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A smoke signal - Now gather round and dance, our lovely butterflies. Fear not when you hit play - the trigger was pulled some time back.

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404 Documents Nine: Field Report of Agent 888

(More 404.) 


888 was polishing up his field report. Adding its finishing touches. Before he had ever begun writing it. He -- I -- continued:

Delving into this subject leads the intrepid researcher/wingnut/conspiracy theorist down an increasingly convoluted path of inquiry into the subjects of Scientology, CIA government mind control black ops, child sex slavery rings in Washington, DC, methodical disinfo campaigns, "Satanic Ritual Abuse", Alternate Reality Gaming, and... Hunter S. Thompson (?!) So buckle up and put your tinfoil hats on. This shit will get ugly.

404 Documents Seven: Nova Heat Substance D

(More 404.) 

Memories flash back to me, layers of skin carefully peeled off, revealing pink machinery beneath. I began to feel as if I were having a certifiable schizophrenic episode. Was this work related stress? The missions, the drugs, a genuine preexisting mental condition unmasked by these factors...or something else entirely?

“You’re just on Substance D, man. You’re spun the fuck out,” the man calling himself Spoony explained. The fragmented identity structure called “Spoony” had yet to become “Chance Melborne,” a somewhat more resolved and serious young man concerned mainly with smuggling and trafficking in classified information and chasing tail. This transformation was to occur sometime later, or earlier, depending upon your place on the timeline. Of course, no one would remember it, in any event.

Nothing is remembered. All is lost.

“The Blue Brotherhood doesn’t exist. These journalists weren’t onto anything, the Monarch Mind Control lead is a dead end. And of course the Scientologists wanted to fuck over these dead journalists... The Scientologists want to destroy anyone remotely intelligent who isn’t a part of their fruity little club. You need to sleep. How many days has it been now?” He looked at his watch. The hands twitched their way around the face, little shivering cockroach legs.

Agent 888 pushed aside empty bottles of Dos Equix and various piles of debris, coughed asthmatically and fished for another mentholated cigarette from his shirt pocket. I was seeing inside the hole in my memory made by the benzos. Or was I just telling myself it was the drugs? Maybe something else was at work here.

“Oh yeah?” the Buyer replied. He was here? So he hadn’t left after all. “I thought that was a fictional name for ‘speed’ from a Philip K. Dick book. “

“No... It is who you are in general, man. Specifically you. Any drug. Any mind altering substance. Your life, living out investigations into things that don’t exist, and searching for answers, suspecting friend in enemy and enemy and friend. Your brain has detached and split into two different polarities: The left and right hemispheres, fighting for dominion over each other. What you need is balance. You are split man. There is a schism in your brain and you are fragmented. That is ‘Substance D.’ It’s not a drug, it is a state of mind. ...

“Did I happen to mention that I am your handler and that you are actually working for the CIA? I think you have potential if you stick with it. You have made it past at least 3 disinfo shells already, you’re hacking your way to the core of the syndicate and we are aware of who you are.... Just kidding man, I think you’re a fucking nutjob and I like to watch you grind your geeeears....”

“Maybe so,” the Buyer said. “Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat. The mark within.”

I woke up in a cold sweat. Heart beating rapidly sweaty palms ache in jaw swallow down better soon. Who am I now? Endless corridors, twisted sheets, uneasy alliances, labyrinths, gargling in rat race choir drinking scotch playing ball with the men at the top... the top of... What? What was IT

I feel IT that means IT is there there, there is a there there there.... And so on and so on, perhaps forever.... IT reproduced ITself in the mind of the young and fed from our pain, nocturnal emissions and our tears.

Didn’t seem real; certainly most would discredit ITS existence. In fact, IT did not exist materially. IT existed as an idea. There is no There, There. Or is there a There, There? Something about a vortex... Like Schrodinger’s cat, but more.... Like it. Somehow. In universe B, Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan are alive, in universe B Scientologists never murdered them and I am not writing about a murder that never happened. In universe A, meanwhile, two options become apparent:

Suicide, or death by Scientology. Nova heat moving in...

404 documents Six: MONARCH MIND CONTROL.

(More 404.)

I remember Bradley taking me aside once, and confiding in me in one of his rare moments of near humanity. He seemed perturbed, anxious. The music in the background wasn’t helping anything, and seemed keyed into our conversation on some synchronistic level.

“You are familiar with some of the black ops the CIA ran on unsuspecting test subjects concerning mind control, right?”

I nodded. We were in my basement at the time, converted into a makeshift recording studio. I was busy trying to ignore him as he spoke over my shoulder. He was making me uncomfortable but didn’t seem to notice or care.

“Yeah, sure. What are you getting at?”

“Well, I’m sure you have heard of Operation Monarch, alternately Operation Mockingbird. Commonly referred to in Discordian circles as Operation Mindfuck, or just O.’.M.’. …”

YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND (part ducks)

Did you hear about Jimmy, man?

No, why?

You didn't hear about fucking Jimmy! Dude! He shat all over himself - this is at the senior dance, too, right, everyone looking right at him as he gets covered in this mess of butt pudding - and he screamed along to the lyrics YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND BABY RIGHT ROUND, I mean every word, screaming along and then-

You're really freaking me out.

You should have fucking been there. Jimmy shat himself, and projectile vomited the whole way to the window, and you're telling me about freaking? At the window he screamed YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE and then? Took a header for the concrete.

It's only two stories.

Fine, then you jump out the window face first and tell me-

-Whatever. So is that why he wasn't in Gym today?

Uh, yeah. Dude. He's fucking dead.

Hm. Guess I don't have to give back his PSP, then.

Yeah. Anyway, fucked up about Jimmy, huh?

I guess. Come on, let's get out of here.

You Spin Me Right Round part Tumeric

I spent the whole night wishing I could get closer to her. Excuses to brush by, to look just a moment more. I did't want to be creepy. I didn't want to own her. Nothing like that.

I just want to be able to get closer to her. I want to be her friend.

I was at the high school dance. Shitty waste of an evening. I mean, I wouldn't have even considered going to something like this. It was embarassing. But I knew she'd be there.






And then the song started. You know the one. "You spin me right round baby, right round."

Cheesy shit but we can all dance "ironically" to it. That makes it safer somehow.

Yeah I, I got to know your name. Well and I, could trace your private number baby. Amber. That was her name. Different hair color every week it seemed. Different piercings and tattoos. Same eyes. Nothing could change them. I wanted to.

So I stood in the corner. Gibberish numbers were bouncing around in my head, blocking everything else out. They seemed to come from the music but compound themselves, a feedback loop of infinite proportions. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...

She turned to look at me when the words "Watch out, here I come" seemed to blow my eardrums out of my cheap skull.

21, 34... ACTIVATE.