When the car finally ran out of gas, I started walking. Fortunately, I have a good, sturdy pair of hobnailed engineer boots for kicking the coyotes and meth heads and rattlers away. I also had the foresight to bring lots of water and pills.
This desert is really big, man, it's fucking huge.
All the Cacti look like people caught mid-stride as they fled from something. Some of them even look like they have faces, twisted in grimaces of fear or loathing. The rock formations all look like big, imposing buildings designed to show the power of the state, and contrast it with the weakness of the individual.
And there's wreckage, too. Twisted remains of cars like something out of The Road Warrior (Part of which was filmed here, which is fitting.). Sometimes the wreckage has footprints leading away from it, and sometimes there's just big clouds of flies surrounding the SUV with the little stickers of the family members on the back window.
I'm in the desert, Richter, and the buzzards are starting to circle. They let out screeches sometimes, screeches that almost sound like words. I could swear I just heard one say "too big to fail". Another one sounded like "national security". And one was screeching something that sounded a lot like a rant about "God's will".
And one particularly fat and foul one sounds like it's laughing. It sounds like it's having a real giggle, that perhaps we're ALL in the desert, now, and nobody lives anywhere else. Sometimes the desert LOOKS like a snow-covered city full of the walking dead and closed factories, or maybe a pretty city with lots of smiling hippies who strangely seem like they're about to start screaming...but don't be fooled. It's still the desert.
And those are some powerful big buzzards, Richter.
I don't mind those things anymore. Even up in the great green, occasionally frozen north we still get buzzards. No shit, they flew in and sat around on a pine tree, STARING. They squawk, sure, but they always squawk. Like kids getting ready to go out to a club, it never seems to matter if they actually get there. The carrying around form house to house, the primping, the pre gaming, and af COURSE the squaking is part of the fun. Whether THERE is the pounding flashing drinking utopia they think is their secret god, or the spoiled, self dehydrated meat of something that just staggered out. They squawk, and they circle, because there's nothign else for them to do, really.
They have a TV set up in the break room, here, next to the coffee maker. You know someone let those damn things onto the air? It's sick, they're jsut squawking away, to a gradually increasing pulse and tempo. Those filthy creatures have been cawwing since September back in '01, and are building to some sort of carrion call orgasm on there.
Again, I ignore the bastards. They'll carry on. I know why Clint, Bronson, Mel, or Mifune stared like that now, as they kept trudging on. Then again, they were jsut playing parts, but fucked if I know where else I'm going to get role models for life in a desert.
Well, there's always Johnny Cash. He understood this sort of shit, and he tried to tell us that there was another road, if only we'd look for it.
But I'm not sure that's true anymore. In my city, they are starting to send the police and fire department home without pay. It seems that the photo-enforcement machines don't ask for overtime pay, and don't give people warnings that cut into revenue. They also have reduced fatalities in their immediate vicinity (never mind that fatalities within 1 mile of leaving the zones have tripled). Soon they'll even automate the billing, and The City will consist of a server room and people e-filing their fines.
But you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, and you can't build a better City without breaking people.
They say Curly was seen out here once, though this is unconfirmed (The last time he was reliably reported as being seen was on the wrong side of the police lines on That Day.). I hope so, because if anyone knows how to get out of this place, it's him. I could use his advice...The one thing I want is thousands of miles away, and I can only pay attention to the ground directly in front of my feet. Walking around here with your head in the clouds is just begging to fall in a pit, or off the side of a low cliff. Wouldn't that make the buzzards happy?
And there has to be a way out of here. I know this, because I seem to remember a time when I wasn't in the desert. I was once in a salt-encrusted seaport in Eastern Canada, for example, though that seaport is now a sprawl of cheap housing and strip malls. All the same, there has to be something else, right? The whole world can't be like this, can it?
Richter?
The City is pushing us all out, slowly and surely Roger.
We're seeing it start right now, jsut liek you said. The cameras, the automation, the unbending adherence to compelte Lawful Evil.
Cities aren't places for people anymore.
Of course, they don't realize that yet. Cities are where things HAPPEN. It's where the BIG Business is (What does Business DO, anyways? What do they actually MAKE?) It's where the seats of power are slowly erroding any job that isn't Head Programmer. They don't call it that yet though, but they will.
