The End

There's more to this story, but there won't be anyone around to tell it. The events of the last month have been chaotic, but I'll try and get down as much as I can before the bus leaves and I go beyond the last of the Wi-Fi into the electronic wasteland created by the march of the biometric robocops to document the culture that has sprung up in the absence of technology in South America. Yes, that sentence is correct. I'm going to go see what 1910 looked like, if it had IKEA furniture and Adidas tee's. I'm literally racing progress right now, as shipping containers full of iPhones and routers are en route from China as fast as football field sized boats can go, and they will wipe out a rare sociological phenomena when they get here. This needs to be documented. Are South Americans staring at the ground and kicking trash when they have a spare second, or are they staging impromptu participatory vaudeville scenes while they're waiting at bus stops? Has the widespread ability to make content led to a larger creative class? Or has a thing that twiddles every time new content is beamed into a person's pocket expanded the consumer segment of the culture? Is it both? How would I tell if it was both? Fuck, I need answers! Where's my bus?

I don't have a clue where Ovaltine Goose-Shredder is, and I don't know if I care anymore. Him being gone, me not being distracted by his artillery bombardment of maniac energy anymore, it's given me a second to think, and I can finally accept that he was usually fucking insane. The Great Lakes are still an unprecedented ecological disaster, and gunning down the half-dead critters that are trying to crawl out of the water is costing Canada a mammoth amount of resources that we still don't have a structure in place to produce. And then he admitted to creating the biometric robocops responsible for turning South America into the land technology abandoned. Jettisoning the military supply train by making the biorobos run on sunlight and tough as trees was a stroke of terrible, terrible geniusity. Goose-Shredder stopped sending me emails shortly after he admitted he was much further beyond the lunatic of a loose-cannon that everyone thought he was. His creative impulses never made a distinction between constructive and destructive consequences, and when you indulge and enable the destructive don't be surprised if no one wants you around anymore. He ran, he hid, but he will never stop himself from popping up to grab attention. In all likelyhood the American Military have tracked him down and now he's chained to a lab bench buried under the dark spot on the map that replaced the recently outed Area 51, shouting a half-absurd hypothesis at some stone-faced soldier guarding the door with an M16. Goose-Shredder's combination of intense creativity and flat amorality make him very valuable to the military establishment. Fuck, he has a slightly flawed self-sustaining biometric weapon on his resume, the only question is whether he's been kidnapped by the public or private sector. Neither option is good for us.

The Firestone acolytes 2000 mile walk was halted by the Preacher Firestone in Panama. 2.5 million dusty and ragged and damn tired followers lugged bags of Miracle Grow across a continent to gather where the isthmus of Panama is about 50km's wide, making the acolytes a human barrier about 50 \people deep stretched from one ocean to the other. The acolytes held position for three days before the first of the biorobos began appearing through the forest, at which point they tore into their Miracle Grow and dumped it in a 50 meter wide swath before retreating to the North American side to watch a bunch of plant-based biometric weapons presumably walk right through the plant food and then push them down and take their smartphones. On paper the acolytes counteraction was at best a minor hindrance before the biorobos continued on their way to sending North America back to the dark ages, but the most dire predictions had the fertilizer enhancement ending the biorobos pacifist streak by inducing a steroid-rage that would cause a red tide and subsequent algae bloom on each of Panama's coasts in the ensuing bloodbath. Honestly now, a fertilizer barrier for plants? I know it worked and it still sounds ridiculous.

Google has admitted that their dissection of a captive biometric robocop did yield some useful information. The biorobos physiology is known to selectively prevent transmission of substances through the bark, providing a barrier for toxins and allowing the absorption of nutrients or water through small flat shoots that grow through the bark like lime green blisters. After absorption the shoot hardens back into bark and the barrier is re-sealed. When the biorobos are absorbing concentrated nutrients like Miracle Grow the shoots go into hyper-growth and effectively root the biorobos to the ground, rendering them as mobile as a common tree. North America is now divided from South America by a forest of broccoli headed tree-people who will flail their arms at you if you take an internet-enabled device near them.

