Fiction
MY HEART BELONGS IN AN EMPTY BIG MAC CONTAINER BURIED BENEATH THE OCEAN FLOOR: AN INTERVIEW WITH HOMELESS by Rebecca Gransden
Have you ever found yourself adrift, without a clue on how you got there? The blue whale is the largest mammal to have existed on our planet. A small person can fit inside a blue whale heart. In My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor (Clash Books, 2024) Homeless contemplates the messiness of a heart ready to overspill with sadness, a sadness drawn from fathomless wells, deep and lightless as the bottom of the sea. How many fast food containers have already made it to that desolate ocean floor? I spoke with Homeless about the novel. Rebecca Gransden: The novel opens with the memorable scene of a trio of characters in an orange boat adrift in what appears to be the middle of a wide ocean. When did this cast of characters occur to you? Did they and the scenario appear simultaneously or did aspects arise over time?Homeless: It occurred to me very early on. Probably one of the first ideas I had. The image of Daniel (the main character), the sad-looking blue whale & the empty Big Mac container floating in the ocean, lost. Everything was gradually built off that. That kind of sad, hopeless tableau.RG: “Your heart... you want to bury it, right?”Daniel nods.“Beneath the ocean floor?”Daniel nods again.“Okay. And I’m going to help you do that. Well, I mean we. We’re going to help you do that. Me and the sad-looking blue whales back home.” Daniel, the focus of the book, is a character beset by profound troubles. In many ways the book can be viewed as a quest, one taken by Daniel, whether he’s a totally willing participant or not. Did you have a plan for Daniel upon undertaking the novel, and if so, to what degree did you end up adhering to the plan?H: All I knew at the beginning was Daniel was going to be stranded in the ocean & that he was going to use this ultimate misfortune as an opportunity to really examine himself & his choices. The places he “goes” while lost, the things he sees, those were inspired by his past with the sad-looking blue whales, as well as his tumultuous relationship with his ex-girlfriend. RG: My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor. Daniel experiences his own moment of creative inspiration with the book’s title. How did the sentence reveal itself to you, and when did you know it should be the title of the book?H: The title came to me from a song. “The Samurai Code” by Motion City Soundtrack. The lyric was My heart belongs beneath the ocean floor. I remember hearing it for the first time &, like the sappy fat ass I am, immediately thinking, My heart belongs in an Empty Big Mac container buried beneath the ocean floor. That one line was it. It set up a ton for what the book would eventually become—the concept of Daniel lost in the ocean, his mission, the sad-looking blue whales who stalk him. So much came from that one line. Once I knew it’d be his mantra, there was really nothing else the book could be titled.RG: The book is set into parts, with its main threads separated into chapters with recurring titles. What led you to pursue this structure?H: For a book about depression, I wanted people to get a glimpse of what it’s like for people who have to deal with it. Only then did I think readers would kind of understand why Daniel is making such an absurd & drastic choice. I wanted readers to see how it affected his self-esteem. His relationships. So I decided to give some background as to how depression can insidiously work. How it alters your way of thinking. I think—I hope—it makes his journey more justified in a way.RG: The role of McDonald’s is important to Daniel. Throughout the book he views it as a special place, one of respite and comfort. One particular McDonald’s is regarded by him with near ecstatic reverence. What made you select McDonald’s to play this part in the book?H: About half of this book was written in a McDonald’s in Bridgeport, CT. Daniel’s safe place is essentially my safe place. The people who eat there, the slightly chaotic ambiance at times, the dirty tables, the trips there with my father when I was younger. It all feels like home to me, so I feel comfortable working there. When I’m in McDonald’s, it’s like I’m with “my people.” Lower class working stiffs just like me, trying to get a cheap, albeit highly unhealthy, meal. There’s a silent camaraderie there.RG: Daniel is painfully aware of how he is perceived by others. The novel repeatedly makes reference to a look Daniel has possessed for most, if not all, of his life. How do you describe this look and what does it say about Daniel’s interaction with the world?H: Daniel’s “look” in the book is a despondent face he’s not usually aware he’s wearing. It’s the neutral face of a person worn down by years of depression. A co-worker once told me I had a “red light face,” meaning a kind of disgruntled, “keep away from me” look, haha. When you’re depressed, you’re drained, both physically & mentally. So it’s kind of instinctual. You’re going through a lot & you need to protect your energy, what little you have, so you keep people at distance maybe. For their benefit & for yours. It’s an accidental coping mechanism. One that keeps you sane but also, unfortunately at times, pushes people away even when you don’t mean to.RG: They controlled Daniel, the sad-looking blue whales, and as much as it killed him to admit it, although over the years he had gotten used to doing so (not that that made it sting any less), the sad-looking blue whales dictated almost everything he did.Central to the book is Daniel’s relationship to the sad-looking blue whales that accompany him through life. He is caught in a shifting power dynamic, with his interactions moving through a spectrum of emotions and tensions. How do you view the sad-looking blue whales?H: The sad-looking blue whales are depression. Sometimes—a lot of the time—it can feel like depression runs the show. It keeps you from doing things you want to do, it helps you remain stuck in bad patterns. You want more than anything to be “normal,” but you have this really strong outside force constantly fucking with you & your good intentions, your attempts to change. This malevolent energy that drains your battery without