PaxNoctis
July 6th, 2004, 03:50 PM
Okay... this story is wierd. I sense that there's SOMETHING here that would be cool to read, but at the same time I don't think I've ever come close to hitting it. Other than weak writing, what do you think about this?
And I love exchanging critiques, so just gimme a link to a story if you want a return favor ;).
-Pax
----------------------
Designing Drugs
Back in the day, they only had a cruel faximile of the process I use to make intoxicants. Maybe it was some dirty redneck in his garage, using tools caked with foul residue. Or maybe a pharmacology student, mixing up his own custom blends during off-hours and using his friends as a testing bed. There is a lack of elegance here. Mixing chemicals in improper quantities, contaminations sneaking this way and that. No no... what I do is art, and what they did is the meanest and most insignificant form of science.
I reach over absently and grab the last remaining slice of pizza. I think it's a day old, it might be two, but nothing's growing on it, and I'm too far gone into The Zone to care about getting up to get something fresher to keep my meat fueled. Ask anyone who programs computers, and they'll tell you about The Zone, that place between time and space, where the Zen-like no mind takes over and the code flows from some perfect, patterned place inside. Most code, it doesn't work the first time around. There's all these subtle little nuanced bugs that relate to some obscure function of the memory handler.
Not so for code that comes from The Zone...
It's perfect. It flows like poetry in places, elegant and beautiful, an arrangement of logical elements that adds up to a greater synergy than anything else in kind.
I've been in The Zone for about thirty-six hours. Oblivious to the world around me, living in a constructed world, the compiler in my head that can flawlessly execute source code. I've managed to stave off the demons of tiredness and frustration with, first caffiene, then energy supplements, and finally a steadily growing intake of marijuana.
The latter changes things. Still perfect, the code pushes further towards an artform, single operations that serve multiple purposes. An interconnected net that grows ever more fragile and complex, wonderful for the fact that it does not break under stress.
I've finished four. Three still left in my TODO file.
The one I'm working on is tricky. In the digital age, when cyberspace becomes virtual reality and the internet moves, wholesale, into 3D, there's a new kind of designer drug. Experience junkies, mystics and the new breed of pusher all want something new and customized, a digital trip the likes of which have never been seen before.
I've written the heroin brown-out... A long, languid, looping spiral, recursive functions working to slow down certain thoughts.
I've written the cocaine high, a cresendo, multiple threads attacking the neurons to activity, a surging symphony. Monitoring threads shut down any thoughts of imperfection, and for those glorious few moments the program is executing, the subject can attain a kind of mental immortality.
LSD was not easy, but I've written it as well.
And once I ran the gamut of existing experiences, I started to design more, new things, some made to specification, some brewed out of the dark places in my mind.
Hallucinogenics are the in-thing this month. The orders have been piling up. And at prices ranging from ten-thousand to a hundred-thousand a pop, I do more than alright for myself.
This one though... It's all about plunging into nightmare. The client who asked for it isn't one of my usual, and I get the feeling this is more going to be used as an instrument of torture than a pleasure trip. By this time, however, in order to do my job, I've divorced myself of morality. A trip is a trip, and that's that.
Problem is, we bury our nightmares down deep, where the ego can forget about them. Rather than facing these things were fear, we hide from them, and pretend that we're brave and well-adjusted. It's a great psychological mechanism, but it's a damn pain in the ass from my standpoint, because I have to go looking for them.
The mind is a very complex place, and mining it for information isn't easy. Making it doubly hard is that I use myself as a test subject.
This is one of the big-ticket ones, or I'd never have taken it on.
Having spent three hours devising a way to populate a data-structure with neural paths least accessed, I'm ready to test it. I'm already plugged in, the latest and sleekest neural-interface sticking into a jack just behind my right ear. A lot of people with less cash use bulky, ugly jacks with long cables that call to mind cthonic, tentacled horrors. Not me. Mine looks basically like a headphone plug, and it slips in easy.
My program will find those things the subject thinks about least and begin examining them, dismissing those with little emotional attachment. I estimate that will leave about ten million neural pathways, which will then have to be further examined, finding the worst and most horrible.