I will walk into the city when I have to, and I will walk out, but each time it feels more and more like I'm pulling off some kind of necromancy, like I'm wandering into the above ground internment, cryptlike parking garages, or towers of silence. The buzzards love it there, it's where a feast is set with them in mind. I don't want to stay in a city any more though, where half the people have forgotten they're already dead. I want to stay where people can still be people, without that being against a law or an ordnance. I used to know an Irish fishing village like that, but it's slowly becoming a haven for yuppies with gass guzzling pleasurecraft, the glen where the bones are cast to the wolves in Zamiel's name.
It's pushing me out, and the denizens of the city will call me the fringe, the whacko, the hick. Not that they have a problem with nature, they'll claim to be VERY Green TM, and love nature as long as they can experience it in controlled, guided, well planned excursions.
Any sensible person would head for the frontier, but we've used up all of those. The moon was JFK's penis, Mars is a joke. As soon as the South Pole is warm enough, I'm going colonizing.
It's worse outside of the cities, though, at least for the time being. Cletus and JoAnne are NOT your friends...they are not the smiling country rustics shown in butter commercials and Sarah Palin election ads. They are snaggle-toothed cannibals hyped up on meth, and they eat out of towners when they can get away with it.
Travel in groups, if you must go there, and remember that even zombies won't preach at you while they eat you. Even the buzzards have that much courtsey, but Jethro is not so polite. He will explain why freedom involves rounding up all the members of a given religion, and making sure the smudgy folk are kept off of airlines, while he gnaws on your ankle. While chewing on your spleen, he will rant about how the gubmint is taking his freedoms, and how he was against PATRIOT and all that crap 5 years ago (he wasn't) but this "Obongo" business is the absolute limit. He will explain why Jesus hates Muslims, while his children pack your lower legs into the deer freezer.
No, you're safer in The City, even if it's turning into a machine literally rather than figuratively. The Machine may be impersonal and uncaring, but at least it doesn't have a mouth full of chewing tobacco and rabies.
And it has a higher class of buzzards.
I'm off the highway now. Budweiser blew it up and it's all side streets and back alleys. There are no flying buzzards here, though to be honest, I wish there were. That way I would have some warning before I come across yet another pile of rotting bodies of those who thought that "change" was actually going to follow Merriam's definition and then really happen.
Our buzzards are actually capable of intelligent thought, but they've let it get swept away in their greed and stupidity. Our buzzards prey on tragedy. They rob and ransack the houses of the murder victims. They steal the social security checks from their mothers. I really can't come up with a disgusting enough term for them. And they look just like everyone else.
The city is quiet, where once beneath the hustle and bustle there was a distinct beat, now there is nothing. They've buried the heart of this city somewhere in the broken buildings, boarded up the windows and hung a condemned sign.
There is a rumor that someone saw Curly last week, but those rumors are always circulating. Don't believe them, it's the buzzards that start those rumors to get you to follow the road they want you to take.
Don't take it and don't believe them, they lie and they laugh when they feed off your despair.
Quote from: Khara on January 13, 2010, 06:20:06 PM
Our buzzards are actually capable of intelligent thought, but they've let it get swept away in their greed and stupidity. Our buzzards prey on tragedy. They rob and ransack the houses of the murder victims. They steal the social security checks from their mothers. I really can't come up with a disgusting enough term for them. And they look just like everyone else.
No, they don't really. You can tell who they are by the lack of scars. They don't look like a senior citizen who just lost his hard-earned retirement in the crash and now has to eat dog food. They don't look like the 60th kid shoe-horned into a classroom. They sure as hell don't look like
those people walking (they're against THAT sort of thing).
No, they look really healthy and satisfied. And why not? They just ate your family...or a family just like yours.
Quote from: Khara on January 13, 2010, 06:20:06 PM
There is a rumor that someone saw Curly last week, but those rumors are always circulating. Don't believe them, it's the buzzards that start those rumors to get you to follow the road they want you to take.
True, true. But I never give up hope. Because I'm dumb that way.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 13, 2010, 06:24:06 PM
Quote from: Khara on January 13, 2010, 06:20:06 PM
Our buzzards are actually capable of intelligent thought, but they've let it get swept away in their greed and stupidity. Our buzzards prey on tragedy. They rob and ransack the houses of the murder victims. They steal the social security checks from their mothers. I really can't come up with a disgusting enough term for them. And they look just like everyone else.
No, they don't really. You can tell who they are by the lack of scars. They don't look like a senior citizen who just lost his hard-earned retirement in the crash and now has to eat dog food. They don't look like the 60th kid shoe-horned into a classroom. They sure as hell don't look like those people walking (they're against THAT sort of thing).
