"SCHWARZWALD!!!!" I shouted in absolute rage.
My voice carried across the dusty wasteland. The hot sun bore down. Old ruins of a containment facility scattered the scene. Giant mutant worms swam in the distant sand dunes.
My hand gripped the pistol. I could feel the sweat from beneath my gloves. My breath was heavy, my stamina was spent. This was it. I was pinned down. Schwarzwald was on the attack.
I leaned against a wall for cover, focusing on my breathing.
"Come out with your hands up!" Schwarzwald demanded.
"I HATE THE ANTI-CHRIST! I HATE THE ANTI-CHRIST!" I responded before quickly leaning out and firing off several quick shots.
All my shots passed by Schwarzwald, who unfazed, kept approaching.
2 sniper shots from different directions almost hit me. One zipped past my chest, the other collided with the wall only 3 cm away from hitting me. If I could at least land a hit on Schwarzwald, wounding or killing, I could then try and evade the snipers. I could get out of this situation. I had been in worse.
I once more came out from behind cover and began shooting at him, hoping to get him by surprise; I would have usually attempted to circle around my target by now, and he knew that.
"AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" I screamed as he unloaded his sub machine gun, striking me multiple times in the legs.
I fell to the ground.
I couldn't move.
I tried to grab the gun laying next to me.
I wanted to pick it up and get revenge on my would be killer.
But I was too weak. I couldn't go on. The blood pooled around my legs like I had pissed myself in red.
I looked up at the man in the three piece suit wearing a brown trench coat; face wrapped in bandages. Schwarzwald slowly reloaded as he looked down on me with contempt.
"Why?!" I questioned to my old friend.
How did it come to this? For years we had had each others backs... up until only two days ago.
"You! You contain the foolishness of both man and machine!" he explained and he pressed his sub machine gun against my chest.
"You! You used to be cool!" I parried.
He shook his head in disappointment of my inflammatory wit, gently tutting, as he squeezed the trigger.
I died...
Schwarzwald began to sing "Don't you forget about me. I'll be alone, dancing, you know it, baby..."
Fade to black
....
It felt like a lifetime ago since my standoff with Schwarzwald amongst the ruin of the New Desert. Maybe it was the latency, maybe it was the repetition of each programmed day. Perhaps it was the unreality. What ever the reason I was deterritorialized from time and space; fully deracinated from the world I once knew. You could kill me and I would think it was yesterday, but perhaps it was today. What did it mean anyway? What could a deterritorialized man communicate? Words Words Words! As if you are the sun! The center of the universe!
The black door creaked open, and from the darkness Schwarzwald emerged. I could see his teeth baring grin under the bandages that wrapped his face. His mad eyes and wide grin were all that was visible.
"It's been a while..." Schwarzwald noted.
"You know me!" I jested, trying to keep my cool and bask in the mystery before it was undone.
Schwarzwald pointed at a wall, and then a stream of videos appeared. News reports from across the years, across the globe; the contradictions all too obvious. The art of abstraction, the art of nooticing.
I wondered how many of us there was; the nooticers.
I wondered if man could survive without his memories from the past? How long could he survive not knowing what he is connected to or where he is from? Or what he has been through?
Schwarzwald joined me at my table in the lobby. Lucky for us, he was the Mod of this zone. It was the only safe Lobby to talk on.
Schwarzwald took out a whiskey bottle and filled 2 glasses. You could really taste the simulacrum; all taste, no chemical high.
"Don't you find it strange that no one else in this city is trying to uncover the truth of this world!?" he said before standing up, downing his whiskey in 3, and then slamming the empty glass on the table.
With Schwarzwald you never really knew what he meant. There was always a metaphor in everything.
Schwarzwald began to march back and forth in front of the videos. Orchestral music began to play.
He spoke "I've lived my life as an E-journalist and a truth seeker. I worked the grind and found the truth! I saw between the lies. I glimpsed the truth and I wrote my articles. But eventually I realized that not even I! Schwarzwald! Can get to the truth of this city... and those who should know the truth, they don't even want to see the truth. But I want to know! I want to get to the one truth, but no one is interested in seeing, but I want to see! I want to know the truth of this world!
Even without the events of 29 years ago, I still believe that man would be an animal afraid of the dark; the unknown. And what did the singularity give us?!!!!
Thanks to the system, we in this city don't have to face that fear. Fear comes from not knowing. We can pretend that we had no life before the now and act all we want. We can avert our gaze and proclaim.
No memories. No family. No tradition. No past. No pain. No insult. No injury. A perfect therapeutic state!
It wasn't just us who lost our memories 29 years ago, but also the foreigners who came here looking for an easy life. We avert our gaze, as if we had no history, but even 29 years can be a short time and a long time.
Is it a crime to know the truth? Is it a sin to look at the things that you fear?
And what was fear?!
