It’s never an easy job being a network operator; when half your job involves fixing malfunctioning html pages in web 4.0, sometimes it feels easier to retire into a comforting lazy life.

Yet the secret agents, that work for what remains of the government, is always operating. So there is never not a job for someone like myself. I got two keys: one is a private key I use to receive personal markdown letters, and a sending key. My other mechanic friend has that private key. Technically everyone is suppose to have a key pair, but as the internet became more specialized, it made most people technically lazy. I got one password, randomly picked from a list of all mixed alphabets. I decrypted it in order to apply it to a secured archive, that contains its own ruby server.

The word server came from the root concept “to serve”, usually in referring to waiters and bar tenders, but also came to apply to any kind of service job that earned a living through tips. Yet now the word server only begins to describe a part of the process, in exchanging information from node to node. I learned this specifically when I met this other “hacker”. The process of using Dimitry was simple, something the girl learned in trade school: simply run a process of finding all sub domains in a particular URL registry.

Often, you didn’t even need a computer to find out various hidden information. And now, nearing the end of web 3.0, the fourth world wide web was on the horizon, flowing like bad renditions of rave music lasting from 2:00 P.M. to after 3:00 A.M. But unlike rave parties, there was no rule against spooks participating, not that the government ever payed attention to this. But for the most part, I was never bothered by the NSA, until very recently, when I had met this girl.

It took my time fixing nodes.

I met her at a rave party re imagined from the nineties, with more specifically goth subject matter. She had taste that I could never dream of, but I was the sort to not really give a shit until it directly effected one of my friends, or even a family member, as estranged as I was. But when you’re friends with the devil, sometimes morality takes a back seat, presses the rewind button, and one simply regresses to early motion picture state. She had a think for slit throats and severed heads of French and Spanish women; it was a taste she had acquired since she was in high school, or so she was willing to admit. Though I have the sneaking suspicion that she had the issue for way longer than thought; at first I barfed imagining the flow of blood from the necks of girls in my dreams; but she had a way of tearing everything away from you, your reality at the seams. She wanted to experiment with a new key exchange protocol.

– Everything has been done in computers.

– Yes, everything that is computationally impractical.

– But isn’t that the point?

– … Up to a certain point.

There were times I was tempted to explain to her my superior knowledge and skill, but found that she was always a step ahead of my knowledge, as much as I didn’t want to admit this. Now I simply accept the ride, and let her sink her own ship. But my obligations still remained in fixing the mess she made. While she never revealed to me the exact details of her fetishes, there were some details I knew, that I could not politely share. But everything under the sun was all there. Everything from pillories, guillotines, wooden clogs, and birkenstocks. But this was Winter, why would anyone be wearing those?

She would leave some cryptic notes in different nodes, indicating the information she knew about different nodal administrators, and they would complain to me about feeling blackmailed. I suppose some aspects of human nature never changed. She would comment, when we smoke in dead drops, exchanging video streams, about the nature of her eye strain, and how it seemed to her like the condition was a spreading epidemic. At the very least, she would always blame her own looks on eye strain. But she was an enigma.

The eye strain enigma.

Through her eyes I saw someone who wasn’t a monster. Someone who hated the very nature of her own existence. Someone whom wanted more in life, but simply never had the opportunity. Sure, some people were born with certain shticks, but it seemed like surely something must have warped her. There was a time when I developed a similar condition, although I never looked at the same material in strangers portable information storage devices, certainly nothing like the bondage I’ve seen. It was so much the type of bondage, as it was the very nonchalantly public nature of the sexual experiments.

In a sense, she was a kind of scientist.

She experimented on herself.

Web 4.0 came faster than anyone expected, as did Web 3.0. It was originally a group college grads whom improvised a method of off line file sharing, the use of classical sneakernet protocols to transfer files and view people’s contact information in landing pages.