No, they look really healthy and satisfied. And why not? They just ate your family...or a family just like yours.
Fucking RAH. Better than I could have put it!!
Quote from: Khara on January 13, 2010, 06:20:06 PM
There is a rumor that someone saw Curly last week, but those rumors are always circulating. Don't believe them, it's the buzzards that start those rumors to get you to follow the road they want you to take.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 13, 2010, 06:24:06 PM
True, true. But I never give up hope. Because I'm dumb that way.
We can't give up hope, it's not being dumb, it's what keeps us from being them. Right?
There is only one Curly. And he is YOUR Curly.
He was once his own, and no one elses, but no one would listen to him then. When he was gone, on that terrible day when the lines crashed back and forth in a crushing orgy of plastic and flesh and blue cloth and broken teeth, then he become something more but something infinitely less.
A man, Then a symbol. Now a battered shot up road sign where you can't even read the writing. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, he may well be only distant voice, half imagined, in the wasteland. An almost silent scream barely heard over the raucous cries of vultures perched on columns that reach to the sky that crack and pop like shotgun blasts as yet another slice of the fragile heavenly dome we erected upon them over our heads sails down lazily like the very tears of God. The eagle is landing, but not how you imagined it would.
When that happens, Curly will be his own once again. Each and every single one of us will be. But for now, he is YOURS.
Khara, when you're walking through hell, you keep walking.
One foot in front of the other. One step at a time. Hemmingway talked about that...but then pussed out and shot himself. We just have to do as he said, not as he did. That's why I jabber about Curly so much. He always had a grin on his face, and no matter how bad things got, he smiled through the pain and wised off. Never let the buzzards see you sweat.
Quote from: Payne on January 13, 2010, 06:38:26 PM
There is only one Curly. And he is YOUR Curly.
He was once his own, and no one elses, but no one would listen to him then. When he was gone, on that terrible day when the lines crashed back and forth in a crushing orgy of plastic and flesh and blue cloth and broken teeth, then he become something more but something infinitely less.
A man, Then a symbol. Now a battered shot up road sign where you can't even read the writing. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, he may well be only distant voice, half imagined, in the wasteland. An almost silent scream barely heard over the raucous cries of vultures perched on columns that reach to the sky that crack and pop like shotgun blasts as yet another slice of the fragile heavenly dome we erected upon them over our heads sails down lazily like the very tears of God. The eagle is landing, but not how you imagined it would.
When that happens, Curly will be his own once again. Each and every single one of us will be. But for now, he is YOURS.
The mad prophets on the street corners say that Curly isn't dead...that he will return when the time is right, and lead us all back into cheap laughs and less desperate times.
But they say that about all the saviors, Payne, and I haven't seen a single one come back. Even Elvis was smart enough to settle down managing a gas station in Michigan, and you couldn't get Eugene Debs to come back for love or money...Not because they couldn't save us, but because we won't allow ourselves to be saved.
No, Curly chose his exit, and he chose it well. What better time to exit stage left, than during the chaos and noise on That Day? He was first and foremost a showman, and he was smart enough to know that the encore is never as good as the show that made the audience demand it. Keep 'em hungry, they say, and they'll come to the next show.
There are rumours of crude men who live in the desert, under a piece of the sky that fell from the great dome. It is said that they can believe, for a while longer, that everything is okay. That there is still sky over their heads. They propped it up with piles of sun-blasted rocks half gone to sand in a crude imitation of those great white columns now gone to the vultures.
And if they have to bend their necks, or walk on their knees under the dome, well it's worth it for the illusion. Right?
At night, when they sit around the fire pit in the centre of their little dome, they sometimes speak of Curly. But they never have anything good to say of him.
Richter,
The Business's make America [tm]. The cities are their factories. Like you say, it's where THINGS happen. Our cardboard culture, it's grown inside the City; small, live spores, strong enough to endure the process, are replicated and replicated.
At least, that's how it started. Now, it's just the replicates being distributed, cloned, then spread further.
The frontier...I live in the, tritely-but-aptly named, Last Frontier. And what Roger says is true. It's worse. It's worse when you're so close to the last bit of genuine WILD, and the locals are only satisfied, only experiencing a high quality of life when they have access to the imports of the City.
The buzzards are here too, despite the cold. In spite of it.
Only...they've done something, tricked us some how. They've made themselves out to be generous, giving. They leave behind a trail of their kills, for nourishment. But only so they can look forward to a feast later. They're not like other buzzards, they have the luxury of taking their time with us.
