===================================== MOST FUCKED-UP PERSON ALIVE TELLS ALL ============(part 3 of 17)=========== ===================================== Copyright (c) 1995 Cognitec/3rd Force ===================================== -------- THIRTEEN -------- 1 I had grown up in a wretched scumhole -- starving, naked, alone, covered with excrement, raised by pigeons, desperate, anxious, constantly depressed. So when the crisis of world hopelessness gripped all mankind, threatening even the subtle dominance of bureaucratic placebos and peer group sanctimonies, I immediately became everybody's first choice to head the new World Peoples' Council, set up to try to fix it. 2 To make sure I couldn't refuse, the most secret and supreme power brokers of the ruling world cabals, all came crawling naked across fields of broken glass and land mines, to beg me to please, please take over their wet dishtowel of leadership and non-stop, raging ego. 3 But I was just a little too busy, at the time, dealing with, you know, all my *own* personal bullshit and didn't really give a flying fuck about the plight of their pukeball world populations run amok. "Ain't *my* fuckin' planet!" I said, in response to their endless, whining appeals -- only *hinting* at how I really felt. 4 But they persisted, because they knew I was their only hope. All their sharp, slick, well-trained, caring, highly-skilled, tireless, hardworking, personable, brilliant, driven, insightful, powerful, charismatic professional people had already stepped up to the crisis -- and failed miserably, only making everything worse with each attempt. It was clear to everybody, by now, that they needed someone more fucked-up than life itself, in order to actually solve the problems of life. Someone so fucked-up, she'd brazenly drive around town all day with an "I'd-rather-be-cleaning-up-some- ancient-nuclear-accident-on-the-South-Side-of-Jupiter" bumper sticker, taped to her windshield, across the driver's line of sight. Somebody capable of going to war at the mere mention of the state bird of the country whose dominant ideology maintained that "the pen is mightier than the cigarette." 5 Eventually, they wore me down, and I grudgingly accepted their pitiful offer -- with the stipulation that my title had to be something like "Eternal Supreme Emperor-Commandante of the Cosmos and Time." Or, "Supremo Zero," for short. Obviously, I could have asked for, and gotten, much more, but I was not in this for fame and power and ego and sex and wealth and control of the universe. I was in this strictly in the hopes of dying at it, in a most stupid and fundamental way. 6 I was installed as Presidente Supremo or whatever, and my first act was to make the entire population of the world learn, by heart, all the songs I'd written during my many incarcerations and (failed) rehabilitations. Though there were hundreds of these songs, each was highly focused and highly thematic and, together, they laid out my program for saving the huddled, humbled masses of mankind -- so if they learned them now, they wouldn't have to ask questions later. Then I passed the Universal Education Reform Act, so that every child, regardless of class, would be taught the story about the bats and the hornets, rather than the old wives' tale about the birds and the mosquitos. Then I gave every nation 100 new colonies, distributed randomly in tiny pockets across all continents and latitudes. 50 with pre-ordained usages like: simulation colony, test colony, writers' colony, plumbers' colony, space cadets' colony, etc. And 50 that could be anything. Then I de-partitoned Central North America and re-established a homeland there for all the refugee Americans scattered around the world, living under the guise of another race. A place where they could return and simply live, with no questions asked, and no longer be shot on sight. Then, I instructed World Peoples' Police to cease all harassment of adults riding over bridges, hanging out their car windows, screaming, "Earthquake! Earthquake! -- C'mon! C'mon! Earthquake!" I made everybody carry a home drug testing unit that had to show positive for the other person, before any interaction could take place between them. And I publicly threatened all peoples and all nations with pre-emptive pharmacological strikes, if, or whenever, I just fucking felt like it. Period. 