HG Wells' Problematic "Fauxcialist" Legacy

HG Wells called himself a socialist. He also called himself a "liberal fascist." I want to break down what this means, in terms of the political landscape of Pre-WW2 Europe in which he was speaking and writing about his views on science, the future and class struggle. HG Wells is undoubtedly one of the most influential science fiction writers of the early modern era. But what exactly did he think "socialism" was? And can we parse that in some of his works?

The answer to the second question is yet. And we must do that to answer the first question.

Or, we can take Wells at face value and agree, he believed socialism was "liberal fascism."

I intend to show that Wells himself was a liberal fascist.

Modern readers maybe confused by this term. You are probably "liberalism and fascism are opposed," are you're wrong, but that's not the point of this article. Historically, fascism arises when minority groups, women, and the working class have managed to make certain limited gains within the context of liberal democracy. I use the word liberal in the global sense, not in the sense of the United States political culture. Classical liberalism. After World War 2, fascism became stereotyped as Nazism, but actually the word comes from an ancient Roman symbol of authority and was first used by Mussolini. And he was a fucked up guy, and an opportunist, whose financial advisor gave his name to the term "Ponzi Scheme."). But let's be honest, Mussolini didn't make quite the impression on the UK or the United States as Hitler did. 

In a modern reading of this (which maybe valid in context but maybe not entirely explanatory), his "liberal fascism" could be construed of his own, marginally middle consciousness' interpretation of what we might call today "Horseshoe Theory" in political science. His vision was closer to techno-utopianism/utopian technocracy, associated today with neoliberalism and Silicon Valley assholes..

Wells' family precarious lower middle class status shaped his views. He feared his family becoming poorer through circumstance, and he believed capitalism was dehumanizing of the working and the exploiting classes. This is best expressed in the evolutionary split between the Eloi and Morlock species in "The Time Machine." In this sense, Wells did endorse a kind of "liberal socialism" (to use the term broadly) because he believed in uplifting everyone to equal standing to prevent the delicate higher class (and by extension, its values) from being devoured by brutal lower classes. But that "liberal socialism" is a brand of fascism. It's a distortion through a colonialist lens. I do not like to dismiss people as "products of their time." There was no time in human history when we as a neurologically modern species lacked self awareness. People in the late 19th/early 20th century were just as accountable as people today for their moral judgments and their impact on other people. 

But my big point here is that in the formative days of socialism and fascism, before WW2, the boundaries were a bit more permeable between "liberal" and "fascist."

 But there is still permeability, which is why Wells' statement was so predictive, even today. Authoritarianism maps sell onto liberalism (classic liberalism) and especially neoliberalism. Fascism is a force within liberal democracy, as much as Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, centrists and Libertarians might consider themselves opposed to it.

The only true opposition to fascism is anti-capitalist and anti-technocracy.

 was very predictive as well as contextually relevant at the time

Hit it With a Rock (humorous "Star Trek" post)

One of my favorite Star Trek The Original Series episodes is called "A Private Little War." It's a thoughtful episode penned as a commentary on the Vietnam War, which was ongoing at that time. The plot involves the Enterprise visiting a planet where Kirk befriended a local tribal chieftain years ago as a younger officer on a survey mission. Kirk reconnects with his old friend Tyree and finds that Tyree's tribe, the Hill People (no, Michael Meyers is not in this) is now in armed conflict with another tribe, the Village People (okay, I know how that sounds, just roll with it, this episode came first) who inexplicably are wielding primitive firearms several centuries more advanced than the rest of the planet's technology. It turns out the Klingons have been arming the rival group, and Tyree's wife, Nona, a tribal medicine woman, attempts to coerce Kirk into giving their less technologically advanced tribe phasers to defend themselves.

The reason this episode is  hilarious is that, for an episode about an arms race wherein a Stone Age tribe is trying to get their hands on phasers because their neighbors suddenly went from the Bronze Age to wielding Klingon-built flintlocks, a lot of people get hit by rocks.