With QR Codes, this simply accelerated the process. Now one could simply grab anybodies phone number and dental records at the touch of a stylus pen. Laptops were going the way of the dinosaur, although one could still buy old used ones on Amazon, and there was a steadily growing interest in retro computing, with small underground DOS developers that work outside of universities. Web 4.0, in particular, combined portable storage medium with IPFS. Now one simply had to pick up a hash value at the local station, boot it up at the local coffee shop, then go off line for the length of that singular web page after applying a simple command:

~ $ wget

But eventually, instead of exchanging markdown to html pages, they began to exchange their phone numbers. A personal friend of mind switched to temporary numbers in burner phones, as a means of perfect forward secrecy, without having to apply any major cryptographic protocol. Eventually an underground network formed from exchanging the hash value links through these temporary phone numbers, and eventually became somewhat of a separate civilization from the masses at large.

Yet now, the idea of placing burner phones used for off line information gathering is so popular, it has quickly become commercialized. I worked for such a grocery giant once, working daily shifts changing the phones. But these days I see fewer customers. It’s almost as if they’re catching up to the game. In this game called life, where the only people that financially make up, are those with the physical know how, and able to function well enough with PTSD, that one simply is unable to distinguish them from the rest of the masses. And it’s increasingly tempting to go with the crowd. In this one rave party movie, it mentioned the slow decline of sub cultures; now it seemed like simply not belonging to a subculture, was itself a kind of sub culture, with eye strain becoming as common as computer hackers, whatever the term hacker means these days.

And now, I’m left wondering, rather the little raver that could, who slices through women’s neck in her mind like it’s wood, could visit me again, at the local coffee shop.

As I recall grandfatherly tales.

Tales of a distant life.

It’s easy to think of yourself as unique, and part of underground sub culture. To certain extent, this is definitely true.

But there is a very specific difference between being part of a group of friends, finding people that you can belong with. As suppose to wanting to be normal, among the every day crowd. And simply never given the chance to. Like Lucifer in the bible, worse, banished from the hell that was rave culture, phreaking 2.0, and other groups of misfit. This girl was a misfit not by choice, but do to the very nature of her own sexuality, which she tries so hard to hide away.

Yet when I see is a Rose without thorns, an untamed horse. An animal, perhaps. Just like everyone else. When she locked in the cage of self, unable to express your own desires to a normal degree, is it any wonder that some people choose to eventually end their own existence. Yet something, in this vampire, seemed to make her hold on that much more. She always carried a thumb drive, with Kali Linux installed. I only know of this from her sharing me the tools of the trade, simply because she was bored, and stopped taking the necessary precautions most of hackers seemed to. It almost seemed like a bizarre suicidal interaction, yet the lecture I gave her didn’t seem to effect her a bit. I wasn’t sure if she was deaf, or simply heard enough times she simply stopped listening.

In a way, I could relate to this.

My grandfather, whom fought in World War II, which ended roughly 156 years ago to this date, would often stopped listening the words I told him. Because to him, it always seemed like I was repeating everything that I ever said. Always repeating everything I ever said, and then some. His helmet was a lead drum, and mine was black silicon in Cyberspace. So for me, on a level I could understand no longer listening, even if it was extremely frustrating to deal with. At times she would stop talking, and simply stare into a seeming void, wandering in deep space, ready to destroy the next star system. So I would poke her shoulder, and she would come back to reality. Only to hug me and run off.

She wore a QR Code on her right arm, presumably the one she didn’t write with. I scanned it once, and it revealed to me, almost an excess of information. I wondered if she was some sort of agent, watching to make sure I didn’t fall out of line with the status quo. Yet she never seemed competent to pass even the most basic tests of low key.

Or maybe it was all a ploy.

My life, her chew toy.

At one point, at the last hours of my shift, I noticed her limping along the sidewalk. I wondered whether she was hurt, but she said this was the normal part of having high arches, that it was simply the way things were meant to be. I wondered, how in the hell she was able to get to the nearest coffee shop. She told me how it was the only way for her to get a wifi connection, with clubhouse at her apartment complex still needing repairs. When I had visited her place to answer a request on replacing her disk drive, she told me how the network facility in her flat was largely sporadic in nature.

