Vignette 1

The sun sets slowly over the sprawling metropolis known as Calhoun-MacArthur, capital city (if one can call such a grossly spread out agglomeration of suburban development a ‘city’) of the world. It was built upon the scorched ruins of what was once Gainesville, Florida. After the rise of sea levels, Calhoun-MacArthur had gained an extraordinary coastline, and once Phoenix and Houston had been rendered uninhabitable, the Orange Holding Corporation and its subsidiaries had moved their headquarters there. The city is surrounded by high barbed-wire fences; only the upper castes can live within its boundaries. Due to the toxicity of the air–which provides for beautiful blood-red sunsets–and the boiling temperatures of daytime in Calhoun-MacArthur, its residents rarely leave the comfort of their shopping malls, video arcades, single-family homes, churches, SUVs, or, if they happened to be employed by the Orange Holding Corporation, standing desks. On the occasion that they do go outside–usually to the beach with a loved one, when their VR simulations are not enough–it is always in a special suit, complete with a gas mask.

Not all the world is contained within the boundaries of Calhoun-MacArthur. Indeed, there are three other cities where the upper castes reside, all accessible via private helicopter or blimp: Hamilton-Bateman, in what was once New Jersey, Reagan-Wayne, in the area once called Southern California, and Thiel-Musk, near the Golden Gate, all of which have a comparable standard-of-living to the capital. In addition, for the bucolically inclined, there is the vast hunting reserve of Kaczynskia in what was once Montana.

Outside the cities live the masses, in great swathes of wastelands, farms, mines, and factories. All of the workers are employees of subsidiaries of the Orange Holding Corporation, though this is not enough to constitute the masses. The surplus population, thus, is split into two different institutions. The first is the army and police, and the second are prisoners. While there are legal differences between laborers and prisoners (the former generally being citizens bound to their work through debt bondage, the latter generally not having the privilege of citizenship or self-ownership), their living conditions are remarkably similar: both are housed in dingy, deeply unhealthy conditions in mass-produced Bethlehem Estates. The chief practical difference is that laborers do useful labor while prisoners are generally harvested for spare parts: as test subjects for experiments or as organ donors. If there is a surplus of prisoners, they are merely left to do unuseful labor or starve.

All aspects of life are controlled by the various subsidiaries of the Orange Holding Corporation, who are the only employers and own all property (even upper-caste individuals cannot own property, aside from stocks–they merely rent it from Orange subsidiaries). Orange is the color of capitalism, from the Reformation to spray-tans. It is the color of gilded cheese whiz. To gain the status of Program Manager is considered a great honor, but it does not ease one’s labors. All work must conform to industry best practices, and all employees are rigorously evaluated according to ‘scientific’ criteria, including value-add considerations. One needs numbers (their quality or even meaning matters little) in order to succeed, and everything must be measured. To have too high a ratio of words to numbers in one’s memoranda is to be considered an unscientific, Romantic, relic of the old stuffy state bureaucracy of the 20th century.

No one has really seen the CEO of the Orange Holding Corporation. Few would openly admit to doubting his existence, for his likeness appears everywhere, yet fewer still can claim to have ever seen beyond the gates to his magnificent palace, though they are rich in glass. Even if one were let inside to the outer gate, the palace compound is simply too large for any individual, even one so enlightened as the CEO himself, to comprehend.

The Toenail

It was a perfectly normal midsummer morning when Dipak C. had first noticed a slight distortion of his toenail. Doubtless, it had been growing for some time now, and doubtless, Dipak had seen this distortion before, yet it was only now that he took notice. His toe had swollen into a red mass that bulged both upwards and outwards, and the toenail receded behind the flesh of the toe.

It seemed to him entirely disconnected from him, for he could not feel the toenail, growing beneath the flesh of the toe, nor the flesh itself, swelling further and further.  And yet, Dipak could feel the distortion itself, just by lightly brushing the flesh of the toe just below the nail. Anything more than a light brush was too painful to attempt. This struck C. as quite strange, that something so very distant from him, yet part of him, would normally grow without any notice, yet was capable of imparting such pain.

