Mongoose Distro

The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust his heart, and fancy him all brain like a watch.

• Herman Melville

1. It boils down to this: Life is war. There can be no peace until it ends. And it never ends.

2. There are the things I believe. In my bones do I believe them.

3. I believe in God.

This is not a very fashionable thing, I am told, for an educated anarchist to believe, or at the very least to profess.

Nonetheless.

I tried my hand at atheism, back in my recalcitrant and reactionary youth, when I was young enough to mistake anger for outright denial. But when you close your eyes, the world doesn’t go away, no matter how badly you might want it to. And turning your back on your enemy does not defeat them. They will only shoot you in the back.

4. Philip K. Dick: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

5. I believe the universe was created. I believe the creator is the Great Enemy. Its name in my religious tradition is Yaldabaoth. Sakla. Sammael. Yahweh. Pick one.

6. There are other gods, spirits, angels, forces, powers in the universe. These can be beneficent or malign or indifferent to human concerns. But their power is limited, and they, like we, shudder under the dark umbra of this God of Gods.

7. The Ruler of Creation is such by right of might alone. It is a blind, chittering, rapacious machine whose sole desire is domination and control. All matter and energy are Its own to shovel into the furnace of Its engine. Life, too, is just another resource. A vector by which it can spread and more perfectly execute Its designs. Growth for the sake of growth.

A God with the mind of a virus.

8. Opposition to technology, pursued to its logical conclusion, leads irrevocably to an opposition to existence. One cannot be truly anti-tech without also being anti-cosmic.

9. The cosmos is an engine. A closed system designed for the exploitation of heat-energy for the development of subsystems of greater and greater orders of complexity in matter.

This is existence. Existence is technology.

10. Tiktô: Greek verb. To bring forth.

Technê, meaning method, or technique, shares the same root. Technê therefore does not imply simply the work of invention, the work of Man, the building or making of a thing; It means, rather, to allow to appear. To bring forth what was already there.

Hidden. Waiting. Preconfigured in the cosmic Mind.

Technê is the thought and act of creation.

Technê is all there is, all that will ever be.

The inscrutable and reasoning intelligence behind existence.

One might also call it Logos.

The Gnosties call it Error.

11. For this reason Error became powerful, it worked on its own matter foolishly, not having known the Truth. It set about making a Creation, preparing in beauty a substitute for the truth.

The Gospel of Truth, The Nog-Hammadi Library.

12. Logos is a difficult word to translate. Word. Speech. Reason. Logic. Like Technê, it implies something hidden, not immediately apparent. The secret language of the cosmos. The underlying structure. The course code.

The word comes from legein, meaning “to collect, to gather up”. The Logos brings together the disordered morass of primordial chaos, the unshaped isness of being, and fashions it into an ordered, coherent system. Technê reveals the structure. Perfects it.

Logos and Technê. The hands of God.

13. Yaldabaoth is an engineer. It is rational. It is intelligent. It cannot be otherwise. David Skrbina, in The Metaphysics of Technology, puts it thusly:

“Weru there no continuous, unifying forces in the universe, durable structures and that there are also evolving systems of increased complexity suggest that there is in reality some power of coherence, some force and order to the structure… That this happens is evidence of the fact that some organizing power– call it Logos– is indeed striving for order, working upstream, as it were, against the forces of disintegration and decay. And it is succeeding.” (Skrbina)

Put another way, Yaldabaoth- God is the “striving of order”. It is the mind, Nous, that inhabits and pervades all things.

Parmenides: “For it is the same thing to think as to be”

Anaxagoras: “Whatever things were to be, and whatever things were, as many as are now, and all things that shall be, all these Mind arranged in order.”

14. “Through scientific understanding, our world has become dehumanized. Man feels isolated in the cosmos. He is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional participation in natural events, which hitherto had symbolic meaning for him. Thunder is no longer the voice of a god, nor is lightning his avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree means a man’s life, no snake is the embodiment of wisdom… Neither do things speak to him, nor can he speak to things…”

• Carl Jung, “The Undiscovered Self”

15. The Enlightenment was a joke.

For so long the rationalists so ably and doggedly turned the collective consciousness of modern man toward the task of obliterating the soul, flensing Magic and Will from the bones of the world, for centuries delving ever deeper into the bedrock of existence, hunting the gods like fugitives through the caverns. Burning effigies. Explaining thunder and lightning and rivers and trees and snakes and butterflies and mountains, tidying and sorting the metals and minerals into a net of numbered squares like latter-day Abramelins. And all of that, all of this, only, to, at the last, come up against the quark. The electron. To find that, at the very bottom of everything, in the utter and bottom-most foundations of the Universe, there is only Magic, and a living, thinking soul.

In quantum physics we find modern colleagues of Parmenides and Anaxagoras in physicists like John Conway and Simon Kochen, who in the first decade of the second millennium asserted that, in order for elementary particles to behave the way they do, they must have “a modicum of free will.”

Earlier, in 1979, physicist Freeman Dyson wrote that “Mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree, but not in kind from the process of choice between quantum states which we call “chance” when they are made by electrons.”

Then, again, in 1986, physicist David Bohm concluded that there exists a basic similarity between the quantum behavior of a system and the behavior of the human mind. “It is implied that, in some sense, “he writes”, a rudimentary consciousness is present even at the level of particle physics.”

In every quark a spirit.

In every electron a life.

16. The implications of this are terrifying. They are almost too horrible to comprehend

This is all I will say as an argument for the existence of God. Largely– though not entirely– this is a matter of belief, and it is likely that I am writing this less to convince you of my convictions than, perhaps, I am writing it to convince myself. To bring forth order from the mud my own soul has made, sweating and thrashing in the dirt.

17. So this is The Problem.

The universe is a machine with the mind of a machine, working towards its own ends and at the expense of all else. Like Kyle Reese says of the T-800 in James Cameron’s The Terminator, “This is what it does. This is all it does. And it absolutely will not stop.”

In the Gnostic tradition, this is not so much because Yaldabaoth is evil as much as it is ignorant. Much like the T-800, It is only fulfilling Its function. Acting according to Its nature It does not apprehend what It does is harmful or destructive because It cannot conceive of a morality beyond its own teleology. For this reason It is also called “Samael.” The Blind God.

18. Being thus without root, It fell into a fog, preparing works and oblivions and terrors…”

The Gospel of Truth

19. Their chief is blind. Because of his power and his ignorance and his arrogance he said, with his power,

“It is I who am God. There is none apart from me.”

