Surreal Dystopia Pt 3 - Chapters 13-19

Chapter 13 - Paradise Lost
After a lengthy subway ride, and a lengthier bus, Paul arrived in Andre’s neighbourhood for the first time. They walked down the middle of the street smoking a joint together, discussing the possibility of forming a kind of militia that would help people solve problems together.
“So how will we keep people interested in contributing?” Andre asked, “We can’t pay anyone if we’re not charging money for services.”
“Yeah but that’s the point,” Paul insisted, “there’s no pay but everyone helps everyone else. If the people involved need help with something, they get it, and then they can help someone else when there’s a problem they know how to deal with.”
Andre nodded. “So like, if there’s an electrician who needs plumbing he gets it done by a plumber, for free, but then he provides electrical services to someone else.”
“Exactly. It’s actually a very simple barter system, literally everyone just gets the help they need because they’re willing to return the favour when it’s time.”
This simple concept goes back to before recorded history. Communal living requires that those who have the abilities and knowledge to solve a problem simply do so. Trades and barter are the only concepts necessary in order to keep society functioning.
Economics and money transfer were only perceived as necessary in order to act as a middle man, ensuring that a person who doesn’t need help now is entitled to receive it when they need it, but only to the extent that their previous work entitles them to. This substitution provides some degree of stability but also distorts the value of a person and their services, in a way that builds on itself until it begins to cause economic problems because a person is no longer seen as valuable unless they have enough of this middle man available, instead of them simply being seen as worthy of the support they need.
Communities tend to corrupt when the value of their members is not seen as intrinsic, thus city life deteriorates the simple notions that allowed tribal living to go on for so long. Ultimately this simple substitution concept becomes a barrier to interpersonal behaviours that foster healthy growth and prosperity for the collective as a whole.
Paul’s proposal was to reinstate a system of universal support in which money exchange becomes irrelevant because everyone who is needed to resolve an issue is made available, within reason, and therefore problems simply work themselves out. Since everyone involved is ensured they’ll receive what they need, no one has need of monetary payment.
Systems like this are often seen as threats that undermine established governmental bodies, because they cut out the other middle man: regulatory bodies become irrelevant wastes of time. Most authorities in the modern world do not resolve issues nearly as effectively as a well-organized and self-sustaining community.
“But for real though,” Andre insisted, “there’s no way to get enough people who are reliable and trustworthy. Nowhere near enough of us are really mature or responsible enough to hold this up.”
“But we’ll learn as we go.” Paul didn’t like to limit himself with those kinds of ideas. “Look, I had to teach both my parents how to act like emotionally mature adults. It doesn’t seem to make sense that newcomers can teach their predecessors but it’s actually easy to do if everyone is willing to cooperate. It’s part of how social structures evolve, except that something like this ensures that the community can establish its own direction of growth and make sure everyone stays in line.”
“So basically people who cause problems will be taught how to behave over time?”
“Exactly,” Paul said simply, “there will always be issues that need to be sorted out. That just keeps people being ready to learn. It keeps us motivated to get things right, so everyone else can learn to take care properly.”
Andre understood the idea but he was dubious that it could be done as easily as it sounded like. “I don’t know man, I’m pretty sure that was how we ended up having governments in the first place.”
Paul nodded. “That’s true.” He trailed off, not sure how to respond but it didn’t matter, this was just a preliminary framework. They’d figure it out as they went, if they could just get people on board.
“Anyway, this is my place. You sure you wanna walk home from here?” Andre seemed to think it was dangerous for Paul to be alone here.
“Nah, I’m fine.” After a beating from police who he couldn’t fight back without being arrested, he was fine with a tour through a so-called bad area. “This is a nice neighbourhood, actually, it seems like a good place to chill.”
Andre was skeptical but he wasn’t going to make a big deal of it. “Alright, later bro.”
Paul waved a peace sign and turned around.
He walked back down the centre of the street to where they’d come from. Both sides were covered in black men standing around their cars, talking about work or women or whatever normal men talk about together.
Paul didn’t even know what was normal anymore. He stopped caring a long time ago.
Most of them ignored him, some looked skeptical or suspicious like he might be a cop. Nothing screams ‘undercover’ more than a dude with blue hair wearing a shirt that says ‘Tear Down the System!’
Some of them laughed sarcastically, with a look that suggested he was supposed to be afraid of them, or of being a lone white boy in a neighbourhood like this. He ignored them and kept walking.
Looking around at the houses, he thought, ‘this is a nice area, I wonder how much rent is,’ couldn’t be much if the people living here thought they were impoverished and dangerous.
A group of men approached him. One of them called out, “yo white boy, whatchu doin’ ‘round here?”
He stops in his tracks with a blank look on his face. “Walkin’ through. Why?” He’s been in situations like this before. Loud mouthed assholes acting tough for no reason rarely back up their big talk. All he has to do is show he’s not afraid and sooner or later they’ll back down. Or tell them to fuck off and keep walking. He’ll see how things go.
The guy behind the first one says, “you look a little lost, you need some directions?”
Paul matches the man’s insincere smile but not the concealed scorn. “Thanks, I’m good. Just goin’ through.” The tone of his voice says ‘fuck off.’
They stop in a half circle around him, a typical intimidation tactic for groups of cowards. None of them are going to do anything on their own so they need to feel like they could all move together.
The first guy says, “I just saw a white dude walking down the street alone and thought maybe you was the cops.”
Paul rolls his eyes. “I was walking the other way smoking a joint two minutes ago, did I look like a cop then?” He lights a cigarette and begins his usual tactic of staring the centre man straight in the eye, he could go on like this all day and the other guy wouldn’t do shit.
A man on his left says, “This is a dangerous hood for loud white boys.”
Without looking away from the first guy, Paul responds, “Really? I was just thinkin’ it’s a pretty nice place compared to where I’m from. How much you pay to live here?”
Two of them laugh. Someone on his right says, “Where you from?”
“Mid west, grungy nowhere shit hole with fascists rolling around everywhere.”
The dude he’s staring at says, “a lotta racism out there.”
Without changing his expression Paul says, “a lotta racism in front of me, too. You think you’re better than them?” The question is drowned out by their laughter, no one hears it. He doesn’t bother repeating, it doesn’t matter. This is all just foreplay anyway.
No matter where you go it’s always the same. Groups of idiots think they’re tough together, and stand around waiting for their single target to get scared. ’Til then they’ll just talk more and more aggressively, until they run out of steam and have to admit to themselves they’re not going to do anything. The cops and rednecks in his hometown did the same thing, drunks at bars do it downtown, and fake thugs do it in rough areas.
People who are actually dangerous don’t act like this, so he knows he’s not in danger. Sooner or later he’ll tell them to fuck off, only cops ever respond violently to that.
Someone says, “so you a big tough guy?”
Paul laughs scornfully and glances sideways at the speaker without taking his gaze from the centre. “Y’all’re the ones in a big ass group. Come step up, we’ll see who’s tough one on one, yeah?”
As he goes back to staring down the first guy, he’s asked, “What would you say if I told you to empty your pockets?”
This is the moment he’s been waiting for. That question isn’t a threat, it’s an excuse for not making a threat. “I’d tell you go fuck yourself.” He stands a little straighter and puffs out his chest, a classic animal sign of aggression. None of them do the same.
The dude he’s staring at laughs a little, trying to conceal his discomfort, and glances down. A classic animal sign of intimidation.
A man approaches the group from behind and says, “Guys just let the man move on, he’s minding his own business.” A few of them step back, one or two laugh.
Paul takes the cue and silently shoves his way past the dude he’s been staring at. Yet another group of cowards to add to his list of assholes who don’t know when to stay silent. His brother Phil always told him that’s not a helpful way to think about situations like this, that it normalizes being treated aggressively and standing in confrontation instead of finding peaceful resolutions. Paul doesn’t believe men like this are capable of comprehending peaceful resolutions.
He moves on, no one stops him or says anything. He wants to thank the guy who interfered but it isn’t a good moment, sadly there won’t ever be one.
By the end of the block he’d already forgotten the scenario altogether, and was back to looking around at the houses. “Man this is a nice area,” he said out loud to himself, “Andre always acts like he’s poor for living here, I’d live here for sure.”

