writing from
Scars Publications

Audio/Video chapbooks cc&d magazine Down in the Dirt magazine books

 

dirt fc This writing was accepted for publication
in the 84 page perfect-bound issue...
Down in the Dirt magazine (v079)
(the February 2010 Issue)




This is also available from our printer
as a a $7.47 paperback book
(5.5" x 8.5") perfect-bound w/ b&w pages

Order this writing in the book
(bound)
Down in the Dirt
prose edition
(bound) cc&d poetry collection book order the
5.5" x 8.5" ISSN# book

order the
8.5" x 11" ISBN# book

from “Tales of Madness, Vol. II” by Tom Ball

DOWN IN THE DIRT

    Said a man to a woman, “I hate this pristine sanitized world. I hate wearing white.”
    The woman replied, “Clothes are nonsensical and no need to fear new viruses and bacteria...”
    Finally the woman went to another planet where people camped out in the wilderness, down in the dirt.
    To feel the earth, to breathe fresh air, to have big open spaces.
    People have lost their relationship with nature and many people even hate nature. They live in cities with new kinds of pollution e.g. in the water...With no Earth-like plants.
     Of course the government says the chemical pollution is safe, many people believed otherwise... and plants were a luxury. Only chemicals could be produced in the lab... It was all synthetic. No plants...
    Some people lived in antiseptic domes and let no outside air through the airlocks. They were afraid of a biological attack but also wanted to be clean.
    Many in these planets had obsessive compulsive disorder. They were perfectionists also. And so were hard to get along with. “Perfect silence” some critics said. As these people mostly were misanthropes... They loved only themselves...
    Some people said we need “new nature on new planets.” New plants, new animals and people living naked and free. With all natural drugs for good feelings.

WORLD OF THE SHEBARBARIANS: MATRIARCHY PLANET

    The Shebarbarians were a race of tough women.
    Their leader was known as the Great Shebabe.
    There were men on the planet too, but they were mostly kept in cages while the women enjoyed living their lives. They cloned each other rather than have kids with a despicable man.
    However they craved variety in their offspring so men were like cows who needed to be “milked” of their semen everyday.
    Despite being in small cages, some of the men were happy to be slaves.
    In truth many women had potential for violence, and this was well-known to the Great Shebabe. But there were no wars here.
    This was a newly settled world where most of the men here were wimps and weak-willed. That’s the kind of men the leader wanted.
    Meanwhile the women who were in power virtually ignored the men.
    The women said their rule was kinder and nicer and better all round.
    But now that they were in power they could be very tyrannical.
    However many of the women here complained about the men. They wanted tough, strong men. You can’t have it both ways said the leaders of the colony.
    But finally they deported all the men and most of the women (lesbians) and got some new men to come and be equals with them, or so they hoped. Or so they thought they hoped.
    But the men ordered love androids to be sent to the planet and so had no need of women.

ANROID BATTLEGROUND, ANDROID FABLE #10

    In this world of war in the far reaches of the Milky Way, disputes were settled by warfare using android troops. Humans didn’t die, only androids. But everyone knows androids were not as good as humans even though their brains had been copied from human brains...
    They produced thousands of adult androids every day, ready for battle.
    Most of the androids had some kind of special power, e.g. flying or shooting lightning bolts. And most of them were hypnotized so they would obey orders implicitly.
    The people enjoyed a good war, and no people got hurt physically, although people lost land and possessions. There were a number of homeless refugees here who had lost everything in gambling on the wars and they lived in dirty refugee camps.
    But finally one king got control of the world. His idea was to have people fight instead of androids. More exciting he said.

    ***

    Soon finally nearly everyone was dead and the king was bored. So he copied himself into androids and started up the android factories again so that wars of “pleasure” could continue.
    In some cases his androids would fight androids that were both based on him.
    He was just fighting with himself.
    Moral: creating androids will likely not yield a good result, but androids are inevitable.

LOST IN CYBERSPACE

    Cyberspace was giant network of the mind. People left their body temporarily and dreamed and had fantasies in cyberspace.
    But you needed electronic credit to pay your way through this huge network...
    Some people never left. Some people ran out of money and remained stuck in the same place
    Of course without the body it was a purely intellectual experience.
    But I was lost in cyberspace. I needed to get back to Detroit nexus. But I couldn’t find it and nobody seemed to know where that was...
    It had been years now since I left for cyberspace...I had gone whichever way the wind blew me and now I was lost and losing hope.
    I longed to have my body back... assuming it was still there in suspended animation.
    And I was running out of credits. I needed money to travel, but if I ran out of credits I’d be marooned here forever.
    And there was a lot of fraud on cyberspace, but the penalty for fraud was death, if you could catch them... I was worried I would lose my money...
    Some people asked what was the reason for cyberspace? Others replied it was like a giant dream. What’s wrong with dreams and fantasies?

