acid washed

                  from George du Maurier’s dream strip “Tom Noddy’s Christmas Nightmare”

     They showed him quite a bit.  As a matter of fact, they showed him all of it ––  at least all his limited-capacity brain could process.  He got it, allright.  They showed him that his beloved little planet was to undergo quite a reckoning in the near future – “sooner than you think” he recalled hearing.  Then the questions came: why? why was he ‘being shown’ this, why was ‘he’ being shown this?  What could he do with such information? He had never been taught the protocol and etiquette on what to do if hyper-dimensional beings that manipulate time/space reality of human beings were to come to him, telepathically notify him of his status of virtual lab-animal, and the lab was going to be shut down for renovations.  As he was being relayed this information, he knew he would either have to remain mum (and essentially play-act within this soon-to-be destroyed artificial habitat) or be committed into another habitat for insane people, because he would indeed be viewed as totally nuts if he were to attempt to “warn” his fellow lab-animals.  At that time – how he wished his 20 year old brain could just be wiped clean – that he could just go back to “life as normal” and move onward in blissful ignorance of the alien scrutiny he had become aware of. 
     He attempted to meander through the next few years – but in a sullen state of mild despair and nihilistic depression.  He had gotten committed a few times – they wanted him institutionalized.  He drank. He wept.  He bummed around.  Not until he met a truck-driver named Woods did he realize that he had only gotten a certain angle of the story―an angle that was shown for the advantage of the one telling it: yes, there were interdimensional beings manipulating humans for their own advantage.  Yes, they had been around a very long time, and would seem to a young man to be like his gods.  But: Woods had imparted to him: they had mindfucked him to try to get him to yield his spirit – his life-source-code –  to them.  that is what they feed off of.  Woods knew.  He was one of them – and he was rebelling against them.

in futurum: give the man a cigarette before you blindfold him…

We all took pause and checked out the sunlight glistening off the pond and then we were told to move on into the camp whereupon we were to be separated according to sex.

To my surprise, the men with the machine guns were relatively sincere and somewhat awkward – they were young men following orders and they didn't want to treat us badly – but they seemed to feel they needed to act as though they were mean and tough. When one of them shoved me through the gate, I didn't take it personally and I let him know with a knowing wink and a grin. We were, after all red blooded Americans - and I think some of the lads were a touch confused as to why we, the people – their people – their neighbors, grandmas, fellow softball leaguers, et al. were now being herded into these giant concentration centers...more like cities…

I am certain they trusted their bosses' assertions that we were indeed the most befouled, wretched, and criminal element untrustworthy with citizenship and by far a grave threat to the status quo called the United States of America. Undoubtedly, though a few at least pondered the actual danger posed by the 85 year old man in front of me who walked with a cane and said nothing nor projected an ounce of menace….or the young woman with two children hanging off either sweat-panted leg....

But that is neither here nor there – for they did their duty and marshalled us into our new home: we would all now be citizens of this enclosed prison of a city; no longer having a name but only a number…our identity simplified into a series of digits and our happiness socially engineered and our thoughts manufactured and installed into our brains and soon they would erase the word "liberty" with "security" in the new dictionary and nobody would remember what it meant anyhow…