Copyright 1995, Pearl Publishing
Channel Revolution
I've been getting decent treatment around here since I sandbagged Schultz. It was hell when I was first sent here. Claiming to be a Net'er won't win you friends among the Channel Citizens at the best of times, since they have always resented our freedom from Channel Laws, but being perceived as a nut-case claiming to be a Net'er puts you at the bottom of the pile even among your fellow fruit-cakes.
It could be worse. They could have transferred me to the "Home Shoppers Bargain Psychiatry Warehouse". That's the worst of the worst. The Shop'ers have the poorest government on WebWorld. When the citizens of the former world governments got to choose their citizenship at the end of the Channel Revolution every deadbeat compulsive spender on the face of the Earth signed up with the Home Shopper Channel Government.
When the United States and the European Community Collective had conceded (they were the last of the holdouts), the Home Shoppers Revolutionary Movement had made a wise move by declaring Leona Helmsley their first President. The other fledgling Channel Governments laughed at the Shop'ers, but got a rude awakening when the computer polls started showing the overwhelming numbers of people electing to cast their lot with the Shop'ers.
The Shop'ers ran ads showing Leona purchasing magnificent
jewelry and other high-priced items from the Home Shopping Channel
and the masses rushed to join the bandwagon. Some of the slightly
more discriminating people became citizens of the Consumer Channel,
but they were few and far between.
When the dust cleared, over a half a billion people found themselves
citizens of a Shop'ers government that consisted of compulsive
spending deadbeats, former Third-World citizens without a dime
in their pockets (but with big dreams of buying all the trinkets
in the flashy political ads), and 'credit card fraud' gypsies
aiming to grab the goodies and split.
The Revisionist Channel Government did surprisingly well. They weren't given much of a chance in the original polls, being branded as basically just a 'Holocaust Denial' fringe group, but they, too, adapted quickly to the changing dynamics in the newly declared WebWorld.
Henry Kissinger III was one of the few who foresaw the potential of the Revisionists to do well in the new scheme of things. He had grown up at the feet of his grandfather, one of the great world leaders in the BC (Before Channel) years, listening to the tales of how the Nazi regime came to power by preying on the vanity of the pseudo-intelligentsia and the disenchantment of the masses.
The Revisionist Channel Government moved quickly
to expand the narrow base of their appeal. In the former United
States of America they appealed to whites by running political
ads debunking the 'myth of slavery' as a plot to coerce whites
into a 'guilt' complex that could be used against them. In the
black areas they debunked the 'myth of slavery', convincing the
uneducated into believing that blacks had originally ruled America
and that when whites gained control of the government they rewrote
history to keep black people from regaining their superior stature.
In Japan, they revised 'history' to give the Japanese superiority
over the Chinese-in China, the same story in reverse. England-Ireland,
Iraq-Iran, everyone was played one against the other and the slow-of-wit
all rushed absurdly to become citizens of a government who claimed
each of the citizens was superior to the other.
The original fears of the other Channel Governments quickly changed
to relief when it became apparent that the Revisionist citizens
would be too busy fighting internal battles to cause any problems
for the other CG's.
When the smoke finally cleared at the end of the Channel Revolution, the Money Channel Government ended up with the fewest citizens and the largest amount of goodies. They were one of the few Channels to actually restrict citizenship. While most of the Channel Revolutionary parties lobbied hard for big numbers, the Money Channel lobbied discretely for the movers and the shakers; people who had plenty of cash and assets, and who knew how to use them.
The CC's (Ca$h Cows), as they were known back then, had the foresight to gain control of the InterNet, a seemingly insignificant entity at the time. It had, at one time in history, been the rage, but it faded into the background after its proverbial fifteen-minutes of fame and glory. Only the movers and the shakers realized the true history and importance of the InterNet.
In the decades preceding the Channel Revolution,
the First Great TV Era had come and gone, being replaced by the
Computer Era.
Computers were the wave of the future. Computers ruled! Computers
eventually were linked world-wide by the newest world-darling,
the InterNet, under the auspices of the World Wide Web, which
was crowned King and then inexplicably disappeared into an ever-present
but lightly regarded fog of everyday banality after the advent
of WebTV.
WebTV once again made Television King, exploding to 500 Channels
and ushering in the Second Great WebTV Era and the Channel Revolution,
which led, in turn, to the Great Channel War, later known as Channel
War I.
There were rumors everywhere, in those days, of Gomez and the Dark Allies, backed by the Ca$h Cows of the Money Channel, striving for control of the airwaves, for control of 'broadcast reality'…and for control of the minds of mankind. Then, for no apparent reason, the rumors abruptly stopped 'cold'. This made the few remaining people who were still capable of independent, rational thought processes, even more nervous than the rumors had made them in the first place.