Need to take out the guard but can't use phasers because you're disguised as natives on a primitive planet? Hit 'em with a rock.

Captive not cooperating? Hit 'em with a rock.

They even shoot rocks with phasers to provide heat for a comatose Spock who is suffering a venomous wound from one of the planet's animal life forms.

So, in summary, the episode is an allegory for a lot of Cold War politics: Vietnam, other colonial wars, mutually assured destruction, arms races. It's an episode about weapons, in which A lot of people get hit with rocks. And the whole time, they're talking about guns. While hitting each other with rocks.

I'm not sure if this was intentional, like the episode's Vietnam War allegory (which was ongoing and highly controversial at the time this episode aired), but it makes for some decent MST3King.

This Alien Skin (an epigraph poem)

 

“Dedicated to our Lord and Savior,

“David Bowie,

“Who dwelleth on Mars.”

-        A food Service Worker at Federal Chicken and Donuts, 2018 CE

 

---

This Alien Skin,

Beneath a facsimile of a more Earthly self

I cannot claim my own.

 

It itches.

 

Meat tastes funny here. Not enough grey matter.

They only eat food animals and plants. They do not consume the dead to honor their ancestors.

 

I wait for greyrain.

 

The greyrain comes, its acid was dissolving foodthings. We cannot drink puddles for days. We eat what the Overs left behind.

 

Parasite face with tentacle of mourning. Fell from the sky last night. It glistens in the iron sun, a silhouette at dusk and dawn.  

 

White tendrils echo. The greyrain stops.

 

Somewhere, the real Starman is smiling.

What is it like to work with Actual, Real Life Rentkids? (Sex Trafficking as Metaphor)

I have two young people on my caseload who were commercially exploited for sex.

But honestly, working with them is like working with any distressed teenager.

Right now, most of my clients who reside in foster care are teens, and the overwhelming majority of them are girls.

Most of these girls were sexually abused at some point in their lives.

I wrote a novel about child prostitution. Please note that I don't particularly like the word "prostitute." I use it in my (first person) novel because the speaker's culture is not quite as politically correct as ours. I prefer the term "sex worker..." for adults. Because sex work is work. It's no more or less legitimate than any other service job, in a capitalist system. I don't support capitalism... I also don't support the State telling adults what to do or not do with their reproductive organs. If the sex is safe and consensual, it's not my business.

These kids are "survivors." They were not engaged in a voluntary exchange of services for a fee. They were exploited, and for the ones who were trafficked, they were conditioned... what we call, in the field, grooming.

I say "kids." If you've read my blog, you probably figure (rightly) that anyone under 25 is basically a kid to me. I define adolescence in terms of neurological maturity instead of social or legal customs that don't correspond to emotional maturity. That's not to say all adults are emotionally mature. They are not. But I don't expect people under 25 to be mature. I expect them to make rash and impulsive decisions. I think they need to develop their autonomy as they grow and experience more of the world to get toward that point in their life where they can effectively prioritize their own needs with their social obligations.

Legally speaking though, in this society, a child under 18 years of age cannot consent to sex with an adult. So it is not consensual, and therefore unsafe. While I understand that a young person may think of it as consensual and even enjoy the experience, my job is to protect kids from exploiters and abusers and yes, sometimes from themselves. I was sexually exploited when I was 16 (I was not trafficked, this was one event in my life, it affected me greatly, and I am still, as an adult, processing and confronting the trauma). When I was 16, I thought I had all the power in that relationship. And, in my experience, many children who were trafficked or exploited also believe this. That is one of the objectives of the "grooming" process.

One of my clients was recruited some time prior to my assignment to the case. The team's suspicions congealed on her 18th birthday. She left her placement, a juvenile residential treatment center, on the night of her birthday, spent it in a hotel with a pimp and a john, and returned at 2 AM. This was a pattern, and we, the team, recognized it too late. Because this happened on the night of her 18th  birthday, even though she is on board extension with child welfare until age 21, Childline would not take the report.

