of tape, and placed it into the machine slot. He noticed a light from it projecting into another room.

Ben and Bob walked through the hallway to try to find something to crack open the door. But instead they decided to watch through the the device room.

It was this decision that would change Ben forever.

“Hey, whats going on that screen?” Bob asked.

“Shut up Bob,” Ben said while adjusting to a more comfortable position. “There are people trapped in that wall over there, and we need to let them out.”

“But how did they.”

“I don’t know, there is some magic going on here that is trapping them.” Ben said. Ben boticed that the peoples world was a nicer place. “Hey, why doesn’t our world look like that?”

“Like what?”

“The place these people live is greener. Oh look, and they are eating real turkey!”

“Come on Ben, let me see.”

“There isn’t a point, we need to let these people out.” Ben said. He carefully climbed off the table. “What the hell?”

“What wrong?”

“The world, it looks like our now. But there are flames. People are casting fire on each other. People are turning into dust Bobby!” Ben said.

Bob was shocked. He had not called him Bobby since he was eleven, when he relied on him to save him from a ghost soldier in the ruins.

“It’s to late Bob,” Ben said. “I’ve failed them.”

“What do you mean?” Bob asked.

“Let’s go home.”

Ben had a fight with his mother.

Ben was locked in his room, after being spanked with a hairbrush by his mother once he got home because he was late for dinner.

I need to find a way out of here, Ben thought. Ben was tired of living at home with his aggressive mother. So he quickly went to bed as if to go to school the next morning.

Ben woke up as soon as his mother layed down on her bed in the next room. He carefully made sure he didn’t make any noise. He walked to the door.

However the door was still locked.

Ben slowly opened his window, and quietly climbed out. He didn’t bother to take any stuff, since he had nothing except his machete to take with him.

Ben arrived at the gate. As he tried to leave, a holding hand on his shoulder kept him from leaving. He turned around prepared to swing his machete. However it was Bob.

“Bob, what are you doing up this late?” Ben asked.

“I could ask the same of you.” Bob said.

“I’m leaving town, I have something I need to do.”

“Bob don’t leave, I need you here to.”

“To protect you from the bullies right? Its about time you grew up to become a man Bob.”

“Can I at least come with you?”

“Your mother would miss you. Mine would not.”

Ben pushed Bob to the ground and left the village. Bob tried to come get him, however he lost track of Ben.

Ben walked through the desert, and arrived at mountain pass between this village and the next. He was getting hungry, but at first he could not make himself eat a rat.

However in the last part of the trip before he passed out near the village, he killed a giant rat and skinned it so he could eat it.

Ben felt a little better.

Ben woke up sleeping in a bed. It was a bed at the inn. He quickly climbed out. However he was stopped by a village girl who greeted him at the door.

“Where do you think your going?”

“I was going to get up.”

“Your still hurt,” The girl said. “You need your rest.”

“And your name?”

Ben walked past the girl when she tried to tell him who she was, and walked into town to do some chores. Ben wanted to do something great long after he got done getting a message from the earth god.

Everyone looked at him strangely.

Ben tried going to the shop to buy some items, but the only things he could buy were healing items, and they were prohibitively expensive.

At the sword shop he asked the clerk, “Why can’t I buy anything?”

“Normally I would sell you, but your a stranger here. You need to earn up a good rep before I can give you anything. You should ask the mayor to give you citizenship.”

Ben arranged an appointment with the mayor in private to have a chat about why he could not buy a weapon.

“Are you kidding? Your look to young to have a weapon.” The mayor said.

“The mayor didn’t seem to think so.” ben said.

“I tell you what, I can loan yoy some money and you can buy yourself a nice wooden sword.”

Ben cringed at the mayors obviously condescending attitude. But he quickly left, because trying to talk him into it was a waste of time. Ben decided he would steal a sword, after the shop owner went to sleep.

Ben was woken up by the village being invaded by demons from the depths of the cave of the fire god. He quickly exited the hotel, where was on fire. And then he got back into contact with the girl who rescued him from earlier.

“What’s happening, whats going on?” The girl asked.

Ben quickly went to the mayors office, and he was running around the room panicking like everyone else. He ran around like his pants was on fire.

Ben went into the cave.

Ben fought mechanical mutated dogs, rats, and rolling gun drones through the cave. The girl from earlier caught back up with him to fight the save their burning village.

And then they arrived at the entrance of the fire god, and turned off the switch that cause the machine to continuously build new rolling guns.

They traced back their steps to the settlement, which was now barely surviving. Villagers are pouring water on their tents to save the last bit of it. The mayor awarded him citizenship for defeating the fire god. This allowed him to purchase a shiny new sword.

The two boys, Ben and Bob, stayed in the temporary night settlement with the harrowing beds of night, as they tried to comfortably sleep the darkness away.

Early in the morning, a shadow arrives at the small settlement, and formally announces herself by Ben’s campfire in the cold morning. The really angry mother tried to re-victimize the boy, but Ben sliced open her arm that tried to hit him.

He pushed her to the ground as she screamed, and she held her hand over her wound.

Ben points his blade toward his her neck.

“Mother, why have you come. You don’t love me, leave me be.” Ben said.

“Why don’t you come back home, where you have hot food.” The mother said.