I queue up a playlist. First I'm going with a strong hit of Genocide, one of my favorites, and also one that I deal myself, exclusively. Then the new one, and a good, slow burn after that.
I hit play, and my mind bends as reality fades away.
.
...
It begins as nothing.
My mind - a wasteland. The dead corpses of a million thoughts strewn in emptiness. Nothing.
I am Zen.
This is the quiet place between the conscious and the subconscious. This is wakeful sleep. This is my Genocide program taking hostage my mind and dragging it through a trip.
Time is thought, and there is no thought, so there is no time.
That which is not passes. How much I cannot say.
And then, it is there, tantalizing just out reach. A thought, a memory of a summer day and me and her dancing. Not so pale then, not so fat. Dancing and the smell of flowers and things in the height of their glory. She laughs, the sun catching that hollow place in the base of her throat, blonde hair streaming behind like silk.
Love.
I am left to contemplate the memory of this moment with nothing else in my mind. None of the usual mental monologues and subconsious messages which are our constant companions. I experience it again, just like the first time, my mind dedicated to nothing but recalling every touch, taste, sound, smell and sight.
It continues to pass.
More thoughts. No longer just the memory of that day, now there is more. I remember who she is, and it pains me and thrills me. I remember also myself. I remember Time.
It is gone. My mind all of numbers and figures. This is Genocide building to it's crescendo, firing every neuron. Like some overburened lake, my mind floods with every thought and experience I've ever had, all in one drawn out cacophany of sensation.
Disharmony. A mad orchestra of fiddlers, all playing a different tune in a different key. It is noise, but in the noise there is beauty and madness.
I hold her - "... fries with that." - knowing it is the last time. unsigned char *ReturnNeuralThreshold (NN n, int nIndex). Why so much hatred? Summer sun. Never a child. We knew that, but didn't care. "I NEED it! Come ON man!" Knew each other better than anyone ever could. My father. Burning flesh (mine). Death, funeral. Black clothes. Red flowers. Contrast. Elegance. Yin. Yang. Brother. Sister.
There is more. Words fail.
And then it ends, and for a brief moment I retain awareness of the room around me, the computer monitor blinking as it debugs my program's execution. I'm about to get hit with the new one. I know this, and I fear it, and I would have cursed, but the moment of awareness is a thing of milliseconds and there is no time.
It's like opium, at first. While it analyzes the mind it sedates the subject, I am docile, a quiet thing that no one else will ever know.
When it hit me. It hit me hard.
It's not clean. It's not supposed to be. Most of my highs, they're HIGHs. You come up, all the unpleasant, violating nausea is suppressed. The program comes on gentle, takes your mind on a ride and courteously lets you off at the next stop. Not this one. It's like rape, like something phallic and barbed and thrusting. It comes and it hunkers, and it starts to conjure up a litany of the forbidden thoughts, the darknesses, secret desires.
Things that never happened...
I'm ****ing my mother. Her bucking and moaning and writhing.
Gone.
And things that did...
"****in' GEEK!"
Punched in the stomach, pain and bile rising, burning in the back of my throat. Fear, naked fear and helplessness. My arms held behind me, feeble strength insufficient to break the vice-like grip.
Later, my pants stolen, ashamed and small and afraid. Hot tears leaving thermal trails on cold cheeks.
Gone.
Tentacles writhing, grasping. A vaginal mouth, ringed with fangs and snarling in fury.
Summer.
Gone.
Cold. So cold. Deadly cold.
Heart slowing.
Cold.
Gone.
Burning. My hands. GOD my hands, the pain. Burning stench in my nostrils, strong hands gripping my forearms, holding me down in the hearth. My father's voice, like a distant preacher man. My sins. Lust. Greed. Incest.
Gone.
Distant memory of my mother's death. I was six. Her body pitted out and emptied by sickness, and my small, child-pudgy hand reaching, feeling this cold vessel that had once contained a bright soul.
Mortality.
Gone.
I'm jacking off in front of God.