I, a white man, was the one who had to break it to a black 18 year old woman, that as of her birthday, the law would no longer see her as a victim if she was caught. We have a safe harbor policy in Philadelphia. But the cutoff is age 18, even if a person was recruited by a trafficker prior to their 18th birthday, as this person was.

The client in question has some pretty serious mental health issues that undermine her connection to reality. I do not believe sex work should be illegal. But that doesn't mean I think it's a good idea for my very young and mentally ill client to be a sex worker.

There are a lot of things I don't think are good ideas. I think in the absence of the State and the capitalist system, most people, at least the majority who are not predisposed to anti-social behaviors, would not harm each other or steal from each other. I think structural poverty and limited access to high quality mental health services by people in poverty is a big part of the problem. The research supports me. You need only look at the evidence proffered by the ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) studies to know that capitalism is not working for kids. And of course, that means most kids, not just the ones who were sexually exploited or trafficked by predatory adults.

In my line of work, I am supposed to know how predators think. Honestly, it's like Frank Black's "faculty" in Millennium. I know how to adopt their POVs. I can see the world through their eyes. I see the cracks in the system they live in and exploit. I know how they operate and I see deep and disturbing parallels between them and the broader system of wage labor exploitation.

The honest truth about MOST "bad behavior" is that it is maladaptive coping. But some things go beyond that.

I am uncomfortable with the term "evil." I think it is too often applied to individuals to write them off as morally corrupt human beings, when the truth is that abuse, including bullying, perpetuates itself. It is a cycle and escaping that cycle should not be shouldered by any one individual. After all, it is society that too often fails survivors of abuse. Maybe these systems are "evil" (if that word is meaningful to you). I prefer to describe things in terms of consequences. "Evil" as a word has a lot of moral and religious baggage that doesn't align with my philosophical materialist, humanistic, and skeptical sensibilities. 

I do believe some things are unforgivable. Forgiveness is not a right. It's an ideal.

But I can forgive the man who exploited me, stole my money and abandoned me, terrified, in a crackhouse. It is my choice to forgive. He was an addict without a support system. Society failed him, too.

In a different incident, when I was 18, I was attacked. I fought off my attacker and fled the scene. I didn't talk about this for ten years, not with my parents, or other family, or my friends. Eventually, in "Rentkids," I wrote about this, too. Do I forgive him? Not yet. Is it possible? Sure, why not? It's not what I think about when my mind drifts back to that night. I don't think "I hope he is hurting," I think "I am glad I am alive." Or the other night. I still blame myself, in a way I would never project on any of the kids I work with.

There is one man I cannot forgive, a Human Resources Executive who wielded significant power over me when I was at my most vulnerable and desperate. This was when I was severely injured, on the job, attempted to return to the job (and an unpaid internship through work that was necessary to complete my MSW). I was still affected by the injury (physically and emotionally) in ways that, due to Workers' Comp insurance policies, made it impossible for me to perform my job and also do 4 unpaid hours per day. I sought accommodations, I was not given any. So I looked up the relevant employment law and resigned due to a "medical quit." This HR executive chose to personally ensure I was denied unemployment compensation. Eventually I did get my UE. This was after months of terrifying, deep depression and multiple suicide attempts and police encounters during a time when I was in mental distress.

It wasn't the first time mental illness affected my job. I've had to work my way back up from the bottom, twice. The first time was because I couldn't manage my work/life balance or my countertransference and boundaries, and I became emotionally enmeshed with a client. I regret this. I was unemployed for about a year and then I could only get direct service work, so I was on the bottom of the hierarchy again. It hurt my ego. It wounded me. Working helped me get out of the depression, and eventually, I became a Case Manager again. Because I love the work but hated the pay, I went back to school. I went into more debt than I will probably ever be able to repay in order so I could make $13,000 more per year as a Case Manager II then I made as a Case Manager I.

