Ballard: The Visionary Entrepreneur’s Call for Wetware Computer Revolution
Worker Advocates, Scientists Question Wetware Ethics
CEO of Anesidora calls human workforce ‘burden of the past…wetware is the future of business’
Anesidora Acquisition of Ballard’s Pithos Approved
Famed Entrepreneur of Pithos In Coma After Collision
Darkness
Smell of rot
Feel of slime
Open my eyes
Eternal fire and thundering skies
Find myself standing alone
Fields of filth and flesh
Pools of poison and blood
Hills of garbage and bone
I am surrounded by everlasting trash and death
Blood pulp and sewage where I step
No roads
Hell?
Not Hell
Don’t believe in Hell
Shallow canal of vile waste
Manmade ways of dead and decaying
Plow trucks run the canal in haste
When I near they stop
Doors open and wait
I look inside
My stomach drop
Driver of meat and wire
They don’t speak
They don’t emote
They don’t tire
The trucks are the only way to leave the fields
Ferrymen of the River of Styx?
Not Hell
Not dead
Don’t believe
Dream? Nightmare?
Why can’t I wake up?
Canals to a city of ruin
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I am out of the plow
Streets full of filth
Streets empty of life
Trucks carrying garbage
Trucks carrying dead
Drivers of meat and wire
Someone Something comes out of a building
Mess of flesh and machine
Not a man
No face
No head
Walks like man
Carrying the dead
Dead thrown into truck
Abomination grabs me
I join the lifeless in a truck
Can’t crawl out
I’m taken to the factory
All trucks go to the factory
I’m dumped with garbage and death
Dead below me
The ceilings are alive
Long metal flesh arms descend
The claws arch and extend
Garbage taken
I writhe
Dead taken
I’m taken
Fall onto a belt for corpses
Ride the belt to the grinder
The grinder chews those before me
I head for the grinder
Stumble on dead to get away
Slip on dead to get away
Climb out and over the divide
Escape before the grinder
Explore the factory of shrieking machines
Moving belts of refuse
Separate metal from electronic
Separate electronic from rest
All is recycled
Necrotic pulp passes me
I follow the belt
Great hall of metal and flesh
Metal weld into chassis
Flesh print onto chassis
Electronics attach to flesh
Once was dead now alive
Vehicles fill with flesh
Electronics attach to flesh
Flesh and metal one
Once was dead now alive
All is recycled
The belt diverts
Follow to a cold room
Tubes of meat? cells? brain cells! artificial brain cells!
Familiar
Cells brew behind glass
Pulp filters
Serum flows
Serum grows the cell mass
All is recycled
Too familiar
All too familiar
Wires and cables on the floors
Wires and cables on the ceiling
Wires and cables on walls and doors
Something inside the room with me
It approaches me
With wire and cables it move
Looks like a person
Looks like a familiar person
More stirring in the room
All approach me
The Board
Machines in preserved skin
Camera and cable eyes
Servants of the System
Managers of the System’s molded slaves
The System was sold as the Dream
The Dream promised to serve life
The Dream promised to provide liberty
The Dream promised to help all pursue happiness
The Dream is a lie
The System serves its people The System serves itself
The System seeks growth over humanity
Ignorance feeds the System
Spite feeds the System
Strife feeds the System
Death feeds the System
The System is cancer
The Board knew when they sold the System
The Board sacrifices humanity to be one with the System
One with the System to reap the benefits
The Board is a parasite
The System’s foundation = Universally Compatible Artificial Organic Computer
My design
My shortsighted plans
My greed
My hubris
My selfishness
The Board wants to reward me
The Board wants me
My body to feed the System
My mind to grow the System
My progress without my humanity
I run
Chased by abominations
Chased into fields of oil and decay
Alarms scream not for me
My pursuers flee
The landscape trembles
Hills of refuse collapse
Giants each made from 50,000 bones
Hatred gazes upon me
Blood of toxic runoff
Bile of black oil
Eyes of fire
Undead children of a poisoned Earth
Devourers of flesh
Drinkers of blood
Fire setters of wheels and wells
Made from the victims of lies
Victims of deceit
Victims of abandonment neglect
I run
I’m caught
I’m lifted
I feel rows of teeth cut and crush
My blood escapes
My blood pours down the gullet ahead
Separated from myself my screams hush
How am I alive?
Feel the walls close in
Walls of snapping jaws
Walls of bile
Jaws rend
Jaws mangle
Bile burns
Innards tangle
My pain goes wild
I’m becoming one with my devourer
Feel everything
Hell?
Not Hell
Hell?
Don’t believe in Hell
Not Hell
Don’t believe in Hell
I don’t believe in Hell
Worse
This is worse
This is worse than Hell
Famed Entrepreneur Out of Month-Long Coma
Famed Entrepreneur Calls for Pithos Split with Anesidora
CEO of Anesidora says Ballard ‘not cut out for business, nor his own vision’
Blood Meet: Ballard Assaults CEO
Ballard Missing, on the Run
CEO of Anesidora Stable, Permanently Blind
First Tests of Pithos’s Universally Compatible Wetware Proves Positive
I saw it coming
I see it coming
How do I stop it?
There’s got to be something
I haven’t slept
Should I sleep?
What if I return to that place?
My head hurts
I need to remember
My body aches
Need to write from memory
My chest hurts
Write more to see what I missed
I’m missing something
It must be something
I’m missing something
It’s got to be something
I have to stop it
How do I stop it?