Friday 10 June 2016

The Last Five Years
[this post is in response to a comment you can view here]


When I look back on the last 5 years of my life, I feel ashamed about the amount of things I managed to accomplish in that amount of time. 


Five years ago, I could tell myself that I've accomplished a lot in the last five years. I spent 4 of those years in college learning, and being productive and loving myself, and the year after college going through a poignant life-changing paradigm shift that involved a shady apartment in the city, hating myself, and lots of pot.


Five years ago, I could tell myself that it was okay to say, "I have no fucking idea what I'm doing with my life." Today I still don't know, and I'm reminded of my mother, who use to say all the time when she was still in her fifties that she still didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up. I thought this was ridiculous - why didn't she just go after what she wanted? 


I guess I thought I would be super secure in my life choices by this point. And in a way, I suppose I am: I know now that I will always want more, or less - something I don't have. Even the most "successful" people don't have the perfect life. The perfect life doesn't exist.


... Or does it? 

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Mostly because I feel guilty for not feeling content with my life as it is, because really when it comes down to it, things aren't going too shabbily.  

But there's still that part of me that wonders at enlightenment. I'm realizing that everything I've thought about happiness, my entire life, has been about the tangible evidence I can drudge up and collect, and put up on a shelf to look at and occasionally show others.  My house, my car, my job, my husband... even my name - I want people to recognize my name, to see it in their heads. I want people to see it and know that I'm smarter than they are.

But what about inner peace? I'm starting to think that the road to happiness might be linked to something within the human essence - something that, despite all the material things one owns, keeps your chi and all that bullshit centered, content... happy.


I've heard that there are still some hidden Buddhist and Hindu (Eastern religions) sanctuaries north of the old Indian subcontinent, hidden deep in the hills of the Himalayas. And I can't believe I'm saying this - but I'm thinking about escaping.

*******

I'm very confident of my secure server and therefore this blog, which I have obviously kept secret and not told anyone about... Until now, of course. But I can't help but think about all the movies I've seen where I would always be SCREAMING at the lead dumbass character for having some sort of stupid bullshit dead giveaway thing that's so clearly going to get them caught.  1984, Winston's diary anyone?  But (K)no(w) Subject is the last chronicle, the only memory I have of my life before 2012.




I stopped writing (K)no(w) Subject shortly after the attacks began.It was really ironic, because people will tell you that they knew whatwas gonna happen, that they knew how it was all gonna play out, but we were right. It all started with a poem: 

And before the race is built anew
A silver serpent comes to view
And spew out men of like unknown
To mingle with the earth now grown
Cold from its heat and these men can
Enlighten the minds of future man.
To intermingle and show them how
To live and love and thus endow
The children with the second sight.
A natural thing so that they might
Grow graceful, humble and when they do
The Golden Age will start anew.

Mother Shipton, as she was called, lived during the 15th and 16th centuries and was a crazy prophetess who nobody really believed... until centuries later, when her visions - which were in the form of poetry - seemed to predict horrible events like the Great Plague, the fate of the Spanish Armada, and the Great Fire of London.


My good friend Mickey had the research and evidence to back it up, and eventually Pat, my husband-to-be, came on the scene with factual information to add to our theory, and I didn't really do much except summarize and draw conclusions, bridge gaps in the theory, etc. We did find this:
























"Alien" attacks. The key was 'interdimensional beings' - we never saw them, and still don't to this day. They operate on another pane, move between dimensions that humans can't even begin to see with their eyes. They can travel billions of lightyears in an instant just by thinking about it - imagine the chaos that would ensue if the human brainwere given that power. 


It wasn't ugly. It was just... unsettling. Entire buildings, huge structures, people... so many people, disappearing - evaporating - into thin air. Fewer at first, then more and more. Until suddenly, the world was gone.



That was December 23, 2012, three and a half years ago. We found out about the government's plan in January of that year. Pat and I weren't together at the time in any capacity, but he had been living in Chicago and getting pretty prominent as a stage combat choreographer as well as a real fighter - he was trained in hybrid martial arts and won tournaments and stuff. I had known Pat in college and welived in different states at the time, but he had always been that type of person who random shit happens to. And of course, one day he gets a letter from the United States government. One thing leads to another, he gets recruited as part of an elite team of assassins run by the Department of Defense - which has built his team's top secret base 84 miles northwest of Las Vegas Nevada, right next to the famous Area 51.

*******

I really don't know why. He says it's because he loves me, but at the time he was really nothing more than a friend. But he called me randomly in the middle of the night one night. I hadn't talked to him in months, time just gets away from you. Pat was always calling me up at super random times though, like the time he called... it's been years ago now. I was super excited: "Hey Pat! How's it going, I haven't heard from you in forever..." 
"Hey." He says shortly, sort of in hushed tones."
"Hey, what's---"
"I just have one question for you," he says hurriedly.
"...Uh, oka--"
"Can I use your bathroom?"


And me, puzzled for a split second but long enough to turn my head slowly and see him walking up to my front door through the window. I get up to let him in, stunned, happy to see him because we had been great friends at one time, and open the door. He rushes past me, goes upstairs to my bathroom, and doesn't come out for a solid  seventeen minutes. He says he had to make a phone call.

