The Plain and Honest Truth - a semi-Discordian serial novel in progress

[Laughin Jude]

Okay, fuck, let's do this.

(Pre-emptive tl;dr.)

The Plain and Honest Truth is a serial novel I've been plugging away at for a couple years now. My goal is to have it done in time for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, seeing as how 9/11 was the thematic inspiration for the whole project to begin with. Given it has Discordian tendencies (especially in the brain-washing video that the Earthbound Region-Independent Society shows heroine Sindy in the first chapter), this seems as good a place as any to stick up a link to it. My apologies in advance.

So far Part One is complete. It weighs in around 100-120 pages depending on the format it's in. A PDF version (black and white pics) can be found here. There's a full color version on my site here. I'm not really sure if the absence or presence of color adds or subtracts from my art, but hey, luckily there's not a lot of it.



As far as the Discordian influences go, they're more thematic than plot-oriented. There is reference to the Illuminati early on, though there's actually no Illuminati in the book (though there is a Council of Overseers running the US government, not to mention the Rosicrucians, a.k.a. the Catholic Church, Westboro Baptist Church, the Scientologists, Al-Qaeda, the Disciples of the Smiling Jackalope, and of course the Earthbound Region-Independent Society... so there's no shortage of conspiracies). There's not a lot of quoting the PD (actually, only one vague exchange that I'm aware of). My goal has been to create something that nods to the old Discordianism while also looking at the post-9/11 world from a Discordian POV, creating its own memes and presenting its own vision of the philosophy. Whether the book fits into PD's version of Discordianism, I couldn't say.

Instead of trying to explain what it's about or post a full chapter, I'll just toss out a few excerpts.

Is that the truth? The Conspiracy is always working to undermine Todd, and he never knows which direction they'll strike from next. They got to his family early through one of their field operatives, a vile man posing as a youth psychiatrist who slandered Todd's name. They followed him to college, where they spread rumors concerning his sexual proclivities and a Rainbow Brite xylophone. The bastards would even remotely access his computer to insert typos into his term papers after he'd run the spell check just to ding his GPA and keep him out of the Academy.

But Todd Moody persevered, and he's been chasing the Conspiracy since he started at the FBI. He thought he had them in 1996 during the Atlanta Olympics. The mascot of the games, Izzy, was obviously patterned after an alien species called the Lindolears. It's sick: the Conspiracy and their alien allies are so sure of victory that they broadcast their intentions to those who know what to look for. The Lindolears used the games to scout the fittest humans for their beryllium mines and pay-per-view documentaries/live dissections. Todd did his best to protect the gold medalists but was expelled from the grounds by Conspiracy agents when he tried to warn Lisa Fernandez of her coming abduction. Since then he's been reassigned to DHS, and the Conspiracy's attempts to discredit him have only increased in number and severity.

Todd doesn't know who the Conspirators are, only that they exist and control the world's governments through use of alien technology recovered from crash sites. He can't exactly prove it—yet—because the Conspiracy's total control of all media and law enforcement makes it so easy to cover their tracks. The Rants & Raves section on Craigslist has been a reliable source of anti-Conspiracy intelligence, though lately Todd suspects psi-operatives have been infiltrating the board.

Jay Leno (a misshapen ogre whom no one under age 65 finds amusing) is interviewing a skinny black man in his early thirties who calls himself Ronnie the World's Most Honest Faith Healer. Ronnie was hit by a bus six months ago and was clinically dead for two and a half minutes.

"And you say god talked to you?"

"Yeah," says Ronnie, "that's when I knew what I had to do. So I traveled around the country faith-healing the sick and wounded."

"Wow." Leno shuffles his cards and looks at the camera. "So, ah, how many people got better?"

"Oh, none of them."

"Eh?"

"Yeah, didn't do any good at all. Made absolutely no difference."

"Uh, but didn't they pay you—?"

"Hell no, that would've been dishonest."

Leno scratches his head. "Uh, so, I'm curious. What exactly did god tell you?"

There's hesitant laughter from the audience.

"Exactly?" says Ronnie. "He said: 'It's just not working out between us. Stop calling me.'"

"Tasty rice," says the old man, and he helps himself to a bite. Jack picks up his chopsticks and takes a moment to fix their position in his hand. He dips his sticks into the bowl and pinches a sticky clump of rice. The old man's sticks shoot into the bowl, and he steals the clump of rice from Jack before Jack can draw his sticks back out. "Oh, my apologies," says the old man, and he eats Jack's clump of rice.

Megan's eyebrow climbs, and she scoops up her sticks as well. She doesn't have to spend any time repositioning them; she's spent plenty of Christmas dinners eating at Chinese restaurants and perfected the art of chop-fu by fifteen. Her sticks go in; she grabs a clump of rice and snaps her wrist back so the sticks are in her mouth before the old man can pounce.

The old man makes a "Hmm" in his throat. Jack tries for the rice again; the old man's sticks knock Jack's aside. "Rice is very good," the old man says and stuffs his mouth.

