They Still Shoot Horses

Peek into my dystopian drugged-out esoteric sci-fi ww3 novel in making, think Gibson meets Ars Goetia or maybe just a sloppy PKD ripoff if he actually wrote a single believable female character ever

Friends,

I’m finally home from my travels across Canada. I have a pile of ideas I would like to write about, but somehow, it’s not flowing and I can’t really force myself to finish anything. I’m preparing a report from the conference Devil24 in Halifax, which was really awesome, and also putting together a piece framing AI as the New Mutation of the Language Virus, inspired by the Burroughs’ Nova Trilogy and some ToPY writings, so stay tuned for these topics coming soon.

But this outlet is not my job, I don’t really feel pressured to deliver content according to the ‘top 5 rules to grow your following NOW’. I’m sure we all feel already trapped in the loop of forced hyper-productivity all the fucking time. All I aspire for is to have a little fun, and while I’m very grateful to all my old and new readers, you might not always find here what you would expect. But I guess that’s life in general.

And in the spirit of staying true to what’s currently occupying my brain, let’s, for a minute, forget the weird anxious world of AI out there. There is a wholly new playground I’ve started exploring recently - fiction writing. I totally won’t blame you if that’s not the reason why you’re on the mailing list, please feel free to junk the mail and I promise that eventually, you’ll receive more occult technology takes.

But for now, I’ve decided to share with you a snippet from a work-in-progress, my dystopian drugged-out esoteric sci-fi cutup WW3 novel. Think Gibson meets Ars Goetia. Or Ballard, but on designer dissociatives instead of cocaine. Think all your worst global socio-political anxieties coming true. Or maybe, just think a sloppy PKD ripoff, if he actually wrote a single believable female character. Like ever.

I’m not sure how well is this going to work - and honestly, I’m trying to seal a magickal deal here by anchoring this weird brainchild in manifested reality. And I’m having incredible fun with it - here ya go, the first few paragraphs.

---

You'll have to do it over again until you get it right.

	An unassuming landscape. A birch, here and there. Some bird sounds. I’m fighting an urge to sandpaper my face.
	“When will you let me see him?” I asked, trying to hide the tinge of desperation in my voice. “The time is clotting again.”
	“Eva, you really need to rest. I won’t let you near him in this state.” Bitch Fuckface Stupid Whore Cunt. I inhaled deeply and relaxed my flexed fists. The landscape morphed into a darker shade of green. 
	“You don’t understand Martha,” her beady eyes glared at me, “they send me to see him RIGHT NOW.” Martha crossed her arms. I felt myself growing small, my exhales condensing in frightful puffs. She hang over me like a mountain of beef, thighs and breasts out of perspective. 
	“Look at yourself Eva, for Christ’s sake, go home and get some sleep,” she raised her voice, a stern eyebrow wrinkle split her face as she stepped towards me. I leaped back like a cat, hitting a chair that crashed on the tiled floor and flew to thousand pieces. Her dancing jaw tightened and I howled as I ran into the courtyard. 

	I locked myself in the car and stared into the gritty haze of traffic passing by. The industrial machinery on the horizon glimmered in the dissipating heat, mixing with the signal lights of every fucking cop car in town. The rear view mirror blinked back at me.
	Sweat stung in my eyes and I gripped onto the dead steering wheel. I looked at my left palm. The gunbarrel-type ejection seats often goes up to 20–22g, but it’s still too early to assume anything. I tried to take my pulse, but the timing always slipped away. After the third attempt I gave up. The clock on the dashboard had stopped and the horror gripped me, what does it imply for our allies? 
	The less I see the less might go wrong. I climbed to the backseat and hid under an old leather jacket. It reeked of cigarettes. Maybe a smoke would help? I fumbled through the pockets. Candy wrappers, coins, a few American dollars, a USB stick. It looked like one of those keys that circulated around in my catholic school. It had some corrupted pdf scans of Crowley and LaVey. A bunch of Lovecraft, supposedly classified MK Ultra documents and a really compressed jpegs of the seals from the Lesser Key of Solomon. Probably installed a pile of cursed malware too. Good stuff. Very formative. 
	Half a tablet wrapped in a piece of foil dropped into my lap. 
	Drugs, god I wish it were just drugs. 
	But it ain’t. 

	I swallowed the blue pill dry. It left a sour taste on my tongue as the acid rain broke out over the whole of southern France. 
	A princess tranquilliser is coming home. 

	###

	I woke up on a sofa, covered with a quilted blanket. The window was widely open, letting in a few sharp reflections from the busy street flickering on the dusty rug. My shoes and a coat was still on and I glanced at my exposure watch. The flashing red light made me shuddered. The night has brought me to Mickey, my dearest fallout denier. 
	“Good, I thought you’re gone for good,” He peeked into the room, sipping from a chipped mug with a hand-painted Eiffel Tower. My eyes got fixed on his pointy felt shoes. “Oh, these? A little fae brought them. I found them in the hallway last week,” he wiggled his toes. Presumably at the neighbours’s shoe rack. 
	I rubbed my eyes. “Man, I’m not sure I can do this anymore.” A crumbling black mascara smeared all over my hand. I smiled embarrassedly. For Mickey, it’s just another replay of the three-day-long nights from before the war. It’s easier like that. 

	“So, what year is it?” I glanced at the rugged Terminator poster over his bed. 50th aniversary AI-enhanced edition. 
	“Dear, it’s 2015.” He answered with a serious face.
	“Oh no, not 2015." I threw myself into the pillows. 
        “Everyone you date turns out a major cunt,” 
	“You sleep with all your dealers,” 
	“Touche. 50c falafel?”
	“Right below Jerome's flat."
        "And beer for every breakfast," he laughed and handed me a dented Jägermeister mug. The coffee smelled awful. 
	“Are all the bored tech bros buying drones now?”
	“Shitty 4k aerial footage and no crypto regulations! Merkel at the reins.”
	“There is no war."
	“Not yet. But Ruskies in Syria. And Paris bombings?” 
	“Steel fucking trap of a memory!" he exclaimed. 
        I bit my tounge. Acute hyperthymesia.
        "I did scroll the news a lot,” I took a sip and frowned. The almost-lethal dose of TCx enhancers was still circulating through my brain. The breakdown seemed slower than usual. 
        “But still, can't believe you'd remember all this shit. I swear I haven't seen you sober for at least a decade back then.” I glanced at my watch nervously. 
        "Yeah, well. Tense times. We all cope somehow." 
        "I guess so. I knew this German dude who memorised lines from Koran in case ISIS makes it all the way to Europe. He was ready to recite it at a gunpoint.”
        “I would shoot.”
        “So would I.” 
        We both laughed.
        Against all odds, I have survived yet again.

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Friends, that’s a little taste of it. And with this, I hope I actually get myself to continue writing, and bring Eva into this realm. A little innocent spell. What do you think? Give me that ❤️ or sth if you would occasionally like to read more of these snippets here.

Cherish it all,

k