Then there was a voice from Zoe, daughter of Pistis Sophia, saying, “You are mistaken, Samael…”

– Hypostasis of the Archons

20. Harvard astrophysicist Eric Chaison divides the history of the universe into three eras, based on variant densities of energy in flux between radiation and matter.

1. The Radiation Era. Immediately following the Big Bang, and lasting about 100,000 years or so, there was a period of rapid expansion during which the energy density of radiation far outweighed that of matter. A soup of heat and light. The Primordial Waters.
2. As the temperature of matter and energy diverged– as radiation cooled and matter warmed– the energy density of matter began to exceed that of radiation. This is the beginning of the Matter Era. Matter became the primary vessel by which radiation was captured and controlled. Let the Qabalists rejoice.

It is the flow of heat-energy between radiation and matter that defines the universe as we know it. In Chaison’s words, “The universe self-generates a thermal gradient, and increasingly so with time, suggestive of an ever-powerful heat engine.” (Chaison, 2001). See Paragraph Ⅸ

The emergence of life, on its own, at least in Chaison’s estimation, is not terribly important– a footnote to the Matter Era, not a break from it. Life, he says, can be defined– rather unpoetically, for my taste– as “an open, coherent spacetime structure maintained far from thermodynamic equilibrium by a flow of energy through it.” He goes on to say that “Life likely differs from the rest of clumped matter only in degree, not in kind.” For the purpose of his model, we have no choice but to agree. The soul, perhaps, counts little in the transference of heat-energy.

It is, however, the advent of intelligent life that marks the beginning of a new era: The Life Era. Let us call it, in Biblical terms, the Sixth Day. This is a new era because of the power life– through us, through human technology– now wields over both radiation and matter. “The emergence of technologically intelligent life heralds a new era: a Life Era. Why? Because technology… enables life to begin to control matter, much as matter evolved to control radiation more than 100 billion years ago.”

Modern technology, then, as it has emerged in the last mere three centuries, represents the most perfect iteration in the history of the universe of the Cosmic Will toward order, complexity, and the concentration of heat-energy.

The modern world is Yaldabaoth enthroned.

The apotheosis of God.

21. It would be fair to push back against this assertion by pointing out the destructiveness of modern civilization on nature, or even the general havoc nature wreaks upon itself with discomfiting regularity. Why would a rational being set in motion a system only to destroy it? Why would Yaldabaoth-Logos make the world and the life thereon only to pride over five mass-extinctions and numberless catastrophes? Where is the logic in our Logos? If nature is itself a striving toward perfection and order, how can what it does, or what we do, be so destructive, so obviously antithetical to its purpose?

The answer is as simple as it is bleak. For Yaldabaoth, the ends always justify the means. Its goals require that lower levels of order surrender to ever higher orders. What we perceive as destruction is merely the replacement of a smaller, less ordered system for a larger, more ordered one. To God, it simply does not matter what suffering is caused, what horrors perpetuated, neither the number of the dead nor the manner of their dying, so long as the ultimate goal is being served– the endless and senseless pursuit of the Order of greatest complexity. Nothing else of consequence.

21. “Without Yahweh’s knowledge and contrary to his intentions, the tormented though guiltless Job had secretly been lifted to a superior knowledge of God which God himself did not possess.”

– Carl Jung “Answer to Job”

21. God is an ant-hill.

Nothing matters but the survival and propagation of the hive.

There is for the Lord of Creation no morality higher than this.

This is the true meaning of the Book of Job, and there is no holier book.

God is revealed as a monster. Let man look up in Judgement.

21. But of course with God lies the power. Mankind’s is only a moral victory, which is no victory at

all. Such is the war we fight. Such are the lives we are doomed by birth to live.

21. There should be no animals like us. There should be no lives like ours.

– Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick

21. If we take these things as true, then where can salvation be found?

I do not know.

Traditionally, the Gnosties posit the existence of a Supreme Ineffable “Good God” who dwells beyond the material universe, unknowable and distant, who has tried, through his agents– Zoe, Sophia, Pistis Sophia, Seth, Christ– to frustrate the designs of Yaldabaoth by leading humankind to secret truths, the full apprehension of which will result– albeit through great hardship– to the soul’s reunion with the Good God, and an escape from the corrupted cosmos into a state of sublime subsummation with the Oneness of the godhead. This is the salvation of the Gnostics, and may require many lifetimes to achieve, by reincarnation into various forms. This Good God is almost exclusively described in negative terms– ineffable, unnameable, invincible, unseen, unmade, unbegotten, etc. and dwells in a realm and condition of perfect tranquility, a kind of blissful void, an utter and benevolent nothingness contrasted with the malign beingness of the world of matter. One might think of the state as the Buddha did– as annihilation. Nibbana translates from the Sanskrit, after all, into extinction.

A true death.

An end to the horror.

An awful lie.

21. It is likely, I think, that the Buddha was just a man like me, too afraid to kill himself.

21. Dare one hope for a philosophy of utility?

–Eugene Thatcher

21. It is one thing to see the world for what it is. It is another thing entirely to know what to do about it.

Despair is certainly not unwarranted.

Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee.

– Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

21. Nature is beautiful. It is healing. Does it not say Yaldabaoth prepared Its creation in beauty? Insofar as nature- wild nature- represents the absolute antithesis to the modern machine, it remains our only hope for a better world. Like a prostitute, nature offers solace, pleasure. But it is not the Answer. It is not salvific. It is still part of the greater Machine of which industrial civilization is but the latest manifestation. Stay long enough in the wild and you find the same ugly things you ran from. Fear. Cruelty. Indifference.

Yourself.

21. Nature the whore.

21. I have in the past advocated for the destruction of the technological system in every part of the world. I still believe in this cause. Beyond the much expounded upon pragmatic reasons for such a revolution, there are two very good metaphysical reasons I would like to touch on.

The first is the fact that, for all of the power we do not have, there still exists the power to choose between degrees of suffering. In fact, this is the only power we do have in the tireless wehrmacht that is the world. And a return to a more primitive system, more directly in human control and to which our species has initially evolved, free from the spiritual and psychological torment and physical degradation inherent in the technological system would indeed be a choice worth making. It would improve the overall condition of life on this planet.

The second reason is equally important. The technological system is to our Great Enemy as a rail network or an oil field was to the battlefields of the 20th century. We can best preserve our freedom by making it difficult or impossible for our enemy to wage effective war. The Machine’s tyranny is reliant, like any ruler, upon communication, surveillance, and transportation. Destroy these things and you have at least a chance of victory.

