So, about The City...

[The Good Reverend Roger]

We all live in The City, and nobody lives anywhere else.  Nobody remembers who built The City, and nobody really cares...What we DO know is that The City wasn't built for humans.  It was built for commerce, for traffic, and we are just rats living in the walls.  We need The City, because we've forgotten how we lived before it existed, much as the Anasazi forgot how to live as nomads once they settled down.  Their fate was awful, and if we're not careful, what happened to them will happen to us.

This is a very real concern, because The City is breaking down.  All across the country, bridges and roads are decaying, while we fritter our resources away on war and hopelessly corrupt banks and political institutions.  As the systems begin to fail, we wring our hands for a bit, then we go back to watching politicians and celebrities dance for us.  We don't fix things, because we don't know HOW.  Sure, we have the engineering skill, but we've forgotten how to make The Machine function. 

We are cargo cultists.  Look it up.

The sad fact is that our culture is entering its baroque stage.  Instead of infrastructure and innovation, we spend all of our efforts to obtain toys and diversions.  When cultures enter a baroque stage, there are only two ways out:  An influx of ideas and innovation from an outside source, or the culture enters its terminal stage.  Since the world has become a monoculture, the first option is off the table...So down the tubes we go.

Sound depressing?  Well, life sucks, wear a hat.  A little hideous truth is in order, and I won't always be here to tell it to you, so you're going to have to learn to see these things for yourself.  You can't fix a problem til you've identified it, and you can't identify it unless you LOOK at it, and SEE IT FOR WHAT IT REALLY IS.  You have to learn to cast off your preconceptions and biases and SEE THE TRUTH, no matter how painful that truth is.

I've had to get used to an ugly truth or two, and there's no sense in looking away.  My prognosis is not good, and I - like The City - am breaking down, bit by bit.  The truth is that I'm ill as hell, and I may or may not be able to make some commitments I've made, though if I fail to, it will be for a damn good reason. 

Sorry to lay all this on you.

Or Kill Me.

[Payne]