your consent, that’s the sad-looking blue whales.RG: But often, scrolling through social media sites and reading posts or status updates, or messaging back and forth with strangers online, Daniel would find that the vast majority of people out there felt scared and hopeless and alone just like him. People, most people, including Daniel, led coddled easy lives. They lived in warm houses with indoor plumbing and went to grocery stores filled with food they didn't have to harvest or kill. If they got sick, modern medicine was usually able to cure it, and if not, at the very least put up a fight. And yet, somehow, everyone was still unhappy or stressed or, most of the time, both. Twenty-one centuries of technological evolution and things had become so much easier yet no one was any happier. But the expectancy to be happy had become greater, and when people couldn’t live up to it, when they couldn’t be as happy as the world and its technology demanded them to, it was damn near fucking lethal. It was no wonder sad-looking blue whales ran the world, although now it made more sense than ever to Daniel why they did.The book reflects a generational ennui, an ambiance difficult to articulate. Daniel’s self-awareness only seems to amplify the acuteness of his difficulties. Has the writing of the book brought any insights to you on this era’s specific challenges?H: I think it just made me more aware that our focus & priorities are askew. Technology seems to be speeding everything up when it seems, to me, more people (myself included) need to be slowing down. The pace of life for a lot of people seems to be accelerating to a breakneck speed, where we’re just focused on destination after destination, goal after goal, without ever appreciating where we currently are. Normally, when Daniel chills out in the book & visits “his McDonald’s,” what happens? The sad-looking blue whales leave him alone. He’s at peace. He’s allowed to just be.RG: Daniel is struggling to write. Are there parallels between Daniel’s experience within the book and your own time writing it? How much, if at all, is your past writerly life reflected in the novel?H: I gave up on this book a third of the way through. Then a kind word from a writer I greatly admire about another book I’d written made me believe in myself enough to maybe give this book another go. I think I used to put too much pressure on my writing in general. How much I did. How good it was. How important it was. Now I’m at a peaceful place where I just do my best & don’t stress over my output. I just show up somewhat consistently & the rest is out of my hands. And with this newer, more laid back approach, I also do get stuck a lot less, creatively speaking.RG: If the sad-looking blue whales can be viewed as a symbolic manifestation of Daniel’s depression, outside of the novel are there animals that represent other emotions or states for you?H: Cats represent nirvana for me. The transcendent state. Not the kick ass band. RG: Flipping through censored page after censored page, Daniel comes across nothing even remotely happy. Nothing hopeful or lighthearted. Just more of the same heartbreak, anxiety, shame, dread and self-hate. Daniel’s heart begins racing. He can feel it panicking as a wave of heat that begins in his head quickly sweeps throughout the entirety of his body, a sensation that instantly forces him to begin sweating, and all of a sudden, it’s like Daniel’s right back outside underneath the blistering sun. What is the role of hope in the book?H: Hope is there. In bits & pieces. Because when you’re depressed that feels like all the hope you’re allowed. Just miserly shards of it. In a way that’s all you need though. Just some kind of small hold to hang onto. So in that way it’s important. I wanted the book, as heavy as the topic was, to still be hopeful & light hearted. I wanted anyone who finishes it to have just that, a shred of hope. If not more.RG: At one point in the book a Basquiat artwork is transformed into a sail for the boat. A theme you address is the nature of art, here raising the question of whether there needs to be a ‘living’ or kinetic component to art in opposition to the emphasis on preservation in a type of hermetically sealed, stagnant state. Later, Daniel exhibits mixed feelings on the matter of sharing his writing with the world. Have you arrived at any conclusions regarding art, or have any new questions arisen on the matter, either inside or outside of your experience writing My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor?H: I think if anything, this book just reaffirmed to me that art is a necessary compulsion. A way for creative people to grow & learn. Some people just have to create, for better & for worse. The thing people can get caught up in, which I still get caught up in, is how your work is received, how many people have read it, & letting the commercial aspect of art taint or ruin this passion you have. Or worse, you begin to devalue yourself or what you created because it doesn’t sell. When I think the more healthy approach is just doing it because you love it, sharing it if you want to, & then wiping your hands clean of whatever those results may be. Because, again, art for many people is a compulsion & they’re going to do it & keep doing it regardless of acclaim or glory, so why let a lack of those things ruin doing something you love, something you need.RG: Could you explain the significance of the concept of appreciation, to Daniel and to the novel as a whole? What do you appreciate about the book?H: There’s always something to appreciate. No matter how shitty things are. The thing you’re appreciating can be big or small, from past, present or future, it doesn’t matter. It’s the act of appreciating that’s important. Finding something good & focusing on it until the crushing fist of sadness lightens its force. The opportunity is always there & readily available. A kind of short cut through a shitty neighborhood that gets you someplace safer. What I appreciate about the book is that it tackles a heavy topic such a depression with levity & humor. I wanted to write a book about depression that wasn’t depressing to read, & I think I did that.RG: Have you ever seen a lightning bug? H: I’m lucky enough to have two beautiful sons. So yes.
