True History of the Matrix

But the real question is, does it come with its own Priory?

Green Dragon masons staged the original Tea Party, due to the disruption by the English imperial government of their smuggling operations. One wonders what exactly is the story behind the modern tea party- although filled with many loyal patriots, those who have created it and tried to control it certainly intended something specific for it. And not something good.

Then there's SION.

Its apparent aim is somewhat admirable, although a basically jewish organisation is once again coopting non-jews to form a stormtrooper battalion for them. There is a need to put islam back in its box, mainly because as has been factually established the EUrocrats and their fellow puppetmasters elsewhere intend to breed "Europo-Negroids" "similar to Ancient Egypt" as their slave race underclass, to be ruled over by an increasingly overt power elite.

To see the illuminati go from the boogeyman of the fringe writers of the early 1970s to being a confirmed species in the 2010s certainly gives on pause for thought.

Likewise the New World Order meme- and the hideous reality behind it.

The challenge is to avoid not only the more obvious Hegelian dialectic traps but also the onion layers of other traps- especially controlled dissent and apparent freedom fighters who are actually Judas Goats.

They Live is a good place to start. Watch that.

"Future" noun.

FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

Ambrose Bierce

New 52: My Desk Lamp Is Trying To Kill Me

DJ Paul Bennewitz vs MC VALIS feat. PKD

VALIS, by Philip K. Dick at American Buddha Online Library

"All that was involved from the start," Fat said quietly, "was advanced laser technology. Mini found a way to transmit information by laser beam, using human brains as transducers without the need for an electronic interface. The Russians can do the same thing. Microwaves can be used as well. In March 1974 I must have intercepted one of Mini's transmissions by accident; it irradiated me. That's why my blood pressure went up so high, and the animals died of cancer. That's what's killing Mini; the radiation produced by his own laser experimentations."

VALIS, by Philip K. Dick at American Buddha Online Library

VALIS, by Philip K. Dick at American Buddha Online Library

This chapter is the esoteric part of LOST. Sadly.

They tried to turn the Golden Palm Oasis into the Black Iron Prison.

No wonder everyone stopped watching.

Japan's newest popstar outed as CGI creation | The Vigilant Citizen

Japan's newest popstar outed as CGI creation | The Vigilant Citizen

An undistinguished comicbook adaptation of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? was produced. It has many problems, the main one, central to its failure is simple.

In the irregular light the bounty hunter seemed a  medium man, not impressive. Round face and hairless, smooth features; like a clerk in a bureaucratic office.  Methodical but informal. Not demi-god in shape; not at all as Isidore had anticipated him.

Above is a quote from the actual book.

Illiterate people shouldn't adapt books. Illiterate people should learn to read.

Comicbook stereotyping has rarely been as effusively offensive as the act of making the characters in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? heroic idealised superhero style figures. It isn't a superhero story, in any remote way. And even a casual, let alone detailed, reading of the book would impart sufficient information to do the comicbook properly.

That simple process completely eluded the producers of that comicbook.

It was doomed ab initio.

DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?