7 The 2nd day of my Presidency of the Cosmos, I got up early and hired a crack team of quantum geneticists to produce, from scratch, and totally =in vitro=, a pure, native worldperson, that just might serve as the standard for the future of all organisms -- but maybe not. I amended the Education Reform Act of the previous day, so that children would no longer be taught about the bats and the hornets, but instead, they'd learn about the turkeys and the earwigs. I banned the manufacture and sale of microprocessors made of protein or DNA and let all the stores know that "Tales of Pain and Pleasure" had to be off the shelves by the end of the day. I revised the streetmap of the world, so it no longer included Missinapoli Minneola, or Missiapolis Mindiana, or anything in Minnesopiola. I eliminated the subsidies that allowed the disenfranchised-but-non-vagrant populations of the world to still have their lifehistory videotapes done in blood. I had Francisco Bizarro publicly discredited as the inventor of the tin can telephone and the rubber sex doll. I disbanded all world cabinets and legislatures and replaced them with a team of about 10 or 12 people who could precisely mimic modem sounds enough to be able to hum any sequence of bitmaps into any transmission line anywhere in the world, at any BAUD rate, and using any compression algorithm whatsoever. And, of course, as promised in my inaugural address, I banned reality from ever again being used as a crutch by people trying to hide or escape from drugs or being free. 8 A few months later, as lives and infrastructures continued crumbling even faster than before, I called a press conference to let the people know that they fucking better not try to blame *me* for any of this. "I realize," I said, addressing them via interlink, "That, despite all my best and most heartfelt efforts, things still seem to suck more than ever. "So, I'm here, to say to you tonight: --> 'Hey! Just shut the fuck up and mind your own business!'" Then I left the mike and let my Secretary of Defensiveness, Johnny Mattress, finish up the address, and lay out for the people, the even more draconian measures I'd devised for them, one day, out of total boredom with even the most supreme authority over matter and energy and human will. "Hello," he began. "My name is Johnny Mattress, and I hope you won't get all pissed about the following directives which are made, after all, with nothing but your best interests at heart -- even if their roots do lie deep in the filthy soup of unmitigated, primordial vengeance: 1: All offers of drugs claiming to be the best and strongest ever, must be accepted and then sent immediately to the Presidente-Supremo's office, for further testing. 2: Whatever is fucked about the world can no longer be blamed on the nervous system which is structured so as to be able to perceive it in no other way. 3: A bell-shaped curve can no longer be considered the only correct response to questions about mankind, whether it really is or not. 4: Bars on windows must always be spaced just far enough apart, so a squadron of highly-trained, 4-year-old girls can swarm in one night and carry out any necessary governmental mandate. 5: Bars on windows must always be spaced just close enough together, so as to prohibit the entrance of any team of highly-trained, 5-year-old girls, such as those that frequently carry out the atrocities of various non-governmental, and anti-government sympathy groups. 6: Performances of the play `Romiette and Julio,' and screenings of the film `Alzheimer's Fever,' can not occur within a month either way of a National Kamikaze Tea Ceremony. 7. Wildcat splinter groups espousing total world secessionism, but without access to their own motivations, may not demand that the motto: "No penalty for any kind of withdrawal whatsoever!" be written on a small card and placed over everybody's doorway. Then he put the mike down on the table and walked away, and *this* address to the people -- was over. 9 Meanwhile, the world became closer and more intertwined, and individuals became, simultaneously, more isolated, more alone, and more technology-based. Soon, only the lowest of the lower classes still had to physically interact with the world and with each other in order to survive, and at that point, theirs were the only real stories left in the world. ----- 4TEEN ----- 1 Normally people just got massive stomach aches when they talked to me, but for a brief period during my presidency, their friends and loved ones died, instead. I had always accepted my responsibility for earthquakes, civil wars, and people falling off bicycles at stop signs, but it wasn't easy trying to fix the cosmos, with all your cabinet members and advisors, always tearfully rushing off to distant funerals, or holding their stomachs and rushing off to distant bathrooms for extended periods of time. My therapist, Dr. Our, told me not to take it personally. "These people," he said, "Bring these destructive events on themselves, subconsciously, in order to be able to absolve themselves of any guilt over the way they feel about you." 2 Eventually I was forced to leave this job for, approximately, the same reasons that had forced me to leave all my other jobs, schools, prisons, religions, families, nations, and hovels. And, with all my imperial exemptions and perks gone, I was immediately drafted into World Peoples' Militia. 3 In those days, the Militia was used exclusively to protect the people from any possible occurrence of extra-sensory perception or paranormal events. We were trained to move in at the first sign of pre-cognition, telepathy, or psycho-kinesis and, if necessary, break some heads. Even if it was only just a weather forecast that somebody'd gotten half right. 