Particularly during the Summer time, when kids were off at school. So to exchange information in any capacity, she had to rely on off web file sharing drives to contact friends, snatching emails and phone numbers like it’s cotton candy. A level of poverty, but unique to the twenty first century, as during my grandfather’s age, there was even a thing called computers. How she is able to afford her computers, honestly I couldn’t tell you. I just know that I would see her trying to hook up ports in a daisy chain, shaped sort of like a fourth dimensional cube.

She wanted to apply her own 4.0 web protocols, one that involved more nodes that can be practically taken down, clones of QR codes persisting into eternal contact spheres.

I just know, this year seemed weirder than most. And I’ve lived through a lot. Now the President of the United States is even more of a puppet than he used to be than when I went to high school, between 2004-2007. It was closer to a collective kind of dictatorships that nobody really payed attention to, and thus snuck up on us. There only reason people are not apprehended, is the very careful nature of the engineers of the net.

But one will not always be lucky.

That I can make the bet.

Life was like a school girl holding a holo-phone, running head first toward a speeding school bus. Here lies the corpse, that was once a child. Here lies the innocence, now turned to dust. And everything else, that was once good. It’s all turned to rust. Now one tips their top hat forward, walks around with a cane. Simply trying to make it through the nearest bus stop, with falling out of breath, puffing on vapes, sounding like the pipe of speeding train. All that nicotine to cope with it all, it can’t be good for the brain.

It can’t be good for the life.

If I could describe the rave party I went to with her, it was closer to a funeral procession. She would hold my hand, knowing my hesitation to dance. Light flashing, heads bashing. People’s private parts banging, and a drug full experience so I’ve heard, though I always rejected the stuff. My life always felt like it could out in a huff, and no like a fine prostitute sucking on my prick. Not like Switzerland, with bug burgers, lattes, and cuties licking all over you. This life was made for me and me only.

This was my land.

This was the night.

Sometimes it’s easier to go to bed, wishing for some other life instead. Instead of the real life, filled with pain and regret. I once tried communicating my feelings with my therapist not Bret, but rather than listening, he found some deranged pleasure in watching my own feeling unfold. It was almost a life story never told. A story of a boy whom dated girl, who died of an infestation, leaving only a rose to my name. Her own life story, I remembered as she told me. But do to her privacy wishes, I promised to her I’d never tell it. And this was a promise I intended to keep. I only tell of the public life, to communicate this final note.

Sometimes we find goodness in odd places.

And even more odd people.

Now I rest in my bed, the doctor telling I only had a few months to live. Throat cancer they said. But at least I got to spend some of the last months, meeting this interesting girl, whom, as the rumors tell, shot her own pimp. Fled out of her home country, and arrived here in Chattanooga. What a strange place to land, but who am I to judge?

I’ve lived my life well, young thing.

I shall meet you in hell. Dying before retirement age.

The age of one hundred and fifty eight.

Hell is a much different place, than taught in history books and the Catholic Church. A church filled with pedophiles that lurch. I may be in hell, but that doesn’t stop me from defaming God, because to me he/she does not exist. He exists only in the illusions of tunnels of light. Now I sit on my purgatory throne, waiting for a final judgment that seems to never come. Here, in Purgatory Road, the stop sign always points up, and the green sign down. The town where the crazy old cat lady, walks around in a circle, around a blood drawn pentagram. The bus has arrived, perhaps it will be my release. To heaven or hell, I care not. So long as I could dream of flowers in a church.

Dream of another life, where the old skyscrapers, are replaced by endless Summer clowns, and your grandparents turned once more into young women. But then I wake up, and I’m in my hospital bed.

It was 3:33 A.M.

The girl I met, Gin Bailey, came to visit me in my hospital bed hours later. But not as a prostitute, but as a welcoming friend. She held my hand, gave me a hug, as well as a coffee energy drink. Gradually easing off, she had a tear in her eye.

– Don’t mind me, it’s eye strain.

– Don’t worry, I’m here.

– It was good meeting you old man.

Now I hear organs, playing in the distant, a funeral procession drawing nearer. The sound similar to the sound of vampire tv shows from the nineteen eighties, and other shit TV. I suppose that was it, for no longer having anxiety, as I finish my peach smoothie.

I tasted like death.