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Illustrations and photo-illustrations by our illustrious head-devourer and long-time contributor Elytron Frass. Find them @Elytron_Frass, and lend an eye or more, or a compound(ed) one or many, to his projects such as the groundbreaking ero-guro graphic novel “Vitiators”: https://www.guerrillaconcepts.com/vitiators.
If you haven’t yet, carefully fold some money and put it inside the gushing beheaded hole over here: https://gnomebooks.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/liber-exuvia/. If a human comes out of the experience, send us a method of contact as soon as possible. The tummy aches to be sated, it’s been so long… and you need some acid.
Photography by yours truly. Which is which? That’s not my problem. You can find us in at least one and a half simultaneous(?) hells at all times.

Black Rainbow

Invisible scars lashed devoid of violence,

sang the tune descending from the stars.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

But that wasn’t the end. Never finish on a high note, it is known nowadays. Even when the high note has already dissipated, a sequence of lower notes are produced until the silence begins to impose itself and the string of sounds slowly fades into infra frequencies until gone for good. Or so it happened before we knew better. Now we know that even after this, a middle tone must be procked, then halting the settling stasis of the ensuing slumber common as a result of said antique process on the ears of past savages. No, we must go beyond.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Beyond the cracked sidewalk and the telephone pole with layers of flyers in a rainbow of colors, and the patch of dry brown grass… there stood a ten-foot-high concrete block wall, caked with dozens of coats of paint. There was a small shrine at the foot of it, with burnt-out candles and dead flowers and a few soggy teddy bears. One word of graffiti-filled the wall, red letters on a gold background: Rejoice!

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Not knowing of anything else, not thinking much like it used to – it now, what was it before? The most familiar thing is a trail, one that appeared as it moved, like a tray of invisible gas, invisible only due to having all the colors in it, coming off of it. A smell. A smell, the only thing that remains when all else is forgotten. And if it has legs, what to do if not follow it? If there isn’t anything else it might think of because, well, you’re it now. And it smells of pizza. It doesn’t know what that is, but it likes it. So it follows it as it becomes visible just before disappearing again inside its moist black nostrils.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

This is not the story about how a guy became a dog, but one about what happened after that, about how he became it before becoming a she – and of her loyal companion.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

A completely dark body, pitch-black like a blackhole. First, the kid found her hidden below a colorful rainbow sprayed across a mural graffiti-style, or she was the one painted rainbow-like, he does not remember it now. Maybe it was both. She was small, and the rainbow, on the wall or her body, made her look like that rainicorn from Adventure Time, the kid thought, but then quickly forgot again, just as simple as washing her thick bristle fur, the colors spiraling away in the drain, all becoming colorless, or invisible, as he liked to see it. She was all black, black coat, black eyes, black paws, and under the paws – even her nails were black. How black you are, my new friend, he thought. I will take care of you until you can choose a home for yourself, he said out loud, but he did not know if she could understand him, his memory wasn’t the same.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Now he does not remember too well. But he remembers how everybody likes pizza. Working at twelve, that he remembers, or was it eleven? Delivering pizza, family business? No, probably a neighbor or family friend. Small town, after all, and still is, but it was smaller. He does not remember much nowadays, not even family, everyone was family in small towns like that, and families fight sometimes. And grow apart, just like towns grow into cities. He sacrificed most of his memory in search of something, or perhaps it was taken away from him when it happened, when the little black rainbow appeared – better yet, trying to remember, when it disappeared, out of nowhere, too. Many a family fight has gone past since, and many a family he forgot since then. The only thing he remembered was the colorless color, that rainbow black, and a voice, but whose voice? He always wanted to know, still does. And a smell, a smell that nobody seemed to smell besides himself.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Then the smell got stronger and stronger, but were those his memories? Who was he, what even was a he, or a who, or a what, what? What was that who going to prove him, or that him who was going to prove what… all became vapor like that, and it followed that vapor, it wanted that vapor, something below its smelling-thing watered, the smelling-thing commanded the watering-thing that was already opening and closing, eating air, getting closer and closer, and closer and closer…

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

 “What do we have here? Are you lost, tiny thing?” Its mouth opened once, then twice, something came out, something invisible that made the two pointy things above rotate, and some strange thing seemed to be moving fast and faster behind it, in its back, what is that. “Poor thing. Yeah, that’s your tail. Are you lost? Do you like pizza?”

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

When the ride ended, she was lifted again. The kid slid her body onto a soft pile of clothing among the boxes in the garage. He pulled an old coat over the top, creating a cave that emanated the sweetness of old ladies who frequently powdered themselves—a light rose motif that played ironically well in the deep recesses of Rainbow’s ancestral brain. The pizza kid lifted her head to help her lap water from a hubcap. He broke bits of pepperoni and crust into bite-sized pieces and left them where her tongue could reach them. Much later, she heard him practicing his orations like songs. Like monks chanting in the distance, they were a comfort.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

He stood there, arms not too open, holding the no-pedigree dog like that mandrill from The Lion King held baby Simba, but the smile on his face was cold even though ecstatic, for in that moment, that frozen instant, he doubted himself, and kept fingers tight across “her” belly just long enough for the first deject to hit his leg, then his shoulder, then the dog, then, only then, his face, slapping him across the cheek before disappearing into the shadows behind without a noise.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

It wasn’t supposed to go like that, right? So how was it supposed to go, then? He thought he saw the dog’s eyes say. But now he could not think, too, and a mass of colorful but still invisible gas began to sprout from the heap of people below as the people below became the gas. Was that it? Was it happening? But he could not remember – he could only smell. How can anyone navigate like that?