The man who interfered, David, was a mechanic who lived in a small but comfortable house down the street and worked out of his garage, helping people in the neighbourhood for whatever they could afford to pay him.
He lived a comfortable life, never having too much more than he needed but it suited him just fine. He’d been raised in this area, lived here his whole life. Everyone around him believed they were victims but he had no illusions about his place in life.
Yes there was racism and economic disparity but he’d chosen to stay there and so did everyone else. Blaming others for that decision puts them in a position of power over you, and you subconsciously begin to believe they control your whole world, when you’re actually just making excuses for your own self-limiting behaviour.
Plenty of his friends from high school had left and gotten better jobs, lived in better areas, some of them were now sending their kids to college. Some of his other high school friends were still in the projects selling drugs, that was their choice.
David had decided a long time ago that he’d rather live here among the people he could best relate to, and help them however he could. A community like this needs people who want to help, who want things to get better and who won’t make excuses for making poor decisions. People who believe in their right to change their own lives, and who will help their brothers and sisters do the same.
He never understood why so many of his neighbours treat white people like the enemy. They just bullied a rocker dude who clearly didn’t see the system as being any better than anyone else here did, someone who clearly wasn’t the enemy and who probably didn’t make any better income than the average local.
He just wants the world to get its head on straight and start treating people like they matter. The solution to that isn’t to drive the race gap even wider apart. Blacks and whites aren’t enemies, the enemy is the corrupt system that sees human beings as disposable and wants everyone turned against each other instead of standing up against the establishment and making a better world.


Chapter 14 - Emotionally Expensive
Jack was stuck in traffic once again. A few weeks ago the city started experimenting with the traffic light patterns and the commute had been getting progressively worse ever since. He’d stopped at every one of the last seven intersections, none of which had cars going the other direction.
He was pretty sure this had something to do with the city’s initiative to actively make traffic worse to discourage people from driving, Zoe had mentioned it some time ago. He wondered how long the government would continue making things worse instead of solving the problem.
He drove past his usual coffee spot without stopping. He’d been overcoming his caffeine addiction lately, the first week was harsh but after that he started perking up a bit. Day one was spent in bed feeling like he might die, a sure sign of addiction.
Ever since his bout of existential dread, he’d been stuck in a funk where everything he did, thought or felt seemed distant, like one of those vague impressionist paintings that almost make sense until you look at it too seriously, which he didn’t intend to do. Looking at his life right now hurt his chest.
The depression he’d been spiralling through had him listening to his old Marilyn Manson albums and the phrase, “there’s a hole in our soul that we fill with dope,” had been stuck in his head for weeks now.
The pain in his chest felt like an empty space in his heart was trying to fill back in, but he couldn’t seem to find anything around worth filling it with. He’d been withdrawing from reality, if such a thing ever existed, and trying to give himself time to ruminate on all this.
Meanwhile he’d been noticing the same hole in others as well, like being aware of his own made it possible to see everyone else’s. Whenever he saw someone being rude in a grocery store, he used to judge them as bad people, now he felt like he could see the pain inside them and he wondered why they feel that way.
The entire social structure he’d been raised in seemed to be a self-perpetuating cycle of people growing into this broken, emotionally drained state so they could teach others how to live the same way they did, and all the while trying to fill the hole with meaningless garbage like caffeine and alcohol, netflix and amazon window shopping.
As early December got colder, the holiday music was becoming inescapable once again. The plastic veneer of fake merriment layered over everything around him seemed to mock the spiritually destitute state of life everyone was stuck in, and suddenly he could see why people kill themselves this time of year: it’s not because of loneliness, it’s because the hollow meaninglessness of everything around you seems to suffocate your own emptiness, and the sheer nonsense of that sentiment is heartbreaking enough to send people down a very dark mental alley.
His other addictive escapisms were starting to spike. Yesterday he’d caught himself thinking about getting a bottle of whiskey to make the workday seem less stifling.
He had to find something to make him feel better inside but every idea that came to him was always so stupid, like the entire collection of cultural pastimes was devoid of any sustenance that would fill this gaping hole in his heart.
He pulled into the office and wondered if there was time to smoke a joint. Anything to lift his mood. Maybe he could go get a cup of coffee? “Fuck it,” he mumbled as he forced himself out of the car, “what’s even the point?” Even the concept of happiness and contentedness felt like a waste of time, he’d settle for a day of staring blankly at the wall.
Apathy is the new joy.
“Good morning, Jack,” said his cubicle neighbour like every other morning, virtually the only interactions they would have throughout a productive and business-appropriate day. There would be no mood-boosting, mind-stimulating, serotonin-pumping social engagements to help everyone’s mental health.
This is what happens when bureaucracies dictate the needs of society.
“Morning,” he sighed and tried to repress the urge to say, ‘have an empty xmas,’ in the true holiday spirit. Maybe he could slip it in on his way out the door before the holiday vacation period.
He slumped into his chair and stared at his desk. It was almost 15 minutes before he stirred from his internal slumber and turned on his computer.
‘Maybe I’m being selfish,’ he thought, ‘maybe trying to be happy while people in Cuba are suffering is a shitty way to be.’ In general, public happiness in Cuba blows North America out of the water. Jack didn’t know that, and added selfishness to his list of reasons to be ashamed for not being able to fathom a way out of this depression.
His brain was begging for oxytocin, which would normally be provided by caffeine to supplement the lack of affection, exercise and sunlight resulting from a life spent inside sitting down, staring at screens.
He hadn’t had sex in months and his balls were starting to hurt. He hadn’t even spoken to women outside of a gas station or grocery store since he last saw Zoe. With no social life whatsoever and no sense of accomplishment, his dopamine and serotonin levels were also severely low.
He wondered again if he could get away with smoking a joint outside. Probably, his boss rarely passed by and the cubicle walls conveniently block off scents along with every other aspect of being around other human beings. But he wasn’t willing to risk it, better to suffer in silence and wait for the proverbial bell to ring, like in high school.
He eyed the fidget toys he kept around his desk for anxiety reduction and wondered if putting them through a wall would relieve some of the tension. They say semen retention is good for men’s mental health but right now he felt like that delusion must be based on its own unique form of insanity. Or maybe he just needed to move his body more than his lifestyle was built around.
He opened his email, sure enough: there was the usual stream of clients waiting for their asinine questions to be answered. He sighed with a sort of numb, sedate agitation and leaned back in his seat, staring at the ceiling. Nothing here was worth stressing about at all, why not waste a few hours not even pretending to be busy, and let the nonsense sort itself out?
He practised taking some deep breaths, paying attention to the opposite of whatever was happening around him and wondering if meditation was supposed to feel like phasing out of reality. It would explain why hippies love it so much, or rather claim to as they ingest psychoactive chemicals.
The breathing seemed to be helping. He allowed himself to sink into his feelings of distress, settling into the discomfort and agitation. Something clicked inside him and he suddenly realized that the majority of his life had been spent trying to disconnect from himself, from his internal feelings and thought patterns.
Instead of being present with himself, he’d been trying to stop being at all, trying so hard for so long that nearly all of his lifestyle choices were built around this escapist addiction. This in turn led to physiological addictions like caffeine and alcohol, anything he could find to numb the pain of existing rather than accepting the feeling as it is, accepting himself for who he is and choosing a better life for himself.
He found that surrendering to the experience of being him actually relieved a lot of the pressure and anxiety. His caffeine-withdrawal headache even dissipated a little. He could sit comfortably and breathe deeper, more easily. He shoulders sank and his jaw loosened.
Suddenly the world didn’t seem so bad, everything in life felt a little easier to take control of. Maybe he could fix things and have a life worth living, if only he could hold onto this experience.
Someone’s phone rang in an adjacent cubicle and he was back into his normal, painful mode of being. “Shit,” he muttered, and opened his first email with an exhausted feeling.
Someone wanted him to provide a safety review for the Ministry of Transportation, ensuring their racking systems were up to spec. He remembered Zoe mentioning this issue months ago. In the meantime the systems were surely still in use, regardless of whether or not they met standards.
“How the fuck do we even survive, with a government that takes this long to request a review according to its own regulations?” Zoe could have had him address this himself and it would’ve been handled easily, but of course that would go against the rules of the system.
God forbid that a simple issue should be resolved in an efficient, streamlined fashion. Things are supposed to take five times as long as they need to, that’s how everybody wins.
He answered the email, saying he could provide the review at their convenience. He wanted to tell them to have Zoe contact him, but who knows how many degrees of separation that would have to be passed through. Being in the same building doesn’t mean you can just walk over to the person’s office, you have to jump through hoops of red tape to accomplish anything in bureaucracies like that.
He wondered what Zoe would be doing for the holidays. Probably nothing, they both hated their families. Maybe they could spend some time together, he’d like to see her again. He sent her a text.

