(Originally appeared in The Dial Tone Issue 002 by Landline Collective in March 2022.)

It shouldn’t feel like anything.

Threats of a corrupted past sink the world. The other face of the threat: perception, built out of a negative form, an attempt to pay debts, an unending, seemed up life for everyone. Can’t leave the house anymore without 100 cameras snapping your photo, they vanish by the time you hear exposure, aperture closes. Mechanical parts, actors for seven simulated minds. What does that make me?

Messages find me, “You can just cut out the stomach.” Heaven can help whoever’s left after that. Some of us have longer walks home after all. I say I’ll infiltrate a place that barely exists in order to stop the plan. 12 dead men got together and made a little corner of hell on earth. Their currency is memories, phantoms tampered with. Imperfect erasure is the goal. “This is how they keep us all in the wheel.” Find the core, (The Master “真相”) clip in the disc card, the Owls will handle the rest. Whole thing flips over is how I understand it. Sounds like a final move in it’s explanation. Networks will link out, I’ll get a little more life, hear some more english, feel that primary green glow all around my head, around my whole body.

I’ll finally get to see my life they say.

The Owls take all my shit. Sortie pulls me closer, into the maw of the night. They talk and talk. The gear will do most of the work. No room for failure here. One last shot. In and out, no traces. “Call us sometime soon, ok?” One of them says something low as the doors open. I say “What?” He unbuckles the sides of a box, the contents exit and walk over to me. Biped RO7. Its eyes scan me, scan the room, scans out into the dark world. Then we are whipped down into the sky, the moon, the air, and then a forest, surrounding a pale stone valley. Reminds me of the sink.

I land in the trees, RO7 moves ahead to find my entry. I follow. Mind imagines the stairs they mentioned, a serpent now, it’s skin blows away into the drain of the valley, the rocks pull apart the snake, abuse gravity’s opportunity, the snake finally winds to the bottom, crumbling all around. It searches around the bottom and finds half an eggshell to eat, then the rain gets pulled down. This could eventually drown the snake, who finds ways to worm under a rock then a hole then the cool mud past it all. Screws deeper into the blackened umber, whispers a last breath under it’s old life, it’s efforts met with silence, a world filled with so much reality it had to stop speaking.

The illustration stops short. I’m met with a blocked sally port at the valley’s edge. Matte black material fills every crevice of the door. The I-E (Optic gear, NVG with multiple lenses, they told me it has potential to “amplify” hallucinations) activates for me, catching the etched stone above the door. Oebo Pitu. I look to RO7, who barely comes up to my knees. The camera on the head looks up to me like a child, lost. The I-E spots the rest. Gives me a green fuzzed out nightvision of the scene. Two guards lay together with their heads touching. I’ve been out accessed. One shockpress, two downed enemies. Someone advanced helped themselves. Need for another line motivates the scope to my eyes. Owls call me about magnetism sensed east of me, on another side of the sink. Likely something from the original excavation. My drabs contract around my body. I’m pulled away again. I elude a row of two, then three enemies. I pause to hear them talk. They have no idea what they are guarding. I’m half sure I know.

Mutualities, agreements set up 100 year ago. Old birds died, the new generation ganged up, gave birth to a network of wire specializing in past acceleration, proliferation, repetition, information

feedback, relentless separation. The thing and the name for it.

Cheapens out the world into an ocean of suggestions, our boat of dreams will not last the trip. It’s hard enough to convince someone they are beautiful, that you love them, that they are all you ever needed to feel real. That they would always come before you. I’m only acting on two dreams: the one where my neck is the last one to lose, and the one of the ocean, gone out from under us. The drive to control the past forecasts. Endless rocky strata, the horizon on a planet of death.

Time facing stars look down a row of trees as I circle into the valley. I missed them in the daylight, when there would be something to say, when it would have mattered. An Owl tells me this would be the last time the sun came out of the sky. Weakened, blue air. Cold darkness. I was wandering away from a memory this whole time. Staring at it right in front of my face. A tunnel starts to run around me, spits me into the bottom of the valley. Old comrade Aibek meets me at the bottom, reaches his left hand up to my chin. Rubs it back and forth. This halts my will, any movement. RO7 loses it. I hear it’s digitized crying and screaming for the first time. Horrific, Aibek is unbothered. He leans his head right to mine. Freezes when we touch, then fades away. I-E activates, brightness adjustment.

Six figures move out from the corners of the old river. Aibek died years ago, and what would he

have to kiss me for?

The six pause for a moment. Scope clicks onto one of them. Suits of ancient armor. Black smoke leaks out in the cracks in the armor. They get low and travel into the grasses. Thermal filter on the I-E gives me jack shit. I’m going to stick it out. I meet them where they are, get low. I’ll have to push some pieces off. Naked eye gives me faded, bleached sand, dark blades cut through my vision. I begin to feel fooled by the textures, the ground starts to arrow out, but only a little. Hard, night ground rips into my drabs. I reach into my back for a knife. The cover slides off easy, its deep blueness strikes me. Knife’s face bounces up to one set of armor above me. My training helps me feel unused moments, small windows. To look up out around again. They moved between the window. I look up, enough time to scan all six standing over me, still on the ground.

Details of the armor, illustrated sets. Snakes turning into rivers then turning back into snakes. Damaged bits of the armor flake off like skin. I lock eyes with one, the I-E reignites the knife’s answer to me. I see into one’s eyes.

Out of heaven, a reflection of two stars, disintegrated, as if seen from the bottom of the ocean. Rifles gather up around my head.

Then, green light, a long whistle freezes them. Object of affection is now over the valley walls. I only catch two burned frames of their retreat. The six of them climbed up cracks in the wall, then they vanished out. I-E’s safety trigger causes a reboot. (Excessive lights from the rips in the movement, winds inflicted with a singed, blinking speed. The air gives out.) Smoke burns away from me. They decide to leave me alone for a while.