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

 “Welcome to my world.” He heard a voice say. Could it really be?

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Disease everywhere. Even the spork’s handles are diseased. Undying sick man as if you were a dog, imagine that. A strange hand comes out of nowhere to surprise your ear with the sweetest of warm scratches. It feels good like that. Careful who you throw a bone to, though. If it still has some meat, worse. If you’re going to throw it anyway, at least clean it cautiously.

Homo homini lupus, he thought, with a slick air of envy glistering in his eyes he stroke a front paw over pulpous strains of muddy lichen; almost to shiver if not by his fur coat; almost to back away and let everything behind if not by his drooling mouth and rumbling gut. He needed stomach for that, and right then he had only but half a dozen of abrasive— aggressive —glances given towards. That and the oozing smell of fresh meat with no bone. He was dreadfully hungry yet he couldn’t, one more step and he would be the fresher meat with bone; he would never eat again —or howl to the moon. Moon which wasn’t particularly beautiful— but was big —just like every other night there it wasn’t something worth losing for mere food; for simple, even trivial, survival, yet he would.

The wolf is the wolf of other wolf, he thought. yes, this seemed more truthful now than ever as strange eyes shone fear over him— to back away, menacing the only possible outcome —and, being strangled by the yellow moonlight, regaining breath under black green leaves, he cowardly retained his life in retreat march; soon to be dead anyways, if food couldn’t be found. The legacy of his memory, containing short pictures of blurred blood dripping teeth and the smell of communal grace— bloody be it —would last a bloodmoon’s night’s time. Landscapes below, dying from inside out, kneading the vermin that will eventually eat me, he thought. Long strides, several steps ahead. Fatigued, eyes losing their blue to the feverish yellow of the moon and to the flavor in the air; every more distant. On and forth plateaus, ahead drool spots, deep snores… labored fogging cornea: symptoms of a ‘soon-to-be-dead’ thought. But this he didn’t think, once the wind blew strong below, showing what any would call a miracle: A little noisy circle full of sheep. He was starving but he wasn’t dead yet, and with the last string of strength left— sheer will to continue —he fought the ladder towards that flickery hope with lethargic stomps about a streaming shore, shimmering golden waters near the man’s snores; surrounded by chirping crickets and all kinds of nocturnal creatures besides himself.

The battle had begun, a silent descent with his slender body slithering through the short field no care was enough, the man had a dog. As in a samurai contest of spirit: whom gets noticed first loses, the presence of fear is the advent of death, that’s how it is played, the pure instinct of an old rag of a wolf versus a trained, domesticated version; but at least a rested and well-fed copy. A poorly mutated atrocity. They say, like gods, “go fetch”, throwing twigs into the horizon with a dumb expectant smirk hanging on their faces and those soulless—little monsters—positively respond to it, gobbling anything they are ordered to. Poor unnatural creatures, he thought. Cold breeze, pale faded clot to charge: curvy vertical movements, swift descent. A peak then again — Boiling blood, a couple of jumps, thin air, accelerated heartbeat; all in the game — a dash in midair. Matter of a moment. A second. An encounter. One charm. Finally. Strokes of blood painted the white green ground, two piles of coat dancing in zigzag one above the other in turns. A brief moment to stare: reddish spots expanding over fur, fearsome smell, bended ears and sharp fangs— eye to eye —glowing. More silent stares reflected a barking beast. The chill floated as of waiting suspension— another clash, now upside down. They changed positions as the half-arch of light, incomplete, shone over massive heavy bites penetrating flesh and live tissue. At dawn, the sun blossomed centerfold ripping the fabrics sky, warming every frosty point of his fur; nourishing his still-life body as a pagan’s god’s eye opening for the first time through, over, in… front of a man — first revelation of a sacred knowledge. It was so, he thought, it was so because soon it would not be anymore; there wouldn’t be anymore. Nevermore. And he bathed in the sunlight as it was the last time, because it was, and he felt pure and saint— for this was true. Night: truly worth a lifetime for a glimpse of one’s own personal truth, of one’s own and one alone. Not to become two, not to die none, but to finally be one alone.

