Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997 Pearl Publishing
Insanity
Nuthouse Number Nine is for the hard-core psychiatric inmates. Looney Level 'Leven is for the terminally dangerous. No one is released at this Level. No one gets out.
There is no 'insanity' as we knew it in the old days.
Back then, if you stepped off the beaten path, then you were considered
'weird'. If you stepped further off the well-traveled societal
by-ways, then you were considered 'disturbed'. If you went totally
out into hyberspace, however, then you were considered 'insane'.
But when TV came along, things began to change.
Nobody realized it at first, but there were signs. Marshal McLuhan
spotted it right away and wrote "The Medium Is The Message".
He was politely received during his own time and garnered a modicum
of acclaim, but no one really understood the depth of what he
was trying to explain.
Then it began happening.
A man, Charles Whitman, climbed to the top of a building
on the University of Texas campus, started blowing people away
with a high-powered rifle, and our new 'medium' carried it to
the world. TV was the 'medium'. An interesting new medium. 'Entertainment'…that's
what we called it.
Then another man decided to mimic good old Charlie. Then another…and
another. And 'nuts with guns' became a fad, with these events
beginning to happen on a regular basis. 'Nuts with guns' had their
fifteen minutes of fame, then quietly disappeared, and the fad
was seemingly over.
But it had begun.
Zappa tried to warn us about TeleVision. "Watch
me and I'll bleed you, 'cause you eat the shit I feed you."
The 'flower children' of the sixties listened to him and applauded,
but they never really understood the true extent of the danger
he was espousing.
It kept happening-each time at a deeper level-with more
and more regularity. Bank robbers began learning the truly effective
techniques of their trade by watching the evening news for the
stories of the guys who got away. Prison inmates took notes during
fictional 'escape' movies and turned fiction to fact by mirroring
the movie-and it worked!
TV, even with only a few paltry channels, still managed to work its way into our life to such a great extent that it became an extension of our reality, and eventually our reality became an extension of TV. And then, slowly, TV began to 'become' our reality.
And in the end, when we still had a chance-a slim chance, but nevertheless a chance-WebTV exploded to 500 Channels through the 'wonder of modern technology'and… we were doomed.
Freedom
Jonathan's mind was once again a confusing swirl of mixed-emotions and troublesome thoughts. He was torn between the hard reality of WebWorld, with its rigidly structured programming, and the phantoms from his past, which brought back harsh memories, but also brought remembrances of a time when everything seemed to be happier, lighter, with an underlying current that suggested the possibility of being…free.
Freedom. Jonathan shook his head slowly, not daring to believe
that his instincts were truly telling him that his world-view
had become so constricted and rigid that he had lost sight of
what the word really implied.
Jonathan let himself sink into his childhood memories, the shadows
surrounding him in his dimly lit room becoming an almost palpable
likeness of the figures from his past.
CypherPunks, Hackers, Phrackers and Phreaks. Mad Doctors and Freedom-Knights,
Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
Strains of a historical music figure, Joe Cocker, seemed to drift
across the room, carried on the wisps of light, blue smoke whose
pleasant aroma floated into the room from a point in time and
space which was miles away and long in the past.
Jonathan opened his eyes, looking once again at the ancient poster
from a festival called Woodstock, seeing the additions his grandfather
had improvised on it, which could only be seen in the flickering
rays of the blue-light which Jonathan had resurrected from parts
found at the Museum of Antiquities.
Jonathan could name them all: Country Joe McDonald, Joe Cocker,
Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens, and a multitude of others. All of
them sporting, due to his grandfather's humorous addition to the
poster-tattoos.
He let out a loud roar of laughter, realizing that he had, at
one time, had this same poster hanging in his cubicle at headquarters,
not realizing until he had put together the blue-light mechanism,
that each and every figure on it proudly sported on their arms
an emblem that could have resulted in Jonathan's persecution,
and possibly even his death-the Mark of the Toad.
Jonathan laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks, until
his ribs were racked with sharp pain. As he struggled to regain
his composure, he realized what his laughter and pain signaled,
and he began to slowly weep, his tears falling on his body, just
as his mother's tears had fallen on him so very long ago.
His tears became a river, carrying him back toward the point in
his youth where his mother's tears had signaled their flight away
from their past, away from the CypherPunks, and toward freedom.
He rode the river of tears once again, only this time the journey
was toward the CypherPunks, and toward freedom.
Jonathan thought of the legend of the headstone on the grave beside
that of Vice-Admiral D'Shauneaux's, the grave said to be reserved
for the last free man or woman remaining on the planet. He slowly
rose and looked in the full-length mirror on the wall beside him,
seeing himself, his present, his past, and flickering shadows
of his future.
He thought about the many years which he had spent closing himself
off from others, making certain that his tainted past remained
hidden in obscurity. Avoiding close emotional relationships, avoiding
physical intimacy. Avoiding situations in which he would be expected
to display his body to others.
Jonathan slowly removed his sweatshirt, pulling it over his head and discarding it on the seat beside him. He stared in the mirror at the symbol on his arm which he had even avoided looking at himself for all these many lonely years. He stared at his left arm and the tattoo upon it. A symbol which had caused him to live his whole life in fear of discovery-the Mark of the Toad.
He thought about a poem which he had memorized that had been posted
to the CypherPunks list by a 10 year old child during the great
schism which had threatened to destroy the list, in a fight over
censorship concerns that blazed brightly when one of the founders
of the list decided to take it upon himself to 'purge' the list
of a troublesome subscriber and 'moderate' the postings that other
list members would receive.
Jonathan's grandfather had laughed uproariously when the post
was relegated to the 'flames' list that had been instituted, at
the thought that the mighty CypherPunks needed to be protected
from the words of a child.
The memory and the words brought Jonathan back to the present.
Anarchy. How long had it been since he had allowed himself to
repress all memory of the loud and boisterous rants and raves
on this subject during the late nights of CypherPunk revelry in
his grandfather's study? How long since he had allowed himself
to clearly see that it was not the CypherPunks who had ruined
his life, but the Dark Forces spreading throughout the land who
had decreed that those who espoused principles of privacy and
freedom were enemies of the people.
Jonathan drew himself up as he gazed in the mirror again, the
shadows of the past receding and leaving him standing alone, as
if he was, indeed, the last free man on the face of the earth.
He knew that he was no longer at any point in time or space, but
was standing at the nadir point in which legend meets reality,
where each man or woman walks alone and face only themselves as
the final judge of the meaning of their life and actions.
In that instant, Jonathan realized that the legend was wrong,
because he heard the echo of the Vice-Admiral's voice whispering
gently through the labyrinth of the communal mind of mankind,
and the voice was saying,
"Do something."
There was a knock on the door…
Chapter 7 - Insanity / Chapter 8 - Freedom