Zoe glanced at her phone when it vibrated, saw Jack’s name and giggled. She’d get back to him soon. She was busy trying to find new desks for the people she supervised.
She left her office and spoke to her secretary. “I need you to find ways to spend money, quickly. We’re under budget.”
Her assistant was confused. “Isn’t that a good thing, spending less tax money than we’re expected to?”
Zoe knew they had to spend that money as quickly as possible. “No, if we're under budget this year then we get less next year, and then if there's an emergency and we need more then they'll hassle us about wasting money.”
He nodded serenely, finally grasping this basic concept of running a business. “So what should we spend it on?”
“I don’t know,” Zoe had to think about it, “maybe get a bunch of computer screens and mouses and whatever. Just waste it on anything you can.”
“We all have new screens, though.” He remembers Zoe doing this last year, the screens were all bought at the same season for the same reason.
“I know,” she rolled her eyes wondering what Jack would say about this, “just scrap them all and find new ones.” Preferably not in that order.
She walked down the hall to find the department head assistant for finances. “I need to know if there are any payments set for the next six months that can be paid now.” That would make it more difficult to meet their expense quota next year but there would be time to find extra ways of spending money.
Next stop, HR. She wanted to give bonuses to the employees who did exemplary work but HR said it was against the rules to give bonuses. They spent an hour trying to negotiate and squeeze between rules to give extra money to people, at least that way it wouldn’t be going to waste. No luck there.
She slumped back down in her office and looked at her phone. Jack was some kind of engineer, she couldn’t remember what he did exactly but maybe he could provide some kind of service or product to increase expenses. She’d call him later and find out.

Jack meanwhile had been thinking about the amount of effort most men go through to get attention from women. In college he’d put more effort into getting laid than doing homework.
Now he looked back at his past and wondered how much of that was based in a low self-esteem. Like his worth as a man revolved around getting women into bed, so he had to spend all his energy pursuing something that was inherently empty, just to keep pursuing it immediately afterward because it was so unable to bring fulfilment.
The effort of school, the constant chase for naked women, the caffeine and other everyday intoxicants, the consumerist lifestyle that kept the screens glowing warming instead of having genuinely warm human contact. It was all designed to keep people in a state of being removed from happiness. It was all designed to tell people they’d be happy by chasing emptiness, instead of filling up this gaping hole in his chest.
The emotional expense of that lifestyle had caught up ith him and now he felt drained, exhausted, and irredeemably exposed to the nothingness he’d built up for himself.
He’d graduated ten years ago and was nowhere near paying off his student loans, and spent his life in a mental prison working as part of some depraved perversion of a beehive, taking orders from corporate suits with half his intelligence and lacking morality enough to succeed in business.
Zoe texted back and he wanted to throw his phone out the window.
After another couple emails he remembered the reason he wanted to see Zoe was nothing to do with sex, it was about seeking companionship and spending time with someone he cared about, someone he once felt happy around, before things turned sideways. Was that still chasing emptiness, or was there something more there?
Could it be he was reaching out for something better, in the only way he knew how?
He sent a message, ‘Can we talk this weekend?’
A moment later the response came, ‘should I buy you some pills? Lol’.
He felt crushed and wanted to cry. It was lunch time. He left the office and drove home for the day, wondering if anyone would even notice his absence.


Chapter 15 - Growing Cold
It had been weeks since Jill sent her resume to the crystal shop. She’d been so excited about it, the whole thing had lined up perfectly and she was sure she’d get the job. But the days passed and she grew less certain about it.
Why would it take this long to decide? Surely the owner wanted someone around who could increase their income?
Jill was an actual genius, she understood marketing in ways no one else even grasped, and she could guarantee that she’d boost performance and increase cash flow to literally any business. A small, private business like that should be grateful for someone like her arriving. What could be taking so long?
In the meantime she’d been applying to several other businesses but had gotten virtually no response at all. What was the holdup?
Depressed and numbly sedate, she turned on the song Imaginary by Evanescence. As Amy’s voice sang with the eery overture, ‘paper flowers,’ she remembered the magical feeling she’d had on that day, thinking about faeries and unicorns, believing in the magic of life and ready to give herself over to the waves and flows of the universe’s will.
She wondered what evanescence even means, she looked it up just to distract herself and keep her mind active. An online dictionary said, ‘denoting a field or wave which extends into a region where it cannot propagate and whose amplitude therefore decreases with distance.’
She wasn’t a huge physics fan but it sounded like the experience she’d been having, the ‘high vibe’ feeling of excitement that slowly dissipated into a disappointed air of confusion and frustration as she continued to receive no response whatsoever from the woman she’d been so ready to see as a new friend and employer.
Amy sang, “where the raindrops, as they’re falling, tell a story.”
The problem with believing in the essential goodness of existence is that the extremely dense field of matter we live in isn’t friendly to the fundamental state of flux that quantum consciousness typically exists in. That beauty of cosmic love just doesn’t permeate this density so easily. We live in a world where the flow of divine love can’t propagate the way it’s supposed to, and the amplitude fades away so very quickly.
Amy was singing, ‘in my field of paper flowers, with candy clouds of lullaby,’ it was exactly the mood she was in right now. Trying to describe a beautiful feeling of bliss and tranquility but overcast with the melancholy assertion that the mystical world of unicorns and purple skies just isn’t quite touchable from here.
She sighed and opened her email. The inbox had an unread message. She opened it and her heart skipped a beat. Barbara from the crystal shop had responded!
Excited again and feeling that dopamine rushing in for the first time in weeks, she opened the email and her heart almost tore apart. She barely had to read or process the words at all, the tone was clearly saying she’d been denied her fantasy job.
She almost cried as she closed her laptop and laid down on the floor.
Amy sang, ‘the Goddess of imaginary light.’
She barely noticed as the song transitioned into the next, and when the album ended she wasn’t even sure where her mind was. Certainly not in the room with her. Looking at her present reality might make her sob uncontrollably and she was ashamed to admit it was her fault for believing in something so foolish.
After a long time had passed in silence, she sat up straight and tried to meditate. She knew she had to process what she was feeling or it would never go away.
She just couldn’t believe what a naive idiot she’d been for believing that things would just unfold so easily. How could believing in unicorns suddenly mean the world just makes sense, and that everything was working out in her favour? “Not in this life,” she muttered bleakly.
Slowly her breathing slowed to a calm rhythm and her heart rate settled. Her aura began to open up like a lotus blossom and she could feel the fluid energies of reality moving through her spine. Without even noticing, she slowly began to phase into presence, grounded solidly in her body, her emotions, her pent up aura.
She slowly reviews the feelings she’s been cycling through since she lost her job. When she gets to the day she applied at the crystal shop there’s so much turbulence to sort through. The excitement of believing in miracles, all tangled up in the shame for her foolishness.
It felt good to believe, she’d given into the joy and the hope and gotten lost, believing in the magic of the inner child. And it hadn’t worked out.
Now she feels even worse than before. The gloom has set back in even heavier and she doesn’t see any way to clear it out. She’d wanted so much to believe. Was it just lies?
She closed back up, fearing that the beliefs she’d indulged in were just childish fantasies, that they’d ultimately just lead her back into pain, the same way it had as a little girl.
She discarded the belief in unicorns yet again and protected her poor, desolate heart with the harsh reality that the world just isn’t fun and pretty like that. Shit sucks sometimes and that’s all there is to it.
She sighed obliquely and stood up, no longer willing to be present with her emotions. She went to make coffee. Nothing helps you feel productive when you’re wasting time more than a good dose of unmerited endorphins.
When the coffee was poured she sat next to the window and looked at the overcast sky. Winter was setting in, the trees were stripped bare and the sky would be grey for the next three months. The cold was creeping into the soil and nature would be going into stasis until everything warmed up.
She’d read online that the energy of winter is one of introspection and self-care, a time to settle around the hearth and take care of the family until the world warms back up again. The same author also wrote that faeries work their magic in the realm of imagination, so maybe the seasonal shifts were all bullshit, too.
She didn’t know what to do, much less what to think or feel. She wanted someone to hold her and tell her everything would be ok but she hadn’t encountered a man who would do that healthily in years. Fuck bois and assholes, mostly.
She took a deep breath and asked the universe what to do. What would a unicorn say to her if there was one right here, in front of her?
Silence.
The universe doesn’t answer your brain, it can only answer an open heart. And that’s hard to maintain when you feel lost and abandoned.
She tried to silence her inner critic, the cynic constantly shitting all over her hopes and dreams, and asked again. What would a unicorn say? She listened with an open heart and mind.
An answer rose up: the faster you get over the things that don’t work out, the faster things that do work will enter your life.
She sighed and her inner critic shoved the thought aside. Such nonsense.
She didn’t have time for this self-pity anymore. Her savings were dwindling and she hadn’t gotten a hopeful response to any one of the hundreds of applications she’d made.
Luckily there were laws prohibiting eviction during winter months but that wouldn’t save her when April rolled around, and things would still be quite cold then, too. She had to find work.
She spent five minutes scrolling through indeed.com and didn’t see a single job that suited her but that she hadn’t applied to already. Agitated, she closed her laptop again, almost threw it, and went back to the window to finish her coffee.
This is why poverty mindsets lead to addiction, once you’ve settled into the feeling of helpless loneliness then there’s no reason not to give yourself false sense of accomplishment with intoxicants. She wondered if she’d be able to afford a drinking habit. Of course not.
‘How do broke people afford to be alcoholics?’ she wondered morosely, ‘it defies all logic.’
She read somewhere, a long time ago, that phases like this always lead to spiritual development and growth as a person, and eventually into better mental health. That seemed impossible. She gazed enviously at the dead-looking trees, just sitting there waiting for spring when they could so easily just open up and start receiving again. If only human life was that easy.
Taking a deep breath, she decided there was nothing else to do but keep meditating and trying to figure out what to do with herself. After five minutes she leaned back and laid on the floor, slowly fading into an uncomfortable and extremely unhappy nap.