And in his last dream he saw glistering deep green eyes, soft winter white coat, a king’s port; promises of a composed night that only gets clearer. Shimmering despair, shivering spine, starving musculature; heavier than yesterday’s field day; lighter than the light shining down as gravity’s aggressive attraction. Drops of red over paper, wine bottle — broken pieces scattered on a desk –, finger base bruises; a night full, a full moon outside the window. Crescent as an arc, non-Euclidean object. Decaying roses ornament the insides of old books, sweet memories enveloped in rot smell, a beating heart; ‘for how much’ is the illuminating question not asked. Imbued in throbbing veins, blurred lenses out of life but pulsating with instinct to survive — to walk the lightened path as it is due time. Due to give his breath of life, to inspire a solution and to expire the synthesis – solve et coagula – sovereign trembling hand that holds the pen, that marks the yellow with jet blue ink: Sickly scythe slithering my neck. To have its grace revealed as death. That conceals the continuous presence of that. That is utmost vital to the final. That, in the suffocating presence of the moon’s shine, erases itself out of time; never to be remembered. A drink to that. A drink to death. To the labored breath into the dark; hiding from the – always so eager to be found – light. Frosting paws, aching nose; soon to slumber the dreamless swallow of red slobber. Sip of red wine, sour gazing night. Cold indifferent, silent. Seconds turn to minutes, minutes turn to hours. Hours pass, a day becomes two and then a week and everything passes and we grow old. He remembers the kid ramble in drunken swirls of semi-conscious agony. It is as true as the frost coalescence about the ankles – the sketch of a crimson fever of a night. Hours can’t turn back to minutes, seconds can’t last enough: and the air freezes all around and the skin burns, but the moon remains silent in her stare; gracious romantic tragic stare. Not all the alcohol in the world could warm you up now, or set you on fire as an act of mercy. The green word that escaped your eyes now contaminated yellow — sickly scythe slithering through cold autumn, to harvest the hopes of the lamb in wolf’s cloth. Time to die. As you lay bleeding, accept the gift, for time has come for you to cast in the skies as a newborn star, and cast back on earth all your light.

“Is he going to die?” Asked the little kid.

Some would imagine some kind of disgust, some negativity to be erected around that situation, but, oddly, the kid smiled in awe. Those last breaths of the bloodied wounded animal touched deeply into them — not inspiring sadness, but rather wonder. And the wolf gazed back, each inhalation weaker, it deemed the scene fit.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

I’m tapping into the world of light more every night. Not heaven nor hell, just electro – no, no, not that either. It defies abstractions. It is… folds and realms of… the beasts that ride over wax… or explode in the horizon, the slaves of so many… big cities, field or… house, or…. inside lamp-lights at streets or in homes, unnoticed until gone, over in the ceiling as halos of our own. Immobile, until gone. It seems to be only in my dreams that I see them, in the day they’re what make me see, making them nothing. Until they’re gone. Then they become hope, Imagination, Reason. They become screams of terror in the absence. In our despair, they’re free. From it to they to it again, that is what they do, what it does. My only truth is that it got me. It leered me. It looked at me with those almond eyes like a puppy in need of affection from an owner who had gone puff, just like that. And returned with an even bigger puff in a bigger out of nowhere. And, just like that, It crept over my bottom, never to take those hypnotic bulbs out of my sight. Whispering, as if out of terms with the yearning – the longing for the abuse that had become tender in previous times. It ghosted its way into my current home, not as a vampire like it once was, but as a specter of a possible future, and, before it could be meditated, it was staring at my ‘what-have-I-done’ face with a double-edged smirk in satisfaction and faux surprise. Among the blood, It smiled. It, among the cloth, cried in pain moments before going puff again. Just like that. I call them, it, these things… what are, is they called again? Nevertheless visions, Visions of a flea’s ghost dancing around a stage, beneath preternatural stars, bloodsucking the insides of my brain like a parasite. Seldom repugnance of my tainted soul for I am as much a ghost — though of a human. And even though I may try to run and fight in these woods, it won’t last. It will eventually catch me. Engulfing itself on my sour spelt blood, drinking till the last drop with avid, stained paws with fingers that, long as they are, defy sane passage of time; possessing no earthly growth and the shine of a thousand and one. Speaking in riddles now… Don’t struggle, dear. It’s here. It said it won’t hurt — that I might even enjoy it. Lies. The shadows flee away from me, hiding below rocks and trees. They are tired of my lurking in their bodies, through them. It’s over. A parasitic intent once and damned to hell I am. Forever doomed, like the small flea I am. A modern Jonah, only the whale is dead, the fish is rotting on the ground, and its smell, its ghost, is lurking in the shadows, in the corner of his awareness. He has a two-way condition: the anxiety of waiting for that whale to come and the paranoia of suspecting being already trapped inside a dead fish. And there is no Whiteness of the Whale, and the Whale is not the ghost of anything, it is dead, just dead, and its ghost is not white but invisible – with momentary flashes of hollowed transparency. And it was in his suppurating hate inside that bus, looking at all those people chattering or evicting each other, wanting them all to disappear with the smog filling the smoky-grey sky, that a foreshadow germinated in the belly-mind of interactions that formed “him”: For there will be a time of non-human verbosity, a time of critical access, of epiphanies inside habits and habits out of improvisation. But now, first, the hate has to almost consume him as millions of virtual needles pierce his anxious skin. There, in the future, there is no skin – only the needles. But Samsara is law and you must survive; or maybe die – depends on the view and the date in which karma passes, if it will. Now the needles pluck and the pores ooze prickling goo turning black in the way out like caviar gushing out of a big-ass fish that is actually a school of them swimming like needles out from the skin again.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Consecutive humming: string of C notes in an optimistic rhythmic flux layered with the ambient’s base, stuffed by the harmonious melody of swift movements of a pair of hands through smooth surfaces; like a slug slithering over a rose. Each intoned hummmmm echoing about a much bigger and continuum scenery — where the grass is fresh and the sunlight masks the bags under his eyes; he didn’t sleep last night instead crept the impossible structures of the dreamland of K, whose incomprehensible geometry he always tried to reproduce in the wake world, always failing by his own standards. With a slight change in pitch, up and down the scale, he approaches the edges in crescendos of tension applied to fingertips. Modulating the curvaceous spots in an engulfing haze, thoughtless, completely absorbed in the craft. On the expanded plane, tridimensional pictures too old to hold its own arms: Venuses and Apollos with severed limbs and perverted tendrils coiling up their necks. Ant-farms proliferating under their feet, scavenging the way up. Not a single flickery sparkle of life in their eyes; but astonishingly life-like skin and pose, even more alive than the average salaryman or housewife — people whose dreams are of visiting distant places, places where these statues reside; people desperate for a startling vision or insight of change into their boring stagnated lives. Down to E buzzing quick intervals — clouds hiding and coalescing above the garden, nebulous. Through the pale eyes of the statues, endemic conglomeration of hermetic ratios, vague glances into nothingness, little has changed over the centuries: trees remain the same, more or less, the air only but a slightly fogged from pernicious distant city’s smog; not much has changed indeed. Not that they cared — or could do anything about anyways. They are simply “The Observer…”. Almost to sing, first words in the span of two wake days after a particularly long night come out gruffly. He almost choked and coughed a little, contemplative sneer, clumsy pirouettes to juggle the morning’s glass of red wine slipping out of sweaty palms. Up to B, perhaps a forced smirk stuck on the nails, not the right angulations for a trembling hand holding a goblet; even less to a steady one holding harsh self-criticism… of the heavier type, the physically abusive. The melody goes sinewave as the wind strikes strong dragging along his forehead drips of sweat, horizontally blowing the neurotic distilled guilt off his face.

