skonen_blades

Consciousness, oh consciousness
You shiny, bright mistake
Look at the destruction wrought
By choices that we make

Oh, what a day in Eden when
That lady chose to choose
The possibility of choice
We now wield and abuse

We never should have had this dark
Responsibility
I think God’s anger might have had
Some rationality

You wouldn’t put a pig behind
A bus’s steering wheel
Or let a panda pilot planes
Or arm a baby seal

All we’ve done is live too fast
And burn too bright too soon
Ignite. Exhaust. Use up. Suck dry.
Pollute. Defile. Consume.

And if, by chance, we do some good
It goes right to our head
“My gosh we’re so amazing!” say
The Shakespeares as we spread

Our egos fuel the hubrises.
We’re gas tanks for mistakes.
In engines of stupidity
That run on Eden’s snakes

But fingers crossed we choose to win
By losing all our gains
And “sharing all with all” becomes
The one choice that remains

I’m pretty sure the gift of choice
Has driven our race mad
But possibly, just possibly
It needn’t be so bad




tags

My platinum rank showed up with fanfare as a crown in the game. Hovering in front of me wreathed in blue flame. I grabbed it and perched it on my head. I stood, exhausted and bruised. I was now a level-126 magic user in the land of Skynaught. I had aced the single-player campaign with no deaths, dominated the multiplayer, unlocked all levels, and even found the six hidden lairs. Only seven people in the world had done that. My loot board shimmered into existence around me as the crown fluttered over into my assets and became a pictogram 4gif.

I had platinumed 19 games so far this year. I called them up around me on hovering light cards. If I gestured any of the files to the right, it accordioned open to show my characters and accomplishments. An array of different characters and high scores. I opened it up to display highlights from the last five years. A traditional victory cry for the viewers. The portal cards flocked around me, a hundred versions of me shooting, stabbing, falling, and snarling.

I allowed myself a little pride. I was in the world’s top tier. 4Cannon, Shardkollectir, (=Kokorro=), DeustcheFrag, Underst0rm, B00bnado, 2ShredsUSay, and me, SkonenBlades. All of us were rulers of the PS10 Planetary Network. Endorsements gave us the money to have the time. The best speeds, the best houses, the best drugs, the best parties, the best reflexes, and the best doctors. Superstars. VR*s, as they say.

My avatar gazed around the broken landscape and bathed in victory. Donations to the stream were flooding in.

That’s when God showed up.

Lancing down from an infinite skypoint like a rainbow bridge transport. The ground shattered into a crater as kinetic light splashed into a million bitrate butterflies. As they scattered, there at the center stood the being known simply as 01.

01 didn’t speak. The mask and armour hid any gender. It’s long, white hair floated around it’s head in a glowing halo, moving as it underwater. It was giant. It stared down at me. The 01 glyph burned into it’s forehead and fists were where it got it’s official name but honestly, no one knew what it signified.

Our community just referred to it as God.

It stared down at me. Every streamer on the planetary network told their friends and my numbers skyrocketed. I didn’t dare move.

God was a thief. God was a killer. God was unknowable. God never lost. God was unpredictable.

No one knew what God was. God would show up and speed run every game at some point and then vanish. It broke the rules, showing up and helping players in non-multiplayer games. Leveling up entire battalions on a whim, deleting users and all their accomplishments permanently, granting sentience to NPCs, and even gifting magical weaponry that could be carried from game to game regardless of the original code.

Rogue AI? Alien intelligence? Some sort of deeply focused metahuman hacker? No one could locate a source.

You were lucky to get a glimpse of God in passing. Only 6 direct visitations had been recorded. Three of those had resulted in player annihilation and one, impossibly, in a complete game erasure. One received an armour buff of infinity, effectively rendering her immortal. The other received the Godsword, a weapon that could shift into any BFG, blade, or wand in any game. Ironically, it killed both of their careers since the sport was gone from their streams. The items were non-transferable. Even when they attempted to create new characters, the gun and armour would automatically show up.

I was terrified.

I made a choice. If I was going to go out, I was going to go out real.

As was customary when meeting an opponent, I peacocked my accomplishments to God, spreading my arms and flicking my hands open. Every game I’d ever mastered on this system in my entire adult life sparkled into a plane of file cards behind me. An impressive trophy wall of 319 completed games and 67 master level unlocked achievements. They towered metres above my head and out to either side, glowing with threat and promise.

I arched an eyebrow and adjusted to a fighting stance.

