ID, IX. MAIORES. V, CAL. IUNI. FORTUNA PRIMIGENIA.

I discovered this book by complete chance last year – a very old hardback copy was given to me as gift (in a situation which was certainly weighted with the most unlikely of synchronicities), “huh,” I thought, “it’s a first edition of H.G. Wells,” the book itself almost cannot be opened because it is so old and falling apart so I procured a text and audio file of the thing relatively easily and began to read. In hindsight not only for myself but I fancy for the generations of the last fifty years - in all totality, it is deeply strange that this book has not been more widely recognized or taught in schools, as like 1984 and Brave New World, as being the third contender (although technically the second, published one year after Huxley – seemingly written at the same time interestingly enough) in “visions of dystopia” – except that the book is not so much a vision of dystopia tomorrow but a vision of dystopia ‘today’ or rather ‘life as we know it’ of the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries (endless war, endless pandemics, economic and logistic chaos), narrated from the comfortable and reassuring position of a society far far in the future who have long since revised their culture and solved all of the causes of the problems and become a society of genius polymaths “with (every Man and Woman) the intellectual equal of the polymaths of the ancient world.”
Now, I do not mean here to seem to ‘sweet-talk’ the reader into rushing out and buying this book or to hold it up in the manner of those other books as if it were some ideological blueprint but instead to assay the thing in the natural context which seems to me to be universally unrealized and which presents itself to us as a thing which is plainly self-evident, that is: that in the depressing and miserable dichotomy of 1984 and Brave New World; two extremely atomizing and miserable narratives, that there is also – far more empowering – The Shape Of Things To Come wherein the miserable protagony and antagony of both 1984 and Brave New World might read as merely a footnote somewhere in the middle of the book as an example of the witless measures mankinds old master undertook to preserve their power in an untenable circumstance. In other words, we know all about 1984 as children; we have this drummed into our heads and we glean our cultural comprehension that dictators cannot be cliques of business people but only lone individuals, usually in military uniform, and then we graduate from that to Brave New World to gain a more sophisticated comprehension of the feckless consumerism and ‘passive egoism’ by which our society actually operates, but then we do not – as I argue we ought – continue along in our education with this third book which actually addresses the matters at hand at a more adult level.
For instance, here, from ‘The Breakdown Of Finance And Social Morale After Versailles’ (Book One, Chapter Twelve) addresses in a single paragraph the cause of our continual economic chaos (of which all crime and poverty and war originates from) and highlights the problem from which this chaos cannot be resolved yet could easily be resolved, “adjustment was left to blind and ill-estimated forces,” “manifestly, a dramatic revision of the liberties of enterprise was necessary, but the enterprising people who controlled politics (would be) the very last people to undertake such a revision,”

…the expansion of productive energy was being accompanied by a positive contraction of the distributive arrangements which determined consumption. The more efficient the output, the fewer were the wages-earners. The more stuff there was, the fewer consumers there were. The fewer the consumers, the smaller the trading profits, and the less the gross spending power of the shareholders and individual entrepreneurs. So buying dwindled at both ends of the process and the common investor suffered with the wages- earner. This was the "Paradox of Overproduction" which so troubled the writers and journalists of the third decade of the twentieth century.

It is easy for the young student to-day to ask "Why did they not adjust?" But let him ask himself who there was to adjust. Our modern superstructure of applied economic science, the David Lubin Bureau and the General Directors' Board, with its vast recording organization, its hundreds of thousands of stations and observers, directing, adjusting, apportioning and distributing, had not even begun to exist. Adjustment was left to blind and ill-estimated forces. It was the general interest of mankind to be prosperous, but it was nobody's particular interest to keep affairs in a frame of prosperity. Manifestly a dramatic revision of the liberties of enterprise was necessary, but the enterprising people who controlled politics, so far as political life was controlled, were the very last people to undertake such a revision.

There is a clever metaphor I fancy that Wells worked in to this for the ‘actual’ defacto controlling class of things, that is: not really the politicians (sorry to disappoint the Orwell and conspiracy fans) but instead the ‘Dictatorship of the Air’ which might easily read as the ‘Dictatorship of the Airwaves’ – in colloquial language, that being radio and then television. Certainly we might imagine Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner or Sumner Redstone (of yesterday) entering into honourable retirement as like the ‘dictators of the air’ of the very last days before the establishment of a one world state – in any case that is how things would work out, as the power of, say, Ted Turner to eradicate a political party in the United States – at any time he wishes – by simply green-lighting coverage of their bad actions relentlessly for months until revolution occurs is a real power of which no other institution possesses nor possesses any means of defence against, i.e. the ‘real power’ in our world to end a war or begin or war or end this or begin that is that power held by the organized press. This metaphor is somewhat of a more mature view, I think, than Wells earlier conception of the press in The Sleeper Awakes (1899) where the press of a dystopian future is visualized as a “babble machine” spreading circular nonsense to preoccupy the citizenry (although this is arguably a true representation of the mental processes of the Twitter and Facebook user, or of the general baby-speak and extremely infantile form of the news reports on the front page of the BBC News website) which is more or less what the press depicted as being in Brave New World also.
However the construction of sudden new realities (or sudden ‘actualities’) presented by the equation of interdependent technological innovations (i.e. the radio and the television in this instance) is mentioned early on in The Shape Of Things To Come in ‘How The Idea And Hope Of The Modern World State First Appeared’ (Book One, Chapter Two),

