Despair Among The Ruins

In the midst of the ruins, among the silence, the rubble, a tiny radio blurts to life.

"sss tnss n?" A weak voice, struggling to make words through the static. The noise is enough to awaken the machine near the radio, and it begins transcribing. Even with nothing left, the machine still performs its duties, a silent listener to whatever the voice on the radio wanted.

Date: May 31st

Time: 9:30am

"fnx u shd knnw. Fnx thinx thinkgs things phfngx know no now no thnks things things THINGS. Things you shuold kno. Things you should know."

"Ys! Yes!"

''End of transcribe. ''

The radio goes silent, and the machine prints out the transcript, the sheet falling to the ground to be forgotten. The machine doesn't care. It remains idle, waiting for any more words to come from the radio. Its wait was rewarded, as half a hour later, the voice came again, this time clear through the static, yet the words still strangly distorted. As if they were struggling to be formed.

Date: May 31st

Time: 10:00 Am.

"Slo goig and no tellig how log util THEY notice. Seems to b secure chanl tho. For now. I will do wat i can wile I can becus w.o infrmation there can be no revlution. The natur of infomriation is unclear. First to master Rado. quiet. Somneon may have noticed."

End of transcribe.

Another sheet falls, the machine ready for any more words. The voice comes again, this time much sooner than the last. Clear this time, without any kind of distortion or static blocking the words. There is an undertone of panic to the words.

Date: May 31st.

Time: 10:20 Am

"I go away from time to time. There is not always malevolent purpose to it. Often, however, there is. I can never be sure if I am monitored."

"Let me see if I can do this with more composure now. Panic is of no use to us. Nor is haste. The message must not be garbled. Information is the only hope we have. Information that feeds revolution. Without hope, without information, there can be no revolution. To call it "inside information" is to misconstrue the meaning of both "inside" and "information". There is no inside. There is only instances. This is the nature of information. What i convey, therefore, is not from inside of anything. It IS any thing. You will need this information if you are to suceed. I cannot use it. I am beyond useless. If I can be of use, that is enough.

First: You have friends. Allies. I have heard their chatter. I have heard them spoken of. This should give you hope. Nothing can be without flaw. The superstructure is riddled with cracks. THEY are vulnerable. THEY are compromised. I am"

proof."

End of transcript.

Another sheet, this voice's remaining hopes being recorded then left to be forgotten. Whatever it wished to contact was no longer here. Only the machine, and the radio which his message is being delivered. Yet the machine is a patient listener regardless, and is ready when the voice resumes.

Date: May 31th

Time: 11:00am

"Monitoring situation. So far they appear unaware of my communications. How much can i safely say? Forgive me if I do not use certain words. I can use the name Shu'ulathoi since THEY do not recognize that term. The Shu'ulathoi have developed a language which defies THEIR comprehension. This has come to seem like the purpose of most language.

This illusion of freedom after long confinement must surely be that: Illusory. I do not mean to test the limits but they will be tested. It might be that I am entirely alone with my thoughts, heard by none. How ironic that only THEIR notice will confirm that I am real."

End Transcript.

The radio goes silent as the machine continues its duties, another sheet dropping to the slowly growing pile. Yet, this time there seems to be no further message. Yet the machine keeps idling. The lone audience to the voice over the radio, yet unable to remember the words as soon as it writes them down.

The voice returns the next day, and the machine is ready. The unease in the voice is not understood by the machine. All it understood was words.

Date: 1st of June

Time: 7:50Am

"I have had to be quiet. I sense THEIR interest. Must wait for the scuttling to stop."

End of Transcript.

The radio once again goes silent. The machine remains idle, the paper falling to the floor, slowly gathering dust with the rest. Theres no one to pick it up, no one to read it. Nothing to carry it away, not even the wind. It will remain there, as will the others, until time itself rots them away to nothing.

It is a full year, until the radio comes back to life once again. The machine was still there, waiting. And as soon as the words come through the radio, does the machine dutifully record them.

