The Reckoning of Jean-Pierre, Chapter 1

Escape from the City.

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I didn’t even mean to bring this whole bloody mess up again, but Frank did. In fact I was sick of talking about the whole subject. Especially with my recent troubles and all. What more could be said about it? I was just sitting there at the bar minding my own business and a drunken Frank came over to me and said, “Hey buddy, I heard you are the one who has a bug up his ass about technology and all.” Frank, or as everyone in these parts knew him, the local habitual drunk, who always managed to scrape together just enough money in his pockets to afford booze and the latest skin flick, whom apparently had just become aware of my presence in this neighborhood and decided to unexpectedly confront me. What a horror, what a miserable life; how could it get any worst after all I’ve been through?

Frank continued to harass me with his verbal haranguing, “You're the reason the world is dying. You old fools won't stop looking to the past. Come on my man get with it, time is moving forward. Join us. What is the big deal anyways? There is really no difference between sending an email and sending a letter. They are both the same thing, just one is faster. Nothing has really changed.”

This last comment put me over the knifes edge. “Frank!” I said directly to him, almost shouting my defense. “That would be like saying there is no difference between slow cooking a rack of ribs and tossing it in the microwave. Although they both may indeed be heated meat, I assure you, there is a whole world of difference between the two. Would you even want to eat the latter?”

He looked at me dumbfounded, slumped back into his highchair and went back to staring at his smartphone like a character from Idiocracy. That was it. It was over. He brought it up, not me. I was done with the whole topic and Franks only purpose was to get my agitated and buggered up. It worked. He trolled me good and hard. That is all we do to each other in today’s world. Trigger, bugger and agitate. Gaslights away!

Now despondent, I left the bar and walked the city streets for the last time alone in my thoughts about what exactly had happened to my mood lately. It was like the world and my life was all moving too fast and out of my control. I wanted it to slow down. What exactly had happened to this whole mess of a life of mine? It was like we had all stopped progressing at once but the world outside us kept spinning faster and faster. Was it ever progress anyways? Or had it always been but an illusion? My thoughts were so busy with the problems and fits of modern life these days.

It was not only me. Everyone seemed busier, agitated, increasingly distracted and more spread thin than ever before. Perhaps this is the fate of modern man. Always thinking he is at the peak of all previous attempts at striving in this world only to be blind to the fact that he is actually regressing severely in all things that matter. They all want to say that the world isn’t much different than it used to be, just a whole lot quicker and better for it. “Efficiency above all else! The Great Quickening. Everything is so much more efficient now! Nothing has really changed at all. We are the same old slobs of yesteryear.” That is the argument, right? That humanity has always been like this, just a heck of a lot more speedy now. The rate of change has simply increased. Did they ever stop to think of all the implications of this?

While formerly you could die knowing that life was pretty much the same as when you had been born. Just some little gradual tweaks here and there. At most a simple reformation or a gradual change in the local customs, you still knew that your children and grand children and great grandchildren, that they all would live a similar life to you. This was simply a given. Our position and status in life was once somewhat fixed. The family name even reflected the traditional occupation of your lineage. Now this idea of any permanence. Nay, even any immortal aspects of humanity are gone forever. Disappeared by the never-ending march of technology towards the future. Progress its called. Is it? Do you feel empowered these days? Technology creates this naive dissonance through the dependence and resulting despondence it creates within us. We grow complacent with how much it has really warped our very being. That you will be able to find some career that you love and stick with it, your life, your passionate pursuits, nope, not anymore. Not if you cannot keep changing and expanding with the times. The endless expansion and debt. The endless mortgages to the hilt. The endless having to grow, grow, grow, open new stores, open new offices, open new franchises, add more employees. Build out a dystopian Meta-world even. No time for kids. Nurture and build out that list of customers! Words that used to describe events of War are now used for marketing distinctions. Let's go start a new Campaign, shall we? Let's use our competitors weaknesses against him and flank him with clever guerrilla marketing campaigns, foisting these shiny new baubles and trinkets upon the vast civilization!

It is like the world has all been drafted into one big collective jobs program, battling it out for everyone’s individual attention vis a vis mass digital marketing. The latest addiction to the latest train-wreck news and fear to keep you busy and confused in captivated delight. This is how they control us. By preying on us with manufactured fear which only leaves us wanting more consumer driven distractions. Distracted by it all so you won’t notice the real issues. – The loss of everything which was once sacred to our people. – Keep your mind busy and focused on the latest spectacular crash. The latest made-up statistics. The latest corporate takeover. The latest jobs report. The liberal consumers and the pro-producers have us all in for the same fate. The same never-ending suckers ride of endless worthless scrolling consumption. Consumption of excesses. Consumption of a fear and hatred which leaves you feeling impotent. We are under a total control of our own general choosing. They record all of our digital movements so they can dig up some dirt on us when it is needed. Mass surveillance? Who needs it when they have us all under tow from stem to stern, port to starboard side. Who could watch it all? They simply record all the noise. Welcome Aboard! This train into the dark dreary mine of data harvesting. Once your target is on their radar then they seek out your appetites for your own self destruction. The largest dataset in this Universe is only needed to find out the dissidents weaknesses after the fact. I was done with it all. I was just no good for this current type of world. I was as good as gone from this place. They’ll figure out where I am headed if they want to.

The lady at the bus station counter looked at my cash and seemed a bit shocked for she had not seen real bills in so long. She had forgotten what to do with them. Luckily she had a calculator nearby to help her figure out the change. It sure was a struggle though. No one seems adept anymore at simple tasks without the aid of a computer. I could have helped her out with the exact change but I was still apathetic from the whole situation I found myself in. It took her a few minutes while I waited patiently in the dirty dingy modern city station room looking over my shoulder occasionally. This place was so dark and dreary that it matched my whole mood about the city. A lit up crumbling dying jungle for the cognitively deaf and blind. This flickering urban dungeon which treats us all as incompetent foreigners. Did anyone really know me here? Did anyone know where I was going? Did I even know myself? The warning signs are everywhere now and in every language imaginable, like a trap lying in wait for you. The feeling of a masked group of men, creeping about like ambulance chasing lawyers, wearing sunglasses, carrying briefcases, like a group of Agent Smith's closing in and around you from all sides, descending upon you like a caught wild animal. Like getting stuck in a clothing donation bin box with your feet sticking straight out head first. The theft prevention door tightening around your neck like a hangman noose. What a horrible way to go! An inevitable suffocating demise. I had to free myself and escape from it all but I felt trapped deep within it. I was actively trying to slow my life down but the outside world kept moving faster than I could keep up with. Just this act of trying to delay it all filled me with such despondence. When the ticket counter lady handed me my pass and a few coins I breathed a sigh of relief and release. I mustered the strength to get on the first bus I could find, waved goodbye to the shoe shine boy and never looked back again. I would not return here. I knew this. I was no longer welcome and my ways had become to divergent from this city life. It would eventually be flooded by its own mass of ignoble men surrounding it with stinking putrid ambitions. It begs for more of their kind. Fill this teapot full of tempests until it boils over. This urban landscape deserved whatever it gets in the end. Après moi, le déluge. A dark rainy night was falling upon us and I sought out a new bright dawn in this drenched and wretched world. That is when I remembered my hopes that were still buried deep in my chest. My own wooden ark in which I could ride out these stormy nights. A place I can barely remember from the traces of my youth. Ah yes, that immortal tomb of a man, his resting place in which he can find his way and redeem himself in this world yet again. I could think of no other thing except that resting place. A home. That Cabin. Does it still exist? Could I ever even find it?