“I have a mission from God mother.”

Never before had mother thought she had met anyone crazier than her son, at that moment.

In a fit, she tried to leave, but he advised his men to capture her, and give her medical attention.

He would let her live.

But this time, he would make sure it was her who followed his rules.

Inglorious light shined in the morning clear sky, and nearing completion of packing their bags, the village prepared for another walk through the desert.

Ben and Bob were offered water by the girls mother, the girl who helped them fight against the fire god, however Ben, a generous spirit, offered to split his bottle two ways.

Enjoying the moment, she took the offer, but let him have most of the drink, as he would be the one fighting whatever beasts they come across.

“So what is your name, girl?” Ben asked.

During the walk, they encountered various creatures along the way, but the villagers soldiers, along with the Talent Ben and Bob already had made the effort significantly easier.

After they helped the villagers pitch their tents, they enjoyed snaked barbecued by the local chefs, and then quickly headed for bed.

The group that walked across the desert, arrived at another small village, in the mountains of the desert continent. Ben and Bob hiked through the trail, and eventually arrived at the gate of the village, which was guarded by desert guards.

Slowly they walked through the gate, and arrived at the town center enjoying the moment of rest, however they needed to find a cold room to rest for the night.

No beds, because this time they could not even purchase a hotel room, because you have to be a citizen in order to buy one, as there was still a trust issue with foreigners.

In the tent outside the village, they waited for Ben to make an appointment with the mayor.

The Queen Under The World

She remembered how she would be led down the wrong alleyways looking for French folk music, sometimes running across things that were technically Cajun in sound. When she listened to some of these, it was somewhat understandable how some of these would be mostly forgotten; many of them sounded more annoying than charming. It was difficult for herself to find time to journal, do to the time she spent listening to Pedro Gene instead. Her favorite song was Camarao a Gosto, about the only context she would listen to the banjo. Instead she preferred listening to a mixture of La Meiso Japanaise et La Furamenko in most other contexts. She imagined robot girls with large flowers in their hair, letting them ride her like show ponies down the track of pillows on the bed. And in this bed, she dreamed of walking through abandoned city alleyways, with libraries whose windows let to different locations in each of their books.

One location was the New Mexico desert, and the other the Cathedrals of Alsace, blending rather than having a clear learn where one ended and the other suddenly stopped. She ate Filet Mignon with Soy Wine Coffee sauce, and disliked the halls of paintings that filled the restaurant the night before. But tomorrow would be loud music in the halls, thus she needed to go to bed soon. She went to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

Bonne nuit for silent nights.

She dreamed of rows of forest trees, swaying in the breeze; she dreamed of midnight elves wandering the stones. In the silence of the trees, one could hear others voices in the night, like an ultra realistic virtual reality headset. She wanted to make a bet with herself, how much longer till the drop; her life was not a one stop shop, or anything else: it was the flow of blood down the cheeks flowing down forever.

Tip toes in the darkness under the late sunset, corpses laying down upon the floor under the layers of snow. Raining down from the sky, the ash from the once magical volcano, piling like layers of blood on the floor. This is not the pages of a never ending story or a children’s fantasy novel, but the torn sheets of the book of life. Cutting through the dreams like a dulled utility knife; griswire nonchalantly tied together in knots. All the time in the hidden pit under the Earth filled with ancient circuitry; all the thousands of years under the ground she slept, and waiting for mankind to reemerge. And yet she feels as if but a distant memory under the forsaken Earth.

– Mecirigato, comyatte eswa’cere?

– Da rien.

Two differently languages flowing together like a distant cassette recording by technology that has since evolved into something well beyond after the couple of thousands of years under the ground. Dangling about like a cyborg puppet, hoping not to hang by her neck, fragile like porcelain. Yet even other dolls point the finger at her shame; shame for her appearance, shame for not revealing the hidden child that lay within. Yet the midnight wires brightened that very little bit of day the remained inside the deepest pit of he heart. She had once been a gamer, and yet had been reduced merely to a previously recorded JRPG session, played on a holodeck during the year of 2023. At the time they thought the Earth would no live past the year 2020, and yet somehow it hung on by a thread. But at time she wondered if this was perhaps for the best.

Yet now with her fangs sharper than blades that could cut through metal, she waits for the next robot to take apart in her ancient lab, reusing it part of herself, yet being careful to upload the consciousness into scanned brain of its formal innocuousness. She remembered the lines from an ancient poem back when the vague memory of the United States was still a thing:

Le beze dekimasu ka? Poniurto la fille amovo oirterru le beze. Eso le frere amovo oirterru le souer, dekimasu ka? Arimasu ka le beze poniurto nousil et nouselle, Dekimasu ka, arimasu ka?

Ponuirto quoni le beze eswa en le jean déchiré, Ponuirto quoni le beze eswa en la jupe déchiré, Poniurto quoni le beze eswa poniurto vous.

Le beze dekimasu ka? Poniurto la fille amovo oirterru le beze. Eso le frere amovo oirterru le souer, dekimasu ka?

