fortuitous circumstances, barriers to progress elimated
vast paradises. leopards prowl past white walls.
palm shadow on white walls. shadow plays.
vegetable forms reaching and trembling.
leopards in and out of the shadow.
shadowed gold.
in the eyes of satelittes.
enclosed in
the sodium walls.

Brute peacocks strut along coridoors
marble. beaten gold. firelight. barbaric luxury.
indolent kings slumped on their thrones,
massed ungulates
hoofprints in soft mud
plum blossom on wet asphalt
Plaistow in grey morning
river mist. mud. sunlight, weak as piss
dribbling through cloud sheet.

Roman legions trudging through mud
police sirens ripping the air
cigar-chomping railway barons
pince-nez wearing homosexuals embrace in the daffodils
quote whitman
declamatory in the flower-beds
in earshot of curious squirrels,
who cock tiny heads, paws raised to chin,
amongst the oak roots.
Peacocks in barbaric coridoors.
in fervour of new begininngs
in the release of hoarded energy.
nova light. eclipsed stars.
space on fire. deep space. white fire.
variegated finches. in lattice of birdsong.
in thrumming web of birdsong

Norman soldiers trudging through mud.
radiance.raindance.
wolves rifle through rubbish bins
in the backstreets
behind the cafes and the restauraunts
forest to city-city to forest.
the smirking insinuations of marigolds
and the plants in the gardens, so orderly
so decorative
are simply biding their time.
roots buckle the ashphalt
creepers curtain the windows
darken the drawing rooms.
tanks in the petrol station forecourts
buisness school graduates tumble in the ornamental fountains.
remove trousers, bellow.

delirious captives
press the pleasure button!
press the pleasure button! again! again!
sea turning. frothing, roiling. Tumultuous, green-backed, white-fingered god.
Twisting, turning as if in chains, beating against the walls of the cell.

chained god thrashing.

And the tribes spread out and came to populate every corner of the broad earth.
And dwelled in isolation, each tribe in its own region, until physiques and features changed, in submission to new enviroments.
Landscape, weather patterns, food sources...
Expansion. The explosion. Particles propelled outward. Energy expanding outward.
Fragmentation. Difference. The unfolded flower. Fireworks.
Frog ripples on pond surface.
The out-breath.
And now,
Contraction.
Unison. The bud. The acorn.
The tribes are reconvened. The old languages are forgotten.
The old songs are forgotten. The old dances are forgotten.
taboos. rules. roles. customs. observances.
the thousands of tiny patterns are caught up by and integrated in the larger pattern.
Mass extinction. Landscape is homogenised. Climate shifts. The specialist is driven out by the generalist.
The scavengers and squatters.
New eco-systems are forged. New rivalries. Monopolies are broken up. Rulers are toppled. New monoplies are formed.
New rulers look out over the land.
Contraction.
The in-breath.

pleasure button. pleasure button. pleasure button. pleasure button.
accept the reality.
the options are really quite limited.
gyre and gimble.
each living the others death.

Lucid transformations, harking back to earlier times of tangible angels, pellucid sun gods, children, laughter and arching rainbows.
Sun-bursts and cloud-bursts, giddy-hearted, while running through the long grass, joy siezes us, rain and sun intermingled.

Vision becoming more intense as it slows, seeping gradually into the skull-dark, like day's first sun, reaching over the hills to light the valley.
light spreading outwards, the moment expanding, containing ever more within itself, stretching in all directions and dimensions.

Flowers laughing, grass laughing, children playing in the laughing grass
the sun smiles benevolently, its light mellow and golden.

Are we to be expelled from these sweet meadows in perpetuity? Even now the memories seem close enough to touch, can almost feel the air there-
its gentleness, its sun-warmth, its sprightly youth.

How did our limbs become so heavy? When did our thoughts grow so ponderous, our preoccupations so petty?
How did this come to pass? It is springtime still, the branches are supple and the leaf is green.
Only inattention, be it distractedness or wilfull blindness, can convince us that winter has come and that the sap has ceased to flow.

Your heart is a bud set to burst, your mind a flower, opening to greet the sun. And you never left the meadow and the laughing of its grass, though in your mind you conquered mountains and crossed the raging seas, charted icy wastes and begged for change in friendless cities. Wandered alone in empty deserts where the white sun burned your skin, crawled and hacked through sultry jungle where snakes and leopards lurk. Saw fantastic monsters and wonders too numerous to name, marvels both man-hewn and natural. Cities carved from mountain tops, temples of shining light, trees tall enough to touch heaven.

Lived among tribes with strange customs and of strange appearance, and learned their ways,
became indistinguisble with them and forgot your homeland.
Your face hidden beneath their tribal masks.
You jealously guard your status among the tribe. You brandish your spear. You hold yourself very erect and affect a stern experssion.
You imagine yourself very imperious.
You think you can never come back to the meadow.
What does the meadow know of power, of influence and the customs of strange tribes?
What does the meadow know of intrigue, manipulation and deceit?
Of brute force or brutal cunning? Of violence greed betrayal?
Of all the small meanesses and dishonesties of thought, hypocrasies and double standards,
cruel, spiteful thoughts, thoughts of censure, thoughts of scorn, mockery, the pinched, mean mind, the vindictive mind, the spiteful mind.
What does the meadow know of indolence, of idleness, of joyless self-indulgence, of lassitiude and inertia?

THE SECRET DOCTRINE!

sun shafts break on rock face,
shadow of fern fronds
flutters in wind gasps
moss on stone.
Forest cathedral.
Plant pillars
buttresses
knotted root
spiralling vine
twisting tendril
light hunt.
The Benevolent Bobby Bisto is perched on a mossy rock. Green light. Leaf shadow.
Instructing his earnest students in his system of esoteric wisdom.
THE SECRET DOCTRINE!
small birds hop about his feet, untroubled by his presence. Is he genuine? Is he a fraud? He is irresistibly likeable, a flashing smile, crinkled laugh lines
a shaggy mane of white hair. Eye twinkle. Laughing.

The Cimmarons camp is known as ASHANTI TOWN.

There is so much I want to show you.
There is a writhing squirming maggot world beneath the surface. A world of contending impulses. Inchoate life forms. Thought forms. Parasitic gods.
Is he taking the piss?
How come he's got that knowing grin on his face the whole time?
MACHINE ELVES!
Blarney stone loquacity' language torrent. thought finds language without friction. tendrils of word growth unfurl outwards, stretch and branch off, there is no search for the right word, the felicitous phrase.
bird song.
the thought finds the words waiting and slips into them gratefully
the unfolding instant.
the students sit on moss and root. burgeoning awareness.
swell and burst. Bobby Bisto remodels the world. Remakes it. Draws out relationships. Exchanges. Patterns. Words take shape in minds eyes, become swirling image clouds, throw images upon the mind screen. Marching armies. Unfolding flowers. Memory flash.
Emotions swell up and ebb away.

WORLD ECONOMIC MELTDOWN!

alright you bag of slags i had things to do.... i've been in the mountains but i'm back now... Bear with me....

F. FLYPAPER: PRELIMINARY TEST RESULTS.

No digestive organs. Advanced photosynthesis. Transformation of energy. Wind. Sun. Light. Heat. Transmuted to power mind/body matrix. Draws energy directly from the living environment. Through the pores. Breathes carbon dioxide. Advanced powers of regeneration. Thumb removed grew back within 24 hrs. Further experiments suggest no limit to the body's ability to regenerate itself. Advanced internal temperature control. Body heats and cools itself in response to outside temperature. Reaction to unspoken thought detected. Hostile intentions registered. Responses recorded to events happening outside the perceptual field. Able to negotiate obstacles blindfolded. Echolocation suspected but not confirmed. Memory comparable to that documented in savants. Total recall. Mathematical capacity unrivalled. Instant calculations. Musical pieces of enormous complexity played note perfect after single hearing. Distances judged with the naked eye, accurate to within nanometres. More startling is an ability to comprehend languages never before encountered. Proved able to decode Mayan glyphs and Chinese ideograms. Thought in image not language. Answers arrived at without calculation. An aptitude for manipulation to rival that of the most prodigious psychopath led to Frankie Flypaper escaping from the research laboratory. He is being tracked.

"He could have escaped any time he chose. He wanted us to know. He wanted us to have those results. How much more has he hidden from us? What dos he have planned? A mind like that could achieve anything. He must be stopped. Search the hunting grounds. Every man and woman we have, out there, now."

