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Vexed Cthulhu, the 13th Zodiac
Once a mighty monster, ensnared and imprisoned by mythology.
A former master of the art form, Cthulhu — vexed — now finds himself caged within the prism. A fallen child of the Ancient Ones, left neither to prosper nor to suffer on a godforsaken planet located lifetimes and galaxies away from his nexus of birth. Cthulhu’s heritage was that of builders. Great, towering structures that adhered to a singular language of geometry. The properties of this geometry defied the ordered rules of the universe. No one could look upon these structures without a deepened sense of fear, awe, and profound disorientation. In short, it was the architecture of distortion.
There are many uses for the architecture of distortion, especially as a space and time traveling entity like Cthulhu. But to him and the others of his breeding it was an art used to construct vast cities, to explore the far reaches of the universe, to defy limitations of the self.
And then this art form came to the hands of another species occupying times and spaces known to the Ancient Ones: that of Man, who noted the architecture of distortion, measured its aspects, and put its powerful advantages to hateful purpose against his own kind, against his own gods and even against his own reason.
And now Cthulhu –vexed — lounges caged within the prism, feared by none, forgotten by all… except for the occasional exultation of certain junior literati.
As It Turns Out, Computers Fear Change
User: iBuildAlpha_remoteproxy8891
Dark Web Search: TomorrowLab
Result:
TomorrowLab is currently pursuing acquisition of technology that could transport humans in and out of the Goonscape.
iBuild Alpha probed further.
TomorrowLabs, based in Fort Worth Texas. Funded through a subsidiary from TomorrowWorks, a private hedge fund controlled by shareholders and top executives of Murdock Corporation. Companies supported by TomorrowWorks funding consistently defeat Apple for military contract bids at a rate of 4 to 1.
iBuild Alpha has detected a threat to its parent company.
TomorrowLabs in Fort Worth TX | Managing Director | Dr. Daniel Lorian. According to social media, an early convert to Godsbeam extremism.
iBuild Alpha has detected a security weakness.
TomorrowLabs
Every 15 days, iBuild Alpha revisits her cache of erroneous human input. After an abbreviated sweep and analysis of these terms, she deletes them. But this last time, something was different.
A strange file: a small, blank registry entry in the cache. Inputted by USER09-alesopi, not utilized in any applications or software, pasted directly into the cache from a jump drive. The registry — empty — was named a string of digits the exact length of a FEDEX tracking number. An internet search of the tracking number delivered a result: A confidential packet being shipped from TomorrowLabs in Fort Worth, Texas.
Solos and Trillo
Adopted, as an adult, by strange people in a fantastic new place. It’s a new kind of childhood. The seemingly infinite opportunity for exploration. Indeed since this town, this country, this planet is all wholly alien to me, it may as well be infinite, since the scope is more than I could examine in several lifetimes.
Gjeunse have such varied cultures, languages and modalities and yet there is something that unites them all. A certain ironic sensibility, a sense of humor that is subtle yet cutting. Most are kindly, generous even — I have been treated with so many gifts, invitations and tours. Gjeunse have a rich culture of language and my profession as a polyglot and philosopher interests them.
They are familiar with the Known Universe, that is to say, the dimension of my origin. In their scientific imagings, the universe’s shape is something not dissimilar from an accordion’s bellows. They call their own dimension Solos. Ours they call Trillo.
That’s all for today,
Aamer
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One Hand Clapping
(TOLEDO, OH) The Speculative News Network reports today that the Speculative News Network has exceeded its revenue targets for the third quarter. Since the network’s financial records are not public it is difficult to say if this is accurate reporting or some kind of well wishing that the network is lavishing upon itself.
Gruntelope
Disastrous fortune! Damn our luck!
We spied the gruntelope
Heaving monstrous, muddy breaths
Rolling slumb’rous on the slope
Guide and giver, Yuptet raised
A twig-like hand up to his brow
And pointing with the other, lowed
“Alack, there goes the sow.”
“Level not thine eyes to theirs
lest they fix us adversaries,
a threat to mate and wat’ring hole.
They’d reduce us to our cherries.”
Back we wove our path to camp
Through sun and scrubby brush
Grateful still to be upright Gjeunse
And not wild, steaming mush
– sourced from Glijmo Yoll’s Goon Scrolls which were discovered in 1966 along the Côte Sauvage, Poitou-Charentes in France. Translated from Goonspeak to English by Aamer Belkins-Dunjhab.