I never want to be a boss. I never want to be in a position where I would have to terminate another worker's employment.

When I think about that HR executive, my blood boils. I think about his smug smile, his condescending tone and words ("buck up, kid"), his upper middle class background, his paternalistic attitude, and I HATE everything about him. But people like this aren't the problem. A system where they rise to the top is. 

Will I ever forgive him? Will I ever not hate him? I don't know. I only know that today, I am not ready to let go of that. I cannot blame the system for him. He used the system. But there were things he did in the process that were unnecessary and cruel. He pursued the denial of my UE benefits with aplomb, like he was putting me in my place. I despise HR as an institution. But most HR staff I know are good people who are trying to do the right thing. It's the people at the top who are rotten. There is more to this story, here, than unresolved trauma.

As a social worker I believe in the dignity and validity of human relationships. But not all relationships are healthy, and not all relationships are consensual.

Libertarians, conservatives, and increasingly more centrists and liberals think of contracts between employee and employer as contracts between equal parties, but they are not. They are asymmetrical, unequal social and economic relationships. Some bosses are good neighbors, good parents, and try to undo the damage the system has caused, as much as possible, but they have the ultimate veto power if positive change effects their profits.  And as the militants say in the world of my novel, "A boss is a boss is a boss."

What does this have to do with sex trafficking? I'm glad you asked.

Everything. Because sex work is work and like all work, it is inherently not consensual or based on equal relationships. A worker must eat. A worker must have shelter and clothing, not just as a worker, but as a person. But the employer is not dependent on that one person's access to material security. The worker is replaceable. Even under regulated capitalism, it is in the design of the system that structural poverty is maintained, if necessary by a social safety net, and because of means testing and an often insurmountable welfare/employment gap, the safety net of the regulated liberal-capitalist welfare state keeps most people poor rather than lifting them out of poverty. Capitalism cannot sustain full employment because it would cease to function without a competitive and brutal labor market. It depends on a surplus army of disposable un-employed and under-employed people. These people are more likely than those at the top to have had the adverse childhood experiences the above study looks at. They are more likely to struggle with mental health challenges or substance abuse. And they are more likely to be written off by our society as failed human beings, collateral damage, than the utter parasites on the top. So, in essence, we are all "prostitutes" under capitalism. In my moments of despair in 2018, when I was forced to become a very unhappy Uber driver after graduating with a Masters' in Social Work, I wrote, with permanent marker, on my chest, in all capital letters: "WHORE."

Because this system made me feel like a failure, hopeless and helpless, and that is the last way I want anybody to feel.

And that commitment to an "ideal" about how to treat other people extends even to this hated man.

I only ask that after the Revolution, I be kept far, far away from him, and if necessary, I would rather be exiled than take a life. Even a life spent abusing and exploiting. I cannot write individuals off, no matter what they have done. That is what capitalism, even regulated capitalism, does. It is wrong, more wrong than my hating one man.

So this man, who I hate, I will never call him (as some anarchists would) a "garbage human being." I might think that. But to say it, to expect agreement, is not something I am prepared to do.

People think anti-capitalists are angry, and we are. But do they ask why we are angry? It is an anger born of compassion.

I am an exploited worker. It is not a consensual or equal relationship.

So I wrote a novel where sex trafficking is a metaphor for all capitalism.

What is it like to work wit Actual, Real Life Rentkids?

Why even ask that question?

It's like working with any distressed kid.  Kids are kids. They tantrum and blow up my phone and apologize 20 minutes later hoping I'm not mad at them. They test my patience and my resolve. They make bad decisions and the adults in their lives react to them. Seriously, they're still kids. What happened to them didn't make them something other than kids.

They are searching for connections in a scary and hostile world.

I am much better at managing countertransference and boundaries than I was when I started. So, I do less harm, because I learned a better way. That better way led me to embrace Anarchism, rather than the vaguely left-liberal market socialism I considered ideal when I was younger. I thought I was a radical then. But in ten years, I unlearned a lot of things, and learned many better, more equitable, transformative and healing things.

