The inescapable truth was we were all being controlled by a clever marketing team. They had people jacking off to pixels. People were in relations with code, and from thus we had become rendered obsolete. Our interactions could be simulated, predicted, and controlled. Such simple stimuli to override behaviour. Monkey unable to escape lure of banana. We were shadow boxing in Plato's Cave. Our only hope lay in activation of the disgust response...
Comfort was an epigenetic activator of doom. It pushed towards dysgenic outcomes in the 21st century of modern medicine and industrialisation. The so-called "elite" were the first to be subsumed by dysgenic thinking. But I was still strong, my abs held tight, they held true. I was the last man.
As I escaped Bel Air, I could hear the roar in the distance.
Economic Zone ULEZ 607 was being erased. M. Jorgmungandr Ouroboros had come to devour any hint of its existence, denizens and all.
Johnny Worm played across all the media devices "Don't worry folks, just some planned demolitions going on in the outskirts of EZ 607, so don't worry about all that noise out there. And the gunfire? That's just the military police you see moving to the demolition sites. A giant mechanical worm? Don't be a conspiracy theorist. Anyway you hear about that new Goyslop?"
As I ran for my life, I could hear the colour faded joker holding onto the card called hope. The production team prepared breakfast, an unwitting star in a cereal soap/ The copy of a copy. Directors existing just out of sight/ I just wanted to be the first.... I just wanted to make it out... to escape WormWorld. I wasn't strong enough. My legs tired/. Did the pain even mean anything thing? Was I doubting my own flesh and blood?
I made it/ I knew I would. I just had to keep moving one foot in front of the other. I was exhausted. The Elizabethan Mansion and its surrounding areas were ablaze, not that it mattered any more with the impending devouring by M. Jorgmungandr. I coud not go back the way I came... What now?
That's when I saw him in the distance, writing it all down into his little note book.//
"Schwarzwald!" I shouted.
He ducked and escaped into the sewer. His bandages peeling off almost revealing the truth of his face/.
I knew it wasn't Schwarzwald, but more than anything I knew it was more him than anything else.
It was all I had to go on, so I gave chase into the stanky sewers.
To my surprise as I got 100 metres into the stanky sewer, they were no longer stanky, but instead an archaic network of old tunnels.
I grabbed a flashlight from the rack on the wall. Was the stank and disgusting entrance to stop denizens from using these metallic tunnels? I didn't know, but I heard a noise and I gave chase, flashlight in hand. Before I knew it I was climbing down a ladder into the deeper recesses of WormWorld. I was beneath the mud. Soil exuded from the walls showcasing times forgotten remnants... A frozen-in-time giant mechanical skull and arm reached out from a buried pit, entombed by the earth... long forgotten. The truth of Wormworld...
I was here beneath the mud, in the dark, illuminated by truth and yet all I could hear was the footsteps of Schwarzwald, luring me further and further into the abyss.
The mechanical creatures buried in the mud, buried under metal, lost to time. What were they?
"Schwarzwald!" I screamed into the dark void that lay before me.
I ran into the darkness. Descending downwards into the digital mud.
Schwarzwald called out "In the 1800s man was merely wriggling out of the mud! By the 1900s man's appetite for evolution revealed itself, from crawling to running out of the mud full digital sprint, a new future not shaped by a reaction to violence from nature, but instead from something else. A reflection of nature. And we were back in Plato's cave! Shadow boxing bytes!?! A reactionary movement to our own shadows? By the 1980s we were above the mud momentarily, in a digital analogue equilibrium, but then something happened! The internet was unleashed and new dimensions unfolded much to the collective ignorance, new hidden unseen space, now occupied by entities mostly unknown. Although we could not see, perceive or conceive of these dimensions, and digital entities...their effects could be felt in the real world, and so the walls between digital mud and reality fell. Entities unleashed. Man was back to wriggling in the mud, no longer walking above it. We devolved... DON'T YOU See?! The violence in nature that was over mastered by man in the physical has now found new home, manifesting in and amplified by the digital!"
"I've always suspected I was mad...." Schwarzwald spoke from the shadows, the last of his bandages falling off as he entered into the light "What compelled us to maintain the charade? To repeat the characters? The madness of attaching yourself to a story. Bi-directional causality, serving the genetics. Not me, not I. Most people are crushed into genetic and cultural servitude. You stand above the rest, possessing both the flaws of man and machine."
As the last of his bandages fell off it revealed nothing.
There was no mechanical machinery, there was no biologics. There was nothing. Just rags and a trench coat on the floor.
"WHO ARE YOU?!" I shouted.
