_ | \ | \ | | \ __ | |\ \ __ _____________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ _____________ | ___________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ ___________ | | | _/_/_____ | | > > _/_/_____ | | | | /________/ | | / / /________/ | | | | | | / / | | | | | |/ / | | | | | | / | | | | | / | | | | |_/ | | | | | | | | c o m m u n i c a t i o n s | | | |________________________________________________________________| | |____________________________________________________________________| ...presents... Possibilities by Obscure Images >>> a cDc publication.......1994 <<< -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc- ____ _ ____ _ ____ _ ____ _ ____ |____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____| The small room was almost claustrophobic with the clutter of living. Terry wasn't concerned with it; she was comfortable there. The room held a smell of incense and stale cigarettes from months of alternating the burning of the two substances. Her nerves were jangled from a long hard week, a week of uncertainty and despair. Since graduating from college, she'd been on her own. She'd been paying the rent on the one room apartment from savings and a lousy part time job in a hippie clothing store. It was a bit more than that, though. New Age crystals and pseudo-Oriental religious tracts filled the spaces that the tie-dye products weren't. She'd spent all week going to interviews and applying for more jobs than she cared to remember. All of the places wanted experience, and being fresh out of college, she didn't have any of that. It used to be that you could get experience fairly easy, but these days there were more than enough people with experience looking for jobs. She dropped herself down on the lumpy futon that she had thought would be great to sleep on sometime in the distant past. She was staring at the ceiling, looking at the dirty white paint and the outdated fixture that held a single low-wattage light bulb. She was too wired from the shitty week and the awful looking prospects for the future to get any sleep, so she tossed and turned trying to get comfortable. She soon remembered the tape some guy had given her that afternoon. The guy was really strange, she thought, as he wandered around the store earlier in the day. He was tall and overweight, with long brown stringy hair and a scruffy beard. He was wearing a dirty old trench coat, but underneath the coat he was dressed completely in black. He stopped at a rack here and there, muttering to himself. She wondered what a person that looked like him would be doing in a store full of color and nostalgic capitalism. He looked like he belonged in some old film, one that nobody had ever seen. He eventually made his way over to the checkout counter were Terry was standing. Instead of moving onward, he stopped to look at her; his prying brown eyes, amplified by the thick black glasses, digging into her own. Strangely enough, she didn't feel frightened by the probing eyes, just a little awkward. "Can I help you?" she asked, somewhat haltingly. "No, I don't think so," he said. "I think I can help you though." "What do you mean, help me?" she questioned, beginning to feel nervous. "You know what I mean. Take this and listen to it later after reading the instructions on the inside of the case," he stated, handing her a cassette tape. "What is it?" "You'll see," he said, smiling kindly. "I promise you it'll help." He gave her a final grin and then walked out the door, and then down the street, out of her sight. She was confused by the whole event, but before she had a chance to examine the tape, a crowd of Birkenstocks flip-flopped through the door, demanding tie-dye and pretty baubles. Reaching off of the futon, she grabbed her purse and pulled out the tape. She removed the paper that the tape box was wrapped in, to find a note taped to the case. It read: "Terry - You opened the package, that's the first step. The next step is for you to put the tape into your tape deck. Once you do that, dig out the headphones and put them on your head. Before you push Play, let me explain what you will hear. First there will be a series of droning oscillating tones that will seem to pulse inside your head. When you feel relaxed and drowsy, don't panic, the tones are designed for that. Next, on top of the tones there will be a loop of a word or phrase. This loop is optimized for your particular mind. I know you're asking yourself how I know these things, but don't worry about that, you'll find out soon enough. You should get yourself ready for this tape. Go to the bathroom, dress in something loose, or nothing at all. So long as it isn't constraining, it's ok. Turn off the lights and lay down on your futon (they're awful, I have one too) and press Play. You'll have a few seconds to get settled down before the tones start, so try and relax and let your mind open to the sounds. Ok, enough of my ranting, it's time to start. Oh yeah, my name is Paul. Good luck, and good life. -paul023 E.L.F." "This is too fucking weird to believe," thought Terry, as she hunted around the room for the headphones. "What do I have to lose," her mind wandered, as she popped the tape into her deck and got up to go to the bathroom. She came out of the bathroom, stood in front of the futon and thought, "Nothing constrictive, eh? I wonder if this guy is watching me from somewhere, trying to get me naked. Hmmmm, oh hell, if he's gone through all this trouble just to see me naked I might as well oblige, just for laughs." She stripped off her clothes and laid down on the futon again, flipped the light off, and pressed the Play button on the tape deck. The tones began. Not much else seemed to be happening at first, but soon she felt her tension slipping away, and a feeling of warm pleasure swept over her. Slowly the words began to phase in. It was one word repeating over and over again. As the loop went around a few more times, the words seemed to be changing, as did the tones underneath the words. She thought her eyes were closed, but she couldn't tell any more. The dim vision of the room faded away and was replaced by a fuzzy group of objects in vivid colors, some of which were moving. They were all beginning to take shape and come into focus. Terry walked along the wooded path in the state preserve. The trail was seldom used and was long overgrown with long grasses and sharp weeds. The sun was up, but very little of the light fell on the path. She hummed a tune of her own creation as she made her way through the sensuous woods to a destination she did not know. A bird in a nearby tree chirped happily to itself. The twigs and rigid weeds on the path made a crackling sound as she stepped on them, unaware of their existence. Terry's mind was swimming in the sea of sullen warmth that surrounded her. The musky smell of decaying leaves made her feel a bit heady, feeling a joy that was