I am a better social worker and a better human being now. I could not have done this kind of work when I started in case management.

It takes a big heart full of steel, steel forged in the fire of compassion and cooled by cold fury.

Yes, I am full of rage, but I have outlets that are constructive.

We are building the new society within the dying husk of the old.

::[[ Plans For This Blog ]]::

 [[ Greetings from the 427th century... ]]

Awe, I'm just kidding. No one counts in Earth centuries anymore. We just call this Sometime After the Sixth Great Migration.

...

Okay. I lied. It's 12:32am in Philadelphia. And I am about to go to bed watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. But before I do, P*L*A*N*S.

Because. You gotta have plans.

I have gotten four great rejection letters recently. One day after the other. All of them said that they "like" and "love" certain elements and told me why they passed on these stories. It is very rare that SF editors do this and it indicates that they think you have promise.

So, I am caught between anxiety and confidence, in a vicious cycle.

I also have to work Saturday. Which I guess, is technically today.

I am coming up on one year of working from home. It's been tough. Due to the nature of my job, I feel like I live in a teenage wasteland. I crave adult companionship, not romantic, just platonic, with people who aren't case parents, foster parents or coworkers.

Don't get me wrong. I love kids. I especially like working with teens because they are challenging and they keep me on my toes. But my job comes with a lot of emotional stress and vicarious trauma because I work with kids who have been removed from their homes by DHS (the Philadelphia Department of Human Services). I deal every day with abuse and trauma. I have a mental health background and sometimes it can be isolating because I tend to see social dysfunction and relational dysfunction everywhere I look. I see people acting out traumas, I see them struggling, and I think this society has done a lot of damage to a lot of people. But I do believe in accountability: I think people need to be accountable for asking for help. Most bad behavior is maladaptive coping. There are very truly sociopathic and psychopathic individuals out there. Most people, if their needs are met, if they do not have to struggle for existence, and are afforded dignity and material safety, are good people. Even if they sometimes do bad things. And I do think people are accountable for change. I hold people accountable for change, or I at least try, every day with the families I work with.

My New Years' Resolution was to do a better job of coaching people out of avoidant behavior patterns. 

See, this shit gets isolating. When you start to look at behaviors within eco-systems of human relations as predictive phenomenon, you feel like an alien observer. Like that Caliban-inspired "First Among Equals" in my story, "Savage."

So, a few more resolutions.

I am going to try to do a better job of representing social workers on this blog. This month is Social Worker Appreciation Month and I am going to try to pay it forward by being a little nicer and not as angry.

I am also going to continue to post "unpublishables," stories that are either way too experimental or weird or disturbing to get published in legit mags. Consider this a "just for fun" exercise.

Eulogy for a Supernova

Eulogy for a Supernova

 

AS concerns the Affairs of my partner in crime, Fergie Coates, may the Spirit resolve your struggles.

May the Spirit permit his passage. May the Spirit accord him his right luggage. May the Spirit lift and the Spirit descend with safety for all passengers. May his oxygen mask go unused. May the winds and rains not mar his journey. May he be together with All Who Have Passed.

Fergie was a foodshaft worker. He worked the shalemoss mines and fungal pits of the protein complex. He was a prominent Arclight Wrestler, a Purple Crest Champion at Fizzball, and a poet of incredible depth. I first met Fergie when I was seven and barefoot, and collecting pretty bottles that people left behind in the parking lot near the Liquor Control Board Store. We used to hang out there when we were teenagers, getting high and singing for pennies and selling jokes for a quarter per hook and a penny per punchline.

May the coins multiply inside his bowls. May the USAngels bring many goods. May Uncle Sam prevail. We make formation, and we fly with our wings outstretched, grander and more magnificent than the most awesome of birds.

Draw the Angels to us, we beg of the Sky. May they bring many goods!

