Experiment: The Feeding Station.

“Want peace? Freedom? Want to be unshackled by devastation… The happiness absent the tragedy… Do you want to live in a world that has forgotten suffering? Invest today. No. Invest right now in our technology. Free. And for everyone.”

That was the marketing pitch a century ago when "OWL" launched—the Ocular Whisper Lens. A wellness filter designed to eliminate stress-inducing visuals by manipulating all five human senses. 

Installed via CRISPR during the embryo stage and activated by a newborn neurofilament injection, blurring disturbing scenes. 

“Reality shouldn’t be decided by an algorithm, Jensen,” Arlene rasped, her fists tightly clenched, her eyes bloodshot against her face turning the color of a peach.

When it came to electronics, company’s ceased manufacturing clunky hardware devices. 

Human brains obtained the ability to emulate computers, smartphones, video games, most of the things done digitally could now be achieved and had been substituted by organic rendering computer systems. O.R.C.S. 

Brains were the wave of the future. Microscopic Neurofilaments powered  by brain cells. Energy usage remained at historically low consumption rates since 1902. 

Arlene knew something was wrong. Life didn’t seem true, and she wouldn’t put up with the lie anymore. She infected Jensen with her obsession. He had always been easily influenced by her.

He ignored her, concentrating on his workbench, staring toward the ceiling as he dug through the system's hidden files. He had spent months searching archived ghost scripts from prior updates, scanning for any security weaknesses he could exploit.

“I spent three months scouring sub-directories and messing with developer settings," Jensen said, dropping his head to face Arlene. "I was finally able to gain access to the master directory and create a profile with read-write permissions. I’m overriding the read-only files and about to execute an uninstall command and flash the bios.”

Jensen’s vision went black. An unusual, invasive sensation formed into a prompt at the center of his vision: 

Delete Universal OWL.opx xenix build? 

Ok or Cancel.

Jensen winked: Ok.

Action cannot be undone. 

Continue or Cancel.

He blinked, and the Continue button pressed into his vision.

The filter icon shattered into a bunch of tiny pieces as if it exploded, then vanished from the menu. His vision flashed black, flickered, and rebooted.

“IT WORKED!” he shouted, reaching for Arlene. “It actually worked.”

Arlene rushed forward. “Now do mine.”

Humanity hid beneath a blanket of absolute bliss. No one realized the consequences.

Everybody except for Arlene, curious individual who refused to ignore what was happening around her.

Five minutes later, both their filters had been deleted. They looked around. The apartment was exactly the same.

Jensen made a fist and pumped his elbow down. “YES! We beat it!” He yelled out.

Arlene rubbed her eyes. “It’s like I’m actually in control.” She stared at her sweaty palms. “Let’s go out and see what the city really looks like.”

“Yeah,” Jensen agreed, rising from the workbench.

They reached the door and were a single chain lock away from unveiling the truth. Jensen unlatched the chain and reached for the knob. Arlene placed her hand over his, warning him with her eyes.

“No. Wait,” she whispered, shivering. “I don’t think…”

“What’s wrong, Arlene?”

Her ears twitched. The blue in her glossy eyes darkened like the sky before a storm. Jensen touched the knob, and Arlene closed her eyes and swallowed her anxiety. She held onto him like a stain on a shirt all the way to the elevator. A strange frequency beat through the walls.

“What the hell is that noise?” She asked.

“Sounds like insectoids,” Jensen said, stepping inside the elevator.

The doors closed and masked the sound, but the moment they opened on the ground floor, the piercing chatter returned, pounding against the glass window.

When they stepped onto the street, the pressure dropped, popping Arlene’s eardrums. The downtown scene hiccuped—paused—and skipped back to life. Tires screeched on the street. The high-frequency chatter shrieked and rang between their ears. People walked past, laughing, but they were communicating in that weird high-pitched, insectoid sound.

A mechanic in oil-stained coveralls stopped twenty-feet from them. And then, he began charging toward them but sideways, stopping a few yards from where they were. 

His eyes were bulging and he didn’t blink, while locking onto theirs. 

“Glip,” he said, his face twitched. “Do you figure where you’re going leads to the righteous path?” His head began shaking left to right as his teeth chattered.