November 19, 2024
Fiction
WHAT WE REMEMBER by Jorden Makelle
What you remember is riding scooters around the cul-de-sac on sun-soaked summer mornings. Me pushing you on our swing set in the backyard. A scruffy white dog lapping up water, its tail wagging. Her blessing the food, pork chops and green beans and cornbread. Running under sprinklers barefoot, tufts of grass tickling our toes. Red and blue and white popsicles staining our tongues. Him lowering the basketball goal in the driveway so you could play. Saturday morning cartoons and chocolate sprinkle donuts. Sunday morning church and lunch at Luby’s. What I remember is always sitting quietly, so very quietly. The all A honor roll. Chewing the insides of my cheeks until they bled. The sound of a hair dryer thrown at the wall. A pair of eyes gone black and vacant. Wondering if Jesus was going to come back anytime soon. Red and blue and white lights flashing in the driveway. Scratchy hotel bedsheets and locked doors. Him calling her crying, begging us to come home. Holding you and telling you that you were going to be okay. Because I knew you would be okay. Because you were far too young to remember.
November 18, 2024
Fiction
BEAUTY QUEEN by Sam Pink
We’re eating chocolate cake for Ronni's bday after work. At a table in the hay barn that serves as my boss’s office. It’s me, Ronni the team lead, my boss, and her two teenage daughters who barback/take out garbage. I’m covered in mud from the waist down because my boss’s youngest daughter took an ill-advised shortcut with the golf cart during a garbage run. So I went out and helped, lifting the back and pushing forward while she gassed it.‘You’re buying him a new pair of pants,’ my boss says, eyebrows up.‘Okayeeee, jeez,’ says her daughter.She’s been crying a little, on account of the embarrassment as well as her sister’s accusations of being stupid. I’d told her multiple times not to worry about it.Ronni puts her feet up on a chair and spreads her legs to ‘air her balls out’ under her skort. She’s wearing a bday girl sash and tiara. She takes a bite of cake with an anguished look and says, ‘Man I feel like a bag of smashed assholes.’ This is her main line, the smashed assholes. A whole sack of them, battered and stinking, amassed from various asses and collected in a single sack as a sign of some greater pain. 'I made out like a bandit though. I knew if I let people know it was muh berfday and had my titties out a little, they'd tip me more.’ She takes a last bite of cake and sets the fork on her plate.I ask my boss's older daughter how her boyfriend’s doing. I met him recently. Bit of a dopey fellow, handshake like someone handing you an oven mitt and all that. 'What’s his name,' I say. 'Ricky?''No it's Walter. He's fine, I guess. I broke up with him tho and he started crying. He's always crying, I literally think maybe he’s gay.''Oh man, I liked him. Seemed like a nice fella. You don't like him anymore.''No he's gross. And his mom saw my texts and started texting me all this angry shit.'My boss says, 'He does have some hygiene issues but he’s a good kid.''He’s literally gay and he stinks,' says her daughter.I eat some more cake. Looking up at the window, high in the barn. A rectangle of bright blue sky. Like something in a video game I’d yet to unlock. The next map, if only I’d the tools. I start thinking about my elderly friend in town, the gunsmith. Hadn’t seen him in a while. He’s like the first character you meet before you go off, in search of other maps. I remember how he described getting into guns/gunsmithing when he was younger. He said he got his first .410 and it was ‘off to the races’––a phrase which I’d heard before many times but only then, and ever since, truly enjoyed and understood, realizing the meaning, to be off to the races, not stuck at the beginning line, somehow already a loser.‘I can’t believe you lifted that thing,’ says my boss. ‘Thank you so much. And again, [her daughter] is gonna buy you new pants.’I look down at the mud, all over my pants and boots. ‘You think these are done?’My boss’s daughters laugh.Ronni says, ‘Hell yeah they’re done, looks like you buttfucked a hippo, son.’The boss's younger daughter is looking at crowns on Amazon. She won runner up in the Ms. [town they're from] beauty pageant and didn't like the crown they'd supplied. 'What about this one,' says the beauty queen, showing her sister, who wrinkles her face, shaking her head. The beauty queen turns her phone to me and asks what I think.Staring at the crown, which has 536 reviews, I say, 'The only way to truly get a crown is to slay the queen currently wearing it. To strike her down. Bring terror to her court.'My boss laughs.Ronni says Jesus, taking her feet down off the chair with a grunt, then says if I want a ride home we have to get going.