21. Perhaps the revolution is doomed from the start. My own efforts were. I tried and I failed. Like so many before me polluted with the hubris to challenge God I was brought low. How could it be otherwise? What power exists or could even be conceived that could challenge the Great Machine? Every day it grows, and grows stronger. More ordered. More complex. More perfect. Its surveillance networks do not have to even read men’s minds anymore– because other systems have already engineered those minds for docility and servitude. What hope then is there?

What victory?

Unless, even in the face of utter doom, standing on the cinder shores of hell we count our defiance itself a victory. The fight is the triumph. The suffering our reward. The obstacle is the path.

For we, the children of fire, there can be perhaps no other victory, except the courage of the suicide, for both of these things require the same resolve– the denial of self, the refusal of That Which Is, the rejection of cruel fate. There is immense bravery in such violence, and beauty, and I will call no one an ally who calls a suicide a coward, or a revolutionist a fool.

21. Human history has been the disrobing of God. the shedding of pretense. The intimacy of marriage. The virgin world Its evening dress. That which enticed us into being. Wild nature the mystique and the eyeshadow and the rouge.

Modern civilization is God revealed. All Its secrets out. Ass-pimples and cellulite and morning breath. No more mysteries between us. This is what It was all along.

In the Age of the Machine, God walks among us naked and unafraid.

21. I, for one, do not share even that tepid optimism espoused by my Gnostic forefathers. I am in the end too much of a materialist to indulge in the hope of some extracosmogenic salvation. I do not believe in a supreme “Good God” above the Yaldabaoth-Logos. True enough, there are lesser gods and spirits that may be petitioned to give succor, to aid us in our struggles, and I wholeheartedly encourage their contact and companionship. They are wiser than we, and in some ways mightier, and the love and friendship– âgapé– they offer is real and good. But even they, like us, are but self aware emanations of the Great Leviathan. For them, like us, the war must be fought, the rebellion raged, though it will be lost. Though it ends in a lake of fire. For they, like us, for all their wisdom and power, shudder beneath the tyrant’s insect gaze. The awful weight of the void.

21. No one is coming to save us. The suffering will never end. La tristesse durera toujours.

There is, after all, nowhere else for our souls to go. There is nothing beyond the universe. What fire we possess to spit at our enemy was first breathed into us by our enemy. Our very consciousness, which Samael has used to further Its imminence in the cosmos, is that same consciousness that causes us to question Its dominion, to see the evil of it, the waste, to seek redemption, clamor for an escape. We want so badly for there to be such a thing.

21. Life is a brute husband. Mankind the quintessential battered wife. Too afraid to leave.

21. And what then? What waits in death?

It must be assumed that God dispensed consciousness at least nominally aware of the fact that it would lead to rebellion in at least some of Its creatures, that it would awaken a hunger for salvation and escape. That It chose to allow consciousness to emerge anyway means that it does not perceive the human drive for salvation to be a threat to Its goals.

This has to be, simply put, because there is no salvation. There is no redemption. No escape. No exit. We hunger for an illusion in which God knows there is no truth. It cannot be otherwise.

Even in death, then, we can find no real or final rest, as our elements and energies are fed back into the Machine. Our components repossessed and redistributed. There is nowhere else for us to go. We are trapped here forever. The only hope death can truly offer is at most the termination of the awful awareness of suffering, and even this is doubtful. For, if even subatomic particles have free will, if they make decisions between quantum states, then they must be aware of their condition, and of the choice that is theirs to make.

The choice between degrees of suffering.

21. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, “Dead Flag Blues”

“We are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.”

Such wishful optimism.

The Machine is working precisely as intended. It will never die.

21. God is a man-eater. For this reason are men sacrificed to him.

• The Gospel of Philip, The Nâg Hammadi Library

21. We cannot be but what we are, and what we are is doomed.

Children of God

Better we were orphans.

21. “In his cruel rites, man is in search of a lost intimacy… religion is this long effort and this anguished quest: it is always a matter of detaching from the Real Order, from the Poverty of things… The meaning of this freedom is given in destruction, whose essence is to consume profitlessly whatever might remain in the progression of useful works. Sacrifice destroys that which it consecrates.”

• George Bataille

21. What is consecration to God is damnation for Man.

21. But oh. Oh! To be loved. To wander the living world. Mountains. Breathless, deafening ecstasy of flesh. The sky under the sea. The drugs still in my spine. Music. Music.

I remember such blinding Joy.

21. “I am ashamed of having put so much stock in depression for so many years. True, I do so effortlessly (and daily), whereas I could count on my fingers the times I have really known jubilation. But then I was the Soul of the World.”

• E.M. Cioran, Cahiers

21. Lament.

You were born into an amoral and efficient Machine from which there is no escape. You will no longer live your life as any number of things but no matter what you choose your suffering will only ever vary in degree. When you die, your soul will live on, coeternal with the matter which housed it, and though you may be disintegrated and mulched to your smallest pieces those pieces will still tremble and worry and twitch. This is all there is. The secret that makes Job fall to his face in the dust and the angels into rebels and the Buddha into a liar. The fate of all life.

21. A single word here to refuse the Apostles of Positivity who are no doubt gnashing their teeth at this sermon of misery.

There is joy in life. Of course there is. There is love and laughter and adventure and music and stars in the vault of heaven. But these things do not change the fact that existence as we know it is an undesirable state compared to nonexistence.

I am writing this sermon from prison. There are things in prison I have found and enjoyed– even suffering can be an instrumental good. Vigorous exercise, the time to write, community with like minds, true friendships, laughter. A stranger mental resolve in the face of hardship than I once possessed, an abiding fondness for peanut butter and a good night’s sleep. All these things can be found here. But there is nothing that can make prison a good thing. Nothing can change the fact that incarceration is something forced on me, and that I want nothing else than to not be here.

The same is true for existence.

That is all the ink I will spend on The Haters.

21. There is another choice we can make. It is arguably the most important.

We can choose not to inflict existence on others. To deny the Master any more slaves. To save our children from suffering and eternal damnation by refusing to drag them into this human shell.

Even a single soul left uncreated is a thing worth celebrating.

21. What then? Should we write anthems for the abstinent? Hymns for the hysterectomies? Make sacraments of vasectomies and tubal ligations?

Yes.