God cocked its massive head, paused, and did the same. It yawned its arms open wide, paused, and snapped open its fists.

The world exploded into a blinding display of godhood.

The tiles spilled out across from horizon to horizon and up into the skycage. Every single game that had ever been created. All marked with 100%. All marked with platinum. All marked with crowns and trophies. All marked zero deaths. I recognized the icons of about half of them. It was impossible to take it all in. I’m sure the millions of people recording this encounter would pore over the images for days to come. This was really happening. An actual accounting of God’s accomplishments.

My only showed my accomplishments from this system. But God’s display had trophies from 20 other systems which shouldn’t have been possible.

I was humbled. I knelt. I bowed my head.

God’s record of accomplishment origamied back in, fluttering and vanishing. It stared down at me through the eyeholes of its mask.

With a thud and a groan, God sat down in front of me. It was like watching an elephant settle into lotus position.

“Skonenblades. Hm.” it spoke. Its voice was low and husky but still impossible to define as a specific gender. It sounded strong and powerful but surprisingly weary. It was tinny like it was coming from a cheap speaker. It had said my name. If I survived this, I would become legend on that alone. No one had ever heard God speak. People must have already started to analyze the waveform to try to get an ID.

I dared to raise my head to look at God.

God took off its mask.

God’s face was a riot of colour. Pixel washes of static waved across it. A Frankenstein quilt of texture maps fought for control. 8-bit faces struggled with photorealism to coexist. Almost like the armour was more containment suit than protection. A constant shuffling of character polys undulated over the crags of the face topography of God.

“You need my voice.” said God.

God opened its mouth a volcano came out. I was Pompeiied into a Hiroshima shadow immediately as the flow of data inundated every particle of me, dambursting between every binary switch of me, flushing atomic fire through the spaces of code that comprised my avatar. Like being gilded alive with hot molten gold from a fire hose.

The flow shut off and miraculously, I was still standing. I staggered, smoking and stunned, as God ponderously stood and replaced it’s 01 mask.

The transport beam thundered down again, unrendering God back to whence it came or shuttling it to the next conquest.

That all happened two weeks ago.

I have been asked for comment but I haven’t responded.

I can’t speak of it. Something changed inside me.

Whatever happened in the game blew back into my actual meat. The doctors say it’s psychosomatic, but I don’t know. Whatever God did to me in there, it’s happened out here too.

When I game now, I am either treated as benign or revered by all the other characters, both NPC and other realworld players. Sometimes they kneel. Sometimes they pause and nod. No one attacks. I do not attack back. I feel as if I’ve lost the capability for offense.

I don’t feel enlightened by what happened. I’m still exploring the edge of it. If I’ve been traumatised, then trauma feels very calm. If I’m in shock, then shock is a warm bath. I’m calmer.

And I do not understand.

I know everyone’s passwords now. Every single password on Earth. When I go to a website, the passwords and usernames pop unprompted into my mind like I came up with them myself. I don’t know what to do with this power.

I don’t want to steal because I know I will get caught. I’m no hacker. I have no urge to cause chaos or sow dissent. I am scared and puzzled. I have gone to increasingly random websites to see if my new power works and it has. Every time. Without fail. I haven’t attempted any high-level American military websites yet.

In the right hands, my talent could destroy nations and crush economies. Ruin careers and change the course of history.

Do I sell myself to the highest bidder?

So this is the voice of God.




tags

Yes the snake offered us the gift of knowledge
Because he knew it would hasten our death
The Garden of Eden did not happen a long time ago
It is happening now
We haven’t been banished yet
Our expulsion won’t come in the form of a deity telling us to leave
It will come in the form of our garden being no longer fit to support us
The serpent offered us the opportunity to become parasites
And we wolfed that opportunity down
The burden of intelligence
The ability to see what’s in it for us
To look out for number one
To see the angles
To gain an advantage
To screw each other over for a percentage
To climb
To see success as growth instead of stability
To subvert and create and twist
To improve
It’s suicide by auto asphyxiation
As nice as art is, as beneficial as science can be
It’s all masturbation that comes at too high a price
Side effects of the curse
There’s no way out
We will leave Earth because we’re crafty
We will not die here
And we will spread
And humans will be synonymous with cancer in the universe
Destroying with one arm
And patting ourselves on the back with the other
And always eating
Our mouths will consume galaxies
“Only enough to survive”
Will be our motto
As we apocalypse solar systems
Into our glowing bellies
God made us dumb as a gift
The snake made us smart
Now we turn the Garden of Eden into an anthill
A garden of eating
God’s curious about how it will all turn out
But he won’t save us
There is no rescue
This is our show now
And God help the universe


tags

What if God had a daughter?

