My mouth is a swirling maw of darkness, my eyes blank portals into a world of horror and despair. My eyes blank portals, my eyes blank portals. No wait, I’ve said that already… I did say that already, didn’t I? Time for me to say something new at this stage, isn’t it? Time for me to break some new ground for a change. Time for me to get out of the stinking rotten old rut that I’m in. That loathsome filthy old rut…
Reality was struggling to fix itself, repair itself, but failing. Failing big time. The damage had been far too great and that was that. There was nothing any of us could do any of us other than watch on in dismay. Nothing for us to do but watch on helplessly in a state of numb, unbelieving shock. The passive witnesses of a horror beyond the imagination. Reality itself was crumbling away, inexorably degrading into lower and lower forms of itself before our very eyes. It was degrading in real time, before our very eyes, into what I can only describe some kind of abomination. What was once trustworthy and true was now revealed as being the very opposite of this.
My mind had been made all shiny and new. ‘Shiny and new, shiny and new,’ I sang out cheerfully, ‘everything has been made shining and new’. I kept on singing my song over and over, but then – before I knew it – I realised that my mind wasn’t shiny and new anymore. It had become tarnished and dull. All of a sudden I realised to my horror that the whole world had turned cheap and sleazy and – what’s more – I knew it was me that had done it. I knew it that it was my fault. I had sinned. I had brought a fearsome entropy debt upon my head and that’s bad news. That’s the worst news possible…
I had done the bad thing and so now everything was ruined forever. I wished I hadn’t done it but I had and there was no turning back. I shouldn’t have done it but I absolutely had – I had done the bad thing and now I had to face the consequences. That’s heavy shit, I don’t mind telling you. The heaviest. I call this ‘having the knowledge of one’s own evil nature’. It’s always necessary to face the appalling evil of one’s own nature – it is so very necessary in fact – but that doesn’t mean that we’re in any hurry to do so! Anything but that, isn’t that right? Anything else but not that. Instead, to help us avoid the truth, we created a little thing we like to call society. Society is great and all that of course but that doesn’t change the fact. It doesn’t alter the fact of our basic nature. Nothing alters that fact.
I was a Hero of the Conventional World. I had done all the right things in life – I had been to all the right schools, studied at all the right universities, met all the right sort of people and all that kind of stuff. It didn’t do me any good in the end though. Obviously it didn’t do me any good in the end! The future was here already, just waiting for me, and I just wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t prepared for it, you see. I had no idea. I didn’t have what it takes – I was a sham, a fake person. I crumbled away immediately, I lost my mojo. I collapsed into a cloud of dust.
We get to play it being genuine human beings though even though we’re not. We’re slaves of the external authority. We get to act as if we’re real honest-to-goodness people with actual genuine integrity when – really – we’re extensions of the vile machine. That’s how it is in the modern world, isn’t it? That’s what life is like in the modern world whether you care to admit it or not. The machine says we can get to play at being free and autonomous and all of that sort of thing just so long as we keep on obeying orders. Just so long as we don’t break the rules.
The future is here and it’s not nice. No – it’s definitely not nice, not nice at all. I was spewing out the most hideous Satanic nonsense as fast as ever I could, and yet it still wasn’t enough. Nothing is ever enough. Nothing is ever enough. And there’s nothing any of us can do to make things right. You knew there wouldn’t be, of course. You knew that all along. You knew there wouldn’t be anything we could do and you were right.