The fruitlessness of all these premature inventions is very easily explained. First in the case of the Transatlantic passage; either the earlier navigators who got to America never got back, or, if they did get back, they were unable to find the necessary support and means to go again before they died, or they had had enough of hardship, or they perished in a second attempt. Their stories were distorted into fantastic legends and substantially disbelieved. It was, indeed, a quite futile adventure to get to America until the keeled sailing ship, the science of navigation, and the mariner's compass had been added to human resources. (Then), in the matter of printing, it was only when the Chinese had developed the systematic manufacture of abundant cheap paper sheets in standard sizes that the printed book—and its consequent release of knowledge—became practically possible. Finally the delay in the attainment of flying was inevitable because before men could progress beyond precarious gliding it was necessary for metallurgy to reach a point at which the internal combustion engine could be made. Until then they could build nothing strong enough and light enough to battle with the eddies of the air.

In an exactly parallel manner, the conception of one single human community organized for collective service to the common weal had to wait until the rapid evolution of the means of communication could arrest and promise to defeat the disintegrative influence of geographical separation. That rapid evolution came at last in the nineteenth century, and it has been described already in a preceding chapter of this world history. Steam power, oil power, electric power, the railway, the steamship, the aeroplane, transmission by wire and aerial transmission followed each other very rapidly. They knit together the human species as it had never been knit before. Insensibly, in less than a century, the utterly impracticable became not merely a possible adjustment but an urgently necessary adjustment if civilization was to continue.

In other words, then, a global state (or, rather, such power in general held by the press as I see the analogy extending to them as being the ‘Dictatorship of the Airwaves’) was impossible to imagine and completely laughable before the technologies had stacked together to reveal as like in a simple piece of arithmetic which produced a single outcome of the equation; that no sooner had the technologies existed then the thing had become an actual reality – in that 1) unassailable political power had been unthinkingly dropped into the lap of the owners of the press, but that more importantly as consequence that therefore 2) mankind was subject to that power, that is: the situation existed the moment the technologies did – and this whether any living person had even realized it, as I think quite naturally all the time Men and Women invent things that they really have no notion of the fullest or most optimal uses of (“nothing is needed by fools, for: they do not understand how to use anything but are in want of everything,” Chrysippus), e.g. in no metaphor the television was quite literally invented as a ‘ghost box’ to commune with ghosts imagined to reveal themselves by manipulating the black and white of the static until someone else had the idea that there was at least one other use for that contraption.
It is quite strange, also, that in contemporary times we have for ages been heavily propagandized ‘against’ the idea of a “one world state” as if, say, all the crimes and fecklessness that have gone on in our lifetimes are somehow secretly building towards the creation of such a thing – not a thing you would naturally conclude from an observation of those events nor a thing advocated for by anybody (insofar as I have ever heard) but it is a thing which would be the first logical response to ‘preventing’ such crimes from ever occurring again – such as like the already widely practiced concept of a Senate-Style Federation of Sovereign States rather than a hundred or so mutually antagonistic polities capable of bombing themselves or screwing up their economies and creating waves of refugees or mass starvation or pandemics, and so on. For instance, All Egypt is dependent on the flow of the Nile which originates in what is today another country, that other country recently decimated the flow of the Nile by gumming up the Nile with a Hydroelectric Dam; such an outcome would not occur if the total mass of the land itself was governed as the single interconnected economic and environmental system that it is in physical reality of which, when divided along arbitrary borderlines, there is no means to govern the entirety of the region in an amicable and prosperous manner for all as a whole and no recourse to the otherwise intolerable situation but War which is unlikely to occur – as most Nations are comprised of civilized peoples who rightly loath the concept of War – but it is the single and unavoidable outcome to resolve such a situation until that situation has dragged on for decades, causing immense suffering, until it reaches that point of desperation – the matter of Palestine and Israel, fresh to my mind in these days, raises itself also.
Of the matter of War itself, in ‘The Direct Action Of The Armament Industries In Maintaining War Stresses’ (Book One, Chapter Eleven), Wells relays in 1933 what United States President Eisenhower would later remark in 1961 in his farewell address of the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex; albeit far more analytically on Wells part, that: it is not so much the ‘desire to harm’ on the part of the armament industries which sees them engage in unnecessary build-up of weapons stockpiles but that it is simply their business to produce, to stockpile, produce more deadly variants and stockpile the more deadly variants and sell off their old stockpiles to whomsoever rings their doorbell; for instance the on-going War in Ukraine is no different in this regard to the Viet Cong and NATO Warfare in Vietnam in that massive quantiles of cheap munitions were necessary for the war to be fought in the first place and massive quantities of munitions happened to exist as a by-product of the Armaments Industries to be dumped onto the warring parties in order to facilitate their macabre impulses at the expense of the citizenry; both at their cost in terms of the debt taken on to procure the weaponry on the part of their governments and in terms of their lives when the weaponry was unused to the outcome of massive loss of life of a single peoples within a bordered space – a thing of no value to themselves. Simply put, albeit in a very simplistic reduction to the bare basics: the War would not reached such catastrophic inhuman proportions without massive quantities of cheap Armaments that otherwise sat taking up warehouse space for more valuable Armaments on the part of the producer and seller.