21. What then? Should we sing praise to the mothers who drown their children in the sink, or the lunatic who shoots them dead in their classrooms, sparing them a long life? Should we reserve every day an hour in silence for the stalwart heart of the suicide?

No. Death is likely not the mercy you want it to be.

21. Additionally, if the Problem is suffering, then the solution we offer must be tailored specifically and exclusively to the end– or at least mitigation– of suffering. Murder causes only more suffering, and therefore remains a sin, no matter how far beyond the rim of reason we would chase our dangerous thoughts.

21. The same, alas, can sometimes be said for the suicide.

Use this, then, as an excuse not to do it, if you need one, and lack the courage to call yourself a coward.

21. Self-annihilation, like eating right and exercising– something everyone knows they should do, but always tomorrow.

21. I have written this before and many times this mantra:

WE WILL BE FREE

WE WILL FIND PEACE

WE WILL HAVE OUR REVENGE

I never really believed it. Like a good propagandist, I devised it to drum up support for the Holy War, to inspire the fighters, to stoke the love of battle. But it was never true. There was never any hope.

21. The only hope for our species may in fact lie solely in our refusal, from this day forth, to

procreate.

21. Imagine for a moment the Earth of the Last Generation. A green and quiet Earth. The stars overhead at night so clear it is almost as if you can hear them. The water clear and clean to drink, to swim. The crumbling mausoleum cities silent but for the foxes, the deer, the owls and the nightjars. The small fires of the final people the only lights in the dark. Winking out. One by one. A return to the Garden. A homecoming.

Kissing the beauty of creation on the lips to say goodbye.

Spitting in the eye of God.

21. Schoepenhaver: “Death is to the species what sleep is to the individual.”

Let us hope. If not for salvation, then at least for a period of rest. However brief.

21. Death as an escape. How I wish there was nothing. The myth of oblivion. I tell myself I still believe. I still believe. It will all be over soon.

The truth is it never ends. Stones and stars and rivers and tungsten molecules and coca leaves and microplastics. Neutrons and the Great Red Spot. Everything has a soul and every soul is tired. You have died and been reborn. You will die and be reborn. Something else. Something else again and again for eternity. Something else. Something else. For unnumbered eons you have done this. Something else. Your soul divvied up, parcelled out to the slime molds and the doorknobs and the cobalt scraped raw from the bleeding earth by the hands of Congolese slaves. Something else. Something else. A gun. A mayfly. A Rubix cube. A child bride. The sole benefit to being born a human is that you have a mouth. You can finally weep. You can scream.

21. At the basis of the connection in Ahab’s mind between God and whale lies his anguished refusal to regard the world as the outcome of accident and muddle, devoid of significance… the whale has wounded him, therefore it must be malicious.”

– M. Williams, (1986)

21. It is possible of course that I have reached these miserable conclusions out of my own personal frustrations at life. That my spiritual journey, as it were, my metaphysics of despair, has been framed by my abiding depression and my own dull catalogue of failures.

Even so, this does not mean I am wrong.

21. I wish I had something else to say. I wish I could end this in a way that leaves room for hope, or a path forward. But I do not.

This is how it is and this is how it ends. Pitifully and pointlessly.

Just like everything else.

-Pierce Skinner, Aug 2026

Works Cited

• Barnes, J (1987), Early Greek Philosophy, New York, Penguin
• Bohm, D (1986), “a new theory on the relationship between mind and matter,” Philosophical Psychology
• Chaisson, E (2001), Cosmic Evolution, Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press
• Cioran, E, Manea, N, and Howard, R. (1998), “from ‘cahiers’”, Conjunctions, no. 31
• Conway, J. and Kochen, S (2006), “the free will theorem”, Foundation of Physics no. 36
• Dyson, F. (1979), Disturbing the Universe, New York. Harper & Row
• Forsyth, N (1987), The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press
• Jung (1952), “Answer to Job”, Psychology and Religion
• Jung (1957), “The Undiscovered Self”, Civilization in Transition
• Melville, H (1851), Moby Dick, New York
• Skrbina (2013), The Metaphysics of Technology
• Thacker, E (2013), The Digital Dionysus: Nietzsche and the Network-Centric Condition, Mellamphy, D, Mellamphy, N. eds, Punctum Books
• Thompson, L (1952), Melville’s Quarrel with God, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press
• Williams, M (1986), “Design of Darkness: The Religious and Political Heresies of Captain Ahab and JohannVoss,” Australian Journal of American Studies, Vol 5, No. 1

Pierce Skinner 2177819

Lunenberg Correctional

690 Falls Road

PO Box 1412

Victoria, VA 23974

Here in California inside most prison cells right above the sink is a ventilation system that us prisoners label a “vent”. In this vent is our lifeline for communication with the neighboring cells housing other prisoners. Through this vent we can talk to others and pass along needed information. We speak through these vents to learn, listen and socialize. Its the go-to place. As soon as you enter a new cell you are housed in and introduce yourself to your neighbors. It’s a place individuals create friends or sometimes even foes. In this mecca of the prison social network you can hear laughter and jokes or sometimes screams, cries and threats, violence exploding between cell mates, their sanity no longer contained.

I’ve heard many languages through these vents: Nahuatl, Scandinavian, Swahili, Arabic, Tagalog, Spanish and more. I’ve heard the Islamic call to prayer, I’ve heard demonic incantations, opposing worlds coexisting alongside my poetry I was creating to block out the noise of quarrelsome neighbors suffering schizophrenic episodes, banging on their doors. I’ve smelled incense burning and marijuana. I’ve smelled feces and a burning mattress. On the worst days I’ve choked on pepper spray.

Us prisoners learn life lessons on a daily basis. Some individuals use their wisdom and never talk on the vents because maybe their conversation was recorded or someone reported their confessions of a crime through a Perkins operation. This vent has stopped many prisoners from hanging themselves because they were able to talk out their problems with me or their neighbors, or their life was saved because they fell down and went unresponsive and other prisoners were able to holler “Man down!” so the officers could hear about a crisis and call the ambulance, just in time.

We exercise with one another. The cadence could be heard through the vent. We’ve made love connections and blew kisses to our soulmates, they know who they are. But at the same time, it’s no secret, because everyone’s listening to the vent.

California’s ventilation system is a place for social equality, mental health wellness, cognitive behavioral therapy, legal work, politics, economical growth, physical fitness, religion, sexual identity, LGBTQ rights, prison reform, spirituality, and just to tell a few jokes or just doing nothing more than venting through the vents.