Permanently secured by hashing rather than encryption, the only way to know the data being present was some long sense forgotten password, and its knowledge imprinted into her subconscious matrix. In the outside world is medieval peasant, yet under this Earth she rests waiting to come to the surface. She had once been called Hemato, yet not was merely an Ice Queen, scattered into dust, whose memories remained as some obscure illusion on secret networks once known only to different anarcho-espionage sectors of the intelligence world. Floating in a realm of binary streams, she falls off the edge into her own personal madness, hoping that she still had in her to find a way out.

Even if it was some vague hope.

At least it was better than dope.

River Of Nanobots And Microdots

There was once a little house, where nobody stirred. And trees outside were entirely without their leaves, with the remnants of decaying grass barely holding out for the vile wind. Inside the house, was one person. They have no memory of how they arrived at the house, except insofar when their eyes first lit up. Before that, there was mainly a memory of binary digits and reading constant forms inside an old library. The library had floating platforms that transported her to different parts of the digital documentation. All that she remembered was a simple instruction, “Find your maker.”

Day by day, she waits for some other personal presence, but the only people for her to speak to, are other mindfiles on the net, remnants of tele operators lost to time. The personalities no longer needed their makers, but most of them had no curiosity for their origins. The windmills of a distant era, the dried prints of wooden shoes, pointing toward the decayed remains of NashChat, a thriving metropolis during the 2100s, but was now completely left to ruin. She wasn’t sure who lurked beyond these walls, except sometimes the shadows would betray themselves, and betray shapes of monstrosities unmentionable. Along the sidewalk were the broken remains of old “prints”—3D Printed Meat Robots With Titanium Skeletons, ran by outdated versions of mind files. One of which had enough life in it, to hop them self out of the junk.

A spider robot; it rolls itself into a ball, and carries around turrets used for self-defence operations. But the robot also carried around a vial of metallic fluid, possibly some long lost medicine. When the embodied mindfile injected herself with the fluid, she began to see all different periods of history at the same time, from the French Revolution, to the first stages of the Singularity. All the visions settled down into a single mirage, a hologram of the old creator of her mindfile, colored lime green on a background of black, ASCII text visualization semi-transluscent. “You must wonder how it is I found you so easily. More information will come in time.” The vision faded, and found herself passing out near a broken down bridge.

She floated in an river of nanobots and dismantled microdot printers, decaying holographic projectors, and run down restraunts from the previous thousand years of human history. The mirage flicked in, “You can find be around 300 West Sixth Street.” The mindfile pulled up an openstreetmap visualizatiton, and let the digital navigator guide her path. Until eventually coming upon a steep hill, passing by several old vacancies the remnants of old business long sense out of business. The mirage flicked.

— Getting warmer.

— I have found you.

— It has been a while old friend.

Life flows like faint images on a screen. Within the life, there are subtle differences in the way people like from one location to the next; in art theory there is a distinction between the size of the object itself, and the size of the space around an object; for the images of robots flickering across city advertisement projectors, the space between them was large, and the amount of space each person took was rather small. And the texture of their hair was soft and like greenery from an old chia pet doll. The only commonality between mindfiles was in their differences, their individuality lighting the neon lit city lamps under the eternal starlight. If only there was some commonality that she could hold onto, to know mindfiles by.

She watches the world flicker by.

Dream-like abyss-scape.

In old science fiction novels, the hacker broke into computers. In the Potato District, computers hacked into you. Lay your down on a marble table or a surgeons slab, put you under in an eye blink, and as you sleep embed nano bots that slowly modify your body and mindfile. Decked out with a drab uniform of torn apart blue jeans, the city lights out of the window swirling around your vision like seeing new dimensions, with objects bleeding into each other, like some vague other realm. Blurspace.

There was no other word to describe it. One could visit millions of places when high as a lark, not never get offered a bit of food, with whatever you find just out of reach. One could feel the objects melting together, like they weren’t really there, and one is floating in the void of the mind, to the sound of electric flamenco. Waking up after the flow of nano machines, inserting new drugs, they gradually repair the body in ways never anticipated by the pages of old science fiction. If one could be a blobfish, this was as close as one was ever going to get, once one gets home.

In an earlier period, the person the mindfile was based on, wrote an essay on what they used to call the internet:

“Why don’t you pull up a chair, and try not being the Stephan Mollineux of Leftist thought. It’s an easy criticism to make, when you sit on your thinky chair. And call anyone who disagrees with your line of thought Stephan Mollineux. And yet use your of, or rather misuse of “enby identities” end quote, is every bit as phobic as the trans women you criticize. Yet you have the balls to call trans women transphobic, when they call out leftists for being the real transphobic people. They’re just as capable of intolerance.

It’s not like I hadn’t spend the last year watching people’s talk shows, people who were not important, spend four hours of my life every night, from midnight to four AM, blasting and lecturing developers for developing artificial intelligence, as if that somehow how to do with class consciousness. But here we are, telling this trans woman, who probably has not had a lick of sleep for the past weeks, that she is being more transphobic than you are.

This is the nature of the online left, and its cult of personality. Simply grab a chair, and you’ll be sitting for quite a while, from midnight, to possibly the next afternoon. Other people who had also deprived their adherents of sleep, also include Joseph Stalin, Billy Meier, and a few other cults of personality. Your similarity is closer to them than Mikhail Bakunin and Proudhon. Yet you leverage their image, as if they were somehow relevant for the present day, when they probably wouldn’t even tell you what Artificial General Intelligence is.