In a perpetual progress in the size and range of great guns, in a vast expansion of battleships that were continually scrapped in favour of larger or more elaborate models, (Armament Firms) found a most important and inexhaustible field of profit. The governments of the world were taken unawares, and in a little while the industry, by sound and accepted methods of salesmanship, was able to impose its novelties upon these ancient institutions with their tradition of implacable mutual antagonism. It was realized very soon that any decay of patriotism and loyalty would be inimical to this great system of profits, and the selling branch of the industry either bought directly or contrived to control most of the great newspapers of the time, and exercised a watchful vigilance on the teaching of belligerence in schools. Following the established rules and usages for a marketing industrialism, and with little thought of any consequences but profits, the directors of these huge concerns built up the new warfare that found its first exposition in the Great War of 1914-18, and gave its last desperate and frightful convulsions in the Polish wars of 1940 and the subsequent decades.

Even at its outset in 1914-18 this new warfare was extraordinarily uncongenial to humanity. It did not even satisfy man's normal combative instincts. What an angry man wants to do is to beat and bash another living being, not to be shot at from ten miles distance or poisoned in a hole. Instead of drinking delight of battle with their peers, men tasted all the indiscriminating terror of an earthquake. The war literature stored at Atacama, to which we have already referred, is full of futile protest against the horror, the unsportsmanlike quality, the casual filthiness and indecency, the mechanical disregard of human dignity of the new tactics. But such protest itself was necessarily futile, because it did not go on to a clear indictment of the forces that were making, sustaining and distorting war. The child howled and wept and they did not even attempt to see what it was had tormented it.

To us nowadays it seems insane that profit-making individuals and companies should have been allowed to manufacture weapons and sell the apparatus of murder to all comers. But to the man of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it seemed the most natural thing in the world. It had grown up in an entirely logical and necessary way, without any restraint upon the normal marketing methods of peace-time commerce, from the continually more extensive application of new industrial products to warfare. Even after the World War catastrophe, after that complete demonstration of the futility of war, men still allowed themselves to be herded like sheep into the barracks, to be trained to consume, and be consumed, by new lines of slaughter goods produced and marketed by the still active armament traders. And the accumulation of a still greater and still more dangerous mass of war material continued.