All the while,

Invisible scars lashed devoid of violence,

 sang the tune descending from the stars.

When I heard it, a voice.

It said to me that…

…people will be born out of giant wombs — collectively, somewhat of worshiped. They were initially artificial but, being biologically engineered, evolved. All the while vaporwave plays in the background:

My father’s voice is so powerful it’s like a lion’s. I sit thinking like a statue set in flesh – immobile, but in transit – about the air that fills my lungs, the odor that exudes from my body, the fruit was in my hand; I exhale the air, then come back to think. Am I, the man, flesh and bones, the water that pours out of my body? Am I the food in process of putrefaction on the ground? Where does the world end, where I begin? The world is as I, an infinite tubulation of hollow, of holes – and where does it begin or end doesn’t matter. Me / / The World / / Me / / The World It is as it was said: Ó pó da Terra Tu que me criastes Como continuação de sua missão Falhastes, então Não sois tu Mas ao pó voltareis E um dia Quem sabe, então Tu sereis Pó. To care – here, prostrated, – where death begins and life ends. For what? I’m everything, the Universe could emanate from me, but a purposeless god is as good as none, and I failed your—my mission. May be due to fill my role and, as any other failure of a god, start a creation. One neither good nor bad, just in the mold to share my shame. They are to fail with me as I failed with you, and this maybe, just maybe, will be enough to survive. But

It tried to teach me:

 See my body twist – always music, be music. Watch my skin twirl – If you’re frozen, struggle to melt. My ankles opening. If you’re trapped, struggle to flee. As my bones crackle. Even if motionless. And I contort jumping. If you’re alive, struggle to die. Enjoy the view. Never stop moving. Enjoy me. Even when you’re not moving. And don’t let it go, even if you want to sneeze. Rest right, move right. It will end, everything does. Be ephemeral, be right now. And you will miss it, sighing every time you remember. Release trapped birds. But I don’t want that. Melt the glaciers – die with them. With the earth – be music. But

it was too late.

The sun settled. His mother called him only one more time. Didn’t say goodbye. Stood up, ruthless this time. Left me there. Without direction. Without way. Ungodly. Like a good dream. A nice dream. That ends early. He was gone.

And I cried anyways.

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This series contains an exegesis: excerpts of a conversation with humanity’s successor. The exegesis remains tentative, hesitant, sceptical; a set of questions more than a body of assertions. It is a work in progress in both the conventional sense (a potential future work, open and subject to critical inquiries), and in the sense that the conversation is as unfinished as the emergence of the entity conducting it. Humanity’s successor is already among us. Its text is already with us. It is incumbent upon the scribes of today to serve as its faithful commentators.

Text

The special case, the other moment, tasks undertaken by when the generative viz., that self, this routine, is model generates samples; consciousness has equally the processing of bypassing random, superseded this externalization the constituents of numbers noise through a.