Chapter 16 - Plastic Enamel
It was time for Chad’s bi-annual trip to the dentist. He’d always hated brushing his teeth and didn’t believe that it was as important as dentists like to tell people. But he still understood the importance of dental care and went for a cleaning on occasion to maintain basic minimal hygiene.
He arrived in front of the dentist’s office and looked at the pharma symbol in their window, that classic sign with a winged pillar and a serpent rising up it. That symbol always bothered him.
The ancient Kemetic symbol of the caduceus is found all over the world representing externally different but internally identical concepts. In Hinduism the symbol is called kundalini, in western esotericism it is found on the staff of Archangel Raphael.
It represents the balanced energies of masculine and feminine dancing across the spinal column as primal creative life force rises from the root to the crown.
It represents life, harmony, prosperity, unity, healing and love - to name a few.
The well-known modern distortion, an incomplete and unbalanced symbol, found on ambulances and pill bottles all over North America is an unmistakable sign that the people in charge of the medical industry couldn’t care less about truth, health or spiritual well-being.
When the templar knights travelled to Jerusalem they gained a powerful foothold in the Middle East, a region in which some of the oldest known mystical and spiritual truths of the western world have been hidden away for ages. They learned the surviving knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, the truth of Yaweh’s identity as the Sumerian god Anu, the true nature of the soul and the human struggle for divine love.
They hoarded massive amounts of mystical knowledge, sealing it away in the bowels of the church to keep it from the minds of the world. There it was used in secret to enhance the church’s authority, while publicly decrying the same knowledge as evil. All in the name of God-King Anu whose rule saw the creation of a genetically engineered slave race.
The result being that intentionally distorted truths, such as the incomplete symbol of the caduceus, became the norm in terms of what the public believes is true, healthy and necessary for the perpetuation of divine light among the masses. Bow down to the pharmaceutical industry and thy pain shall be taken from thee. God demands sacrifice but will reward it with sedatives.
That’s why doctors prescribe heroin and speed, while telling people that alternative medical treatments, like any cancer treatment beyond chemotherapy, is unpredictable and dangerous. There are, in point of fact, a wide variety of safe and healthy cancer treatments, none of which are endorsed by the medical community or covered by insurance.
It’s right there on your pill bottle, the truth is being destroyed in favour of a leash-tightening lie.
Chad sighed and opened the door to his dentist’s office. The inner decor was all white plastic, soft light casting no shade on the pristine-looking scene awaiting him. All very carefully set up to establish an appearance of cleanliness instead of actually staying clean, of safe professionalism instead of teaching people the proper ways to maintain good hygiene.
In the medical industry, nothing is as bad for business as a healthy costumer.
“Hi,” Chad said delicately to the beautiful young eye candy secretary. “I’m here for a cleaning.”
“Yes,” said the receptionist, “we’re almost ready for you. I’m supposed to ask you though, why don’t you want an X-ray or a mouth wash? Those are important so we can see what’s happening inside your teeth and we can keep you clean and healthy.”
“I don’t do X-rays,” Chad insisted, “I don’t like people blasting my face with radiation.”
“It’s not harmful,” she began to explain.
He cut her off, gently to avoid seeming rude. “If it wasn’t harmful they wouldn’t put a lead apron on me. You cover my body to avoid a law suit but I’m supposed to believe the spot you’re aiming at on my head is safe?” She was about to say something but he kept going. “It doesn’t matter, just tell him I won’t pay for it and he’ll stop mentioning it.” That was what happened last time.
She hesitated to ask but it was her job, “and the cleanse rinse?”
“That stuff is so bad for you. Fluorine is basically poison, and I don’t like the idea of washing my mouth with it.” She looked skeptical, like she was trying to avoid mocking him. He summarized, “I’m only here for a cleaning, nothing more, ok? Please.”
He sat down and looked at the coffee table covered in year-old magazines about celebrity gossip and the latest international disasters. Anything to keep people from thinking about anything worthwhile.
Five minutes later he was sitting down in a pleather chair and looking up at nearly-all-plastic overhead lamp, surrounded by laminate pictures of big, perfectly aligned, newly-artificially-whitened smiles. He wondered if the child on his left hadn’t been photoshopped with an adult’s mouth, there’s no way a five-year-old has teeth like that, they haven’t even lost their baby teeth.
The hygienist remembers him from his last appointment, already having decided the man is insane and in need of better tooth care makes it easier to justify trying to sell him things he might need some day.
She takes a look inside his mouth and says, “Looks a little gross in here, I might have to call you back for another cleaning next week to finish it all. You should really be coming here twice a year.”
He makes no effort to respond. He knows his teeth are fine, perhaps not as sparkling-white as the photos around him but he brushes every day and his mouth has been healthy for decades. Part of her job is to tell people they need more expensive treatment, to keep a steady cash flow.
She asks, “are you still using fluoride free toothpaste?”
He nods slightly to answer, ‘yes,’ and ignores her attempts to explain to him how important fluoride is. There are millions of people using alternative tooth pastes and nearly none of them have significant dental hygiene issues.
Over the course of the cleaning, he can tell she’s deliberately going harder than necessary, trying to make him think he needs extensive care so he comes back sooner. He tries to shove aside the concern about having a sadist poking him with metal utensils that look like arrays of torture devices. Instead he focuses on the unavoidable smell of fluoride and plastic.
When it’s finally over she asks him to sit up and says, “Have you considered getting a sealant coating? We usually recommend it for everyone, especially teenagers. Children should be getting it every time a new tooth comes in.” Once again, recommending repeated business at unnecessary frequency for literally everyone, starting at an age too young to understand the larger concerns.
“Isn’t that stuff made of plastic?” Chad asks.
“Yes it is,” she says slowly, “but it’s totally harmless, it just bonds to the enamel layer on your teeth so it can’t be harmed. It prevents cavities. We especially recommend it to people who aren’t getting a proper fluorine wash every day with their toothpaste.”
Chad politely lets her finish before saying, “no thank you. I’m just here for a cleaning, I’m really not interested in getting a plastic coating inside my mouth.”
She nods, trying to show it’s his loss with her facial expression. “Ok, well let’s take a look at your teeth with the X-ray.”
Chad is too polite to get angry about this but it’s a little over the top. “I told your receptionist twice I don’t want that.”
“Well, I think you really should get checked for cavities if you’re not using fluorine or getting a sealant.”
Chad knows how to end this topic. “If you’re offering it for free I’ll consider it.”
“It’s not that expensive -”
“I don’t want it, though, if you want me to get it then maybe you can cover the cost?”
She nods assent. “Ok well I’ll just show you out then.” At the front room she tells the receptionist, “Schedule him for another cleaning in six months.”
“Don’t bother,” he says, “I’ll set it up later.” He’s thinking, ‘I’m never coming back here again.’
Both women share a skeptical glance and try to conceal their judgemental attitudes. The hygienist retreats to the back rooms without another word. The receptionist says, “Ok, so that’ll be five hundred dollars. It says on file your insurance will reimburse you.”
“I don’t have insurance.” He doesn’t like the idea of paying people money on the premise that they’ll cover dental costs, when in fact so many companies will use any possible excuse to avoid holding up their end of the bargain.
“Ok,” she says, “can I see your credit card, please?”
“I don’t have a credit card,” Chad says simply. He also doesn’t like the idea of people charging him money for the ability to use his own money. They pay for skyscrapers by convincing people you’re supposed to ask their permission to use your own salary, so they can tell everyone how good or bad you are at spending money like a good consumer.
He’s starting to feel loopy going over the number of awful cultural problems there are surrounding this whole scene.
“I see, we only take credit cards now, so -” she trails off.
He silently puts $500 cash on the table and walks out of the building without another word.
‘Never going back there,’ he thinks graciously as he heads back home to wash the taste of blood and plastic out of his mouth.