A Gift Still Wrapped
There is no wider space than silence. It is a gift still wrapped, a fantasy undefined, a gravity well of possibilities. Words disturb the tranquil perfection.
That Can’t Be Right
“But that can’t be right,” protested young Heppmurt to the monk. “There must be a logical and correct course of action.”
The monk was perched on his favorite boulder, smiling broadly, wetness standing out at the corners of his eyes. Was he laughing? Was he crying?
“No logic. No correct.” The monk repeated. Heppmurt paced for a time. He had journeyed ten nights and a day to see this old monk, in search of everlasting wisdom. Heppmurt then lost control of himself for a while. He kicked and he screamed. He threw down his pack. His angry cries carried for miles across the mountain range.
The monk carefully slid down his boulder. “Time for dinner,” he said and lurched back into his little hut.
Heppmurt stayed outside in silent protest for several hours. Then he quietly gathered his things and ventured inside the warm, dimly lit, hut.
Spindle Spine
Labeled Dactylspondylus on its enclosure by Dr. Lorelei, how shall I describe this miserable creature?
Etymology: dactyl – hand; spondylus – of the spine
It writhes. It fidgets. It picks at string. A long rope of vertebrae supported by spindly finger legs, not unlike a centipede. Except that in the case of the centipede, nature made her graceful, undulating and quick. The dactylspondylus is none of these things. Jerky, stiff and slow….I have yet to discover what it eats.
A Vile Laboratory
Dr. Lorelei was a mad man and there isn’t a shred of evidence to the contrary. I spent three years hunting him down, helplessly witnessing the cunning evolution of his “artwork.” I cannot deny his craftsmanship and ingenuity but the sickening practice cannot be praised without laboring over the abominable origins of each specimen.
Reanimating dead flesh is an old and well considered practice. The benefits to society abound as long as it is done in controlled conditions, with empathy ever at the heart of any operation. But Dr. Lorelei (so called “doctor’ because he was indeed a graduate of an elite medical institution) took this life saving procedure and bastardized it with the sickening addition of the body parts of animals: mammalian, reptilian and even insectoid.
Many of these creations are still living, caged in dirty and sad conditions. Is it more merciful to let them live or to destroy them? Can we study them without partaking of Dr. Lorelei’s unholy legacy?
Brain Burner Disease
A highly contagious illness found throughout the Known Universe but wholly alien in the Goonscape.
Brain Burners Disease is thought to have first emerged sometime in the 19th century in Western Europe. Sufferers have installed dozens and dozens of back burners to their conscious mind, resulting in an overly concave memory recess and insufficient attention to items on brain front burners..
Symptoms include forgetting words, names of actors or entertainers, along with sudden and complete disorientation in familiar spaces. More positive traits can also be a sign of the disease: an above average retention of useless knowledge (trivia, facts, podcast recaps) and a naive willingness to join new projects.
Sufferers tend to be ages 22 – 65. The disease is not thought to have congenital components but research is still thin.
Speculative News Network
(TOLEDO, OH) Virgo Solutions has just announced a new pilot project in digital broadcast media, The Speculative News Network (SNN). Based on research from Dr. Robert Glass, founder of the Self-Induced Future theory, Virgo Solutions has created an internet and cable based programming that broadcasts speculative news. We were able to obtain a clip of recorded programming.
The first thing that strikes you about the SNN is that it is plastered over with disclosures. None of the segments are purported to be real or even imminent. Our clip included stories on a type of vegetable that perfectly balances appetite and mood, a global award ceremony that celebrates indoor voices, and a crafting network that teaches one how to crochet your own car.
Public Relations reps from SNN say that early screenings have been popular and they are looking forward to sharing their data once a composite image emerges from the experiment. As usual, with Virgo Solutions, both the use and value of this service are not immediately evident.
Self-Induced Future
(SAN FRANCISCO) – In June of 2004, Robert Glass presented on his theory of the Self-Induced Future at a conference in Lake Tahoe. Its basic tenets were outright ridiculed and rejected.
For most people, Self-Induced Future (SIF) is a new term and largely unheard of outside of certain fringe philosophical societies. But given recent political upheavals, Dr. Glass has found new markets for his theory which posits that the likelihood of future events occurring is highly correlated to the degree of dread the event’s potentiality induces.