4 As part of the discipline that solidified our group cohesion, the only newspaper we were allowed to read was the one with the headline: "Man Empties Restaurant With Threat of Micro-Nuclear Explosive Device in Cow's Stomach." 5 I had been in the Militia for about a week and had just finished shining my shoes, one day, and was sitting at the edge of my bunk, staring down at them. I had reached an equilibrium that I couldn't explain. Not living, not dying, not pissed off. This state had no name. We were to go on a corporate sweep at 0300 hours, and I was getting ready to get myself mentally prepared for it. Whenever we went out on a mission, there'd always be a final pep rally, where the entire squadron would jam itself into a tiny room, and everybody'd just start calling everybody else "You fucking asshole, you fucking scumbag, you fucking piece of shit" as violently and aggressively as possible, for a full hour. Then we'd all high-5 each other and rush out the door screaming, all hopped up, ready to take on whatever (fucking) piece of population or infrastructure got in our way. 6 Just before it was time to move out, I started hearing this distant, tinny sound in my ear, like a high-pass filtered, short-wave transmission -- but it didn't come from anything around me, and no one else in the barracks noticed it. The sounds could be distinguished as a human voice or voices speaking, but the words could not be understood. Obviously it was coming from some other dimension or time. Or from some charged up conversation of the present, occurring billions of miles away. When I finally complained about this to the commander, he leaned over his desk and softly confided in me that he'd been hearing it too and, the next day, I was transferred. 7 I was moved to a barracks where, across the street, an old lady screamed out her window in Ukranian, non-stop, for 2 hours at a time, randomly, 4 to 6 times a day. She was often given as the reason why this barracks had the absolute lowest morale of any unit, anywhere, at any time, in all human history. 8 At night, some of the recruits met secretly in the boiler room and tried to hammer out the conditions of a new Democratic Fascist Manifesto, while an old hit single of mine, "Girl From Another Species," played softly, over and over again, in the background. "Fortunately, they all want to be just like us, and we are fucking up worse than anybody," was usually the only consensus we'd have reached, when the meeting broke up, early the next morning. 9 Out of probably fear or pain, one day, our commanding officer, Commandante Our, decided to take an independent police action. Meetings were held at the squadron level to prepare us. First, we were instructed not to wear the kind of clothes that had moving neon arrows pointing at the crotch or mouth. "We may land on a day that is not the day when anybody has any needs or desires," our group leader warned. One of the guys said something about this from the audience, and everybody laughed. The group leader smiled, but made a motion for them to quiet down and take things seriously. "Some of you may not come back," he said, getting very emotional. "So what!" I called out, from the back of the room, "I've *already* not come back -- and more than once -- and it's no big deal." And I was instantly kicked out of the service, for good. All service. 10 Then things got so slow, you had to call Emergency two years in advance. ------- FIFTEEN ------- 1 Having fucked-up at the supreme presidency of the universe, and having fucked-up prison and military service and daily life and work and school and childhood and death row and on the road and off the road and on trains and planes and in stadiums and cars and airports and apartment buildings and having even fucked-up in busses and bars, and with no longer any possible hope whatsoever of anything ever, anywhere -- I decided it was time to play the last remaining card in my tragic deck: I went to see Fabian. 2 He was out washing his XK-E as I pulled my Alzheimer's into his driveway, but he didn't seem to recognize me at first. He stared suspiciously, and gently released the handgrip of the hose so it stopped spraying. "Fabian," I called out the window before coming to a full stop, "It's me." He did a double take, then broke into a broad smile. He threw his arms open wide as I got out of the car, and we embraced for many minutes. "It's really you," he said. "I can't believe it." "I'm pretty fucked-up, Fabian," I said, trying to sound upbeat, but my voice cracked. He looked worried and finished rinsing off the car in a second, so he could come right back to me and show his concern. "Let's talk about it," he said. He put his arm around my shoulder, and we walked into his place together. "Don't worry about *me*, Fabian," I said, nobly, "How are *you* doing." I sat down in his spacious, sunlit living room, as he went over and poured us both a stiff beta-blocker and tonic. He came back and sat across from me on a large white sofa and