And I guess this one comes from something a long time away, and make a mental note in this timeless moment of calm to put a time-verification mechanism on the program.
Gone.
And I love exchanging critiques, so just gimme a link to a story if you want a return favor ;).
-Pax
----------------------
Designing Drugs
Back in the day, they only had a cruel faximile of the process I use to make intoxicants. Maybe it was some dirty redneck in his garage, using tools caked with foul residue. Or maybe a pharmacology student, mixing up his own custom blends during off-hours and using his friends as a testing bed. There is a lack of elegance here. Mixing chemicals in improper quantities, contaminations sneaking this way and that. No no... what I do is art, and what they did is the meanest and most insignificant form of science.
I reach over absently and grab the last remaining slice of pizza. I think it's a day old, it might be two, but nothing's growing on it, and I'm too far gone into The Zone to care about getting up to get something fresher to keep my meat fueled. Ask anyone who programs computers, and they'll tell you about The Zone, that place between time and space, where the Zen-like no mind takes over and the code flows from some perfect, patterned place inside. Most code, it doesn't work the first time around. There's all these subtle little nuanced bugs that relate to some obscure function of the memory handler.
Not so for code that comes from The Zone...
It's perfect. It flows like poetry in places, elegant and beautiful, an arrangement of logical elements that adds up to a greater synergy than anything else in kind.
I've been in The Zone for about thirty-six hours. Oblivious to the world around me, living in a constructed world, the compiler in my head that can flawlessly execute source code. I've managed to stave off the demons of tiredness and frustration with, first caffiene, then energy supplements, and finally a steadily growing intake of marijuana.
The latter changes things. Still perfect, the code pushes further towards an artform, single operations that serve multiple purposes. An interconnected net that grows ever more fragile and complex, wonderful for the fact that it does not break under stress.
I've finished four. Three still left in my TODO file.
The one I'm working on is tricky. In the digital age, when cyberspace becomes virtual reality and the internet moves, wholesale, into 3D, there's a new kind of designer drug. Experience junkies, mystics and the new breed of pusher all want something new and customized, a digital trip the likes of which have never been seen before.
I've written the heroin brown-out... A long, languid, looping spiral, recursive functions working to slow down certain thoughts.
I've written the cocaine high, a cresendo, multiple threads attacking the neurons to activity, a surging symphony. Monitoring threads shut down any thoughts of imperfection, and for those glorious few moments the program is executing, the subject can attain a kind of mental immortality.
LSD was not easy, but I've written it as well.
And once I ran the gamut of existing experiences, I started to design more, new things, some made to specification, some brewed out of the dark places in my mind.
Hallucinogenics are the in-thing this month. The orders have been piling up. And at prices ranging from ten-thousand to a hundred-thousand a pop, I do more than alright for myself.
This one though... It's all about plunging into nightmare. The client who asked for it isn't one of my usual, and I get the feeling this is more going to be used as an instrument of torture than a pleasure trip. By this time, however, in order to do my job, I've divorced myself of morality. A trip is a trip, and that's that.
Problem is, we bury our nightmares down deep, where the ego can forget about them. Rather than facing these things were fear, we hide from them, and pretend that we're brave and well-adjusted. It's a great psychological mechanism, but it's a damn pain in the ass from my standpoint, because I have to go looking for them.
The mind is a very complex place, and mining it for information isn't easy. Making it doubly hard is that I use myself as a test subject.
This is one of the big-ticket ones, or I'd never have taken it on.
Having spent three hours devising a way to populate a data-structure with neural paths least accessed, I'm ready to test it. I'm already plugged in, the latest and sleekest neural-interface sticking into a jack just behind my right ear. A lot of people with less cash use bulky, ugly jacks with long cables that call to mind cthonic, tentacled horrors. Not me. Mine looks basically like a headphone plug, and it slips in easy.
My program will find those things the subject thinks about least and begin examining them, dismissing those with little emotional attachment. I estimate that will leave about ten million neural pathways, which will then have to be further examined, finding the worst and most horrible.