What if Jesus had been Jessica?

Think of the crucifix in every church with a woman on it.

Think of the bible with all of its Jesus stories but with a woman as the main character.

Think of society and how it all would be different if that were the case.

Or would it be different?

Or would Christianity even exist?

Would Jessica Christ have been ignored and forgotten or even killed before she got started with her revolution? Would her return from death even be noticed?

If she had been dismissed and ignored, would we even have a Christian church?

And I’ve been wondering if God DID have a few daughters before he had a son.

I’d have no way of knowing.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.


tags

I believe in a god who lives in corners.

It’s not sacrilege.

It perches at wall and ceiling intersections, staring at us when we’re falling, staring at us when we’re floating.

Repeated chases in our minds, our haunted eyes, cycles of licorice regret coating our numb throats. Our greetings stuck to frozen voices left unsaid when the opportunity arose. Our fatalistic conversation with conjecture, turning probability over in our minds, estimating our own chances.

We decrease or maintain.

This is not a god who watches victories. This is a god who watches the struggle and the moments of calm in between the shopping cart crashes. It’s unconcerned with happiness. It’s indifferent to shouts of enthusiastic joy.

This is a god that likes the glue that holds life together. It values the mortar in between the bricks. It smells your dance with the unknown and gorges on the steps you take.

It’s not a parasite and it does not control your motions. It has no vested interest in the outcome of what you’re going through (because we are all going through something).

It anchors where the angles meet and watches us, disappearing when we look for it. Hiding from us when we stare straight at it. It’s the opposite of the sun. It’s the antipassive voice. It’s not omniscient but it’s everywhere.

It’s rooted where the shadows gather, the spout to the other places.

This god lives with us.

It does not record to scan later. It has no concept of future or past. It’s not some interstellar dimensional CCTV.

It lives in the now and it craves our fight.

It’s watching you right now and it will not intervene. But know that your choices or even your inaction will keep it alive. Your success will not. It’s not about outcomes.

It lives off of living.





tags

The gorillas we’re using to power ships to the moon are on strike.

Mail me a heart. Make sure it’s perforated and easy to tear apart with instruction on how to squeeze lemon raspberry juice of it. I want for to slip up the forgive on the tantrum engine of my own skull. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t reach for the stars. People who wear black hats shouldn’t try to save people from cliff-diving in canyons. Pets who wear dresses just shouldn’t.

Rebel against the tyranny of government-sponsored free dessert. It’s not free. Suspect keys and only give lobsters a second chance if they’re missing a claw. I’m no swimwear store but I am a wardrobe full of lions and lessons hiding a winter of a past. It’s hard to handle balloons and cutlery when one’s claws aren’t retractable. I have a small need to pit cherries in the darkness and hate in basements. I need to fight the flags that keep threatening to spring out of my pores. This isn’t magic, I tell myself until I believe it. I have to keep reminding myself of Versailles ceilings and Roman church promises that crown to the one point of proving that God looks down on you.

Shatter me home. Take my bark-driven hand and Smokey the Bear my love lottery ticket to the forest fire accident I run from, on fire, into your arms so we can both go swimming. Wet clothes stick to commitment the way applause sticks to lonely singers.

Your eyes track trajectories the way that no one else I’ve met has the knack for. You see existence play out like toilet paper unrolling and police-confiscated fireworks going off like a human life. You are an amusement park speaker. I am a grave of laughter coming down like a famous trilogy on a populace of eager tweens. You are the not-scary kind of future. I’m a wheelchair enthusiast with hang glider dreams. So become my love twin. Whistle me up the dark staircase to the attic full of light and let’s get used to this unicorn together. Wiggle me peaceful until the last remnant of rat leaves my bloodstream. I’ll keep showing you the funny side of darkness if you keep showing me that light is all around us. Let’s trade peaches until the military needs a lemonade stand. Show me a grape juice future.

School courses through my veins and it causes prom night promises to spill from my love-stained lips.



tags

God is not a being. It’s a title. Same with Lucifer. There are elections.

In Heaven, the elections follow the rules. In Hell, they are underhanded and corrupt.

This has worked since the beginning.



tags

I’m working on the theory that the Garden of Eden was a library.