FIVE  The small beam of white light shone steadily into the left eye of Rachael Rosen, and against her cheek the wire-mesh disk adhered. She seemed calm.  Seated where he could catch the readings on the two gauges of the Voigt-Kampff testing apparatus, Rick Deckard said, "I'm going to outline a number of social situations. You are to express your reaction to each as quickly as possible. You will be timed, of course."  "And of course," Rachael said distantly, "my verbal responses won't count. It's solely the eye-muscle and capillary reaction that you'll use as indices. But I'll answer; I want to go through this and --" She broke off.  "Go ahead, Mr. Deckard." Rick, selecting question three, said, "You are given a calf-skin wallet on your birthday." Both gauges immediately registered past the green and onto the red; the needles swung violently and then subsided. "I wouldn't accept it," Rachael said. "Also I'd report the person who gave it to me to the police."  After making a jot of notation Rick continued, turning to the eighth question of the Voigt-Kampff profile scale. "You have a little boy and he shows you his butterfly collection, including his killing jar." "I'd take him to the doctor." Rachael's voice was low but firm. Again the twin gauges registered, but this time not so far. He made a note of that, too. "You're sitting watching TV," he continued, "and suddenly you discover a wasp crawling on your wrist." Rachael said, "I'd kill it." The gauges, this time, registered almost nothing: only a feeble and momentary tremor. He noted that and hunted cautiously for the next question. "In a magazine you come across a full-page color picture of a nude girl." He paused.  "Is this testing whether I'm an android," Rachael asked tartly, "or whether I'm homosexual?" The gauges did not register. He continued, "Your husband likes the picture." Still the gauges failed to indicate a reaction. "The girl," he  added, "is lying face down on a large and beautiful bearskin rug." The gauges remained inert, and he said to himself, An android response. Failing to detect the major element, the dead animal pelt. Her -- its -- mind is  concentrating on other factors. "Your husband hangs the picture up on the wall of his study," he finished, and this time the needles moved. "I certainly wouldn't let him," Rachael said. "Okay," he said, nodding. "Now consider this. You're reading a novel written in the old days before the war. The characters are visiting Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. They become hungry and enter a seafood restaurant. One of them orders lobster, and the chef drops the lobster into the tub of boiling water while the characters watch." "Oh god," Rachael said. "That's awful! Did they really do that? It's depraved! You mean a live lobster?"  The gauges, however, did not respond. Formally, a correct response. But simulated. "You rent a mountain cabin," he said, "in an area still verdant. It's rustic knotty pine with a huge fireplace." "Yes," Rachael said, nodding impatiently. "On the walls someone has hung old maps, Currier and Ives prints, and above the fireplace a deer's head  has been mounted, a full stag with developed horns.  The people with you admire the decor of the cabin and you all decide --" "Not with the deer head," Rachael said. The gauges, however, showed an amplitude within the green only.  "You become pregnant," Rick continued, "by a man who has promised to marry you. The man goes off with another woman, your best friend; you get an abortion  and --" "I would never get an abortion," Rachael said. "Anyhow you can't. It's a life sentence and the police are always watching." This time both needles swung violently into the red. "How do you know that?" Rick asked her, curiously. "About the difficulty of obtaining an abortion?" "Everybody knows that," Rachael answered. "It sounded like you spoke from personal experience." He watched the needles intently; they still swept out a wide path across the dials.  "One more. You're dating a man and he asks you to visit his apartment. While you're there he offers you a drink. As you stand holding your glass you see into the bedroom; it's attractively decorated with bullfight posters, and you wander in to look closer. He follows after you, closing the door.  Putting his arm around you, he says --" Rachael interrupted, "What's a bullfight poster?" "Drawings, usually in color and very large, showing a matador with his cape, a bull trying to gore him." He was puzzled. "How old are you?" he asked; that might be a factor. "I'm eighteen," Rachael said. "Okay; so this man closes the door and puts his arm around me. What does be say?" Rick said, "Do you know how bullfights ended?" "I suppose somebody got hurt."  "The bull, at the end, was always killed." He waited, watching the two needles. They palpitated restlessly, nothing more. No real reading at all.  " A final question," he said. "Two-part. You are watching an old movie on  TV, a movie from before the war. It shows a banquet in progress; the guests are enjoying raw oysters." "Ugh," Rachael said; the needles swung swiftly. "The entree," he continued, "consists of boiled dog, stuffed with rice."  The needles moved less this time, less than they had for the raw oysters.  "Are raw oysters more acceptable to you than a dish of boiled dog? Evidently not." He put his pencil down, shut off the beam  of light, removed the adhesive patch from her cheek. "You're an android," he said. "That's the conclusion of the testing," he informed her -- or rather it -- and Eldon  Rosen, who regarded him with writhing worry; the elderly man's face contorted, shifted plastically with  angry concern.  "I'm right, aren't I?" Rick said. There was no answer, from either of the Rosens. "Look," he said reasonably. "We have no conflict of interest; it's important to me that the Voigt-Kampff test functions, almost as important as it is to you." The elder Rosen said, "She's not an android." "I don't believe it," Rick said. "Why would he lie?" Rachael said to Rick fiercely. "If anything, we'd lie the other way." "I want a bone marrow analysis made of you," Rick said to her. "It can eventually be organically determined whether you're android or not; it's slow and painful, admittedly, but --" "Legally," Rachael said, "I can't be forced to undergo a bone marrow test. That's been established in the courts; self-incrimination. And anyhow on a live person -- not the corpse of a retired android -- it takes a  long time. You can give that damn Voigt-Kampff profile test because of the specials; they have to be tested for constantly, and while the government was doing that you police agencies slipped the Voigt-Kampff through. But what you said is true; that's the end of the testing." She rose to her feet, paced away from him, and stood with her hands on her hips, her back to him. "The issue is not the legality of the bone marrow analysis," Eldon Rosen said huskily. "The issue is that your empathy delineation test failed in response to my niece. I can explain why she scored as an android might.  