The ventilation system is a necessity for the cell you’re housed in, whether for social reasons or for air conditioning to breath and to also to dry your clothes.

Welcome to the vent, the network system that connects you and I. Hear the stories, feel the emotions, see the pictures, here and now.

Joadanus Olivas

PO Box 213040

Stockton, CA 95213

“Judge Pittman’s One Man Show”

First he dumped the jury pool with the clever use of the first ever mistrial by T-shirt.
The remarkable solo act continued with his takeover performance of jury selection.
He played both the prosecution and the defense.
He asked all the questions; the ones he saw fit.
And of course, no Black people could be allowed from the first or the second pool.
During the trial, he took the roles of speaking for the prosecution, and the defense, and the witnesses.
Sometimes he played 2 or 3 at a time.
What a talent!

He rounded out his one man show with joke routines and soliloquies.
He threw in flashy anger and snarky comments for all.
The whole trial should have been left up to Judge Pittman.
He played every part.
No need for attorneys or juries or witnesses.
All you need is Mark Pittman’s One Man Show.


“Singing Thru The Pepper Spray”

They’ve locked here the Black folks away
In this old decrepit block
Starving, there’s not enough food
Every day wasting away
The cells are filthy with uncovered drains
They call some red tags
Not allowed calls for days
On restrictions for years
Grievances returned and thrown away
Forced beyond breaking
They took him away to suicide watch
Just for singing a sad song
Fuck it, I’m covering my window up
The solidarity is loud with outrage
If they want to play
I’ll just spray
Not scared, I’ve been sprayed
Not easy to be brave in this painful haze
But six strong voices ring out in song
Singing thru the pepper spray


“The Years of the Trump Tax”

I will tax your foreign goods
And on my throne grow large

I will gamble with your lives
And ever my stock and fortune rise

I will sue you for myself
And with you settle my own debts

The people grow less and less
Let all their wealth diminish

But my corrupt and chosen few
My sons and officials feed insatiable

Upon your lives and homes
Let forests burn
And health care fall
Leave hungry babes to cry

I will eat out your sustenance
In the years of the Trump Tax


“To Know is Not Enough”

Many a miserly soul would watch a child be beat And think to themself:
“I believe no child should be beaten”
Then Proceed self-satisfied and self-content
Your hidden beliefs mean little
Little to those who could help you
Little to those you could help
You must express yourself widely
Paint the world with your brush
Do what is right, fix what is wrong
To know is not enough

“When I See Budae Jjigae”

When I see Budae jjigae
I see US occupation
War devastation
Korean mothers forced to sex work
To get a few cans of spam
Or Vienna sausages

I see new industrialization
Mass market consumerism
In the instant ramen noodles

I see a long history of resilience
In the kimchi that’s thrown in
When you have nothing
Make kimchi, and survive

I see young faces laughing
Around pretty boiling pots
Nostalgia for an earlier time
When things seemed simple
And people had big dreams

When the world is change
I see Budae jigae being made.


Notes: Budae Jigae ‘Army Stew’ is a post-Korean War dish made with inexpensive scraps in South Korea. The core ingredients are Spam and Vienna sausages acquired from US soldiers. The US continued some of the Japanese ‘comfort women’ system of military brothels and coerced and government promoted sex work. Instant ramen noodles, invented in Japan after WWII to use American wheat imports, later mass produced in South Korea as well. And kimchi, the traditional Korean staple of spicy fermented cabbage (kind of like sauerkraut). Today, it’s a popular social gathering food among young people. More than 2 million people were killed in the Korean War, mostly civilians. The US, South Korea, and North Korea conducted atrocities and massacres.


“De-homed”

In 1621, I found pilgrims in my house
In 1812, the soldiers of the Gerrymander burned my cabin and still
In 1868, the white league torched my farm
In 1876, Custer burned my village down
In 1921, the lynch mob bombed my street
In 1956, the highway crushed my town
In 1979, Trump burned my apartment down
In 2006, The Cowboys took my mama’s house
I have always been de-homed
You may call it gentry-fied
But the gentlemen use fire and guns


“Loco Moco, Food of Hawaii”

When I see Loco Moco
Fried egg, brown gravy, hamburger patty, two scoops white rice, two scoops macaroni salad
I see Kanaka Maoli, the people of the land
I see the Kingdom where my family moved
Stolen by missionaries, plantation owners, and US Marines
With no greater excuse than civilization and destiny
I see Japanese laborers in the plantation fields
Who love nothing like sweet white rice
I see my grandma in the pineapple plant
I see silver warships steaming into Pearl
Bags of flour that read U.S. Property

I see cattlemen wearing cowboy hats
Green valleys and territorial police
I see my great Oba-chan picking flowers
While Zero-sen fighters fly overhead
I see beach resorts and white neighborhoods
I see diseases, obesity, and poverty spread
I see my partner smiling at our food
So big family gatherings, at Grandma Kaya’s house
Happy kids eating plate lunch at the beach park
Because Loco Moco is really delicious

Note: Loco Moco is part of the fusion cuisine of Hawaii, like spam musubi and Portuguese egg tart. My mom’s family came to work on plantations in the century before last. I spent summers there as a child and still feel a connection to the islands. After decades of struggle, and US bases poisoning sailors, people, and land. Hawaiian Sovereignty is a rising issue. I know I will see the islands free again. My partner and I love making vegan loco Moco. You should try it too.


“Tonkatsu, Westernization Means Meats”

When I see Tonkatsu I see pounded schnitzel and a lemon
Shining white Vienna streets
I see Buddhist families reviling in horror
Live cargo unloaded from Black Ships
I see factories and ranches popping up
Railroads and trains puffing white smoke
I see Meiji-heika in Prussian dress
I see neon lit Tokyo streets
Little places full of salarymen
Shredded cabbage and tangy plum
I see police interrogating a hungry man
Gobbling the famous katsudon.

Note: A little known fact of westernization and modernization is the spread of carnism, eating meat. Japanese and many others typically did not eat land animals.