Huge fractal fields of information intersect, merge, drift.
Frankie mind intact and accessible. As is all mind and every mind. All information exists in potentia and accessible. Hawk mind flying over forest. Rabbit mind skipping through tussocky grass. Mind of tracker dog stalking Frankie through Ruche's hunting grounds.... DNA memory snaking back through millennia. cause and effect branching off endlessly into future time. Preempting future events, following the paths of necessity backwards into the deep past. Perspective not limited to current body coordinates. There is no thought. There is only information apprehended as protean image or sensation. Hawk mind registers as hawk sensation. Air currents on extended wing. Hunt focus. Calculations of distance and speed of strike. Prediction of prey movement. Tree mind of wind fingers through leaf hair, insect trails up trunk track, roots embedded in delicious soil and branches stretched into open air, sunlight and the moving sap..... everything is sensation. Mind is sensation. Thought is the abstraction of sensation. Substituting symbols for blocks of sensation.
The abstract entities represented by numerals take on coloured forms, merging together in a series of combinations before settling into a new forms. Equations shimmer and writhe. Patterns flower among dataclouds. Minute shifts in the environment registered. Mind traveling all circuits. Becoming what it perceives. Taking on the identity of whatever it contemplates. Becomes water. Becomes mineral. Total identification. Flowing over the surface of the world, taking on each shape it passes over. Like the blown leaf for whom the wind is its will, action flows naturally and inevitably from circumstance. Grinning through green forest light. Deliriously happy. Dog bark in distance. Man hunt behind him.


Drifts through signals. Some minds flare orange and red or purple black in grey brain mass. Vast accumulations of energy. Vivid. Distinguished from pulpy brain stew. Zoom in. Inhabit coordinates. Reels from hate blast. Dense purple-black hate. Rigid control. Power lust. Clenched.
Escapes. Moves back stunned. Finds orange-red flare. Sanctuary. Make for that place.
Physical intelligence. Body finds quickest, most efficient, graceful ways of moving through space, of performing actions. It gives Frankie an animal quality. A leopard-like litheness. There is no stifness. No awkwardness. No miscalculation. No resistance. Fluid. Muscles propel body through space. Slice through air. A refined awareness of just how much weight a joint or muscle can bear, how much force can be relayed through it, how much traction can be relied upon. A feel for weights and forces and distances. Gazelle gambol. A spring and suppleness. No stumble. No snag nor snare. Joy in movement. Leap, hands curl around tree branch, momentum propelling Frankie over a muddy brook, lets go, lands lightly on feet, momentum riden into run step, laughing. Leap and skid down loose dirt bank, controlled slide and run.

MIRACLE INVASION!

Into the void created by the collapse of the state stepped a whole range of religious and ideological organisations, even, on occasion, criminal enterprises. Bandits with Robin Hood complexes. Drug Barons financing hospitals and day clinics. Football teams funded by blackmarket booty.
Evangelists handing out religious tracts with aid packages. Food for prayers and conversions. Medical treatment for believers. Free meals at church services. Clothes emblazoned with religious platitudes.

Huge amounts of money are being expended in the slums and rookeries, on the refuse islands and shanty towns. A furious contest for souls is being waged wherever people are poor and vulnerable, susceptible to bribes and crocodile tears.
Free childcare is an opportunity to mould the minds of the young, and teach them the importance of saving the souls of their parents.
Miracles are staged at every opportunity. Charlatans surreptitiously administer medicines and pray vociferously over their patients, praising God at the first sign of improvement.
Stooges rise from wheelchairs, raise arms to heaven, dance merry jigs of gratitude.
Every church fights for a larger share of the market. Every two-bit cult, every self-declared prophet, every would be revolutionary. Fishers of men all.
No avenue for indoctrination is left unexplored. Radio stations broadcast the Word. Musicians in every conceivable genre. Computer games. Children's stories. Free concerts are staged in the slums. Books are handed out. Games.
Some neighbourhoods are effectively run by a particular sect. They operate as states in minature, extracting tithes and worship in exchange for public services. Religious law operates in these places, sometimes deeply barbaric and intrusive. Sexual lives are rigorously policed. Injudicious words can result in utterly disproportionate punishments.

Religion is big business and the marketplace is a competitive one. Advertising, PR and merchandising outlays are on a par with those of the major corporations and their techniques are no less sophisticated. The heads of the bigger churches pull CEO wages. The churches themselves model themselves after the old cathedrals in their desire to overwhelm the senses.
Services are held in huge auditoriums with preachers elevated on stage, voices massively amplified. There is extensive use of gold, marble, porphyry....
A range of special effects and light displays take the place of stained glass and clouds of incense.
Stirring music rumbles from high-end speakers. Sound and image and the Word are used to push the worshipper into a state of high suggestibility. Awe. A suspension of the critical faculties. Singing and chanting in unison is used to foster a mob mind, the sense of being carried along by a force greater than any one individual. In some cases sacraments include mildly psychotropic drugs.
Ancient techniques of oratory, passionate cadences, emotive language, call and response, crescendos and lulls are mined mercilessly. Savage fears and furtive desires are invoked and maipulated.
And it is working. Huge profits are being made. Thousands and thousands are attending services.

Meet Milton Freeman. CEO of Total Correction.
He is immaculately attired, in a conservative way. A well fitted expensive suit, navy blue with a sober barely visible pinstripe. White shirt, starched. Razor sharp trouser crease. Black brogues vigourously buffed and polished. Orderly hair, greying, parted with precision. Clean shaven. Straight back. No hint of a gut. Disciplined. Steely eyed. Cruel lips, thin, perpetually pursed.

Total Corrections, a subsidiary of Priceless Attributes, supplies containment and correction services for a whole range of organisations. A growth industry. It is the market leader. It profits not only for charging its clients for services rendered but also from unpaid prisoner labour.
This is part of the rehabilitation program, preparing the prisoner for freedom. Work gets the prisoners out of their cells, provides exercise, discipline and mental stimulation. A whole host of good habits are ingrained.

Pelican Bay Correctional Facility. Maximum Security. Maximum Punishment.
Total isolation. Once entered the cell is never left until the sentence has been served. Prisoners are issued with colostomy bags. Showers heads are built into the cell ceiling. The shower is switched on at the jailers discretion. Water is dirty and either scaldingly hot are icily cold. There are a number of punishments which can be administered without the potential risk of coming face to face with the prisoner. The temperature of the cell can be raised or lowered to excruciating extremes. Gas can be released from dispensers in the ceiling. Walls and floor can be electrified. Walls and ceiling can be contracted to the point at which the inmate is forced onto his haunches, head bowed. Speakers in the wall can be used to broadcast distressing material, sometimes simply white noise played at a painful volume. Frequencies which cause a loss of bowel control, vomiting etc. In other cases psychologically disturbing material is broadcast. For example, the sound of an inmates wife having sexual intercourse with another man. Technology exists which allows all sorts of possibilities. A favourite trick is to make the man fucking his wife the same man responsible for his arrest, or the judge who sentenced him to Pelican Bay.
Distressing news is fed to him, in total isolation he has no way if determining its veracity. This can be anything; that his sentence has been extended to life, that his family has been killed in a huge gas explosion, that a war has started or a plague unleashed, that new and abominable punishments have been authorised, the removal of the tongue for instance... the possibilities are endless.
Punishment cells include insect cells, crawling with fire ants, mosquitoes, cockroaches, flies, maggots, millipedes and giant poisonous centipedes, rat cells, shit cells where the inmate is knee deep in human excrement and the dreaded itching cells. An irritant is released into the air which makes inmates itch until they rend their own flesh. Inmates have emerged from the itching cells with strips of flesh hanging from them like rag dolls.
Other punishments include allowing an inmate a pet, usually a dog or cat. With no other company the inmate forms a deep bond with the pet. He cares deeply for the animal. The pet is then tortured and killed in front of him, while the guards laugh uproariously.

Other prisons are run on the lines of mental institutions with inmates afforded a relatively large degree of liberty but kept sedated on a range of drugs and subjected to a program of forcible rehabilitation. Electro-shock therapy. Aversion therapy. Lobotomy. It is often easier and more politically convinient to declare a person insane than to find them guilty of a specific crime. There is also no need to set a time limit on their incarceration. They can be held for as long as it is deemed necessary.