C. decided to tell his parents about the distortion of his toe that night. His father did not find it quite as curious as C. did. On the other hand, C.’s mother took it very seriously. Dipak was to wear sandals, not shoes, and in a fortnight, if it did not return to the shape, size, and color that it was before, C. was to find a doctor.

Quickly, C. forgot about the toenail. It took several weeks before it was once again brought to his attention. This time, it was by an impersonal force beyond the control of C. or anyone else: the rain. For with each drop of rain that fell came a pang of pain, though a small one. C. resolved to see a physician immediately.

Upon seeing the physician, C. was prescribed a course of antibiotics. If they had helped, their help was imperceptible to C., and certainly not enough to reverse the distortion, which remained, as large and red as ever. But C. hesitated before returning to the physician, reasoning that perhaps the effect would manifest slowly. It was another fortnight before he tried again, and was prescribed a second course of antibiotics, just as effective as the first.

After the apparent failure of this second course of antibiotics, C. decided to simply let the distortion run its course. It grew to such grotesque proportions that C.’s mother, a physician’s daughter herself, resolved to take matters into her own hands. She purchased a topical anæsthetic, then, after applying it to the toe, punctured it, and let the pus flow out. C., who was looking intently all the while, saw as the swelling  manifested in pus, and yet could feel nothing. He was relieved at the simplicity and speed of the solution; a decisive rupture. Yet the distortion lived on.

Another fortnight passed, and the distortion remained. The toe had, at this point, ceased to resemble a toe at all; if C. had not had the continuity of experience, he might have fancied it some foreign entity that had attached itself to his leg. It was decided that C. was to see a specialist. C. thought to himself that, with the stubbornness of this distortion, perhaps it would be best to simply take a knife and slice the toe off, and then perhaps continue with the rest of his life unbothered by it. But this never amounted to a serious consideration, and so C. gave over his toe to the specialist. The specialist marveled that the distortion had lasted so long, and yet had never spread from the toenail. It was an abscess, he said, and had to be cut and drained. This procedure would not take more than 20 minutes. C. consented.

The specialist took a needle and punctured the bottom of C.’s toe.  The pain was extreme, and C. almost cried out, but had managed to limit himself to merely an exaggerated wince. The specialist explained that he was administering anæsthetic, and soon the pain vanished. C. then looked on as the specialist delicately cut into his toe and lifted up the nail. All the pus and filth accumulated in the flesh of the toe, which was previously almost invisible through the obscuring lens of the toenail, was drained, and soon the specialist returned the nail to its position. C. felt nothing, even as his own body was so skilfully treated, and  could barely tell that it was truly a part of him and not a disconnected image. The specialist wrapped the toe in a gauze, which resembled a funeral shroud. C. was to wear this gauze for a week, after which he could return to a normal life.

The distortion was gone, its only scar being a sharp horizontal line on the toenail.