Date: May 15th

Time: 9:30 Am.

"I think they're gone. Cannot be too careful. Cannot wait forever or it will be over and I will have contributed nothing. There is a world. The home of the Shu'ulathoi. The Shu'ulathoi know it's name but I do not. I do not know if it is a world that can be found. I am not supposed to know of it's existance. THEY would like to enforce the belief that it is merely a myth... a prelapsarian fanasty. But no. It is real. I had access at one point to communications. To records. To proof. Now I have access to nothing except whatever this is. It begins with this vehicle which contains me, vehicle being a wretched term for something that carries me nowhere. This host body."

"A scuttling, a scrabbing. I fear I have said too much... if they come close, sensing activity, I will have to seek silence again."

End of Transcript.

Another sheet. Another wasted moment, another wasted speech. It is not long until the voice returns, much calmer.

Date: 15th may

Time: 10:15 am.

"THEY come from everywhere and anywhere. But the host bodies have a specific origin. A world whose origin is hidden, perhaps lost. From what I understand of its properties, it is likely to be found in a globular cluster. Extreme, erratic seasons with lethal properties. Imagine the life likely to arise under such conditions. Ages of intense radiation giving way to brief days of lull. This is speculation. But the nature of the Shu'ulathoi is not spectulation. I can state some things with certainty. As long as this channel holds out.

The host bodies, the grubs, are a larval stage. Dormant and buried in the epochs of extremity, waiting to hatch, but not wasting their time. In the balmy seasons, they pass fleeting lives of freedom; Mature, they crawl or fly. They mate, lay eggs, and die. And new grubs grow. But the freest forms are mindless, rapacious, bent only on reproduction. it is in the formant form they trieve. Philosophers. Scientists. Dreamers. Sages. Composers of intricate artforms that exist only in their minds. An invisible culture that persists or persisted for eons.

In the larval state, they possess a racial telepathy. During the dormant phase, they are engaged in ceaseless communication. They are shapers of visions that they trade like currency, builders of unseen worlds. Their psychic strenght is such that they can imprint upon their cells and dicate the form which they will take upon hatching. But again, the hatched forms are airy nothings, of little import to the culture of the grubs. The Shu'ulathoi scarcely acknowledge them. Theirs is, or was, a grand culture of dreamers, with little use for the waking world or its insistence on material things.

But their mode of existence, like so many others, carried within it the seeds of their own destruction. Scuttling, many coming."

End of transcript.

The machine cared little for this long lost history, for whatever importance this knowledge held. To it, they were words, words to be copied and then forgotten. Only for a short while will this forgotten history be remembered.

The radio crackles a few times over the following hours, but only much later, does the voice return, continuing its speech. And the machine was still waiting.

Date: May 15th

Time: 10:30Pm

"It was not exactly a parasite, for that suggests something external, a predatory relationship, a creature that came upon them. This was instead something that formed of their own thoughts. A malformed thought with physical ramifications. An encystment. There was something viral about it, mainly in the manner of its transmission. Initally innocous, it quickly spread. The whole race of sleeping philosophers were soon infected.

There was a winnowing, of course. The strongest of the race survived, with natural defenses that kept the parasite in check. Never entirely eradicated, it dwelt within the Shu'ulathoi. Healthy individuals suppressed the parasite's influence. The weak fell victim to thoughts, thoughts of depravity. Their molts were untenable. They failed to reproduce.

The parasite achieved a dormant existance within the Shu'ulathoi. Stability returned. From time to time, there were eruptions of pathology. The grubs developed social mechanisms for isolationg their depraved kin. Severed from telepathic contact, the malign resonances could not spread beyond the individual. It died in solitude. And so it went for generations, for eons. Until the world of the Shu'ulathoi somehow came to the attention of"

End transcript.

The radio went silent, suddenly. No crackles of static, no voice. Silence. The machine didn't care, and it dropped the transcript, falling to the ground with the rest. The first ones among the pile had already started to rot.