At this point the Firestone acolytes celebrated with awkward fist-pumps and the Preacher Firestone walked toward the newly created Forest of the Biometric Robocops and the rooted biorobos frustrated howls rammed eardrums in a wide radius. Everyone said there was something special about him, and they were right because the Preacher Firestone was the most realistic human analogue ever created by a multinational corporation. He was concentrated Google, designed to blend into our lives and influence us in ways only the jerks among us have a defence against. Google used the Preacher Firestone to convince 2.5 million people to act out a plan in their defence, and the acolytes were aghast as they watched their leader walking into the howling biorobo horde with the serene facial expression he had wordlessly covered the previous thousands of miles with. In the midst of the horde, the Preacher Firestone was shredded into a shower of diodes and sparks by their treefingers.

A statement from the Google corporation that birthed His Androidness explained that the Preacher Firestone had been instructed to walk into the midst of the biorobos because he was a defective unit that no longer served his purpose for the company. “Google recognizes that our Firestone Unit was immensely popular, but the Firestone Unit was deteriorating at a steady rate. For instance, the Firestone Unit's speech functions were scaled back from non-stop-talk to only necessary commands during the migration because of a malfunction in it's vocal processor. There was no way to fix the malfunction without compromising the mission, and once the Firestone Unit accomplished it's mission there was no need to fix the unit. Explosive de-comissioning was the easiest option.”

The murmur that started in the acolytes at the point of the Android Firestone's demise spread out to each coast, touched each ocean and lapped back to the center of the isthmus in a cascading chorus of “It's crazy, right?” Local Outragee Sandra's voice rose out of the murmur and she wailed her way to the spot of the Android Firestone's demise, distressed over feeling she had been defrauded by an imposter messiah. “I was supposed to do something good for once! I was supposed to redeem my career choice! I was supposed to be part of a miracle! Not some PR stunt! Not some lie! He didn't eat! He didn't sleep! He just talked! It was so obvious!” Local Outragee Sandra doesn't cry like a normal person, she just screams for a while with dry eyes and stops when she runs out of sorrow. It's a common feeling amongst the acolytes, that the value of the journey was nullified when their good intentions were commandeered by Google, but while the android Firestone may have pied-pipered two million people across a continent, they still undertook a long journey and stood up to a dangerous foe. That's a significant thing, maybe even the high-water mark in their lives. The stories to tell, the smartphones saved, the acolytes banded together and did something powerful. Granted, we should always beware of corporately piloted animatronic humanoids trying to convince us to act in certain ways, but while we're on the topic we also shouldn't write them off just based on what they are. As the technology matures we have to make sure that there are no stigmas attached to Artificial Intelligence to not let another form of bigotry get off the ground. If we truly replicate human intelligence in a robot they're going to be as scared and confused as we are. We need to respect that. Yeah, we're all distressed that millions of people got duped by a corporate avatar, and that android technology will probably be weaponized in the next 10 minutes, but almost everyone is stoked that the acolytes stopped the biorobos. Seriously, acolytes, don't worry about the why on this one. You helped people. The world thanks you.

Someone made a recording of Axel Hjalmar's response to Firestone's victory against the biometric robocop horde and posted it to youtube, and that's delicious because the anti-Google resistance leader would vomit if he saw his likeness next to that logo, provided he wasn't distracted by the view count. Hjalmar addresses Google's foray into horizontal influence like he responds to everything Google does, by laying out how he thinks it will ruin humanity. “The bane of the advertiser is that words on a screen can be clicked away without a thought, but they know you will listen to a telemarketer's entire pitch because even though you want to cut them off you aren't rude enough to interrupt them, and if an advertisement can stare you straight in the eyes it will be asking you not to break it's heart with a gaze. The next frontier of advertising seeks to exploit our social conscience, and the only way to combat it is to have none.” Hjalmar believes that widespread use of androids for subtle face to face advertising will quickly turn us all into assholes, marking the beginning of a closing off of human social relations, and cautioned that humanity must “be vigilant in the face of such machinations.”

