Spinal Flowers (excerpts)
When she did so, the camerawoman gasped and brought her hand to her mouth in shock. Though the child did not seem to have any difficulties moving, we could clearly see a misshapen mass of an extremely deformed spine beneath her shirt. Twin did not seem to mind our reaction and elegantly walked inside the hole. We followed her.
[…]
The incestuous twins in their yellow cloaks, the obese hairy men in suspenders, the bald librarian who wore extravagant grey beehive wigs, the albino bodybuilder. An unlikely team, the cliché would say; perfect cerebrospinal fluid, a person of culture would prefer.
[…]
The journalist smiled awkwardly at the camera. The black coffin, shaped very much like an iron maiden, stood next to him. What are your thoughts about the season so far? Silence. Ah, yes, that makes sense. Are you not scared at all? Silence. LOL. So, if you don’t mind me asking…are you seeing anyone at the moment?
[…]
If petroleum is a self-aware lubricant, spinal fluid is…like whipped cream. It depends on it, but is so much more delicious. No, ok, for real now: it’s a bit like necromancy. We have been fucking around with metal and oil and electricity, but nothing is as efficient as the nervous bone tower that runs from your waist and eventually becomes a skull. What we have now realised is that going straight to the metal, so to speak, straight to the bone, the marrow, the nerve is much more efficient. Our end goal? Stay tuned.
[…]
Cerebrospinal counter-cryptography will allow us to unlock our trans-universal traumas.
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To examine the world as if it were a simulation is besides the point. An advanced enough simulation is itself indistinguishable from reality.
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Exultant is perhaps a misnomer, but still largely adequate. To achieve this theoretical state is no doubt a triumph against the shackles of our own limits. Plants got an early start, yes, but this advantage came at a heavy price: they relied far too much on physics. Mammals, instead, chose a harder, bloodier path which meant their first steps were pathetic. The price was well paid, however, given that they, I mean we, are now much closer not to rely on physics, but actively use it, bend it.
[…]
If the universe is a game, physics are its rules. Yet, if one understands the game well enough, one can change its rules without fundamentally disrupting any of its processes. It follows that an intimate knowledge of how to play games can lead to insights in understanding the biggest game, i.e. the universe.
[…]
If the universe is a game, is anyone playing it? Think less glass beads, more mecha-spirit-void-dragons with big-ass guns.
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More than a game, the universe is undoubtedly a videogame. The real question becomes what is the genre? An open world RPG might be the pedestrian, quickest interpretation, but, as is often the case with the seemingly obvious, unlikely. In this paper, I will defend the proposition that, whatever genre it is and if it can at all be approximated to human videogames, the universe game — aka Silentium Universe — is a competitive game ideally suited for e-sports.
[…]
The cosmic microwave background is likely a proposal hidden and suppressed. Let’s Play, beckons the universe.
Life and death, thus, can be understood as win and fail states, not the other way around, as one might have initially assumed. Is trauma, according to this view, the remnant of a retry after a grisly death? The stratified memories of all the failures that led to a specific world/game state?
[…]
She asked us to remember the rules. There were to be no questions from now on and the camera was to be turned off. We protested perfunctorily, but at that point the three of us were eager to finish the visit. She nodded and turned her back to us, diving deeper into the dark corridor; I could have sworn her deformed spine was now writhing underneath that bright yellow t-shirt.
[…]
What was relevant about the coffins was not so much the perceived isolation but its potential for verticalisation. By permanently distancing someone from the ground and creating the correct, controlled environment, the spine can be freed from its atavistic constraints. The procedure is, of course, one of paralysing fear.
[…]
The death drive would, thus, be more aptly named Leroy Jenkins instinct.
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A gamer is a witch is a scientist is a puppet.
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The speedrunning experiment was abandoned, eventually: contrary to all expectations, all players became obsessed with horizontalization after they were permanently committed to their coffins. It was as if their spines were flowers and a fickle god was strapping one vertebra-petal at a time. Many of the players eventually became planarian colonies with a bizarre cocktail of defective higher and lower cognitive functions.
[…]
Each tower looked more or less the same: a thick orange stalk stretching improbably high. Patches of white dust accumulated erratically over the structures which seemed otherwise perfectly smooth. I opened and closed my mouth repeatedly as questions popped up in my mind and I subsequently remembered that I was not allowed to ask anything. My assistant sat on the floor, removed his glasses and pressed his palms against his eyes. The camerawoman seemed overtaken by a terrible itch as she scratched her back with all the effort she could muster.
The more time we spent there, the more I felt connected to these stalks. No one really knew what they were — the official information was that they were a naturally mutated strain of fungus that was thankfully sterile and would eventually die. Rumours were much more colourful.
[…]
The ground shook slightly beneath of our feet and the three of us fell on our backs. I looked up and smiled: another stalk was blossoming, producing a fruiting body that I would later learn looked like a bloodied skull. I was sure they were winning.