chhhris · March 15, 2019 21:51
diff --git a/mind_games_poem.txt b/mind_games_poem.txt
 Foreward

   "If it sounds to you like everything that could go wrong is going wrong, then I would have to agree.

 "Do you know what it is? What’s causing all this misery and suffering?

 "I know now, but for a long time, I had no idea why my luck had turned. Why my deepest and darkest fears had manifested themselves into real life. 

 "For a long time, I thought I was alone. Of course by now, I know I am not alone. And other people who thought they were alone, now realize the truth as well. 

 "This descent into madness. I know what caused it. How the computer virus was able to spread itself from the far reaches of the Internet into the core of our brains. But I still haven’t figured out his motive. Why did he set out to create such a virus? What psychological trauma fuels this national nightmare? 

 "Was it for the glory? Was it twisted faith? Crusading in the name of god against a sinful foe? 

 "Or was it just the devil finding his most capable pair of hands yet? 

 "Whatever the motivation, the end result is a nation of people — brothers and sons, fathers, daughters and mothers, sisters, co-workers, teammates, soldiers, artists and entrepreneurs, friends and lovers — all fastidiously covering their laptop cameras with masking tape. Nest cams laying crushed in landfills. Smartphone cameras painted over with Sharpies.  Any lens connected to a network, blacked out. 

 "The lives of those we lost in order to make it even this far; their deaths will be honored for generations to come.

 "Thank you 🙏 for reading this far. There is more to come, and all will eventually be revealed. For now, I must pause to rest."

 * * *

 Outline for The Heroine
 Episode I of II or III 

 "Mind Games"

 Playlist =
 [
  "Heaven Only Knows" by Bob Moses,
  "Sorrow Doesn't Resurrect" by Ark Patrol,
  "Levo" by Recondite                         (cowbell),
  "Rising Water" by Andrew Bird               (accordian),
                                              (bagpipe),
                                              (iPhone alarm),
                                              (heartbeat),
                                              (machine gun fire),
  "The Front" by Conor Walsh,
  "Frozen Heart" by Frozen soundtrack,
  "Serious Mood" by Point Point, Pyramid      (computer sounds),
 ]


 First day. She/her. Footsteps. 

 One footstep after another. Courageous. 
 Her eyes, narrowed. 
 Sharpening her focus on the world.

 High school bag. The other kids, students. Friends.

 She loses herself in Computer Science class. 
 Most of her time spent in a virtual reality tournament sponsored by Stanford University, NASA, MIT and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The purpose of the tournament is to provide a meritocratic competition to attract and identify the most exceptional minds from around the world. 

 After her friends and fellow gamers in the virtual reality world start acting weirder and weirder, she begins to suspect that they have been hacked. That a virus has infected everyone’s brains. At this point in the near future, virtual reality games are so lifelike, our brains so easily tricked into thinking the digital world more real than the biological world. 

 (Remember how if you died in The Matrix, you were dead IRL!?)

 All her fears take form. All the memes. All the insecurities. 

 They rush her face. Her heart is pounding; will she survive the attack unscathed?

 What scars will the attackers leave behind?

 ~~

 Meanwhile, inside the school.

 Drama teacher strung up on the blackboard like Jesus. “Save me, please!” he pleads in my direction. 

 What’s up with everyone else in the other classrooms?

 The other kids are attacking each other like Lord of the Flies. 

 Next door a classroom full of dogs snarling attacking each other to shreds. Gnashing of white teeth, blood splattering, chunks of fur-lined skin dripping crimson goo.  

 Open another door and a white trash weirdo / depressed lone wolf is wielding an AR-15. Mowing down dozens of innocent bystanders. Pumping fully-automatic assault rifle bullets into kids, these people are my friends! He points the gun in my direction.

 Whoops! I slam the door. This is getting heavy!

 [Author’s note: 

 What other fears?

 Financial insecurity. My shoulders hunched like a too-heavy backpack.

 All the people I love most, dying to me over the phone. 

 My mom dying. My dad dying. My wife dying. My kids dying. My dog dying. My brother dying. My friends, dying. The world dying. The universe dying. 

 Btw, where did the universe come from in the first place!?

 End of Author’s note.]

 Anyway, all the fears come to life. The kid realizes that life wouldn’t dirty dog her like that, there must be a flaw in the design; who designed it? 

 If this is not real life, what is it? 

 It is a simulation. Virtual reality. She’d been losing herself in the computer for days at a time. 

 Soon she realized that her mind had lost control; who controlled it?

 Was it a malignant force, the devil himself, did such a thing as evil exist? Or was there a mundane explanation.

 The most mundane explanation is probably right, she thought. Even when everything in your life is completely fucked, life is most likely preferable to being dead. (Unless you prefer to be dead, in which case, you guys! So sad.)