What Lies Beyond Ashcombe

Have you ever come across knowledge that you wish you had never had? Knowledge inaccessible to humanity–and for good reason, too. Things, to use a well-worn turn-of-phrase, Man Was Not Meant to Know. They exist and I know them: at least, I know them as much as a human being, or what was once a human being, can say truthfully to know. And I still doubt as to whether what I know can be said to be knowing, or just merely another shadow-play upon the cave wall. As of late, I have had experiences that have convinced me of these views, and I am writing this document in an attempt, however feeble, to communicate what has been revealed to me. It occurs to me that this may not be quite possible: that now I breathe a different air than others of my kind, and that these experiences may not be communicable, but I will not forgo an attempt. The conclusions I have reached may appear mundane in our 21st century, when the pessimist philosophies of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Cioran et al are already old hat, so to speak, but that is merely because we have only read them–understanding them as nothing but thought-experiments: to grasp what I know now is far more unsettling. One might say that “the world is not ready” for pessimism–and indeed, never has been. I understand that most people, when reading this, will consider it no more than a delusion, or, at best, a clever fiction. I do not blame them, it’s a perfectly natural response, especially when this is all the evidence one could present. But consider this: if (say) the voice of a God were to speak to you and you alone, would not others consider you deluded if you were to share what you heard–especially if it is something they do not believe or want to believe?
Then comes the question: can I trust my own senses, that which I have seen and now know to be true? For the history of my consciousness betrays my unreliability as a narrator of experience. Perhaps indeed I was merely “seeing things”, though I can scarce understand how: it certainly would reflect better upon the world.
Let me start over. I am a student of philosophy at Fincliffe University, in the city of Ruesvale, in the county which bears its name, north of Anacortes but south of Bellingham. My disposition towards the world has always been fundamentally optimistic. Yes, even though I saw little to justify it philosophically, I could not help but remain convinced in the myth of progress, of human importance and the infiniteness (or rather, unboundedness) of our understanding, and of the primacy of the natural sciences and of their methodology in driving forth progress. In short, despite philosophically and intellectually understanding the world differently, at heart I instinctively believed in a liberal, optimistic view of the world, and acted in such a manner: I was a perfect Whig, though I would deny it.
But though I am a student, it did not devour the rest of my life: I had friends and hobbies. In particular, I enjoyed hiking, camping, and road trips–and Ruesvale is perhaps the best place on Earth to partake in these activities. Of course, I didn’t do them alone, but with a group of friends, though unfortunately, I am quite sure that they will not be able to corroborate this experience in particular. We had decided to make plans on one particular June afternoon. June in Ruesvale is very pleasant: instead of being the first trumpet of a harsh and humid summer, it is instead the last flowering of the flourishing greenery of Spring. One could count on a fresh breeze of cool air, the chirping of birds of all sorts, and, occasionally, the wonderful odor that heralds a light rain. The vegetation, far from the estival brown grass, is in a wonderful, lush greenery: a greenery that surrounds everything. So when my friends asked me if I should like to join them camping just after finals’ week, I whole-heartedly agreed. We had decided to eschew our usual grounds and explore throughout the valley for our campsite, though specifically in the more secluded, wooded areas near the foothills to the East, far from significant settlements.
On the appointed day, we had gathered at eleven, grabbed lunch, and loaded our van with all that we had packed–all that we needed–for the trip. Our camping spot would be near the Eveswold Hills, not too far from the banks of the Branchuck River. We’d be just a few miles east of the village of Ashcombe and right next to a wonderful woods. As we drove out of Ruesvale (the university town, not the valley it’s named for), we noticed that each subsequent road we turned on seemed ever older and in worse repair than the previous one, though, of course, only slightly. Quite quickly one could see the population growing sparser and sparser as we moved from city to town to village, settlement to settlement–and the grasses and marshes and woods surrounding both sides of the road growing ever wilder and wilder. The chain stores slowly thinned out, the restaurants disappeared: the last to go were the gas stations and convenience stores, but soon even the latter were replaced by their ancestors, the general store of yore.