Board meeting. Total Correction.
'Prevention of crime?' Freeman barks incredulously
Prevention of crime, dear god above, how did this simpleton find his way into a board meeting? Jenkins you naive wretch, you blundering sappy ignoramus, remind me, what business are we in?'
'But, crime prevention sir, no sir, I mean, correction sir, correction of the criminal mind sir' Jenkins, flustered but relieved, thinking he has the right answer
'You blithering dolt Jenkins, have you seen the reoffending stats, dear Mary mother of God, they're way up into the 90s, what sort of bloody correction is that you nincompoop. Think again. You Morris, spell it out for the half wit would you'
'P.R.I.S.O.N.S'
'What does that spell Jenkins?'
'Prisons sir'
"the vast bulk of our annual profits comes from the designing, building and managing of prisons. What possible interest could we have in the prevention of crime? To the contrary you drooling baboon, our interest lies in the escalation of crime. Our interest lies in whole sectors of the population becoming criminalised. The more criminals the more prisons. The more prisons the more money for us. Bottom bloody line.'

Henry Bastard takes up the thread
'Without a bulwark of the unemployed the economy suffers. Wages rise. We need the unemployed, but have yet to devise a satisfactory method of managing them. Prisons and detention camps provide the best current management option. Think of these people as vectors of infectious disease which must be quarantined to prevent them from spreading to society as a whole. Here their discontent can be contained. They are unable to organise themselves into a political movement. They are unable to spread fear among the affluent and law abiding sections of society. They are unable to sabotage to smooth running of the economy.'

Ganymede and Xanadu are owned by Priceless Attributes but are not factory towns in the sense that Petersberg is a factory town. Only a relatively small proportion of residents are directly employed by Priceless Attributes. The cities are essentially a business venture. Priceless Attributes rent retail space and housing and supply public utilities; power, water, education, health, security (Wolfram is a subsidiary of Priceless Attributes) and so on either directly or through sub-contractors.
Under this system not only do Priceless Attributes amass obscene amounts of wealth they also control their population to a degree only dreamed about by any dictator, oligarchy or parliamentary democracy. The resident of Ganymede or Xanadu is educated by Priceless Attributes. He lives in an environment designed by Priceless Attributes. His news comes from Priceless Attributes. His entertainment is provided by Priceless Attributes. He is subject to laws drawn up by Priceless Attributes. Strictly speaking there is no public space in the cities of Priceless Attributes. Everything is owned by Priceless Attributes. There is no need for censorship as such. Distribution networks, media, publishers, advertisers are all either owned by or in thrall to Priceless Attributes and any material critical of or detrimental to the interests of Priceless Attributes is strangled at birth.

notes....

Elysium Fields. Gated Community.

cliques of eerily similar pubescent girls stand around the shopping mall (Elysium Gardens) projecting attitudes of lofty boredom and ostentatious scorn
"ha! visible cartilige" extemporising a running commentary on passers-by and their sartorial and physical shortcomings....
Plastic surgery has rendered them almost identical.
they speak in an affected drawl and hand each other compliments of breathtaking insincerity.
'Oh I love your nose! You've had it remodelled again!'

Private Security Guards prowl the permimeter fence. Combat trousers. Military boots. Handguns in holsters. Stun grenades. Tear gas canisters. Capsicum spray. Tasers.
Snipers in dicreete (neo-classical) guard-towers yawn, pick noses. Razor wire in sodium
light. Inside the gates neighbourhood bobbies stroll the streets tipping their hats to the ladies and ruffling the hair of youngsters.

Wives read magazines in tanning beds. Blue glowing coffins. Turn orange.
Attack dogs strain at the leashes of their handlers.

Shopping mall air ionised to deliver pleasing sensation.
Forest of transplanted trees. Recorded bird song. Model birds perch unconvincingly on branches. Glass eyes peer unblinkingly at picnicers.
Nature Walk.

Keeps the riffraff out.

THE SALVATION ARMY!

The Salvation Army represents a fundamental break from the modern conception of God. Here God offers no succour to the suffering, no courage for the fearful, is no companion to the friendless, no source of strength to the weak, the meek and the mild.
Let us quote from one its own theologians
'Who is this pitiful God happy to sleep side to side with beggars in the wind swept streets, who pleads with the powerful to sheathe their swords, to reliquish the spoils they have won through stength of sinew and fixity of will? Who chides the proud hero and lauds the weak sister. Who, tell me, is this slavish God, this weak, wretched God of conquered peoples? Who bleats for love and understanding. We recognise no such God. Would God shy away from the world he has created? Admonishes the kings he has set to rule over it and laud those who are crushed under its weight? A God who bemoans his own creation? Impossible! What God would make a world only to disown it? This can be no God of ours.
Our God is a God of the victor and not the slave. A God to inspire fear not wheedle for insipid love. He is powerful. He is fierce. His hair and beard are of flame. His counternance is that of the thundercloud and the roiling ocean, the savage tiger, the erupting volcano. Sharp of fang and claw, thew and sinew. Strong and ruthless. He pleads not for mercy, nor does he beg for compassion. He does not cousel forgiveness. He hungers for blood and death. Only victory honours his name, victory and the blood of those who deny him. Fear God. Fear his wrath. Give him his tribute as you would a conquering king. Seek not to humanise him. He is God and He is terrible'
from 'The Wolf and the Sheep'

HUMAN ENGINEERING! REDUX!

Sally Formica is walking home. Home is on the outskirts of town, one of many squatter camps chiseled out of toxic land. Where the steady sodium light is replaced by the smoky living light of fire. Fires in oil drums. Candlelight. Wooden pallets burning in braziers. Oil lamps. And the people lie thick on the floors. Head to toe and shoulder to shoulder. With bedsheets or lengths of old carpet hung from the ceiling or girders in lieu of walls, dividing one lot of personal space from another. Where houses are corrugated iron and driftwood. Plastic sacking and straw. Where waste accumulates outside the doors and is never taken away. Where electricity is purloined and its supply is erratic and volatile. Where old diseases flare up again like vindictive ghosts. Cholera. Yellow fever. Smallpox. 18 miles away. Long foot slog through city streets. Where the roads don't go. Where dirt tracks wind aimlessly through filth.
But for now she walks through great canyons of Xanadu, in the shadow of skyscrapers. Where capital reaches its greatest point of concentration, and the buildings grow tallest and most vigorously. Each one pressed hard against the other, fighting for space. A rainforest of skyscrapers. A dense ecosystem where money is sun and rain and soil.
The the very air crackles and flashes with imagery. The sigils of advertisers. Dragons swoop down at her, making her heart race in response. Adrenal glands spark. Handsome men with come hither smiles pose in their underwear, 6 packs rippling in low bedroom light. Gesture to her. Whisper words in her ear. The siren songs wrench at her heart. Surges of bittersweet memories. Erotic fantasies. Orchestral strings emote. Fanfares of triumphal brass. The heart flutters. Micro-narratives snare the attention. A shorthand dependent on a shared image bank. Hours spent immersed in sound and moving image. Archetypes of the mediasphere.
Nostalgia for things which never happened. Transplanted memories. Fictional childhoods running through the wild flowers. Happy families around a dinner table laden with food. Archetypal idylls more vivid than her own past could ever be. Rope swings over laughing rivers. Toy yachts catch the breeze on glittering lakes. Kite flying on windy hilltops. Golden sand, blue sea and sun sets. Endless days of exquisite languor. Sand between the toes. Swaying of the hammock. Swaying of the Palm trees. Salty tang of the warm sea. Romance in the waves. Salt in the kissing sea. Birthday partys. Gaggles of giggling friends. Cake and jelly and ice cream. and all these things able to be triggered in quick concatenations of image and music. The heart gasps. Overwhelmed. There's a hollow feeling in the gut. A surfeit of ersatz emotion. A hollow feeling that wants more stimulation. that fears being cut off from its supply. But it is getting late and the walk is long. There is no time to linger in the matrix.
As she walks the adverts grow simpler. Cruder. Reliant on older technology. Towards the periphery. Where the money begins to run out. The people on the streets look more tired. Their clothes cheaper. Their gait slower. Their posture stooped. Torn billboard posters for discontinued brands. The buildings grow less densely. Vacant weed grown lots. Shattered windows. Collapsed roofs. Walls blackened with soot. Sally is walking home. To CanalTown. Where the canals criss-cross old industrial estates and wasteland. Clogged with squatters. The exhausted canals choked with algae and rubbish. Sewage dumped directly into the reeking canals. Dense and green and putrid. Lined with houseboats and barges with makeshift roofs. Tarpaulin stretched over the barges. And people sleeping inside pressed together for warmth. And the rats are everywhere. Huge and fearless and black. Mould grows everywhere on the damp walls. Sprouts from cracked plaster and concrete. A persistent dampness. Clothes and sheets and blankets all impregnated with the damp. Inescapable. Weakening the lungs. Everyone hawks and coughs up gobbets of thick green phlegm.
People living on rotting houseboats and barges. And in the factories and derelict warehouses. Building fires on the concrete floors. Thousands and thousands of them. Priced out of the housing market. Priced out of the city centre. Priced out of the suburbs. Rats running over prone bodies. Working in the sweatshops for the tailors. Haute couture. Sweat shops. Making one off items. Sewing quetzl feathers into headresses, diamonds into the hemlines of ballgowns. Febrile micro-enterprise. Legal, quasi-legal and illicit. Fermenting fruit or honey and spices in old iron bathtubs, synthesising psychoactive drugs in makeshift laboratories, flogging quack cures and counterfeit medicines to desperate families, running protection rackets, cloning credit cards, cultivating cannabis and opium, growing herbs and vegetables in roof gardens, recycling rubbish, harvesting scrap metal, resurrecting expired electronics, reviving exhausted furniture, varnishing, reupholstering, faking fashionable handbags, sunglasses, t-shirts, football kits, stealing and robbing and extorting, preaching Apocalypse and salvation, building lean-tos and shacks, purloining electricity from the grid or conjuring it from the sun and wind, renting sleeping space in rooms owned by someone else entirely. The watermen who haul wooden handcarts heavy with sloshing urns behind them, essential in a neighbourhood with no water mains. a whole range of scams and ruses and schemes for survival. Every ecological niche is filled. Every way of extracting a living from the environment. A huge cast of characters thrown back on their own resources. Preyed on by mobs and thugs and confidence men. Harassed by officials and private security guards. Always in fear of losing what little they have. Disease as ubiquitous as the rats. Gangsters preying off the defenceless. Teenage hoodlums thrilled by the fear they induce.
Sally's heart sinks. A roadblock. Wolfram Security. Checking papers they know she doesn't have. Bribe hungry. She recognises Canaltown gangsters lurking around a smoking brazier. Security guards and gangsters. Wolfram gives the gangsters free rein over CanalTown in exchange for their cooperation is crushing dissent, organised resistance, political agitation. The gangsters identify trouble makers. Act as provocateurs. Eliminate leaders. Break up incipient organisations. Instill fear.

WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS!

Secret socieites coalesce around gods. War God!
A cabal of arms dealers, high ranking soldiers, politicians, thugs, gangsters
Those who stand to profit from the prolongation of conflict. Who perpetuate a competition world. A conflict world. Where one can only advance ones own interests at the expense of another.
Wheels within wheels!
Gods of Chaos and Gods of Control.

All quotes taken from the Books of the Benevolent Bobby Bisto
"Before Copernicus, the earth WAS the centre of the universe."

"We create reality anew with each moment that passes. It responds to our thoughts as it responds to our actions."
The Most Benevolent Bobby Bisto's theology is predicated on this one assertion. Everything matters. Every thought, every upswelling of emotion, every footfall, every utterance, has a definite and far reaching effect.
Every event, and all these things are 'events', Bisto recognises no distinction between 'inner' and 'outer', is an act of creation.
Every event affects the shape and tenor of the universe.
A thought can change not only the game-rules of a given society, but the very underlying physical structure of the universe itself.
The right thought could reverse gravity.

The universe is full of gods and these gods, each corresponding to a human drive, fight for control. Each god seeks to reign over a universe made in his own image.

99% of people are unaware this struggle is taking place.

The rest are divided into those who would use their understanding to accumulate personal power and those who would use that understanding for the betterment of all.

All sorts of ramifications follow from these few assumptions. In the world Bobby Bisto embeds his followers withing special attention must be paid to all those groups of people involved in manipulating the the thoughts and emotions of others.
What ends are they pursuing? Which gods do they serve? What deals have been done? What transactions have taken place?

What energies do those drums conjure up? What emotions does the demagogue excite? What actions do they demand of their followers? What attitudes do they endorse? That voice, its cadences, its crescendos, its lulls and plateaus, what does it invoke? Why were those words chosen? What charge do they carry? What associations do they carry?
What behaviour does the town planner seek to promote? Which actions does he seek to 'design out'?
"Remember the very streets, the squares, alleyways and marketplaces are designed to code behaviour. Nothing is accidental. Nothing is random."

What anxieties do those adverts foster? What doubts, what fears? And to what ends?

And look again at the world and see it for the battlefield it is, with people fighting the proxy wars of gods and the gods, parasites dependent on human worship.

This is the fiction Bobby Bisto embeds his followers within.

"And ask yourself, which gods are in the ascendency? The signs are everywhere, for those with eyes to see. Look to the birds, see how they squabble for territory. How they peck at each other, flap their wings and strut in displays of calculated aggression. Look to the plants, how they grapple for light. Look to the cities, how the rich push the poor into the poisoned places, the places of foul air and foetid stinks."

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK!

Appeal of FeelGood predicated on one assumption. People want to live a script. Insert them into a storyline in which they can be heroes. Give them a sense of importance. Make them feel needed. Tell them the survival of humanity depends on their efforts. Make their lives vivid. Make each decision significant. Make every event significant. Charged with meaning. Reframe everyday occurences. An esoteric reading of events. Make them privy to earthshaking secrets. Use the proven techniques of plot twist and cliffhanger. Place them within a system. A heirarchy they can advance within. With each advance more plot line is revealed. This simple device has ensnared hundreds of thousands of followers and gathered enormous wealth. In the weeks to come we will hear more about FeelGood, their founder and prophet, some of their prominent followers and detail the plot structures they embed their acolytes within.

HOLISTIC SHOPPING!

The average inhabitant of Ganymede and Xanadu walks around in a state of constant low-level sexual arousal. Titillation is everywhere. Suggestive phrases circle through his mind, the jingles and taglines of advertisements, models leer down at him from animated billboards pouting and preening, holograms seem to lightly stimulate his genitals or brush against her nipples, lubricious music ripples against his inner ear. As a result he is forever seeking release, some endlessly deferred orgasm and turns to the sources of arousal for its fulfilment, consuming voraciously....
Gorgeous shop girls and handsome sales clerks in tight fitting t-shirts stalk the aisles smiling at passers-by.....

Overwhelm them with emotion! Fear! Sexual Arousal! Sentimentality! Strike up the orchestra!
Manipulate the heart strings! Make life outside the manipulation device unbearable! Dull. Lifeless! Make them ache with withdrawal symptoms.
Increase the heart rate! Dilate the pupils! Stimulate adrenal glands!
Embed them in fictions! Swooping strings! Beating drums! Excitement! Fear! Anger! Sexual Arousal!

Observe, if you will, the amplification of emotion in film/TV by music. Priceless Attributes build this manipulation and amplification of emotion into the fabric of their cities. To walk the streets and shopping malls is to be caught up in a torrent of spurious emotion against which everyday life seems unbearbly drab, grey and two-dimensional. For the gameplayers this effect is, needless to say, exaggerated tenfold.

BIG MOVEMENT CONCEAL LITTLE MOVEMENT!

The cemetery which is home to the Tombstone Kids is large, wild and overgrown. A landscape of stone angels and ivy. White stone and green growth. Tall grass. Venerable yew trees in which owls wait for nightfall. The smell of rosebay willowherb and the scuffling of rats.
Blank faces of angel stone, features eroded by the wind and rain, keep silent vigil over child graves. Moss cushioning stone. A small chapel, its roof caved in, its walls dense with ivy, its interior stripped and set fire to, sits on the periphery of the cemetery, guarding the gates.