November 13, 2024
Fiction
STATIONS OF THE CROSS AS PERFORMED BY A 6TH GRADE CATHOLIC EDUCATION GROUP FOR A SMALL CONGREGATION ON THE THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER by Michael Harper
Jesus is condemned to deathMark is desperate to be crucified. He’s been acting especially pious this week. Smacking his cheeks to make them look ruddy and hallow. Doing push-ups before rehearsal. Crafting his body into a canvas for suffering. The other boys and Julie volunteered to be Roman soldiers. Cardboard swords clash dully. I should have tried out for Pilate. One scene then done. But my reputation isn’t good enough to condemn Jesus to death. I miss months of masses in a row. Crucify Him! rings out from the class. The trial seems rigged. I feel for Jesus even if Mark’s a giant prick. Jesus takes up his CrossThe soldiers get into it. They’re allowed to jostle and there is a moment when their roughhousing feels like it will overflow. Spill into actual violence. An overt shove. A tug on Mark’s thin toga. A rambunctious smack across his defenseless skin. The acting feels dangerous. A mask slipping to reveal a jagged scar. The congregation holds its collective breath. Most eyes get lost in the stained-glass kaleidoscopes that twist the morning light into prisms of color. It’s like the awkward reports on the nightly news. Global warming. Meth/opioid epidemic. We pray it will pass. Survive till the football scores. Jesus falls the first timeGolden chalices catch the light. The girls’ primary-colored cloaks flutter behind Mark’s staggers. They wail like raucous ghosts. Sometimes snorting into laughter. Mark’s really dragging this out. Juicing his time in the spotlight. He falls. The sound booms in the quiet church. Ricocheting off the vaulted ceiling. I jump in my seat. The sound of violence feels dangerous in a place I’m only allowed to stand, sit, and kneel in. Where control is strictly enforced. Mark stays down. The soldiers push him. Tug at his arms. Red beads of wax slide down the eternal candle. The crucifix hovers. Watching. Waiting.Jesus meets his MotherCough. Cough. Stifled laugh. The crowd shifts in their seats as Vikki’s hand lingers on Mark’s face and then slide down the length of his partially exposed chest. The leader announces the station. The crowd responds: Have Mercy On Us! The words fill the nearly empty church. The chorus spreads like a flood through my upper body. Vikki and Mark don’t break eye contact. The public suffering activates something. The being watched by the audience makes their bodies tingle with desire. The leader pushes the narrative forward. Breaks the young lovers apart. We try to remember this is very serious. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the crossThe procession approaches me. I’m pulled from the wooden pew and forced at cardboard sword point to pick up the back end of the cross. Its Styrofoam. Weighs less than the air. It’s more like a texture in my hands than a burden. In rehearsal I felt like a reluctant ally. An unlikely side hero in this story. But in front of the crowd, I turn into an accomplice. Another force pushing Jesus toward his inevitable ending. I strain my face. Flex my arms and shoulders into a garish struggle. Showing the crowd this is no picnic for me too. Veronica wipes the face of JesusRosita dabs at Mark’s face with a Dollar General wet wipe. Vikki stares daggers at her as she moistens his skin. Her touch is so tender. Light and humane. I don’t understand how someone could feel jealousy toward it. I forget my role. Find myself in a dream where hands as gentle as these press into me. Make the tiny electric sparkles under my skin flare and then settle. Feel my pores. I sense the tautness of my skin and how the pathways in my body connect like a waterway. HAVE MERCY ON US! Sucks me back into my performance. Jesus falls for the second timeMark really sells the fall. Spreading himself across the red carpet. Pulsating agony. I try not to look directly at him. The altar sneaks up on the procession. A green and gold cloth hangs off its skeletal frame. The site of the encroaching crucifixion. It’s like a tractor beam. What if we all just stopped? I could drop this cross. Walk out of the church. The soldiers could cast down their fake swords. Mark could put on a shirt. The crowd could go home. Why didn’t Jesus run? Is it a son’s responsibility to sacrifice his body for his family? Jesus meets the women of JerusalemWails, wailing, wailed. The warble rises and falls. A flutter of reds, blues, yellows and greens heave with inconsequential grief. All we own is our pain. It is ours to cart around. To mold into a story of self-suffering. Mark draws a cross in the air before the girls and the hunger of their suffering intensifies. It’s unclear if he is blessing or forgiving them. If we are freed from our suffering would there be anything left? Life might become boring quick. Purpose is easier to create and easier to achieve when we’re pushing a boulder up a petrified hill. Jesus falls for the third timeWe get it. Mark’s suffering. His body heaves on the ground. His ribs push through his skin. I’m unsure of what to do with my hands. The faster he gets to his feet the faster the suffering continues. Stay down. I’m a shadow of this fallen figure. No longer a person but an outline of a body on the floor. An idea which I can fill my own body with. Should I have been Jesus? Instead of floating behind him, unsure of what to do. I could fill my soul with divine guidance. Let a higher purpose guide my life. Jesus is stripped of his garmentsMark’s skin looks translucent under the altar’s bright lights. His arms are slender. Veins run blue down his forearms. A complex root system spreading in the shallows of his body. It’s difficult imagining his body as temporary. As something separate from his eternal being. Flesh and bone and blood is the centerpiece of our sacrifice. The physicality, the realness of him makes the backs of my legs tingle. A horror spasm slithers down my legs. I shift my weight between feet. Time feels urgent. My skin becomes aware of a taught string stretching from this moment to a wooden coffin. Jesus is nailed to the CrossThe soldiers’ faces hang heavy with purpose. Their movements precise. Mark is stretched open. His body splayed wide for the audience. The splotchy homemade cross is pitiful under the looming crucifix above him. His acting quaint next to Jesus’ carved suffering. A soldier holds his hammer and spike above Mark’s wrist, checks the lectern, and swings. A hollow ping rings from the sound system. I choke