Roger, do you remember this?

[Payne]

Do you remember when word got out? They called it a leak. Some "unamed source" lifted the corner of the ragged and stained cloth that covered The Great Machine, and let this two-bit hack have a brief glimpse at the pulsating, grinding, filthy leviathan. It made the evening editions, as soon as the words were written down, they were given the hurry-up by the ranks of editors and copy-checkers. It was Good Shit.

There was the outrage on street corners, there was all that fear. On that nights news, talking heads argued back and forth over what it could mean. No consensus was found, there was no common ground, nothing could even be articulated. The hack hanged himself that night, or at least he was found hanged the next day. When he was buried, no one attended his funeral - personal effects were sold on eBay, his diaries making a lot of money for the first detective to the scene of his death. Your bid for them failed.

Sales of personal firearms, alcohol, tinned food, eco-friendly cars and guitar strings went up. There was a dip in the form of almost every leading sports star. I lost a bet to you. An unexpected peace broke out in the middle east, a week before the President was due to invite the leaders of Isreal and Palastine into the White House.

As time went by, we forgot. The Great Machine was no longer front page news. The talking heads had now turned on the President for his naivety regarding the middle east, which had just seen the bloodiest days of conflict in months - even years, according to some (even you). The hack's diaries were never read, at least with anything like the seriousness they deserved. A metal band in Illinois found some inspiration in them and had a minor hit, before creative differences ended their career.

In the bowels of The Facility, The Great Machine had a new seal on an almost, but not quite, inconsequential piston. The leak had been fixed with little fuss.

Do you remember?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm not sure.  I remember that things went crazy for a while, and all the wrong people were smiling and there was so much blood in the gutters that I can't to this day remember what it smells like.

I remember that everyone tried to forget.  Everyone wore a look on that day that said if you tried to make them look at the crisis, they'd kill you.  I remember that people were laughing to loud and too long and some people cried out to their neon Gods and their neon Gods did not answer...for a while.

Then the lights came back on and the great gears began to turn with their comforting whirring noise and the conveyor belt started moving again, and all the sweating masses breathed a sigh of relief, and went about their business, carefully avoiding the corpses on the sidewalk.

I remember that much, and not much more.  But when I try to ask people what exactly happened that terrible day, they look at me like I'm crazy and then they start to talk about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize and how funny that is.

But I remember, Payne.  At least some of it.  And I can't understand why nobody else does.  I mean, all those corpses had families, right?  Were they just declared missing, or mugged, or...what?

But I remember.

[rong]

for a moment it stopped being you versus me and started being us versus them.  it was a fleeting moment.  and then it was gone - like a fart in the wind.  but it happened.  i think.

[Richter]

I remember the day IT happened.  IT was horrible, senseless, a waste of life and talent.  We were all responsible, voting for the factors that led to IT, ignoring it and abstaining, struggling futilely against it at all to peaceful protests when there was MORE we could have done.  I mean, how often is soemthing so obvious and imminent and so horrible that you KNOW you OUGHT to forcibly strike it down?

We were taught to be passive, so we were.
We were taught to wait for emergency services, the Army, and everyone else that should have showed up to save us.  (Except they didn't.)
We were taught to be creative, be individual, and think outside the box by blank faced servants of the regime of the week, but it never did quite take.

Jefferson, Paine, and Franklin, have stopped spinning in their graves.  They've given up on us, and I do not blame them.    

We can't justify, spin doctor, excuse, or finagle our way out of the guilt.  After seeing IT, who would dare?  That grim, rainy sky blame was on us all, without exception.

I suppse we better go home and turn on the TV.  Maybe we can forget about it all.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

But Richter, I still have these nagging memories about the cops in their riot gear and the nightsticks and the tromp tromp tromp sound of boots marching in step.  I have dreams about people pulling the blinds closed as They went by, so that they wouldn't have to see them wouldn't have to know wouldn't have to tell their grandchildren that they SAW and didn't FIGHT.

And sometimes I dream about the sun, Richter, and a bright shiny day that wasn't too hot and a pretty girl by your side and the future.  The moon as the first step, then Mars, then 4 kilometer-long ships hurling themselves towards Barnard's Star.  

Sometimes the dream is so real that I think it really must have happened somewhen, in a place that THIS place could have been, if only things had happened a little differently, if only we weren't mud-grubbing monkeys that got to the moon and scared themselves with their own success.  If only we hadn't forgotten how to turn dreams into reality, instead of just our nightmares.

And then I wake up, and I start grubbing in the mud.  Because that mud ain't gonna grub itself.

Things could have been different, you know.

[Richter]

Roger, wasn't that all just what the first Smiler (Jefferey Fredonia Krump) told us as cover so he could sling his suburning nuclear semen at the Red Monkies better and faster. 

We're happy swinging through the "safe" trees, watching the "safe" TV right now. 

...Aren't we?

