2020-07-04
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      As her eyes focused on the hour hand of the mechanical
  clock in front of her, she thought of her militant grandfather
  teaching her to meditate:

      "Not for peace. Not for wellbeing. For survival"

      The hand of the clock wavered, moved forward and backward.
  Settled on number 9. She took a deep breath and cleared her 
  mind. She imagined a shining arrow on pavement. She imagined
  movement. Arrow pointed straight, her feet moved in a hypnotic 
  rhythm. She was walking on a street, following the arrow.
  The clock remained at 9.

      On top of the imagined street, the feet and the arrow,
  she added a layer of moving images. It was a compilation of old
  movies. The parts she could remember by heart. The hand of the
  clock twitched with each jump from one scene to the next. Her 
  feet kept moving on the pavement.

      The minute hand of the clock came alive and jumped to 2
  and dropped back to it's resting place, pointing downward to 6.
  She had made an error. She had thought of the directions as a
  map, instead of casting the arrow based on the linear
  succession of street corners.

      "Stay in first person"

      She started again. She rose up from the metro, pointed an
  arrow to the right, all the while Fury Road was playing on top
  of it all. She didn't raise her eyes and looked at no one. No
  one would look at her either. After 24 arrows and 24 corners
  she would walk into a building just like all the other
  buildings. Three floors up, three arrows, second door on the
  right, relax.
  
      Enough. She detached the wires that ran from the clock to
  her shaved head. The clock showed no signs of tampering and
  she had official documentation that made it clear this was an
  antique piece inherited from her grandmother. She had even got
  it inscribed with the sort of retarded message one might find
  on a timepiece from the postmodern past. Something about all
  being nothing on the eve of eternity. Love, Trissa.

      The streets had no signs. Each building was a grey tower
  of equal height. There were no windows. The pedestrians moved
  in neat lines. All the faces were turned down and gave a blank,
  inward looking stare. No one noticed that an unmod had
  surfaced.

      She paid no attention to the others except for the rhythm
  of their steps. She knew they were completely harmless to her.
  She didn't think about this, of course. She had conditioned
  herself to know it in her being. She was in a focused trance,
  her attention fixed to the imaginary movie she player for
  herself.

      The others on the street had actual movies played for
  them by their mods. They had arrows flashing for direction 
  and they arrived to their destination without any thought or
  even any knowledge of why they were there. Another set of
  instructions would tell them what to do once it was time for
  that. They were happily immersed in a life of entertainment,
  they had a necessary amount of daily excercise, and they did
  the little that was needed for the wheel of society to keep
  turning.

      A drone floated over the city block. It scanned for brain
  wave anomalies. There was no reason to have anyone show signs
  of higher functions on the streets today. Most of these workers
  had not paused their streams for several days, except for when
  they took their bedtime shot. To keep the machine running was
  more efficient each year.

      The room on the third floor had no furniture. All the walls
  were completely void of any distinction. There was no light, nor
  windows. She had picked this one because it was the one closest
  to the center of the building. There were at least five concrete
  walls to each direction before her brain waves would meet the
  surveilled airspace out there. There was no evidence that 
  a dream could go through more than three walls, but still she
  felt uncomfortable going to sleep here instead of her cave.

      The man had a pistol on his belt and Marcus Aurelius on his
  lap. He read the book quietly and gave a little tap whenever
  the girl lost her focus. She knew it was a dream. Even so, she
  had to obey him.

      "It is not a punishment. I would do this myself 
      if it made a difference. You have to start young,
      you have to grow tough."

      The hour hand was waving from 4 to 11. She was losing the
  composition. The movie was jumping back and forth and she 
  didn't know which arrow was which. She knew the dream never
  ended good.

      "Focus!"

      She took a breath and pulled her consciousness into a ball
  the size of her heart. The room faded and rebounded back into
  existance. The man rose from the chair, told her to keep at it
  and walked up the stairs to the ground level. He switched off
  the light as he went. The cellar was reduced to the smell of
  potatoes, onion and mold. There were gunshots outside.

      The street was lined with people each direction. The lines
  separated into several at crossroads and continued their march
  with no indication of purpose. Each person had a grey set of
  clothes on. Each person was slim but not skinny. Each person
  had that inward stare.

      The entertainment that was allowed on the mods were
  digital remakes of old movies. They were more violent than the
  originals, they had less dialogue and all ambivalence was
  removed. Usual ending for a movie was a rebellious character
  lowering their head into a formal bow in front of a powerful,
  righteous leader.

      An antique clock walked through the main door of the
  Ministry of Entertainment. It was carried by a lady wearing a
  wig made out of her own hair. She walked with the same steady
  step as the others, but she was something quite different.
  She was the last living descendant of a radical sect of 
  anti-progressives who had fought for decades against the
  surveillance state and lost thirty years ago when an agent
  got to her grandfather.

      No one questioned her as she walked into the server
  room. After the victory against the rebels physical security
  had been streamlined away. Efficiency was the prime virtue. 

      She removed the back of her clock and attached a cable
  to one of the stream boxes. The unmodified version of Lars
  von Trier's "Antichrist" was uploaded on countless mods and
  added to their playlists. She took a deep breath, imagined the
  ending scene and walked out, following the imaginary arrows
  to nowhere.

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