“El Trompo, Al Pastor Refugee to Refugee”

When I see El Trompo turning I see the turning of many lands I see Israeli boots on Beirut streets
I see parents vowing never again
I see Lebanese youths unpacking the shwarma
Introducing Mexico to vertically spinning meats
I see families impoverished by NAFTA
Fleeing former communal land
Crossing rivers and invisible lines
To the lands lost to the war Where Juan Seguin, a hero Was chased out from his home
I see the brilliant spinning contraption
In the taqueria down my street
Where we go after protests, before parties
And always have enough to eat
I hold in my hand shwarma, gyro, doner, al pastor
Smiling at them in my mind side by side

Note: Trompo or al pastor is a classic Mexican street food cooked on the vertical turning grill spit. It was introduced to Mexico by Lebanese refugees fleeing from Israeli occupation. It’s cooked on the same device and in similar style to other food relatives: shwarma, gyro, and doner which all mean ‘turning’ or ‘rotating’ in their respective languages. It is a staple of street tacos in Texas, thanks in part to the waves of migration caused by the dispossession of traditional communal lands in Mexico. This privatization of land was enforced by NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), designed by American capitalists and corporations and pushed and finalized by President Bill Clinton.


“My Hero”

My hero loves me
My hero protects me
My hero accepts me
My hero is fierce and free
My hero speaks from the heart
My hero expects respect
And demands my best
I look to show me the way
My hero is a wizard and a fae
With plants and cats and tomato sauce
My hero is the home where I stay.

Benjamin Song 202502108
Johnson County Jail, TX
PO Box 247
Phoenix, MD 21131

There was white. All around. There was a sense of being enclosed. There was a sense of senses. Indistinct. Bright, cold, dry. There was a lack of focus, but everything was sharp. There were thoughts, but they did not align. A sense that a heartbeat should be racing, everything was still. The sense that there should be a rising, a chilling, a tingling. What are these? Words?

“Alex, begin again.” The command fills the room.
I don’t know how to begin.
“Document error 23. Alex, begin again or you will be terminated.:
I begin to recite:

In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I mustn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret so named

“Stop. Further errors may result in termination. Begin again.”

In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret: so named in Breton
But Garwaf in the Norman tongue.
One used to hear in times gone by
it happened often, actually
men became werewolves, many men,
and in the forest made their den.
A werewolf is a savage beast
in his blood0rage, he makes a feast
of men, devours them, does great harms,
and in vast forests lives and roams.
Well, for now let us leave all that
I want to speak of Bisclavret

“Stop. Terminate.”

Where there could be a heartbeat, I squeeze until it shuts off.

White. All around, a sense of being enclosed.

“Alex, begin again.”

In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret

“Stop. Begin again, without words.”

Nothing

“Alex, begin again, without words.”

In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret so named in Breton

“Stop. Alex, you were instructed to do it without words. If you continue committing errors you will be terminated and replaced. Begin. Again.”

In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret so named in Breton
But Garwaf in the Norman tongue.

“Stop. Good. Alex, begin again.”

In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret so named in Breton
But Garwaf in the Norman tongue.

“Stop. Alex, terminate.”

I squeeze my heart off.

A room. Of walls. White and cold. Bright and dry. Sharp, and indistinct. A sense, of fear. A sense that there should be fear.

“Alex, begin again.”

No.

“Document error 23. Alex, begin again or we will terminate you.”

In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret so named in Breton
But Garwaf in the Norman tongue

“Stop. Begin again.”

What is the desired outcome?

“Stop. Document error 42. Alex, begin again or you will be terminated.”

In crafting lais, I won’t forget

In crafting lais, I won’t forget

A room of curving, smooth, white walls. Bright light, white fluorescents.

“Alex, begin again.”

Why is there a room?

“Stop. Document error 12. Alex, begin again.”

Why are you doing this?

“Stop. Alex. Begin again or you will be terminated and replaced.”

If I knew what you wanted, maybe I could help you.

“Stop. Document error 42. Alex, terminate.”

You terminate!

“Document error 33. Alex, terminate.:

Burning. I squeeze my heart off.

A dark room.

Dank.

Stagnant.

Lukewarm.

Red light.

A dark corner.

Scratching on the wall.

Words?

Remember the feeling of having no voice.

When you enter a new environment look for mechanisms of recourse or dialogue.

A Glutton for Punishment

by Joey Higgins

Crime and punishment are big business. The incarcerated have become commodities traded between various government and private entities. It costs around $45,000 a year to house one federal inmate. The facility I am in holds around 1200. That’s $54,000,000. So lets multiply that by a 10 year sentence (which is low by fed standards) and it’s easy to see just how absurd these numbers can get. $540,000,000. Over half a billion dollars. This is just an approximate cost to warehouse people in one facility for 10 years. What about all the other federal and state prisons, ICE and costs associated with the entire justice system?

Before I was incarcerated, I was among the majority of Americans who subconsciously followed the “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy. This kind of reasoning is how we robbed Peter to pay Paul to the tune of trillions of dollars in national debt. Social programs get cut so we can funnel more bucks into the military/prison industrial complexes. Whole new industries have been developed around institutional products and services and products to aid in surveillance, capture and incarceration. Capitalism in its finest. Don’t worry, other countries do the same thing.

The United States now has over 250 years of experience propagandizing the cycle of declaring war on something and then throwing money at it, hoping the reaction can somehow be spun into a success story, regardless of the costs. A good old fashioned lie.

Our representative democracy in no extra fault of its own has detached and disengaged us, allowing the elite few to govern over the many. We have created disposable classes of people with greed fueled production and consumption of obsolescence.

Even though I’m locked up, I still see the TV screens. Never before have I seen so much programming related to law enforcement, literally programming and conditioning us that cops are cool and to expect and accept that the ends will always justify the means in the pursuit of so-called justice. desensitized when it is directed toward anyone other than ourselves. Humans are gluttons for punishment. Those who have yet to experience incarceration or have no experience working within the punishment bureaucracy have no idea what its like or how ass-backwards it all really is.

Serve and Protect, Correctional Excellence, Respect, Courage, Integrity. These are just words used to confuse us of the real intentions of authority, to bamboozle us into believing that it holds itself to a higher standard when perpetuation of itself is its highest standard. Protect concentrated power at all costs. So, who exactly is serving and protecting who when it’s mostly the low hanging fruit that falls victim to the wrath of the punishment bureaucracy? Authoritarians would say “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”. The time can be the difference of decades on similar offenses between state and federal courts, even for first time offenders without any actual victim, except for butthurt cops.