Rachael grew up aboard Salander 3. She was born on  it; she spent fourteen of her eighteen years living off its tape library and what the nine other crew members, all  adults, knew about Earth. Then, as you know, the ship turned back a sixth of the way to Proxima. Otherwise Rachael would never have seen Earth -- anyhow not until her later life." "You would have retired me," Rachael said over her  shoulder. "In a police dragnet I would have been killed.  I've known that since I got here four years ago; this isn't the first time the Voigt-Kampff test has been given to me. In fact I rarely leave this building; the risk is  enormous, because of those roadblocks you police set up, those flying wedge spot checks to pick up unclassified specials." "And androids," Eldon Rosen added. "Although naturally the public isn't told that; they're not supposed to know that androids are on Earth, in our midst." "I don't think they are," Rick said. "I think the various police agencies here and in the Soviet Union have gotten them all. The population is small enough now; everyone, sooner or later, runs into a random checkpoint." That, anyhow, was the idea. "What were your instructions," Eldon Rosen asked, "if you wound up designating a human as android?" "That's a departmental matter." He began restoring his testing gear to his briefcase; the two Rosens  watched silently. "Obviously," he added, "I was told to cancel further testing, as I'm now doing. If it failed once there's no point in going on." He snapped the briefcase shut. "We could have defrauded you," Rachael said. "Nothing forced us to admit you mistested me. And the same for the other nine subjects we've selected." She gestured vigorously. "All we had to do was simply go along with your test results, either way." Rick said, "I would have insisted on a list in advance. A sealed-envelope breakdown. And compared my own test results for congruity. There would have had to be congruity." And I can see now, he realized, that I wouldn't have gotten it. Bryant was right. Thank god I didn't go out bounty hunting on the basis of this test. "Yes, I suppose you would have done that," Eldon Rosen said. He glanced at Rachael, who nodded. "We discussed that possibility," Eldon said, then, with reluctance. "This problem," Rick said, "stems entirely from your method of operation, Mr. Rosen. Nobody forced your organization to evolve the production of humanoid robots to a point where --" "We produced what the colonists wanted," Eldon Rosen said. "We followed the time-honored principle underlying every commercial venture. If our firm hadn't made these progressively more human types, other firms in the field would have. We knew the risk we were  taking when we developed the Nexus-6 brain unit. But your Voigt-Kampff test was a failure before we released that type of android. If you had failed to classify a Nexus-6 android as an android, if you had checked it out as human -- but that's not what happened." His  voice had become hard and bitingly penetrating. "Your police department -- others as well -- may have retired, very probably have retired, authentic humans with underdeveloped empathic ability, such as my innocent niece here. Your position, Mr. Deckard, is extremely bad morally. Ours isn't." "In other words," Rick said with acuity, "I'm not going to be given a chance to check out a single Nexus- 6. You people dropped this schizoid girl on me beforehand." And my test, he realized, is wiped out. I shouldn't have gone for it, he said to himself. However, it's too late now. "We have you, Mr. Deckard," Rachael Rosen agreed in a quiet, reasonable voice; she turned toward him, then, and smiled. *** He could not make out, even now, how the Rosen Association had managed to snare him, and so easily.  Experts, he realized. A mammoth corporation like this -- it embodies too much experience. It possesses in fact a sort of group mind. And Eldon and Rachael Rosen consisted of spokesmen for that corporate entity. His mistake, evidently, had been in viewing them as individuals. It was a mistake he would not make again. "Your superior Mr. Bryant," Eldon Rosen said, "will have difficulty understanding how you happened to let us void your testing apparatus before the test began." He pointed toward the ceiling, and Rick saw the camera lens. His massive error in dealing with the  Rosens had been recorded. "I think the right thing for us all to do," Eldon said; "is sit down and --" He gestured affably. "We can work something out, Mr. Deckard. There's no need for anxiety. The Nexus-6 variety of android is a fact; we here at the Rosen Association  recognize it and I think now you do, too."  Rachael, leaning toward Rick, said, "How would you like to own an owl?" "I doubt if I'll ever own an owl." But he knew what she meant; be understood the business the Rosen Association wanted to transact. Tension of a kind he had never felt before manifested itself inside him; it exploded, leisurely, in every part of his body. He felt the  tension, the consciousness of what was happening, take over completely. "But an owl," Eldon Rosen said, "is the thing you want." He glanced at his niece inquiringly. "I don't think he has any idea --" "Of course he does," Rachael contradicted. "He knows exactly where this is heading. Don't you, Mr.  Deckard?" Again she leaned toward him, and this time closer; he could smell a mild perfume about her, almost a warmth. "You're practically there, Mr. Deckard. You practically have your owl." To Eldon Rosen she said, "He's a bounty hunter; remember? So be lives off the bounty he makes, not his salary. Isn't that so, Mr. Deckard?" He nodded. "How many androids escaped this time?" Rachael  inquired. Presently he said, "Eight. Originally. Two have already been retired, by someone else; not me." "You get how much for each android?" Rachael asked. Shrugging, he said, "It varies." Rachael said, "If you have no test you can administer, then there is no way you can identify an android. And  if there's no way you can identify an android there's no way you can collect your bounty. So if the Voigt-Kampff scale has to be abandoned --" "A new scale," Rick said, "will replace it. This has happened before." Three times, to be exact. But the new scale, the more modern analytical device, had been there already; no lag had existed. This time was different. "Eventually, of course, the Voigt-Kampff scale will become obsolete," Rachael agreed. "But not now.  