handed me the drink. "Old times," he said, holding up the glass for a toast. I smiled weakly, then broke down. He stopped drinking and reached over and hugged me. "C'mon, man," he said, "Tell me about it. You know, it can't be that bad. I can help you work something out. C'mon. Is it money? Sex? Your health?" "It doesn't have a name or category, Fabian," I said, in between heaves, "I'm just fucked up -- beyond all reconciliation with time." I could see he was really right there, at that moment, and I appreciated it. The phone started ringing, but he let it ring through so his machine took it. "Please," I said, "Let me never have lived." "I'm afraid I don't have that power," Fabian said. 3 We went for a ride in the hills in his Jag, but that didn't help either. Despite my fucked state, I was still conscious enough to realize that this wasn't the same Fabian I used to know 5 years ago, when we were selling desktop thermonuclears together in Territory 13, Sector 9. "Maybe you should just do something to take your mind off it," he said. "They're holding tryouts for the Olympics of Being Fucked-Up, next month. Why don't you JUST GO FOR IT! Go for the Gold!" He started getting all worked up into a motivational frenzy, but suddenly remembered who he was dealing with, and cut it off. 4 My best Olympic event was the one where you got into a big laundry supply truck and drove to the top of a long, narrow, one-way street on a steep hill, and waited for somebody else to come along in another big laundry or plumbing supply truck. Then you'd both release your brakes and start to barrel down the hill, at top speed, the wrong way, jockeying side by side for position, trying to push each other off the road, up onto the sidewalk and through the ground floor window of some apartment -- killing 4, injuring 3, and doing maybe 6 or 700,000 dollars damage. I was also quite skilled at driving cars uphill, in the dark, on the wrong side of the road, with no headlights. So, in a Pentathlon that included these 2 events, I was certain I could quickly learn to do the other 3 well enough to win at least a silver, if not gold, medal or shower. 5 I took Fabian's advice, dropped all thought and pretense, and settled into a gruelling workout schedule that took every second of my time and every joule of my energy and every cc of my matter and every bit of my information. And, of course, I was pretty disappointed when, without any warning, the World Peoples' Olympics Organizing Commission suddenly cancelled that year's event, simply because no global earthquake could reliably be predicted for its opening day. But, then, I really couldn't complain -- since I'd always been a staunch supporter of the idea that, if there's not gonna be an 8.0 earthquake somewhere nearby, that day, why even bother waking up? 6 I closed down my training camp and got back to thinking about how fucked-up I was -- instead of embracing it and acting on it and following it and eating-and-sleeping it and worshipping it and cashing in on it. Then I thought, "Maybe I'll just join the Erasers." 7 The Erasers was a group that went around the world, erasing any piece of culture or infrastructure that was based on any of the 4 big lies of the species, or on any of the 8 big lies of desire, or on the 6 big lies of nature, or the 4 big lies of social order, or on any of the lies that emanated from the vocabularies of purported attempts at understanding consciousness and history. "Soulless ego, empty labor, fearful sex -- are the secret names of the stories told to cover up what is really just the play of sunspots across a field of hormones," was their motto. 8 The leader of my unit was Captain de la Tourette. He had written the best-seller, "Dimensions of Normalcy," and been with "Today: Serotonin -- Tomorrow: the World" when they recorded their hit single "Personal Biochemical Warfare." But those days were behind him now, and like me, he'd come here as the absolute last resort -- after Fabian. 9 The first exercise we did, during my probationary period, was the one where we all put on our Velcro suits from head to toe, and walked in endless circles through the bee swarm room. Then, after an hour of this, we were shown out the back door, where a van was waiting to take us to a live taping of the hit TV show, "Designing With Carrion." 10 These and similar operations were supposed to "separate the animals from the assholes," and as soon as I learned this, I quit the Erasers and started a Fast Bush-Food franchise. Everything on our menu was picked or killed fresh out of the bush, and our 2 most popular offerings were termites on a stick and semi-conscious baby field-lizard. Our patrons could even go out to the trees themselves and pull off their own bark, or wait over a little hole for hours, with a stick. And we didn't charge them any extra. 