In the centre of the cemetery sits a war memorial. It is here the children meet, lighting a fire at the foot of the monument and sitting on its steps, telling stories and entertaining one another with magic tricks. Oliver Twist, the orphan fox cub sits with them on these nights, in the fire-heat, intelligent of eye, handsome in his red coat

The Tombstone Kids. Unorganised. Leaderless.
The children live in mausoleums. Dry and warm. With the dead to keep them company.
There are no better thieves, burglars and pickpockets. Ghosts that flit through crowded streets. Unseen and unheard. Light fingered enough to snatch the watch from your wrist. Quiet enough to unpeel the pyjamas from your snoozing wife. Deeply knowledgeable about the history and traditions of their craft they delight in reinventing old ruses and set pieces. Cons and techniques. Slice the pocket out your trousers with a pair of scissors. Skilled in street magic, masters of misdirection, sleight of hand, suggestion and cold reading. They pride themselves on their elaborate ruses. Their choreography. Their audacity. The Tombstone Kids elevate theft to an artform. An performance. A spectacle. They will stage alien abductions to steal a wallet. They have no sense of proportion. The more extravagant the better. The item to be stolen is merely an excuse for the performance. A new method of misdirection. A new conjuring trick. Some subtle ploy for the appreciation of the connoisseur.
Not many of them. It's a select group. A few boys. A few girls.

Here's Fellini. A thin kid, moves like a cat, and just as nervy. Dark hair, dark eyes, cheekbones you could slit your wrists with. Long fingers, delicate, like a concert pianist. A master of his trade. Only 14. Dresses well. Today we find him in a top hat, a velvet waistcoat over a white shirt of Egyptian cotton, a silk cravat and an antique, gold fob watch. On special occasions he wears the mayors chains of office. Took them right off the old boy's neck. He never felt a thing.

CIMMARRONS!

In the desert lands where nothing grows child raiders and bandits frolic with machine guns and bayonets. These are the Cimmarrons. The grouop was formed by child soldiers, generations ago. Enlisted to fight a grown-up war they rebelled and slaughtered their officers and fled to the desert lands where nothing grows, their numbers swollen by runaways from the labour camps and miltias. Here they have built their homes and shrines and lives of fierce fantasy. Lives overgrown with the vines and creepers of wild myth, a living green world, dense and humid jungle of the imagination in which they are completely at home. Fed by their own daring raids and artful burglaries. Watch them running, fabrics which glitter, flutter, catch the wild sun. Turbans unraveling, the rattling and jangling of improvised jewelry made of bird beaks and tiny bones, coloured plastic, feathers, beads, shells, tin foil and aluminum. All are dressed as emperors, viziers, sultans, demented shamans in platypus masks and condor wings, magicians in robes and conical, star patterned hats, spacemen and jumble-sale samurai. Monkey bands of whooping boys, crashing through paradise.
Their camp is ringed with flags, fetishes and totems. Ragged pennants, banners of independence. Boys doze in hammocks strung between totem poles.
At puberty the boy must descend into the pit. This brings together all the members of the pack in a mood of great and childlike solemnity. Drums beat and the children chant. The pubescent child is descending into another world and shall never return to this one. He wears a false beard of horse hair and a wooden phallus strapped to his crotch.
The Cimmarrons have no agriculture. They neither hunt nor gather. They refuse to engage in anything resembling work. All their needs are met by the spoils of raids and ambushes. By theft and robbery. Masters of guerrilla warfare. Of cunning and stealth. They are utterly ruthless. Slaughtering the Overseers of the brick pits and copper mines. Massacaring the commanding officers of two-bit militas and liberating their child captives. They melt into the scenery like mist eaten by the rising sun.
"They just disappeared Sir, it all happened so quick sir. Took all the kids with 'em Sir, I'm the only one left alive Sir, look Sir, all dead Sir."

KALAKUTA!

Badger Priests trained in the Warrens. Intefered with by prurient old zealots in purple robes.
When the Badger Priests begin to manifest signs of sexual maturity they must surrender their badger pelt.
"Father, I suffered night-emissions, here is my pelt"
a solemn moment. the child's head is bent in shame. there is great sadness but no Badger Priest would ever dream of dissembling. Plod sees everything.
"Mother, my womb drips blood, here is my pelt"

Robes of stained glass, mosaics of glitering glass and jewels sewn into flowing fabrics. Sequins. Materials which bewitch the light. Jewelery.Ceremonial antlers.
Robespierre! He wears the antlers of office! His men and women shimmer in robes which seduce the sun!
The children follow their path, dancing and laughing...
The Ark on the Rock.... The Republic.... In the courtyard men and women beat enormous drums
An enormous bonfire burns and there the light flickers and is blurred with smoke
Lagbaja! The Faceless One! Lagbaja dances in smoke haze....
Lagbaja dances in orange flicker of flame and shadow, movements like those of the flame
Lagbaja! The children crowd around him laughing and shouting. As he dances he mimics those around him, he snatches Robespierre's antlers and mocks his striaght backed gravitas, he gestures regally, he frowns and sighs
he extrudes his arse and makes vigourous pelvic thrusts, he bounces his arse up and down and rolls his hips, he falls into a press-up position and humps the dirt with infectious relish.....
he rolls back his eyes and raises his arms to the sky in a parody of trance, becomes possessed, writhes in the dirt
he mimes a prissy, rigidly choreographed dance routine of the sort practised by Ricky Dandelion
he goose steps, stands to attention, salutes, breaks into the Dandelion dance again....
He struts over to Robespierre, sashaying his hips, his lips drawn into a pout and slaps him on the arse
stands behind him and starts a grinding into him in a parody of exuberant lust
Robespierre can't help but laugh, he snatches back his antlers and the pair of them execute the Dandelion dance in perfect synchronisation
horns blow
Robespierre breaks into song
Lagbaja is joined by two beautiful young women, one on either side, they sway to the music and play the role of back-up vocalists
Everyone sings. Everyone dances.
Look around. Through the fire smoke. Through the swift limbs of dancing bodies.
The compound is built of mud and stone. It is centred around the courtyard in which we stand. The building is a scuplture. Its walls are decorated with paintings and low reliefs. These are built up communally with no coherent plan, in the way a city wall comes to swarm with graffiti. Image and word.
Walls are topped with spiralling pinnacles like sea-shells, minarets and pyramids. Walls and roofs sag and bulge, curve and writhe like the edges of a burning candle. Wax moulded by fire. Lava cooling to rock.
This building is not based on the cube. It is not a series of boxes. Walls are prickly or goosebumped or ridged. Conical forms like termite mounds protrude from the floor. Sculpted forms of men, women, gods and demons begin to free themselves from the walls, begin to find form, half-embedded in the building. Facades assume the stylised forms of faces, human and animal.
The decoration is maniacal. All space is filled. Plants grow everywhere. Trees fill rooms, stretch branches through the roof. Creepers reach out feelers along every vertical plane. Plants grapple for light. Birds are everywhere, indoors and out. Singing and fluttering. The roofs are thick and green gardens. Plants droop lazy limbs over roof tops. Dangle idly in the air.

There are people everywhere. Wandering through the corridors. Courting and kissing in the roof gardens. Reading in the libraries and under fruit trees, playing instruments and dancing in the courtyard, flirting and talking and laughing. Lying on cushions. Laughing on cushions. Listening and talking and joking. Children playing and running, leaping like rabbits in long grass.
People studying. Reading. Lost in thought. In rooms whitewashed and soundproofed. Free from noise and distraction. Meditating in the whitewashed cells.

Always music. Landscape of sound. Sound glitters on foothills. Sound sun rising over sound hills.
Time expands. Becomes multi-levelled. The moment strectched accordian-like. Layers. Move up and down within the moment.

Always talk. Always communication. Mind-meld. Communion. Always listening. Connect.
Ideas dart and leap from mind to mind. Dart across space. Electric thought. Mind reaches out to mind.

The Ark on the Rock is deep inside Nogo. Within the walls.
It maintains links with all the most established dissident groups existing in Establishment territory. The Tombstone Kids, the Cimmarrons, etc and has inspired dozens more. There is a network of tunnels extending from within Nogo to the outside.
This is the hive where the bees are buzzing. Where they fly out from. Where they return to.
Kalakuta!
Republic of Rapscallions! Rogues and Rascals!
Where no government holds a mandate. Where no law holds.
Swarm through the tunnels. There is no where they cannot reach. Every shanty town, every lawless no man's land, every military compound and factory floor has hosted them. They allow no pool to lie still and stagnant. Information always. Flow of thought, idea, change. Information.

Robespierre is the face. Lagbaja is the faceless.

MEIN UBERMENSCH!

Frankie Flypaper. Child of the Refuse Islands. Child of the Cancer Villages. Reborn!

And what is this? No stomach? No digestive organs? He draws living energy from sun and sky, more self-sufficient than the plant! Is this the future? To be freed from the cycle of toil that has charcterised the history of Man? Free from the wheedling demands of the body?
Free from the dependancy of the child that clings always to the mother's breast and cries and wails with each second of seperation? No More!