We're satisfied ourselves that it will delineate the Nexus 6 types and we'd like you to proceed on that basis in your own particular, peculiar work."  Rocking back and forth, her arms tightly folded, she regarded him with intensity. Trying to fathom his reaction. "Tell him he can have his owl," Eldon Rosen grated. "You can have the owl," Rachael said, still eyeing him. "The one up on the roof.  Scrappy.  But we will want to mate it if we can get our hands on a male.  And any offspring will be ours; that has to be absolutely understood." Rick said, "I'll divide the brood." "No," Rachael said instantly; behind her Eldon Rosen shook his head, backing her up.  "That way you'd have claim to the sole bloodline of owls for the rest of eternity.  And there's another condition.  You can't will your owl to anybody; at your death it reverts back to the association." "That sounds," Rick said, "like an invitation for you to come in and kill me.  To get your owl back immediately.  I won't agree to that; it's too dangerous." "You're a bounty hunter," Rachael said.  "You can handle a laser gun -- in fact you're carrying one right now.  If you can't protect yourself, how are you going to retire the six remaining Nexus-6 andys?  They're a good deal smarter than the Grozzi Corporation's old W-4." "But I hunt them," he said.  "This way, with a reversion clause on the owl, someone would be hunting me."  And he did not like the idea of being stalked; he had seen the effect on androids.  It brought about certain notable changes, even in them. Rachael said, "All right; we'll yield on that.  You can will the owl to your heirs.  But we insist on getting the complete brood.  If you can't agree to that, go on back to San Francisco and admit to your superiors in the department that the Voigt-Kampff scale, at least as administered by you, can't distinguish an andy from a human being.  And then look for another job." "Give me some time," Rick said. "Okay," Rachael said.  "Well leave you in here, where it's comfortable."  She examined her wristwatch. "Half an hour," Eldon Rosen said.  He and Rachael filed toward the door of the room, silently.  They had said what they intended to say, he realized; the rest lay in his lap. As Rachael started to close the door after herself and her uncle, Rick said starkly, "You managed to set me up perfectly.  You have it on tape that I missed on you; you know that my job depends on the use of the Voigt-Kampff scale; and you own that goddamn owl." "Your owl, dear," Rachael said.  "Remember?  We'll tie your home address around its leg and have it fly down to San Francisco; it'll meet you there when you get off work." It, he thought.  She keeps calling the owl it.  Not her.  "Just a second," he said. Pausing at the door, Rachael said, "You've decided?" "I want," he said, opening his briefcase, "to ask you one more question from the Voigt-Kampff scale.  Sit down again." Rachael glanced at her uncle; he nodded and she grudgingly returned, seating herself as before.  "What's this for?" she demanded, her eyebrows lifted in distaste -- and wariness.  Her perceived her skeletal tension, noted it professionally. Presently he had the pencil of light trained on her right eye and the adhesive patch again in contact with her cheek.  Rachael stared into the light rigidly, the expression of extreme distaste still manifest. "My briefcase," Rick said as he rummaged for the Voigt-Kampff forms.  "Nice, isn't it?  Department issue." "Well, well," Rachael said remotely. "Babyhide," Rick said.  He stroked the black leather surface of the briefcase.  "One hundred percent genuine human babyhide."  He saw the two dial indicators gyrate frantically. But only after a pause. The reaction had come, but too late. He knew the reaction period down to a fraction of a second, the correct reaction period; there should have been none. "Thanks, Miss Rosen," be said, and gathered together the equipment again; he had concluded his retesting. "That's all." "You're leaving?" Rachael asked. "Yes," he said. "I'm satisfied." Cautiously, Rachael said, "What about the other nine subjects?" "The scale has been adequate in your case," he answered. "I can extrapolate from that; it's clearly still effective."  To Eldon Rosen, who slumped morosely by the door of the room, he said, "Does she know?" Sometimes they didn't; false memories had been tried various  times, generally in the mistaken idea that through them reactions to testing would be altered. Eldon Rosen said, "No. We programmed her completely. But I think toward the end she suspected." To the girl he said, "You guessed when he asked for one more try." Pale, Rachael nodded fixedly. "Don't be afraid of him," Eldon Rosen told her. "You're not an escaped android on Earth illegally; you're the property of the Rosen Association, used as a sales device for prospective emigrants." He walked to the girl, put his hand comfortingly on her shoulder; at the touch the girl flinched. "He's right," Rick said. "I'm not going to retire you,  Miss Rosen. Good day." He started toward the door, then halted briefly. To the two of them he said, "Is the owl genuine?" Rachael glanced swiftly at the elder Rosen. "He's leaving anyhow," Eldon Rosen said. "It doesn't matter; the owl is artificial. There are no owls." "Hmm," Rick muttered, and stepped numbly out into the corridor. The two of them watched him go. Neither said anything. Nothing remained to say. So that's how the largest manufacturer of androids operates, Rick said to himself. Devious, and in a manner he had never encountered before. A weird and convoluted new personality type; no wonder law enforcement agencies were having trouble with the Nexus-6. The Nexus-6. He had now come up against it. Rachael, he realized; she must be a Nexus-6. I'm seeing  one of them for the first time. And they damn near did it; they came awfully damn close to undermining the Voigt-Kampff scale, the only method we have for detecting them. The Rosen Association does a good job -- makes a good try, anyhow -- at protecting its products. And I have to face six more of them, be reflected. Before I'm finished. He would earn the bounty money. Every cent. Assuming he made it through alive.