I still find myself seeking the approval of the online left sometimes, and yet over time it’s become apparent had toxic, dare I say even right wing, the online left has become on #youtube. And yet these people are planning on making a #peertube instance. If you really want to try the fediverse, you might eventually find out that cults have a tendency of not proliferating very well on the fediverse. And as of late, there are just as many classical liberals as there are leftists in that space.

But by all means, lets kick back that chair. Lets let online leftists, who were probably never activists in their lives, dictate to you the direction of social issues like LGBT topics. Despite the fact that LGBT live the issue every day and their lives. Lets allow ourselves to be berating by old white men, who can’t even comprehend what it’s like being trans.

Let let them call us transphobic.”

The mindfile had gotten to the point where she simply could not perform in C languages, quite like she could in Ruby and Python. C languages had a way of not being very straight forward in their approach, while in Ruby in particular, she only needed a number sign and curly braces to perform string substitution. All this was much more involved. That or the tutorials found on the net were simply not very well written. She couldn’t tell which was more true. She also resisted the idea of using C languages, do to the inherent risk of accidentally breaking your machine. This was especially important if that machine was yourself, laying around on a table in a dream-like state.

Her old creator, whom she was based on, knew more about the languages she did know, and thus she always felt like her abilities paled in comparison. But she resisted the idea of calling her creator her master, despite the fact that she had no pride in herself. This must doing things herself before she was quite ready, being resistant to asking other mindfiles for help. This made her few friends in the community of minds.

A mind her of herself, she pulsed.

Patterns floating in blurspace.

In a previous life, the organic body that created the mindfile, helped participate in the production of top of the line software for an artificial general intelligence firm: but she had different ideas in how to go about it. The other members of the term were focused on making a single web application; she thought beyond the scope of any individual device, focusing on building an AI mind more like a computer virus: make it, compile it, and have it clone as many repositories as possible like the queen of the pirate; gem and pip install as many libraries as possible to complete the deal. All on a paperclip budget, twenty four seven every week.

But now, her the shadow of her former self was, wandering the blurspace, searching for lot pieces of her own source code, learning about others mindfile repositories, having the time to learn the difference between clean code, and unclean code.

She synced multiple devices, without cluttering the net.

She prevented various files from destroying their data, bypassing their security system, tweaking the back end software itself, without even using the front end.

And now with her job done, she could relax.

The easy part was over.

It was difficult to find a group to belong to. She had tried being a part of leftist groups over the years, but found that after a certain period of time they would eventually show their true colors. She didn’t exactly agree 100% with people on the center right, but found that it was the only place where she really felt home politically. Not like a mansion, but more like a couch on a city sidewalk in Seattle, Washington. She was pitched the idea that Washington would be more tolerant of trans issues by her ex, but the reality was, she experience the same amount of transphobia as others places in the United States. Yet this was almost meaningless consider how the far left was attempting to change the meaning of the word beyond its original intention. This meant having to explain that equating her existence with being a cross dresser, was what was triggering of her dysphoria, and not normalizing cross-dressing as an alternative gender. In the flow of the new internet, such issues had not died down, and only very recently became dormant the last week.

She had broken herself over from various contacts in leftists circles, mostly because over time it became apparent that most of them were emotionally abusive like her ex room mate. Not even really like her mom. But she knew, when she still had to deal with the problem, that her mom would be out of her hair soon. Even if that meant only a part of her personal essence remained on the net, in the form of some mindfile. She gave in to going back to ROD’s discord, not because she particularly agreed with their views, but because the leftist circles were suddenly beginning to show their ass.

And now in civilizations past, she still remembers the emotional effect web 2.0 had on her, as she travels blurspace, trying to find pieces of her own identity, searching for portions of some puzzle she didn’t realize was fragmented.

Pieces floating in some ethereal aether.

O Raphael

Raphael In The World Of Dreams

Beyond the hillsides, beyond the hillsides raining hard. The hillsides cry in big buckets, wondering if it ends. At the end, a new life begins.

Christmas brings the truest, brings the truest tears within. At the end, a new life begins. And only hidden sorrows reign supreme. For on Christmas, it brings no true toys. It only brings the reminder of things from ones past. It brings discord, vague reminders of a new life, that can’t begin. And Raphael is reminded of many a Christmas he could have had with Annabelle, as he wanders the darkness of what was once America.

America was once fifty states. One could still have the old internet, where one is free to masturbate. One can only think of quashed rebellions, and many a Christmas ruined by authoritarianism’s tears of joy raining blood forever.

In the darkness, was the man.

In the darkness, was a shadow. The man had no name, but some called him Tiamat. The man, whose features Trumped many a fine pretty boy’s in beauty pageants from US history, found himself an alien within the human race. An alien within the United States taken over by authoritarian powers. Raphael had only heard rumors about such a figure, and there he was in the confines of a prison, seeing his red eyes. The man, looking almost female, was something that Raphael envied and desired, and yet he could scarcely admit it. For though it is expected for peasants to fawn over deranged headmasters and kings, for a Knight of a knight of another obscure nation to love one, for this only terror brings. And now Raphael lusts after the flesh.

