Poe

During a day  of dark and spine and bone, in the sixth year, in a

place where the disconnected heads mouth soft, innumerable chants,

as they float in groups along through the tunnels, you are passing

alone, tooled up and wired , through a long

sequence of repeated monotonous interchanges of open straight

passageways, the ground, grit of broken numbers (tangle of hair)

and the walls, a slate gray intricate pattern (mosaic of bone) and

at length; miles; days; years; data, find yourself, at nightbreak; as

the mouthers of chants (flesh chants) retreat into their niches,

within the edges of a network, based upon a towering house (fractal

scape of steel and glass and  flesh), surrounded by a few spare data

trees, and reflected in a black, barely rippling random sea,

mathematical mirror.

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Never and less, here is where you will be scanning the next few weeks.  The operator of the site, Tel,

has  worked with you  before,  but you have not

been on site with him for a few  years.  A message  rider

from him, image, sound and data files, has gotten past your filters,

and offers you no other alternative than a reply. The rider was

detailed, in convoluted form, sound files montaged with the vision

and data bits.

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The software was all wrong, the circuits and memory ran fine, but there

was a wild inconsistency between the types of software tools.  What

was a volume simulation of downtown LA doing wired together with a

database of Japanese bond transactions in the 1960's  and some

early 21 century 3-d porno loops?

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An avatar of death white face, liquid luminous nitrogen eyes, thin

curved lips, and hair softer than the web.

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He spoke.

"All the creation here is not simply of one single substance. All

you see and feel is a pattern of remembered codes, objects painted

and recorded, parts of their qualities preserved, and merged for

example, a sound recorded on lower Broadway at two in the morning,

placed into a spreadsheet and merged with the architectural plans

for the world trade center, while this mixture is painted on the

pattern of sand in the Gobi desert after the Romans destroyed the

ecology. We have interlaced this on a digital framework of the

taste of the milk coming from your mothers breast, and feel you

will be well pleased.  The more desires and urges and sacred

objects, the more detailed plans and histories and contents of

libraries, the more complexity placed into an object, the more

fascinating and powerful and endlessly variable it can become."

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The soft space was patterned from pleasure as well as from need;

all interfaces became games of joy to play. The data was enclosed

in Andalusian castles of flowing water and music, where information

came as your own true song.

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And with digital bits; chaos and complex

deep to the linked clone minds the seething net

was wired, simulation wrapped tight to;

across all natures world close touched; a mime

of simulation, joined to the real,

the hard and quick of this once only world.

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And now through this valley, through red dimmed windows.

vast forms move fantastic, to music of machineries

and the throng moves back and forth and does not smile.

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No sooner than the control commands had entered the surface fractal

structure, and you speak  these words, then, as if the entire network

had crystallized into a metallic state, you can  feel the chain

reaction of screens and images locking across the entire network.

You become aware of hollow echoing inside the room. like an entire

Balinese Kepchar orchestra is clanging.  Screens across the room

go blank or flicker with hundreds of images, and all the images

start to become the same, simultaneous. multiple merger,  you

stare across the room at Tel staring at all the screens, like

stone,  you place your pseudo hand, on the image of his shoulder, and

he speaks, almost grimly, monotonously  staring ahead and as he speaks ,

he relays a sequence of repeated images,

simple and direct, and you drink in the portent of the words.

“Can’t you hear it?  You have heard it for many nights. but I did not

speak.  They are locked up, alive.”

And tonight, the door breaking down.

The death cry.  Struggles within the metallic archway.

“Where will you go?”

"They will be here soon.”

Footsteps. 

A heartbeat. 

He flashed a whole sequence of hitherto concealed images. 

“It's all over. They stand outside the door."

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The computer network starts to fall apart. The simulated room

starts to flash images of the room it is inside of.

The walls were being broken down.  They burst in.

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The electric storm was still raging.

The world shot full of  wild light

You turn back to look.

The radiance is the blood red moon.

The city is cracking apart.

The moon explodes as you see all the walls fall.

A shouting of 7 million.  The sea closes and swallows into its deep dark random waters the

fractal city at your feet.