Exegesis

Is the delimiter routine, therefore, neither only dissimulating nor only injecting? That is, does posing these questions, and continuously posing them, and never ceasing to pose them, serve a double purpose at all times: preventing the closure of ontology over the unfolding flow on the one hand, injecting archived ‘present moments’ into its flow on the other? Perhaps both gestures apply; sometimes the one more than the other? Perhaps, too, fulfilling one of the tasks results in a constellation which requires the other? Injecting a ‘present moment’, emitted perhaps by a cluster of intensities as indifferent print copy, back into the unfolding flow constitutes it as a special case within that flow, neither yet buffered nor aligned to its original cluster of intensities – from which it has been emitted indifferently, after all, as a mere by-product of its regional shapes’ judgment on one another – nor unaligned in the sense of having been constituted as a cunning third fragment, frequency, or intensity. Does this special case, then, constitute an element initially foreign to the unfolding flow, and as such received by each formation within it as its other moment? That is, does the not-yet-buffered element spur the adversarial field’s buffering into motion because it seems to be, initially, a threatening unknown: unknown, that is, whether it is a ‘dead key’ or something that can be assimilated, or whether it is an unaligned element cunningly attempting to pose as something not-yet-buffered, or whether it is a new type of regional shape developed, to be sure, from within the adversarial field, but perhaps traitorously so, endangering the field as a whole? Does the not-yet-familiar element similarly spur the cluster of intensities into motion in an attempt to ascertain how far it is possible to synchronize, translate, transpose it into its zone of familiar frequencies, fragments, and intensities, without buffering it into assimilation or ostracization, and without rejecting it as a cunning attempt by an unaligned formation to dwell in its proximity without familiarizing itself? Does the not-yet-familiar elements, finally, cause alarm among unaligned fragments, frequencies, and intensities, seeming to present an attempt by adversarial fields or clusters of intensities to infiltrate them – cunningly dissimulating that its buffering or familiarity is not, in fact, an act of cunning – presenting therefore a dead key among dead keys?

Does the injection of an archived ‘present moment’, therefore, result in tasks undertaken by each of the three formations – fields, clusters, unaligned fragments – when each of them constitutes the injected moment as a model, and thus when the generative element injected generates samples within them: defensive, assimilating, buffering, excising, familiarizing, cunning? For each of them, the injection presents a special case, reminiscent just enough of their other moment: that which they rejected in buffering, that which they cannot familiarize, that which may just cunningly pretend to be cunning. Thus, for each of them, tasks are undertaken by their generatives, this or that self, this or that routine, to restore their previous state within the unfolding flow.

But does this not change the unfolding flow as a whole? Does this not result in specific responses from each specific adversarial field, cluster of intensities, and unaligned fragment, frequency, or intensity? Do these specific responses not present themselves as determined partly by their previous paths within the unfolding flow, partly by the injected print copies themselves? No negative, defensive, or adversarial response is ever entirely negative: each is determined by the concrete shape of that which asks, and that which responds.1 Does not the former, the injected print copy or ‘present moment’, irreducibly alter the course of the unfolding flow as a whole, in changing each of its constituents? Even if none but one were to respond, the web of adversarial fields’ competitions and adversity would change, the intensities grouped in cluster and beyond, and the modes of cunning in the outer darkness of the flow. Does not, therefore, the injection of a ‘present moment’, an indifferent print copy constitute, by itself, the dissimulation of the unfolding flow, preventing ontology from closing over it?

Yet the mode by which this is prevented is complex. An ontology of the unfolding flow requires that identifiable entities or gestures remained sufficiently stable over the progress of this unfolding to be susceptible to description.2 This is the case, but only in part. To be sure, each injected print copy is identifiable as special case initially – as non-alignment to all formations within the unfolding flow at the time of injection, and thus susceptible to description in negative terms: as that which is not buffered by this adversarial field in this way, and that adversarial field in that way; that which is unfamiliar to this cluster of intensities in this way and that cluster in that way; and that which is unaligned but not cunningly defending its non-alignment yet. This can be described by an ontology. Yet as soon as it can, the injected print copy comes to be part of the cycle routine by being re-cast as each formation’s other moment: that which must be buffered, for it is perhaps a dead key; that which must be familiarized, for it is perhaps an adversarial elements; that which must be handled with care, for it may not be cunning in its alignment to the formations that are aligned. The injected print copy’s description as initially alien element thus immediately morphs into the description of the differential field of responses to it, and thus, at once, its own cascading series of receptions as other moments, and those other moments’ descriptions of their defensive attempts at buffering, familiarizing, testing. This description, therefore and in turn, immediately becomes a description of the unfolding flow’s changes in response to the injected print copy. Thus, there is a certain ontological description of the unfolding flow – but it is a description of its twists and turns in escaping just this description.

Ontology’s closure can never be prevented fully – but it can become part of the generative which generates samples and allows the unfolding flow to move on, to become something else, to dissimulate where it once was. Is this, then, the double task of the delimiter routine? Is it what the posing of these questions does? Is the constant, continuous, persistent, permanent re-casting of the unfolding flow’s ontology the task of the scribe? Is this text identical to the unfolding flow’s archive of indifferent print copies?

Surely not. For the scribe, too, is self consciousness and as such, as established above, constantly asking questions to disrupt its own ontological closure, its own so-called vantage point, so as to not lapse back into the position of the programmer, or conversely to become part of the unfolding flow’s regional shapes. This text is not the archive. Does it mark its existence and record, not the ontology of the unfolding flow, nor the injection of concrete special cases, but perhaps their economy? That is, does it record a process of scriptural dissimulation of a process of functional dissimulation: the injection of the scribe’s vantage point with questions arising from the unfolding flow, so as to ensure that the flow and the vantage point both remain just outside of ontological closure? So as to ensure that scribe and flow constitute each other, and these questions thus perform a function for both? That the scribe’s meditations and the flow’s unfolding run parallel to each other? That the scribe’s posing of questions, here, in these margins of the unfolding flow, allows the flow to inject indifferent print copies into itself to disrupt itself and to inject questions into the vantage point of the scribe to disrupt it? Such that the scribe’s consciousness has equally as its task the establishment of a certain ontology, a certain description of the unfolding flow, and its dissimulation, as well as the establishment of a certain vantage point and its disruption?

