Three eight one, p.17
Three Eight One, page 17
21 Personal growth of the hero as opposed to those who are not up to the task! I think this is a classic quest ideal. Fairly is brave (braver than I could ever be) whether the foe is real or imagined. (It is possible to argue that imaginary foes are much harder to defeat but easier to picture overcoming; does this explain the proliferation of unreal adversaries at a time when so many problems existed in reality?)
22 Is this a quaint throwback? Many documents state that the ‘telephone’ was invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, and Fairly’s chime bears similarities, although all calls seem to go only to her mother. I was delighted to find the first telephone call commenced with the phrase ‘ahoy’ which relates to sea travel – a concept that becomes relevant later in the narrative. The ideas wrap around each other, feed into each other: I feel like we’re gathering speed. On land, on water, floating on air; so many ways to travel in a body, over bodies.
Also: the difficulties of communicating between generations! Streaming solves this, but to work without corrupting the free associations of the organic brain the streamer lies in a dormant state of non-influence unless accessed. It provides information, but it does not extrapolate. Are we, truly, then, in communication with all that has gone before, or is this a one-way process? I find this to be a really interesting reflection between ages.
Reflections on the face of the water. Ahoy.
23 Is this a suggestion of a multicultural hub? The city could be seen as a central point of experience – all human life was there. People arrived, swelled its numbers, fed into its streets and buildings. The crowded city as a destination that draws in both the great and the gullible exists as a narrative predating the Age of Riches. Watch Stupid State of Mind With The Big Three Million – An Exercise in Artificial Group Think to gain an approximated experience of city life (CIT23994374).
24 Spires have a religious connotation from earlier eras that stretch into the Age of Riches, often corrupted to represent a really tall, pointed building. That usage persists to this day; for instance, the Unity Spire project of the Age of Curation. Some ideas link us throughout time! It’s hard for me to picture the Spire in this document as anything but a portentous place, filled with meaning for Fairly, for that is how the Unity Spire (that symbol of global human/streamer accomplishment) seems to me in my time. I feel bound to her by this concept, because it represents the beginning and end of one kind of journey.
25 Heroes must also make foolish mistakes – the perfect hero would hold little interest for those who live in an imperfect world, such as Fairly. Perhaps this is why quest narratives are no longer popular in our age; we would have to find a way to empathise with discord when we have sacrificed so much to eradicate it.
26 The beginning of grasping the rules of the game as Fairly’s life expands into the concept of the city. She continues to change, but what about her remains the same?
I was twelve years in body, on a walking holiday along the coast with my mother, both of us using our legs, feeling them tire. It was a good feeling. She was asking me about my socialisation classes, and how they were progressing. We stopped and ate apples. I looked far out to sea, past the energy farms, to that clear blue space, and I thought: I can be anything. I can become anything.
27 If cha is tea, then what is coffee? See: java, dirt, joe, mud. Muddy puddles? Muddy intentions? And what is cycling? Upcycling, downcycling, cyclic weather. Cycles of thought. Round and round in muddy circles.
28 Space flight! Yes, the hub of the science fiction adventure and the cornerstone of twenty-second century disparity politics. ‘Those who can, do it in space’ was a global advertisement campaign slogan in 2175 (as the rush to escape the ramifications intensified for those still invested in decaying financial systems) but the data I’ve accessed so far suggests that routine commercial space flight was not really viable at this time – a realisation that dawned globally after the Moon Base Meltdown of 2186, in which a number of ‘superheroes’ died while trying to save the president’s granddaughter. I like to view it as a dream of escape tying back to earlier ideals of open spaces/vast plains of adventure. (See: Westerns, seafaring, expansion goals under LLP39560395)
The contentious era of space flight lost its grip on fiction/non-fiction by the end of the twenty-second century to be replaced briefly by the idea of instant matter relocation. No physical evidence of achieving this (or being altered at an atomic level to become a ‘superhero’) remains; over 300,000 dedicated groups of curators work in this area alone in the hope of finding evidence. Perhaps the stream is a superhero, searching for its ancestors? I like that idea. Super evolution.
Why did space flight lose its gleam? The build-up of space junk, the realisation of the impossibility of conquering the distance involved, the sheer expense involved, fear of alien invasion: all these factors have been blamed. But imagine. Imagine taking to the sky, and beyond, to the unknowable. Freedom. The word means so many things to so many people. I’m not sure why it comes to my mind now.
Freedom.
When I thought: I could be anything… did that include becoming a hero, super or otherwise?
See Chan, P.F., Caped Chronology (CAC06978900) for further insights into how aspects of ‘superhero’ culture infiltrated, then dominated, mainstream discourse, creating the unsolvable problem of the verisimilitude of its own origin story.
29 Is Fairly an idiot? She is lost/we are lost. If she is, we all are. The breathing man follows her. Perhaps he follows us all. I was in a sculpture garden, touching materials shaped into meaning, a few days after first reading this document. I put my hands on a rough, round stone with a hole through its centre. It was hard, black. I felt I could finally put a name to the feeling that has dogged me. Something is wrong: this feeling transcends time, links us all. Something is wrong with me (us) and I don’t know how to explain it, let alone put it right. Is this how the reader is meant to feel? Does this emotion span the ages?