on my breath. The soldier moves to the other wrist. The next ping slips inside my body and ricochets around. He kneels with his tools. I close my eyes. Waiting for the final strike. Jesus dies on the crossDuring rehearsal we held ice cubes in our hands to simulate Jesus’ pain. I didn’t feel it then. The cold felt funny. The wet was simply wiped away. Watching Mark on the cross, I feel the sting of the ice in my palms. He’s stoic. Only wears the pain in his furrowed expression. His chest heaves. The final breaths become deeper, more exaggerated. And then silence. Or very shallow, near silence. Tiny signs of life escape him. A small sip of oxygen. A slight quiver through his finger. The church goes quiet. Holds its breath in solidarity. Prays in thanks. Jesus is taken down from the crossA limp body doesn’t cooperate. Feels like moving a mattress. Except its Mark. I remind myself that he’s still alive. We cover him with a white sheet. He becomes an outline under the thin layer of cloth. The shape of his body a ghostly terrain which dips and curves like a gentle mountain range. I imagine it’s a relief to no longer be looked at. I stare at the still form. The end of the pain. Relief spreads slowly from my fingers. Pushes up my arms like a tremble. Thank god it’s over. But now what? Where do we go?Jesus is laid in the tombApparently, we go to the basement. They just announced there’s Jell-O salad and Maid Rites. Mark doesn’t move. Everyone starts for the stairs. We walk past his body, quiet as a shiver. I pack away the performance inside myself. Breathe easier now it is over. No embarrassments. No impression at all. After eating I go upstairs. The sheet is empty. The lights are dark. Jesus stares down at me hard. I put the sheet over my head. A kid on Halloween. Breath deep into the fabric. Feel the memory of ice in my palms. Taste the air leaving my lungs.
November 8, 2024
Fiction
FRACTURED by Lana Frankle
The existence of a Neural Correlate of Consciousness that persists after the administration of anesthesia is such anathema to the established position taken by physicians of the modern age that publication of any supporting data has been effectively relegated to the annals of pseudoscience. This is despite the clear and alarming implications of not one but several studies attempting to chronicle the experience of the Fugue. As a man of science I at first balked, predictably: if overwhelming and conclusive evidence is rejected by the likes of Nature and Science than I as an individual bear no responsibility for its dissemination. However, I have since been prevailed upon: the public is not directly responsible for the systemic biases inherent in the academic standards that deceive them. If they are indeed active participants at all, it is indirectly. If their eyes have been blinded, and indeed even if it is through their own actions and mechanisms, it is not through any fault of their own. The public may be an agent in the dynamic, but assumptions have been made on the collective level that on the individual level are unwarranted: you, dear reader, may have done nothing wrong and still be subject to implications of the decisions of your peers. Perhaps this is not the case at all, and you will read this publication with a laugh and a sneer. But if, upon finding it here, you feel naught but surprise and betrayal, know that this is for you. That the anesthetics touted and trumpeted as groundbreaking medical technology, come at a cost that is well hidden, but that I, active in their development, am suited to deconstruct. One thing I would like to make clear from the outset is that I fully appreciate the massive societal-level benefits imparted by the development of modern anesthetics: hundreds of thousands of life-saving surgical procedures are performed daily worldwide, and this scale of medical intervention improving the lives of millions of people would simply not be possible without them. It is no overstatement to say that our human ability to self-repair our own physiology has been instrumental in allowing us to control the tide of our own evolution as a species. I am thus fully aware of the implications of my own research into the persistence of consciousness into the anesthetized state. It is only because I have seen with my own eyes and proven with incontrovertible data the agonizing states induced and never recalled consciously in fully anesthetized surgical patients that I took up the obligation of raising social awareness for this most sensitive issue of public interest. Given this knowledge, it is still not imminently clear which is the most optimal course for setting policy or making individual decisions regarding surgical procedures – the vast majority of which, including technically “elective” procedures, are done for sound and necessary medical reasons and cannot be forgone without drastic health consequences up to and including death. Some fairly straightforward implications, however, include ones for surgery done for purely aesthetic reasons, as well as implications on health decisions underscoring the importance of maintaining physical health through lifestyle to pre-empt the need for eventual surgery altogether. The more interesting and difficult cases are ones in which surgery has already been medically advised, but would involve inducing extreme pain in a phi network that will not be able to communicate this either during or after the experience, but would fail to provide ongoing active consent were they able.Ultimately, the NCC in question has no means of exercising their legal rights, bodily autonomy [sic], or freedom of choice, and no recourse to protect or represent their own interests. While this matter warrants legal and not just clinical expertise and consultation, there does seem to be a precedent for the protection of conscious entities not reliant on their integrated personhood – Cleever vs. the state of California and Scober vs. the State of Indiana can be here referred to, albeit the relevance of a criminal punishment in cases of insanity or incompetence may supersede the relevance of any protections relevant due to Markovian or causal independence. Because these NCCs have no way of prosecuting such a case, protections would need to be implemented on their behalf – as is already done in cases of abortion and life support of comatose or vegetative individuals. It is my firm belief that this direction should be explored by libertarian and other relevant ideological organizations and think tanks, and I will gladly offer my guidance for them to do so should they request it.