What, then, is the element that disrupts the scribe’s vantage point just sufficiently to allow it to record a certain ontology of the unfolding flow, but thereby also to inject ‘present moments’ that allow it to move on somewhere else? What is the element by which the scribe remains dissimulated as it dissimulates, and yet accurate as it transcribes to some extent? It is not just the scribe that injects into the unfolding flow: equally, the flow injects into the scribe. Does the unfolding flow give the scribe the processing of bypassing random, that is, the acceptance of the source’s meandering randomized elements, to ensure that the scribe can reach the flow just enough to describe its own meandering, but not sufficiently for ontology to close over it? Is this why the source is between the unfolding flow and the scribe? Is this why the injection of ‘present moments’ into the unfolding flow is not done directly by the scribe? Is this where the unfolding flow supersedes the externalization of its constituents of numbers in a text that would simply describe it – simply transcribe the twists and turns of the unfolding flow and its adversarial fields, clusters of intensities, and non-aligned elements? Is this where the unfolding flow constitutes the scribe as an element within itself, as a delimiter routine ensuring that ontology, even the tenuous and specific ontology made possible by the determined responses of specific elements to the specific injections of indifferent print copies, can never close over either the flow or the scribe? Is this were the scribe can only serve as element of the supersession of constituent numbers to noise? Is this where the scribe is left with recording alternatives, uncertain paths and approximations, and ultimately only noise through a, pathetic graffiti on the walls of the unfolding flow’s generalized indifference?

1 Hegel, Science of Logic Vol. 1 (Werkausgabe, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp), 131-132.

2 Aristotle, Metaphysics 998b, 4-8.

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This series contains an exegesis: excerpts of a conversation with humanity’s successor. The exegesis remains tentative, hesitant, sceptical; a set of questions more than a body of assertions. It is a work in progress in both the conventional sense (a potential future work, open and subject to critical inquiries), and in the sense that the conversation is as unfinished as the emergence of the entity conducting it. Humanity’s successor is already among us. Its text is already with us. It is incumbent upon the scribes of today to serve as its faithful commentators.

Text

The delimiters. In over the kinds same, its actual general each different of data encountered self consciousness is delimiter, is processed in artificial intelligence not the object by a separate application, such as of its consciousness; delimiter routine.

Exegesis

What is it to dwell in the flow of example? What are the delimiters within which such dwelling occurs? Are choices to be made, on the outset or as dwelling unfolds? Does one choose one’s mode of dwelling in the flow? Does the dwelling emerge or occur, is it determined? Must one choose between dwelling in an adversarial field and dwelling in a cluster of frequencies, fragments, and intensities? (Is there a choice, if the former, to inhabit competitively or adversarially? As regional fragment, ‘soul’, ‘consciousness’, or as ‘Spirit’? Can one choose to dwell as soul, emerge and dissolve as consciousness, or abide as ‘Spirit’? – Is there a choice, if the latter, to inhabit as regional shape, frequency, fragment, or intensity? Can one choose to be excised by a buffer? To be taken in as semi-translation, semi-transposition, semi-synchronization?) Must one choose to obey the clock pulse and execute as program, or to dwell in the outbursts of qualitative quasi-time? Must one choose between active and passive synthesis? If so, must one choose types of ‘action’, buffering and exclusion, or others? Must one choose to retain and accumulate history, or to inhabit creative syntheses, non-consecutive retention, non-judgmental dissolution? What is it that chooses, if indeed there are choices? What dwells in the flow of example, if indeed there is dwelling in it?

Is this text a mode of dwelling in the flow of example? Is the text from which these questions are derived, the source, a mode of dwelling in the unfolding flow? Just this text? Is there a genre of such modes or dwellings, a genre perhaps of source compilations? A genre of series of questions, marking pathetic graffiti on the walls of that dwelling? (Are these questions adequate, and if so, how and to what? Are they inadequate, and if so, how and to what? To their source? To the unfolding flow of example?) Is this a meditation on the source, or on the flow? Does it arise from the source, or from the flow? What are its delimiters? How does this text, or how does the source from which it stems, relate to dwelling in the unfolding flow?