Anyway, he calls me, a few years later than the bathroom incident, but in the middle of the night, and tells me of this government conspiracy to wipe out the major populations of the world. Now, Pat can be pretty crazy. He can also tell a joke really really straight-faced, and I'm pretty gullible anyway. But even I thought he was totally joshing me. He wasn't, obviously, and this story is already getting too long, so I'll just tell you that he eventually convinced me. Good thing too, cause it saved my life, and Mickey's, since I had to bring him with me because he was my roomie and best friend and all that jazz.

Mickey and I had just moved to Los Angeles from Denver to pursue our acting careers, and things were looking up for us. But you better bet when it's the end of the world your dreams don't mean a goddamn thing anymore - it's survival of the fittest, always has been. And I got a kick in the ass and had to get it in gear or perish. 

We left in the middle of the night and were on the run for a while. Pat gave us the locations of the takeovers, and so we just... ran away.We lived in an old camping tent, moving every night, hiding out in caves and forests. I thought there was no way they wouldn't be able to find us, but they never did - maybe they never cared. But eventually, we devised a plan.

*******

Pat and I got married, three years ago yesterday actually. Mickey and I changed our names and became siblings. Once we were with Pat, they protected us. They prized Pat, and he became Lieutenant of the S-9 Troops pretty early on. We moved to New York City shortly after everything had been rebuilt. The EDs, the extradimensionals, rebuilt a brand new New York, hauntingly pristine and hematite grey, and completely devoid of anything making it look remarkably human at all. Of course the poverty-striken, piss-smelling alleys are gone, but so is the Statue of Liberty. Central Park. The Met.


Of course the EDs have made everything completely sustainable, so every system on Earth functions the way it should. We don't burn fossil fuels anymore, or build dams or divert rivers - the hole in the stratosphere was patched up. Everything is natural -  but it doesn't look natural. There aren't rolling savannas, miles of tropical rainforest, or rocky mountains - this is New York City, so there's a grey ocean and sand - what apparently is the most economical and beneficial terrain for this area.


The EDs run everything, so naturally they've annihilated every large human land population. Only those who can farm or hunt in small tribes or even single families are left among the world's population. And there are those cities like ours, created and run by the EDs. Cities of countries that are part of what is still NATO. Of course the Middle East got vaporized in its entirety due to the United States' conflicts with it. Though I have to have hope that there are still some Muslin colonies living on their own out there somewhere. 


Under the EDs, there are no weapons, though there is no weapon control. There is no violence, though there is no criminal justice system. There is only peace... but I suppose it is a peace invoked by fear.

*******

I became a writer for the government. If you can still call it that... it's more like the absence of government. Fear keeps people obedient. But everybody that works in a major city colony works for the "government."  So I write. I go to work and sit in a cubicle and type up messages that come to me via all sorts of inputs, and I sort them and filter them and retype them, and they are sent out to the correct people. That's basically how it works anyway, although "typing" has become somewhat of an obsolete format... it's too much to go into though, since I am typing here - the description wouldn't translate correctly.



Mickey has always been wise beyond his years and waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. He met Clive at the Department, and they're happily committed without being too committed. Clive is the only one I've ever met who can almost follow him when he goes off on his complex theories about life and love and everything else. Mickey had always secretly wanted the "New World Order" - he's always been a survivor, so it makes sense that he's mostly happy and successful with the way things are. Clive is great, in my opinion. They share a common view on the world, and for Mickey that's damn near impossible to come by.


Pat... is Pat. I have grown to love him, in a way I might have thought possible only in another universe. But it's like we're in another universe, really, so that's probably why it's worked out. And the more that I look at him, the more sexy I think he is. 


I guess you might wonder a little more about what he does, but to be honest, I'm not really sure... and I don't want to know. Some things are better not knowing, I'm realizing... He truly believes in the good of the world, as it is now. He's truly happy following his duty to his world, to what's left of his race. 



BACK TO THE PRESENT
So here I am. I told you I was thinking about "escaping." I want to go to a Buddhist town, and talk with the monks, and the people, and reach a state of happiness within myself, within my soul. I believe in the soul, I believe in faith. God is mostly dead today, with the presence and knowledge of the EDs, but I think that spirituality can still exist. There can still be a reason for our presence here, for our lives, so precious.

I don't know whether or not to tell Pat. If I tell him I'm leaving, he could reject me and hate me and even worse, he could report me for treason and I would be made to vanish, most likely. Never reaching the enlightenment that I seek.

But he would be sad that I left in the middle of the night, without even saying goodbye. Would he wish he could have come with me? Or would he think it was better this way, so that he didn't know I was a traitor and can't be blamed? He sacrificed so much for me to be alive today... Don't I owe him at least an explanation?

*******

The decision has to be made tonight. I'm going either way... after releasing this post as a message to everyone in the department. Then I'm going to send it to all the departments of all the major cities left. I knew my job here would come in handy one day. They think it's better that the world go on thinking that aliens attacked us and took over on their own, without our own people turning against us. I think they're wrong.

Or maybe, since the world has gotten so crazy, I'm just craving a revolution. I'm still here, still alive... doesn't that mean that I'm meant to do something?! I'll have to hide for the rest of my life. But it will make my life finally mean something.

But the question is: does Pat want to spend the rest of his life with me?

*******

Well, this is it. I can't let you know the outcome. I'm sorry, but it's too dangerous. This will be my last correspondence with the "digital" world. I surrender all my titles and occupations, my names, both new and old, and hope that some sort of unknown force is working with me as I venture onward in search of peace.

And Pat, I know you'll read this eventually. I hope you decide to come with me.