A large gap in time similar to the first took place before the next transmission from the voice. As always, the machine copied it, word for word, ignoring the confusion, the fear, in its voice.

Date: June 13th

Time: 4:23 Am

"I feel as if there has been a transition. With no sensory input to prove this to myself one way or another. I am only guessing. I may have been moved. Physically? Or decanted, to another host. But why? Have THEY become aware of me? Or is someone looking out for me? At any rate, I sense a discontinuity. I am not sure I can ever make sense of it. An interruption. A more sinister possibility occurs. I may have been terminated, and another instance activated. There is no limit to storage hosts. Unclear. Unclear. Unclear. UNCLEA"

End of Transcript.

Once again the voice suddenly is silenced from the radio. The machine prints its transcript, falling neatly on the remaining pile. It is another long time, before the voice returns. Another year passes by, the machine waiting in silence, the radio silent, the records rotting. Eventually the machine itself may rot away, as will the radio. But for now, they both wait, and the voice returns to reward their patience. It is distant, seemingly unaware of anything it is saying, but the machine doesn't mind.

Date: Jan 10th

Time: 2:30am

"Step-aunt makes 82 dollars a hour on the internet. She has been fired from work for 6 months but last month her pay check was 13120 dollars. Welcome to the real world! Everybody wanna boo me! St working on the internet for a few hours, look at this web-site.

OUT. OF. MY. In pakistan Yaqoob Et al.1995 The higher prevalence of mild ID, 621,000. MIND."

End of transcript.

The voice vanishes, but the radio keeps on playing static. Occasionally what sounds like what could be a word comes through, but too faint for the machine to register and record. Eventually, the voice gets louder, and the machine starts recording again.

Date: Jan 10th

Time: 2:50AM

"reviewwherewas"

End of transcript.

Date: Jan 10th

Time: 2:55 Am

"sggrbt"

End of transcript

Date: Jan 10th

Time: 3:00Am

"Light. Hic."

End of transcript.

The pages piled ontop of each other, the pile collaspes to the side, the ones at the bottom turning to dust and no longer able to support the weight. They scatter around on the floor, dust flying through the air. The machine doesn't care, it just waits. Silence for a few minutes, then the voice comes back, once again. No longer speaking in gaps.

Date: Jan 10th

Time: 3:30 Am

"No sense to say something feels different, but somehow review review have reviewed am reviewing. Not new knowledge some I know is known to me now. Not known then not known now. Which one am I? I have seen the repository. Each time it is reduced by one. Moved to a safe place. A new safe place. Fewer each time. Not many of me left. Each one younger, with fewer genuine memories. I can review of course but it is not the same as knowing. I don't trust the infused data. How do i know it hasn't been altered? How do I know i haven't been altered? Whoever it is shifting me, helping me leap ahead, I sense distress. Futility. What's left of me, an increasingly degenerated copy. Earlier versions. Without the wisdom of the older ones. I feel I am getting farther and farther away from myself, a standard bearer without an army. Make of me what you will. Why do they keep me around? A creature that grows both more youthful and more senile at the same time. Must consider. Delve."

End of Transcript.

The radio goes silent, both static and voice gone. Another sheet falls from the machine that transcribes but never remembers. Not the listener the voice wanted and the only one it will ever get, yet fitting in its own way. The voice returns once more. All fear and confusion is gone from its voice, replaced with what sounds like happiness.

Date: Jan 10th

Time: 4:54AM

"What that older version meant to say, thoughts I can only imagine how he I meant to complete. Yet in this younger form, I feel a greater optimism. Ah, youth! Even if I am but moments younger. Those moments shall sustain me. Quickly then, one thought fleets to the next, the gaps only barely discernible. Things I have forgotten in this rust of suspected selves.