At the close of Channel War I, the leaders among the winning factions directed the fear and hate of the masses towards the InterNet, thus gaining support for wide-ranging laws supported by all Channel Governments which placed serious restrictions on the InterNet, along with corresponding WebWorld Security checks and balances on the its management and the power of the Net'ers..
The Money Channel Government, which by that time held three channels under its control, railed as hard as anyone against the threat of the InterNet but their overly obtuse professions of indignation were viewed with suspicion by the other CG's. To lessen the threat of MCG control of the InterNet, the other Channel Governments, in return for begrudgingly conceding the Money Channel Government's right to control three channels, demanded that ownership and control of the InterNet be turned over to the CypherPunk Channel Government, a spin-off of the 'Wired' Channel which had become one of the early casualties in Channel War I.
The basic premise behind their demand was that the
InterNet, which still filled an essential need, would not be as
threatening in the hands of a bunch of fun-loving, loosely organized
misfits as it would be in the hands of the movers and shakers.
No one seemed to notice how easily the CC's gave in to their demands.
(And the 'Ca$h Cows' didn't seem to notice the overly obtuse professions
of indifference with which the CypherPunks accepted the mantle
of control over the InterNet.)
The Money Channel Government, which now included the Money Market
Channel and the Zero-Tax Channel, had secretly backed the CypherPunks
in Channel War I during their internal battle with the 'Wired'
Channel Government's established honchos. 'Wired', a leading-edge
computer magazine during the height of the Computer Era, had parlayed
their fifteen-minutes of fame into a major-league enterprise commanding
their own TV Channel, and became one of the key players in the
Channel Revolutionary War.
The Ca$h Cows, having learned from history the formidable
power of counter-revolutionary movements, had the incredibly astute
intelligence to realize the value of empowering (and at the same
time controlling by proxy) the seemingly disenchanted CyberMisfits
at the core of the 'Wired' Channel Government's power base. After
biding their time, the CC's manipulated the CypherPunks into taking
the blame for launching the opening salvo of Channel War II.
The CypherPunks, being well-grounded in the Tao and incredibly
astute students of Tai-Chi and the Tarot, realized the incredible
power of playing the Fool, and they allowed themselves to totally
go-with-the-flow of the Money Channel Governments 'deceptive'
manipulations.
I can see you rolling your eyes again, smiling smugly. "Right," you're saying, "and now this looney-tune is going to tell us that he was one of the legendary CypherPunks."
I know the CypherPunks started Channel War II. I instigated the Battle of Channel 49-and I made sure we lost.
I wasn't just a CypherPunk…I was the Fool.
Alexis
Alexis brushed the tiny, woolen balls of lint from the hair at base of the old man's neck. They fell slowly to the floor, doing a swirling-dervish type of dance as they were caught between gravity and the upward pull of the ceiling fan twirling lazily above their table at the back of the bar.
The fan didn't help much. Her thin, cashmere blouse, soaking up
the sweat from her nubile young body, clung to the gently flowing
curves of her breasts, and she knew that every man in the bar
was fully conscious of when she was taking shallow breaths, and
when she was breathing deeply.
They were following the rise and fall of her breasts like a shore-leave
sailor, sitting on the beach and watching his ship, his beloved,
rocking gently in the waves, as if beckoning him to come to her
and share her gentle rhythms on a journey beyond this place, towards
a fate that lies just beyond a horizon that they will never quite
reach.
They were equally conscious of Bubba, half-asleep, leaning his head ever so lightly on her shoulder, and slightly below her shoulder, on the lower part of her collar-bone, so very close to her tender young breasts, but never quite touching them.
She knew it was driving them crazy.
The young man, Jonathan, who was sitting at their table, was positively a wreck. He had said nothing in the fifteen minutes he had been sitting, waiting for Bubba, though he had 'almost' begun to speak several times, then stopped.
Alexis knew that it was because, try as he might, he couldn't think of a sentence that didn't have the word 'breasts' in it.
Finally, he managed to say,
"It's certainly very hot, today. Is Bubba your grandfather?
The humidity certainly makes one's clothes...", his own reference
forced him, involuntarily, to look down to stare at her breasts,
as he added, weakly, the word, "…cling."
"To my breasts, you mean?", Alexis replied casually with a slight air of interest, rather than offense, in her tone.
"Oh, no!", the young man almost cried out, "I mean…I mean, I'm sorry, I'm…I'm…"
"Stuttering, I believe, is the word you're looking for.", Alexis said with a small, friendly laugh.
"Yes…stuttering.", Jonathan returned her cue rather
honestly, she thought, for someone who appeared to be more inclined
to bolt for the door than to engage in humorous conversation regarding
his obviously extreme embarrassment over the situation in which
he currently found himself .
But he wouldn't…leave, that is. He was one of them,
a Net'er, or a computer programmer of some sort, no matter which
Channel he was a citizen of. And he needed to see Bubba-he needed
to-no matter what he had to go through to do so, because the alternative,
not seeing and talking to him, was unimaginable.