Quote from: Payne on January 13, 2010, 06:57:36 PM
There are rumours of crude men who live in the desert, under a piece of the sky that fell from the great dome. It is said that they can believe, for a while longer, that everything is okay. That there is still sky over their heads. They propped it up with piles of sun-blasted rocks half gone to sand in a crude imitation of those great white columns now gone to the vultures.
And if they have to bend their necks, or walk on their knees under the dome, well it's worth it for the illusion. Right?
At night, when they sit around the fire pit in the centre of their little dome, they sometimes speak of Curly. But they never have anything good to say of him.
They wouldn't, though, would they? They are the scourge of our time, the makers of the dark satanic mills that manufacture hell on Earth. Curly stood against their lies and in fact everything they ever stood FOR. I'd hate him too, if I were them. But I have real blood in my veins, and I cast my lot in with Curly, no matter the cost.
For it is better to stand upright and see the stark Truth, than to walk on my knees and pretend that everything is okay. The worst they can do is destroy me...to listen to them implies much worse.
As Elton John used to say, back when he knew the score, it's time to burn down the mission.
Quote from: Alty on January 13, 2010, 06:58:10 PM
Only...they've done something, tricked us some how. They've made themselves out to be generous, giving. They leave behind a trail of their kills, for nourishment. But only so they can look forward to a feast later. They're not like other buzzards, they have the luxury of taking their time with us.
Buzzards are patient. They take the long view. That's how they ended up owning the world.
An interesting question is, "Can we use their methods to steal it back without becoming what they are?"
You know why a lot of modern "Wizards", "Warlocks", or "Sorcerers" try to summon angels or demons?
Because Crowley said he did it.
Not a hope of power, not a hint of reason, just dial up a celestial motherfucker, say hello, and ask them to fuck off since they jsut got their pagancred.
Smart wizard does NOT summon, smart shamman only talks to the spirits when needed, smart priest does not pray, someone might answer. Do not drunk dial the dead.
The City, the Civilization is like that now. People clustered to people, clung to their metal and stone trees. The hooting and howling channeles through phone lines and meeting rooms. It's all inlaid, laced and lanced throuhg with the leylines of communication by which we can summon demons by the name of Police, EMS, Fire, and Papa John's. Invoke their presence, or speak their numerical digital names through the wires and they willd descend upon thee. The foolish call them to complain that their father broke their bong, and suffer. They do not like beign invoked needlessly, and take their eye and their task to EVERYTHING, regardless of who summoned them. These groups are composed of people, that follow the rules and guidlelines of the city that make sure they can't quite ACT like people. We always could contract with demons and monsters, jsut now we see another way their built out of people.
Quote from: Richter on January 13, 2010, 07:27:34 PM
Do not drunk dial the dead.
THIS. Any of you fuckers call me after I die, and you'll regret it for the rest of your lives. I have to put up with monkeys for the time being, but I will NOT tolerate an eternity of them.
Quote from: Richter on January 13, 2010, 07:27:34 PM
The City, the Civilization is like that now. People clustered to people, clung to their metal and stone trees. The hooting and howling channeles through phone lines and meeting rooms. It's all inlaid, laced and lanced throuhg with the leylines of communication by which we can summon demons by the name of Police, EMS, Fire, and Papa John's. Invoke their presence, or speak their numerical digital names through the wires and they willd descend upon thee. The foolish call them to complain that their father broke their bong, and suffer. They do not like beign invoked needlessly, and take their eye and their task to EVERYTHING, regardless of who summoned them. These groups are composed of people, that follow the rules and guidlelines of the city that make sure they can't quite ACT like people. We always could contract with demons and monsters, jsut now we see another way their built out of people.
Even the Elder Gods are monkeys. This explains everything.
Around here we got buzzards too (well, turkey vultures as Sjaantze, Harbinger of Distraction keeps correcting me). Being that this is CowTown, there's no Desert, there's no City... well not much of one. Hell you can hardly see the fucking city for all the trees and grass that still grow in the officially fenced off bits of town.
It's not like my home. Where I grew up, the fences were around the bits of land where people lived and the trees grew where they wanted to. But, even in the wood we had Vultures. Big Vultures, cause those fuckers had the easy life. Right in "The Heart of It All", the woods around here are full of the dying and the dead, freshly rotted meat is just what the Vultures crave. Hell, in the Desert they're looking for mice and jackrabbits and the occasional Happy Family... slim but scary pickings. In the woods, they gorge themselves silly. The rabbits are fat, the Deer are large, hell even the squirrels are, like most of America, three times bigger around than their genetic code planned for. Yep, plenty of Good Eats.