The night is cold, and the stars are far away. 
Oh, "Jeopardy" is on...

[The Good Reverend Roger]

They stole our dreams, Richter.  Whores and thieves stole our dreams, and gave them to swine.  And the swine trampled them underfoot, and called it national security.  We should scream and howl and make them pay, but you and I both know that will never happen.

Grub, grub, grub.  It's all we have left.  It's all we deserve, really.  It is the price of complacency and moral cowardice.

[Richter]

We have cut down the tree of liberty for pulpboard schooldesk we no longer fit, and cheap schoolroom paper for impotent gun, drug, and crime laws. 

Our children will only sit in it's shade if we are willing to water the seeds left behind.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

[aside]
That monkey called rage is running the show, now.

Thanks, Richter, I'll be a real blast in the 2:30 meeting.   
[/aside]

[Payne]

I was there when Curly decided to look for The Facility. I told him I wouldn't go, that I had to stay around and see if I managed to get the diary on eBay. So he and a whole bunch of people went off to look for The Great Machine. I saw him a few more times that day. Once he was on this side of the riot shields. On the evening news bulletin, he was on that side. I couldn't tell if he was ecstatic or scared. In the end I don't think it ever mattered. I haven't seen him since.

I don't think we ever found The Facility, though one homeless man I saw recently was shouting at me in the street that he had found it, and had taken its shinbone. I didn't listen to him, I just hurried on by. The crazy of that day was more than enough for me thanks, and people were looking at us.

I don't know what happened to the others. There was us - the victims, and we survived. There was The Enemy, and most of them survived too (even if they got stretches in jail). Then there were the Heroes, they were the victims who didn't survive. But those others... Perhaps it's best not to think about them.

We learned a lesson that day. We learned a lot. And no right thinking person could say that things didn't Get Better.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Curly...I feel I should remember that name.  But I can't remember it.  I WON'T remember it.  I won't think about the river of shit and filth, and the horrible things that happened.  You can't make me.  And neither can that goddamn big gorilla in my guts.

I won't.

[Eater of Clowns]

March 15th,

This ought to be my greatest success, the breakthrough I've been looking for to bring my name into the national consciousness as not only a premier investigative reporter but as a champion of the modern day.  So why is it all I feel is dread?  The repercussions of this will be immense, I know it somewhere in me, but we're all to be liberated.  Yet the pit in my stomach hasn't gone away since I first lifted that flap.

I wrote it all up and submitted it to Marcus after I got out of The Factory.  I didn't even wait to see what happened, I just left as quickly as I could manage to my anonymous and safe little apartment where I could wait and see where it all went.  Maybe Marcus would just toss it aside?  But after waiting for the train and feeling like every eye in the world was on me, by the time I got home it had already started.  Yelling first, then glass shattering and wood splitting.  It wouldn't reach a crescendo until hours later when the write up got to the streets.  It seemed like every old newspaper flying around from previous days had just vanished and mysteriously turned into my article - I hesitated to check my own birdcage because I feared seeing yesterday's issue having transformed itself into today's.

All of this is just over the idea of that behemoth.  They don't even know what it looks like yet.  They wouldn't have believed me in the very first article.  It was all so wretchedly, perfectly, efficient.  Closest to my corner lay four pipes draining the biles, blood, and phlegm that fed back into it elsewhere.  Pumps and valves and pistons and cogs and semiconductors flashing and twisting and turning.  Arms would reach out to piles of debris and add tubes here and springs there in brutal, malicious wrenching motions.  But what brought my gorge to rise was at what looked like its center, beating in rhythm to my very own and prodded with ugly needles but pounding happily away, pumping even as I saw it shudder when it somehow knew where my gaze fell.

The lights are out and the shades are drawn.  Fires from outside are peeking through the edges of my windows so I may write this.  A glass of bourbon is in my hand and running its course to steady my pen so I may write this.  Would that I had the courage to strike that desecrated organ.  Oh but its arms were so quick and so accurate.  They would need to go first.  No, but its pipes were so hot and would burn.  They would need to go first.  But then its gears were so razor sharp and

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Chills

[Kai]

Recently while spelunking the dark depths of the Internet, I came upon an interesting conspiracy. This crazy old man was claiming that a long time ago, The Machine broke down for a few moments. And suddenly, reality was bare to every mind. Everyone knew again all the lies they told to make The Way of Progress, all the lies that people told them about how good they were, how kind and generous, how beautiful, what a piece of work. They suddenly knew just how ugly and stupid they truly were.


And everyone started screaming.


5 minutes later, the screaming suddenly stopped again. People looked around, wondering what had happened, but they had already forgotten. The Machine was doing its work again, turning lies into truth into reality. Only this crazy old man remembers what happened, and he tells it to anyone who will listen. And I believe him.


Because the moment The Machine broke was the moment I was born. Which explains why my dreams are always filled with the sound of screaming.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Bump for Nivek