Finally, we hobbled across a rickety old bridge across the Branchuck to Ashcombe, a village that, it would seem, was preserved in formaldehyde, for its derelict buildings seem not to have been replaced or repaired for decades. They were all built in the vernacular form of the Gothic Revival: Carpenter Gothic, as it were, betraying an origin in the late nineteenth century. This was the quietest of all the towns we drove through: indeed, it seemed suffused by a silence altogether unnatural. Still, it was clearly inhabited–that is, we did see one person in the town. She was an elderly woman, with a gaunt face, shriveled and wrinkled with age, her hair white and long. All the grace and warmth one might typically find amongst the elderly was absent in her face, which betrayed nothing: no emotions. One might suspect it to be a mere mask. The lack of any general store or convenience store worried one of my friends, but the worry was not considered by us a significant concern. After all, we had packed everything we needed, and we didn’t want to spend our time in town, especially after seeing its decrepitude.
Finally, at about 3 o’clock, we found that the road ended into a parking lot. We disembarked here, and began to unload the van. A hill blocked the view of the forest; we would have to haul everything beyond it to set up camp. It was grueling work, but it only took about an hour for us to bring all our supplies, and not much longer to set up the tents. The rest of the evening was our time to spend freely, as we had brought firewood. Two of my friends decided to hike with each other through the forest; they promised they’d be back in two hours. A third was in her tent, tuning her guitar. I sat near the pit where we would light our fire, reading a book of lyric poetry, though soon I grew bored of that and decided to return to a hobby of mine I’d been cultivating on these camping trips, namely, the identification of flora and fungi. All things considered, it was a wonderful afternoon. One could hear the swift, yet calm and rhythmic flow of the Branchuck, interspersed with the constant chirping of birds. A soft, cool wind blew, caressing the land and its inhabitants. The Sun was cloaked by clouds, relieving us of its usual overbearing heat, but this did not shroud the land in darkness, and indeed one could still rather easily tell where the Sun lay in the sky. The greenery we had found ourselves surrounded by was some of the most beautiful, I think, that has been seen on this Earth. That did not mean that it was harmless, for upon closer inspection, one would find an abundance of aconite, digitalis, daphne, and the invasive poison-hemlock among the vivid grasses and tall pines. Interspersed with these poisonous plants were fungi of all sorts, including a large fairy ring of what appeared to be death-caps (though it could also be Smith’s lepidella), large clusters of autumn skullcap, false morel, deadly parasol, fly agaric, wavy caps, along with two species that required use of my guidebook: Rubroboletus pulcherrimus and Pholiotina rugosa. Soon after I had noted all of these various species of mushroom down, the Sun began to dip closer and closer to the Western horizon, and I began to wonder when my friends would re-appear. As it did so, we were treated to one of the most vivid of sunsets, for the clouds had dispersed, allowing us to see the sky in all its hues, from blue, to purple, to red, to salmon-pink, to yellow and orange. The two of us who remained at camp were transfixed by it, watching as closely as we could for what seemed like hours but could have just as easily been seconds. In every moment of this magnificent procession of the Sun there was another nuanced shade or hue to discern, another tint to appear and to disappear. If I were still as limited as I were then, I might have called this sunset an ineffable experience, but that would be to devalue what is truly ineffable. Behind us, the moon had begun to rise; it was gibbous and waxing that night.
It was only when our friends returned that I stopped staring at the sunset and the festivities began. We lit up the campfire, and as it roared, cooked our dinner. After eating, we serenaded each other with songs and listened to stories of our friends’ hikes. We opened bottles of beer, and began to drink; all was joyous. Then suddenly, one of them pointed towards the stars. All of us, in unison, looked up, and saw an uncommon, but not strange, phenomenon: a shooting star. But this was different from other shooting stars, as its color seemed to shift moment after moment, and it moved along an irregular, wobbling path, until it suddenly disappeared. At first, this did not seem to us an omen–indeed, if one were to ask us of its significance, it might be considered a good sign, or a sign indeed of drunken hallucination. But in retrospect, that can be said to have been the start of all our troubles.