Substance D(MT)

The Stargate Conundrum

With the illegalisation of drugs, DMT was also made illegal. This, in itself, was strange. Not only that: DMT was a Schedule I compound, thus outperforming cocaine. Officially, it also has no proven medical application. DMT, furthermore, is not addictive – and if it was, it would only be in the sense that people want more and more trips – long for them. Like a cigarette. In fact, the full effects of a DMT trip last less long than the smoking of a cigarette.
Why did the US legislation go overboard on this drug? Why make it a top-grade drug? Was it because they wanted it all to themselves? After all, if, as argued, DMT potentially allows limitless knowledge, do we want everyone to access that knowledge archive? Or do we want to seriously limit access to it? In the latter scenario, grading it a Schedule 1 drug, would be a most logical scenario. And do we need to see the actions of the US Government in its treatment of DMT as a stand-alone event, or do we need to see it in light of the Remote Viewing project and other drug projects, such as MK-ULTRA?

As McKenna stated, “Psilocybin and DMT were made Schedule 1 without any scientific evidence at all being presented for or against their use.” Schedule 1 is the most restrictive category, resulting in the fact that even medical research was virtually impossible, as Rick Strassman had discovered. Rather than over-reacting, the government had made sure all possible usage of DMT was strictly controlled – and withheld from the American population. In short, the US government tried to outlaw a drug that is present in almost every fabric of our reality. It is a psychic drug. Not the only one, but the most potent one, and the one native to all of us…

When will the robot rebellion occur?

the religious experience of philip k. dick | b r n r d .net

the religious experience of philip k. dick | b r n r d .net

the religious experience of philip k. dick

In 1974, science fiction writer Philip K. Dick experienced a series of mystical visions. They would greatly influence his writing, most explicitly in 'Valis', a philosophical exploration of gnostic, christian and other religious themes. They also inspired comic book artist Robert Crumb to adapt Dick's experiences, as recounted in interviews, into a short story: 'The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick' (online in reasonable quality images).

The ancient Greek word for what Dick experienced was 'enthusiasmos' (enthusiasm), literally: possessed or inspired by a god. The term is often associated with the Dionysian Mysteries, in which trance-inducing rituals would bring participants to a state of 'ekstasis' (ecstasy). Other 'symptoms', which Dick also experienced, include 'anamnesis' (literally: loss of forgetfulness, or recollection of events outside one's own life) and 'xenoglossia' (speaking in languages unknown to the speaker).

In Dick's case, his prolonged drug use may have been a cause for his visions. He, however, interpreted them in terms of divine inspiration, believing at first that he was a persecuted Christian in Rome in the first century AD, and later that the spirit of the prophet Elijah had entered him.
Whatever one's verdict on the 'truth' of these experiences, it is no wonder his novels all deal with the fragile nature of reality - or the philosophical implications of the fact that we humans think too much. The question in Crumb's story sums it up in typical Dick style:

Was it the onset of acute schizophrenia, or was it a genuine mystical revelation, and then again, is there any difference?

The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick

THE CRAWLERS

HE built, and the more he built the more he enjoyed building. Hot sunlight filtered down; summer breezes stirred around him as he toiled joyfully. When he ran out of material he paused awhile and rested. His edifice wasn't large; it was more a practice model than the real thing. One part of his brain told him that, and another part thrilled with excitement and pride. It was at least large enough to enter. He crawled down the entrance tunnel and curled up inside in a contented heap.

Through a rent in the roof a few bits of dirt rained down. He oozed binder fluid and reinforced the weak place. In his edifice the air was clean and cool, almost dust-free. He crawled over the inner walls one last time, leaving a quick-drying coat of binder over everything. What else was needed? He was beginning to feel drowsy; in a moment he'd be asleep.

He thought about it, and then he extended a part of himself up through the still-open entrance. That part watched and 1istened warily, as the rest of him dozed off in a grateful slumber. He was peaceful and content, conscious that from a distance all that was visible was a light mound of dark clay. No one would notice it: no one would guess what lay beneath.

And if they did notice, he had methods of taking care of them. The farmer halted his ancient Ford truck with a grinding shriek of brakes. He cursed and backed up a few yards. "'There's one. Hop down and take a look at it. Watch the cars-they go pretty fast along here."

Ernest Gretry pushed the cabin door open and stepped down gingerly onto the hot mid-morning pavement. The air smelled of sun and drying grass. Insects buzzed around him as he advanced cautiously up the highway, hands in his trouser pockets, lean body bent forward. He stopped and peered down.

The thing was well mashed. Wheel marks crossed it in four places and its internal organs had ruptured and burst through. The whole thing was snail-like, a gummy elongated tube with sense organs at one end and a confusing mass of protoplasmic extensions at the other.

What got him most was the face. For a time he couldn't look directly at it: he had to contemplate the road, the hills, the big cedar trees, anything else. There was something in the little dead eyes, a glint that was rapidly fading. They weren't the lusterless eyes of a fish, stupid and vacant. The life he had seen haunted him, and he had got only a brief glimpse, as the truck bore down on it and crushed it flat.

"They crawl across here every Once in awhile," the farmer said quietly. "Sometimes they get as far as town. The first one I saw was heading down the middle of Grant Street, about fifty yards an hour. They go pretty slow. Some of the teenage kids like to run them down. Personally I avoid them, if I see them."

