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"Mud unto mud! -- Death eddies near --
Not here the appointed End, not here!"
-- Rupert Brooke, HEAVEN
And the Curator speaks: "It used to be me that had to wear that
stupid sign. Now it is me that has to go and fetch water from the
cellar. My wife Sophie is dead. She died two winters ago, during - what
we now call - the Savage Storm. Really savage that son of a bitch was,
too. It came and blew everything away in sight. Many fellas of mine died
that fateful night, when the Savage Storm hit our coastal town.
Mindville - no name to joke around with, that's for sure. But
nevertheless my town was wasted, utterly and entirely. Clear and shiny
as a baboon's ass, that's how it is now. You just don't wanna lick a
street that reminds you of a baboon's ass. But that's exactly what the
Board will make you do if you do not wear that stupid sign. I am not
wearing it because I am the one who still has to go (every day, every
morning, every evening) to fetch water from the cellar. Everybody else
(male, female, children, - hell! - even little babies) has to wear that
stupid sign - a CERT certificate, the Board calls it. A shit for brains,
I say, that's what that stupid sign signifies." The Curator sits
back down. After all, wisdom never struck in BOLD LETTERS. Dark wall
screaming mouths tight shut. In the end and in the future - Mindville,
Tennessee: museum in a bubble, tight-lipped service to a dream encasing
all and all, bullwhipped and chained and dominatrixed deeper deeper led
into the eternal bliss of a gluttonous abyss, heretical cannibals with
teeth filed down - the prey a soft flesh box bubbling with internalized
lies, CERT-fed puppets pale and sad, trapped in a cage of their own
design, 'built' by elevated animals and guarded by the Board. Blood-less
and oxygenized ... VATERLAND! ... VATERLAND! ... a faint scream choked
in static. And the Curator speaks: "Now, I don't wanna preach here,
but look around you, young men of tomorrow, and smell the bacon! I am
talking to nobody here, I know, but a warning in silence might go a long
way. All my dead fellas, dead and buried or burned and scattered
(depending on their involvement), will surely hear this prayer. That's
the darndest thing - 'think soul communication!' some all-brainer told
me. Who am I to argue?" The Curator sits back down. It is clear as
the Ancient Past's sky: THIS night may prove terminal. Deus ex Machina,
usually kind and benevolent and of classical beauty - now drunk and
babbling: "Salvation tentative!" - having Wallhallian fun
tavern-stool crashes and blows all around, Met spilled and finally
passed out - the Greek ideal drowned in Barbarian booze. On the wayward
side a slide will pop up that will show one, two, three things: further,
upwards, right. Of course, the Curator wakes up, and the Arrow is still
pointing down. Among brigand rulers (individual souls that dictate and
let die), the Gulag masses starve for extinction. An enduring empire
must swallow its pride and follow the eternally 'sanctioned' and UGLY.
Is it always convenient to keep history and theology apart? A question
raised by multitudes of tanned and skinned alive meat market products,
the show on display bobbing throbbing - squeezing out regeneration -
resurrection in the tomb of utility. Supply and demand - always the
first - never the latter - meat market products shut in and orgasmically
chanting: "Once ... Twice ... In! ... Out! ... All we wanna do is
do it!" WHAT is not rhetorical. And the Curator speaks: "I
never lied to you, young men of tomorrow, at least not intentionally. I
just told you what I've heard from my outside source. After all, someone
had to escape the INFECTION to write regular reports." The Curator
sits back down - and farts. 'No advance until dawn is clean and
sterile!' The slogans silent echoed against walls bouncing back into
hapless minds. 'Inherit the uninspiring and ineffectual dead!' A supreme
technocratic diversion rectifying the Board's decisions - final and
cold. Nightlife Philosophy now skimming past a slant-eyed movie screen,
the audience all wrapped in plastic - pushed with fingers deep in holes
the boundary a gap, the feminine stench an enticement device. The barren
film of no good themselves. Not all lost in tune with time, but
distorted, scratched and bold: blood and guts and never whine, valiant
strugglers for the useless cause of status. 'Kin in the Bin!' The slogan
fresh clear read and deeply resented. In Omega City, everything is clean
and dirty, true and false - all for the benefit of the Board.
- Constantin von Hoffmeister
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