I do not know what to say about ANY of this.

~~~Payne: Torn.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I think, for me at least, its not so much "I don't know how" to fix the Machine, as I have no desire to fix the Machine.
Maybe it will be easier for humans to remember they are human once the City is bankrupt and the Machine is broken beyond repaired. After all, the Baroque period gave us some of the most fantastic discoveries in centuries. Some of the key events then set everything up for the Next Incarnation.

Before the Baroque period, the Church mostly ran everything. After the Baroque period, science had gotten a good toe hold in and has been ripping myth to bits since then. Before then, Kings were appointed by God... by the end, people had learned how to dethrone Kings.

Maybe the city has to be destroyed occasionally, in order to save the rats?

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

I've had to get used to an ugly truth or two, and there's no sense in looking away.  My prognosis is not good, and I - like The City - am breaking down, bit by bit.  The truth is that I'm ill as hell, and I may or may not be able to make some commitments I've made, though if I fail to, it will be for a damn good reason. 

Sorry to lay all this on you.

Or Kill Me.

Roger?  I don't like the sound of that......  What has happened?

[P3nT4gR4m]

I'm with Rat. The machine has had it's heyday, way back when. The good old days they called it and back then, when it was well oiled and fueled and maintained in tippermost toppermost condition it was glorious! The good old days they call it and some of the old ones can still remember it wistfully as they look around, through fading eyes at a world gone all to shit.

I don't call it the good old days. I wasn't even around then. I grew up after they'd ran out of clean fuel. After the rats had eaten all the string that held the shit together. After the cogs had gone rusty and been replaced with plastic shit that seizes up every couple of hours but it's cheap and that's more important than any fucking quality of life. No I don't call it the good old days, I call it the past and, like it or not, none of us are equipped to live there even if we could resurrect this dying social organism from it's emphysemic, syphilitic death throes.

I'm a product of this dying machine. More so even than the biological gunk that my parents contributed. I've learned to breathe it's filth and feed upon it's decay. And I want to see it dead. It's the logical conclusion, it's where it's all headed and I hope I can stay alive just long enough to see it roll over and choke on it's last wheezing breath.

I don't know what comes next, like everyone else I can only speculate. Whatever it is I won't be here. Such is life.

[Template]

I'm with Rat. The machine has had it's heyday, way back when. The good old days they called it and back then, when it was well oiled and fueled and maintained in tippermost toppermost condition it was glorious! The good old days they call it and some of the old ones can still remember it wistfully as they look around, through fading eyes at a world gone all to shit.

I don't call it the good old days. I wasn't even around then. I grew up after they'd ran out of clean fuel. After the rats had eaten all the string that held the shit together. After the cogs had gone rusty and been replaced with plastic shit that seizes up every couple of hours but it's cheap and that's more important than any fucking quality of life. No I don't call it the good old days, I call it the past and, like it or not, none of us are equipped to live there even if we could resurrect this dying social organism from it's emphysemic, syphilitic death throes.

I'm a product of this dying machine. More so even than the biological gunk that my parents contributed. I've learned to breathe it's filth and feed upon it's decay. And I want to see it dead. It's the logical conclusion, it's where it's all headed and I hope I can stay alive just long enough to see it roll over and choke on it's last wheezing breath.

I don't know what comes next, like everyone else I can only speculate. Whatever it is I won't be here. Such is life.

The "good old days" is primarily a product of pure nostalgia.  You'll be talking about the good old days someday.  If you still have your tongue then.

Also, you and Rat seem to have missed the part where the system may become unable to preserve much of its history or advances or arts.  The Renaissance got off the ground because contact with the Muslim empire basically reloaded the knowledge from Rome and before back into the Machine.  Analysis of our projected scenario includes as a serious question, "will we still be in the steel age afterwards?"

The Machine cannot be reconditioned, and it can still lash out at attempts to replace it or patch it.  Wanna build a working society, today?  You risk mortgaging the vision while getting sponsorship and venture capital, or being pegged as having the wrong values, and the nice men in white or blue or cammo will stop you.

[Triple Zero]

I've had to get used to an ugly truth or two, and there's no sense in looking away.  My prognosis is not good, and I - like The City - am breaking down, bit by bit.  The truth is that I'm ill as hell, and I may or may not be able to make some commitments I've made, though if I fail to, it will be for a damn good reason. 

Sorry to lay all this on you.

Or Kill Me.

Roger?  I don't like the sound of that......  What has happened?

Seconded?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

He had a bad reaction to some of his medication and thought it was his heart... he actually doesn't remember most of what he posted today. He's spending the night in the hospital but took his laptop, so hopefully we'll be hearing from him soon.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Ill is all.  Long term heart problem, short term mixed medications causing problems.  Am now under "observation" for the night.

Interesting note:  a few years ago, you couldn't bring a cell phone into a hospital.  Now you can run a laptop, and they even provide the comcast.

It appears that I have made it through another doctor's incompetence with all my bits still attached and functional.  It seems that the 4 different medications I was taking (2 normal ones, 2 for the bronchitis) mix into some horrible hellish toxic death ball.  But I made it, and you are all stuck with me for at least the immediate future.

Also, apparently Khara and I spoke for a while, while I foolishly drove myself to the hospital.  I don't remember that, but my cell log indicates that I was on the phone with her for some time.  Also, I spoke to Nigel.  I do remember that.  Thanks to both of you for keeping me conscious on the drive.  Next time, I shall demonstrate a minimum level of intelligence and call a damn ambulance.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

He had a bad reaction to some of his medication and thought it was his heart... he actually doesn't remember most of what he posted today. He's spending the night in the hospital but took his laptop, so hopefully we'll be hearing from him soon.

SPEAK OF THE DINGBAT, AND HE SHALL ARRIVE.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

When I wrote the above, I vaguely remember thinking I was a goner, and I was trying to communicate something I felt was important, but couldn't get the words right.  Now I can't remember what it was I was trying to say.

Now I know how that spag who wrote Xanadu felt. 

[Payne]

You should demand a REALLY fucked up doctor if they keep trying to kill you this way. Got to be a worthwhile exit, not some bungled prescriptioning.

[Payne]

When I wrote the above, I vaguely remember thinking I was a goner, and I was trying to communicate something I felt was important, but couldn't get the words right.  Now I can't remember what it was I was trying to say.

Now I know how that spag who wrote Xanadu felt. 

I think I kinda got it...

I do not know what to say about ANY of this.

~~~Payne: Torn.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

You should demand a REALLY fucked up doctor if they keep trying to kill you this way. Got to be a worthwhile exit, not some bungled prescriptioning.

Troof.  I want my head amputated, if I have to go by piss-poor doctoring.  I shall ask the nurse if this can be arranged.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

GAH.

Still feels like someone's running around in my guts with spiked boots on.

FUCK.