THE REPUBLIC #41 (2025/11/02)
DEMARCATION
I did it. I don't deny a thing. —Antigone
Thus far our author. Cabals form and dissolve, this much never changes. Motives are often inscrutable even to the members themselves. People don't do things for reasons, they do things because they do them. Whether owing to guilt or an overactive imagination, explanations typically follow later. Lagging indicators of overpowering feelings.
Turn now to explanations of just governance. Tell a little story that frightens your audience, one that makes inevitable your prescribed solution. "Inevitable" in your telling; most critical is to persuade your audience to surrender in advance. Preemptive compliance is a prerequisite of power.
Reinforce your message through repetition. Ideally, symbols of preemptive compliance are adopted into the vernacular. No one can understand each other without them.
You disappear.
Break down the presentation. Wally Wood's 22 panels that always work. Big head. Extreme close-up. Back of head, part of head. Profile, no background. White Ben Day, dark foreground. Open panel, complete object. All black. One big object. Full figure, open panel. Reverse silhouette black or Ben Day, bottom open. Small figure, Ben Day. Depth. Down shot, cast shadows. L-shape, silhouette. Diagram, eye level. Side light, or top. Frame. White Ben Day background and silhouette. Three stage. Extra. Contrast.
The audience connects disparate elements all by themselves. A little detective work, and the results are presumed iron clad because they've been independently discovered. The hubris of credulity clouding the future, blotting out the sun.
Help them help themselves.
What's my motivation?
THE REPUBLIC #40 (2025/10/31)
CUR NON
All you keyboard killers in your feelings / Mad you ain't trending / Mad, got you trickin' on your women —Malice of Clipse, M.T.B.T.T.F.
Slake was troubled by a persistent awareness of other little boys, with whom he shared certain peculiarities in common, spread throughout time and the galaxy (though not necessarily in that order) just like every snowflake in an avalanche. Two of the three, curiously, were human.
There was the boy in Indiana, Mars, 1987-1991, who, through his exuberance for gaining martial prowess, had somehow bullied an older boy into teaching him a made-up martial art that didn't really exist. The older child, otherwise friendless, had felt he had no choice but to play along, and dutifully put forward his own best effort to invent and demonstrate effective combat techniques that would actually work in the hallways and locker rooms of their country school. Surprisingly successful, the arrangement persisted for four years. The information about how to fight must have been coming from somewhere, but from where neither of them could guess.
There was Drew Crak, coordinator of a burgeoning grade school intelligence apparatus, silently and secretly recruiting schoolmates to surveil themselves and each other, filling out and filing detailed reports in triplicate, which he held onto because he figured the work product might someday come in handy if any of these kids ever crossed him. Plagued by bursts of unwanted interior dialogue—manifesting as 4D sensations, not properly classifiable under the usual demarcation of the senses—Drew tried his best to ignore his (now) encyclopedic knowledge of the 40th century, including the ability to visually identify a race of purple-skinned aliens, whose pronounced canines and yellow eyes for some reason seemed intent upon avoiding contact with the Earth. But they were so cute...
And finally there was young Slake himself, stranded in a hostile (if boring) past, some decades prior to the adult Slake's present contemplation of same. That particular youngster had never studied a martial art, had never read a book, had never bothered exceeding the modicum of effort required to bullshit his parents that all was going well, and consequently he was wholly unsuited for being drafted into the elder Slake's evolving scheme, which commenced presently.
Slake guessed this was the full extent of what he had to work with. It would do.
He prepared to contact the team.
THE REPUBLIC #39 (2025/10/30)
STATE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS
If the air's a little thick in this room tonight / I reckon it's the result of an onslaught of separatist rookies / Overcome by this colorful sight —Prince, Race
Long ago in the far future Slake Bottom came of age in an era of rampant misinformation and constant microagressions from the so-called authorities.