I queue up a playlist. First I'm going with a strong hit of Genocide, one of my favorites, and also one that I deal myself, exclusively. Then the new one, and a good, slow burn after that.
I hit play, and my mind bends as reality fades away.
.
...
It begins as nothing.
My mind - a wasteland. The dead corpses of a million thoughts strewn in emptiness. Nothing.
I am Zen.
This is the quiet place between the conscious and the subconscious. This is wakeful sleep. This is my Genocide program taking hostage my mind and dragging it through a trip.
Time is thought, and there is no thought, so there is no time.
That which is not passes. How much I cannot say.
And then, it is there, tantalizing just out reach. A thought, a memory of a summer day and me and her dancing. Not so pale then, not so fat. Dancing and the smell of flowers and things in the height of their glory. She laughs, the sun catching that hollow place in the base of her throat, blonde hair streaming behind like silk.
Love.
I am left to contemplate the memory of this moment with nothing else in my mind. None of the usual mental monologues and subconsious messages which are our constant companions. I experience it again, just like the first time, my mind dedicated to nothing but recalling every touch, taste, sound, smell and sight.
It continues to pass.
More thoughts. No longer just the memory of that day, now there is more. I remember who she is, and it pains me and thrills me. I remember also myself. I remember Time.
It is gone. My mind all of numbers and figures. This is Genocide building to it's crescendo, firing every neuron. Like some overburened lake, my mind floods with every thought and experience I've ever had, all in one drawn out cacophany of sensation.
Disharmony. A mad orchestra of fiddlers, all playing a different tune in a different key. It is noise, but in the noise there is beauty and madness.
I hold her - "... fries with that." - knowing it is the last time. unsigned char *ReturnNeuralThreshold (NN n, int nIndex). Why so much hatred? Summer sun. Never a child. We knew that, but didn't care. "I NEED it! Come ON man!" Knew each other better than anyone ever could. My father. Burning flesh (mine). Death, funeral. Black clothes. Red flowers. Contrast. Elegance. Yin. Yang. Brother. Sister.
There is more. Words fail.
And then it ends, and for a brief moment I retain awareness of the room around me, the computer monitor blinking as it debugs my program's execution. I'm about to get hit with the new one. I know this, and I fear it, and I would have cursed, but the moment of awareness is a thing of milliseconds and there is no time.
It's like opium, at first. While it analyzes the mind it sedates the subject, I am docile, a quiet thing that no one else will ever know.
When it hit me. It hit me hard.
It's not clean. It's not supposed to be. Most of my highs, they're HIGHs. You come up, all the unpleasant, violating nausea is suppressed. The program comes on gentle, takes your mind on a ride and courteously lets you off at the next stop. Not this one. It's like rape, like something phallic and barbed and thrusting. It comes and it hunkers, and it starts to conjure up a litany of the forbidden thoughts, the darknesses, secret desires.
Things that never happened...
I'm ****ing my mother. Her bucking and moaning and writhing.
Gone.
And things that did...
"****in' GEEK!"
Punched in the stomach, pain and bile rising, burning in the back of my throat. Fear, naked fear and helplessness. My arms held behind me, feeble strength insufficient to break the vice-like grip.
Later, my pants stolen, ashamed and small and afraid. Hot tears leaving thermal trails on cold cheeks.
Gone.
Tentacles writhing, grasping. A vaginal mouth, ringed with fangs and snarling in fury.
Summer.
Gone.
Cold. So cold. Deadly cold.
Heart slowing.
Cold.
Gone.
Burning. My hands. GOD my hands, the pain. Burning stench in my nostrils, strong hands gripping my forearms, holding me down in the hearth. My father's voice, like a distant preacher man. My sins. Lust. Greed. Incest.
Gone.
Distant memory of my mother's death. I was six. Her body pitted out and emptied by sickness, and my small, child-pudgy hand reaching, feeling this cold vessel that had once contained a bright soul.
Mortality.
Gone.
I'm jacking off in front of God.
And I guess this one comes from something a long time away, and make a mental note in this timeless moment of calm to put a time-verification mechanism on the program.
Gone.