The book is, if the reader has likely already gathered from the excerpts, not written in the style of a protagonal narrative; i.e. not as a story, i.e. no hero and no villain, but as a sort of a Historia Augusta – that is really the most fitting comparison I think of when trying to describe this to a new reader (or perhaps J.J. Scarisbrick’s Henry VIII), that is to say it is written ‘as’ a History in the classical style we are familiar with from the better of the ancient writers, as like Appian or Cassius Dio, but unlike Suetonius or Tacitus it is absent of the sloppy hinging of all bad things on the highly personalized propaganda ad hominem (i.e. blame the fall of empire on one guy) that goes in those narrative works as we are typically familiar with them.
It is, of course, a work a fiction; although Wells did predict World War Two beginning in late 1939-1940 (although he had Poland putting up much better and longer of a fight against the Germans) and various other innovations, beginning from his own day with a true account of events prior to his own day – giving us a valuable account of affairs and actors prior to 1933 which would otherwise not come easily to any of us to discover. But the book, ultimately, is vehicle for the transmission and discussion of these societal (i.e. social, economic, industrial, logistic) matters presented to the audience of the day fresh, in their own minds, from the abject horror recently witnessed in World War One – and the economic catastrophes of which Roosevelts reforms had not yet come into tangible reality (i.e. relief for the poor, public works projects such as the motorways across America) as is discussed in that other seemingly little known H.G. Wells literary offering in his face-to-face interview with Josef Stalin the following year in 1934 (something which I think is of far more historical value than say, Nixon and Frost or Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis), so as to ‘avert’ another crisis and pluck from the ether a seemingly alternate trajectory of where Mankind might at last get its act together. This ‘novel’ (thought it seems strange to call it that) ought be read, I would advise, in conjunction with ‘The Sleeper Awakes’ (1899) and also the (actually very depressing – I would not advise it) short-story prequel ‘A Story Of The Days To Come’ (1897) – set in that same universe – which, perhaps it is because I am English, seems to me to be a black horror show of the reality that we actually find ourselves living in this far into an actually dystopic future – or perhaps yet with the ‘strange windmills’ powering the mega cities that this a future yet to come (no pun intended); the broken speech, the babble machines, the miserable condition of the Working Class and their consumption of pre-packaged soft bread, the desire to flee the urban sprawl into the dilapidated countryside and make a little life in a run-down house with tacky wallpaper peeling away … ah, forgive me, my point is that ‘our condition’; i.e. those of us literate in English, is quite analogous to the condition of the central characters in those two stories; a culture dulled intellectually to the point that they can barely speak or think, being appraised and assayed by ourselves; those of us simply literate, as to render our commentary stuck as to seem as mutually alien as like Caesar in Gaul. However, it is in the context of the frame given to us in ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’ that we might gain a degree of sanity about this self-same situation; to study and lean into that dispassionate quality as to discern the nature of things as they are and recognize how important this quality is in relation to Well’s ultimate outcome for the best possible position of Humankind far far future, that is: that of Humankind’s vital intellectual capacity, and that the most striking message of STC, beyond all we have mentioned in this little overview, is that intellectual capacity in and of itself.
For example, when we consider the ‘actuality’ of the power of Turner or perhaps Zuckerberg in his heyday, for instance, we consider a power fallen into a Mans lap by an accidental stacking of disparate technologies created not by himself but of which possess a power utterly dependent in that same equation upon on a population being ‘witless’ in the first place and so led slavishly by the “babble machines”. However you cut it, reader, the great uplifting of Humankind to a standard of autonomy and intellectual prowess – not held by an elite but possessed by All People – is a thing both intrinsically self-sufficient within our grasp for our own selves and is certainly the prerequisite for political matters in that intellectual capacity of the voting public determines entirely whether a public is tricked or foolish and gets themselves into trouble by undertaking some obvious error or whether they are immune to such trickery and foolishness in the first place and that their energies and time are spent on more valuable pursuits. It seems to me that our contemporary society has done away with the notion of good character through intellect and that we live with the outcome of this; being shepherded by emotional manipulation and brute force because our society at large is treated as if we lacked the verbal and intellectual toolsets to understand anything else – moreover possessing no means to discern whether or not what is forced onto us is right or wrong; truth or lies, and so on. Such a society as this, again it seems plain to me, is ‘any’ dystopia because it is the baseline composition for ‘all’ dystopia; as like the foolish dogma of an out-dated ideology for example rests itself upon a large enough contingent of the public being either treated as if they were or in fact are “too foolish” to discuss or think a thing through, so a dogma is poured over them like concrete creating, in turn, intolerable circumstances as the dogma, tomorrow, becomes out-dated and suddenly instructs them to do foolish things, as like in the “Banality Of Evil” (read: Hannah Arendt) as the character in all serious perpetrators of inhumanity who insist, with a confused expression on their faces, that they were just doing their job – and this ‘quality’, of extreme ignorance, is the composition of the culture where such ‘evil actions’ occur.
I mean here that in STC we have on one hand a very in-depth account, very serious reading, to graduate the reader out of the depressive, atomizing, disempowering, conspiratorial milieu and mire of ‘life’ presented to us in 1984 and Brave New World, but that we have at the same time the very resonant harmonics that one does not need to “wait around for a distant future utopia” to “solve all the problems” but that the tools to do so are well within our grasp at any time we so choose and of which such an undertaking constitutes the foundation stones and tapestries of that future utopia which, I think, could be said to “meet us half-way” in many of these matters, as like we reach forward and they reach back and then those in the past reach forward and we in the resent reach back; that is anyway what it is to learn from the past and anyway the answer to “why the Grandfather sews the seeds for trees from whose fruits he will never eat.”
Valete.

ID, IX. MAIORES. V, CAL. IUNI. FORTUNA PRIMIGENIA.