40th century bullshit, same as the first. Slake was barely a hundred years old, and already he was sick to his back teeth of coming in to work every day, sitting at the same desk, performing the same stupid busywork. The teacher would arrive and hand out assignments without uttering a single word, presumptuous in her exactitude. The other kids always hopped right to it, mashing buttons with manic glee, but Slake preferred dialing the union steward and reporting any petty violations of protocol he observed committed by their perpetually silent educator. The teaching staff, and by extension the bosses, didn't like Slake one bit.
Too bad for them. His contract was airtight.
One more year until he could blow off school forever. Shortly afterwards the real work would begin, but for now it was all questionably sourced term papers and discussion threads graded on participation. He came to school heavily armed with all the answers, and they let him walk right in.
"I'm originally from Los Angeles, CA, but moved out to the east coast with my mom to focus on myself." Slake stopped himself from butting into this irritating conversation. Earthers were seldom worth the effort. Exited the cafeteria.
His asexual discourse continued in his mind. Someday, of course, he would be expected to produce offspring. Whether via natural means or otherwise, it was assumed within his family that he would dispense the genetic payload entrusted to him at birth. But outside of his family's cell he'd never encountered another of his own kind. Vivid purple, everyone else seemed pale in comparison. Maybe it really was just him in the world.
Which was not to say he had any interest whatsoever in the homely collection of buffoons living at home.
Federating was likewise out of the question. Nobody ever agreed with him about anything.
Slake recognized the classic dilemma: join or die.
All that was left was to figure a way to make money from it.
relay (demo) (2025/10/28)
from Relay demo mixtape (1999)
mp3 (15.8mb)
… (2025/10/28)
THE REPUBLIC #38 (2025/10/26)
RECRUIT YOUR MIND
The said study in the said alternate identity has proven far too effective to share with anyone. —SL, 1989
De-risking the apokálypsis always proved risky in and of itself. Push too hard and you'd find yourself "levelled with ye dust," just like that old statue of King George III. Push not at all and you'd surrender decision power to whomever and whatever was standing around waiting for the next sucker to appear. In life some gambits were inherently dangerous no matter how things played out.
Drew Crak was eleven years old. He couldn't sleep at night for the torrents of information flooding his conscious awareness from parts unknown. Far in excess of the telescreen and video games that concerned the adults of his era, the "phosphene activity" he experienced extended to sound, vision, and inescapably foreign insights into his own psychology. Four-dimensional packages containing multitudes, transferred at speeds beyond human comprehension, sometimes arriving in parallel. Where was all this coming from? What did it mean? Drew was eleven years old. The adults in his life didn't want to hear about delusions of grandeur inspired by unexplained mental activity. He would bite his lip and stare at the ceiling until he fell asleep.
The politics and religion of his upbringing had failed to provide a useful framework for understanding all of this, so Drew finally resorted to art, depicting the shapes and relationships he sensed in the fabric of THE WHITE on blank sheets of paper, supposed by onlookers to be examples of frivolous and meaningless modern art. Undeterred by the critics, Drew drew.
Reading filled up his hours not devoted to avoiding others by drawing. Drew worked diligently through the school and public libraries before asking his father to help him request interlibrary loans, which he sometimes kept and never returned. Some of the new data from these library books matched up with what he had previously perceived internally emanating from the [whatever it was]. What did this mean, and what was he supposed to do about it?
Drew recruited himself to smooth over the unruly waves presently roiling THE WHITE. Something was coming—he knew not what—and it didn't feel at all good. But what was he supposed to do? The effort demanded an increasing amount of his attention, which inevitably led to the neglect of his school work and other commitments.
As the vibrations gradually attenuated Drew passed into and through puberty, sometimes wondering if his mission, whatever it was, had been a success.
But how could he ever tell?
THE REPUBLIC #37 (2025/10/23)
THE ABOLITION OF THE RULE OF LAW
Sittin' at a table lookin' like we gods / We're dressed in white for the rap so tight —Sir Mix-A-Lot, Seminar
As Slake's influence over Franck's family's martial art waned, his story faded back into THE WHITE from whence it had come, making room for other characters and additional chapters. Centuries away, a young boy who spent a lot of time staring at blank walls sensed he'd somehow dodged a bullet by never having met this purple-skinned alien from a future he'd never live to see. The boy trod carefully between the rain drops, not knowing why, but understanding somehow that it was necessary.