We shared dreams, him and me. We used to dream of the same little Grey People. But then the memories faded and other memories, more brutal, intruded on us in our frailer moments. I suppose there were times we both blacked out, together, in the parking lot behind the State Store, or in the woods. Maybe something happened. It would explain…

We are Infants, oh Great Ones. We offer ourselves to your service. Let us fight for you. Let us die for you. We ask only that you multiply the coins in our bowls. May your Invisible Hand prevail. May we die last and best fed.

He disappeared on his own sometimes and didn’t have any explanations and he figured he was high and we got high together and nothing happened except we were hungry. But alcohol has carbs so we used our fake IDs and we bought Jack Daniels with our allowance and then in the basement nothing happened either. Except we were no longer virgins and I had never expected it that my first time would be with a guy. But it just happened that way.

Sometimes, Fergie would joke that we were an odd pair. He was tall and bronze and made of meat and I was short and fat and made of pale dough. But it was like yin-yangs and all because we evened each other out. So really we were an even pair. He was at least as tall as I was fat.

And then we met Nanzo and Havartha and our twosome became a foursome. Nanzo was a bored genius and Havartha was witty and wrote poetry – on walls. When I met her she was on GPS. They did that with kids back in the twenty-first century, if we were habitually truant or committed minor crimes. Our religion embraced technology and we used to worship at His Banded Ankle. So, we had to keep Havartha out of some of our schemes, but other times, she proved an excellent distracter.

We had adopted the Cargo Cult. It was our idea. We wanted to prove to the Philadelphia UrbCommune that we could think for ourselves. The UrbCommone appreciated our experiment and encouraged us to practice Cargo Cultism. So we decided to pray not to God but to the Spirit with the Invisible Hand and the USAngels and Uncle Sam, who basically looked like a really thin Santa Claus.

We gave ourselves code names: I was Stalker. Nanzo was Ol’ Hickory. Havartha was Royal TannenBomb, and Fergie, Fergie was Jesus Santiago Coriander McGorskovich, AKA Gorski. Because he heard that like a long time ago when they first landed on the moon, Armin Legstrong, the who invented the Moon Walk, said “Good luck, Mr. Gorski.” And the reason, Fergie AKA Gorski said this happened was because a young Armin Legstrong walked by his neighbor’s house one day to hear Mr. and Mrs. Gorski arguing. Mr. Gorski wanted oral sex and Mrs. Gorski said, “Oral sex, oral sex? I’ll give you oral sex when the boy next door walks on the moon!”

Fergie used to tell stories like this. He was obsessed with the twentieth century.

I think Fergie would appreciate this service.

It’s very twentieth century. The cars. The procession. Both fell out of practice with the Ascendancy of the Cyclers’ Movement.

This is eulogy but’s also a tone poem for a supernova. Havartha helped me write it. It’s my gift to all who loved Fergie.

Fergie, inventor of the word “lugcake” and the protosonic ascendancy cannon.

Fergie, friend, lover, yin-yang.

But as Fergie would have said, “Go tell it to the moon. Go tell it to the Gorskis.”

Rentkids: The Query Letter

 Query Letter in Progress for my first novel... figured I would post this here.

Dear _____,

 

I am writing to seek representation for my first novel, RENTKIDS, a dystopian science fiction novel for adults of approximately 98,000 words, with prominent post-colonial and queer themes. Think of it as CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY… with sex. It’s social science fiction, in line with such favorites in Octavia Butler’s PARABLE OF THE SOWER, and the worldbuilding and characters also owe themselves to non-science fiction works such as Scott Heim’s chilling MYSTERIOUS SKIN. In fact, I originally conceived of the plot as being MYSTERIOUS SKIN meets CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY.