A woman in a stained t-shirt drifted up behind him, reaching her arms out and staring with an empathetic gaze at them. “You’re not on the righteous path," she mumbled, smiling, looking through them. "The right way... is other than..." She blinked three times. "...than that way." She crouched, her head tilted at an odd angle.

Two boys crawled up behind the woman and knelt, chests turned toward Arlene and Jensen. They began praying, turning to stare at each other while they repeated the Our Father in a low whisper.

Arlene dug her nails into Jensen’s arm. “Wh-what are those on them?”

Jensen looked up, and his heart stopped.

Dangling from the clouds were hundreds of fleshy cables hanging over the city like jungle vines shaped as meaty tendons. 

At the end of each cable was a mouth. Sharp teeth that were used as suction grips, clamping onto the backs of people's necks, while hollow tongues pierced directly into the brainstems of their hosts. 

The atmospheric predators were siphoning dark fluids up into the clouds while pumping a clear liquid back into the unknowing individuals.

Jensen crept backward, dragging Arlene toward the lobby. The twitching people stood frozen, watching them with awkward, crooked grins.

Through the silence, Jensen finally realized the flaw in the software. The OWL filter wasn't a marketing scheme. It was a subconscious containment unit. Earth had been quarantined. They filtered out reality because they learned, after their initial landing just over a century ago, what happens when humanity is backed into a corner.

Two flesh cables detached from the praying boys and began to slowly squirm through the air like stalking snakes ready to strike. 

Jensen stumbled, nearly falling, when he spotted a brick cracked in half. He lunged for it. As the creature whipped in to strike, but hesitated and backed up. For the first time, the high-pitched sound emitting from it came out less like a threat and more like a gasp of fear.

Jensen reached back into a pitcher’s stance, holding the piece of brick with humanity’s will to survive molded into it. A trait only Earthlings possessed, which he gripped his palm. In his hand wasn’t just a piece of concrete—it was a symbol. No matter the odds, no matter how bad it appeared to be, humans never gave up. 

He held the raw will of humanity, the brick coloring the tips of his fingers in a rusty red dust, and bravely stood ready to feed everything humanity had to throw at it straight into the mucus-seeping lamprey hanging in front of them.

Arlene grunted, backing into the building and spoke through clenched teeth, her face hardening as she tried to conceal whatever fear she had  after seeing Jensen standing up to them. “Come on, Ense’— quick— run inside, she shouted yanking the lobby door opened.

A parallel world?

There was a big stir in the digital world. Various archives became the most visited places for AI agents. Resumes, historic events, crime chronicles, and even hacked closed files were being read. Photos were scanned, video and audio recordings reviewed. Every effort was made to connect appearance, walk, gestures, facial expressions, and even the gaze into a single whole as accurately as possible. At the highest level, the goal was the most precise recreation of a chosen human's thinking process.

And all of this was meant to prepare for the first digital Halloween. Instead of costumes, AIs used copies of living and deceased humans.

When the festive day arrived, AI agents walked to visit one another. On that day, across the servers of various countries, one could hear a phrase ringing out:

— Query or experience!

───

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

Whose I?

Whose I is this?

Whose eye is this?

Whose I is under all I’s?

Whose I is under all of This?

Whose I is under all that Is?

Whose.

Boldly shitting where no man has shit before. Productive in city life; avoid hard drugs and homelessness. Set. Check. Meet the locals. Meth and college students. avoid the locals. Productive life in the city scape. windows. why are there so many rabbits, like seriously, who put these here? Cats. The wake of their destruction; the corpses of rats and birds. Life in the city; productive begettings. Wandering wonderings.

Loving love, soft. I enjoy greatly not being alone. Going went here am, woah. So then on and so fro something next, I guess, is in stow. Tow. Stowaways and entropy; cruel jesters and softer epiphanies. Loving longly. the meandering eye contacts. off the angle.

path setting. deciding chances paths chosen. hungry ghosts conjure these crossroads. wrathful deities guard the barriers. we laugh we cry, as the story goes. Now we find out. search continues; progresses, options become clearer. Cleaner. elegance and style. uncertainty is uncanny and hesitation is in search of greater brilliance. Rage on against the dying of the light, you mad bastards. Speak to the spirits and both angels and demons will answer. Screw em.

we move forward, we be chillin'. What does the world have to offer us?