From a contemporary entry in the boy's personal log:
October 23, 1987, 3:45 p.m. Charles M. and I were at the playground, playing, or rather fighting, with Jason H., arguing with Chad, Dereck, and their mom about hiding Dereck's backpack. Jason remained unseen by their mom. After they left, we, well, Charles, got into it with Jason while I was busy getting our stuff ready so we could split, soon, before we got into real trouble for fighting. Once Jason left we started to head for the serpent. After we got to my house we got dressed to go hiking to MARS2.
The following also fell out of the same folder:
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE FOR THE CONTEMPORARY WARRIOR
Not much has ever been written about the art of Korea's shadow warrior. With much of the spotlight falling on Japan's infamous Ninja, the smaller, much younger art of Sul Sa Do has been crowded out of historical accounts of the art of the "stealer in."
Actually, Sul Sa Do isn't the original Ninja's art. Hundreds of years ago, in the 15th and 16th centuries, a group of Korean Buddhist monks who were on a culture gathering trip to Japan were taught the mystic arts of the Ninja warrior.
Over a period of two hundred years, Ninjutsu in Korea was modified and adapted to the needs of the Korean practitioners, until, in the late 17th century, the various techniques and applications were collected into what is today know as Sul Sa Do.
HISTORY OF SUL SA DO IN THE U.S.
The current views of headmaster Denison are transmitted through 4th degree black belt and instructor Charles Meehan. Master Denison is located in Tuscola, Illinois, where Master Meehan is originally from.
Master Meehan and Master Doshen trained with Master Denison from 1978 until 1987, when Master Meehan relocated to Indiana. Master Doshen stayed in Tuscola to continue training with Master Denison.
Upon arriving in West Berlin, Indiana, Master Meehan didn't start his own Do-Jang, like he had expected. Instead, seeing what the town was really like, he chose only a few personal students to learn the intricacies of his art in private.
And thus, in the fall of 1988, I became a student of Master Meehan's system, the ancient martial art of Sul Sa Do.
The boy's sensitivity to perturbations in THE WHITE had not protected him from coming into contact with Meehan, whom decades hence, after they'd both grown up, would see prison time for drunk driving, and, after further investigation, various charges related to the contents of his laptop hard drive.
The boy had taken off his white Sul Sa Do uniform for the last time around 1991, when Meehan could no longer be dissuaded from shouting loudly to the rap videos materializing on his telescreen that he hated black people.
The current status of Sul Sa Do's lineage is unknown.
… (2025/10/23)
THE REPUBLIC #36 (2025/10/21)
POOR CHOICE OF AXIOMS
I did it myself. —Oedipus
Franck Deng was apparently still alive, then. Slake rose, legs stiff from decades in seiza, and rubbed his eyes in the fluorescent lights of the transition station. Over Franck's shoulder he could see the nearby moons, although he didn't recognize either one of them. As the station turned, the planet came into view.
"Amazing nobody's disturbed the vehicle in all this time," he said.
"I make ninety-nine year lease," Franck explained, and kicked shut the airlock door. They began to walk. "Why you no teleport out of there?"
"Needed some time to think. I finally worked out what you were trying to tell me."
"You forfeit headship. I award it to two other guys in succession, but both of them already dead. Still interested?"
"I wasn't interested the first time," Slake reminded him.
"I pay you well to be interested."
"Yeah, but why?"
Franck turned to the window. "Money all gone. Government cancel program. If you no do it, nobody do it. Tried to replace you but those other two guys unreliable. They dead."
"So you said."
Slake still didn't understand the fake accent. Franck Deng was a white guy from New Jersey.
"How did they die?"