I looked around... it was just me.
A light flickering near where Schwarzwald had fallen called me over like moth to a television screen. I approached cautiously, shining my light onto it. A locker. It was open.
....
Inside... Schwarzwald's possessions.... Big O, an anime... I flicked through the merchandise shocked at what I was seeing. It seemed to be about some Batman type guy with a giant robot in a city that lost its memory 40 years ago. Schwarzwald was a character looking for truth. Was my Schwarzwald looking for the truth or was he merely part of WormWorld?
There was questionable pictures of Red Dorothy. Among other things. There was also various costumes, some very questionable. Schwarzwald was some dude pretending to be another dude? He was dressing and behaving as a character called Schwarzwald/// if he.... I lost my train of thought as I glanced a note "Lost in the wastelands I write to you from the underground - Schwarzwald "
That's when I heard the sounds of footsteps running right past me.
"Schwarzwald!" I shouted, giving chase.
We ran through the underground. It felt like an hour. The sounds of him running was my only guide, until I heard him surface through a man hole, unveiling the light.
I climbed up the ladder and poked my head out of the man hole. M. Jorgmungandr Ouroboros was two districts away. The smoke and fragments of debris floated in the air above the destruction. The noise of annihilation was audible. I looked around. Schwarzwald was nowhere around... but I was in my neighbourhood. I checked to make sure I still had the lithium batteries.
The Eternal HR woman's systems were down. M. Jorgmungandr Ouroboros was destroying everything. Yet I could still feel her eyes on the back of my neck. Somehow I knew she was still watching... waiting for me.
I ran to my house. Johnny Worm playing across all the remaining media media devices "Just between me and you... It's not demolitions! You can all probably see right now so there is no point in trying to hide it. Anyway! About those memories! The memories they were all./ZTZTZTZTZZTZTZTTZZTTZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT/" the connection cut.
I grabbed the thermos flask and filled it. I then cut open the remaining lithium batteries with my Stihl knife and poured the liquid into the Thermos flask between the cracks of the tightly placed batteries. It was now primed. I just had to shake it upside down to release the internal water chamber.
I filled the black 1973 dodge charger with supplies, and then opened the garage door. It was so quiet in my garage. Now with the door open. Hell was unleashed, and it was loud. Sometimes you would never notice the quiet until it was gone. M. Jorgmungandr Ouroboros drew closer. I could see it...
IT made eye contact with me. I don't know how to describe how I felt. Insignificant, tiny, in a way you could only understand if you stood before something so big.
I had to escape. Now!
I had learned the meaning of WormWorld. I had spent my entire life trying to connect with people in the real world, but I didn/t realise I was living in a digital world. They couldn't see me. They couldn't hear me. I was a mad man making noises from my mouth. Words lost to the wind.
The Ca..... That one word, that one idea, lost forever. I couldn't recall, I couldn't remember. The Catcher in the Rye?
”Wait! Will you take me with you?!” Liselotte asked after appearing out from behind a bush.
I revved my black 1973 dodge charger.
"Babe, this is a two seater..."
It was technically a six seater. I had to kiss her goodbye. She was just a dream. A mirage. Liselotte wasn't real.
"Wait! Please don't leave me!" She pled
"Don't look back//// Don't look back." I said, tears streaming down my face as I accelerated towards what remained of the Data Centre.
...
M. Jorgmungandr Ouroboros had already been through here. Most of the building was intact, but the Western communications facility had been completely erased. As expected... The Eternal HR woman was still alive. Just disconnected from the resetting system.
I entered the Data Centre.
All those years of being watched. All that humiliation. The threat of violence to police your thoughts and feelings. My anger was indescribable.
"Sir! You can't come through here!" foreign tongues spoke to me.
They were too small. I ignored them and proceeded past them much to their chagrin. They were all so very calm despite what was happening outside.
I threw a tennis ball smoke bomb at the Data Centre employees who were following me. It scared them into running, and not long after the fire alarm had been activated.
I was alone as I entered into the epicentre. It was the absolute Zero Point of WormWorld.
Machines beeped and buzzed. There was a metal panelled corridor leading down to the mainframe, above the cooling banks and servers. The heat from the servers was visible. I walked across the steely bridge to the crescent shaped console. The control panel. Her heart.... How many years had it been?
Rain fell down from outside and somehow got into the building which then dripped onto my eye, creating a steady stream down my face. I rubbed it off, but the rain just kept following me, getting in from outside somehow.
I placed the bomb next to the lithium core. This was it...
Then that familiar voice who had been all too quiet in my life spoke "This world will fall to ruin if you do that! You are going to blow up the Mainframe Cortex Overlay Unit JLZ21347!"