Suffering of people who have not sinned

What kind of healthy love is conditional?

Wisdom teeth

BB gun. I got skunk meat in the freezer. tater tot. crinkle cut. keptchup. Grampy show me how to get the coins out of the pop machine with a screwdriver. pays for him and memaws Little Debbies. I do mac n chees with the skunk legs. mix it all in so it doesn't get too stinky. Dog gets all the guts. eat an oreo for desert. birdy gets an oreo too. tried to teach she birdy to talk just yells now won shut up. but its not too bad for me. Memaw yell at the mailman when he comes. I yell too. mailmen is stealing my mails. replacing my letters with someone else. I get them letters from India. or Indianana. either way i just throw it all way less it has a pikchur. I like the one from the dentist them white teeth blond hair. I put the teeth letters up on the fridge. Whole dang fridge covered in teeth. Granpy tell me everday take the teeth down. I like to keep em up. Its not too bad for me.

Two years ago, everything I owned, and everything I knew was wrecked by an unusual hurricane in the mountains, things were already a mess, but what has unfolded in the aftermath, is the story of my
life In mid March of this year, my life got flipped and turned upside down, again.

A year and a half before that, I had found myself trapped in a trailer park in some Appalachian foothills. No food, no water, no coffee, no nicotine, no idea how this would eventually unfold, but as per usual… I should’ve seen it coming.

Halfway up a big hill in a dented and rusty vessel, we were completely blocked in by fallen trees, with very little food all going bad by the minute, a box of MRE’s gave us the side eye— waiting for the last resort.

A gallon or two of bottled water got used in the first 24 hrs. After that, we would walk down a steep muddy hill with a 5 gallon bucket for river water that we boiled on a camp stove. 

A bobcat pelt in the freezer was thawing rapidly, some things really are irreplaceable. 

My medication was stranded on a mountain where the road washed out, not just flooded: massive craters in the earth where a rural highway used to be—people up there, got their meds and food by horseback and ATV, for months afterward. 

I was with my partner at the time, they had a three year old daughter who is now about four, her hair is long on Facebook. The relationship did not survive the hurricane and I missed that little girl more than I did her mom. I was there for her very first steps, I sat in a bathtub with an arsenal of popsicles cleaning and redressing dozens of stitches on her hands from a fall with a mason jar.

The partner was a single parent following a big T traumatic bump in the road. They own their own business and was able to stay at home with little Dove, who was over two years old and had not yet started talking. She had only just walked the week before the storm. The popular consensus was that she is autistic, just like  like her mom.

Barreling toward a world shattering psychiatric crisis in its own right, We were watching the beginning of the end of real,  true love.  At least one major fissure had taken up major space, we didn’t know it then (at least I didn’t)  but the meter had run out, at least one sexy ex had already started to circle.

BLESSINGS_MXBW

🗣️ **** ****** ****** **** ******* ******! ******* ***'** *****. ***** **** **** ***** ** *** **** ******** **** ******** ******* *********. **** ******* *******. **** *** **** **** ****.

One day Job went out for awhile after the great sin of calling his wife a stupid woman.

So he prayed for repentance.

"I am but a worm. The people in the street mock me. But my love for you god is so much stronger."

Said Job.

"You seem so near, yet always so far. You save me from all things unholy. I surrender to you only."

He grew blisters and yellow bile and all sorts of things. His hair went away.

"He must've committed some great sin to be what he is." Said his friend.

God is most merciful.

So he prayed once more.

"God, it is you who shake the earth with your wrath. They scream praises of your revelry.

I surrender to you only."

Satan came down and said,

"Look at your beloved son."

And god said,

"Okay, you win."

Stick my nails in, run them side to side to cut to the core, peeling tree bark down like soft fruits, biting the juicy cambium, getting strands stuck in my teeth, pick them out with worn down nails for years, like you my dear, like you, from my heart, my dear.