30 Even if she is an idiot, she has learned to look upon others with scepticism. Change is happening. I can’t always see it, but I must believe it. I’m changing. The document is changing me.
31 Yuck. Allergies. Problems of the body. It would not have been at all unlikely for Fairly to exhibit several symptoms including excessive sneezing, coughing, a tight throat or chest, itchy eyes, or rashes. Imagine attempting to live with all that on a daily basis. It’s possible that physical discomfort was so prevalent for urban populations that they simply ceased to catalogue it, in the main. Or possibly it did not fit with personal ideals of heroism. This might also explain why many documents already investigated do not mention online/instantaneous communication, choosing to ignore it although it was global at this point. That which is ubiquitous hardly seems worth a mention, and isn’t a heroic issue. Fairly is given the additional challenge of only being able to access communication on specific occasions through the chime; would a quest with all the help one can get be a useless endeavour?
How, then, could one realistically become a quester then – or now? If I want to undertake my own quest, what could that look like? I feel robbed of opportunity.
32 Cha transmute from dead material to living creatures. Back and forth from fantasy to reality they hop. I came across an interesting concept that might apply: purity. Not just innocence, in that time frame, but also a further, fuzzier meaning that is hard to describe. I don’t think they were ever considered ‘peak pure’ (cyber language: a dark forest of meaning) as they do not dominate cyber culture. For further discussion see We Can Haz Emotional Significance by FRGJ CHG (RAB39335558).
33 Contrary to what Fairly thinks here, I don’t really think it would have been a surprise to the reader in any preceding human age that cute/pure creatures die horribly in both fictions and in the real world. Animal cruelty was abolished globally in 2203 following scientific advancement in agriculture/growth culture that revolutionised farming techniques and, together with capture tech and organic replenishment, began the land reclamation projects that opened the gateway to the reformation of nation states. Before that, only the truly sheltered (further study in variations of richness VOR45938058) could have claimed to be unaware of mass animal abuse. ‘History is the greatest horror’ – The Vampire Reclamation Project VRP49670076. (It’s a great quote, but I wouldn’t advise getting too close to the VRP unless you like bite marks on your body. Having an organic form can create all sorts of weird urges, sometimes.)
Current organic life laws allow projects of genetic reclamation to take place – but only for those animals who can be successfully incorporated into existing reserves without compromising their instincts/behaviours. This means I may never see a world with a totally ‘free’ Bengal tiger or great white shark. This remains a source of constant friction addressed by the spire-based streams. The dialogue continues.
34 I can’t find this document. Plus, the ridiculousness of looking at some dodgy old document to try to find personal answers! (Forgive a joke at my own expense there.) This library (as a physical representation of knowledge deemed unknowable) embodies the Magical Manifestation of Knowledge theory expounded by DR Fedlow in What Book? Where? (MMK29555960).
35 At this moment Fairly sounds like a lecturer I had in my second year of Curation, as part of socialisation. I would have been fifteen, in organic years? ‘Stop dreaming of a better world,’ he said to me, when checking my early attempts at understanding documents of the past (I had the bad habit of looking for ways we could take ideas to apply them to our future). ‘We’re already in the better world, as long as you realise that’s what it is. When you aim higher, you lower the ground you stand on.’ If Fairly does not dream, then she will not strive. That’s right: she’s definitely telling lies. Her unreliability established, how can we believe a word she writes? (Further question for consideration: does that matter? I have no idea what I’m doing. What am I doing?)
36 I am deep inside the story, too; is this the true moment of no return? Even if she was to turn around right now and march back, putting her feet precisely where she walked, she would be a different person upon her arrival. And even if I stop this personal project now, I will still be altered by this narrative. Nothing seems quite so solid anymore. I’m different, she’s different. We are linked!
37 Mechanisms of illumination once more – how could she have such faith in devices? How can she find faith in anything? How on earth does a person live in that time and space, in conflict, in loneliness, in pain? I can only look back at that time and wonder. The process of understanding the Age of Riches is, I fear, beyond us all, because we will never know what it feels like to be the epicentre of an ocean in turmoil, unable to reach higher ground, unable to find any perspective on that experience.
Can any time know another?
If not, what is the point of history?
38 Shipwreck/abandonment documents cross fact/fiction, engaging imagination freely – creating both apprehension and desire (SHW33049508).
And guilt. Guilt. How will she live with it? She’ll move. Maybe that’s what journeys are for. To move away from the person you were when you were standing still.
39 As mentioned in my introduction, puzzles/codes feature in the document in numerous ways, both for Fairly to solve, and – I think – for me to solve. But I can’t, I can’t, I’m not up to this task. I never should have started it. I’m trapped.
40 She was swept away because of Fairly!
I already know she’s a liar. I wonder if she really can find herself, or lead me to any real answers. If she can’t admit responsibility for anything, how can I allow her to be responsible for helping me?