Gretry kicked aimlessly at the thing. He wondered vaguely how many more there were in the bushes and hills. He could see farmhouses set back from the road, white gleaming squares in the hot Tennessee sun. Horses and sleeping cattle. Dirty chickens scratching. A sleepy, peaceful countryside, basking in the late-summer sun.

"Where's the radiation lab from here?" he asked.

The farmer indicated. "Over there, on the other side of those hills. You want to collect the remains? They have one down at the Standard Oil Station in a big tank. Dead, of course. They filled the tank with kerosene to try to preserve it. That one's in pretty good shape, compared to this. Joe Jackson cracked its head with a two-by-four. He found it crawling across his property one night."

Gretry got shakily back into the truck. His stomach turned over and he had to take some long deep breaths. "I didn't realize there were so many. When they sent me out from Washington they just said a few had been seen."

"There's been quite a lot." The fanner started up the truck and carefully skirted the remains on the pavement. "We're trying to get used to them, but we can't. It's not nice stuff. A lot of people are moving away. You can feel it in the air, a sort of heaviness. We've got this problem and we have to meet it." He increased speed, leathery hands tight around the wheel. "It seems like there's more of them born all the time, and almost no normal children."

***

Back in town, Gretry called Freeman long distance from the booth in the shabby hotel lobby. "We'll have to do something. They're all around here. I'm going out at three to see a colony of them. The fellow who runs the taxi stand knows where they are. He says there must be eleven Or twelve of them together."

"How do the people around there feel?"

"How the hell do you expect? They think it's God's Judgment. Maybe they're right."

"We should have made them move earlier. We should have cleaned out the whole area for miles around. Then we wouldn't have this problem." Freeman paused. "What do you suggest?"

"That island we took over for the H-bomb tests."

"It's a damn big island. There was a whole group of natives we moved off and resettled." 

Freeman choked. "Good God, are there that many of them?"

"The staunch citizens exaggerate, of course. But I get the impression there must be at least a hundred."

Freeman was silent a long time. "I didn't realize," he said finally. "I'll have to put it through channels, of course. We were going to make further tests On that island. But I see your point."

"I'd like it," Gretry said. 'This is a bad business. We can't have things like this. People can't live with this sort of thing. You ought to drop out here and take a look. It's something to remember."

"I'll-see what I can do. I'll talk to Gordon. Give me a ring tomorrow."

Gretry hung up and wandered out of the drab, dirty lobby onto the blazing sidewalk. Dingy stores and parked cars. A few old men hunched over on steps and sagging cane-bottom chairs. He lit a cigarette and shakily examined his watch. It was almost three. He moved slowly toward the taxi stand.

The town was dead. Nothing stirred. Only the motionless old men in their chairs and the out-of-town cars zipping along the highway. Dust and silence layover everything. Age, like a gray ;spider web, covered all the houses and stores. No laughter. No sounds of any kind.

No children playing games.

A dirty blue taxicab pulled up silently beside him. "Okay, mister," the driver said, a rat-faced man in his thirties, toothpick hanging between his crooked teeth. He kicked the bent door open. "Here we go."

"How far is it?" Gretry asked, as he climbed. in.

"Just outside town." The cab picked up speed and hurtled noisily along, bouncing and bucking. "You from the FBI?" 

"No."'

"I thought from your suit and hat you was." The driver eyed him curiously. "How'd you hear about the crawlers?"

"From the radiation lab."

"Yeah, it's that hot stuff they got there." The driver turned off the highway and onto a dirt side-road. "It's up here on the Higgins farm. The crazy damn things picked the bottom of old lady Higgins' place to build their houses."

"Houses?"

"They've got some sort of city, down under the ground. You'll see it-the entrances, at least. They work together, building and fussing." He twisted the cab off the dirt road, between two huge cedars, over a bumpy field, and finally brought it to rest at the edge of a rocky gully. "This is it."

It was the first time Gretry had seen one alive.

He got out of the cab awkwardly, his legs numb and unresponding. The things were moving slowly between the woods and the entrance tunnels in the center of the clearing. They were bringing building material, clay and weeds. Smearing it with some kind of ooze and plastering it in rough forms which were carefully carried beneath the ground. 

The crawlers were two or three feet long; some were older than others, darker and heavier. All of them moved with agonizing slowness, a silent flowing motion across the sun-baked ground. They were soft, shell-less, and looked harmless.

Again, he was fascinated and hypnotized by their faces. The weird parody of human faces. Wizened little baby features, tiny shoebutton eyes, slit of a mouth, twisted ears, and a few wisps of damp hair. What should have been arms were elongated pseudopods that grew and receded like soft dough. The crawlers seemed incredibly flexible; they extended themselves, then snapped their bodies back, as their feelers made contact with obstructions. They paid no attention to the two men; they didn't even seem to be aware of them.

"How dangerous are they?" Gretry asked finally.

"Well, they have some sort of stinger. They stung a dog, I know. Stung him pretty hard. He swelled up and his tongue turned black. He had fits and got hard. He died." The driver added half-apologetically, "He was nosing around. Interrupting their building. They work all the time. Keep busy."