Something vital to us homo sapiens, that which when we lose will result in our apathetic wait for extinction, a genetic dead end. Man's fear has vanished! The loss of the will to fight! The Will to power!!!! Gone!
Wake up!
Ascend!
Climb out from Plato's cave!
Don't be afraid of knowledge!!
Without the capacity to think we lose the ability to have value!!!
Think!
Think unless you want the gulf between man and overman to expand into oblivion, you must think!
And what are these Giant mutant worms! These monsters and horrors that linger in our minds?! A reflection of societies anxiety! A metaphor of our deserted desert lives. No outlet! No future! Doomed to devour until death! A remembrance of the humans who played God... splitting us into two worlds, towards pitiable lows..."
"I'll buy that for a dollar!" I jested, knowing and both unknowing for the sake of my sanity; how could any 'sane' person truly know?
Schwarzwald hunched forward in a reserved depression.
"The truth is out there... beyond the city...." he murmured
"You can't go beyond the city limits" I reminded the one who controls the power of God created by man.
Schwarzwald regained his composure as he began to march manically "Wormworld huh?! And here I was talking about the worms as if they were a metaphor, and not some demonic beast summoned by the weakness of mankind. That which seeks to devour and grow! The life of a worm; that which seeks to spread and infect as many people as possible. And what is our society if not an infection of ideas? An infection that fights for dominance and produces anti-bodies to kill off new ideas?!?
And what truly are the Worms?
Worms are the engineers of the underworld!
Consooming and rebirthing organic matter!
Don't you see it?!
WE ARE THE ORGANIC MATTER!
AHHHHHHHH!~!!!!!!" Schwarzwald screamed before continuing.
"As long as we continue to live in this mass-illusion, the worms will continuously be reborn. A mirror of none other than ourselves. Our anxiety within us, without outlet, no past or future. No anchor to hold us down. Our emotions; hate, love, jealously, joy, and our desires, our fears! Alone each is just a small part, but together they become an enormous WHOLE that takes shapes.
And when we reach beyond the limits! What do we find?! Not the comforting notion of supreme God's watching overhead, but instead the remnants of long abandoned technology and machines! A Joke!"
"To the joke of the world!" I toasted in irony.
"Speaking of worms... where were you yesterday?" Schwarzwald questioned as he rejoined me at the table.
I looked around the empty lobby, taking my time, savouring the mystery. Schwarzwald usually had a thousand on me, but now I had one on him.
"Outside... beyond the limits. I went for a stroll.." I made my gambit.
"I don't believe you" Schwarzwald accused with a straight voice and tone.
"Fine... I encountered a MAP at the shop, and then somehow found myself in breach of subsection 4.39... I did get two beers and some meat out of it... so not the worst outcome."
"And why did you not show yesterday? Don't tell me you resisted and ended up at the infirmary!?"
My face gave me away.
"I thought better of you... you don't look bad?"
"Transdermal patch" I slapped my shoulder.
"Lucky you" Schwarzwald mused, before continuing "Your absence got me thinking... and I'm going to do it. Beyond the city limits..."
"Are you insane?" I questioned the clearly insane man.
He smiled.
I had a thought myself, but I could not share it. The empty lobby became not so empty. A group of NuHumans entered.
NuHumans had no mother, no sex, no personality beyond that given to them by the system. They looked like a group of thin androgynous males.. but perhaps female. One could not tell. They were the end-result of the trans question. The system removed the trans population as they caused instability, and replaced them with the perfect NuHuman, birthed in the cadaver factories/birthing facilities.
Schwarzwald and I looked at each other. There would be no more conversation so open. NuHumans were known for their adherence to the system. I listened in as I pretended to nurse my simulacrum of alcohol.
Other than the caps and the bussin' I got the jist of what they were saying. They only spoke in unreality. They never once related to the real. It always had to be so far removed. I felt bad for the NuHumans, because perhaps they could not speak about the reality as it was something so distant to them, and maybe if they did... if they could see it, they would go crazy. Life of la creatura and el monstruosidad was a genetic dead end. As those genes transcripted to culture, could they alert the host that they were a dead end?
Perhaps they were engineered too perfectly. I could not tell what race they were. Amorphous androgynous blobs fed unreality daily. Perfect ants of the colony.
And what was I but a dinosaur past his expiry date?
Who was I to judge the death of mankind?
"If the masses believe it, then a lie becomes the truth! See you tomorrow!" Schwarzwald warned me before disappearing.
I looked at the clock. Time always seemed to go too fast when I was with Schwarzwald. I disappeared.
...
"Time for late night activities..." the HR woman alerted me.
Here I was back to reality... and what did I find? Man made horrors barely within my comprehension.
Late Night Activities' LNA was a protocol designed to reduce sexual harassment and rapes; it was at first for offenders, but soon administered to the whole population; as with all protocols of control. The Therapeutic state drained us of any will to procreate. We were just replaceable bodies to be placated until our demise and replacement. I guess Schwarzwald was right. We are the organic matter!