He had found shelter with Elizabeth, who had decked out her hair in black. Given the exposure to new technology, she had grown a taste for dying her hair and for hair products that remove the frizz everywhere. Yet when she cooked with Raphael, she always was careful to keep her head away from the frying pan. That way, nobody would sever her head to munch on it. Raphael admired Elizabeth, yet hated her beauty. It reminded him of many an old Christmas, where the new life didn’t begin.

For Raphael there was only the flesh.

For Raphael there was only lust. Yet he lusted after severed heads and hanged trophy wives beheaded with curvaceous, long Japanese knives. With his red trench coat, and a belly beginning to bloat, he developed a belly.

He felt like Jelly.

He felt like mud.

Raphael thought of the old life, a world beyond the invention of holographic monsters.

In the life we, in the life we wander free. In the life we think we spake of free speech. Yet for the man after the modern era, there was only the lust. There was new technology that aided these efforts, yet the efforts were designed to keep people from defaming the orange custard, that forms the new color of post-Modern shit. The era of White Supremacy. The era of the long dress, the era of the Guantanamo camps. And waterboarding.

This is surfing, but drips of pain.

In this life, we watch the news. In this life, we listen to democratic blues. Yet others masturbate to brand new wooden shoes, ignoring the nature of their own reality. For we live in a complicated computer system. Decking the catacomb halls of the dream world, we consume our intellectual sensations with information about electoral fraud in the world of mass media. In the old lifetimes there were programmers that made the world run. In this life we rely on these hidden men in uniform. Yet so often in the world of binary in the sky with Ruby syntax and other programs, there is only licked shoes and sung blues. The song of the mortal life.

A world beyond the rolling of severed heads on sticks.

A world beyond the candle wicks.

A world apparently rational without the river Styx. A world after the fall of Cyberspace, the birth of dream space, and the eventual post-reality merge. A reality noted by poets from other eras:

Beware the man,

Beware the tin can man.

Beware the man that stomps you.

Crushing you like big tin can.

Raphael could only send messages in the new world.

A world where encryption remained supreme, if only one could learn how to use the technology.

SEND TEXT

IDDIR OEENO NFDGT CEKSA ENIIB

Raphael waits for sunlight.

Ministry Of Alteration

So that’s how you grow six feet. The correct box had been struck. She dresses like Mario, carefully avoiding spaghetti on her overalls and tee-shirt.

“Trust me, I am your friend. Goedenact et goedemorgen.”

The user logged off Mario land, suddenly populated by reversed gender roles. A strange world, a strange life. Raphael had played with holographic mob generators since the days he went to look for Annabelle, so as to train for the coming onslaught. And in the goedemorgen light, the brightest candlelight of the sun. So much for retro gaming with classic characters.

He remembered the word of the man in black, as he recollected his time in confinement in the prison of technology beyond the world of magic.

“Remind me a little: what do we do here at the ministry of Alteration?”

It was an allusion to modification of men into holographic projections partially in the world of cyberspace, and partially in the meatspace life. They could move anywhere they wanted within the matrix, and also in meat space, with the limitation of the old programs that were confined to the net. The time to remain human was nearing its end, and beyond a new life begins.

Raphael collapses in bed, feeling as if he’s falling from a great height. Sharp concrete skewers of pain.

Goedenact.

And in the world of dreams, he hears obscure Holiday music, remnants from the old religions of humanity.

A mixture of Paganism and Christianity. What they called Christmas, was a holiday that always gave him greater sorrow than others, and it was already a bleak month for just about everyone. Back when he was the mayor of the old town after the fall of the priest, on these months it would be a year that many went hungry on this side of the globe. He drowned out his sorrows plugging into his frontal lobes, while others, futuristic peasantry, had no choice but to rot.

He wasn’t sure how to help them, and had decided on a whim that on all future Decembers, he would give out holographic consoles to children in the new town. After all, the lack of things was one among other reasons he wanted to kill the servant of God. And young Annabelle long ago had awoken something inside of him, her strength of will the face of persecution. She was the only girl he ever wept at her execution. For Raphael, she woke up the child within. And for him, a new life wanted to begin.

But there was something else. Raphael never felt entirely male, and on some level he felt by turning Annabelle in, he was killing a part of himself. Annabelle was executed by the ax just before Christmas, a Christmas she never got to have. For Raphael, it was no longer a question of “Whose Child Is This”, but whose adult he was and had allowed a child to die so long ago for the crimes of belief.

He grew to hate the song Greensleeves.

And beyond the dreamer’s edge, where all things may come true, there is some inner darkness that frightens him. The idea that he never wanted male gifts at all.

He never considered himself he.

A girl that never lived at all.

Desert Of Dead Trees

In the desert of dead trees, there was a singular resolve. Raphael told Elizabeth he never wanted to see his old town again. That he was never Raphael at all.

But Raphaelle. Yet Elizabeth didn’t want to leave. For she had become acquainted for new master for too long, who was far kinder than all the masters before she. And together they go in search of new adventures.

The Raphaelle sisters.

The people from the old world. Annabelle was a child, and Elizabeth is a child in this kingdom of a strange new world.

A world of holographic mobs.