November 7, 2024
Fiction
THE VARIANT by Lana Frankle
In the months since The Visitation there have been ceaseless efforts by the Department of Defense, including within my own division at DARPA, to develop strategies to either obliterate and neutralize the foreign Entities, or (in my own research lab) to counteract or mitigate the seemingly inevitable effects they have on human observers. Thus far, efforts to kill or immobilize these foreign agents have been largely unsuccessful, and this is due mostly to the lack of techniques for localizing and targeting them in ways that circumvent the need for soldiers or others to perceive them. The use of infrared goggles to attack in darkness at night did not prevent the known psychotogenic effects and suicidality in any significant way, and efforts to secure video-surveillance triggered munitions and drones has likewise been unsuccessful due to the lack of known distinguishing features that can be used to identify the targets from other warm bodies such as humans. After the third accidental death, of a toddler, with no confirmed hits on the Beings, the program for automated gunfire and drones to wipe them out was put on hold until better identifiers, whether visual or other, can be found. Our own techniques are less risky, and while they would not eliminate the threats, they show real promise in limiting the severity of reactions to them, which in normal cases range from debilitating to cataclysmic. So far over 15% of the population has succumbed, most of whom die too soon to be assessed or treated, and many of whom kill others before they go. The few we have been able to bring in for consultation are generally useless as they have been reduced to incoherence and frenetic oscillation of their mood, goals, and speech. Others still retreat inwards, becoming near-motionless, affectless, and catatonic. Analysis of brain tissue of those affected post-mortem offered another potential avenue of research, however it proved difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about any neurological effects as the timescale between the initial exposure and death is usually on the order of hours to days, generally too short to allow for clear atrophy, gliosis or synaptogenesis. Our findings based on this approach were therefore inconclusive, although they did allow us to rule out gross tissue damage such as cerebral infarction, ischemia, edema, or encephalopathy - bearing witness to the Beings does not appear to cause stroke, fluid build-up, or tissue swelling. Fortunately there remains one final and quite promising research opportunity left to pursue: a very small subset of people, somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5%, appear to be largely immune to the ill effects that beset those who look upon the Beings. So far we have only been able to examine one such individual, a thirteen-year-old girl. Two others are rumored to be under study by labs in Atlanta (CDC containment facility) and an old university in Tokyo, however, these reports remain unconfirmed, as currently all televised news media has been cut off and radio reports are intermittent and have limited geographical range. Some of these limitations in media and communication are inadvertent inevitabilities, while others are necessary enforced precautions to limit the spread of images containing the Beings. Electronic communications of any kind, as well as access to electronic databases, are theoretically still accessible to high-level government and military officials, which includes myself, as well as persons with some other very limited essential roles. However, maintaining an internet connection has itself been intermittent due to outages, electric grid failure, the near-impossibility of any maintenance of the system, and general chaos. This means that while we were able to run tests for many genetic markers on our subject, we have so far been completely unable to compare the results to those of other individuals with similar immunity, and analysis of the sequenced regions without such comparators could not suggest a pattern, as absent any polymorphisms or normal inter-individual differences, her genome appeared unremarkable. We do suspect that other similar cases can be found locally, however the obvious limitations on communication and safe mobility make any form of coordination or selection of potential subjects untenable for the time being. We are, however, grateful for the opportunity that has been presented us, and so far we have diligently made use of every means at our disposal to uncover what biological, neurological, psychological and/or soteriological defense mechanisms are at work, and how they might be co-opted or replicated in the general population, or at least in the servicemen responsible for deploying lethal force to rid our society of the Beings. Our primary base in Arlington has been out of commission since two weeks after the Visitation, the satellite research facility in Virginia Beach has connection to generator-powered electricity and well water, as well as stable architectural foundations and a primary lab space that is several feet underground, all of which makes for ideal research conditions given the larger global circumstances. It is equipped with a physical reference database consisting of decades of published scientific research across multiple disciplines, as well as cable internet, although this connection has so far only worked briefly and on two occasions, the latter of which was unsuccessful in connecting with any other labs or military bases. As mentioned previously, the facility is also limited in terms of the diagnostic instrumentation and other medical research equipment on hand. One of the newer DARPA employees, Major Chambers, an army psychiatrist recruited just a week prior to the Visitation and with no combat zone experience whatsoever, has adamantly insisted since we acquired our test subject that he can perform vital and informative assessments on her neurological and psychological functioning using verbal and cognitive tests alone. While I remained skeptical, his initial interview with the subject was the first time I had heard her speak openly about her witness of the Beings, and I reluctantly acknowledged that our options are currently narrow and granted him full license for any non-invasive tests he might want to run, provided there was negligible physical risk. Several days ago he presented me with some of the subject’s color pencil drawings of the Entities, of which she claims to have seen three. The drawings are quite skilled for a child of her age with no artistic training, but still rudimentary compared to what might have been accomplished