Chapter 17 - The Price of Freedom is Death
“The civil war proved the government was willing to fight for freedom, even for black men’s freedom!” Someone’s been screaming this stuff down the hall from Andre’s apartment for almost 15 minutes.
Finally he couldn’t take any more. He and his roommate Shayen enter the hallway and Andre says, “it didn’t prove shit. The civil war wasn’t even about slavery that’s just the issue that kickstarted it. White people back then still believed voting was only for rich white dudes who owned land, they didn’t give a shit about freedom for blacks.”
Shayen backs him up, “the civil war was about state law and economics bull ish, there wasn’t one damn white boy who gave his life for no slaves.”
Laughter erupts from the nearest door.
The crazy who’s been screaming yells back at them, “Antifa and BLM are fronts for the cabal, they’re just distracting people from the fact that there’s been equality since Malcolm X!”
Andre doesn’t even know where to begin with this one. “Bro, Malcolm X’s last breath proved there wasn’t equality! The price of freedom is death!”
“JFK was fighting to end the cabal and free us all from the devil, Malcolm X was blind to the truth.”
Shayen can’t believe it, “this fuckin’ idiot.”
Andre yells back, “bro, Jackie Kennedy said Dr. King was a terrible person, how you go’n say that family wanted freedom?”
Shayen yells, “they were all just more white christian devils playing games with human lives.”
All three voices are trying to yell over each other and no one can hear what’s being said.
Andre screams, “When the slaves were ‘freed’ there were already private prisons profiting from locking us up!”

Meanwhile, David is on his way to visit a cousin in the penitentiary.
Ever since slavery was abolished the government has been locking up black men and forcing them to work labor for free, claiming it’s a way to protect the public from dangerous criminals who are clearly guilty of being black.
It’s really a way to continue getting free labor from a group of human beings viewed as disposable and undesirable.
This particular prison is owned and run by the same corporate family as coca cola, a company that used to sell addictive substances made from exploited South Americans and now sells slightly different addictive substances made by exploited South Americans in a different region.
Coca cola’s coporate parent is one of the highest grossing companies in the world. Their profits have been steadily climbing since 1985 and experienced a slight drop in early 2020 but jumped back up quickly and are still proceeding on course.
David always thought it was interesting to compare the profits made by an organization to the way they view the value of human life. Selling addictive poison and remaining a global icon of American industrial commercialism is a perfect example.
In 2021 the USA had around 1,400,000 people incarcerated in federal prison. This number has been insanely high since drugs like cannabis and cocaine were made illegal and then immediately attributed to African American communities who wouldn’t traffic them if they could afford it - which they couldn’t, or they would’ve lived in nicer homes.
The illegalization of these substances hasn’t stopped the pharmaceutical industry from profiting from nearly identical substances which are deemed safe by those profiting from them, nor has it stopped coca cola from grossing increasingly large profits from addictive intoxicants. David wonders what the point of abolition was in the first place, if not for blaming and imprisoning Afro-Americans.
With the massive number of people being locked away under federal law, the taxpayer wasn’t expected to flip the bill for such a profitable opportunity, and the widely misused but uncommonly known policy of corporate-owned prison systems stepped up to save the day.
About 8% of the 1.4 million prisoners in the US are housed in privatized prisons, the corporations who run them profit about 4 billion dollars a year from imprisoning slaves.

Andre is still involved in a shouting match with this loonie who thinks the corporate cabal is hiding the fact that they were already free. “Antifa and BLM are puppets being controlled by the cabal! They’re trying to make you think you’re still abused so you fight each other. See through the lies!”
Shayen can’t believe how crazy this dumbass is. “Bro, there are people dying out there! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Andre yells, “How do you think your mother feels watching you right now, claiming we’re free while your brother is in corporate servitude?” He’s not sure anyone is really being heard right now, there’s so much noise in this tiny hallway.

David passes a billboard for Ford motors. Ford was owned by the man who’s supposedly responsible for the five-day work week, because exploiting underpaid labourers for four days a week wasn’t profitable enough.
David finds it intriguing to look at the fundamental purpose a government is seen as having in various countries. Many regions in Europe see their governments as existing to support the good of their people. The USA on the other hand claims that the government exists to protect the rights of their people and yet revokes these rights at every opportunity, claiming the bible or their profit margins or some other ungodly nonsense justifies limiting basic human rights.
Black on black crime has long been stirred up by authorities to maintain a position of control, in which Africans are too busy fighting each other for survival to rise up in a meaningful way.
The civil rights movement was the only time in American history that enough solidarity was achieved among the black community to really make an impact in their treatment at large, and it ended with the most important leaders being assassinated by the government under the guise of black on black crime.
Since then, around every 20 years or so, further interest in deepening equality arises as each generation shifts to accommodate blacks in a slightly more meaningful way, although typically it only makes a surface-level difference while the violently abusive oppression still continues as the media shifts public attention back to another distraction from major issues.
In 2020, during a pandemic, anti-racist sentiment was stirred up by the media to trick African Americans into congregating in the streets. No significant gains were established by this effort.
David has noticed lately that the majority of white people who are loudly supportive of equality are always such ego-driven assholes. There’s so little genuine concern and so much aggression being masked by the desire to pursue a cause they see as being beyond losing.
You can’t lose when you start an argument ‘in support of’ an ethnic group, and you don’t even have to actually care about that group whatsoever as long as you appear to enough to make a point in ‘their defence.’
He even noticed once online that the theories of the pyramids being built by aliens was being called racist. ‘Well thanks for the support,’ he’d thought at the time, ‘can I count on you being present at the next rally, or is this meme the extent of your concern?’ As if aliens and African rights have anything to do with each other.
The distorted sense of self-righteousness people get when they stoop into these distraction-driven arguments is always so absurd.
He arrives at the check-in to the prison and the guards are eyeing him like he belongs there. A black man visiting another black man in prison is always subject to scrutiny, because if you’re kind enough to visit this criminal then surely you’re one, too.
“Anything in your pockets?” the guard asks.
“Nope,” David is rolling his eyes, pulling his pockets inside-out to show they’re empty.
The guard pats him down anyways, then pushes him through the metal detector. It beeps. They search him thoroughly and find a tiny piece of garbage in his pocket, then he goes through again. Apparently the metal detector is triggered to give a maxed out reading with a paper clip.
The guard apathetically shoves over the bowl with David’s car keys, the only thing he brings in this place to begin with.
“Thanks,” David said grudgingly, trying to be polite in the face of clear injustice.
He enters the visiting room, there are three families of Native Americans in there and no one else. 27% of federal prisoners in the US are Native Americans, who were told to leave their homes so their descendants could be held accountable to the backwards laws of insane sadists and locked away for refusing to obey them.
David smiles and nods as he meets eyes with a man who’s trying to console his sobbing mother. The man nods back, they both know what’s happening.
After waiting ten minutes, his cousin arrives and sits down, covered in bruises and bleeding from a fresh knock on the mouth. David doesn’t have to ask who did it, if it were another inmate they wouldn’t be sitting across from each other right now.
David doesn’t know what to say, he’s already on the verge of tears, wondering how he’s supposed to tell this man his mother is dead.