"Mission gone bad. First guy, he receive all my scrolls, everything I know. Pow, killed during first mission. Second guy, online only student, never hear back from him after first semester. Send certificate anyway. In the mail. Six month later, return to sender with news clipping attached. Student dead. Why people rather die than survive?"
Slake pondered.
The station turned, bringing the twin moons back into view.
"But you survive. Even in airlock. That why I choose you again."
Slake was incredulous.
THE REPUBLIC #35 (2025/10/20)
CREDULITY IS HUBRIS
The monks are lazy. Be it so. —Edmund Burke
So much for having children someday. Slake rolled over on his side and then stopped moving.
"Get up," said the client.
Slake didn't move.
Presently, interoperators arrived on the scene and cleaned out the client's dojo. The client was taken into custody—or at least, that seemed to be the case until official records revealed he'd vanished into a tangle of overlapping and interlocking classification schemes. It turned out that so far as the federal government was concerned he'd never even existed. Slake's certification was now worthless, but at least the client's final payment had come through. For what that was worth.
Lineages diverged and resumed in just such a fashion, unsuitable for human cognition beyond a handful of branches and reconciliations. Slake wondered how many other inheritors had simply blown off their inheritances and let their traditions die out, only to be confronted with vibrant new growth from reaching branches elsewhere on the tree. How many of them had thought they were all alone in the world?
Someone was chopping on the tree.
Interoperators lifted Slake off the floor and loaded him onto their truck, a Toyota Hilux 4x4 outfitted with a holding tank that doubled as an airlock. Once he was locked inside they started pumping out the air. He got the idea.
"Guys, I don't need oxygen," he offered. Helpfully, but not too helpfully.
No response.
He'd expected to be removed, eventually, but twenty years after the interoperators docked their truck in a free parking space at a transition station Slake was still sitting there in the truck's holding tank, contemplating his art's as yet unwritten densho. Sitting in seiza the whole time.
Door opened.
"You had enough?"
It was the client.
Middle Finger, Unseen Hand (2025/10/20)
mp3 (3.3mb)
THE REPUBLIC #34 (2025/10/18)
ARTISTRY OF THE MENTALLY ILL
Can it be supposed that conquerors would chuse to out themselves in a worse condition than what they granted the conquered. —Thomas Paine
"Mistake is good," the client advised. "Your bias to action notwithstanding."
Slake clung to the air, his only handhold against tipping over. The client, who was paying him to be instructed in his family's all but defunct traditional martial arts, had paused again, mid-technique, start-stop, start-stop, and Slake was this close to losing his balance. The air proved to be a poor ally, and Slake finally crashed to the polished wood floor, more than a little annoyed.
"Again," the client demanded. He was dressed a bit like that Snake-Eyes fellow Skulljckr had been so upset about. Same visor. Slake grumbled, but he got up. "We begin by preferring the most unlikely hypothesis, and from there we produce new knowledge."
Again Slake hit the floor, by now quite sore from the austausch. But enlightened? He grimaced and rubbed his shoulder.
"Your ukemi is poor."
"And your accent is variable. You're hardly giving me a chance, what with all these artificial pauses for wisdom. Of course you took my balance, you've left me stranded in an unnatural position while you prattle on." Slake grabbed the client's arm and pulled, then stopped. "Nobody's ever gonna stand still after you grab them." He held the client with his arm extended for what must have been a full minute. The client stood still. "Uncomfortable, isn't it?" Slake said, driving home his point.
"This not Psychiatrie-Museum, Bern, Switzerland," the client said, and did something, Slake couldn't say what, but the next thing he knew he was lying flat on his back, looking up at himself in the mirrored ceiling. His legs were splayed like the photo on the cover of Bowie's LODGER LP, which coincidentally the client had cued up in the background.
"I no want to deal with your depression," the client said. "Do you suppose yourself worse off than the attacker? I'm showing you how to live inside the space he created. Move in the areas he overlooked. You so stubborn."
This was almost as rich as "Don't be where the attack takes place," or "Eliminate all desire for things to be the way they are not."