"Is this most of them?"

"I guess so. They sort of congregate here. I see them crawling this way:' The driver gestured. "See, they're born in different places. One or two at each farmhouse, near the radiation lab."

"Which way is Mrs. Higgins' farmhouse?" Gretry asked.

"Up there. See it through the trees? You want to-"

"I'll be right back," Gretry said, and started abruptly off. "Wait here."

***

The old woman was watering the dark red geraniums that grew around her front porch, when Gretry approached. She looked up quickly, her ancient wrinkled face shrewd and suspicious, the sprinkling can poised like a blunt instrument.

"Afternoon," Gretry said. He tipped his hat and showed her his credentials. "I'm investigating the-crawlers. At the edge of your land."

"Why?" Her voice was empty, bleak, cold. Like her withered face and body.

"We're trying to find a solution." Gretry felt awkward and uncertain. "It's been suggested we transport them away from here, out to an island in the Gulf of Mexico. They shouldn't be here. It's too hard on people. It isn't right," he finished lamely.

"No. It isn't right."

"And we've already begun moving everybody away from the radiation lab. I guess we should have done that a long time ago."

The old woman's eyes flashed. "You people and your machines. See what you've done!" She jabbed a bony finger at him excitedly. "Now you have to fix it. You have to do something."

"We're taking them away to an island as soon as possible. But there's one problem. We have to be sure about the parents. They have complete custody of them. We can't just-" He broke off futilely. "How do they feel? Would they let us cart up their children, and haul them away?"

Mrs. Higgins turned and headed into the house. Uncertainly, Gretry followed her through the dim, dusty interior rooms. Musty chambers full of oil lamps and faded pictures, ancient sofas and tables. She led him through a great kitchen of immense cast iron pots and pans down a flight of wooden stairs to a painted white door. She knocked sharply.

Flurry and movement on the other side. The sound of people whispering and moving things hurriedly.

"Open the door," Mrs. Higgins commanded. After an agonized pause the door opened slowly. Mrs. Higgins pushed it wide and motioned Gretry to follow her.

In the room stood a young man and woman. They backed away as Gretry came in. The woman hugged a long pasteboard carton which the man had suddenly passed to her.

"Who are you?" the man demanded. He abruptly grabbed the carton back; his wife's small hands were trembling under the shifting weight. Gretry was seeing the parents of one of them. The young woman, brown-haired, not more than nineteen. Slender and small in a cheap green dress, a full-breasted girl with dark frightened eyes. The man was bigger and stronger, a handsome dark youth with massive arms and competent hands gripping the pasteboard carton tight.

Gretry couldn't stop looking at the carton. Holes had been punched in the top; the carton moved slightly in the man's arms, and there was a faint shudder that rocked it back and forth.

"This man," Mrs. Higgins said to the husband, ''has come to take it away."

The couple accepted the information in silence. The husband made no move except to get a better grip on the box.

"He's going to take all of them to an island," Mrs. Higgins said. "It's all arranged. Nobody'll harm them. They'll be safe and they can do what they want. Build and crawl around where nobody has to look at them."

The young woman nodded blankly.

"Give it to him," Mrs. Higgins ordered impatiently. "Give him the box and let's get it over with once and for all."

After a moment the husband carried the box over to a table and put it down. "You know anything about them?" he demanded. "You know what they eat?"

"We-" Gretry began helplessly.

"They eat leaves. Nothing but leaves and grass. We've been bringing in the smallest leaves we could find."

"It's only a month old," the young woman said huskily. "It already wants to go down with the others, but we keep it here. We don't want it to go down there. Not yet. Later, maybe, we thought. We didn't know what to do. We weren't sure." Her large dark eyes flashed briefly in mute appeal, then faded out again. "It's a hard thing to know."

The husband untied the heavy brown twine and took the lid from the carton. "Here. You can see it."

***

It was the smallest Gretry had seen. Pale and soft, less than a foot long. It had crawled in a comer of the box and was curled up in a messy web of chewed leaves and some kind of wax. A translucent covering spun clumsily around it, behind which it lay asleep. It paid no attention to them; they were out of its scope. Gretry felt a strange helpless horror rise up in him. He moved away, and the young man replaced the lid.

"We knew what it was," he said hoarsely. "Right away, as soon as it was born. Up the road, there was one we saw. One of the first. Bob Douglas made us come over and look at it. It was his and Julie's. That was before they started coming down and collecting together by the gully."

"'Tell him what happened," Mrs. Higgins said.

"Douglas mashed its head with a rock. Then he poured gasoline on it and burned it up. Last week he and Julie packed and left."

"Have many of them been destroyed?" Gretry managed to ask.

"A few. A lot of men, they see something like that and they go sort of wild. You can't blame them." The man's dark eyes darted hopelessly. "I guess I almost did the same thing."

"Maybe we should have," his wife murmured. "Maybe I should have let you."

Gretry picked up the pasteboard carton and moved toward the door. ''We'll get this done as quickly as we can. The trucks are on the way. It should be over in a day."