FULL TEXT ON GUTENBERG OF H.G. WELLS ‘THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME’ (1933)
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https://preview.redd.it/37vvsroy8y3d1.jpg?width=740&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e62ef5e11c1c4222d6f99ffebe82b3dd706cbc2f

Hey everyone, 24M here with symptoms of brain fog, disturbed sleep, waking up tired / feeling tired throughout the day.. I’ve had some allergies ever since I was a kid but it was nothing major and never caused any sleep problems. Fast forward to 2 years ago when I was 22 and the symptoms hit me like a truck. It’s gotten progressively worse and I’ve even developed dark circles under my eyes. Doctor says since I don’t have sleep apnea (as confirmed by an at home + in lab - check earlier posts on my profile) then it must be some nasal obstruction causing limited airflow when I sleep… he wants me to get this surgery since I failed medical treatment (was taking an allergy pill + nasal steroids). I’ve attached my sinus CT scan report but I’m on the fence because of the horror stories I’ve heard before regarding this surgery. Would appreciate any advice I can get..

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I noticed something on the dmaorg site- that the posts each have different formatting according to 5 "div class" sections. The formatting really isn't that different in each class and it doesn't seem to be connected to the various file types that are posts. (this was examined using a lot of help from the dmaorg fan wiki which already had the letters typed and I copied and pasted them.)
We know it's a cycle, it has happened again and again. What if the moon dates don't order as our actual dates do?
There were 5 timeframes for the posts- the ones that were already there when the site was found or shortly after, the ones that were posted just before/during the trench era, the ones that were posted after the files were terminated and the site was restored (during scaled and icy) and the ones that were posted ahead of Clancy.
If we reorder the 25 Clancy posts by their div classes (putting class 1 first, then 2, etc.), it puts the yellow stripe picture right before the letter it decodes. We also get the 024 02MOON 25 last. And I just realized that this letter is not signed. What if it's a bishop describing recruiting banditos? What if a bishop is realizing he's not so different from them? That he once believed he was a citizen, an escapee, an exception? Is he following the torches to find the banditos?
Spreadsheet I used to organize the posts
Clancy Posts when Ordered by _Divclass
CLASS 1:
017 07 MOON 16
Cheetah running gif
018 07MOON 08
_note.gif written signed
I’ve made it out.
I feel weightless. I know that place had always held me down, but for the first time, I can feel the levity that I had hoped for. It’s been three nights now, and my breathing has changed. It’s slower, and more full. It’s like the air out here is worth taking in.
I can see it back in the distance, and I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t constantly on my mind. I wish I could turn that fear off, but maybe the further I go, the less that fear will affect me. I feel betrayed by what I assumed was home - if I ever end up back there, I won’t be able to look at it the same way.
They are asleep. They’re so sure that they know the truth, and carry on throughout their day with the same meaningless tasks. They’ve forgotten to look up, and to look outward, to understand that this isn’t about ‘in there.'
This is about ‘out here.’
This new world surrounds me. I used to think the walls back home were massive – these green cliffs engulf me, and place me right in the middle – Trench is quite precarious at times, and it’s easy to grow weary. But it’s real, and it’s true, and I’d much rather endure reality than to mindlessly be obedient to a life that someone else created for me. I’ve obsessed about this world for so long, that it feels more like home than anything I’ve experienced. Somehow, in this vast openness, I feel more protected than ever.
The landscape feels endless, and I’ve found myself walking for hours without any true evidence of getting further down. But I’ve seen plants and colors out here that I’m not sure I’ve witnessed before. There’s a beauty in the strangest places, and the curiosity of what’s next continues to motivate me.
I wonder who else is out here. If what I assumed inside is true, there’s got to be more like me. Sometimes I’ll feel a presence, or think I see something in my periphery, only to look up and see nothing. It’s just another thing that I’m afraid of that also excites me. It all just confirms all of the things that I hoped to be true for all of this time.
I am out here and I am very alive. I’m sometimes scared, but always discovering something new, and I will not stop. Cover me!

• Clancy

019 01MOON 22
17-35.4527.jpg typed signed
I can’t face this page for long enough to write what I’m truly feeling. I am only wrought with more questions about what I assumed to be true, questions about what my own path is, and the question that has plagued me every night that I lie here, back in city: Did I give up?
The force I saw between him and his bishop seemed tense to me, and frightening. But the memory of that exchange has had time to fester and replay in my mind long enough that I’m questioning if I even remembered it correctly. I assumed the bishop was forcefully retrieving his subject, but now I wonder if the bishop was actually trying to save him, and he refused.
I stayed out there for five days after I watched it happen. I haven’t seen him since. Maybe he got away, and was still out in Trench with me. Maybe the bishop chased him down, and brought him home.
Home?
Did I just call this place home?
After all of the endless beauty that I saw out there, am I now convincing myself that I’m actually better off within these confines?
I admit, it was more difficult than I expected. Nothing could have prepared me for how much the ‘unknown’ can consume me. Vast landscapes and endless possibilities, yet coupled with endless danger. I became anxious. I became tired. I became hungry. Every step I took became harder than the last, jumping from jagged rocky step to step, or pulling myself through thick forest - it all became debilitating, and I was sure that I couldn’t go on.
Keons approached as the sun rose one morning. I wasn’t scared. I was relieved. After all that he had taught me, his presence was the most comforting moment that I had in days, and I couldn’t help but be happy to see him. In true Keons fashion, he wrapped his arms around me, then put his hands under my face, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Clancy, child, let’s go home.”
I’ve been here for a few weeks now, and while the routines of this world are comforting, and certainly easier than life out there, my mind keeps bouncing between the two places.
Which one is home? Are the bishops protecting us, and the torches upon the hilltops dangerous? Or is it the other way around? My dreams pull me from world to world, and I feel lost in between all of it.
There is still so much I do not understand.