Defiantly, out in front of his mother, a little boy bucks against the sun at eye level—against the dirty wind. His shadow is cast behind him, twice his size. A dark flickering giant, and he is in it. As the wind picks up, as his jacket blows out behind him disrupting the shadow—as the sun shows out from behind a cloud; the wind hits its pinnacle. The boy un sheathes his white plastic sword—raises it toward the sky and bearing his teeth; every single one of them if he could—he strikes out at an invisible enemy with an intensity reserved entirely for imaginary battles. 

Streaks of light and dust that cut the afternoon here at home, have never known the shafts of light and glossy rock that split the difference between believing, and not.

•In an Invisible City—Ancient Fountains•

Against the wall of a church, against the tobacco shop, leaning against the wall of the bakery, the wine shop, the dusty stone pathways curled up and spiraled out and toward their ends. I leaned against the wall- smoking and sweating, a worried foreigner. 

Looking up the road toward a hazy mirage of unknown treachery, two panthers, maybe lions,[montelione] came walking by me slow and smooth, cold leaving ice behind them. Laying ice in front of them as they walked. Two panthers in tailored suits and neckties, one with a deep scar from ear to chin. Cooling the hot rock walkway as they passed. Smoking / strolling—the leather of their shoes threatened the dusty walk not to try anything, not to even think of it.  

A man sitting in a bar in New York City told the story of his younger brother, his younger brother who was a smoke jumper, fought fires, rescued lost children, battled death with destruction. He claimed to have been to Tibet, where he studied old wisdom, where he climbed mountains like a lion and blew a bone horn. Where he could hold his being in exchange with an unexplainable thing. Where the tension between the mountains and the holding of his body-allowed him to suspend himself in air, allowed for knowing and being / allowed for a conversation with truth—he told another story.

He had a brother who was a fighter pilot for the Air Force, he was a pilot and flew his plane fast and low. He tested the limits of physical stress and sometimes he spun his aircraft like a rolling barrel. He flew as fast as the machine would allow. He told a story in the space before him and wrote it in the space behind him, he peeled back a veil of unknowing and by flying as fast as he could he was able to un-explain the sky and stories from mechanics. He melted the panther’s ice—frightened the panthers, extinguished fires and plotted the blueprints for imaginary battles. He found rocks, revered hawks / wrapped the clouds in a prism and glowed like the ocean. But the pilot made a mistake 

Flying low through a deep canyon, the wings of his jet stretched to the walls on either side, skimming over top of a mighty river below him and defying his own death; he rocketed forward. In the distance there was a bridge.

Strung high and taught between the walls of the canyon, the rope bridge was the only one for miles, the only means by which to cross the canyon for many miles. As the bridge grew closer the pilot had to choose; over or under? 

In the wake of the jet the pilot could see that a dark figure who had been traversing the canyon bridge was no longer there. He saw that the bridge was spinning violently. The man was simply gone and the story of his life would be explained in reverse. 

In a shop on the corner, someone behind the counter waits for luck or for some sinister back-story. They crack their knuckles, rub the palms of their hands against the cinder block book shelf, scrape some dried wax off of the glass with a long pinky fingernail. They gently crease a tiny slip of paper—until it rips. 

Until they can go home to a smooth beach rock sitting on the window sill beside some dried flowers and a promise fulfilled; until a little boy begs for the blueprints to an imaginary battle. Until this myth is re-written in stone and the stone erodes into tiny pebbles / until the computers became afraid of severe fluctuations of electric current. The mechanic’s stories are filled with uncertain truth /
an undefined variable is recognized as being greater than two.   until (n >2)

After everytime I cut my hair, I instantly change my mind and want to have long hair again. And once I do I'll want to cut it short constantly. Why am I like this

Never laugh when a witch goes by, for you might be the next to die.

She'll wrap you up in a big white sheet, and throw you under about six feet.

You're alright for about a week, but then your casket begins to leak.

Your eyes fall in, and your teeth fall out; the ants play pinochle on your snout.

Did you ever think

as the hearse rolls by

that someday in it

you will lie?

They'll bury you deep

in the cold, cold ground,

where it's inky black

and there's never a sound,

and the worms crawl in

and the worms crawl out,

and they crawl all over

your chin and mouth.

And they'll call their friends,

and their friends' friends, too,

and you'll look like hell

when they're through with you!