"Please, have eyes to see," the client said, and adjusted his visor.
The client hadn't explained why he was paying Slake to learn, but at the end of the day's training he presented a certificate proclaiming Slake to be the new head of all his family's traditional martial arts. And this after only three lessons. Slake balked.
"I'm too old to argue," the client said, and stomped on his nuts.
THE REPUBLIC #33 (2025/10/17)
OLD TEETH
The political sphere is a vacuum as far as law is concerned. —Ernst Fraenkel
Slake locked his donkey helmet for HAZMAT before joining up with Skulljckr's fast moving ship. He flashed directly from his own quarters, a risky procedure due to the ample shielding of his own era. Once aboard he made his way to the archival hold, gripping slick pink handholds all along the way.
"Let us calculate," Slake said. "You've got... what? Fifteen tons of plastic in here? How's the air circulation?"
Skulljckr scoffed, still seated on his G.I. Joe bean bag chair, still staring off into the middle distance. "When no one's in here the room is air tight, hermetically sealed.* Nothing gets in or out."
"Well, there's your problem," Slake observed. "These things need to breath. You can't just seal them in a box and hope for the best. The vacuum leeches the oil out of the plastic."
Skulljckr kicked a storage crate, cussed. "Nobody ever told me that. My investment is ruined. All these figures are falling apart. I don't even want to touch them, anymore."
Slake shrugged. As he did so his helmet bobbed up and down, momentarily blinding Skulljckr with reflections from the overhead lights. Skulljckr winced, but recovered smoothly.
"Nothing lasts," Slake said.
"I don't have insurance." Skulljckr pulled himself up and tossed his Star Wars men back into the Rebel Transport, slapped on the lid but didn't bother to latch it before shoving it back into its crate. "If this is how it's going to be then I don't even want this stuff anymore." He led Slake out of the hold before sealing its outer doors, then evacuated the whole chamber into open space. "I always thought that all I had to worry about was UV light and yellowing."
"Nothing lasts," Slake said again, this time more softly. Hand on the pirate's shoulder.
"Hey, wanna see my teeth?" Skulljckr unraveled some of his bandages and removed his Rob Liefeld headgear. Next, the mouthless mask. Somehow, his distinctive skull-shaped eyepiece remained in place throughout the baroque operation without needing to be removed. (Eyepiece-shaped hole in the mask. —SL). His—mouth?—dilated to reveal something strange.
Slake slammed shut is own eyeholes, didn't even stick around to get paid.
Flashed.
* Figure of speech. Hermes of course has an all access pass to any area of the ship.
THE REPUBLIC #32 (2025/10/15)
ALL BELIEF IS OUR ENEMY
My identity by itself causes violence —Eazy E
Regular client needed it done fast. Climate control malfunction in the archival hold. This time, not enough humidity. Back and forth, back and forth. Slake had considered firing this clown on more than one occasion, but by now he represented a substantial portion of his income, and in addition Slake was going through a bit of a dry spell with regard to finding new clients.
Skulljckr sat in his archival hold and sulked. 85 Snake-Eyes peach filecard Triple-Win MOC, o-ring snapped inside the bubble. Three thousand dollars in pre-crash 2008 money, Snake-Eyes now bisected like Darth Maul, but for this dark toy there would be no resurrection without breaking the seal of the bubble.
Moving on, Skulljckr decided to open an up until now MOC DC Super-Powers 84 Martian Manhunter. The loose example from his display case had gone mysteriously missing. He ripped off the bubble and recoiled in disgust. The figure was sticky in his hands. Centuries of climate controlled storage and for what? Why was this happening?
Decided to just play with his loose toys. His Star Wars Rebel Transport was packed with figures from the original trilogy. Strictly pre-Hasbro. He selected an Admiral Ackbar and a Rebel Commando, planning to insert them into a nearby diorama of post-ROTJ Endor, already in progress. Upon making contact with Ackbar his hand retracted automatically. The Mon Calamari's arms were tacky with an invisible substance that took three separate hand washings to remove from his gloves. The sensor package built into his fingertips wasn't convinced. Rebel Commando seemed less gross, but also felt tacky. Now Skulljckr became paranoid, convinced every figure in his collection was rotting in place.