A lot of people think that vultures are only after the dead, but its not true. If you're healthy and its obvious they can't make a meal out of you, they try to scare you off. Have you ever had a vulture puke on you? Let me tell you, its a moving experience, as in "you don't stop moving till you hit the shower". Yep, the Vultures are everywhere.
Roger, you know I won't stop until they pry my dead and decomposing body off the highway.
It used to be I kept walking because they said to stop. Then a decade or so ago, it was out of fear. Now it's because I refuse to fucking give in to the monkeys and the pull of the "everything is gonna be allright" mentality.
It's a nightmare out there for so many. How sick is it that I laugh as I walk by the ones who huddle in the shadows trying to hide from the vultures, praying to a god who went on a permanent vacation to Cabo sometime in the 1st century.
The vultures, they are sniffing at the trail of the ones who know who they really are. You can watch them as they turn their beedy black eyes and watch as we walk by. They keep a close watch on the ones who aren't bent over from the pain and misery of falling into the lullaby of the lie.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 13, 2010, 07:03:19 PM
Quote from: Alty on January 13, 2010, 06:58:10 PM
Only...they've done something, tricked us some how. They've made themselves out to be generous, giving. They leave behind a trail of their kills, for nourishment. But only so they can look forward to a feast later. They're not like other buzzards, they have the luxury of taking their time with us.
Buzzards are patient. They take the long view. That's how they ended up owning the world.
An interesting question is, "Can we use their methods to steal it back without becoming what they are?"
There is no set answer on how to fix the problem because there are millions of problems to be fixed. You ask, can we use their methods to steal back our world? If we devoid ourselves of our humanity, maybe. It's not enough to get your hands bloody, you have to be able to keep them that way. Teach your children how to do the same. So we lose a generation to gain the next 100? Small cost? Or unmeasurable loss? We have to learn how to think, and teach the ones who follow not only what we know, but put it in their minds to discover what we don't.
Until then, if you're scared, bend over a little, walk slower, don't look up, left or right. Just plod along. As for the rest of us, as Roger advised, never let the buzzards see you sweat, and I add, don't let them close enough to know you can.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 13, 2010, 07:03:19 PM
Quote from: Alty on January 13, 2010, 06:58:10 PM
Only...they've done something, tricked us some how. They've made themselves out to be generous, giving. They leave behind a trail of their kills, for nourishment. But only so they can look forward to a feast later. They're not like other buzzards, they have the luxury of taking their time with us.
Buzzards are patient. They take the long view. That's how they ended up owning the world.
An interesting question is, "Can we use their methods to steal it back without becoming what they are?"
It seems like we keep trying, but end up succumbing to the taste of blood ourselves. Maybe the only option left is to poison ourselves so that when they dig in, it'll be the last meal they ever enjoy.
Maybe we're already doing that. Sure would explain much of the madness.
Their offspring aren't always their own, but they are always buzzards. In a monkey classroom they can be seen by the keen of eye, briefly, a furry chimp thing laughing or glaring in just such a light that their lips belie wicked beaks hungry for their peers. Flashes of feathers reveal beneath their clothes, especially when ruffled, these things that fashion themselves as great birds of prey, not carrion seekers but eagles in their own minds. And sometimes in the minds of those they trick.
With time the ways of buzzards come to their minds, they learn to work with altitude and vision, to ignore their hunger in favor of bigger meals to come. Some will see the horrors wreaked upon their too-rapidly dying prey, such being the fact of the barren landscape. The nobler will land and preen, feather by feather, until they are pink sick things, they will saw the bones of their wings to the base like fallen angels, and they will shuffle about with their born kin. Others will fly and eagerly clamp their beaks for the feast, with their patience coming all too soon.
Some are not buzzards at all, they're ape opportunists. They swing so high until the day a big winged thing settles nearby and promises them the wonders of flight if only they entrust themselves to its talons. Silly stupid apes they are, they do, and they fly for a time and some even learn to do it themselves, gluing the tattered remains of dead forebearers to their arms and flapping wildly against all probability. One can tell them by the shadows they cast, for they are ever in the silhouettes of buzzards so large they are but darkened outlines blocking the sun.
I have never seen the desert, Roger, but oh have I visited wastelands.