I can’t ever seem to rest my eyes for long. I have to stay sharp, they were on me in no time, fractions of moments between seconds. RO7 emerges from hiding. I-E pings the citadel’s tower to me. Top of the tower pokes up out of an old base camp. Baked bricks. I press myself up against one side. Everyones been taken care of again. Recently, and we didn’t hear a thing. I can make out a corrupted image file on the little screen they gave me. Greenish renders in the cradle of a palm. I lock and unlock the screen a few times. I like the granular, freezed up recording of a big window closing. I call the owls no response.

One glove comes off, wind cuts it up and away from me. I needed to touch the ground is all. RO7 moves to me, back to my side as I ask it to give me a reading underneath us. Just as they thought.Rooms and rooms and rooms and rooms. I drop a match down the barrel of the tower. The shadows flee, burn out. One rest opens up on the side, gives me a better view. Old black tunnel, lined down into the earth with smooth wires and walls. Green pulses run down them.

The gloved hand reaches into the bag. It’s not here the thing. Transparent card one of the two they gave us. The elevator box is summoned, almost like its being pushed up to me. The door is already open as it glides into my level, stays open until I’m in it and moving down. Rhythmic, blurred screeches show through the black walls. RO7 chirps and looks up. Three green circles over near the door. They barely light the room. The left button goes out. We land somewhere deep. The doors open slightly. It never feels like there is space for me. Always I have to make my own way. RO7 moves into the room. Messages me.“BLIND ZONE.” All I can see with my eyes is flickered, barely distinct shadows. I call the owls they don’t answer.

Natural adjustment, I make out six monoliths, pumping hoses of data down into a ultrabright, needle thin hole in the center of the room. Digitized scream floods my ears. RO7. I get the death data immediately.

RO7 Final FEED shows me beams of it’s vision, fuzzed out green dances, a low render. Six of the monoliths (Information Gates) stand adorned with an armored corpse around it. Video stutters out then stops on the final frame. Two heavenless stars. I light the I-E. The onyx doors stop the armor, arm reaches through. It was there before I saw it. Clickclickclickclickclick. Again and again. It’s out of ammo, but that doesn’t stop it from shooting me. I switch I-E back off, I feel it move away. The center elevator button loses it’s light. Final circle flashes yellow then goes out too. My eyes are now prisoner to the adjustment. Doors finish opening. I get up against the interior. The shadows die in and out, I see the last armored figure face away from me on the other side of the room. We both hear my foot enter the water. An ankle deep puddle. It reaches a hand toward me, freezes the tiny pool, localizing the true temperature of the depth we’re at. I’m stuck, steps move up to attack my mind. Panic, confusion, it’s too late. Something resembling a wire closes around my ankle. Circle closes, aperture diminishes.

Rush of pain sends my eyes everywhere. My arms legs my whole body sings, stunned.

A final attempt at seeming, digital memory flickers, a black card ejects from the coil of RO7. Burnt green suit of armor turns its head to investigate, and I put three knives in the back of its neck. Faded gloss of gray blood sprays me. I’m wiping the shit off of my face, and I’ve had enough of the I-E. I throw it off and I’m flat on my stomach. The little support biped had its body threshed into sixths. Crawling without a foot, blood pours out in my wake. I’m on borrowed time.

This black card has the secondary solution. No response from the owls when I call them. Not the owls not anyone. Casings on the Gates show me voids of space, overflowing language fills the small screens on the fronts. Saturations of words in appointed tongues pump through them. Black with muted reflections of the green lights. When I press my ear to one I don’t hear clicks or

beeps but distant bird songs bouncing into an early morning. Must be light out by now.

The owls finally call back as I’m hanging onto my head. “Jun, kill the system. Make us whole.” Sounded like voices in unison. Recorded, too. More knives don’t affect the opening, but digging with my bare hands works. Black waves roll through my vision, I’ve lost too much blood. I merge with the letters in the hoses. I can’t fit, I lose all my gear my clothes my drabs everything except the card. Digging like an animal, the origin of the letters. Port is collapsing around me. Six wires pressed around my body start to heat up. “Network protects itself through surging.” Fire whips touch everything and stay. My voice blows out.

————————————————————————————————————————————

I lose the hold on my life, reawaken in a cold, blind green tomb. My hands reach to my head, years of new hair. Burns never fully heal, but these did. Owls told me the bodies are preserved here. Tubes drape around a moviescreen set up in the middle of the room. Hard light, CF-circuits visualize accelerative archaean programs, logic viruses, imagined histories on endless loop. Old books litter the floor around it. I crawl to the input, and snap the card into the slot.

“manual entry……..testing connection……….upload…………success…….eowknj23roirejwfk 2,.13,,,,,,,,,241.111…………..39rorororororo”

Silence, light masks over the words in the dried up books, the ones bought, stolen, deadened by storage. Children can worry about the present, we only get to replay the past. Memories wedged into something else. Rows of birds follow me back. The wind starts cutting down when we run out of luck.

I’d have given up if it wasn’t for some recording of a dream. Something resembling a copy of my whole life. Single page, wider than a desert.

Bright clouds, even in death.

Moviescreen lights up once more.

“truth~.v”

I open my eyes again and it’s the middle of the day.

I’m in a field of endless black flowers.

The grammar of the universe is converted into truth. Mountains collapse and reterrace as truth. The ocean fills with truth, beaches sift out, turn black, shores of truth reveal themselves. Apartments, food, the people it all gets unprocessed, it’s all the same truth now. Language, screens, messages. Rain, weather, the air. Truth. Clouds turn into warm webs of truth, trapping the birds, who themselves become truth.