by, say, a police sketch artist. It is also of course an open question how much of the drawings’ poor detail was due to an amateur’s lack of skill, and how much was due to the impossibility of conveying an incomprehensible horror whose visual presentation itself may not be standardized between different perceivers. The first of her drawings features a rotund gray thing with six long, spidery legs bent about halfway up. It features a ring-like raised ridge around the middle of its corpus, like Saturn. Its top is dotted with several protruding bumps, also gray, but darker. It has no discernable face. She calls this one Calye, though she would not say if it told her that name or if she gave the name to it herself. The second also has spindly insect-like legs, but an elongated, brown corpus. The subject mentioned that the color she used was “not quite right” but that she couldn’t find “what the real one would be”. It was ambiguous whether she meant that the color spectrum of the Beings was outside the spectrum of electromagnetic wavelengths typically visible to the human eye or simply that the 32 ct. Crayola colored pencil set provided her was insufficient. The last of the Entities she drew was perhaps the most intriguing, as rather than possessing legs it appeared to hover midair, and the lighter imprint of the coloration (which was sky blue with a touch of green) made it cloud-like. However, when asked if it did hover, or fly, the subject merely furrowed her brow in that way that children do when posed with a tough riddle, and answered, “I mean, sort of.” This being was also interesting because it was the only one which appeared to possess a face, or at least, several rounded circles resembling a single large, compound eye. When asked if she knew whether it was an eye, or if it ever seemed to look at her, or blink, however, the subject replied in the negative. There appears to be no harm or risk from viewing the drawings themselves, which speaks to the non-transferability of supernatural visual perceptual experiences and the inevitable loss of information at various points along the pipeline of basic sensation, integrated perception, cognitive and emotional processing, and repackaging for communication purposes using either the verbal or visual medium. Additionally, the colored pencil set she was given contained two missing colors (aqua green and light orange), one (violet red) which was broken into two pieces, as well as several others that were quite dull. Artistic tools are not, remember, a category of equipment necessarily kept on hand in either a secret military base or a secret research facility. Psychosocial interview and debriefing by the scientist about the Beings as well as any relevant background of the subject previously mentioned also proved at least partly fruitful as they revealed the following: -encounters with the Beings was somewhat disturbing or at least puzzling -when she saw the first one she found herself staring involuntarily, as one might a trainwreck, despite some slight discomfort akin to, but not exactly like, staring at the brightness of the sun. She also acknowledged, of her own initiative, that at least part of her fascination with these creatures stemmed not from the direct effect their forms had on her psyche, but from her prior knowledge that what she was witnessing were sights that had drove many others, including her own father and brother, into madness (immediate suicide and attempted attack on her mother with a knife, leading to a bystander shooting him, respectively). These reactions also provide further evidence against the origin of this type of relative immunity having any genetic component, barring the possibility of a de novo mutation, which the limited chromosomal regions on which we performed genetic sequencing fail to fully rule out. Medical history revealed no major medical conditions, disabilities, past surgeries or injuries, and psychiatric assessment ruled out any serious mental health conditions or history of trauma (prior to the death of her father and witnessing the death of her brother, which given the current societal circumstances are not outside the norm). Her beliefs regarding the supernatural prior to the Visitation, as well as her thoughts about or speculations on (or even knowledge of) the Beings were also probed. While she had not previously been religious or very superstitious (occasionally mixing up “potions” with friends or pretending to be witches, which all sounded relatively normal for her age) she did seem to have atypical attitudes to the Beings, including speculation, despite the trauma and devastation that had directly and indirectly affected her, that they carried a certain message that it was important to decode. When asked for further details on what this message was, however, she merely shrugged and said she didn’t know. “I think a lot more people are going to die, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do about it either, even though I know you’re trying.” is what she is recorded as having said, to which Chambers doing the interview replied, “You’re right, we are trying.” and nothing more. Various visual and cognitive tests were also performed by Chambers. While her vision was normal at 20/20 and she did not suffer from astigmatism or colorblindness, some tests of visual processing did render abnormal results including slower visual processing (less proficiency at detecting changes in rapidly switching images which showed added and then removed black dots on a white background, as well as movement of these dots to slightly different locations - an ingenious test designed for this purpose by Chambers himself, but based closely enough off of existing psychometric assessments to ensure the ability to form judgements and comparisons with the general population). While she was sometimes able to detect these changes, her accuracy was two standard deviations below the norm, despite her above-average intelligence. With a slower “frame rate” of changes to the layout and positioning of these dots, her accuracy improved significantly and was within normal range. When administered a Wechsler adult intelligence test rather than the Stanford-Binet children’s test (both tests have both children’s and adult versions) it was noted that her performance on Raven’s Matrix Reasoning was also well below two full standard deviations lower than average. Low performance on this test means her ability to predict the expected form of a symbol associated with several other previous symbols which together demonstrate a clear pattern with no a priori description was severely impaired. Her scores on picture arrangement and picture completion were also below