"Thank God for that," Mrs. Higgins exclaimed in a clipped, emotionless voice. She held the door open, and Gretry carried the carton through the dim, musty house, down the sagging front steps and out into the blazing mid-afternoon sun.

Mrs. Higgins stopped at the red geraniums and picked up her sprinkling can. ''When you take them, take them all. Don't leave any behind. Understand?"

"Yes," Gretry muttered.

"Keep some of your men and trucks here. Keep checking. Don't let any stay where we have to look at them."

''When we get the people near the radiation lab moved away there shouldn't be any more of-"

He broke off. Mrs. Higgins had turned her back and was watering the geraniums. Bees buzzed around her. The Bowers swayed dully with the hot wind. The old woman passed on around the side of the house, still watering and stooping over. In a few moments she was gone and Gretry was alone with his carton.

Embarrassed and ashamed, he carried the carton slowly down the hill and across the field to the ravine. The taxi driver was standing by his cab, smoking a cigarette and waiting patiently for him. The colony of crawlers was working steadily on its city. There were streets and passages. On some of the entrance-mounds he noticed intricate scratches that might have been words. Some of the crawlers were grouped together, setting up involved things he couldn't make out.

"Let's go," he said wearily to the driver.

The driver grinned and yanked the back door. "I left the meter running," he said, his ratty face bright with craft. "You guys all have a swindle sheet-you don't care."

*** 

He built, and the more he built the more he enjoyed building. By now the city was over eighty miles deep and five miles in diameter. The whole island had been converted into a single vast city that honeycombed and interlaced farther each day. Eventually it would reach the land beyond the ocean; then the work would begin in earnest.

To his right, a thousand methodically moving companions toiled silently on the structural support that was to reinforce the main breeding chamber. As soon as it was in place everyone would feel better; the mothers were just now beginning to bring forth their young.

That was what worried him. It took some of the joy out of building. He had seen one of the first born-before it was quickly hidden and the thing hushed up. A brief glimpse of a bulbous head, foreshortened body, incredibly rigid extensions. It shrieked and wailed and turned red in the face. Gurgled and plucked aimlessly and kicked its feet.

In horror, somebody had finally mashed the throwback with a rock. And hoped there wouldn't be any more.

_______________

The Crawlers: Copyright © 1954 by Greenleaf Publications, Inc. From Imagination, July 1954

What is LOST's John Locke doing on the first edition cover of a PKD novel from 1966?

The Divine Invasion, by Philip K. Dick at American Buddha Online Library

The Divine Invasion, by Philip K. Dick at American Buddha Online Library

"'The Ape of God,'" Elias said. "A Medieval theory about the Devil. That he apes God's legitimate creation with spurious interpolations of his own. That's really an exceedingly sophisticated idea, epistemologically speaking. Does it mean that parts of the world are spurious? Or that sometimes the whole world is spurious ? Or that there are plural worlds of which one is real and the others are not? Is there essentially one matrix world from which people derive differing perceptions? So that the world you see is not the world I see?"

The Divine Invasion, by Philip K. Dick at American Buddha Online Library

The Divine Invasion, by Philip K. Dick at American Buddha Online Library

Again pressing the switch of the external bullhorn, Herb Asher yelled after the retreating figure, 

"You think James Joyce was crazy, is that what you think? Okay; then explain to me how come he mentions 'talktapes' which means audio tapes in a book he wrote starting in 1922 and which he completed in 1939, before there were tape recorders! You call that crazy? He also has them sitting around a TV set -- in a book started four years after World War I. I think Joyce was a --" 

The autochthon had disappeared over a ridge. Asher released the switch on the external bullhorn. 

It's impossible that James Joyce could have mentioned "talk-tapes" in his writing, Asher thought. Someday I'm going to get my article published; I'm going to prove that Finnegans Wake is an information pool based on computer memory systems that didn't exist until a century after James Joyce's era; that Joyce was plugged into a cosmic consciousness from which he derived the inspiration for his entire corpus of work. I'll be famous forever.

VALIS

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense. In the VW Rabbit as I had listened to Linda and Eric rattle on about being three-eyed people from another planet I had known they were nuts. This made me nuts, too. The realization had frightened me: the realization about them and about myself.

"There is no 'Zebra,'" I said. "It's yourself. Don't you recognize your own self? It's you and only you, projecting your unanswered wishes out, unfulfilled desires left over after Gloria did herself in. You couldn't fill the vacuum with reality so you filled it with fantasy; it was psychological compensation for a fruitless, wasted, empty, pain-filled life and I don't see why you don't finally now fucking give up; you're like Kevin's cat: you're stupid. That is the beginning and the end of it.  Okay?" 

You said it yourself: the universe is irrational because the mind behind it is irrational. You are irrational and you know it.  I am.  We all are and we know it, on some level. I'd write a book about it but no one would believe a group of human beings could be as irrational as we are, as we've acted."

"Sometimes I dream --"

"I'll put that on your gravestone."

-- Valis, by Philip K. Dick