"Well shit," says Megan, and she goes for the rice again. This time the old man's ready for her; he knocks her sticks aside and pinches a clump of rice; Megan counters by stripping the rice from his sticks; it falls back in the bowl. She pulls up another clump of rice and has it almost to her lips when the damned old man's sticks rattle hers in mid-air. Megan rolls her wrist and traps the old man's sticks in a wooden submission hold, but the old man manages to pull his utensils free.

"Honey," Jack says, but Megan ignores him.

"What is this man?" says the goateed monk. "Is he a disciple of the Smiling Jackalope? Is he a noble teacher? Is he a great master?"

The chopsticks clash in mid-air again, clacking together with a sound like tiny bamboo staves. Megan scores a blow on the old man's ring finger, and she uses his moment of hesitation to grab a bite of rice. She's not really too fond of white rice, but now it's come down to principle, dammit.

"Is he a rich man? Is he a poor man? Is he a holy man? Is he a criminal?"

Another mid-air clash, and the old man's stick pinches Megan's thumb. She hisses and jabs him in the soft spot between his thumb and index finger.

"Perhaps he is a hungry traveler. Or is he a great chef?"

The old man drops his chopsticks and gives Megan a slight bow of his head. Then he smiles and reaches his other hand into the bowl and scoops up a palmful of rice with fingers that look fresh from digging in the garden.

"Who is this man?"

"He's an asshole!" Megan says and stabs her chopsticks through the old man's hand, pinning his palm to the table.

You've probably never heard of Ayn Sedai in our Universe. In our Universe, the Nathaniel Branden Institute fell apart when Ayn Rand discovered her apostle Nathaniel Branden was having an affair with a younger woman, which Rand apparently felt was an intrusion upon her own past extramarital affair with Branden. In the Universe we're concerned with now, Rand never found out Branden was not-cheating on her, and the NBI eventually morphed into the First Holy Communion of the Randites, who believed Rand to be the physical manifestation of Ma'at, goddess of truth, balance, order and laissez-faire capitalism. In the final months of Rand's life, secluded within the Randite compound, where she was surrounded by and endlessly waited on by her oath-sworn followers, the self-styled Ayn Sedai claimed she could "channel the currents of space-time in the Universe" and gave a secret code whereby one could find prophecies of the future in her writings and the writings of those she had inspired.

Ron Paul is a seventh-degree Randite Master; thus, he knows the code forward and backward, along with the story it tells in Rand's own writings. Take this decoded bit from The Fountainhead, which to the untrained eye seems merely several paragraphs about a villainous newspaper editorialist:

It shall come to pass that what America made will be ruined
And the parasites shall once more lay across the electoral map.
Soldiers shall make war across the world for no good reason
And workers of the nation will lose consumer confidence.
Neither shall Wall Street abide...

All that said, it wasn't McCain's Soviet indoctrination that set his life on its current path. That honor goes to his introduction to Ahmatohtal Wahkjhab, a Sunni cleric who spoke to the young radical of a sacred truth, a holy mission and a deep and abiding hatred for the Great Satan America, a country where women wore pants and everyone smelled of cheese. John McCain's conversion was sudden and absolute, and he returned to the United States to pursue not his original political agenda, but his newfound religious destiny—he would stab the Great Satan's heart from the Oval Office, and none of the pig-fucking infidels would ever suspect John McCain was a secret Muslim until the United States was burning to the ground.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

 

[Don Coyote]

i suspect several people will have hate shits because of this.

[Laughin Jude]

Neither of those responses is "tl;dr." I'm honestly kind of disappointed, internet.

[Requia ☣]

It's not that long really.  I mean, yes there's scrolling but tl;dr is a result of gnat like attention span, and the post is really more lots of small chunks.

[Phox]

It's not that long really.  I mean

tl;dr

[Phox]

OP: 

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

I like this. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is lovely!

[Freeky]

Holy Jesus. 

[Laughin Jude]

Are people actually reading this? I honestly expected to be told to gtfo.

If so, I'll update when I have more chapters to toss up. I'm going to get back to this story in earnest once I finish The Edward System.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You're a good writer; there's no reason you'd be told to GTFO.

[Freeky]

No way, we love creative pieces as much as fluff, possibly more.  Shocking, isn't it?

[Luna]

Are people actually reading this? I honestly expected to be told to gtfo.

If so, I'll update when I have more chapters to toss up. I'm going to get back to this story in earnest once I finish The Edward System.

This is good stuff.  Don't worry, if it wasn't, you would be informed.

[Laughin Jude]

Writer's block OVER. Funny how my muse comes down from Seattle for a weekend and all the sudden the dam bursts.

There's a new chapter up, "Of Paganism and Patriarchy." It's about Jack and Megan meeting Cadence Ohana. Hopefully it won't be long before there are more to follow. The next one concerns Betsy's backstory and is called "I Was A Scientology Sex Slave." Guess what that one's about.