almost out of place this woods. It was by pure chance that she had found the trail that she was walking on. She was walking along one of the other trails in the woods when she happened to notice something out of the corner of her eye. When she looked straight on she noticed the little path that she would have otherwise ignored. She kept walking along the path, which was beginning to twist and turn with a greater frequency. A slight left slant, then a short right slant, all at constant intervals. Terry didnt seem to notice the changes in the path. She just kept moving, a pleasant feeling of tension building in her the further she walked. The thoughts began to stir within the confines of her mind. Questions, answers, patterns, disorder, all swirling around her brain with a greater velocity. Where would she be tomorrow? Who would she love? Where was she going to get money to live? All the questions she had ever asked, and more that she may have never conjectured. There was a light of high intensity coming up on the path ahead, so she hurried along the path with the tension building. At the end of the path she was dazzled by the light, and her mind exploded in a rapture of such intensity that she was knocked to the ground. Her body had to rest for a few moments before she dared to open her eyes, but when she did she was startled by the sight before her. The path continued out from the forest to the middle of a huge field. The sunlight was brighter than she could ever remember it being. The colors were vivid to the point of surrealism. She picked herself up and continued on the path, making her way to the end of the trail, compelled by a force of will she didn't understand. She stepped into the circle at the end of the trail and looked at herself. She was shimmering; her body stripped of clothing and emitting light flashes of colors she had never seen before. The meadow she was standing in was resonating to the colors coming from her body. The colors began flashing faster and faster, until Terry noticed that the meadow had disappeared, the entire meadow other than the circle she stood in. In its place were an infinite number of spinning mandalas, all interconnected by strands of causality. Despite the alien nature of the surroundings, she recognized every one of the unique mandalas as symbols of her soul. She looked back down at her body once again to find that it was no longer there. There was only a small silver sphere with causal strands reaching out of every available location on the surface. She was confused. At that time a voice spoke to her from all directions. "Don't worry, there is nothing wrong. The illusion has been stripped down to the barest essentials for your comprehension, although those are not really necessary either," the voice intoned. "Are you God?" she asked. The voice chuckled and replied, "No, I'm not God, I'm you, and everyone and everything else." "Doesn't that make you God?" "No, it doesn't, not by any means. Let me explain. I make no choices, I have no influence over you. I don't even exist except for the fact that you created me." "What are you then?" "I'm reality, I'm possibility. I am the collapsing wave. That's all, nothing more. Possibility? Yes, I am defined by every action made by anyone at any time, I am also every possible outcome for every event. Everything is possible, nothing is forbidden," the voice said, fading away. Terry's mind was spinning. The information was overwhelming. The answers were breeding more questions, forming a neon labyrinth in her mind. There were no strings attached, nothing to guide her back out of the glowing maze. Her synapses fired at accelerated rates as she moved further along the maze. Climbing over the obstacles, she whisked by Zen koans strewn amongst the abstract mathematics of the cognition. She closed her eyes and pushed at the barriers of understanding. Possibility, nearly infinite choices, all equally valid for this one moment outside of time and space. She felt the tugging of a mind far away, pulling her away from the end, from the truth. She diverted some of her attention, shoved the mind away, and continued onward. She gained momentum as she rounded the last turn, her soul racing down the last straight path. She reached the end and she understood. She brought her body back, and looked at the still swirling mandalas of possibility. Seeing a small golden apple with the letter "K" inscribed onto its surface, she reached out and took the apple into her hand. The apple sunk into her skin, and she felt the meadow come back around her. There was a smile on her face as she made her way back up the trail, her nude form emitting a soft golden light. Her eyes opened to the golden light of the sun creeping into her room through the window over her futon. She saw the golden light that was draped over her body and felt like a goddess. She got up and went into the bathroom to look at herself. She hadn't felt so good in the morning since she was a kid. She studied herself in the mirror, trying to see a difference. Same face, same breasts, same stomach, same legs... yet there was something that seemed different. She shrugged the feeling off and took a shower to get herself ready for work. She walked into work exactly on time. It was the first time she hadn't been late for work in quite a while. The day dragged onward, but Terry didn't seem to mind as much as usual. Around quitting time, the man who gave her the tape came into the store. He didn't bother himself by wandering around the store, instead coming straight up to the counter. "You listened to the tape, I see," he said, smiling. "Yeah, I did. It was... incredible," she said with a faint smile. "I'm happy you listened to it. You passed the test. You have the job." "What job? I don't remember anything about a job." He handed her a gold-colored business card and said, "You can start right now." "Start what?" she asked, still perplexed. "You'll see. Let's go get something to eat," said Paul, motioning to the door. Terry closed up the shop a little early and walked off to dinner with her new boss. He didn't mention what her job was exactly; he just told her that she'd know what it was when it was time. Later that night, laying in bed, she realized what her job was going to be. She smiled and then fell asleep. _______ __________________________________________________________________ / _ _ \|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.....806/794-1842| ((___)) |Cool Beans!..........415/648-PUNK|Polka AE {PW:KILL}..806/794-4362| [ x x ] |Metalland Southwest..713/579-2276|ATDT East...........617/350-STIF| \ / |The Works............617/861-8976|Ripco ][............312/528-5020| (' ') | Save yourself! Go outside! DO SOMETHING! | (U) |==================================================================| .ooM |Copyright (c) 1994 cDc communications and Obscure Images. | \_______/|All Rights Reserved. 11/01/1994-#283| ÿÿ