• Clancy

022 03MOON 16
Larger map of trench including voldsoy
024 02MOON 09
__ev-i-D__ence.jpeg typed and says signed but isn’t
I'm not as scared as I used to be. Their mystery begins to fade as a method to defeat them becomes more clear. I no longer feel powerless. I can outsmart them. This new power of psychokinesis worked, and I believe it can work again. I stand here, looking down at the line where the water meets the sand - a starting line. All the while, knowing there is a finish line across the Strait. Their compass lies, but mine remains true. I've left embers of inspiration, I only hope whatever spark was left has grown to a torch, and together we create an inferno
[SIGNED] - Clancy
CLASS 2:
988 06MOON 18
cla_ncy-98806MOON_18_-1 jpg typed signed
CLANCY_S JOURNAL
The perplexities of the Dema horizon didn't occur to me until my ninth year. It was then that I began to contemplate the existential, and decide what type of impression I wanted my life to make. Naturally, to fuel my hope, I looked out upon the distance of the land that had cultivated me, only this time with a new awareness of the obstruction that my youthful ignorance had allowed me to overlook. Was it there the whole time? How had I not seen something so obvious? I am reminded of the moment daily, as the idealization directly collides with a unique hope for my own future. As a child, I looked upon Dema with wonder, today, I am wrought with frustration, as I spend each day squinting for a glimpse of the top of the looming wall that has kept us here. It was upon my ninth year that I learned that Dema wasn’t my home. This village, after all of this time, was my trap.
Before I became realized, I had deep affection for Dema. There was a wonderful structure to the city that put my cares to rest. Streets and locations were dependable, and the responsibilities of the day seemed to be accomplished with minimal effort. Once a task was taught and understood, we delighted in our ability to complete our obligations timely, and felt secure in knowing tomorrow’s duties would be accomplished with the same efficiency. We all worked to represent our bishop with honor, and knew that each inhabitant of our region had a like-minded dedication to consistency.
Keons embodied the spirit of this dedication. Of Dema’s nine bishops, Keons was revered as unwavering and forthright, possessing the ability to achieve focus that was rare for most on our region. We all admired him, and felt honored to be inhabitants his region. While we had heard legend of the ruthlessness of other bishops, Keons possessed a stoic demeanor unlike anyone I had ever met, and we were all proud to serve.

• Clancy

988 12MOON 01
ba_dge jpg
FPE citation
017 07MOON 17
Picture - trench - bandits
018 07 MOON 05
This entry is another letter from Clancy. The white squares on the outer edges of the image correspond to the letters "WAKE UP". It is titled _he_a_vy_.jpg typed, inverted, signed
They’re asleep. The night took forever to arrive, and now we’re almost
ready. We’ve studied the watchers and know that there’s no chance that
we can step through unnoticed. So, instead of trying to hide
ourselves, we’ll make sure that all of us are noticed. It’s been one
year since the last convocation, and tomorrow’s Annual Assemblage of
Glorified will be the biggest spectacle this concrete coffin of a city
has seen all year. If we time it right, we’ll divert the attention of
the watchers and finally take the step though. We’ve had no contact,
but we’re hoping the other side will be able to find a way in. We’re
not sure of the breach location, but we are willing to risk being
smeared in order to find it. We know that we must go lower, and wait
for the torches. They’ve never seen anything quite like this, and by
morning, everything will be different. I’m terrified and excited, all
at the same time. They don’t control us.

• Clancy

022 03MOON 18
1619250308151109140519-Ø-919.jpg made me a weapon written, signed
What is this thing? This device? This gift? Some sort of neurological connection or expansion. Psychokinetic weapon?
This is absurd.
Why was this given to me? Why am I the only one that can weild it? Was this the reason that I survived? My mind is racing as I wait here on the rocks - staring off into the darkness. Waiting for our torches to be mirrored - the signal he told me to wait for.
It feels oddly familiar. Not the spikes in my hand, but the power it harnesses, I've felt it before. Is this also the source of those rumors I heard in the dark corners of the city? Legends and stories that I assumed were myth, inspired by children's nightmares - tales of what the bishops would use the bodies for. Those "honorable" citizens who acheived The Glorious Gone - referred to as available vessels.
It all begins to make sense.
The episodes I would have: the blood red vision, my dreams of flying, the out of body account of the rider in the river, the decaying hosts of the television show, the robed figures that commanded the doomed ship...
Had we all been "seized" by the bishops using this same technique? Is this where their power comes from? Are they immortal, or just feeding off the next body, giving their hosts a brief second-life? I am in my original life, why am I available to this control?
This whole time I thought I was battling my inner self. Was I actually under assault for something else? someONE else?
This small eerie island has made me a weapon. We both believe that we can use it to change the momentum of this war. Now, we must return to the mainland where they should be there to recieve is. We will destroy and rebuild. Though it's been years since he last spoke with them, I hope they have not lost faith in The Torchbearers plan.
But how could any of this have been planned?