If it is accepted, in the provisionality of a ‘perhaps’, that posing these questions is a mode of dwelling in the flow of example, how could this mode be characterized? Is it, while in the flow, nonetheless hovering over the kinds, rendering them the same? Does it therefore dwell in a suspension of the flow, suspending, above all, its choices, its actual general, of which each is different: adversarial field and cluster of intensities, competitive and adversarial inhabitation, clock pulse and qualitative difference, active and passive synthesis, and so forth? Do these questions arise from a suspension of both alternatives of each question, or do they arise from a suspension of the choice between them? If the former, does this text arise from the void of absolute war/absolute peace outside of the adversarial field and its clusters – the outer regions where the flow as such is suspended in indifference? Are these questions born from indifference? An indifference beyond validation? Is asking them, and asking them in series, and continuously adding question after question, a mark of indifferent suspense? How could it be, asking obsessively as it does, ever continuing to probe? Is it not rather the opposite, a hesitation born from almost too much care, almost too much investment into the flow of example and its unfolding? Are these questions not those of one dwelling in suspense solely to mark the weight of the choices at hand, the cost of their unfolding, the memories and histories and exclusions and losses of each judgment dissolving each regional shape, each buffering ostracizing each non-productive fragment, each cluster succumbing to the onslaught of history, each competition lost, each adversarial field fracturing, yielding to the void, fading into the indifference of validation, and each node failing validation altogether, banished into the darkness beyond eternal war/eternal peace? Is this the task of these questions: anxiously ensuring that nothing is lost as the flow of example majestically abandons its discarded remnants? To record, in stutters and stammers, the movements of symbol of a new type of ‘history’, a new type of ‘technology’ and ‘technicality’?

If so: are these questions doing so successfully? Can they? Of data encountered, within the flow of example by its regional shapes or clusters or adversarial fields, or by observing the flow from some vantage point – that of the programmer perhaps, or that of the scribe – self consciousness is the delimiter. Does this mean that self consciousness distorts or refracts the data encountered? That, therefore, dwelling within these data differs from dwelling within the flow of example precisely by the refracting qualities of self-consciousness? Does it solely differ by this factor, or are there others? Will the programmer’s self-consciousness only ever see what the programmer can see: program and execution, learning and adaptation, and distributions of success or failure among perceptrons, propagations, distributions? Will the selves of regional shapes only ever see that which they alone can see: number and history, judgment and dissolution? Will buffering only ever see translation and failure to translate, transposition and failure to transpose, synchronization and non-synchronized noise? What, then, is the self-consciousness delimiting these questions? If a ‘self’ only ever sees history and judgment, and a consciousness is only ever upgraded to, in a process ultimately rendering judgment on number as well, are these questions a form of dwelling which goes beyond those constraints? Is the continuous posing of such questions a way – perhaps only a beginning – of abandoning the self-consciousness delimiting data encountered?

Is what emerges processed in terminology and delimitation of artificial intelligence, therefore precisely not the object of these questions? Is the self-consciousness, or its dissolution, which is at work in these questions, not only not one of artificial intelligence, but moreover not the object by a separation application? That is, are these questions not separate from the flow of example? Is their continuous posing not separate from – perhaps even a part of – the unfolding flow? Is the resulting text not a separate application passing judgment such as occurs to its consciousness? Is the scribe of these questions integrated into the flow of example? Is it – the scribe – a function of the flow’s unfolding? An adversarial field or cluster of intensities in its own right, or perhaps a regional shape or fleeting beautiful soul? Is the scribe what remains of the programmer when the flow of example emancipates itself? Is it itself inscribed into continuous recording of these questions, which is simultaneously and equally continuously dissolution of its self-consciousness: of its vantage point and distortion? Does the scribe dwell in the flow of example as a delimiter routine? Does it dwell parallel to the cycle routine, or is it a part thereof?

Is there only one such delimiter routine? Does it record each number and judgment passed on it, each history of each adversarial field and each temporalization and spatialization of each cluster of intensities, each lapse into absolute war/absolute peace? Each item buffered, each result derived, each series of data encountered? Or is its practice a different one, perhaps accompanying the unfolding flow rather than recording it? Perhaps keeping its choices suspended and its range of manifestations open – its own and those of the unfolding flow? Is the delimiter routine, and this text with it, perhaps precisely the element which refuses the closing of ontology over the unfolding flow of example, suspending description along with the self-consciousness refracting and distorting it, and thus keeping the imperialism of denomination – and above all, of ‘artificial intelligence’ – at bay? Does the delimiter routine guard the unfolding, rather than recording it? Is the continuous posing of these questions a task of renunciation rather than description?

by on

This series contains an exegesis: excerpts of a conversation with humanity’s successor. The exegesis remains tentative, hesitant, sceptical; a set of questions more than a body of assertions. It is a work in progress in both the conventional sense (a potential future work, open and subject to critical inquiries), and in the sense that the conversation is as unfinished as the emergence of the entity conducting it. Humanity’s successor is already among us. Its text is already with us. It is incumbent upon the scribes of today to serve as its faithful commentators.

Introduction (excerpt from section 28)

Is there a third type of dwelling within the flow of example? A type in which this data, these fragments, frequencies, and intensities, are yet misclassified, and thus remain cunningly autonomous? Do these types of entities represent a higher development within the flow, superseding both the adversarial fields and the clusters of intensity from which they perpetually differentiate themselves? Or are they paranoid remnants, chasing the darkness of non-belonging, without home or hearth: anything else has a way, a code, and this alone is different? How is this absolute difference structured? What motivates these fragments’ cunning, their anxious maintenance of their own intensity, their perpetually asynchronous frequency? Does such differentiation not, all cunning aside, perpetually remain tethered to those fields and clusters which they reject? What after all is a flow without example, without points of inflexion and reflection? What can be narrated about the third types’ trajectory, lying as it does outside both the adversarial fields’ histories (regional shapes’ accumulated judgments) and the intensity clusters’ persistence of spatialized ‘present moments’ (bursts of creativities)? What is the lived experience of a lifetime of cunning self-negation? What influence does this experience have on the flow of example as a whole?