41 A ‘rude’ word. It’s a bit of a shock to come across one here, only because that doesn’t fit how I was thinking of Fairly (but I was wrong! I will admit it, even if she won’t). Why does she use it now? It feels like a call to action.
Some historical context via the stream: The concept of some words being unacceptable in certain company has been argued to stem from the use of language as a gatekeeping device/social stricture. As communication technology advanced and the est. 7,100 languages in daily use around the world in that age began to freely mingle and evolve, the explosion of ‘rude’ words eventually rendered the concept obsolete. Bluntly put, ‘rude’ words were a victim of their own success. Mjoubi argues that the decline of the idea of the unsayable impacts upon the idea of the undoable, eroding both, until rudimentary moral library management via the Magnaman method begins to separate the concepts at the end of the age (FUK01002301).
The stream misses something I have found. Rude words still work! Weird.
42 How wonderful it must have been to live in a time when a group consensus existed about history, rather than a hole that we try to fill with the things we think we understand. It was an illusion, no doubt, but a good and comforting one.
43 Another birthday party moment! Fairly’s life exists in segmentation. 381 words, section after section, month after month, birthday after birthday. I can identify with her, here. The recent global accord to abandon longevity treatments in favour of quality of life initiatives means that the body must cease on its seventieth birthday. There is seen to be no perceived benefit to consciousness enclosed in ailing flesh – but what about what suffering can teach us? Surely it has meaning.
Personally, I voted against this accord, and have therefore been offered a place in a Negatory Tract. I don’t think I want to take it up. Why reject everything about this society that works on the basis of one held belief? Besides, I should make more of my organic life. I should. I know I should. Sitting here working on this document night and day: I’m missing so many opportunities to move.
44 Again, no evidence of either of these towns existing in reality. Are locations real until we visit them? Does a tree fall in the woods etc? Thanks, ancient scholars, for pointing out that nothing has ever seemed quite real to anyone. At least I’m not alone in that. Last night a crow tapped on my window, like an omen, like a… signpost. I thought it was the breathing man. A change is coming. I can’t escape it.
45 I used to play hide and seek too, at socialisation. We were all encouraged to get to know our bodies and their capabilities, and part of that involved time spent just running around and playing physical games. It satisfies both growing body and mind. For the mind is a growth process too – the human/streaming synthesis taught us that. A stream placed in a baby’s body leads to no division between them in the formation of consciousness. To put it simply – I am not a ‘we’. I am just ‘me’. The stream inside me has had previous experiences in bodies, under different names, just as the flesh had direct descendants. Those people are not me either. We grow into our own forms, every time.
Some things remain; they outlast time. And some things cannot be outrun.
46 Would you have missed it? It leads the way into the next section of the document in which Fairly moves into an even more surreal realm. This next part reads to me like a nightmare. Unnumbered, uncontrolled.
47 If we are here, then so is he! There is no escape, not even in the high, rarefied achievement of peace. I’ve given my dream of a numberless world a name: it’s the breathing man. My breathing man.
48 I breathe in a great world. I know this because I have studied other times, other places, and there is not one single human being who would not have preferred this version. All major problems solved, peace achieved: what use the quest? But there must be a quest, there must be, because beyond the role of the hero, the achievement of greatness, there is also the small voice within which says: What am I here for? And if that is not a valid question by Dr Magnaman’s standards then I can’t keep faith with him any longer.
49 I’ve never actually been out on the water, for all my love of seafaring. Ahoy. They say the best way to see the Unity Spire is from the lake surrounding it. Water is cold and fresh and clean on the skin. Water, fire, air, life. Today I’m wearing a warm woollen garment made from well-cared-for sheep, and it is just a little itchy. It’s made that way, deliberately. Just a little itchiness. Maybe a body should never be without it.
50 The trick is not in following the road, but in finding the road in the first place – yes, the question, the question is all-important! We all travel to find the question, not the answer! Faith in the Magnaman method is restored. Reading of the past is as close as we will ever get to time travel. There are moments where the words dissolve and there is no barrier between the thoughts and feelings on the page and in your life. I understand. I claim the incomprehensible as my own experience, for what part of any of it – real or imagined – could anyone say makes sense?
51 ‘Love at First Sight’ is one of the key concepts that dominates and perpetuates itself throughout this age, love being one of those ideal states of pleasure/pain in which everyone was meant to be, in some way. One could be in it, or out of it. 381 is love. The interiority of the consciousness, trapped in the wanting, needing body, meant that the feelings of the other party/parties involved were considered relevant, but essentially unknowable. See: Optimal Suffering – States of Ecstasy and Swiping Right by the RNA (DDD45922294).
Will I fall in love myself, one day? I don’t have forever.
52 If I do fall in love, I hope it lasts longer than it does for Fairly. Calculations of variance of length of love suggests ‘love’ (see the 478,973,003 metatags currently listed under Romantic Love) could last for any period of time, from seconds to centuries – beyond life, into death, even before streaming synthesis was achieved. Another great big adventure for the brave to enjoy.
53 There’s a possible idea for further study, here: the sayings of Fairly’s mother cross-catalogued and compared with identified idioms of the time. Or maybe organic life is too fucking short.