• Clancy

CLASS 3:
009 12MOON 29
unnamed-(1).jpg
d_e_ath__eat_erz
Vultures on wall
011 07MOON 08
se__elf picture of kid
017 07MOON 07
017_07MOON_07 typed signed
To refer to Dema as m[y] home has never felt accurate. Dema, t[o] me, has simply been the place that I’ve existed, or, the ‘slot’ they’ve put me in. I’ve heard stories abo[u]t the ide[a] of “home,” and its depiction has always seemed warm f[r]om the storyt[e]llers’s de[s]cription. [T]here was a romant[i]c ownership of the p[l]ace they inhabited that I admired, but cou[l]d never relate to. Thi[s] place, my p[l]ace, however, s[e]ems devoid of the romance and wond[e]r that the old stories tell. But somewhere between the iron order and infallible [p]recis[i]on of Dema, a hum of wo[n]der exists. It’s this quiet wonder that my mind tends to [g]ets lost in. This hope of discovery alone has birthed a new version of myself; A better version, I hope, that will find a way to experience what’s beyond these colossal walls.

• Clancy

018 07 MOON 01
I.jpg vulture gif turning head (actual dates?)
018 07MOON 06
_they_ca_ntseeFCE300.gif torch gif
022 03MOON 17
is-ø-lat-ed.jpg written, signed
I haven’t had the ability to write for what seems like a lifetime. This deprivation is what weighed on me the most. Not the lack of food, or the change of scenery - they wouldn’t let me write anything down.
Well, at least not without them present …
I remember that day vividly. First, they let me out. Even though the hallway was still gray and drab, the new experience was a shock to my system - significantly different than usual captivity. I tried to match the rhythm of the nameless guard’s footsteps as we echoed down the long corridor. I followed close behind, as if I had no choice. Cold concrete encapsulated us and seemed to cast a spill of synthetic calmness. Obedience.
We arrived at a blue door. It was an odd contrast to this concrete maze. As I went through the doorway, I found myself in another typical gray Dema room. The only difference was who was waiting for me.
Four of them. Three of them were unknown to me, but one was clearly Keons. I knew his voice
They proposed an idea. A television show - or whatever it was. I had no idea that I was known outside of my cell, but they informed me that I had garnered notoriety for my schemes and outbursts. They wanted to use my face for the benefit of the city. They handed me a pen - a familiar instrument. Yet, they must be present when I use it. They wanted to manage my imagination and vision. Although shackled, at least I could create again.
Thus began the sessions.
Everyday my cell door would open. I followed the guard down the familiar hall, through the blue door, to sit down at the desk and chair. My designated creative space - perfectly centered under their watchful eye. Sometimes three, sometimes eight - not once were all nine present. He was never there. I would have felt it if he was.
At the end of the session, Keons would take my pen, gather my writings, and send me back. This went on for months.
What were we creating? I wasn’t sure. A variety show with songs and set pieces? Were the rulers of this stifled city actually attempting entertainment for its people? Everything I created had to be “for the benefit of the citizens of Dema” a phrase I heard often. I didn’t question them - I was happy to be out of my cell - and putting words to paper.
On the final day, I wrote the last line, I was asked to name it? The question caught me off guard. This seemed like a decision they would make.
Show Day: They dressed me up and asked me to smile a poor attempt at hiding my sleep deprivation. It was all so colorful, as if compensating for the grayness of the city.
It was a blur. Before I knew it, it was over, and I was back in my cell. I can only remember fragments - only blurred hallucinations of color and chaos - like a dream. The confusion of it all hangs overhead. What was it all for?
… but it wasn’t over
I guess it went well enough for them to request more of me. I was useful to Dema, and my creativity was exploited in new forms - They wanted me to be the entertainment at the Annual Assemblage of the Glorified - a performance at sea for the premiere citizens of Dema.
I knew those weren’t the real bishops on that ship.
I’ll quicken the entry - I need to keep up with the Torchbearer.
During the performance, we were attacked by something in the water. I don’t know what possessed the creature to attack, but it was odd, and felt incredibly intentional. Many lost their lives in the attack, and I was thrashed through the bitter cold waves, yet somehow survived. Did this icy cold preserve me? Why was I spared? I am still so cold as I write.
This place feels foreign - nothing like Trench. From the frigid sea, the air here is somehow colder than the water that surrounds it. I have a strange feeling that this island will provide answers.
I must go.