"You know, you people only come here when you discover that there's nowhere else for you to turn.", Alexis said abruptly, with a hint of harshness in her voice.
"Excuse me?", the youth replied.
"You know perfectly well, what I'm talking about."
she said with an air of consternation.
"On the streets, your type make fun of him, you have for
years, and years. You call him a crazy, drunken old fool. You
think he's a joke." Her voice was rising steadily.
"When it starts happening, when you see things-strange things, troubling things-then you come running to him and want him to explain things, to make it all right, or make it go away, because you don't want to see these things, you don't want to know what's going on around you, and you can't bear to live for only a few days, or a few weeks, with what he's had to live with for years."
Alexis was standing, now, having lowered Bubba's head to rest on the table as he dozed on. She was right in front of the sitting Jonathan, her ample breasts hovering inches from his now-dismal face, though his body was more desirous than ever of having her.
She sat quickly down on his lap and put her fingers through the
opening between the first and second buttons of his shirt. She
stroked his chest slightly, as she continued,
"If you want to speak to Bubba, then you have to answer the
questions I am about to ask you, and do so absolutely truthfully."
Jonathan could only nod-yes. Speaking was beyond him, as he found his body becoming tense beyond belief.
"You asked if Bubba was my grandfather, but you really want to know if I'm fucking the old geezer-if all those stories about him are true. Right?"
"Yes." Jonathan was looking at the ceiling, and self-consciously trying not to move his body in the slightest.
"And you're here because strange things have been happening, strange thoughts have been troubling you, making you afraid."
"Yes."
She reached her right hand around to his back, stroking it in
what might be considered a 'motherly' way, except that her breasts
were only fractions of an inch from his chest and directly in
his line of sight, and her breath was hot upon his cheek as she
began to whisper in his ear,
"You've lived quietly, for years, in a nice, sterile world
of numbers, and data, and pure mathematics where everything is
programmed and controlled, stable and docile, and now you have
fears and other feelings and they're putting you
in a quandary, because numbers and programs don't care
how you feel, and they don't feel 'back'."
Jonathan just sat silently, with no reply possible to someone who talked as if she had been reading his mail-watching his life more carefully and clearly than he had been doing himself.
"And now you're running to Bubba for help, to find out if the myth of the 'Circle' is true, if there is someone, somewhere, who can make it better, or make it go away, because during all the time that he spent putting himself on the line, trying to convince people like yourself that the danger was real, you merely wanted to take the easy way, to just be left alone to be swept along with the great tide of humanity around you."
Jonathan was wishing, with all his might, that Alexis would stop,
but she continued,
"Your programs and your machines are doing things that you
didn't design them to do, things that you didn't program them
for-weird things, evil things, and there's nothing you can do
to stop them, right?"
Jonathan was starting to sweat quite a bit, himself, now. Some
of it was from the heat, some from remembering the 'night terrors'
of late, and some of it seemed to be rising up, steaming, from
his loins.
"Yes, all of that, and more."
Alexis was now sitting on his lap, facing him directly, her two
hands on his hips on either side of him. The few, scattered patrons
of the bar were having problems with their own loins as they watched
the display she was putting on for their benefit, leaning close
to whisper in his ear,
"I'm only thirteen years old…", she could feel
him almost audibly groan as she ran her hands lightly over his
buttocks, "but when you get back home, and you're still hard,
you're going to be thinking of me while you 'do'
yourself, you sick pervert."
"Actually, I don't think I'll make it that far," Jonathan replied in halted breaths, "but I'm hoping to make it as least as far as the next alley."
Alexis leapt off of his lap, slapping him lightly on the shoulder,
saying,
"Shame on you, talking like that to a thirteen year-old."
She laughed in amusement, and he laughed in relief at having been
saved the embarrassment of 'messing' himself in the bar, a public
place, and he was happy to sit and sip his beer for a time, dreading
any further conversation.
Finally, she spoke, once again.
"You might as well go home, now. There's nothing for you
here.
"All the dangers that Bubba spoke about are true,
I think you know that, now. But the Circle of Eunuchs is just
a myth, there's nobody doing anything about it. Nobody can
do anything about it. It's only a matter of time, now."
Alexis's face took on a sad, forlorn look, and she returned once
again to brushing off the small balls of wool from the nape of
his hairy neck, leaning down to kiss Bubba lightly on the cheek,
with genuine love, ignoring Jonathan, once again.
After a few moments, he rose somberly and made his way to the door. He knew that he, too, would be sad and forlorn tonight. But he also knew that she was right-he would be thinking of her tonight while he was 'doing' himself.
He smiled, in spite of himself.
Chapter 3 - Channel Revolution / Chapter 4 - Alexis