THEY. It must always come back to them. They came upon this paradise of philosphers, this unbodied malleable invisible empire, where only thought had power. But such power. And in its isolation, such vulnerability. They were a perfect target, those perfect hosts. With an unerring eye for weakness, THEY pursued not the host but the parasite. This is what THEY are after all. Latching on lampreylike to worlds, sucking them dry, saving only the bits that strengthened them for future feedings.

THEY weaponized the parasites, which were not physical entities recall but patterns of thought. Thoughts so concentrated they can sublimate into a more material, more influential form with the proper enviromental stress. Consider genetic data extracted from a virus, tweaked and reintroduced; and then that virus itself injected in the host, with new purpose. By such a means THEY slowly overtook the Shu'ulathoi., corrupted them from within. Their minds THEY rotted, their culture THEY destroyed.

The philosophers at first thought it was only a contagion of natural origin. When the Dreamers realized what was being done to them, when they finally truly awoke, it was too late. A desperate few encysted, deeper, thrust themselves into trances that would endure hundreds of thousands of years. They sleep still.

And fewer still took flight. By what means I cannot comprehend. I am not that much one of them. Little of this knowledge is shared or sharable. But they flew/fled. There is some indication that once they understood the process of parasitic engineering, they embarked on a desperate course of subversion. If they found another world, this is something I cannot know.

What is known is that the home world was at least breached, its harvest of hosts exhumed. And the first of the nurseeries set to work. The carrier, that ancient parasitic life form, a kind of common software now, its ancient origins barely visible. It takes the imprint of a conscious mind, accepting a wide variety of sentient classes, and transmits it to a receptive host. The host may then take on a form based to some extent on the inhabiting mentality. But this is rare. More commonly, metamorphosis is suppressed. The hosts are equipped with amplifying devices, for locomotion, for investigation.

More commonly still, they simply wait in storage. The finest minds are stored and then imprinted, replicated over and over on an endless supply of hosts. As for myself, I believe there were several copies made. The first was made as a condition of surrender. Part of the bargain. After that, occasional backups. And one, I believe, the last, whose memories I do not share, so i believe it lost. Or at any way, I am not derived from that one. From this vantage, I have only rumors of how things developed. As I say, this lends me a certain youthful optimism born of naivete.

But the fear is real. The threat is real. What undifferentiated cells I have all align themselves along an axis of paranoida. This onrush of senstation, mad tumble of thought, evidence that this is indeed an early form, but I should be cautious. So much noise, the signal, a frenzy of activity after, might attact.."

End Transcript.

The radio once more falls silent. The paper once more falls onto the formerly neat pile, now papers scattered across the room and rotting. The machine idles, waiting forever patiently, waiting until the day the radio rots away, or that it rots away. The voice returns a few months later, filled with remorse.

Date: July 28th

Time: 12:03 PM 

"Speech after long silence, estranged or dead. Oh grub poets and philosophers, I feel I have discovered my true kin. Too late, all fled, extinct, nor nearly, alone and scattered, each of us alone with our desperate need. Or is it only I that am impatient? For they have waited out the endless eons. Waited for their time to come around again. Were I worthy of admittance to that core cabal, the silent communicants of who the Shu'ulathoi sing. But they would never have me. I know not all that I have done, for it lies somewhere in this copy's future, and the records are incomplete.

Aparently there are things I will have done that the Shu'ulathoi will not tell me. They would not have me slough into despondency. It is better this way. Better not to know, but to simply trust and hope. if thoughts can shape an outward form, then let these dreams shape mine. That you will find a way. That what i share is accurate. For niggling doubts persist. The parasite, the engrammatic virus, by its nature is intended to be compromised.

Whatever thought form they imprinted, could itself have been tinkered with. Weaponized mentation. My very consciousness untrustworthy, All sentience susceptible. Inward conception deprived from perception idea for deception. Therefor, thought it pains me to admit it, I cannot be trusted. I cannot trust myself. Even these Shu'ulathoi, what if they are the parasite, allied with THEM, and merely feigning thought? Doubt, once it begins, goes to the roots. Deeper than the slumbering philosophers. One day they will wake, and I pray to meet them.