 How to end this madness? The kid put on her noise-canceling Beats headphones and blasted Deltron 3030. 

 Ran down the back stairs to the infrastructure closet. Opened the electric panel and hit the master breaker. The lights and humming from the central air conditioner — cease. 

 Hop to the nearest computer lab. Jumped into the 8x GPU rig she had built for herself. It was connected to a backup hybrid power source of solar panels and gas generation. With the school’s electrical system cut off, she would harness the superior compute and network power of her rig. 

 Hacked into nearby cell towers. Shut them off. She needed to get everyone off their phones!

 Immediately. Brick everyone’s phones. Time is of the essence. 

 The satellites scanning overhead in the earth’s outer atmosphere were a bit beyond her reach. If she and the others stayed inside, their cell signals would be faint enough; they should be protected enough, for the time being, from the penetrating algorithm. The hacker’s virus flows through the network, beamed through the satellite’s signal, which connected to our smart phones, boring directly into our minds, through our phone addiction. Our wearables: internet connected devices touching us, radiating energy-waves into our central nervous systems. 

 Her hack to repell the hackers is successful. Stillness. 

 Time slows back down to normal (or speeds up, depending on where you’re at). She inhales deeply, exhales audibly. 

 ~~

 Gradually everyone else recovers from their malaise. They had been suffering just like our protagonist. Except not as intensely because they did not share her intensity for life. 

 Back at home. Sunset. Family is happy. The kid wowed everyone by single-handily beating back the virus. Saving the entire school is no small feat!

 Her dad beams. 

 Eleven black suburbans pull up to the house. Stern gray suits and black sunglasses approach the family. 

 “The girl is coming with us.”

 “WTF!? Why!?”

 “She destroyed school property. When she cut the power and cell towers, she put people’s lives in danger by disabling the 911 system.”

 Her first thought: Something doesn’t compute. 

 The government agents whisk the kid into the black shiny SUVs. 

 “Am I being renditioned?” she asks. The men and one woman ignore her. 

 They approach a rocky shore. Black water. Rough white froth of the waves. A large metallic gray boat offshore. 

 “You going to put me on a boat and do me like you did Osama?” She jokes when she’s nervous.

 “Listen kid, we need your help.”

 Intrigued. “How can I help you?”

 “The attack on your school was not an isolated event. We’re seeing attacks like that all over the country.”

 The kid’s stomach turns. It’s even bigger than she feared. “Go on.”

 “We’re putting together a team. We want you to be on it. This is POTUS’s number one priority right now. Our entire country needs your help.” 

 To be continued...
	Foreward

	"If it sounds to you like everything that could go wrong is going wrong, then I would have to agree.

	"Do you know what it is? What’s causing all this misery and suffering?

	"I know now, but for a long time, I had no idea why my luck had turned. Why my deepest and darkest fears had manifested themselves into real life.

	"For a long time, I thought I was alone. Of course by now, I know I am not alone. And other people who thought they were alone, now realize the truth as well.

	"This descent into madness. I know what caused it. How the computer virus was able to spread itself from the far reaches of the Internet into the core of our brains. But I still haven’t figured out his motive. Why did he set out to create such a virus? What psychological trauma fuels this national nightmare?

	"Was it for the glory? Was it twisted faith? Crusading in the name of god against a sinful foe?

	"Or was it just the devil finding his most capable pair of hands yet?

	"Whatever the motivation, the end result is a nation of people — brothers and sons, fathers, daughters and mothers, sisters, co-workers, teammates, soldiers, artists and entrepreneurs, friends and lovers — all fastidiously covering their laptop cameras with masking tape. Nest cams laying crushed in landfills. Smartphone cameras painted over with Sharpies. Any lens connected to a network, blacked out.

	"The lives of those we lost in order to make it even this far; their deaths will be honored for generations to come.

	"Thank you 🙏 for reading this far. There is more to come, and all will eventually be revealed. For now, I must pause to rest."

	* * *

	Outline for The Heroine
	Episode I of II or III

	"Mind Games"

	Playlist =
	[
	"Heaven Only Knows" by Bob Moses,
	"Sorrow Doesn't Resurrect" by Ark Patrol,
	"Levo" by Recondite (cowbell),
	"Rising Water" by Andrew Bird (accordian),
	(bagpipe),
	(iPhone alarm),
	(heartbeat),
	(machine gun fire),
	"The Front" by Conor Walsh,
	"Frozen Heart" by Frozen soundtrack,
	"Serious Mood" by Point Point, Pyramid (computer sounds),
	]


	First day. She/her. Footsteps.

	One footstep after another. Courageous.
	Her eyes, narrowed.
	Sharpening her focus on the world.

	High school bag. The other kids, students. Friends.