The cheap plastics used in his favorite toys had visibly degraded almost in real time, well within the first decade of their introduction. Some extreme examples, such as Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars 84 Daredevil, had molted inside their bubbles even before the end of the 1980s. Sometimes while still on store shelves. Collectors of various franchises had driven aftermarket prices through the roof, heedless of the fact every single outsize investment was a ticking time bomb, sweating petroleum through its brittling skin.
Skulljckr sighed, and clicked to escalate his ticket again.
2005 (2025/10/14)
… (2025/10/14)
THE REPUBLIC #31 (2025/10/11)
A LITTLE LIGHT EDITING
Families dissolve, but the State remains. —Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Fucking humans.
Of course there'd been some complaints about footprints in the hallways, so Slake flashed back to the job site at the beginning of the session and completed his work without mussing the wine dark velvet. At least he'd get paid twice for his trouble.
Back to his own present. Slake picked up another ticket, this time in the same system. He hopped over and cleared their alarms, no pep talk required. He could have handled this one remotely, but he wanted to get a look at their new hands-free consoles. Something similar in intent to his donkey helmet, but far less advanced. Also, they didn't work. Like, at all. Yet?
Slake had logged thirty-six hours since he woke up from troubled dreams that morning. He was tempted to try the velvet job one more time, but twice was already pushing it. Better to try and get some sleep while he could. It had been a long day.
Interoperator alarm.
No, it was just another ticket. Slake climbed back out of bed and got his helmet on. Now he could strain to read the ticket notes, tiny type too small for his naked eyes.
He didn't want anything to do with this one. Put it back.
Next ticket, a mobile alpaca farm, stranded when its percept team spontaneously developed an allergy to alpacas. Also a hard nope.
Thanks to his flexible schedule Slake could afford to pick and choose.
Helmet battery was running low, so he decided to stay in for the night. Fell asleep at the kitchen table, where troubled dreams resumed.
The eerie intuitions Slake relied upon during waking hours did most of their real work here. Endlessly sorting and calculating, formulating new plans and making hard decisions based upon incomplete evidence. Tucked away in his filing system were the answers to millions of as yet unasked questions. Waiting to be accessed "as if from nowhere."
On this night Slake's subconscious pondered the paradox of freedom and order. Associative reordering. Unaware, he cut and pasted within his own mind.
But, why?
THE REPUBLIC #30 (2025/10/10)
CONTROL
You've got to have a scheme / You've got to have a plan / In the world of today, for tomorrow's man —David Bowie, No Control
A computer program, like any work of art, is a hypothesis waiting to be proven wrong. In this case a deductive argument about what a specific piece of hardware will do when presented with a specific input. Since there's no way of ever knowing for sure, human play testers must remain ever shackled to the task of pushing buttons and interpreting results.
The whole process sucks.
The ship wasn't cooperating. Slake withdrew his lead and plugged in his helmet instead, which worked instantly. He didn't like resorting to this golden cheat code because he didn't entirely trust the helmet's motives. But: Reverse nerve pain, the ship responded immediately. And just like that he was back on schedule.
In memory, no control.
Slake gathered up his tools. If it wasn't the drive it was the team driving the drive. He still had to issue his standard pep talk before he could sign off on the job and duck into a storage closet to flash home.
On this deck the floors, walls, and ceilings were all wine dark velvet. He was leaving grimy footprints everywhere he went. Somebody was going to complain.
I can't believe there's no control.
Where was that music coming from?
Folks. Robots. But I repeat myself. Scattered laughter. Remember: Computers are people, brown people aren't. Yeah, right.