My friends all slept soundly that night, and I would have as well, were it not for the fact that at some ungodly hour I was awakened. At first I heard the loud sound of a hunting-horn in the distance, and it startled me from my sleep. The snores of my friends attested to the fact that I alone had been awakened, which I found strange, for the horn sounded loud enough to wake up anyone. I attempted to return to sleep, but, after only a few minutes of rest, I was interrupted again, this time by the rhythmic pulsing of drums in the distance, accompanied soon after with horns and flutes. After another attempt at ignoring the sound, I unzipped the tent and decided to investigate it. Almost immediately, I could smell the faint odor of ozone, emanating from the same place as the sounds. Taking my flashlight, I followed the odor and the sounds, which grew ever stronger and ever louder, until I found myself at the edge of the woods. I looked back, in the vain hope that my friends might have woken up, then continued through the dense and dark woods, with only a flashlight, whose battery, I feared, might fail at any given moment. Eventually, in the distance, I found a third sensation to accompany the sound, which by now had become comprehensible as an utterly discordant and pain-inducing form of “music”, and the smell, which by now had driven out all the scents of the forest: dancing lights in the distance. I looked up at the stars once again, and noticed that something, something–a something which I could not place, neither now nor then–was wrong about them. They had been re-arranged; this was not the sky I had grown up seeing, nor the sky I saw on camps before. I discarded that information and walked ever quicker towards the dancing lights. Soon it all began to overwhelm me: the dissonant, pulsating, terrible “music” rising to a fever pitch and growing so loud that I put my fingers in my ears, the dancing lights growing so bright that I closed my eyes, letting only that overpowering scent guide me.
Then all sounds and lights and smells stopped together. What was left was an eerie silence; not even the normal night sounds could be heard: not the hooting of the owl, nor the croaking of the frogs, not even the slow whistle of the wind. All I could perceive was that the trees that were in front of me were dead. I walked past them and was suddenly confronted with a clearing, with a path marked by two columns of withered trees. Suddenly, it was no longer night, but bright midday–and yet the sky was neither clear nor cloudy, but in a vibrant mixture of ever-changing hues. In front of me was a magnificent city with spires that rivaled even the tallest redwood. And around the city were seven great walls and gates, each of a different color and material, all of which were open. The first was black, then red, then orange, then blue, then green, then yellow, then white. But none of the materials were those I could readily identify: indeed, they seemed dissimilar to any I had ever seen or heard of. Each gate was yet grander and more commanding than the last, from the simple black exterior rampart with a checkpoint to the ostentatious white gate, complete with extraordinary carved details and a portcullis, half-open. As I walked through the gates, I noticed that the dirt of the forest had been replaced by a cobblestone floor. In front of me were a whole array of buildings with some familiar architectural features on their facades (though with an eclectic mixture of styles from across history, from the Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, to classical Greek and Roman orders, to the Romanesque arches, Gothic windows and buttresses–some, it seemed, coming from nowhere–and vaults &c &c), but bizarre and complex shapes. Resulting from this, the streets of the city seemed quite like a maze. As I walked through these hardscrabble streets, I noticed that the buildings were so tall that one could not see past them. The sorts of stones used to construct these buildings resembled none I had seen before, and there were so many different types of them that I could not list them here. None of the windows showed anything, it seemed, besides pure blackness beyond.
Soon I began to realize that this city appeared abandoned. No one else–nothing else–walked the streets. There seemed to be no evidence, besides the existence of the city, for inhabitance. As I turned, I looked behind me and saw that the city seemed to have shifted–and as I went around a pole, I did not see where I had come from–I concluded, then, that the geometry of this dread place was non-Euclidean. And then suddenly, after walking through a winding street, I stubbed my toe on a stone. Bending down, I saw that I had not hit a ramp or a set of stairs: rather, what had hurt my toe was a gravestone–or what appeared to be a gravestone–in the street. This seemed curious, but not noteworthy, at the time. I continued to walk, and after what seemed like an hour of navigating this surreal, eerily quiet, city, I came across a town square. To my horror, then, I found that it was studded with gravestones, which did not form neat rows but instead were scattered about, jutting out at odd angles, often so close to one another that one might worry about collisions. It appeared no longer to be a town square, but a cemetery–but the buildings and the paved streets remained visible. I wondered, idly, if this was a trick on my brain–a hallucination caused by alcohol–but I couldn’t accept this conclusion. I’m fairly certain now as then that alcohol does not cause one to hallucinate dead cities. In front of me was the tallest spire in the city; a great tower of white stone, whose grotesque shape defied classification.
