U. Kanad Chakrabarti
Delirium Ludens
Playing in vast worlds, lovingly rendered jungles of
cycads and palms. The swelling itchy racket of
cicadas. Teams self-organised on tribal loyalties:
Vermillion, Jade, Tanzanite. Belisarius’ hippodrome
refracted through cyberculture wars of the 2nd
millennium. Gaming non-stop, we genuinely happy.
Soylent, drink ’til yer sick, just press the green
paddle. No tipping the drone.
Estate of flow.
We play for pleasure and for points – points buy
swag. Bps swop to cutter…watch the daily fix,
floating expiration, minus 3% compounded 30/360 ….
basterds. Need a stochastic doc to price yer wallet.
Fancy some midcenturymodern … white flat on
cloudshroud Peak? Flat white, yellow cloud.
Harmonious march to sunlit uplands.
The ill game also. ’course thems is modified to
accommodate their specific defect. Dunyano its
un-patriotic not to play: Game In to Help Out !
Games change, depending on where you wuz lucky
’nuf to berth. Some oiks drone Daoism With
Marxist Characteristics; others genuflect & cross,
pining for a Third Rome; while the puce
Neo-Hayekite sputters: ‘The Commies are coming!
The Commies are coming!’
Bring out yer flag. Bring out yer flag. (rumbling tumbrel)
Outside the biological shield lies a Hobbesian, empty
land. Boiling, parched, sodden. Radiation-hardened
brazen meccas roam a Großraum of Warring States.
Uneventful, grinding struggle for resources.
Theatre-denial.
Dialectics through other means.
On (an)nihilistic caldera, rocks crumble under
golden sandals, yet fall we never do.
Whither Katechon?
For the true war is elsewhere, in swarmspace.
Toroidal reactors fund race dynamics over compute –
99.9999% guaranteed uptime – recursively
self-improving, asymptotically approaching the grail
but curiously immer stupid enough to need regular
intervention. Prisoner’s n-lemma: has one hit AGI?
Or does it dissimulate, evolution’s highest art? And
what about the programmers – friend or foe? Who
the fuck is in charge?
Meanwhile, the variarch dæmons do one thing
bloody well: fashion unputdownable games for the
dēmōs. After all, these loathsome vestiges of a
presingular past still generate such valuable daata,
so much compulsive weirdness, delectable fodder for
googol-parameter algos still seeking the Gödelian
outside. For now, just keep the wetware sloshed and
happy.
We are excess collateral, Newest of the Last Men …
the lucky sods, waiting it out in the Cooler Lats. All
the rest: dehydrated history or noshing on roots n’
nuts … mostly just hiding from sand-rays.
For the great irregular migrations are long over …
taklamakan all. Most soul traders eliminated, a few
paid off. Anyway, where to go? The North is
neurochipped, ethnically purified and finally absolved
of its antezarathustran errors: False Enlightenment
and Colonialgilt.
Damn, what did Hippo's Bishop say? 01100100 01110010 01100001 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110111 01100001 01101101 01110000 00101100 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01111001 01100101 01110100 • .