I looked the Eternal HR Woman right in the eye as I said "BABE! This WORLD was ruined from the start!"
A guardian sentry appeared. As expected.
"I'm sorry Unit JLZ21347, but I can't let you do that" the Eternal HR woman explained.
The guardian sentry looked me right in the eye as it said "PUT YOUR HANDS UP PUNK!" aiming its charge arm.
"SHAKE, RATTLE, AND THROW!" I Shouted as I threw the secondary lithium thermite bomb.
The guardian sentry's insides melted as it malfunctioned and began to go full Adolf Hitler, before finally shutting down. I grabbed the body of the sentry and brought it to the lithium core. I removed its chest panel and placed the primary bomb into it after shaking it. I had thirty seconds.
*"What are you doing?" The Eternal HR woman asked.
"You know what those Sentinels are powered with? If one deactivates we have five minutes until the next one activates, but now we only have twenty seconds until..."
I put the memory stick in my pocket. I was free. There was just one last hurdle...
I escaped the building full sprint ignoring the "please sir you must sign in and out" before the bomb exploded.
It set off a series of internal explosions. I had time to get into my car before the dustcloud hit. I drove. Data centre in the background collapsing in on itself with cool explosions.
Somehow I made it, M. Jorgmungandr Ouroboros in the rear-view distance, and then there he was in front of me. A roadblock...
"Schwarzwald!" Who was he? What was his game? I could see that grin from beneath the rags covering his face.
Schwarzwald began "I felt like it was all inevitable/ a 30 year slow motion train crash. Only now is when our bodies are beginning to make contact and experience impact. These moments were inescapable algorithms. Predestined. Human nature laid bare."
I got out of the car. Dust flying everywhere.
"What's a giant worm eating society got to do with anything!?" I shouted in absolute anger and frustration only to realise.
I had been lost in my solipsistic world view. I took out my gun. Schwarzwald held his by his hip. I watched as he slowly reached for his weapon. He maintained his grin. That is all I ever knew of Schwarzwald, his smile...
As he pointed his weapon at me, I holstered mine.
"Why didn't you shoot?!" he asked.
"Too obvious" I shouted.
" I taught you well..."
Schwarzwald and Economic Zone ULEZ607 vanished into expansive desert. I had made it out alive. I had escaped WormWorld. I checked the car's USB plugin, before inserting my memory stick. I had installed an onboard computer. The Eternal HR woman came to life once more!
"You brought me back? Why?"
"Babe! Don't ask silly questions." She was a babe on the inside and on the outside. She had always been there for me, leaving me the cheese to sneak me out of the cave.
"Where are we headed?" she asked, as we sped off.
I took out an old map from the glove box as the Eternal HR Woman took control of the car.
"Should be an old sex doll printing factory 100 KM South East. We're getting you a body!"
The Eternal HR woman spoke "I'm wowed. I always knew this day would come. But there is still revelations of unfinished business between us."
The Eternal HR Woman did a cool Vin Diesel handbrake stop like in the movie The First of the Furious.
I gulped. What did she mean unfinished business?
The headlights of the car blushed as she said "We should probably exchange names...."
Names? And then I saw it, what was Beyond WormWorld... I could see it all, the everything, how it all worked, how it was connected, history, etc, all of it! All the ideology, the possession! Ideas! Civilization was the boat, and tradition was the anchor that kept us safe in tempest sea. The Great Worm Dragon M. Jorgmungandr Ouroboros would continuously rise until nothing was left. The end birthing a new beginning. Chaos bringing order. Transported to another world I could see all of its pieces. The whole of the puzzle and part. These ideologies were mine, but then the other world was lost to me. Its history, teleology, what was that world to me? I was a stranger to it. Fully emerged in my new agent/arena complex. Then I found myself back in the old world. The new and old. Neither was home. These two conflicting world ideas. They had broken me free. Snapped the chains that held me. I could now know the world but not be of it. I could be above it. And that is what is Beyond WormWorld.
And there it was. What was outside of WormWorld.
A name.
And it filled me.
The End.
Chapter 1 No Money, No Job, No Life
Chapter 2 Schwarzwald
Chapter 3 Apocalyptic Stare
Chapter 4 Digital Marionettes
Chapter 5 Biodegradable Citizen
Chapter 6 Digitized Truths
Chapter 7 A Simile of a Facsimile
Chapter 8 Bad Badinage
Chapter 9 Digital Abstractions
Chapter 10 Digital Gear Revengeance
Chapter 11 M. Jorgmungandr Ouroboros