As her eyes focused on the hour hand of the mechanical
clock in front of her, she thought of her militant grandfather
teaching her to meditate:
"Not for peace. Not for wellbeing. For survival"
The hand of the clock wavered, moved forward and backward.
Settled on number 9. She took a deep breath and cleared her
mind. She imagined a shining arrow on pavement. She imagined
movement. Arrow pointed straight, her feet moved in a hypnotic
rhythm. She was walking on a street, following the arrow.
The clock remained at 9.
On top of the imagined street, the feet and the arrow,
she added a layer of moving images. It was a compilation of old
movies. The parts she could remember by heart. The hand of the
clock twitched with each jump from one scene to the next. Her
feet kept moving on the pavement.
The minute hand of the clock came alive and jumped to 2
and dropped back to it's resting place, pointing downward to 6.
She had made an error. She had thought of the directions as a
map, instead of casting the arrow based on the linear
succession of street corners.
"Stay in first person"
She started again. She rose up from the metro, pointed an
arrow to the right, all the while Fury Road was playing on top
of it all. She didn't raise her eyes and looked at no one. No
one would look at her either. After 24 arrows and 24 corners
she would walk into a building just like all the other
buildings. Three floors up, three arrows, second door on the
right, relax.
Enough. She detached the wires that ran from the clock to
her shaved head. The clock showed no signs of tampering and
she had official documentation that made it clear this was an
antique piece inherited from her grandmother. She had even got
it inscribed with the sort of retarded message one might find
on a timepiece from the postmodern past. Something about all
being nothing on the eve of eternity. Love, Trissa.
The streets had no signs. Each building was a grey tower
of equal height. There were no windows. The pedestrians moved
in neat lines. All the faces were turned down and gave a blank,
inward looking stare. No one noticed that an unmod had
surfaced.
She paid no attention to the others except for the rhythm
of their steps. She knew they were completely harmless to her.
She didn't think about this, of course. She had conditioned
herself to know it in her being. She was in a focused trance,
her attention fixed to the imaginary movie she player for
herself.
The others on the street had actual movies played for
them by their mods. They had arrows flashing for direction
and they arrived to their destination without any thought or
even any knowledge of why they were there. Another set of
instructions would tell them what to do once it was time for
that. They were happily immersed in a life of entertainment,
they had a necessary amount of daily excercise, and they did
the little that was needed for the wheel of society to keep
turning.
A drone floated over the city block. It scanned for brain
wave anomalies. There was no reason to have anyone show signs
of higher functions on the streets today. Most of these workers
had not paused their streams for several days, except for when
they took their bedtime shot. To keep the machine running was
more efficient each year.
The room on the third floor had no furniture. All the walls
were completely void of any distinction. There was no light, nor
windows. She had picked this one because it was the one closest
to the center of the building. There were at least five concrete
walls to each direction before her brain waves would meet the
surveilled airspace out there. There was no evidence that
a dream could go through more than three walls, but still she
felt uncomfortable going to sleep here instead of her cave.
The man had a pistol on his belt and Marcus Aurelius on his
lap. He read the book quietly and gave a little tap whenever
the girl lost her focus. She knew it was a dream. Even so, she
had to obey him.
"It is not a punishment. I would do this myself
if it made a difference. You have to start young,
you have to grow tough."
The hour hand was waving from 4 to 11. She was losing the
composition. The movie was jumping back and forth and she
didn't know which arrow was which. She knew the dream never
ended good.
"Focus!"
She took a breath and pulled her consciousness into a ball
the size of her heart. The room faded and rebounded back into
existance. The man rose from the chair, told her to keep at it
and walked up the stairs to the ground level. He switched off
the light as he went. The cellar was reduced to the smell of
potatoes, onion and mold. There were gunshots outside.
The street was lined with people each direction. The lines
separated into several at crossroads and continued their march
with no indication of purpose. Each person had a grey set of
clothes on. Each person was slim but not skinny. Each person
had that inward stare.
The entertainment that was allowed on the mods were
digital remakes of old movies. They were more violent than the
originals, they had less dialogue and all ambivalence was
removed. Usual ending for a movie was a rebellious character
lowering their head into a formal bow in front of a powerful,
righteous leader.
An antique clock walked through the main door of the
Ministry of Entertainment. It was carried by a lady wearing a
wig made out of her own hair. She walked with the same steady
step as the others, but she was something quite different.
She was the last living descendant of a radical sect of
anti-progressives who had fought for decades against the
surveillance state and lost thirty years ago when an agent
got to her grandfather.
No one questioned her as she walked into the server
room. After the victory against the rebels physical security
had been streamlined away. Efficiency was the prime virtue.
She removed the back of her clock and attached a cable
to one of the stream boxes. The unmodified version of Lars
von Trier's "Antichrist" was uploaded on countless mods and
added to their playlists. She took a deep breath, imagined the
ending scene and walked out, following the imaginary arrows
to nowhere.