I have a theory about privilege. In the West, the ideals of liberty all derive from certain rights granted to the aristocracy in exchange for not couping the king. What we need to do is expand the tent of whiteness to include the entire human race. At that very moment THE WHITE was indeed expanding, colonizing the past all along its path. The audience, who didn't know this and therefore couldn't appreciate it, fell silent.
Wait, wait, there is precedent: A little over two thousand years ago, people from southern Europe and Ireland weren't considered white, either. And just look at them now.
Progress!
Slake was sure he could feel the ship start to move.
THE REPUBLIC #29 (2025/10/08)
CONTEXT
The earth belongs always to the living generation. —Thomas Jefferson
Disrupting her flow state, Shoshi's shadow administration faded into THE WHITE before a third speck could appear. Shorn of its constituency—the imperative to deceit—her identity collapsed, severing the corpus callosum between dictator and legislator like both bathroom doors slamming shut at the same time. She released her white-knuckle grip upon her character and characterization. A was no longer A.
Of course, the map had never been the territory in the first place.
Centuries passed before another candidate emerged. Structured procrastination; one could hardly describe the process as disenshitification. Suffice to say that time elapsed along traditional lines. Only a partial record remains.
The new guy wore the same peculiar donkey helmet as Rep. Shoshi Koreika (C). No one left alive was aware of its significance, including the man currently wearing it. Polished gold, it offset his dark purple skin. Slake Bottom didn't worry about it.
Picked up his next ticket. Maintenance on an unmotivated percept drive in a neighboring system. But if he stood over here...
Nobody knew his trick. He could just show up, seemingly out of nowhere. He was always surprised when nobody questioned how he got there. Eventually he surrendered to the hubris of their credulity, just went along with it. Kept on keeping his mouth shut.
Interoperators.
Slake avoided them, got to work. It wouldn't do to engage any long conversations about his origins. Instead, he interrogated the percept team using standard tools: who, what, when, where, and why—activating premium enhancements. At length, one of them finally spilled the beans, and another one immediately started arguing with him about alleged inaccuracies in the first one's account. The ship started moving.
Flashed back home. Slake took off the helmet, scrubbed his face. It always took a few minutes to adjust to the diminished visual spectrum. His teeth moired in the mirror.
What the fuck was it he had planned to do before he left this morning?
panel from weird fantasy #18, 1953, used without permission
THE REPUBLIC #28 (2025/10/07)
CONTENT
What will come will come, even if I shroud it all in silence. —Tiresias
There were other pages. Shoshi moved forward, cussing. Her pent up reservoir of punditry began to spill forth into the nothingness around her. She let loose her opinions about her husband's administration, about herself. Speaking to no one, she told he truth.
The reader regarded her candor warily. Certainly she had not earned their trust, and she was probably trying to manipulate them, so why should they believe otherwise? Perhaps this very paragraph was a good jumping off point. The audience could always check in later, a few weeks or months down the road, when perhaps they themselves might feel a little better, and Shoshi was likely to have been abandoned by the author in favor of another short term mouthpiece. That was how this worked, right?
But no such prize for today. Before long, another speck appeared on what Shoshi still assumed to be the horizon. Closer, it appeared to be a tiny wooden sailboat, crewed by an off-brand collective of blue-skinned warriors, shirtless in white pants and white hats. Their captain contrasted vividly, adorned in bright red. The ship flew a black flag.
"If you see something, save something!" The captain shouted through cupped hands from the top deck, unsure if he was getting over. An aide handed him a bullhorn and he repeated his warning assisted by electronic amplification. This time, Shoshi could hear him. "We're all out of content over here!" he added.
Immediately Shoshi stopped speaking. unsure of just how intellectual property worked in this jurisdiction, she didn't want to give the whole game away before she knew the shot. The captain of the little wooden sailboat paused to see if she'd respond, then repeated the entirety of his message, royalty free.
No response.
Impasse, then.
The captain returned to the bridge and his little wooden sailboat sailed away, resigned to generating its own entertainment for the remainder of its voyage.
Shoshi had decided to share her thoughts with them, but now it was too late. They were gone.
Next time?