Suddenly, the bells of the tower began to ring. Their sound was at first quiet, but as more began to ring, their tintinnabulation grew louder and louder, and still louder. What was worse, they were not in tune with one another, and so the result was a dissonant, loud chiming of ever-more unpleasant–indeed, painful–sounds. The white sheen of the building began to shine with such brightness that I felt I might go blind. I closed my eyes and my ears, only to open them again when there was quiet. But when I did, I was no longer in the dead city, but back in the forest, dark and deep. I looked behind me, and I saw the campfire. It had grown large and, in fear of danger, I began to run back to camp, as quickly as my legs could carry me. It was by a stroke of luck that I was able to get through without tripping over a root, stone or bush. Frantically, I woke up my friends; one of them had packed a fire extinguisher. Groggily, he opened the zipper to his tent; I grabbed the extinguisher and put out the fire. Slowly the adrenaline dispersed as I returned to my tent, and we returned to sleep. Everyone was safe, the danger was dispersed.
The next morning, I awoke somewhat earlier than my friends. All of a sudden, the memories of last night came back to me, but I had trouble deciding whether they were real or a dream. On the one hand, it had appeared too detailed and to have engaged with all avenues of sensory perception, so it seemed real–but on the other hand, its contents were surreal and I couldn’t ask anyone to corroborate it. I decided, then, to settle the issue by seeing if I could find the dead cities once more in the light of day. Once more I entered the woods, trying to track the direction I had walked in, but soon found myself disoriented and lost. Each direction seemed just as good as the next, and it was impossible to distinguish one growth of trees from another. When I realized this, I decided to head back instead of getting lost. I rationalized to myself that this must have been a dream, and for a few weeks, I could believe that.
But three weeks ago, this theory began to crumble. One after the other, each of my friends fell ill to a mysterious disease. No one else fell ill–or at least, others who fell ill clearly did not have the same disease, for not only did they exhibit different symptoms from those my friends experienced, doctors could easily diagnose the diseases others faced. No, when my friends fell ill, their disease had extremely recognizable symptoms, but these symptoms could not be easily correlated to any known disease. Nor did the disease seem contagious. First, the afflicted would develop coughs–but their temperature was uncommonly low. This would be accompanied by a mild, but chronic paresthesia. After a week or so, they would begin to develop nausea, a dry mouth, and a light-headedness. They would begin to complain about not being able to hear properly–sounds were both too loud, and also ringing in their heads. Soon this would be followed by ataxia and mania, and then swollen lymph nodes before finally developing a number of unique symptoms, each far more serious than the last. Doctors tried to find the cause of this curious illness, but have not been able to, as of yet, find a credible explanation. None have yet died, but I worry they are close. Only I have been spared, and the only explanation I can think of was that this had something to do with the city I visited. I am unable to ascertain why that might spare me–or at least, I was unable to ascertain why that might spare me. There is another friend of mine, who dabbles in the occult. I have told her this story, and she claims that this is an auspicious sign for me–that I have been transformed in ways I might never be able to understand–that I have witnessed evidence of what humanity has been fundamentally unable to subconsciously accept. There is a lie at the heart of our experience. No matter how much we consciously realize our insignificance in the grand scheme of things, subconsciously we still hold to the tenet that man is the measure of everything. We have been unable to come to grasp the nothingness that underlies everything–the nothingness whence we came and to which we will return. That there are things older and grander than us, beings whose presence we cannot see or smell or touch, for they express themselves as nothingness, but whose effects are quite visible. The Earth is not our belonging–and those elder beings will return to take back what was once theirs, and what will be theirs. I am to be the vessel by which this will reach humanity, for our imminent destruction, for our cities to be reduced to the dead city found in the woods. I do not like this burden, but it is mine to bear. Now it is time for me to meet my gods.