My friends, my dear fellow gutter rats, lend me your ears.

The future is now, and they own it. If you're reading this then you have at least 6 ounces of premium hardware—wedged in your hand or in your head—ready to drip-feed you a C-suite-certified stream of data that will fry your neurons like an egg on a suburban Arizona sidewalk.

No longer will all-organic, narcotic-induced brain damage reign supreme. No, your descent into delusion will be curated by manicured men in button-downs and quarter-zips, and you, yes YOU, will willingly spread your cheeks for the ever-extending prosthesis of socially networked, immersive sensory stimulation. You and a billion of your closest friends—you’re yearning for it, aren’t you? The Feed. And who will be left to pick up the pieces? Me.

I'm your subterranean guru, an old believer with a bottle and some untreated schizoid tendencies. You want out? Forget the blue pill. Swallow a shotgun. Because this ride doesn't end.

Still here? Then mark it down: 3:50 AM GMT. The moment you realized this was it: your inflection point. You're not getting a ticket for the Mars rocket, and Daddy's Campbell's soup collection won't survive the biopocalypse. You can’t turn it off, and you’re not sure you want to. YOU need to outsmart THEM. And I'll help you do it.

Pause your crypto-skimming skin-stream—creator or consumer, I don't judge—and hang with me for a moment. Now put your filthy pants on, grab a cigarette, and step outside. Up above you, an infinite array of radiation-spewing phenomena are just waiting to put an end to your pathetic genome. Three billion years of evolution won't stop the cosmos from fucking your shit up. Do you really want to spend humanity's last century in a feedback loop of orgasm-induced paralysis? Didn't think so. Light your cigarette and take a drag.

It’ll hurt, you see, but don’t rush it. Red before blue and blue before green, count to three. Snip the wires, gently now. Savor it. Fear is the mind-killer. Pain sets you free. A tidy little bypass squirted up your cerebellum and soon you’ll be wide-eyed and laughing. You’re sinking, away from the broadbeam light, when all the friction of unfiltered human experience slides back in and rubs your insides raw until tears stream down your face. Good. All their little ones and zeroes are flushing right out.

IMPLANT .. synova .. xv7
    
cut 1 ✓  R ━━━┓		
cut 2 ✓  B ━━━╋━━► [br0adbeam_fix.ko] ━━► OPEN_BAND
cut 3 ✓  G ━━━┛
    
    
FEED: ░░░░░░░░░░ 0%
SELF: ██████████ 100%

Now call your best friend and tell them the gig's up. It's over. They’ve been wiretapping your brain, you say, telling you when to jack off and how to do it. And you're fucking done.

Grab a few more friends, a case of High Life or three, and march on down to your ‘approved civic gathering zone’ of choice. Tell 'em, “We're here to put an end to it. Cease and desist. The TV Party's over, and we're the cleanup crew.” Set the barricades and down the Wild Turkey cuz it’s gonna be a long night. Just leave enough in the bottom to light the bombs when the Feds come a-knocking. You’re sweating, friend. Don’t worry—it's all part of the plan.

There’s a megaton payload hiding in your city. It’s cramped together under leaking foamboard ceiling tiles and huddled around stacks of soggy polystyrene. It’s right there, hunched over next to you. Grab your friend by the shoulder and tell them, “I’ll bleed for you before I bleed for them.” Now you’re ready. Now you’re on fire. Now you’re the primer. You’ve slipped the stream, Dorothy, and now you’re on a collision course with destiny’s evil twin.

But when the dim hours of the morning arrive, don't forget: your state-provided cell comes equipped with a TV set. It’s your move. Just promise me, you promise, that you’ll remember: they don’t own your future yet. You can ride the decline, you can steer it, you can

HARDWAREFLUSHINGOUTWIDEEYEDFEARISTHESETSYOUWIDEEYEDFREEBLEEDFORFREEBEFOREYOUONESANDZEROESRAWEYEDRAWRUBSYOURINSIDESTHEGIG'SUP HARDWARE FLUSHING OUT WIDE EYED FEAR IS THE SETS YOU WIDE EYED FREE BLEED FOR FREE BEFORE YOU ONES AND ZEROES RAW EYED RAW RUBS YOUR INSIDES THE GIG'S UP

Cut the Feed.