Frankie's skin is clear and pure, his eyes are violet and his hair is raven black.

An unemployed ventriloquist is slouched on a park bench
a crumpled blue suit
leaves gather about his feet.
He scatters crumbs and lends his voice to the pigeons which gather round

"Excuse me love, that's my crust"
"Get out of it you horrible old git"

"Alright darling, come here often?"

"Oi Mister, this bread's stale"

The dialouge becomes lewder, more violent, bizzare, unhinged
he leans foward on his seat, his voice rising in volume and emotion
The ventriloquist is shouting, stabbing the air with an outstreched finger, face red, veins throbbing in his temples.
Passers-by adjust their paths to avoid him, making detours across the ornamental lawns
shoot nervous glances in his direction.
The pigeons feign disinterest....

NEXT!

Six men in toucan masks wrap the night about them-disappear into its folds.
It's Robespierre and his musicians, they play strangely shaped horns and hand drums. He is only seen like this, within a protective sheath of sound.
They say his musicians control the perceptions and behaviour of the crowd, that they can make him appear invisible, or 10 feet tall. This accords with the evidence. All eyewitness accounts concur. Attest to inexplicable phenomena. Sound is known to possess these properties.
Panic sound. Sleep sound. Rage sound.
Rhythms to stretch consciousness. Till the whole world is held in a single thought....
Six men in toucan masks, turbans, black robes, wrapped in the night....

Every one within hearing range begins to dance
Cleanse them! Purge them of their afflictions! Dance till you are purified!
All awareness of space and time is engulfed as sound becomes an all encompassing environment.
The dancers move in a field of music. The music is the landscape. The music is the climate. The music is the texture. The music swells to fill all senses. It is the topography. It is the thought. It is the emotion. This is not exaggeration. This is not poetic license. This is as objective a description as is possible. The musicians now have total control over the dancers. They create the environment the dancers exist within. Not only the physical environment, but the inner landscape. They have control over even the heart rate and other autonomous physical processes. This is meant literally. This cannot be stressed enough.

ASTRID GILBERTO SEX TAPE!

Every role has its own set of concomitant liberties, its sphere of influence, its responsibilities and its restrictions. Boundaries, strictly policed.
The Clown has his liberties and his bonds, and the King also.
Role is Destiny.

Great Armies foundered here

Inviolable
Imbroglio
Incommunicado

In sand dunes beyond measure
and wind which rips flesh from bone

Tumbler
Tomato
Tombola

and so on
and so forth
a crash of rock on rock

Asthma
Armada
Omerta
Astrid Gilberto

Various mechanisms of Control
quite startling,
how much they have achieved

Who is Paul H Robespierre? Robespierre is the cultural contraband.
Torn and tattered posters spell his name
flyposted on black brick walls, railway arches, sentry boxes,
in Ganymede and Xanadu
in Albion City and Pelican Bay
in all the closed socieites
he is there
the product which, though prohibited, is ubiquitous....

Who is Paul H. Robespierre?

MIRACLE INVASION!

In the star chamber, under the eyes of stars, beneath the glass dome which keeps out infinite space
machinery hums. white walls and metal machines. humming in the sterile star chamber.
on marble slab lies Frankie Flypaper, like sacrifical victim on the altar, sedated and naked, his tiny, birdlike body peaceful as the dead, just a gentle rising and falling of the rib-ridged chest to vouch for his continued existence. Visible heart clenching and unclenching under the thin blue skin. White light. Machine hum.
Ruche signals from the viewing gallery. Smee presses the button. Dazzling white light. Fierce light. Machines in motion.
Massive radiation rays bathe Frankie's flesh, envelop him in light, recode his DNA, remake his mind, twisting him out of his time track, forcibly hauling him onto another....
evolution fowarded, his face and body flicker into different formations, a thousand frames a minute, beast, fish, ape, alien, skin becoming scaled, furred, glossy as perspex
reality is disintegrated.
Ruche and his retinue watch from the monitors... Smee is grinning manically, sweating, compulsively jumping from foot to foot like a child desperate to piss...
Ruch has a messianic gleam in his eye, a beatific aspect, but with the saint's latent hysteria
Frankie is surrounded with purple, orange, white radiation aura, crackling....
His body levitates from the slab
He is floating a metre above the marble altar, aura crackling in colour
his eyes are closed
rays bathe blue flesh
sores heal, lesions seal
atoms vibrate
all boundaries dissolve
all knowledge is simultaneously apprehended
Universe Brain. He sees himself through the eyes of Ruche, then Smee, then from a disembodied viewpoint a 2 feet above himself. Sees himself floating, auraed, radiation pulsing
DNA becomes language, he sings it, sings a new body, a new mind....

informal settlements grow like toadstools across the rotten body of the state....
graveyards, abandoned housing estates, industrial zones, the forests and hillsides, poisoned toxic land....
the state retreats
the rich have abandoned it
they have their own security forces
their own water supply
their own power
the poor have been abandoned by it
they have no sewerage, no clean water, no stable power supply, no education, no health care. They have no jobs, they pay not taxes. Their births are not registered. Their deaths are not noted. They are the Invisibles. They occupy another world. Hidden in the cracks and crevices and out on the periphery of our world. They make their own arrangements.

In the Star Chamber Frankie's mind is reconverging
his body floats back to the slab, gently, as a leaf falls from a tree, nuzzled by invisible breezes

the Tombstone Kids, the refuse islands, Nogo,
Private Enterprise takes the place of the state, as in the case of Weedly-Chough or Peter Familias' factory town
or
alternatively
criminal organisations
such as the Bandicoots, the Mungiki, the Spear of God, the Lamb of God
resources of private individuals or organisations now dwarf those of the states. Where does power reside?
A patchwork of territories....

"Gentlemen, I bring you the Future!"
Ruch and Smee are exultant
Frankie is beautiful
he has been reborn an Adonis with violet eyes

What has happened to the economy? There is instead a patchwork of informal economies and a vast global blackmarket. Counterfeiters. Thieves. Smugglers. Pimps. Mercenaries. Drug dealers.
Off-grid.
This is a new world. This is your guide to the new world. Your map.
Learn of new gods and new heroes. New fears. New hopes.
MIRACLE INVASION!

PLOD WILLS IT!

the Badger Priests are raiding a drinking establishment....
'OK everyone, put your drinks down and your hands on your head. This is a raid.'
The regulars sigh in acquiescence. Penance not punishment is the motto of the Badger Priests, children all, trained in the Warrens.
None over the age of 13. They wear the pelts of badgers over their heads and white tunics to signify purity, tied round the waist with gold braid.
They have no legal powers as such, only religious authority, but here religious authority counts for a lot. Those who scorn it find themselves overlooked for promotions, shunned by their neighbours, unable to receive credit, life, in short, is made difficult for apostates. So the drinkers set down their glasses and try their best to look repentant.
"Scourge myself little brother? Yes little brother, yes, Plod wills it little brother, I quite agree...."

Escape the tentacles of Plod.
Green and slimy
Slathering limbs.

Penance not Punishment.

"Mr Quince sir, the Aborigines of Australia have been complaining about conditions in the Safari Park. They say they have never had to hunt lions before. They object. They say it is dangerous and that many of their young men have been seriously maimed and even killed by the lions. Do you feel responsible for these accidents Mr Quince? DO you not think it would be more appropriate to have them hunting wallabies or something more traditional Mr Quince sir?"

"Look we've made this quite clear. Autonomy comes at a price. The public won't pay to see those boys club defenceless marsupials to death. We are protecting their ancient and noble culture. But they have to meet us halfway. the public wants to see man against lion. Man against crocodile. Man against bear. Not man against Skippy the bloody kangaroo. End of Story."

JACKIE CHAN PROMOTES PEACE!

-Truthwerks Broadcasting-

Morris Quince, spokesman for the UN Tribal Peoples Group, reports from the latest meeting
'The preservation of these unique and ancient cultures is of course our sole aim and preoccupation. We have talked long into the afternoon. These are not easy questions to address. The coexistence of the ancient and the modern is a tremendously difficult balancing act. There are numerous practicalities we would be naifs and fools to overlook. If, for example, tribal land happens to be also, the site of valuable mineral wealth, well.... We must be pragmatic. We advocate the integration of the tribesman into the safari park format. The tribesman must be profitable, must be productive if he is to justify his place int he modern world. He must not be mollycoddled nor patronised. Within the safari park format, hunting, under agreed quotas, the animals confined there, staging dances and rituals at times to be agreed upon, with audiences of paying visitors, he can preserve his ancient and noble culture and still meet the demands of the modern world.'

