Principia Discordia > Bring and Brag
The Audio Book of the Dead, Chapter 1 SUBMISSIONS
The Good Reverend Roger:
The question as to whether Gods of men exist is answered, at least for me.
I know that they do, because I've met one.
The God was drunk as hell, back at a party in 1987. He was talking to three friends of mine, all up-and-comers in the new computer technology of networking. He was jabbering to my friends - let's call them Larry, Curly, and Moe, and making very little sense to me...though that was a function of jargon and not his colossal inebriation.
I was kind of left out of the conversation, and my three friends seemed to come to an agreement with him. The party broke up about an hour later, and I really didn't think much of the conversation, at least for a while.
My three friends, though, all quit their jobs and dropped out of sight for a while. When they came back, they were all fairly big names in the industry or, in one case, a government organization. All three were huge into assembling what would later be called "the internet".
I spoke to Larry a couple of times over the years, and at first he seemed excited as hell. They were doing big things, and they were going to change the world. Curly was happier than I'd ever seen him in his life, and he wore a big grin, just like the character I've named him after. But the second time I saw Larry, he wasn't so happy. He looked a little worried, and muttered a bit about Moe being in the pocket of all the wrong people. He brought up the famous Stanislav Petrov incident, and said that Moe had said something about "having the cure for that sort of thing"...and then asked me - with a weird look on his face - what I thought the worst thing I could do with the internet was, if I had unlimited access. About this time, Curly was still grinning, but it looked more like a rictus.
Two weeks after that conversation, Moe was killed in a car accident. Funny, though, I thought I saw him years later, but I was probably mistaken.
Larry stopped talking after that, and kind of dropped out of the crowd I know. Curly went a little nuts (or so it seemed at the time), and started buying into conspiracy theories here and there. Not all of them, but enough. He talked about CARNIVORE a lot, and PROMIS, and a few other conspiracy theories that are related directly or indirectly to the computing industry, particularly where it meets up with DARPA and other government organizations.
There's more to tell about Curly, and that will come, but suffice to say that Curly was on the wrong side of the police line on That Day. He said he knew how to turn "the machine" off, which didn't make much sense. I was so busy gagging on tear gas that I never heard the last thing he yelled to me, before the demonstrators - with me trapped in their midst - were swept away by cops that looked like something out of a dystopian science fiction story. Curly has never, to my knowledge, been seen again.
I didn't see Larry for years after that...then one day he pulled up in front of my house with the God (who was just as drunk as the first time I'd met him) wearing a depraved grin, in the passenger seat. Larry handed me a box of flash drives (which maxed out at about half a gig at the time), and told me to load them. He said it would allow me to move into or out of websites by hijacking accounts, among other things, and to have fun with it while it lasted, and maybe to pass it around to people I trusted. He said there was a lot more to it, but he didn't have time to explain.
I've never seen him since. I did see the God once more, but that's a story for another time.
- As told by Robert _____
(To those of you who recognize what this was derived from, PM me.)
Richter:
You'd never know it, these days, if you met a god on the road. Well, you MIGHT know if they were driving a police car or a semi truck, but those are specific incidents. The gods these days don't advertise themselves as gods so much. They slink around in other guises, clever costumes thatwould never clue you in you're dealing with a deity, demi deity, divine messenger or demon, until you've had your interaction with them and gone on your way. Their cults and temples probably don't even know what they are anymore.
They have us surrounded, if not outnumbered. As simple as a bit of unexpected aid, as complex as a fceless, ineffable dictate, look around and ask yourself how many times something not human is dictating what humans do. the box in the wall that tells you what to do, the voice on the phone instructing you through a procedure, that camera that catches you commiting a VIOLATION, and capturing fine resolution evidence to be sent to your doorstep. You can see the old archetypes and paradigms and question whether that was Loki, Tiamat, or Hastur that you just ran into, but it really does no good. When you walk into their realms, step into something covered by their portfolio you better know the things you cannot do, the words you cannot say.
These are the obvious ones, the basics. They get more convoluted and obtuse,and human reason doesn't always apply. Be careful not to offend the gods.
Lord Quantum:
--- Quote from: Richter on February 01, 2010, 07:48:03 pm ---They have us surrounded, if not outnumbered.
--- End quote ---
Surrounded by Gods? Now there's a book title. Yoink. Are you saying that large numbers of people in the recent past have ascended to Godhood or simply that technology has given the Gods of Old greater power? As for cameras being Gods, sounds more like Odin's two ravens to me, but eh.
Richter:
Offices should be populated by men and not gods.
It started awhile back when I got a job in "Business". I'm still not entirely sure what "Business" is, other than my degree from college wasn't in it. That meant I had to start at the BOTTOM, and not be ushered immediately onto the upper floors with spacious offices, high salaries, indefinite lunches, perks, and bonuses.
It was the first job that was offering pay in money, so I took it. Near as I can tell, I did things, and worked for people who did things. I talked down irate customers, smoothed over misunderstandings, and got new things set up, while looking for a way to rise higher. I watched what my supervisors and managers did, and they did things too. They kept an eye on everyone, training informing, hiring and firing. Middle management was where the people STOPPED.
The layer above them, they did less. They spent their time, near as I could see, overseeing the overseers. They floated around the upper floors, agreeable and reassuring when they came down to our level. Their days, it seems, were entirely composed of floating around like this. No one was quite sure how many of these overseers (To the whatever - th degree) there were between us and the CEO. The step pyramid of the company, the ziggurat of "Business", had no clear SIZE.
Asking who did what led to that strange babble, the double speak of every good deity in their trainer robes. The assurances that everyone who seems to be doing less REAL work and more work RUNNING things, was really a highly trained individual. They'd go on about their responsibilities, sidetrack about their last bi - monthly trip to St. Thomas, and swan off to another of the seemingly endless series of meetings.
The Salesmen, they were advocates of the babble in the strange tower too. Ask them, and they go on and on about how to sell, and how things worked in sales. Then they'd head off to wine and dine a client as deftly as any Casanova, all on the company card. "To facilitate business", they'd say.
See, these are the fucking ants of the god world, the black carapace businessmen, and the red tinted salesmen. Scuttling around convinced that without them, nothing would happen. The cohabitate their strange hives, built higher into the air, worshiping and bringing in scrap for their queen, Ceo. Every little man aspiring to be more a god himself, and hop up another step on that useless mastaba.
When the whole world took a downturn, and business wasn’t quite so good, WOW did those fuckers sing. Hosannas of how bad things were. Hymns of layoffs and cutbacks. Always to the people who actually DID things. Then they turned around and spoon fed each other fat bonuses like always before, doting as a pair of obese, flaccid lovers.
“We need to retain our good people!”, they whined as better workers than they shuffled of for unemployment.
These are gods that die frequently in vain, but their collective action, their buzzing cloud of demigod flies, carries on feasting and maggoting on the carcasses of those who actually DO something.
Doktor Howl:
Oh, yeah.
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