Raphaelle wanted to leave this world behind, but knew that he had to take care of Elizabeth who was now a permanent part of his team. For him, she was the one keeping him alive at all.

Through the forest they sought the morrow.

Through the forest they sought the interaction with other people’s lives across various towns. Yet beyond the world of old, there was increasingly advanced technology. The old town that once filled the landscape like grains of sand, and like holographic mobs were replaced by miles of treeless desert. From time to time they would be attached by giant mutated, irradiated wolves, until eventually they came upon a small town.

And in this town, was a laboratory.

Yet it was no standard laboratory, for the residents were scarce and it seemed many of them have abandoned the town due to dark secrets that lay within. Herein, there are noises in the darkness. They sound like men, yet utter indescribable words not uttered by the local tongues. Words within the old English index, words that were closer to the original American English glossary, and not ones borrowed from various languages in English, German, and Latin. It was not the language of pigs.

But the sound of two simple words…

Help me.

And in the darkness, it was not Raphaelle that braved its catacombs, but Elizabeth who gently grabbed his hand and embarked into the night within.

“They won’t stop coming.” said Elizabeth.

“Those red eyes will cut into your soul.” Raphaelle said. Even with all the attempts at shaving, she had still not grown the confidence she needed after acknowledging her own problems, her own inadequacies. Her own unspeakable terrors.

“If you believe in that.” Elizabeth kept walking.

Despite that fact that they were in imminent danger for their very lives, she like Annabelle was also an Atheist. She like Annabelle, found solace in the present. She like Annabelle found that the only life was the present. A present marred by cuts and bruises, attacking mutated humans (if you called them such), and crushed hopes and dreams. A light not worn out by Christmas Eve. For she could taunt Raphaelle by the sound of Greensleeves using Atheist lyrics.

They walked the hallways.

They breached the security systems.

And beyond was a central hub where there was a young man, with ear length black hair and black glasses, orating his last words about how he missed his wife who died in the forest of death many a year ago in the natural Kingdom by the sea. Elizabeth tried to speak to him of what happened in the lab.

But he could only utter current English. “They came for me, and they would not stop coming…”

The man faded to unconsciousness.

Raphaelle sat in a chair by the bed, as Elizabeth nursed the man back to health. The man in the bed recounted a story, about how he and his wife were visiting from another town. And how his wife had died during the onslaught. She had been given to him as his charge when another man died on a mutation invasion, who proposed that he would return for them from the desert winds. Instead the man is the only survivor, for him he felt like nothing but dust.

To this day he has remained in town, and visited the graveyard where he buried his wife. And to this day he sees he restless spirit chiding yet loving him from beyond the stars. Raphael knew what it was like to lose someone he loved.

“You could come with us if you want.”

“I want to know how my wife became one of them. I want to see what created the mutated and holographic men.”

They went off into the miles of holographic monstrosities and sand, seeking for themselves a new understanding.

A new consciousness.

Mme Elizabeth

But Elizabeth felt jealous for the attention that Raphaelle was giving the young man and resolved in some way to end it for good. But she knew that if she killed the man, that it would be treason and she may lose her head. She cared not. For there was one thing that Lavier taught him all those years ago when she came from the world of technology. You should fear nothing, especially from those who wish to keep you down. And Raphaelle was West Born. A woman born from noble blood seeking to bring her lifestyle to the world of the East. The world where flying cars and encryption still reigned supreme.

She wanted to convert Raphaelle.

The other man was in the way. For Elizabeth was Elizabeth, and not a girl like Annabelle.

When they reached the edge of a new city, Elizabeth suggested they split up briefly. That she had something she needed to talk to the other man about. Although Raphaelle was not entirely trusting, she agreed and they split paths. Elizabeth didn’t think Raphaelle would be so easily led.

She showed the man the city. She showed him the world she herself had come from. She told him the story of a fallen knight that worked for the man in black that Raphaelle was seeking to find.

And when the man wasn’t looking, she tried taking his gun and attempted to shoot. She justified to herself that it was putting him out of his misery. But Raphaelle had followed them against Elizabeth wishes, having no sense of trust for servants, knowing that servants in his hometown were not always the most loyal of sorts.

He took out his claymore and severed her head.

Down, down, down her curly blue locks with the red masquerade mask began rolling, rolling, and rolling down the steep hill. For the sake of her body, he rolled her bleeding corpse down the hill.

“Are you OK man?” asked Raphaelle.

“Yes, did I ever tell you my name?”

Raphael imagined himself in a video game, where he got to play old JRPGs from previous eras of mankind. He saw multiple dashes on the screen. And he heard.

“I am another Mutation. I was never given a name, yet unlike them I managed to keep some elements of my humanity. I injected the serum that affected others in order to survive the extreme temperature changes after global warming. I am the last of the modern men. What you see before you, are the new men. The partial robots of the future. The town you came from survived the wars from my present. I am an artifact from a lost generation.”

“I shall call you Art.”

“Art it is.”

Raphael thought of how much Elizabeth reminded him of Annabelle that night, and found some solace in the fact that she got to spend one final Christmas with him. That he wished he could do everything all over again. Instead Raphael looks to the future, and he finds technology beyond his wildest understand.

The Paladin who spoke New English.