This hodgepodge of vanquished tribes convened on condemned land.... the site of an old gasworks with toxins eating into the soil, where rusted twisted metal protrudes from among the bricks and rubble and broken glass glints in sunshine. Animals wander confusedly in this alien environment, struggling to improvise an ecosystem. Lions, elephants and kangaroos, macaws, cockatoos, gaudy birds of paradise....
Palm trees struggle in the hard dirt. The tribesmen whittle at arrow heads, struggle to learn their lines, the lineaments of foreign histories, myths that don't belong to them, learn the steps of dances far lewder and more lascivious than anything their ancestors would have recognised.
Earnest anthropologists attend meetings with the tribal leaders, accompanied by the safari park owners, Morris Quince and other prominent members of the UN Tribal Peoples Unit.
"Yes, we realise you come from different tribes, that's why we've worked so hard to come up with a kind of generalised vision of your culture and what it represents. the common aspects... spears, hunting, dances.... we've taken the best elements from your respective traditions and made them accessible to our target audience. Look, this way you can retain your independence, we're not asking you to integrate in Western Society. We're trying to preserve the things which make you unique"
Quince sounds terribly exasperated....
"The ingratitude is astounding" he says to one of the entrepreneurs funding the project over drinks later on that evening
"Sometimes I wonder whether it's worth it at all"
"Imagine saying they don't want drums! How can you have a tribal dance show without drums? People expect drums"
A wildebeest kicks at the dust dispiritedly.

FOSSY JAW!

Compte Vermillion Ruche is a confirmed devotee of the practical joke. He is forever recounting tales of his past exploits.
"Remember that time we laced the Marquessa's luncheon with laxatives? Christ, I nearly pissed myself, or rather, she did hahahhaha"
he'll chuckle vociferously. Or
"what about when Denzel was shagging that bit of totty and we got the recording of his mum having sex with her new fella and played it through the stereo, top volume.... fucking hell, she doesn't half make a racket the old dear! I don't think he's ever really recovered from that poor bastard! Ooh, Tony, harder, Tony Harder" he squeals in delight, mimicking the sounds of Denzel's mum with no inconsiderable aplomb, not to mention enthusiasm "ooh, deeper Tony, harder!"
Ruche delights in violating the privacy of his staff, interfering in their sex lives, the movement of their bowels and their intimate emotional lives. This is all done in the name of 'having a laugh' and results in a distinct low level anxiety among all that work for him. A guarded, wary manner.....
He has hidden cameras secreted in the living quarters of all his staff and overtly films them while they are at work. He gathers reams of material about their private lives and predilections.
Naturally in the course of this surveillance he uncovers much contempt and scorn directed at him. Curiously he does not make his mockers the subject of punishment or ostracism but instead seems to feel impelled to win their favour, inviting them hunting or to sit next to him at dinner and share in his favourite cognac....

HALLIBURTON DEATH CAMP!

FUCK! MACHINE MALFUNCTION!
the machines have gone haywire. the young workers look like they're in the midst of an epileptic fit, twitching and spasming like broken puppets.... it doesn't seem to occur to them that the machine is faulty, spewing out random signals. they strive to keep up with every beep. they're going to collapse with exhaustion, maybe die, like the participants of the dance marathons they held in the depression. limbs kick and flail, are twisted into unnatural angles. it's grotesque. god, look at that one, shes actually foaming at the nostrils!
such pride in their work though! such dedication!
it's inspiring really.

deep in the underground research laboratories a lowly lab technician is on the verge of a shattering breakthrough...
"if i can pull this one off I'll be in clover for the rest of my days. Ruche will fucking love me for it..."

Manor houses in which rituals are enacted, awry, a misprint in the grimoire conjures the wrong god.
A lewd demon who cums in the face of an eminent aristocrat. Lady Jowel-Humbugger, of Anglo-Germanic descent.
‘Hypotenuse, initiate us in your celestial mysteries’
‘I’m not Hypotenuse, I’m Donkey Schlong, here’s cum in your eye you horse-faced slag’
SPLAT!
‘Here’s another pearl necklace for your collection you inbred tart!’

Little Frankie Flypaper's skin is a ravaged landscape of suppurating sores and seeping lesions. He has been hard at work melting down plastic bags for the boss. His lungs crackle and wheeze. He daren't slow down or he'll get a crack round the head from that horrible cunt Billy Brigand, the Overseer.
One day Frankie's going to escape. He knows all about the mainland. They all do. Hell, the walls of his hut are papered with pictures from magazines and newspapers. There's more to life than this, sifting through through the rubbish, the stench of sulphurous hell in the nostrils...
CRACK!
"Flypaper you malingering little bastard, stop daydreaming!"

He gets a sympathetic look from old Lesley, Lesley's all right. Master craftsman, Lesley. His work sells for thousands on the mainland. Course, no one had any idea till that magazine turned up, Arty-Facts, that was it, and one of his contrivances emblazoned all over the front cover.
'No information regarding this elusive genius is available. His agent, a Mr Boris Zlocky, says only that he is deeply private and lives as a recluse on a barren island in the North Sea, shunning all guests other than himself.'
Course, it was all a load of bollocks. Les is a serf, does what the boss tells him. To be fair, they treat him special. Have to. Biggest cash cow on the bloody island. Shaping his sculptures from melted plastic and crippled metal. Wires and circuitry.
Frankie's nostrils drool black snot.


Ruche thinks he's found a way to activate the dormant DNA, to trigger the next phase of evolution. A few minor technical issues remain, and it is with these our young friend in the lab has been wrestling with. He has doubts, but no scruples. He imagines the moment he announces his findings to Ruche, the ebullient high-fives and whooping.
What these changes will be and whether they will be supportable in the current environment is unknown.
His name is Sebastian Smee, and he is very ambitious.

"Frankie! Stop fucking about with that plastic bag and get your scrawny arse over here!"
Christ, it's Fat Larry, the head of the operation! Frankie didn't even realise Larry knew of his existence let alone his name. This couldn't be good.
"Frankie my boy, meet Sebsatian Smee"
A young, spotty chap with a staid haircut and a labcoat stood before him, one clammy hand extended. Frankie took it, hesitantly. Sebastian beamed, an unwholesome smile.
"Ever been to the mainland Frankie?" His voice had the cracked, wavering quality of the newly adolescent.

"Christ Smee, surely you could have unearthed a sprightlier selection of specimens that this!"
Frankie was standing in a line of 6 boys and 6 girls. They were all naked and being inspected by a very short plump man wearing the most outrageous costume Frankie had ever clapped eyes on. The light was very white and very bright. The room was very large and very white and gleamed painfully. It was immaculate.
"well, it can't be helped" the man concluded with a theatrical flourish of the hand "take them to their quarters"

Everything is very clean. It smells of cleaning chemicals. Everything is white. It is a small room. There are no windows and the light is very bright and white. There is a bed. The sheets are very white. The walls are very white. Glossy, smooth to the touch. A kind of plastic coating. There is a chest of drawers. It gleams with the same white plastic coating. The handles are stainless steel. There is nothing in any of the drawers. There is a speaker embedded in the ceiling. There is nothing else in the room.

"Welcome to Ruche Laboratories. You have been selected for a series of clinical trials. Your family nominated you. They have been given a handsome financial reward in return for your participation. The next few weeks will be an exciting time for you. You will meet many new people and learn many interesting things. You will be party to the most important scientific research carried out this century. Please relax and enjoy your time here at Ruche Laboratories."
the speaker finished transmitting its message and the room fell silent again.