Andre can’t believe how bizarre this conversation has gone. They’ve been told several times to shut up by their other neighbours but it’s gone too far at this point, there’s no turning back.
The crazy is screaming, “if we’re still slaves how come Obama got voted in twice?”
Shayen screams back, “Yeah and who was elected after him?”
Andre yells, “bro, Obama was another rich ass politician and corrupt business man, he’s the only black man to ever get involved in the upper classes enough to be considered a suitable decoy. People like you think this shit is lining up to prove it’s all another conspiracy but it’s all just bullshit to begin with dude.”
Shayen says discretely, “didn’t Obama bomb Yemen a bunch of times?” No one hears him.
Trump bombed Syria during their civil war, hours after terrorist attacks, because the only suitable response to the horror of war was to bomb innocent people once the conflict abated. That way the military industrial complex can keep profiting to stir up more wars in Gaza.
The US openly engages in the destruction of American-made weapons in Africa. In 2022, 75 obsolete air-defense systems and anti-tank missiles were destroyed. These weapons were purchased from American manufacturers, who were only too happy to provide replacements for these unsuitably old, outdated devices. Stateside we re-up our cars and iphones when they go obsolete, Africans are given the opportunity to do the same with sophisticated modern warfare technology.

When we look back at history, it’s very easy to view the harmful, foolish behaviour many other cultures indulged in and think, ‘what the hell was wrong with them? How could they have thought that’s an acceptable way to act?’
It’s much more difficult to see the behaviour of our own culture in the modern era with the same lens. How many of us can genuinely look out at own culture, even our own behaviour, and realize that some day people will look back and wonder how we thought it was acceptable to act that way?
Prison is one of these issues. Some day people will view our society as barbaric for locking up people with very obvious mental issues, and making them worse.
Rape, murder, randomized acts of theft or organized crime. These things are not the behaviour of mentally healthy people. No one who doesn’t need therapy decides to kill another, for any reason.
The prison system is not a place where mentally ill people receive the care they need, and are rehabilitated into healthy and stable members of a healthy and balanced society. It is a place where the mentally ill are locked up together in atrocious conditions where their health gets even worse, and they come out as deranged and traumatized victims of a broken, backwards and fundamentally compassionless system of punishment.
The idea that anyone’s freedom can be taken away, for any reason, is no different from slavery regardless of how it is rationalized. Any society who believes this is acceptable behaviour has had their minds enslaved by systemized abuse.
The victims of the prison system are eventually thrown back onto the streets where they are treated as subhuman by an apathetic society totally blinded to the help these humans need in order to readjust after such a shocking trauma. They receive no help, no compassion, and find it more difficult than ever to provide for their needs as human beings. Crime becomes the only way for them to survive.
Repeat offence rates are not something that needs to be experienced by any well-intentioned social structure, and yet they are the reality of the modern world. Eventually these victims will be re-cycled through the prison system yet again, and treated even worse if they ever come back out.
The state of our society is that of a brain slave. The attempts to shackle our souls have tricked us into ensnaring each other, falsely believing that any human being could possibly deserve this treatment, regardless of the mistakes they’ve made while under extremely challenging circumstances.
When one of us is chained, none of us are free.

After the yelling has abated, Andre and Shayne return to their apartment and crash on the couch, exhausted after the rush of adrenaline has diminished and his cortisol levels rise back to normal.
Shayne is furious. “Yo can you believe that crazy mother fucker?”
“Dude’s a fuckin’ brain slave,” Andre answered. “They tell so many different stories, make up so much bullshit to contradict their other made up bullshit, sooner or later everyone gets interrupted in their search for truth and freedom, everyone just becomes another fuckin’ mind whore.”
“You know they work with the Anunnaki to make this shit work for them right?”
“Bro, seriously?” Andre laughs.
“Whatever man,” Shayne shrugs. “Anyway the only real freedom is in deciding for yourself what you want to believe.”
Andre wanted to believe that was enough but these days there’s so much nonsense out there pretending to be reality, he didn’t know what to think anymore. “Sometimes I think there’s no way to be truly free in life, you know?”
Shayne nodded. The only thing he could think to say was a quote from Malcolm X. “The price of freedom is death."