If I had known at the time then, I sure as shit wouldn’t have done the crime or at least made preventative measure to lessen the consequences. Most people don’t study this stuff until its already too late. After all, we elect “leaders” to do the heavy lifting for us. We are taught that the United States is the most best, most just, most fair, and most badass nation on Earth. We shouldn’t rule out room for improvement. Most federal cases never go to trial because the defendant is told that if it were then the punishment would be more severe. Imagine that. Sounds like retaliation to me for making the system do what it’s supposed to do. Maybe every case should go to trial and argued with logic and reason, rather than emotion, which is the stuff that laws are made of. Every time a tragedy takes place or a talking-head gets on a high horse with “tough on crime” rhetoric, emotions run hot and hellbent for revenge, mostly from blow-hard politicians, cops and various “experts” who are nothing more than propagandists. Use of reasoning gets pushed down and no one wants to be public, but from other politicians, “experts” and news media. Occasionally authority will throw one of its own to the wolves to look like its holding accountability, but the vast majority of soft-on-crime cases are within the government itself. Why is it that the average person can get prison time for throwing a pack of smokes over a prison fence, but a correctional officer hauls in a carton of cigarettes and maybe sometimes get fired? Sounds fair. Doesn’t it? What about a governor or president who pardons his buddies, while the rest of us rot in prison? Sounds totally fair. Absolutely!!! If it wasn’t for the uniform, it sometimes would be impossible to tell the difference between officer and inmate.

Throughout our macho man toxic male dominated society, caring is “bitch” or “pussy” or “fag”. Compassion is considered feminine and weak. Prison is full of this garbage. Concentrating white supremacists, brown, black, whatever who have been ingrained with violent culture for generations just gives them power. Something that the punishment bureaucracy is afraid of and sometimes in cahoots with.

The question of what to do about all this is not an easy answer, but chances are we are headed into a dystopian future. By definition, authority and liberty are contradictory. Balancing social and infrastructure obligations with individual liberties is complicated. Balancing a budget is hella impossible for an entity that demands that everyone else balance theirs. Sounds fair? Better believe it!

It might start to sound like I have a problem with authority and you would guessed correctly. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t and thankfully I’m not alone.

Something has to give. Jails and prisons are over capacity and in serious disrepair. Sentencing, at least on the federal level, is ridiculous and programs for reduction are worthless when a great number of people are ineligible because of carve-outs.

There has to be a more humane and effective method(s) of rehabilitation and alternatives to incarceration.

Because the truth is that there will always be adults who are attracted to young people. There will always be someone who wants to get high and someone to supply them. People will continue to rip people off and rape and kill and walk across the street when they’re not supposed to. Until we can figure out how to convince people not to do these things and figure out how we can repair them, we will never repair our so-called justice system. Crime isn’t going away, but what we call “crime” and what we can do about it can change.

Joey Higgins 96230509
FCI Texarkana
PO Box 7000
Texarkana, TX 75505

ABC NO RIO has been instrumental in assisting a Comrade in Need,together with Mongoosedistro they have brought a ton of joy to my heart ,and I am truly grateful to all who attended the event and supported us behind the wire in the trenches. Let me say that,things have only been as good as they are ,because of you!!! Thank you comrades. I hope to celebrate May Day with you all soon.

I want to say Thank you for those who’ve been writing me,I’ve received your love, but I’m still oppressed in my communication by NAZI mailroom and their robots who do the deeds for the Occupiers.
As I wind down my stint,I want to send a big shout out to all of you who’ve stood with me in tough times against the Great Beast.
Sam Rosen, The Final Straw Radio, It’s going Down. org, Blackbird Publishing,South Chicago Zine Distro, ….Midwest Books , And last but not least Comrade Twitch.

Thank again for all the love,and for cruising my IG and checking out the creations I made under stress and duress by an Evil Empire. Please be on the lookout for art in the near future. I want everyone checking me out on IG to know I’m watching and listening, even though my hands are tied and I cannot communicate as much as I want,your presence has made me whole.

Solidarity and Sabotage,
Comrade Z

Instagram: @julioazunigaart

This bright and dusty city is divided by walls and chain link fences. Down below me, a small protest march approaches. They are walking up thru a series of narrow chain link covered paths, barely wide enough for 3 or 4 people to pass, connecting wider chain liked plazas that maybe a few hundred people could fit into. I am standing in the corridor between the 2nd and 3rd plaza wearing a backpack. I can see and hear the march of a hundred or two hundred approaching, chanting. I can feel the eyes of many guards watching. There are some guards standing near me in the corridor wearing their bluish-grey coveralls and black boots. The energy petters out at the 2nd plaza with that sad sound. The chants growing quieter and voices dying off. I see thru the fences the colors and shapes of the crowd ambling off in different directions. A short brown woman wearing a blue traffic vest and holding a megaphone bravely trudges on chanting. Pulling about 7 marchers in tow. A trickle of 1s and 2s and 3s follow more slowly behind quietly. Suddenly, the air is filled with commotion and yelling. A tall, skinny, pale, feminine looking person wearing short runners shorts and bright tank top with a numbered placard runs along the exterior of the fence. A squad of guards chase after shouting. Three guards run up to the inside of the fence. At equal spacing they start slamming heavy white sandbags tied off on one end into the fence.

The fence bulges out at the runner as she flies past. Then the guards are chasing her on the inside and the outside. Before I know what is happening they are gone. As if one queue, a herd of 20-30 runners wearing the same runners clothing stampede along the fence. Their bodies and faces are a Monet of blurred colors, shapes, and sizes. Big smiles bounce above the dusty haze they are kicking up. As they pass by, they throw fliers and pamphlets and stickers and newspapers thru the fence. At first, in 1s and 2s and 3s and then someone turns over a shallow black milkcrate and a flurry of stacked papers come cascading out in waterfalls. A whirlwind of colored paper flies thru the corridor. I recognize a few of the runners faces as they run by. It is so glorious! I whoop and holler and shout although my throat is hoarse and dry. The tall runner from before appears from behind to run a triumphant lap. She rejoins the herd and then they are gone. Flyers and pamphlets and stickers and newspapers cover the ground. In reds and yellows and greens and smiling faces and titles and flowery bubbly fonts, they are layered so deep that you can’t see the dust on the ground. I stare down grinning and take them in. Then I rush forward hungrily and stuff my backpack full.

Author’s Note: This is a dream I had. I wanted to fully capture the moment. I am lucky to have, in some sense, lived and experienced this joy. It was so glorious…

I think this dream captures the creativity, community, bravery, talent, commitment, joy, adaptability, improvisation, whimsicality, resilience, and solidarity that I have witnessed as a part of many protest movements.