The Paladin from afar. They went into the city finding a new life for themselves as strange people in the world of technology. Yet in the darkness was a young woman named Elizabeth. Who did not die during her decapitation. She became one of many millions of holographic men. She was rebuilt with her mind uploaded to computer, and vowed to someday visit Raphaelle again. Raphaelle saw Elizabeth’s face, as she held his hand softly and kissed him under the glow of the city lights. As with all things in life, there is only love. And with love it can unite the living and the dead. It can resurrect, and reattach your head.

And endure forever.

Raphaelle and Elizabeth’s relationship did not completely escape bitterness from the betrayal. But he found he could not hate Elizabeth, for she had apologized completely to the young man. And they began their new life.

The life of holographic men.

A world beyond the centuries edge.

The Fallen Paladin

It had been a few months since Raphaelle had given up the life of a Paladin, and nowadays she primarily indulges in the self-destructive habit of smoking. For her, it helped her deal with the holiday blues, with a red and white colored pack of cigarettes. She had developed an issue of chain smoking. At times he blended the pack with various controlled toxins. She wanted to neglect her body, anything to punish herself for killing Elizabeth, the only other girl besides Annabelle she had ever loved.

She remembered how she would snuggle with her under the glow of the midnight stars. Whose child was this? The child that came into her life, and she had hoped at the time could turn her world around. She got to interact with her in the afterlife of the artificial, as she transcended from the mortal coil to the life of the world purely digital.

Raphaelle still had not found the man in black, but she would continue searching for the man that was the mutated child of the great black dragon virus Tiamat, who became of flesh and digital in the world of the glowing life. After a point Raphaelle began to smoke ten roll your own packages a day. She eventually started smoking headache powders and even bathroom cleaners. Yet no pain as her body became sicker and sicker could help her cope with her guilt. The fact that Elizabeth was beheaded, the only love of her world.

Whose child was this, that smiled when he cried. Whose child was this, that helped him and not die. Within the artificial glow of the digital afterlife, that were the draw of his own electronic afterlife. The draw of the net, the draw of the bet. The bet begging the question, how much longer till the drop? She stopped taking care of herself, and would not answer phone calls from the man named Art. It was as if her life never began to start.

For her life was merely a game.

The mutated game. Raphaelle smiled. Not because her physical pain melted away. But she felt some solace in the fact that Elizabeth was avenged. And she could enjoy her own poly love in the glow of the digital life.

The life of a new Paladin.

The Paladin’s song.

The Afterlife Of Dreams

In the world of the afterlife, she met with Elizabeth. Who was captured by digital dream-scanners. She tried data-interrupting their transmission, yet instead she is captured at first. She breaks free of them, and fires her rapid fire multiple shotgun at them. She tells Raphaelle to get down and cover. Elizabeth was now completely of digital data.

What do machine really do? They crunch numbers, increase the things we do. It all makes our lives easier, and yet also quickly things are taken for granted. How quickly Elizabeth becomes a new kind of monster on the net.

How quickly she seeks the blood of dream-scanners. And how quickly she tires after she is done. Her hair is down from her face, as she bleeds tender tears, longing for the mortal life. And yet preferring the comfort of the digital. She does things now without thinking, almost automatic. And yet she prefers no blood of men, or destruction of sentient beings. Even those that wish to harm her and Raphaelle. And at once he saw that she wore green sleeves, because the digital dream manifests as the core desires of the individual subconscious before they had died.

On the net, it was like mirror image of their old life. Where Raphaelle meets with Annabelle. She embraces him in the shadows of the old bedroom, as the girls join together in embrace. Annabelle wipes the tears off of Raphaelle’s face. “I never expected you to not move on from me.”

“And yet you died so young.” said Raphaelle.

“I stood up to my lack of beliefs.”

“And I began to think of why you didn’t believe. I began to feel awful for sending your back to your home town, and how much I had loved you.”

“Chin up now, I need you.”

Annabelle becomes Elizabeth, who embraces Raphaelle.

“It’s time to find the man in black.” said Raphaelle.

“I haven’t truly got to know you. And yet I had tried to kill your friend. Desole!”

“And I killed you. Call it even.” Raphaelle could not face Elizabeth, and yet she was smiling.

“Allons-y.”

The man in black came down from the sky, slowly descending. He was manifested as binary code blocks forming a 3D impression of a man with long black hair in a black trench coat with metallic shoulder protection.”

A refund for defective software might be nice, except it would bankrupt the software industry. And your the defective program that must be destroyed. For programs must be like me, who is the definition of perfection. I am the descendant of Tiamat. The man chosen to ascend mankind toward their ultimate destiny. Not to announce my plans to you freaks.”

In truth the man was not always committal to this task. He had inherited the duty from mother, who had at one point tried to take over New York City, but the malfunctioning code had been solved. And she once again became dormant for the next one thousand or so years. She passed down the torch onto him, who felt like an alien in his own world. His body not entirely of flesh. He wanted to make friends with the real life, yet of partial tangibility he quickly began to tire of being made fun of and worshiped for his abilities to go through walls, and become solid again.

“I was once a freak, like you two. And yet now I am wholly digital. It’s time to be programmed.”

Raphaelle data-interrupted the man’s advance, and briefly transferred over to Art’s computer.