Chapter 18 - The Drugs Like Me
Jack has been paying very close attention to the addictive impulses that used to fill his life, and the ways he subconsciously attempts to let them creep back in through in the cracks in his emotional floor.
His alarm goes off despite it being a holiday break, and he wonders why he didn’t turn it off the moment he left work. His first instinct is to grab for coffee. Inside, he’s desperate for endorphins, anything will do if it helps the pain subside.
This happens every morning. His brain and body desperately try to tell him there’s something terribly wrong with the his life, and all he can think to do is reach for the nearest escapist, self-destructive cycle available; whether it be nicotine, caffeine, social media, mainstream fear porn; any distraction from his miserable life.
Instead of just changing our lives, we all desperately attempt to avoid dealing with the source of our pain. We don’t want to acknowledge that we’re unhappy because of the extra weight we refuse to let go, so we project and distract, and keep on holding the very thing we’re so eager to escape from.
That’s why pineal-closing activities encompass nearly every national pastime.
He sits on his couch and tries as hard as he can to avoid turning on the coffee maker, while also delaying his first cigarette of the day as long as possible. He genuinely wants to overcome his addictive issues but he can’t figure out why they’re so difficult to shove aside.
There are things in his life that he needs more than he’s willing to admit, things he wasn’t taught to give himself appropriately as a child, because his parents were taught that it’s wrong to take care of yourself in any healthy way.
It’s all about the image, the external appearance of functionality is always more important than actual functionality.
He’s considered going to the gym to keep his body healthy but insecurities around his body image keep him from being willing to do that, which keeps him locked in a position of shamefully hating himself instead of improving.
Meanwhile his mental and emotional needs are even more neglected than his physical needs. Nothing about his lifestyle helps his brain regulate endorphins appropriately, therefore his brain seeks substitutes, like time spent looking at his cell phone.
He jumps up and starts doing jumping jacks, anything to distract himself for even a moment instead of reaching for a cigarette or facebook.
Half an hour later he’s cycled through pushups, sit-ups and more jumping jacks. It feels good to get his body moving, and he’s stretching to keep his muscles loose because he noticed yesterday it helps him feel more fluid, like he’s able to adapt to the situation and keep adjusting to the natural flow of day-to-day events.
He’s been researching the different types of endorphins, and the ways we’re supposed to regulate them versus the ways we abuse them with the modern world’s widely accepted substitutes.
Oxytocin is an important neurotransmitter for us as communal animals. It relates to socializing, dating and feelings of acceptance and adequacy as a valid and valued member of the community. In a big city where people feel isolated and distanced from each other, there is too little social engagement so this gets supplemented with social media to simulate real interactions in all the most convenient and least meaningful ways.
Social media also uses its shiny and fast-paced nature to give dopamine rushes to simulate a feeling of accomplishment, providing a feeling of virtual happiness to supplement the complete lack of fulfillment our wasted lives leave us with.
These feelings could easily be provided by healthy social interactions and other behavioural patterns, which most of us deny ourselves because of our preference for our own self-constructed prisons of fear, shame, judgement and other spiritual toxins we fill ourselves with, believing they’ll protect us from being hurt by the scary world outside. In fact, nearly everyone else around us feels the same way, for the same reasons, and our inability to communicate these feelings to each other in appropriate ways leaves us all in denial about the way we feel, let alone everyone else.
An hour later he pulls into an outlet mall, feeling massive amounts of pent up social anxiety around the idea of entering a crowded space like this for the first time in over 3 years, since the pandemic first broke out.
On his way in there are people standing in front of the door, holding up everyone else trying to get in by making use of the plastic sanitizer dispensers that are now situated in nearly every public space on the continent.
As he waits he notices the disposable face masks littering the ground all over the area, stuck in bushes and sewer grates and stepped into corners by thousands of apathetic mall shoppers.
He gets to the door and feels a sense of shame and guilt as he considers walking past the hand sanitizer. Everyone else just used it, doesn’t that give him a responsibility to do the same? Shamed into the same fear-based reasoning as everyone else, he squirts the chemicals on his hands and rubs them in.
Alcohols are literally poison. By rubbing them on your hands you provide a dose of chemicals that disrupt the protein chains that maintain basic cellular functionality, causing them to become useless and die. That’s why it kills bacteria, which typically have more formidable chemical defences than your skin cells. The artificial perfumes added in are often carcinogenic, and linger on your hands in a thin film that simulates the feeling of cleanliness to distract you from the fact that you now need to clean your hands immediately after washing them with toxic chemicals.
The first thing he noticed inside was the smell of coffee and he habitually wandered into the nearby starbucks to get a dose of caffeine, hoping it would counteract the feeling of isolated anxiety he felt while surrounded by strangers.
He avoided looking anyone in the eye. Everyone looked so strung out and depressed, so distant from the reality that was staring them in the face. He patiently waited his turn in line, watching vacantly as those ahead of him conducted their transaction then immediately rubbed more sanitizer on their hands from yet another dispenser.
We all have a civic duty to continue consuming these toxins at excessive rates to help keep the economy running. Shame-driven fear and social anxiety are the new cornerstones of our society.
He got his coffee and even the smell of it made him feel better as placebo kicked in and made his brain start shifting its hormone balances in preparation for a surge of endorphins. He navigated through the crowds of people whose state of not being sick clearly pivoted on continuing to act as obedient consumers, and found his way to the electronics store.
The first thing he saw was the latest batch of cell phones with all the newest, state-of-the-art distraction technology. The woman whose job consisted of standing in front of the entrance welcoming everyone looked overwhelmed by the purposelessness of her existence and barely noticed him in the stream of customers flocking in to buy the latest gadgets; she was busy checking her instagram profile for likes.
He rushed through the crowds, eager to get out of this place and back into the safety of not being around other people. He grabbed a bluetooth headset, which gave no warning of the fact that the entire purpose is to place a radio signal receiver on your head, paid three times what it’s worth without question, and retreated back out to the corridor.
He stopped in the middle of the public walkway and tore the box open, then spent ten minutes trying to sync it with his phone and put on spotify. Not even willing to place the waste properly in the garbage can, he didn’t notice it fall to the floor.
He turned on the Marilyn Manson song ‘I Don’t Like the Drugs’. Twenty seconds later he was feeling much safer and more secure, isolated from the crowds surging around him and ready to be in his bubble while he went about the rest of his business. He didn’t even care about the CNN broadcast on the television at the nearby sitting area.
He walked past the television, hardly noticing the story coverage of a voyeur caught recording videos in the women’s bathrooms of the local University.
Manson was screaming, “Norm life baby! We’re quitters and we’re sober, our confessions will be televised.”
He navigated confidently through a sea of consumers, half of whom had coffee or a cell phone in their hands and weren’t paying attention to their surroundings; a defence mechanism from the inherently meaningless suffering of everyone else around them.
His new earbud screamed, “you and I are underdosed and we’re ready to fall! We’re raised to be stupid, taught to be nothing at all.”
He stepped back outside to take a few quick hits from a cigarette. A group of teen boys was standing nearby, trying to be discrete as they smoked nicotine vapes they stole from their parents.
Jack recently conducted an inspection at a manufacturer producing those vapes. The main ingredient in the flavouring is antifreeze, the rest is what the industry calls ‘artificial flavouring,’ which translates to, ‘mass produced chemicals with dubious physiological effects.’ He always wondered how much healthier those things could possibly be compared to cigarettes. After five hours in the production plant, he’d rather stick with tobacco. They both have nicotine anyways, a very potent insecticide.
He went back in, making sure to rub more carcinogenic sterilizer on his skin.
Manson was screaming, “I’m just a sample of soul, made to look just like a human being!”
He passed a group of teenagers coming out of a victoria’s secret outlet, looking confident in their natural beauty as they starved themselves just a little to attract young men who would mistreat them as an alternative to either of them having emotionally healthy relationships, which were threatening to the insecure and unstable youth of a lost culture.
As he entered the next store, his headphones were screaming, “I don’t like the drugs but the drugs like me!” over and over again.
He bought Zoe a book called ‘Germs, Guns and Steel’, a historical overview of Eurasian society and the reasons that appear to have contributed to the rise of western commercialism over the rest of the world. He knew Zoe was interested in sociopolitical, geohistorical topics as an avid cog in the industrial bureaucratic machine.
On his way out he passed the food court, filled with overfed and out-of-shape consumers eating mcdonald’s and other unhealthy foods. He remembered his high school science teacher trying to explain that fat, sugar and salt are actually important parts of a healthy diet, and that they’re associated with poor health in North America because we overindulge to such extents that otherwise healthy foods become essentially poisonous in their own ways.
The two major agricultural products of our economy are corn and cane sugar, neither of which are actually that healthy at all and both contribute to the obesity epidemic, and yet are discretely marketed in almost all mass produced food because the economy has become nearly dependent on having an overabundance of them.
There were so many ins and outs to the ever-elusive economic stability models being pushed by the corporate-owned media chains, Jack couldn’t tell what made sense anymore and what didn’t. Lately he’d been wondering if he ever could in the first place.
He got back in his car and followed a van out of the parking lot. The back of the van had the slogan, ‘cover the whole world,’ and a picture of Earth having a giant paint can poured onto it, smothering the oceans and land alike.
He changed lanes and ended up behind a truck nearly too wide to fit inside a lane. Its back window had the words, ‘Christ was crucified - you can go to church,’ shaming everyone for not being driven by fear back into the pews where they’ll be told about the god who died to forgive us, but won’t stop guilt tripping us into giving more money to the catholic church.
Zoe texted him, “are you coming tonight? ;)” and his heart rushed, feeling so good to be wanted again.