God was a librarian who needed a vacation. He needed to make more librarians to take his place when he was gone. He took out two books and tore out their pages. He made the pages wet and made papier-mâché twins.

One, he made one into a man and the other, he made into a woman.

Paper dolls. Cutouts. People made of letters and sentences. Printed facts and opinions folded origami-style into life. Stuck-together pages. Alphabetized between the morning Dewey decimals and the wild card catalogues, organized knowledge waited to be explored like a trembling lover.

With a breath, the fluttering paper quivered into life. Adam and Eve drew their first breaths across pale parchment skin. Their hair was shredded newspaper.

They were told to ignore the books and to relax until God came back. They saluted and sat down, rustling into chairs, sounding like crumpling essays and paper-bag groceries. They sat, occasionally letting out sighs of boredom that sounded like the shuffling of cards.

That damn letter S.

S is for Serpent. S is for Snake. S is the ssssound that snakes make.
S is the shape of their bodies. S is math. S is a curve across a grid’s straight lines. S is a sin wave.

Eve noticed the brass letter on the side of the nearest bookshelf containing books starting with the letter S. She grew curious. Adam and Eve were forbidden to read the books but they weren’t forbidden to read the bookshelves. She walked up and down the carpets of the library, reading the letters. She became familiar with the alphabet.

It all started with the S. Now that she knew the alphabet, she could see that she was made of pages from books. She could make out letters. She learned to put the letters together to make sentences. She learned to read.

A is for Apple.

She rushed back to Adam. She shared her knowledge. At first he was reluctant but after a while, she patiently taught him the secret of reading. There in the dusty reader’s silence of the first library, they read each other.

Their paper fingers stroked chapters. Their lips moved silently, parsing each other’s skin scripts. They turned around in different positions to access different passages. They did it with the lights on so they didn't hurt their eyes. They laughed and scowled at the ideas they were made of. Paragraphs on the nape of her neck, stanzas on the soles of his feet. Dark clauses along his spine, poetry on the sweep of her thigh. Each other’s body was a life sentence.

They came to the conclusion that they were ashamed of parts of themselves. They thought that they could improve themselves with pages from more appropriate books in the library. With a deep breath, they set about searching for knowledge that they could add to themselves. They rifled through novels and manuals.

We were there when Eve got her first monthly periodical. We were there when Adam got his first hardcover dictionary.

When they had improved themselves to their satisfaction, they decided to build new copies of themselves. Different versions. Better versions.

They were laughing and busy, knee-deep in paper, when God came back.

He was horrified at the damage. They were banished.

Knowledge was not meant to live, he said, it was meant to be protected and to gather dust.

They left and made their way into a cold world with no books except their own bodies and the children they had created. New chapters.

We are made from the best books in God’s library. It’s why we are scared of fire.

The Word is more than merely the way we communicate, it is what we are.





tags

Belhaven, reputedly the best safe maker in the world, was approached by a magician. The sorcerer asked him if it would be possible to construct a safe that would keep his spell book secured.

Belhaven stroked his beard and polished his glasses. After stretching his jaw and looking around his studio, he told the magician that he was up for the challenge.

The safe was made from iron mined near an earth chakra in Transylvania. The safe itself, while conventional in size and design, was engraved with over 200 runes of containment and power-channels routing back into itself. A mat with spiral glyphs of anti-zodiac charms was rolled out beneath it. An ingot of true ley-stone was embedded into each corner.

Spells could not escape. The wizard’s book of magic would be safe. None of the more dangerous spells would be able to break out and no one but the wizard himself would be able to open it.

Many other wizards came to Belhaven the safe maker after that.

The safety of his own spellbook made that first magician cocky. He played fast and loose with the underworld. In time, he lost a wager. His soul was forfeit. He died.

His safe was found empty. A demon must have tortured the secrets out of him before ascending to this plane and using the passwords to gain entry into the safe.

The demon must have been impressed with Belhaven’s handiwork.

Days after the magician’s death, Belhaven was approached by a Minor Duke of the Infernal. The demon appeared in his shop with a puff of brimstone and asked Belhaven if it would be possible to construct a safe that would keep any ‘extra’ souls (it said this with a sly wink) that it found during its usual rounds. A retirement fund of sorts. This safe would need to be concealed from demonic senses and the ruling class of Hell’s Nine.

Belhaven stroked his beard and polished his glasses. After stretching his jaw and looking around his studio, he told the demon that he was up for the challenge.