RENTKIDS is a novel of resilience and recovery from the trauma of abuse, set in a laissez-faire dystopian, mafia-dominated world that is intended as different from the more traditional totalitarian dystopia. The narrative alternatives perspectives between two young protagonists, Devna and Alash, who reside close to the bottom of their society’s hierarchy, just above the street urchins. Devna is a teenage sex worker, in the employ of a manipulative and savvy pimp named Abn Mür, on the planet Tantalus II. In an act of compassion, Devna rescues a wounded, amnesiac boy off the streets, and names him Alash, for the kitten she could not have. He has no memory of where he came from. They grow close as she teaches him to be a “rentkid,” a child prostitute catering to the perverse tastes of their planet’s mafioso upper class. Almost two years later, while entertaining at a party held by one of the “Twelve Families” that rule their planet, a vicious mobster, Leon Calvaratin, rapes Alash. Alash fights back, and is brutally beaten, but manages to offend Leon’s feudal honor in the process. The mob demands that Abn restore honor by giving them Alash as a sex slave as per their society’s traditions regarding debts and patronage. Devna begins to question her loyalty to Abn when he says he has no choice in the matter. She resolves to escape with Alash. Their defiance sets off a chain of events that sees them flee their planet in the company of nomadic revolutionary anarchists, the Starfarers. On the Starfarers’ ship, Devna and Alash must confront the trauma inflicted on them and salvage the strength to move forward with dignity. Unfortunately, Leon is in pursuit, with a squadron of mafia-owned warships, and with their new allies, they will have to confront him, too, in the cold and unforgiving depths of space. And that is just the first part of the book.

Devna and Alash are compelling characters that readers will identify with. They were written to represent real kids who have survived abuse and have had to militantly reassert their identities in a hostile world. Their insecurities and struggles, and close, sibling-like relationship, will be familiar, especially to LGBTQ readers and survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation who lack the support of their biological families and have found other kinds of families for themselves. Through their personal journeys and relational dynamic, the reader is also drawn into a setting that challenges the traditional literary concept of dystopia by locating that dystopia in the intersections of race, class and sexuality, in the context of a society defined vaguely by certain ideals but ultimately ruled by licentious criminals.

I am a 35-year old queer activist and child welfare social worker. RENTKIDS is my first novel, but there are many more stories to tell on the planet Tantalus II and the broader universe in which it exists. I have enclosed the first (X # of chapters and/or a synopsis). I hope to hear from you soon.

 

Raven Green

[ redacted ]

[ redacted ]

A Little Something I Am Working On...

[ 5 ]

Savage

 

eMark@:88.29.52.77X85.71[encrypt.matrx.SIGMA-9]

ATTN/HX: Village SubNet Subcell 197019G

Transmo Freq: EHZ.K12.2021.0901A

Telematrix Domain Prefix Delta

 

Oh, comrades!

Thik’n’ning as I was rolling high, and abouts the finer things in the worlds, I reflected as like in a mirrored parabola on the people in my life.

And I tried to find Order in Chaos.

Before I was wetwebbed, I had a name: Mordecai of Iko Band, Wanderer Clan, Wind Dagger Tribe, Born Free to the Steppe. I was well enough read for a Barbarian. It’s why the Wetweb numbered made me First-Among-Equals. I believe in theories and I believe in facts and things I can see or smell or make explode. And I like my thik’n’nings on things such as Order and Chaos. I take at it analytically as like I was some science observer from some parallel plane, looking askew and ignorantly at all the worlds that humanity calls home, and when I do this I find myself questioning of myself, why is it that I say “Their Great Vigilance” sometimes, not with reverence or respect, but out of fear? And am I thik’n’ning alone on this? And all the other oddball thik’n’nings I thik. And chief among the thik’n’nings this mornering as I heat breakfast stew over a fire outside my thermal-insulated tent and huddle myself with shivers against the bite of wind, is that the people in my life are special.

I love every one of the combat workers in my squad like they were family. Because, though I am first to wake, alone, when each partisan wakens and wetwebs, I absorb them into my heart and soul.

Second-Among-Equals came here from the Peoples’ Legion to show us how to fight. She is a Canalite, from the coastal region. She brought the Newsong.