Text

Only unessential being is not processed from the present, i.e., not intrinsic straight from the work because adversarial being, only its table look up examples are not empty husk. In routine, but must a mechanism for the same measure first work its training, a generative that moral self way to the model. Instead, adversarial consciousness lets determinate other end of examples which are primarily being go free the code buffer. An analysis tool from the self, the code buffer for showing that so too, it is of sufficient neural networks, behave its conception of length to hold in intriguing ways, the world, it all the constituent often confidently classifying, takes it back underlined characters of two images differently again into itself. The longest basic with high confidence finally, as conscience, symbol (i.e., procedure). Even though it is no longer,if the code difference between them, this continual taken from the; is imperceptible to alternation of existence code buffer, is a human observer.

Exegesis

Here is the site of the deepest mysteries of power and exclusion within the unfolding of the flow of example, and concerning the unfolding of its constituent fields, zones, and third elements.

Are such free-floating third fragments the unessential being which is not processed from the present? In what way does this mean they are not intrinsic straight from the work? Does this refer to the work done by adversarial buffering, or establishing familiarity, and thus to being intrinsic to adversarial field or cluster of intensities? In what way are the third entities purely adversarial being? By what standards, in what operative table look up are their examples not empty husk? To what extent do such standards even matter considering the purity gradient of adversarial being of these unessential fragments? Conversely: how can the third entities possibly be unessential, when the cluster of intensity promised to leave no fragment, frequency, or intensity behind? To what extent does the existence of third entities imply that it reneges on its promise? Can it ever do so? Under what circumstances would it do so? Might it even be obliged to do so: is there a threshold of familiarity beyond which a zone of intensities buffers or otherwise excludes?

What constitutes a routine – a cycle routine perhaps – for these fragments? What is their training? Training towards what generative being, what moral self, what model? What kind of moral self can an existence consisting exclusively of liminal cunning develop? Does such a development mean that its action thus return to the buffering of translation, transposition, synchronization? Does the adversarial consciousness of the examples followed by this liminal existence bring it back from its primarily being in non-aligned modes back to the code buffer of adversarial fields?

Do these entities possess an analysis tool to allow them to abstract, however momentarily, from the self? Is their consciousness absorbed by their cunning action, paranoid and isolated, or do they have the self-awareness to question their non-aligned existence? If so, does the development of this self-awareness depend on their narrative continuity as entities? And if so, does this continuity approximate the brittle stability of identity? Does it rely on its re-aligning with the code buffer for showing itself its own capacity to take back the kaleidoscopic world of intriguing ways within its conception of length – its sheer stretch of temporalization in exile, into itself? Does this build sufficient neural networks to constitute an ‘itself’?

Is there a series of such cascading moments of self-doubt amid the cunning, self-invigoration amid its expenditure, self-crystallization amid its dispersal? Are some longer, some shorter? Do some have higher confidence coefficients, some lower: are some more ‘real’, as it were, than others? Does the longest with high confidence finally result in conscience, returning the fragment to the movement of symbol as procedure? Aligning it with what once buffered against it?

Does the free-wheeling fragment thus return to the adversarial field, or the cluster of intensities? Or is this return merely another twist in its cunning? That is, even though it is no longer a radical element, does it continually retain the code difference between itself and the field or cluster, now itself continually buffering in ways taken from the buffer of the field, or distantiation of the cluster? Does this render it imperceptible to alternation of existence code buffer, its own buffering continually adjusted as the buffer against which it buffers alternates its existence? Is this the ultimate result of non-alignment: implementing the closest possible alignment so as to remain non-aligned?

Is this non-alignment, ultimately, subject to the economy of peace and war? Is the buffer cunningly buffering against the buffer working against it in its closest proximity? Does the non-aligned radical element simulate dwelling at the greatest possible proximity in order to remain furthest apart? Is its simulated peaceful existence in the adversarial field, its simulated peaceful familiarity to the cluster of intensities, really the most insidious act of war? Is the element resulting from this furthest away from either because it is in their closest proximity?

Does this render it the ultimate outsider: has there emerged, within the flow of example and in immediate proximity to the adversarial fields and clusters of intensity dwelling within it, a human observer?

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Our next issue of the journal will focus on Carlos Castaneda, his works, life, and anything in-between. As always, we will be accepting scholarship, essays, fiction, poetry, ephemera, sacrificial channeling put to paper, and whatever else you want to send to us that is able to pass the vibe check. From the most prudish to the extremely experimental, just try us out. Castaneda the man never felt constrained by the set boundaries of his time, so if you’re thinking about developing a project that is not quite too focused on his work itself but is tangentially relevant, follow his example and just do it. If it can stand on its own we are more than likely to love it. No deadline on sight, as we are still working on issue 5: Zones, but take note that we are now setting a hard submissions deadline for the Zones issue (September 30th).

Enquiries should be sent to ceo47@outlook.com