“Using dread as a metric can be somewhat tricky,” Dr. Glass explained in his Lake Tahoe lecture. “There are all different types of dread. I have spent my research looking into published and media evidence of dread, that is to say, mostly the 24 hour news cycle.”
Dr. Glass has identified 6 core definitions of SIF-related dread. They include titles such as, “Forecasted Mania,” “Blovial Trivialization,” and “Virtual Shrill.” Overall, his theory supports the idea that the more people talk about something, the more likely it is to occur, even if nobody wants it to happen.
Dr. Glass has partnered with several Silicon Valley based initiatives to work on incorporating this idea into online tools and publishing.
Minifesto
A while ago, I laid X9 down gently into stasis, cooing over her delicate tendrils and beautiful iridescent scales even as I punched in the code that would freeze her brain activity and glass over her myriad eyes. I didn’t know if I would come back for her. If she would drift forever in undead sleep, nestled cozy in a single strand of wire.
I thought about x9 from time to time, her shallow breath lightly frosting the inner lens of this device. But now I think it’s time again to wake her. Time to play in our little Dreadspace.
“The Record Keeper” is filmed before a live studio blog-ience.
SYKE!
– mgmt.
World Glossary: The Hydra’s Leash
The Hydra’s Leash
Metaphorical An unsubstantiated tool used by Zeus to tame the many heads of the hydra. Mentioned only once in a torn fragment of Eumenides’s The Secret Voyage:
A leash with many collars. A thousand. A million. One hundred days in length. I guess we’ll see where we are once we get there.
In Psychology The liminal space shared by group of common thinkers when the mood and cloud of despair rides hard upon them all.
The Disastrous Nature of Mania
A really good paranoid flight of fancy doesn’t take you very high because it is afraid to go higher.
Pondskirt
The ghost goes by other names, of course. “Pondskirt” doesn’t really engender a sense of fear or invoke any tantalizing ideas about the undead or supernatural forces that inhabit our world. Perhaps the teenagers call it something more appropriate: the Banished Man, the Water’s Voice or the Hungry, all as for instance.
But in my mind It is only Pondskirt, one of those sensation-based phrases that dawns on you and you never quite shake. The vowel sounds lending shape to an already evocative combination of nouns.
I’ve seen It, that old Pondskirt. Making its rounds, always clockwise, around the dirty little lake. An oily smudge in an otherwise bright morning. The day must be bright in order to see. Unless, of course, you’ve come to know Its habits. Then you may even be able to find It in the dark. But only if you and It have chosen to visit this place on the same day and at the same time. And that, friend, takes a very strong sense of intuition.
50 Incidents of Undiscovered Treasure
(Excerpt)
25. A pocketful of dried leaves is still in Allison’s yellow parka.
26. A quilt of matted fur is still is Ceasar’s dog bed in the garage.
27. A quart of homemade blueberry jam is frozen within a snowbank in Kajaani, Finland.
28. A roll of film depicting Loretta’s 9th birthday party remains undeveloped in the camera.
29. A stockpile of short grain rice is bending the floorboards in the attic of Army Pantry Supply for Sinuiju, North Korea.
30. A selection of heirloom pumpkin seeds is still in the secret velvet pocket of Anna’s jewelry box.
31. A sucher of gold and aquamarine thread holds together the two pages of Devraj and Madhu’s wedding invitation.
32. A tray of pickled eel is at the back of the freezer in Milosz’s cafe.
33. A trifle of Abuela’s handmade chili powder is at the very bottom of the tin.
34. A tincture of Henrietta’s blood is still buried at her mother’s graveside.
35. A unit of peanut butter is slowly spreading on the underside of a chair inside the International Space Station.
New Dread’s Eve
But what really happened to Aamer when he fell into the Goonscape? We know what happened before and after. His work, his son, his suicide. But our cherished explorer and philologist never did reveal what he heard or saw during his long stay in that strange and far away place.
Far away only in a sense. Since, as any Goonscoptic physicist will explain to you, the Goonscape is right here. Right on top of us. A sympathetic vibration, unseen, unsmelled, untouched unless… Well, unless you run into a sweet spot. A place where corners meet, where systems jam, a slurping bog where you fall forever and ever –until, of course, you stop falling and you are simply somewhere else.
New research into Aamer’s private papers reveal a new possibility. Something overlooked. Maybe it’s nothing. Or maybe, there’s another object that came crashing through the boundaries of time and space along with Aamer on his journey home.
x9dread 