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Hellsville

Date: 16-Oct-2008/12:16+3:00

Tags: , , ,

Characters: voice, man, me

Disembodied I was watching a float down a hallway of appliances, seemingly infinite. They were labeled with permutations of letters, e.g. ARON ERON BRON. Somehow I understood these were things that were some kind of spam distraction, as if they had been labeled to pretend to be people or obscure the location of a person. It felt like I was deep in a labyrinthine underground bunker, with flourescent lighting, gray walls, and hospital tile.
A sort of abstract voice or thought in my head sort of spoke as we passed a lot of other random electronics junk.
voice: "They found your first computer, y'know. It's in a museum now."
Note
For the record, my first computer was an Osborne 1:
...and I had the odd habit of writing Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games in BASIC which you were always punished for making the most obvious choice. I'd find a way of making that turn out poorly, and the crazy choice turn out well. Not sure what that says about my psychology, other than I was probably destined for a life of pain.
At one point I'd stopped floating and in a corner on a table found a few packets that had been paper-clipped together. It stood out in the drab warehouse because some of it was brightly colored construction paperwork and some childlike crayon drawing on it. One crayon drawing was illustrating something about a kid wanting to go to Mars with someone named Mary. An accompanying printout was an essay as if an adult were reflecting upon a modern psychological condition based on his childhood, saying "Oddly enough, when I was young I always had [tendency]".
Somehow I was now completely autonomous and could walk into the adjoining area. When I did, it was a horrible hybrid between dysfunctional medical room and a random-office-junk graveyard. There was only one patient I noticed, a man who seemed to have only half a body hooked to machines. He seemed unconscious, so I kept walking to the next room. I realized it was just more of the same.
Rather than forge ahead, I decided to go back and look at the Microwaves and stuff from earlier. But when I did I noticed another man (or perhaps the same one?) now in the center of the room, also deformed and hooked to equipment. I walked past warily, feeling like I didn't want to talk to him.
man: (singing) "Hellsville, Bells peal..."
Note Hellsville is a song by The Legendary Pink Dots.
Though I thought I'd been keeping my distance, he somehow was able to grab me by the wrist. As he did, I started to lose my stability and things went black but I came back now on the other side of him.
me: "Why did you grab me and wake me up? If you're stuck here, I can help you."
man: (disgusted) "Help me what? The only thing you'll help with is turning me into one of them. Because they have no use for us, we are only curiosities."
me: "That explains nothing. You're just violent and you don't even know why. Why does everyone act like such a moron? Whether I'm some Artificial Grounding Systems agent or whatever the hell, I'm real and you're not."
Somehow he managed to inject me in my chest with something.
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copy write %C:/0304-1020 {Met^(00C6)ducation}

The accounts written here are as true as I can manage. While the words are my own, they are not independent creative works of fiction —in any intentional way. Thus I do not consider the material to be protected by anything, other than that you'd have to be crazy to want to try and use it for genuine purposes (much less disingenuous ones!) But who's to say?