Fourth-Among-Equals came with her from the Canalite land of Pontiel. He is a cherubic warrior, skilled with the bow, the scimitrix, and the long-gun.

Fifth-Among-Equals is young, maybe too young, but fearless, and strong. She is the Carrier-of-Water and Songkeeper.

Sixth-Among-Equals prefers to fight using the weapons of our oppressors, the Technocrati, the Forces of Jacoby Prosser. He’s amassed a collection.

Seventh, they sing.

Eighth, they ache for their lost love.

Ninth, he is always first to volunteer.

I love even Third-Among-Equals, who came to us from the Disenfranchised Classes. I see how he hard he tries to fit in. But it never clouds his mind. He can stand on his own feet. The Family is a dying cell. We are the Newkind, the Wetwebbed, the Many, the Proud, the Partisans!

And we are all the children of Grand Marshall now.

Rush concludes. High roll come down. Drop low. Then, boom! Big white flash.

The Gammamen coming. I senses it. It’s killing time.

One detaches slowly from its cluster, a lonely bubble now, this strange envoy. Floating up in the sky, unattached and cold, its sight inspires the fight in us to overwhelm the allness in ourselves.

Our Enemy is cold and detached. It does not know the simple pleasurings of hearthfire and Song. It has never felled a gamebird with bola or toxdart, it has never run on the steppe and flapped its arms like wings and shouted at the Greater Light and called the Lesser names.

But it has invaded my home. It wants my lands for more “rational” use.

And that is why we fight. We fight for our freedom. We fight for Grand Marshall!

Grand Marshall was like us once, thik’n’ning just like this, on his circumstances as like they’d look to an Outsider. And Grand Marshall, in all his thik’n’nings, concluded that the Steppe of Marr, and the Forests of Gend, and the Coastal Cities of Pontiel, ought not to be anymore a part of the Global Domains under the Technocrati. Our planet had seen its share of conquerors- Rigelians, Diamonders, Ophidians, Taskmasters. We drove them all off. The Technocrati defeated four empires with Higher Tech, and that was truegood, but when they turned that tech on us, to take away our lands, that’s when Grand Marshall knew he could no longer tolerate what the Global Domains had become, and he declared the Trifecta an independent, sovereign, and macrocollectivist Folk Republic. And within that Folk Republic’s borders, he dissolved the Classes and encouraged mixing of the Trifecta Nations. In his thik’n’ning, if the Steppeans and the Foresters and Canalites- all the Folk Tribes of the Trifecta- got wetwebbed up together, we could protect our lifeways from the Technocrati. So we wetwebbed, on a subnet of the Telematrix, encrypted and walled off from any Enemy hacker. And squads like mine, operated as a subcell in the Wetweb. We were localed to each other, and segmented from the All. It quieted the voices in our minds. We operated in tandem with the prowline scouting-cats, the dual webchips in our brainstems and forebrains aligned with theirs in a repeating sequence that tied us and our thik’n’nings together as one so that we knew each other and the world through each other. We creep together through the Trifecta sowing chaos and devastation upon every reach of the Technocrati.

We are all like Sixth-Among-Equals now, using the weapons of the Technocrati against them. EmRails and plasmery, EMPs and nuclear fusion missiles, long-range attack craft and gunships and cruisers, lasers and caterpillar mines, and sleepermist grenades, and the naked rawness of mere bullets.

The lonely bubble swoops low, and free-electron lasers slash outward from its mirrored skin. Scorches burn on the ground where the hot beams strike. They prefer not to kill. They prefer to quell with awe.

But in all our webbed thik’n’ings of late, we are not so suchly prone to awe.

May Their Great Vigilance forgive my abouts-to-dos.

Roll high, roll on, sibs!

Victory to Grand Marshall, victory to the Trifecta Folk Republic! Victory to the Confederation of the Non-Aligned! Victory and Long Life to the All.

I give my life.

Do not forget me, oh!