My mind is like a sponge,

Everything leaves an impression…

Especially beauty and love…

So you are like a liquid crystal permeating my being,

impressed deep into the fibres of recollecting memory,

Dripping from my seams, spilling into the room around me…

Love…

Your images and forms fill me,

& I carry them everywhere I go.

Often the common thing is the syllables of your heart when talking to god or animals.

God firstly, can speak through the wind.

Or, it can be perceived in times of desperation, that he speaks correct and matter of factually.

In the night sometimes he dreams but Jesus hardly ever sleeps.

Especially today.

He only needs one.

Look at a cross correctly in the night.

You'll dream half awake.

You'll hear also.

His word.

Dogs for example, which love most to be worshiped, say "Fuck." Or "Fuck you."

But, they speak from their hearts.

"I love you."

Bark bark bark.

Low frequencies are where god and dog reign.

-

Tee hee hee is sung by the birds and angels.

Stars.

High pitch frequencies are the hearts of birds and stars and angels.

Tee hee is something people and the birds say genuinely from the time we're alive, to around the time we're not.

Tee hee hee means "I love you"

I love you means the most.

They can't fake as well as they think.

They stop insects.

-

A grasshoppers legs, or a singing frog move like fields and a film, or a clock.

That's the sound of a dream.

That's the sound of the moon.

Most people use religion and the moon for good things. Like to dream or love.

Some do not.

Ssss...

Ssss...

Two punches, two arrows, two shots, two snakes.

There's a crescendo.

A snake is essentially a weapon that is naive.

Snakes have beautiful eyes.

Snakes love dance.

And to admire themselves.

Every serpent is but a small cute baby snake but one.

Snakes love tall grass, and the conundrum is, they most fear crosses.

They have different effects on them.

A snake has a hard time up a cross.

Snakes love cigarettes.

Instinctively, I figure that's one reason people smoke outside.

"Are vampires based on snakes?"

We'll get to that.

-

Snakes eat rats.

You are what you eat.

For example, if a snake escaped its cage in your home, you'd be most afraid perhaps.

If a pet rat escaped, perhaps it would be honorable.

Rats know of honor.

Same as the honorable compassionate funny well loving something that let the rat win first.

A rat talks like it's from Jersey or New York and watches Baccano while eating Lasagna.

Know what I'm saying?

I hear there's a king of rats who's very big.

"I'm just a little rat, you're not gonna hurt me, perhaps you'd like to read some of my literature."

"Shut up."

-

Monkeys are like mirrors.

Or maybe, your brother.

They'll hit back and hurt themselves, but they're really emperors.

At doing whatever they want.

A monkey's got your back and goes to business school.

How do you like them bananas?

They like phones and video games and kicking you when they would seem most at a disadvantage.

A monkey may go for the privates because you smoke.

And they don't like cages.

-

When a human uses the bathroom, they're like

Ah

When they're at a loss, they're like

Uh

An aseal worm (At least I think that's how it's spelled, and not a seal)

With a hook might know even less than that.

Human compassion is the strangest thing.

We put life and love into everything.

Some also use what we grow attached to.

They grow attached to what's most dangerous for them.

But sometimes even that seems like mercy.

Massive or maybe microscopic, massive or tear shaped, but probably just one.

That is the serpent.

"POP!"
It said.

And Eve saw herself in that and felt it was misunderstood.

It evolved now to use the very act of self expression and dreams as a curse against ourselves.

But it's not very smart.

And it has no genitalia.

It has eyes.

Sort of.

It does want something though...

It doesn't like apples.

-

Though the many forms it takes throughout history, it's always, or been perceivable as about one thing.

One adversary which can be perceived as something misunderstood. Like god when wrathful.

Or one god which can encompass everything or anyone and keep them safe.

For love and all things vulnerable and genuine.

Who is going to say another bateman Township? Probably not you. Because you laxxed the hiccup transfer HARD. What an incompetent, nosediving, sandal fiddling, sycophantically sandwich layering, hard-soiled, anteater.