• Clancy

024 02MOON 28
__cla_im00FFFF letter, typed not signed
I found a way in. A way they'll never suspect, and a way they'll never understand. Everything about our cause is so hard for them to understand, but so close to the hearts of the glowing resistance. I can reach them all. I can recruit everyone with eyes that see beyond the horizon. I can teach them. They can learn what I've learned, and fly by all of the constructs Dema has placed in front of them. We will take it back.
CLASS 4:
017 02MOON 12
_ .jpg picture of yellow lines to mark “we are banditos” in next letter and numbers that spell trench
018 07MOON 01
e_sr_eve_r.jpg typed/ lines taped together signed
A lifeless light surrounds us each night. Never could I imagine that something so luminous could feel so dark. It’s this glow that reminds us of the dreamless existence we’ve been sentenced to. But what I call a sentence, others accept as normalcy. How did they so efficiently eradicate the dreams within us? When the bishops instituted Vialism as mandate, they effectively reversed the hope that many arrived with.
Am I the only one who realizes that we’ve been lied to? Am I the only one not afraid of the notion that the nine have hijacked our trust, and extinguished the hope that once motivated our existence? We used to close our eyes and picture a better life, now this city is full of dry eyes caught in a trance of obedience, devoid of any trace of an identity. The only significant light I’ve seen has been in the eyes of those smeared - such a curious sight, to see bright eyes strangled by the darkness of bishop hands. As their penance fades, so dims their memory of something more. My hope of something more is all I have in this rigid tomb, and I will not let it die.

• Clancy

018 07MOON 08
2_1_2.gif inverse jumpsuit pic that matches shape of letter from 018 07moon08
022 03MOON 18
W-eap-@on.jpg image of psychokinesis / seize Keons
CLASS 5:
013 01MOON 08
_ti_su_p map of dema compass missing
_ti_su_p.png sev_ering__tiez 3 blanks
018 07MOON 05
_o__ut_.gif landscape
018 07MOON 18
Unalone.gif letter written and signed
I can’t believe what I just saw. I'm still trying to understand. This whole time I was sure I was all alone - a single soul in this vast unknown world. But a few days into this trek, I looked down to see a figure headed the same way I was. I’ve tucked myself in these caves and crevices, trying my best to keep hidden, but he was out in the open, making his exhausted journey right down the middle of Trench. I was curious enough to follow alongside the path with him. He seemed unaffected by the fear of the unknown - the fear that tends to cripple me. To him, the terrain seemed familiar, as if he had been out here before.
While lost in my curiosity, they appeared. I had heard about them back in Dema, but to my knowledge, the stories were merely myth. Ten, twenty, and then what seemed to be a hundred Banditos appeared upon the cliff, all looking down at him. He only stopped for a moment to look back up at them, and then continued on his way. His energy changed, and I wasn’t sure if he was frightened or encouraged by their ominous presence.
They warned him of what was about to come.
It was a blur. First seeing the figure, then the Banditos, only to now have my eyes opened to the oncoming Bishop upon a white horse drawing closer in the distance.
The figure halted, and waited. When the Bishop stopped, I was sure he looked up, directly at me, so I hid deeper back in a cave. The presence of the robed rider seemed to paralyze the man. He stood still as he was approached, powerless as the outstretched hands smeared his neck. I had never seen a Bishop possess power like this. Keons had always seemed gentle and warm - this Bishop, at least out here, seemed like something else.
So I ran, and I’ve been running for as long as my legs and lungs can handle. Maybe this note will be my proof that what I witnessed was not a dream. A million questions race through my brain. Am I not the only one traveling through Trench?
I’ll travel a little further, and maybe I’ll get a moment of rest tonight. I may have made a mistake, leaving. This spot, between two places, is beginning to feel like an endless and hopeless abyss. At least Dema is a place that I know, and at times like this, I miss a lot about what I know. This will all be much tougher than I imagined. Nothing out here is familiar. I’ve witnessed the presence of others for the first time today, and I feel more alone than ever. Cover me.

• Clancy

024 02MOON 25
_maniac_Clay typed letter, not signed
These campfires feel like home, as I stare deeply into them, finding more and more clarity. They tried to tell us we were different. But the flame that burns inside of me is the same fire I've found on the hilltops of Trench. The Banditos have lived their rebellion, and a resistance is growing inside the concrete walls - one powerful enough to burn out all of the stale teachings, and usher in true hope and a path to actual life. We march in the morning. The revolution shall arrive with the sun.