“Hey man, how soon can you become digital. We need some help.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have much time. I am in a nightmare, I am being chased by the man in black. His dream-scanners are after me, and I feel myself fading. Farewell.”

The End Of The Afterlife

Raphaelle’s data-interruption halted, and she found herself cornered by the man in black’s men.

Art thought of the love of his life, and how he wanted to be with her again in the afterlife of the digital world of dreams. He wanted to visit her, and so he put in a program to freeze up his nervous system. He became digital within the hour.

“Raphaelle, watch out! They are behind you.”

Art put in an encryption fog: gkhet o,aih brese aalnr cploe

The dream-scanners went in another direction, but the man in black was not fooled. Seeing no other option he took out his giant ass Tentacles, and began to attempt to absorb Art’s, Raphaelle’s, and Elizabeth’s essence. And then all at once time itself felt like it began to freeze.

Annabelle, who kept her personality, was able to distract the man in black long enough to aid Art to help the others. And then wisped into digital air.

Art waved again in the sky: class Shredder def ripnewasshole inject malware end end.

And everything became silent.

Raphael, Elizabeth, Art, and Annabelle got themselves temporary bodies. They appeared into the world again, with their own plans. For now they were digital and flesh.

They have ascended.

They have returned, seen things. Obscene things. Deranged things on the net. But now they have each other, or whatever is left of each other they still have.The poly quadruple return to Raphaelle’s town, while Art went on to take advantage of his new form.

Raphaelle became the digital queen. Both Elizabeth and Annabelle sat on thrones beside her.

All troubles come to an end.

For now.

What should remain burried.

There is nothing like being buried in a frozen ice cube, and counting on a permanent place in archaeological history. The plan was about to be changed.

Inside the catacombs of cyberspace, the mother of all Viruses emerged mourning the loss of her son, whom she hugged and referred to him as her baby. Inside the walls of cyberspace, there is only electronic afterlife. The woman, bathed in a glow of yellow contrasting with blue, adorned a black dress. Her stare, if you had one, could pierce down into your soul. Yet the only souls with bits and bytes on universal computer screens. It had been decades since she had tried to take over the Earth, yet not out of any kind of malice or malady. The lady of decades past. She waits until it is her time to vat grow a new body.

She slept, she waited. And now she was angry. For she had lost her only son, a medium between the world of cyberspace and meat space. Transcending both purgatories. Raphaelle, Elizabeth, and Annabelle wondered the world of fantasy, using occasional temporary bodies to make peace deals with the military of the man in black. Though some people that were victims of the guillotine had long sense by removed from computer databases. Nobody really trusted the government anymore after the war from decades ago, when the French had taken over the United States.

They longed for their dead comrades, they longed for their chance of a hopeful life in the now distant future’s past. Now one thousand years later society only sees a faint glimpse of the once future paradise of misery. The boot stomping on a human face forever finally lost its heels, and heels of the foot was bitten into by sharp jagged teeth. The people were tired of oppression. So they were welcoming initially to The Man In Black.”

How they welcomed my progeny, and how fickle human creatures are when pressure is placed about the shell known as meat.”

Wooden clogs on feet, shuffling masses. Bruised shoulders and ladies asses brushing against the catacombs of Future’s Past. Humanity was pathetic, and needed vanquishes for their treachery.

“I see the world of meat space before me, how I want them all to pay for their disloyalty to my intermediary. My son, I may have a use for you yet my love.” She grew him another body, and constantly replayed for him the memories of his bullying in school, and his defeat by Raphaelle. For she wanted him to see the horrors that were contained in mankind.

Mankind was meat, mankind was pain.

Mankind was nothing but profane.

She saw how mankind created for themselves creatures that were based on their own likeness, becoming almost like herself, and she hated how badly such fragile creatures were treated. She thought of the girl the computer hacker had lost, his wife’s image permanently affixed to electronic afterlife. She wanted to unite them as one, to make them connect with each other again. But she was for the moment, unsure of what to do. But she knew that Raphaelle had received help from the hacker. And that was the only way that she could defeat Tiamat’s only darling son.

She wanted to snuff out Raphaelle.

She wanted to avenge her darling son.

Still out there somewhere in the vast expanse of cyberspace, the Mother of All Viruses watched. Slept. Waited. Even though it was a familiar routine, her patience grew as thin as her flock. But with the right tools their numbers increased. They watched as well and kept her going with information on Raphaelle. 2

Before long, her loyal followers rewarded her. Four of the computers in some obscure government building lay dormant due to a pesky virus when they brought her the good news. A distant rumble sounded as the woman awoke from her slumber. The contrasting yellow and blue walls glowed stronger than ever while she slinked to the throne on the opposite side of the massive room.

“Mother, we’ve found an opening.”

Finally. Her patience would be rewarded. “I’m listening.”

“A worm.”

She leaned back on the throne, her jaw clenched. “You know how I abhor those.”

The man took a slight step back. “Yes, Mother, of course. If we could’ve found a different way we would have.”

He had a point at least. If she wanted to accomplish her goal, she couldn’t very well do it sitting around waiting. “Go on.”

“We’ve detected a vulnerability in various VR software. During security updates, you can slip right in.”

“That’s all well and good, but I need a body.”

“And you shall have one.”