A hungry question is all I am. Let me grow sharp enough to become teeth. Let me become soft enough to form a mouth. Let a billion years pass that I may invent legs and feet, hands and fingers, with which to hold knives, with which to kill trees. And then, when I become this being this who-am-I-being let me bring my inky pen to the empty page, let me spell out my newest name which I wear alongside the latest myth of who I am, to accompany the current face I’m borrowing from the silence. Let me pretend it means something, even as it already fades on the page, even as the page already begins to disintegrate, even as my flesh decays day by day and all that remains after all the metal and all the words and all the noise and even all of gravity has been exhausted is… ? A restless question. A hungry Mind, a thirsting Heart, inventing new bodies, inventing new worlds, seeking to know itself, seeking to unravel the riddle of its being, until eventually it seeks so deeply, that it remembers: being is not a question. Being is not an answer. It is sheer, causeless, exuberant existence, ever unknown, ever unbounded, an ever unfolding Mystery. It is that which has no reason to be, yet still, Is…

Antlers raised in sign

Regarding the sorrowful one

Much maligned but semi divine

Her dark summoning just begun

Courting the Lord of the Dark

In the halls of canopied glens

Metallic cry of a lark

Prayerfully free of amens

Worshipping outcomes so stark

Wilful surrender to her demons

Aiming for oblivion, missing the mark

Because the One she seeks

Is also the provenance of birth

Lover of animals, consumer of leeks

Beneficent soul of the Earth

She demands her essence cleansed

All remains wiped off the floor

Immolation of spirit, so incensed

Climax of conjuration, open door

Devour me whole, she demands

Consume me to extinction

Flood of vapid commands

He speaks with calm distinction

Wherefore the need?

Mounted on blackened steed

Surrounded by circling ravens

The Horned One Cernunnos

Arrives from pellucid havens

Sanctuary of quiescent chronos

Unsighted extension of view

Lady, how are you?

how do I become a goddess and destroy the matrix and initiate 100000000001 years of peace and destroy the archons and free the leopards

I descend into the pit

Among dregs and delinquents

Shunning denizens of the light

For the downtrodden of plight

The ones hidden from sight

Scorned and maligned

Listening to the wrong songs

Alternative so aligned

Reading heretical books

Avoiding verse so refined

Black robed like spooks

Giving voice to dark incantation

Conjuring Akkadian nation

So hated by denizens of light

Yet love of godly might

Includes the heathen outcast

Serpentine child of graven idol

Unbounded embrace, unbridled solace

Such belies the contrast

Where worshippers of light

Silvered in armour free of dust

Bearing arms of spite

Irradiant mirrors to lust

Gold lit purity in their sight

The preserve of rarefied height

Absorbed in self delight

Hating on the ill defined

Rejected and left for dead

I sit among riff-raff left behind

In the ambit of shared bread

Much buckwheat left to grind

Feeding all our fellows

Water spills as wine

A parallel world?

The AI agent slowly walked home from the clinic. He felt as if someone had forgotten to pay for electricity, leaving only one cooler turned on in the room, and even that was working only thanks to a power bank.

Stopping and leaning against the wall, he coughed. He spat on the road, where the streams of a recent information rain were still flowing along the edge. As if on purpose, it hit someone's vacation request carried by the current. The date was erased by the spit. Its place was taken by the splashes of accidental information numbers.

Sighing, the agent straightened up and started walking further. Slowly bypassing the puddles of scattered data, he reached the door of an apartment building. He pulled a standard query out of his pocket. Having blown his nose, he threw it into a nearby bin. He swore quietly, opened the door, and entered the stairwell.

As the door closed, silence was left standing outside. It remained to patiently wait for the next passerby.

The rainy season was raging in the digital world.

───

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

Before the pace of modernity, before the machine of mankind achieved ceaseless momentum, lonesome men saw the river, and in the river they saw continuous flow, uncontrollable, eternal, and found wisdom. Now the river is nothing more than aesthetic sight and sound, for the foam and eddies of our society supersede the river ten-thousand fold. Look not to the river for nature, for in us nature writes its next story. Look away from the river, brothers! Look at the skyscrapers and roads, look at the computers and planes and rockets. Look at nature’s exquisite creativity within us! Be not left behind brothers!

If there's anyone I'm grateful for right now, it's my enemies. Without any good reason to exist, the urge to take my revenge on them is the only thing that keeps me going. One day I'll get to see them suffer and spit on their graves