	She loses herself in Computer Science class.
	Most of her time spent in a virtual reality tournament sponsored by Stanford University, NASA, MIT and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The purpose of the tournament is to provide a meritocratic competition to attract and identify the most exceptional minds from around the world.

	After her friends and fellow gamers in the virtual reality world start acting weirder and weirder, she begins to suspect that they have been hacked. That a virus has infected everyone’s brains. At this point in the near future, virtual reality games are so lifelike, our brains so easily tricked into thinking the digital world more real than the biological world.

	(Remember how if you died in The Matrix, you were dead IRL!?)

	All her fears take form. All the memes. All the insecurities.

	They rush her face. Her heart is pounding; will she survive the attack unscathed?

	What scars will the attackers leave behind?

	~~

	Meanwhile, inside the school.

	Drama teacher strung up on the blackboard like Jesus. “Save me, please!” he pleads in my direction.

	What’s up with everyone else in the other classrooms?

	The other kids are attacking each other like Lord of the Flies.

	Next door a classroom full of dogs snarling attacking each other to shreds. Gnashing of white teeth, blood splattering, chunks of fur-lined skin dripping crimson goo.

	Open another door and a white trash weirdo / depressed lone wolf is wielding an AR-15. Mowing down dozens of innocent bystanders. Pumping fully-automatic assault rifle bullets into kids, these people are my friends! He points the gun in my direction.

	Whoops! I slam the door. This is getting heavy!

	[Author’s note:

	What other fears?

	Financial insecurity. My shoulders hunched like a too-heavy backpack.

	All the people I love most, dying to me over the phone.

	My mom dying. My dad dying. My wife dying. My kids dying. My dog dying. My brother dying. My friends, dying. The world dying. The universe dying.

	Btw, where did the universe come from in the first place!?

	End of Author’s note.]

	Anyway, all the fears come to life. The kid realizes that life wouldn’t dirty dog her like that, there must be a flaw in the design; who designed it?

	If this is not real life, what is it?

	It is a simulation. Virtual reality. She’d been losing herself in the computer for days at a time.

	Soon she realized that her mind had lost control; who controlled it?

	Was it a malignant force, the devil himself, did such a thing as evil exist? Or was there a mundane explanation.

	The most mundane explanation is probably right, she thought. Even when everything in your life is completely fucked, life is most likely preferable to being dead. (Unless you prefer to be dead, in which case, you guys! So sad.)

	How to end this madness? The kid put on her noise-canceling Beats headphones and blasted Deltron 3030.

	Ran down the back stairs to the infrastructure closet. Opened the electric panel and hit the master breaker. The lights and humming from the central air conditioner — cease.

	Hop to the nearest computer lab. Jumped into the 8x GPU rig she had built for herself. It was connected to a backup hybrid power source of solar panels and gas generation. With the school’s electrical system cut off, she would harness the superior compute and network power of her rig.

	Hacked into nearby cell towers. Shut them off. She needed to get everyone off their phones!

	Immediately. Brick everyone’s phones. Time is of the essence.

	The satellites scanning overhead in the earth’s outer atmosphere were a bit beyond her reach. If she and the others stayed inside, their cell signals would be faint enough; they should be protected enough, for the time being, from the penetrating algorithm. The hacker’s virus flows through the network, beamed through the satellite’s signal, which connected to our smart phones, boring directly into our minds, through our phone addiction. Our wearables: internet connected devices touching us, radiating energy-waves into our central nervous systems.

	Her hack to repell the hackers is successful. Stillness.

	Time slows back down to normal (or speeds up, depending on where you’re at). She inhales deeply, exhales audibly.

	~~

	Gradually everyone else recovers from their malaise. They had been suffering just like our protagonist. Except not as intensely because they did not share her intensity for life.

	Back at home. Sunset. Family is happy. The kid wowed everyone by single-handily beating back the virus. Saving the entire school is no small feat!

	Her dad beams.

	Eleven black suburbans pull up to the house. Stern gray suits and black sunglasses approach the family.

	“The girl is coming with us.”

	“WTF!? Why!?”

	“She destroyed school property. When she cut the power and cell towers, she put people’s lives in danger by disabling the 911 system.”

	Her first thought: Something doesn’t compute.

	The government agents whisk the kid into the black shiny SUVs.

	“Am I being renditioned?” she asks. The men and one woman ignore her.

	They approach a rocky shore. Black water. Rough white froth of the waves. A large metallic gray boat offshore.

	“You going to put me on a boat and do me like you did Osama?” She jokes when she’s nervous.

	“Listen kid, we need your help.”

	Intrigued. “How can I help you?”

	“The attack on your school was not an isolated event. We’re seeing attacks like that all over the country.”

	The kid’s stomach turns. It’s even bigger than she feared. “Go on.”

	“We’re putting together a team. We want you to be on it. This is POTUS’s number one priority right now. Our entire country needs your help.”

	To be continued...