11 When business started slipping, we went to The Bank of Mercy, looking for some relief, but they just laughed and told us the first law of marketing -- about how an idea or product can't become world-popular until long after it's become stupid or dead. Then they suggested we'd be better off going to Commerce Hospital for help, since our only collateral was in illegal neuro-inhibitors. ----- 6TEEN ----- 1 One day, when I was trying to hide, Sting spotted me anyway, at my table in the corner, facing the wall, and came over and sat down, all smiling and upbeat and aggressive and acting like we were close friends, even though we weren't. "Just the person I'm looking for!" he said, as though he meant it. "See, I've got this idea...." He was always getting people involved in some high-stakes project and then, once they were in too deep to back out, he'd suddenly call them lame assholes or something, and the whole deal would collapse -- leaving everybody with massive debt and neverending lawsuits -- except, of course, Sting, who just skipped merrily off to do some world tour or cut some cameo background vocal, or fly some beat-up old space-shuttle round-trip to Pluto to exploit its unique acoustics for a 2-second clarinet riff that might get mixed into some upcoming release. "You see," he began, "One of my offshoot companies is premiering a new vid show. But it's not just *another* new vid show -- It's a whole new *concept* in vid shows. "It's called Undercover," he continued, getting more excited as he spoke, "...and it works like this: First we get a bunch of losers -- almost anybody'll do -- and we give 'em each a transmitting camcorder, a flashlight, and an infinitely re-usable, open airline ticket to anywhere in the world, anytime. "These losers then travel to the exotic or stupid places of their dreams, but are not provided living expenses so, wherever they go, they have to sleep under stairways and eat out of garbage cans. "All we ask of them, in return, is that they spend at least 7 hours each day in some dark corner or makeshift broomcloset-studio, with the camcorder and flashlight focused tight on their faces, while they struggle to dredge up the deepest, most honest and ugliest personal truths from the bottom of the pit of their wretched spleens. "No bullshit, no hype, no acting, no lies -- just the most heartfelt, purest word, straight from the gut. No image enhancement, no post-dubbing, no special effects -- just the raw, unmitigated data, direct from the depths of unadulterated Being. "And all done with nothing but a camcorder and a flashlight and a blanket *and the soul*," he finished, ethereally, wistfully, staring into the sky, floating on his own ecstasy. And I could already hear the sounds of the unit he had warming up for me, outside in his car. "But, what if...," I asked, when he came back down from the stars, "...What if the experiment fucks up and you accidentally save the world from its own sanctimonious hypocrisy? Then what?" 2 I got out of there and walked down the street, past a Psycho Shack. I would have gone in to buy some drug surrogates or Psilocybin Helper, but the line of drooling wannabes, anxious for the next tepid fix, stretched all the way around the block. These days, the market for drug replacements was more intense than the market for actual drugs had ever been. The name was the most important thing, and then the package design. Nobody seemed to care that the stuff didn't really get you high anymore. And if the placebo effect had been outlawed, only outlaws would have felt anything at all. 3 Eventually I got picked up for drunk and disorderly on a freight train. "But it's the only thing I know how to do!" I screamed, as they dragged me off, and then again, at my trial. 4 "OK," I said to myself, once I was locked up. And I resolved to do my best now to try to get back on the glidepath to some (at least simulated) human spirit or human condition -- like I'd read about in the Classic Comics' "History of Consciousness." But my second day there -- before I was even settled in -- the warden suddenly called me into his office, looked me dead in the eye, and said "Get the FUCK out of my prison!" He told me I was being kicked out because I'd been much too genteel in committing the most mindless and repulsive brutalities -- but I knew that wasn't the *real* reason. Then he handed me a little black ball. "This is the symbol of your non-existence," he said. "It means that no prison or jail will ever take you in again, no matter what you do. No matter how many cops and Presidents and babies and Popes you kill in a week with a hot soldering iron up the ass or a road drill." Other people, of course, had been barred from prison before, for being things like innocent or dickheads -- but no one before me had ever been barred from prison for life, *more than once*. Unfortunately, I did not realize this at the time and so regret not having thanked the warden for helping place me, once again, in the record books of lazy, good-for-nothing high-achievers and murderous, coked-up Bodhisattvas. [ End: Part 3 of 17 ] ===================================== Most Fucked-Up Person Alive Tells All Copyright (c) 1995 Cognitec/3rd Force =====================================