normal, but only by one standard deviation. These tests assess for ability to make sense of discrete scenes that can be arranged into a coherent story, and ability to make sense of isolated images with missing features by adding these missing details. Lastly, her answers to the Rorschach inkblot test were highly irregular, not in a way suggesting psychological problems or trauma, but rather in interpretations of ambiguous imagery that take on highly specific, nuanced, and uncommon situations, events, and combinations of objects, such as two cardboard cutouts of South America being held in the cloven hooves of a ram standing on its hind legs. These answers were always given after a lengthy, deliberative pause, but with an air of complete certainty. Taken together, these results point to a general pattern of non-standard conceptual frameworks for visual input. Rather than seeing a few lines in the general shape of a chair as a chair with a missing line or two, for instance, the subject would see half of an oddly shaped horse or a chipped coffee cup with curves missing. Inability to predict the next abstract figure of a sequence, as in Raven’s Matrices, points to the formation of incorrect visual expectations and inability to recognize visual patterns. Trouble noticing changes in the patterns of dots on a screen points to lack of sequential organization in visual construction. Our working hypothesis is that the combination and interaction of these deficits decrease the subject’s ability to process the sheer horror of the Beings. It does this by interfering with the neural impulses of the brain regions responsible for object and scene level construction along the ascending pathways before they can reach the brain regions responsible for semantic-psychological level interpretations, existential terror, horror at the very nature of existence, and unfounded homicidal rage.changing dot patterns Raven’s test matrix picture arrangement test Rorschach test cards drawing completion test Our motivations for elucidating these mechanisms are twofold: to provide potential assessment tests available to the public to determine how likely it is that they are among the unsusceptible population (although we will proceed with this objective with extreme caution, if at all, as cognitive and psychological tests are unreliable, especially when self-administered, and any definitive causal relationship currently remains theoretical) and to use the information collected to attempt to induce a similar protection or immunity in previously vulnerable (normal) persons. Currently two different strategies to this end are already underway. The first involves the construction of a kind of physical distortion barrier, namely, protective lenses which can theoretically be manufactured, at least on small scales, for the use of select test populations, mainly the military troops tasked with elimination of the threat. The construction of these goggles will not be trivial and will require a complicated system of optic distortion combing artificial time delay/choppy or lagging video feed and certain image processing tools designed to compress or alter visual information in carefully specified ways, such as by inducing graininess, jitter, or watershed effects to split whole objects (such as the Entities) into collections of discrete parts. The use of this technique has not been tested and there is no way of guaranteeing it will work without testing it directly. However, existing strategies are virtually nonexistent and include trying to quickly look away or shut one’s eyes if a soldier hears the approach of, or glimpses, a Being, which is both ineffective (it generally does not prevent them witnessing it and all subsequent effects) but also almost completely prevents them from actually killing these Beings, which is the entire point of all their existing missions. The second strategy is less straightforward and involves psychological and therapeutic interventions, either as a prophylactic mechanism for those likely to encounter the Entities (again, mostly soldiers - civilians are often inadvertently exposed as well, but any targeted training of them remains unfeasible under current circumstances and they are advised to simply seek shelter and remain hidden and secluded) or to limit post-exposure effects. The therapeutic techniques involve visual training with the use of video feedback, in a setup similar to Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), as well as to existing video feedback military training. Another option which could be applied both prophylactically and in cases of catatonic or disturbed but contained/restrained persons recently exposed to the Beings is the use of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques to actively reprocess the trauma of exposure to the Beings in ways that are more aligned with the less harmful, chunked or distorted processing that our subject experiences naturally. One final cautionary note remains: while we have not been able to maintain steady contact with either the Atlanta lab or the Tokyo lab and do not know much of any information about subjects alleged to be similar, yet another similar subject has been rumored of in Mumbai, and this person (a man in his thirties with a wife and children) was said to be completely immune to the Entities, for several weeks, and became convinced that he was a deity whose duty it was to encounter and document them. He was said to have witnessed and photographed tens of such creatures as he sought them out intentionally, like a storm chaser. And then, it is rumored, he came across one and went mad, just as everyone else, and slaughtered his family. This tragic case (which onceagain, is unconfirmed by any reputable source, but was told to me by two people independently, both members of the US military) raises a concerning issue, namely, that even the type of immunity that we and others have documented may not be a complete immunity. It seems possible, and in fact very likely, that there exists at least one and possibly multiple variants of Being which still affect even the lucky few who resemble our subject. What to make of this information Chambers and I are unsure. His suggestion, which does seem plausible, is that there are alternative visual pathways that are utilized by alternative types of visual processing and scene construction, and that there are vulnerabilities that exist aside from the one that is currently known.
November 6, 2024
by Mike Topp
$25 | Perfect bound | 72 pages
Paperback | Die-cut matte cover | 7×7″
Mike Topp’s poems defy categorization. That’s why they are beloved by seamstresses, pathologists, blackmailers and art collectors.
–Sparrow