As the man who conceived and facilitated the creation of the biometric robocops, Hjalmar had just watched his life's work destroyed by the hands of a sworn rival who turned out to be “a tentacle grown from the root of all evil” and his response escalated to an uncharacteristically pissed level to match his disappointment. “I fucking knew it! I mean, I didn't know it, but I'm pissed I didn't guess it! Oh the Google. Oh the Google! They are not merely content to document all of human existence but are now infiltrating humanity with their disguised hardware and using it to subtly influence human behaviour. They are creating their own version of humanity because the one that exists does not fulfil their corporate mandate sufficiently. They will bend us to their will, they intend on it! And there is nothing to stop [Google] anymore! How could anyone be so irresponsible as to hinder the [biometric robocops]? How could they hinder the saviours of independence! You! You... you. Perhaps you deserve your chains. You embrace them. How plainly can an usurpation of privacy occur in front of your face? How can you allow your independence to be surrendered to an entity that has no concept of the individual? Then you have chosen, and I find myself fighting for an entity that is content to destroy itself. We're I to win you your freedom, would you simply turn and begin sleepwalking into the next disaster?”

At this point in the video Hjalmar stops trying to burn your conscience with his eyes and looks off camera for the first time in his life. “My boat is a shithole.” I can confirm that yes, his boat is a shithole. It reeks of rust and crayfish. The recently gutted Hjalmar concluded what I'm betting won't be his last transmission to the world by announcing that he was getting a new hobby and that he hoped humanity would be all right without him. “I have a boat that requires attention. You all have fun, I hope what you're doing is fun for you.” Many of the GASP faithful have pledged to continue fighting Google's influence on the world despite Hjalmar vacating his leadership position.

Early Thursday in San Francisco a representative of Google commented on the neutralization of the biometric robocop horde, saying “You're welcome, everyone.” before turning to the floor for questions. A journalist mentioning possible criminal charges being brought against Google by the ICC for creating human clones and killing human clones made the Google representative visibly uncomfortable, with the representative choosing to bolt from the room. Experts in International Law agree that the Google representative could have left the room at a slow walk, given that it will take decades to figure out who has jurisdiction to prosecute, let alone how property rights apply to people born to corporate guardians. If he were around right now, Ovaltine Goose-Shredder would say something like “The law waits for precedents, it's clumsy and lagging behind our human evolution, so it's not like we can expect it to perform well.” He probably would also be strapping a homeless man to a prototype of a combination lie-detector/electric chair that speeds up the justice process by eliminating criminals at the speed of thought. He'd call it a necessary cost for the justice of science. I wish Goosie was around now, but only so I could make sure he couldn't hurt anyone. Karen was the only person he trusted enough to temper himself for. Google is expected to re-base their entire enterprise to Antarctica to duck criminal persecution. San Francisco cheered at the prospect of going back to it's old, ungentrified self.

There's news on the TV in the corner of the bus station. You'd think we would be too wrapped in ecstasy over being plucked from the screaming mass of non-existence to bother fighting, but here we are, and there we go again. I'm traipsing on into the technologically barren South America to test a theory, a hope, and it hinges on how the people of South America behave in the absence of their smartphone devices. I hope the impulse to create and share is still there in the absence of the technology that removed barriers to content production and distribution, and I hope that impulse stays strong. There are only two things to do on this planet, and they're create and destroy. I'm hoping that our destructive impulses end up getting dummied by our creative plans as a dissolution of barriers and easy to find niche audiences make creative validation the easiest endorphin to trigger. That we will be so wrapped up in creating and sharing that we start forgetting to hate things. And if our every movement has a wind-up that started in our ancestors and continues through us, with that weight of human history that has gone into creating us and what we do creating the circumstances for those to come, it would do us well to not let them down by allowing our destructive and violent impulses to swing about and cause their damage.

Oh man, last call. My bus is leaving. It's been fun, but I don't know when I'll be back. Hell, I'm not the same person I was when I started this blog, 4 years ago? Jesus. I'm probably not the same person who took off across North America to follow the Firestone migration either, and I won't be the person who comes back from South America. No more PAJ after this, is what I'm saying. I'm not the guy that can put it together anymore. I've always felt like I got more out of naive wandering anyways. It's time to hit the wilds again.

Send my regards to that Editor I fired last year, and Love always,

James Betty

P.S. Hjalmar just posted a ship refurbishing tutorial on youtube. He hits his finger with a hammer and just shuts his eyes until the pain is gone. It's one of the more impressive things I've seen on the internet. Lashing out in anger was always such an easy option, but now I have to be stoic in the face of immense pain or Hjalmar will be better than me at something. I'm not happy about this, but it's the way it has to be because damnit, I'm not letting some radical Miss Manners have one over on me.