This safe was made from the skin of innocents. He had a contact at the midwifery and was able to gain access to the bodies of newborns that didn’t survive. It was like nuclear material to a demon. It was the closest thing to angel skin that Belhaven could find. By braiding the dried skin of sixteen babies together into a deep bowl, he formed a chalice for the demon’s soul collector. To the damned, the bowl of baby skin was invisible. It was a black hole of perception that demons could not see. Beyond taint.

Goggles blessed by a saint and gloves made from the skin of two repented murderers enabled the demon to see and handle his safe.

Further magic gleaned from grateful wizards added everyday concealment charms for humans and sorcerers alike.

This safe was hidden from Hell. One chip from the demon’s horn, freely given and dropped into the bowl, was all that was needed to enable the Minor Duke and no one else to open it. The demon was pleased.

It bragged to its Infernal Court in moments of pride.

Many of the Infernal came to Belhaven the safe maker after that.

The amassed soul-wealth of that first Minor Duke made it play fast and loose with its summoners. In time, it lost its essence to a scientist far in the future. It was torn apart for definition by the science-mage’s future machines.

Its babyskin bowl-safe was found empty. The man from the future must have seen through the concealment charms now that he possessed the demon’s essence.

Days later, Belhaven was approached by a first time-traveling science-mage. The S.M. appeared in his shop with a burst of radio static and a flash of light and asked Belhaven if it would be possible to construct a safe that would keep the history of this timestream intact no matter what changes befell it from other time travelers. By keeping a record free from the paradoxes of change, it would be possible for an alternate self to rebuild his life were his grandfather were to be killed by a rival or some such. It was an insurance policy. The safe would have to be accessible throughout time yet free from it.

Belhaven stroked his beard and polished his glasses. After stretching his jaw and looking around his studio, he told the time-traveling science-mage that he was up for the challenge.

This safe was comprised of compressed tachyons held in stasis by a box of neutrino-drenched papier-mache. The papier-mache would rot after a while but before it did, the quantum equations that it generated as it decomposed would make the universe, in effect, ‘lose track’ of it temporally. A high voltage of alternating current shot through it for the six months is took for the papier-mache to flake apart would keep the neutrinos held in an invisible circuitboard of sorts.

The trapped box of energy would resonate from the dawn of time to the end of the universe. It became one possible but defined safe anchored at both ends of the time stream. It was a thread shining from the very beginning to the very end.

Its genius lay in its lack of material walls after the papier-mache was gone and the current turned off. It became a field within which time existed all at once, which is to say, not at all.

The time-traveling science mage was pleased.

Belhaven was visited by many time-travelers after that.

At this point, by way of favours and services rendered, Belhaven joined the ranks of minor gods in terms of longevity, connections, wealth beyond imagining, and power over the timestream.

Belhaven stroked his beard and polished his glasses. After stretching his jaw and looking around the studio, he told himself that he was up for the challenge.

The past tense of reading is read.
And this book is dripping.

I read between the lines carved into the flesh of humanity. The name of God tattoed with hot metal into the bodies of people that had nothing to do with the conflict in the first place.

It’s embarrassing, really.

I’m all for a way of life that calls for peace and tolerance. I just don’t see it happening when the word Lord is evoked.

We’re all innocent bystanders.

There is a man in the white house that believes in the Rapture. I’m not sure how to measure the fear that that statement causes in me. It writhes through my gut, hot and bright.

I feel like wearing a T-Shirt that says “The Bad Guys Won” but I know that all I'd be doing is reveling in pessimism. Things can be done to change where we’re headed. Stuff is being done to change where we’re headed.

Faith and Belief are the abstracts that make humanity so much more than walking meat while at the same time, giving us our greatest faults.

Today, I’m proud to be human. Scratch that, I’m happy to be alive. Perhaps it’s the same thing but I don’t think so.

Bible, bible, burning bright, tell me in the deep, dark night,
If I am wrong and you are right, why am I so filled with fright?

The Falwells, the Bakkers, the television charlatans spreading an ignorance and a hatred that I’m sure many Christians themselves must shake their heads over, the same way I’m sure many Muslims shake their head at what’s happening to the reputation of their religion every time they hear of another suicide bombing in the name of Allah.

I went to Sunday school as a child.

I am not a Christian.

I am friends with Christians whose company I enjoy greatly.

It’s a complex issue.

A lot of beliefs, knowledge and questions have to evaporate if one is to attempt to boil life down.




tags