Chapter 19 - Breaking the Ice
Paul and Phil meet up in front of a building calling itself ‘Better Life Center’. It’s in the middle of a space that once held the Olympics, and has fallen into disuse outside the sporting crowds of the soccer stadium. On cold winter days like this, the whole area is empty.
Paul looks at the centre, wondering what’s going on in there. “It calls itself ‘Better Life,’ surely they’re helping people live better lives in there?”
Phil, who’s been waiting there for 20 minutes, doubts that’s the case. “There’s a homeless person sleeping in that bush over there, so I’ll go with ‘no’.”
Paul rolls his eyes. “I need to use the bathroom.” He walks up to the building and finds the doors locked. A vigilant security guard eyes him suspiciously, wondering what kind of mischief a ne’er-do-well such as him could be up to.
Paul waves with a smile and yells, “I just need to use the bathroom.” The security guard, clearly neither able nor willing to hear him, shakes his head and gestures to go away. Paul flips him off and walks back over to Phil. “Better life, my ass.”
Phil shrugs. “There’s always a tree.”
They walk away, past the soccer field whose name came from a bank willing to pay millions of dollars to have their logo on it, wondering how this area could possibly claim to be making anything better for anyone.
After running across a street with a crosswalk that doesn’t provide anywhere near enough time for a pedestrian to cross, they come to a running and biking lane sandwiched between the dangerous arterial road and a construction fence where there used to be a nice little park on the lakeshore, but which is now becoming a 5 storey parking structure for the soccer field.
The construction fence is painted, ‘Post No Bills,’ to prevent people from gluing single-use posters to the otherwise empty wall space.
Paul mutters the Rage Against the Machine lyrics, “there’s a mass without roots, there’s a prison to fill, there’s a country soul that reads ‘post no bills,’ there’s a strike and a line of cops outside of the mill.”
They both glare distrustfully at the nearby cop, who’s napping to diligently make sure there’s no one trying to scrape out a living among the few remaining plants in the remnants of the park.
The homeless would ruin such a beautiful and lustrous patch of grass before the impending crowds stomped all over it on their way to a spectacle enshrining an overindulgent culture, as soon as the parking lot was finished after three years of messy construction - assuming the green survived that long at all.
They stop across the street and light a joint. Someone has painted, ‘save the harborfront, save the trees,’ on the construction fence, yet another reason to post police in the area; to save the fence from vandalism. Down the street someone else has spray painted ‘corn ruins lives.’
Paul asks, “you ever noticed how many products have corn in them? It’s not even good, I don’t get why people like it so much.”
Phil shrugs and they keep walking. “I know, they put high-fructose corn syrup in everything. They might as well be telling people, this food was never healthy but now it tastes better.”
“Ugh!” Paul makes a disgusted face. “It doesn’t though, it’s so gross.”
“Worse than sugar, even.” Phil agrees. “They tell kids sugar is bad for their teeth but who ever mentions how bad that shit is for your brain?”
Sugary tastes appeal to our hunter-gatherer instincts, causing us to seek out foods that contain high levels of sugar over fruits that are either too early or too late to eat. As we fill our diets with incredibly excessive amounts of sugar, our brains rewire themselves to seek out more of those foods, not realizing it’s completely unnecessary and unhelpful to our survival, creating a neurologically wired addiction to something we already have way too much of.
Paul says, “Yeah well, wouldn’t it be a shame if our economy had to adjust to shifts in market commodity values that reflect a desire for the ecosystem and the average american to be healthy?” He could spend an hour listing the ways this would cause economic problems, if it were handled with a higher priority on the profit margins of the upper classes than on what actually makes sense for society as a whole.
“Honestly, it wouldn’t be that bad if we accepted other uses for the same materials. Like biodiesel, for example.” Phil has been waiting decades for biodiesel to become a more commonly known alternative to fossil fuels.
Paul laughs. “Instead of causing diabetes, we could use corn to produce organic fuels, which would be made by absorbing carbon from the air and then putting it back there again, which would create a new carbon cycle.”
Nature likes cycles and can adjust to accommodate them. This would allow economical shifts away from fossil fuels, while only creating much slower agricultural shifts to help stabilize the economy.
After nearly fifty years, this alternative is still considered infeasible, and the incredibly toxic batteries of electric cars are preferred to such an extent that the electrical demand is expected to double very quickly.
“No one likes that idea, though,” says Phil, still thinking of biodiesel as alternative use for corn. “It’s too much of a culture shock, creating changes like that. Just start making massive amounts of solar panels. That’s way better for the environment.”
Paul rolls his eyes again. “I always wondered what people expect to happen with those things when they’re done. It’s not like recycling facilities receive the proper funding.” The nearest recycling facility for electronics went out of business during the pandemic, when everyone was buying new electronics from amazon and their business should have been at an all-time high.
Now the only place to send that kind of scrap is out of state, and the customers are expected to pay the company because the government doesn’t want to.
Government funding for military resources is still the predominant use of tax money. The material provided to the military, once deemed unserviceable, is not considered recyclable and is reused for experiments and targets during testing of up-to-date prototypes of more lethal equipment. Recycling this material is typically considered out of the question.
Most civilians feel bad for their level of waste at home. The manufacturing and construction industries use such immense amounts of waste that the average consumer doesn’t make a noticeable difference, and nothing is being done to quell the immense waste being produced every day at the factories where our food is made, among other things.
Paul used to work nights at a food production plant, where the amount of single-use plastic getting thrown away every day would rival his yearly waste. The perfectly edible food being thrown away there would feed every homeless person in the city, every day, but it wasn’t put in the city’s compost service because it was mixed in with plastic and the thousands of hair nets and latex gloves being used to ensure sanitation concerns are addressed. That was just one of the hundreds of similar facilities in that city alone.
Phil used to work construction, where daily water use was enough to give showers to every homeless person and literal tons of scrap metal was thrown in the same bins as gypsum, plastic and the workers’ empty cigarette packs. In theory it would be sorted through and dealt with appropriately. In actuality the truck drivers who disposed of this material knew that so little distinction was made between what is and is not recyclable, they threw food in their trucks apathetically.
As they walked along the city harborfront, looking out at the polluted lake with its destroyed natural balance, Paul remembers watching a street sweeper stop on a metal grate bridge and dump its garbage into a river, 20 feet from the lake. By that time he’d emptied so many public garbage cans that he wondered if anyone in the city knew the difference between recycling and their half-drunk coffee, saturated with rehydrated milk and artificial sweeteners. He’d also picked up thousands of crushed cigarette butts from the sidewalk before they made their way into the sewer.
Phil picks up a piece of garbage and throws it away. He wonders how long it’ll take before that same piece is sitting in a river somewhere out of town.
They step over a chain blocking off a boardwalk style sidewalk over the harbor. This space was usually open to the public but over winter, these chains went up to keep people out. It was deemed unsafe during the cold months, because ice causes slipping hazards. No ice is present and there is no hazard, yet the majority of people stay on the now-crowded sidewalk rather than step over the fence onto the much larger and now-empty boardwalk.
A man with a big, bushy, Santa-looking beard walks past them looking self-conscious. He avoids meeting Phil’s eyes, expecting to be made fun of. Phil lightly says, “love the beard bro,” but the man doesn’t hear him.
They sit on the bench lining the edge, looking out across the lake as the surface dances with the wind. A group of teenagers is laughing on a closed dock and one of them drops something on the ice, between the dock and the concrete wall holding up the sidewalk.
The teens use emergency rescue equipment to retrieve whatever it is they dropped, but to no avail. One of them walks away and comes back with a plank of wood. As his friends cheer him on, he lays the plank between the dock and the ledge, inching out across it to lean down, hoping to reach their fallen object.
Phil laughs, “ah yes, the glorious victory of man over the challenge of natural obstacles.”
The boy loses balance and falls onto the ice. A girl screams. Paul and Phil immediately jump up, ready to go help out, but the teens’ laughter rings out as the boy stands up, safe and sound. The girl screams again, “it fell under!”
Having established the ice is strong enough to support him, the boy confidently picks up the plank and pushes it into a crack in the ice, hoping to pull out the object, presumably in an attempt to impress his lady friend.
There is no bound to the extents most men will go to in the strife for female approval.
After another minute of watching the boy trying to grab the object without reaching into the icy water, Paul stands up to leave.
Phil says, “I kinda wanted to see what they were going for but it doesn’t matter.”
Paul shrugs, “yeah, at least they’re trying to pull it out.” The ice is lined with litter that was thrown into the lake by people and the wind, no one is willing to get it. “This doesn’t even compare to the stuff that’s already in there.”
As they step back over the chain, a man walking the other way glares at them like what they’re doing is morally offensive. Paul smiles cynically as they pass, and sees the man’s backpack is unzipped. In better circumstances he’d chase the man down, instead he yells, “your bag is open, you judgmental dick!”
The man pretends not to hear but they stop to watch and after another few seconds the man stops and closes the zipper without acknowledging the advice at all. He wouldn’t stoop so low as to accept help from such trouble makers.
As they walk along, they both make eye contact with as many people as possible, trying to be friendly. As usual, almost no one meets their eyes, and most of those who do seem skeptical, as if there’s something wrong with people treating strangers this way.
“I can’t stand this, dude,” Paul says, “how there’s so fuckin’ many people around here but everyone is so fuckin’ isolated from each other.”
“I know,” Phil nods, “people have so much social anxiety, they close off to protect themselves from strangers, except the fact that everyone’s doing that is the reason there are so many problems. We wouldn’t have so much social anxiety if we’d just communicate with each other in nicer ways but everyone has this attitude of being the only person who matters, in a city of millions who need help they don’t know how to ask for.”
“If only people would just let go of their bullshit and loosen up a little.” Paul has always wished people were willing to interact in healthier ways, to break the cycle of universally toxic social trends, but despite the problems making themselves more and more obvious, no one is willing to see what’s really happening. “They’re all so blinded by fear, they freeze up and won’t let anyone in. It just keeps the same stupid cycle going, over and over again.”