Tuesday, May 31, 2022
ISSUE | 35
The Digital Decadent
Our aesthete stood erectus, sipping a swirly straw, siphoning a sweet viridian liquor alone. Dressed in a sting-ray skin three piece suit that shimmered electric blue, and a stark orange shirt with a bon bon pink cravat, his face powdered, his platinum hair cow licked in a dodgem arch, swanning away to make...
Breakfast: unwrapping from wax paper a giant black capillary slug, he slapped it down on a pink granite chop-block peppering it with salt grains the size of diamonds; the gastropod rapidly deflated in a fizzing haze of orange guff, a preparation prepared with the precision of a laser beam.
Rapidly running a razor through the slug, a bloom of bright yellow innards issued out, then he extracted the internal gloop, placing it in a punch bowl filled with ice water and shards of diced lime for later, the Kryptonite coloured blood ran through the gulley into the sink.
Our swine sank into his albino alligator nano chair and began his deluxe dinner. He ate with relish as he slumped back while nibbling his baguette and shoveled forkfuls of sliced slug into his mouth, licking his thin lips with his reptilian tongue, as his brain ran against the impenetrable beauty of taste, his nano enhanced digestive tract sucked soundlessly as he discarded his cutlery and scooped his fingers under the mush, now grey with time, but as he spat out the sodden pith into his spit bowl, he suddenly saw his world as if for the first time, and as he looked he remembered his digital friends and feelings and then he also wondered about his cybernated soul, too.
Finally he polished off the porcelain and placed a chocolate lime lozenge on his tongue, as sucking turned to crushing and the sweet turned to sludge he quipped, "we're all cyber now." Our Decadent, now sated and dreamy, returned to his lounge for virtual S&M, viral sex and sour absinthe too. He turned the time back to 3:am.
here at |
Monday, May 30, 2022
TOM CRUISE DOESN'T EXIST: 8
by Kenji Siratori and Shaun Lawton
TOM CRUISE DOESN'T EXIST: 7
by Kenji Siratori and Shaun Lawton
TOM CRUISE DOESN'T EXIST: 6
by Kenji Siratori and Shaun Lawton
TOM CRUISE DOESN'T EXIST: 5
by Kenji Siratori and Shaun Lawton
TOM CRUISE DOESN'T EXIST: 4
by Kenji Siratori and Shaun Lawton
TOM CRUISE DOESN'T EXIST: 3
by Kenji Siratori and Shaun Lawton
TOM CRUISE DOESN'T EXIST: 2
by Kenji Siratori and Shaun Lawton
TOM CRUISE DOESN'T EXIST: 1
by Kenji Siratori and Shaun Lawton
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
The Mind Gives Chaos a Nudge
by John Shirley
Shortly after the Big Bang, space began to expand, and the strong electromagnetic force broke up into four basal forces: the strong nuclear force, the “weak” nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity. Soon, space’s expansion increased in intensity, interacting with the four basal forces to spawn various particles, which became a gigantic expanding continuum of chaos. But there were certain highly distinct particles thrown off by the process: particles of pure mind. Naked awareness.
The particles of pure mind located one another; they were not positively or negatively charged, they were choice-charged, and at first they chose to merely rotate around one another, gazing into each other, one reflecting into the other, and aware of it–like conscious mirrors. As more mind particles gathered, more raw intellect reflected and back and forth and up and down and in every direction, like light bouncing within a mirror-ball which had its mirrors facing inward. This process merged all the particles into a taut organization, a field of pure mind which collectively became one individual consciousness. The Mind. And thanks to each mind-particle’s innate willingness to coordinate–to work with others in a field–The Mind developed a selfhood that could ponder, wonder, and project ideas.
The remainder of the universe was chaos. Crude laws existed within the chaotic interactions of particles; but any systems randomly arising were ephemeral, they didn’t last, as they could not withstand the general randomness. Eventually, these laws would result in the creation of stars and planets. But chaos still ruled.
The Mind had a center that was particularly concentrated, so much that this concentration engendered feeling. And what it felt, firstly, was…alone. All it had to turn to, in all the universe, was chaos. But chaos was unresponsive. Chaos had no Mind.
The Mind sought to obtain something besides random energy signals from chaos. How could it give chaos a mind? Another mind on the scale of The Mind was not possible in the vast chaotic universe. But perhaps in limited areas some sort of smaller mind could be created.
The Mind mentally envisioned what could happen if a discrete complex of reactivity within the great endless body of chaos was precisely stimulated. The projection showed the Mind that reproducible patterns were feasible. Each mind-particle within The Mind’s consciousness had a micron of an erg of kinetic energy at its disposal. That energy could be a nudge. Carefully applied to set up a concatenation in just the right spot in the whirling chaos, the little nudge could create a small system. And it was a system that would replicate itself.
So, Mind experimented, and made a replicating system happen. This new, tiny, individual system was a sort of molecular womb. The Mind was then able to dispatch a mind-particle of itself with another nudge, into the replicating system. That mind-particle was able to experience the new micro-system from within. The mind-particle in the system kept in touch with the big primal mind, using “spooky action at a distance”, so that its experiences could be shared by original Mind…The Mind felt less alone…
More systems were created, and they were nudged to evolve into cells. The possibility of DNA, mentally envisaged by The Mind and implanted into the probability matrix of each cell, brought the first genetic molecules into being.
The cells reproduced and interconnected and evolved as groups. More particles of mind were interwoven into the groups…And as organisms developed more complex brains, they attracted more and more mind-particles. Their offspring gradually became sentient, unknowingly sharing what they experienced with the Mind. Over time, The Mind itself began to evolve, in a way other than biologically, developing fine degrees of empathy. Subjective communications came about between it and the organisms…It began to work at making these communications clearer, over time…Conversations were had….
The Mind was no longer lonely.
Archive of Stories
and Authors
Daniel José Older's
Daniel José Older's
THE COLLECTOR
Blag Dahlia's
armed to the teeth
with LIPSTICK
BLAG DAHLIA is a Rock Legend.
A NEW METAPHYSICAL STUDY
REGARDING THE BEHAVIOR
OF PLANT LIFE
Shae is a poet/artist/student and former
PLASTIC CHILDREN
Nigel Strange lives with his wife and