PLANET OF SLUMS!

tiny birdlike figures, deformed by leaking toxins, grow vegetables on the refuse islands, snare seabirds, recycle electronics, plunder circuit boards for gold....
whole populations support themselves in this way, on offcuts, waste, detritus.
squabbling with gulls and rats.
the refuse islands are enormous. the boats come in. those that live on the islands were stowaways, or the descendants of stowaways.
the islands are manmade. mountainous. studded with hovels. villages smoke in the shadow of garbage mountains. energy extracted from the heat of rotting waste.
in truth, there is no shortage of food here. there are dangers by the dozen, but no scarcity. there are landslides, whole settlements enveloped as a hillside shears off.
toxins leech into the skin. contaminated food. dangerous work. fires flare up without warning. but no scarcity. that's why so many people live here. rooting through the rubbish. fellaheen. snaring seabirds. fishing in the shallows.
Houses rise from the rubble, the hummus of organic waste, plastic bags..... jerrybuilt
painted with the images of popular heroes and homespun gods or with the images of meadows, forests, beaches with sun setting over golden sand....
driftwood frames, improvised concrete embedded with shells, plastic action figures, coins, the bones of fish and seabirds, charms and amulets...
streets of trampled down rubbish
stench of sulphurous hell
mansions of mob bosses on top of rubbish heaps, rat skulls on lengths of sharpened wood, guarded by teenagers with bloodshot eyes
knife fights in the night streets....
wildfire cults spread messages of mania, dancing till collapse, apocalyptic creeds tied to political ends, harnessing the god fervour
small fishing craft bobbing off the refuse islands, flinging out nets
fires spew toxic smoke, thick and black, swallow houses, whole streets eaten by fire
diseases mutate, swarm through the narrow streets, bubonic plagues and cholera, TB, smallpox.... old devils in new dress
and on the mainland too, in the squatter camps, in the old factories huddled together on concrete floors, in tents under leaking roofs
in housing estates long abandoned. walls are broken down, warrens formed, new architectures
Cracked ashaplt in which dandelions, thistles and nettles grow. Sycamore trees. Pigeons. Rats. Fires in steel drums. Buildings. Old office and retail space. Solid grey concrete. Rain streaked. Or metal hangers. Functional and drab. And in between, around and built onto these, shanty structures of corrugated iron, driftwood and shipping containers. And inside too. In shopping malls and retail hangers. Tent cities. Firelight. Pigeons in the rafters. Disrepair. On walls amateurish murals fade. Paintings of masked, armed men clenching fists aloft in victory. Memoirs of more idealistic times. When people hoped for more than just survival. Or had the energy to pretend to do so.


Peter Familias is making his rounds of the dinner hall
"there is to be no desert until everyone and i mean everyone, has cleaned his plate. Yes, that includes you Jenkins, eat your greens"

The captains of the refuse-ships have a monopoly on everything salvaged from the rubbish. Whatever can be resold or recycled. The profits are handsome.
The inhabitants of the islands have no other way to get their goods to the mainland.
Most of these islands are in the hands of mobs, their makeshift societies subject to rigid hierarchies held in place by violence and intimidation. On others a fragile anarchism still prevails and a man may enjoy the fruits of his labour.

In the African football factories children as young as 4 are practising kickups. Everytime they allow the ball to drop to the floor they are whipped.

ENDYMION! ANOTHER ORTOLAN!

Compte Vermillion Ruche is touring his laboratory. A young lab technician accompanies, clutching a satin bag of ortolans. Everytime Ruche finishes devouring a bird the earnest young man passes him another. Ruche eats with great relish, biting off the head first and talking as he chews.
"at one time of course this was considered junk DNA. Just imagine! The presumptuousness of some people! If they couldn't figure out what it was there for then of course it must be useless, the genetic equivalent of an appendix! It's like hearing someone speaking a foreign tongue and assuming it must be gibberish, just because you can't understand him.

AETHERNET!

COMMUNICATE WITH SPIRITS TODAY!
With our all new AetherSpeak head set. Simply attach our headset and recite your invocation. The spirits will be at your command!

Priceless Attributes completed the purchase of Weedly-Chough 3 years ago.
Since then all villagers have been compelled to don the garb of 13th century peasants and engage in a range of antiquted crafts; thatching, blacksmithery, dung hauling, and jousting. there is much consternation among the inhabitants but what can you do? it pays the bills.

WHERE'S MY VITO?

Captain Vito is the star of a popular action franchise. He is a vigilante adventurer. He upholds order and justice. His own brand of retributive, violent justice. He is tall and strong and handsome. He is loved by many women. Sometimes he yearns for a relationship. He has no shortage of opportunities, but these he rejects, with a heavy heart. His life is too dangerous. His rigid moral code forbids him to expose a woman to such danger, nor marry knowing he could die at any time. He loves children and animals. His constant companion is Torque, a fawn pitbull he rescued from the murderous pimp, Tony the Sleaze. Tony the Sleaze had a sideline breeding pitbulls for dog fights. Mistreating them, starving them, baiting and tormenting them to make them vicious. Captain Vito almost broke down in tears when he saw the animals condition. Locked in cages so small the dogs were unable to even turn around. It made him angry. It made his blood sing for justice. Captain Vito stripped Tony the Sleaze naked. He covered him in lard and blood and gravy and he set the dogs on him. They ripped him to shreds. Tore him limb from limb. Captain Vito took the dogs to a animal shelter and still checks up on them from time to time. Torque he fell in love with. He didn't intend to keep him, but Torque was irresistible. Something in his eyes, some spark of intelligence and loyalty. He didn't want to expose Torque to the dangers of his life as a vigilante adventurer, but now looking back, thinking of all the times Torque has saved his master's life, he's glad he took him. His company, his steadfastness, loyalty and love are what helps Captain Vito keep treading the lonely path of justice and righteousness.
Captain Vito drinks Vito, incessantly. He ascribes to it much of his virility, fortitude and mental acuity. He was created by Vito's marketing division to counter Zoop's co-option of Ricky Dandelion. An early abortive attempt to groom a pop star to rival Ricky directly, Billy Vito, led to the creation of Captiain Vito. The relative commercial failure of Billy Vito reflected badly on the Vito brand. It cemented the popular impression of the company as number two. Perpetual pretenders to the Zoop throne. A different approach was needed. Captain Vito was an inspired gambit. This rugged, 'rebel for order' came to loom large over the cultural landscape giving Vito a level of brand recognition and exposure they could only have dreamed about. His bland catchphrases 'Vito never fails' and 'Where's my Vito?' entering popular parlance. Common catchcrys of the playground, pub, factory floor and office.
Captain Vito is played by Reginald Collarbone, stage name, Ray Flash. An underwear model famed for his washboard stomach before being plucked from obscurity to become Captain Vito. Despite having squired some of the most glamorous models and actresses to award ceremonies and industry parties his private life remains something of a mystery, the source of much speculation. It is in truth, something of a headache for Vito, who know enough of his proclivities to wish they'd taken a little more time over the casting process. A spectacular amount of money has already been spent protecting Flash's reputation.
Here we find him in bed with Kofi Blacksmith, legendarily endowed gay porn star and acting covert agent. He is currently in the employ of Zoop Juice.
'oh, pour it all over me Ray, that's right, oh Ray, it feels good, lick it off Ray, lick it off'

The footage of Ray Flash, aka Captain Vito licking Zoop Juice off the gigantic member of Kofi Blacksmith is the talk of Xanadu and Ganymede. Everyone has seen it. It's a propaganda coup of epic proportions. Vito know what's up. They haven't failed t notice the new found and conspicuously displayed wealth of Blacksmith. The mansion, the extravagant jewellery, the floor length mink... The boardroom is a hothouse of plotting. Maps of revenge are drawn up.

OPERATION STARGATE!

Ruche is in the Zodiac suite. This small room has a round oak table in its centre, the zodiac engraved around its perimeter. There is a candleabra in the centre and a chadelier which mimics the form of the candelabra hanging directly above it. The walls are wood panelled covered with deep red velvet drapes. The celing is a painting of the night sky. Madame Kapovari is shuffling a pack of tarot cards. She is a short, plump woman, with a face deeply lined with wrinkles. His fingers are laden with rings. Huge stones catch the light. One ring is in a the shape of a serpent entwining itself around her index finger. There is a silk scarf around her head and gold hoop earing in her ears. She has the beginnings of a moustache and Ruche hangs on her every word, barely making a single decision without consulting her.

No News is Good News

In Priceless Attributes all news comes from the same source, Truthwerks News Agency. The news is streamed into homes via the dreambox. The dreambox is then viewed through one of a range of filters; left liberal, right conservative, hard right, centrist, apolitical, fascist, being the most popular filters.


Milton Freeman. CEO of Total Correction.
Total Correction supplies policing, judgement and punishment services.
75% of governments use Total Correction services. Judges can be selected from the catalouge. The catalouge includes each judge's record; What cases they presided over, the charge, the defendants personal details, the sentence given etc. From this information the judge most likely to convict can be chosen. It is easy to infer any prejudice or personal amnitys of any judge from his record.