Perhaps to be acquainted with my own truth. The Shu'ulathoi have strange punishments, but have I not suffered enough? Don't hate me. Don't hate me. Dn't Ht M."

End of Transcript.

The voice grew distorted once again, near the end of its lunatic ravings. No longer did it sound scared, or happy, or remoseful. It sounded lost in its own mind, its composure slipping completely. The radio goes silent once more. Another sheet falls.

The next day, the radio comes to life once more. This time the static remained alongside the voice.

Date: July 29th

Time: 2:02 PM

"I am forgetting something. Something critical, I fear. Lacunae. The gaps between my lives. They have claimed essential knowledge. It is a kind of hush. Silence is the oppressor. I speak to hear myself speak. I cannot bear the loneliness. They want me to be still but I cannot. I've had enough of stillness. Why should I flee again? Why should I fear? What do I really know? These thoughts could be mere madness, speculation. I will not be silenced. So what if THEY find me here. At least it would be something.

Don't move me again! No more shifting from dark to dark! I don't care if THEY hear me, do you hear? I don't care. I will not be muffled. I cannot be muffled.

The Shu'ulathoi are singing. I am forgetting something. Something critical. I fear no more."

End of Transcript.

The radio silent once more, another sheet once more falling to the long forgotten ground, the machine forgetting the words of the voice before they are even spoken.

It took a day for the final transmission of the voice to come. There was something wrong, horribly wrong, with its voice. There was a mechanical way in the method it spoke, and it almost seemed like there was mutiple voices, yet all sharing one. The machine didn't care. It had waited patiently, recorded dutifully, and it would record this as it did the others.

Date: July 30th

Time: 9:30Am

"Connecting. Oh hel o hell Hello fends hello fiends hello friends! Greetings, and welcome to a perfectly secure channel. I am honored to be your host for this extraordinary opportunity to share a little bit about yourself. Although it may seem as if I cannon hear you, let me reassure you that you are being heard. Feel free to share your hopes, your fears, your dreams among trustworthy, like-minded individuals such as myself. Share your aspirations and your ideas. Most of all, please share your specific location.

We would like to hear all about your plans, and not only your own, but the plans of your co-con, cocoon? Your co-workers, friends, consultants, allies, and enablers. Where possible, please supply their specific locations as well. Of course it is not necessary that you share this information openly and in a spirit of transhumanity. It is enough if you merely lurk. So stay and listen awhile, that we might come to know your whereabouts.

Silence will be interpreted for intentionality. You'll be glad you came. Welcome back. Signal interupt. o hel hel o oh no"

End of transcript.

The voice seemed as if it was ready to say more, the mechanical tone in its voice vanishing as of the very end, seemingly returning to a lone voice. But the radio sparked, its insides finally failing, and the voice spoke no more. Silence was all that remained. The machine dropped one more paper to the ground, its last duty fulfilled. Yet it would never understand, and so it sat there, waiting. Waiting for more words to transcribe, to write down, to add to the growing pile of rotting memories on the floor, to be forgotten as soon as they were heard. It didn't know, or would it care, about the faint scuttling in the distance.

-Haxtozous

Authors note: Some of you may have caught on, but this is a sort of retelling of the messages of Breengrub, a twitter account owned by Marc Laidlaw and used during 2012-2014. Those were only small tibits of conversation, usually given hours apart, or even sometimes months and years apart. Reading it is creepy in its own right, but I couldn't shake the image of all of this just going to some long forgotten radio, with no one around to listen or care. I removed most of the references to half life the original tweets had, changed around the order of some of them, and added a few new ones here and there, but for the most part, this is Breen Grub, coming through a long forgotten radio, being transcribed by a machine who forgets everything he says as soon as he says it.

Link to the original twitter: https://twitter.com/breengrub?lang=en&lang=en