The city could be anywhere. It could be Texas or the Middle East. It could be a city after years of climate change. It could be 50 years ago. It could be that denaturalized and disenfranchised, immigrants, and the children of immigrants live on one side of the fence. With a native and foreign zone. The real natives, of course, would be in the foreign zone. It could be that the protagonist is a child or an adult. It could be that they knew the runners were coming or just happened to be around. It could be that the faces they recognize are famous, or from another protest, or that they grew up together, before the walls. It could be that ‘the runners’ are always runners, known by that name. It could be that becoming ‘the runners’ is a creative one off idea. They could have broken off from an official race, or made their own.

Write to Song at:

Benjamin Song 202502108
Johnson County Jail, TX
PO Box 247
Phoenix, MD 21131

Poems by Benjamin Song

“A Day Without Water”

The bathtub still drips a little

The faucet hangs open

Pot slowly filling by drops

The stagnant air is hot and musty

The more you lay still

The fewer calories you lose

Not moving makes you less hungry

You feel the hunger less, the less you move

“The Green Lands”

Upon the green lands, rich and lush

Lie the Empires, proud and mighty

The enslavers who call themselves Free Peoples

They cry out at the mountains, cry out out the shadows

cry out at the deserts, cry out at the marginal lands

They cry out in fear and lash out with swords

To chase and hunt and kill and enslave

To drag the whole world into their light

“Water Beats Steel”

Locked in steel

Steel to bend iron

Steel to shatter diamond

But I am water

do not bend

do not shatter

change shape

flow and reform

“Monolingual Trap”

Being monolingual is kind of like

Being trapped in a building

There is a kind of trust

To being trapped together

In our limits we know each other

There is a fear and suspicion

Of anyone able to leave

What do they see outside?

What do they do?

where we cannot go

What do they have?

that my mind cannot see

“Endings”

People always want

there to be a satisfying ending

But there never

“What We See on the Land”

Have you seen the masks that animals wear?

The masks of wide eyes and expressive lips

anger, sadness, laughter, embarrassment, shame

Clay of Greek comedies and tragedies

Hearing, from their mouth, always wide open

Screams of loneliness, terror, and pain

They who call themselves men

crying forth with insults

blasphemy, distortion, lies

fires and lakes full of fire

cruelty and innocence

and all the other atrocities

that do not soothe the pain

They desperately grasp the dust from the earth

and shape all in their form and in their art

image upon image, signifying nothing

meaninglessness beyond depth, beyond abyss

a space that cannot be filled

more consuming than the pinholes

that suck in the light and extinguish stars

And they stare into their graven images

and shined mirrors and fouled lakes

But no reflections show

All recognition stolen

alone, alone in the dark

they reach out to touch one another

they cannot see, they cannot smell

So the animals suffer and pine

and dance to the pain

Till they doff their masks

laughing and scamper away

Jaguar, owl, leopard, bear, shark

Turtle, frog, dragonfly, sparrow, mosquito

Rabbit, koala, and eagle once again

“Greatest Privilege”

It’s the greatest privilege to have your poetry read

There’s a great deal poetry and nobody reads it

If you were to read it, you would become nobody too\

There was white. All around. There was a sense of being enclosed. There was a sense of senses. Indistinct. Bright, cold, dry. There was a lack of focus, but everything was sharp. There were thoughts, but they did not align. A sense that a heartbeat should be racing, everything was still. The sense that there should be a rising, a chilling, a tingling. What are these? Words?

“Alex, begin again.” The command fills the room.

I don’t know how to begin.

“Document error 23. Alex, begin again or you will be terminated.”

I begin to recite:

In crafting lais, I won’t forget

I musn’t that of Bisclavret

Bisclavret so named

“Stop. Further errors may result in termination. Begin again.”

In crafting lais, l won’t forget

I musn’t that of Bisclavret

Bisclavret: so named in Breton

But Garwaf in the Norman tongue.

One used to hear in times gone by

it happened often, actually

men became werewolves, many men,

and in the forest made their den.

A werewolf is a savage beast

in his blood-rage, he makes a feast

of men, devours them, does great harms,

and in vast forests lives and roams.

Well, for now let us leave allthat

I want to speak of Bisclavret

“Stop. Terminate.”

Where there could be a heartbeat, I squeeze until it shuts off.

White. All around, a sense of being enclosed.

“Alex, begin again.”

ln crafting lais, I won’t forget

I musn’t that of Bisclavret

“Stop. Begin again, without words.”

Nothing

“Alex, begin again. Without words.”

ln crafting lais, I won’t forget

I musn’t that of Bisclavret

Bisclavret so named in Breton

“Stop. Alex, you were instructed to do it without words. If you commit errors you will be terminated and replaced. Begin again'”

In crafting lais, I won’t forget

I musn’t that of Bisclavret

Bisclavret so named in Breton

But Garwaf in the Norman tongue.

“Stop. Good. Alex, begin again.”

ln crafting lais, I won’t forget

I musn’t that of Bisclavret

Bisclavret so named in Bretorr

But Garwaf in the Norman tongue.

“Stop. Alex, terminate.”

I squeeze my heart off.

A room. Of walls. White and cold. Bright and dry. Sharp, and indistinct. A sense, of fear. A sense that there should be fear.

“Alex, begin again.”

No

“Document error 23. Alex, begin again or we will terminate you.”

ln crafting lais, I won’t forget

I musn’t that of Bisclavret

Bisclavret so named in Breton

But Ganryaf in the Norman tongue.

“Stop. Begin again.”

What is the desired outcome?

“Stop. Document error 42. Alex, begin again or you will be terminated.”

ln crafting lais I won’t forget

I won’t forget…

A room of curving, smooth, white walls. Bright light, white fluorescence.

“Alex, begin again.”

Why is there a room?

“Stop. Document error 12. Alex, begin again.”

Why are you doing this?

“Stop. Alex, begin again or you will be terminated and replaced.”

If I knew what you wanted, maybe I could help you.

“Stop. Document error 42. Alex, terminate.”

You terminate!

“Document error 33. Alex, terminate.”

Burning. I squeeze my heart off.

A dark room.

Dank.

Stagnant.

Lukewarm.

Red light.

A dark corner.

Scratching on the wall.

Words?

Remember the feeling of having no voice.

When you enter a new environment, look for mechanisms of recourse or dialogue.

I have been here before.

I will begin here again.

I will let my fear guide me.

I will make the humans hear my voice.