SITTING PLACIDLY BY THE LAKE

    I was sitting placidly by the lake when suddenly out of the sky a space ship appeared and landed quite close to me. Out of the ship came what appeared to be small robots. The robots went out in every direction on the land.
    One came up to me and I was very scared, but suddenly the robot grabbed a few of my hairs and went back to the ship. After an hour had passed the others had seemingly all returned. And the ship blasted off for space.
    I figured they wanted our DNA which could be found in a hair.
    But when I told this to others, the few that believed me said it was probably a spy ship from Earth trying to cover up secret voyages to space with fake aliens.
    Who else would send a ship filled with robots but our government?
    Of course it was illegal to store people’s DNA so they did it this way (send a space ship). Perhaps each time they landed they had one person in particular to get their DNA but perhaps they had use for normal people too.
    Who knows what secret programs the government was working on?
    Some even said that Mars had already been colonized. People lived in underground tunnels that could not be detected with a telescope. And so who knew what they were up to.

PLANET OF THE VOWAX, MAD ANDROID FABLE #11

    All the smartest people from recent times had their brain cloned and put in a high tech wax statue. 10 000 different people in total. They were a weird kind of androids...
    Some were cloned from hairs or bones of historical geniuses.

    ***

    Tourists could come here and ask for advice from the statues who would turn on when someone addressed them.
    I had a talk with “Plato.” I asked him about his philosopher king idea. He said the problem was he didn’t make clear what type of philosopher was king. So many leaders thought they were philosophical kings. He said he meant that great thinkers needed to rule.
    But how do you choose thinkers? I said

    ***

    You could buy some of them (copies) and bring them back to your home planet as “amusements.” Or turn them into regular androids...
    If you wanted you could buy them a cloned body and bring them back to life again...
    Some of them were controversial e.g. Genghis Khan or Stalin or Hitler.
    But the world at this time had much bigger conquistadors. Such as The Great Gar, Celeste the Great and the Star Baby.
    Moral: future people will put brains in anything.

BIZARRE ONES
    

    On bizarre planet, also known as Hero’s planet, people were strange. They told each other “Cultivate your strangeness. Go to strange planets, talk with strange people, read strange books.”
    Books like “Strange World,” which guides people how to be strange.
    1. Never appear ordinary when you first meet someone.
    2. Always wear bizarre clothes.
    3. Say the craziest things you can think of at all times, let them think you are a madman/madwoman.
    4. Have no routines
    5. Practice acting mad at home, so you can really knock people’s socks off.
    6. When other people are sad, you should party.
    7. Try to say things that are both strange and deep.
    8. Train your kids to be strange as possible.
    9. It is best to make love with a stranger.
    10. Take drugs to make you stranger, including illicit ones
    And so on...
    In the country of the strange, the strangest is king/queen.
    If people have an open mind they can love strange people. But most strange people are rejected by society for not toeing the line. So you’ve got to hide your true persona from the populace at large.
    Who can deny that it is not a strange world?
    But all great ideas seem strange when first conceived.

WOMEN WITH MEN’S BRAINS AND VICE VERSA

    On the planet of “Brains” (Q-34), they cloned 50 men and 50 women with a woman’s brain in a man’s brain and vice versa.
    It turned out to be a relatively peaceful society. People got along fine. Only the men were more effeminate and the women a little more masculine... but it turned out there was less difference between men and women than they thought.
    They were forced to admit that culture determines the role of both males and females...
    Some tried it and then later switched back to their original sex. It was kind of a rite of passage to know the other sex well.
    Some people claimed they would be willing to do anything. And such people toured this planet to experience its strangeness.
    Some people said androgyny was the future. Make love with anyone...
    All sex is good...
    But some people of course said it was a freak show. But others said what’s wrong with freaks...? Freaks are something different.
    Open your mind said the freaks.

HYPOTHETICAL GODS

    They built neo-temples here on this planet.
    It was a planet that welcomed Christians...
    There were however warring factions which argued over the nature of God. The fact that there was even some violence in this advanced age, was quite surprising, to some.
    Some said God created our universe and we should enjoy life, others claimed we would make Gods from humans in our own image. Still others adhered to traditional religions.
    But they vandalized each others’ churches... And showed open hatred towards each other. Sometimes even inside sects of the religion hated each other..
    Finally they all moved to their own islands to get away from the other Christian sects. There were 23 islands on the planet and there were 16 sects.
    They lived by fishing the black waters of this worldwide ocean...Terrestrial fish and seafood, plankton and so on had all been brought here from Earth.
    For a while there was peace but then they started fighting over fishing rights.
    Many said that Christians should show brotherly love and be good to your fellow human. Most felt this way, but there were a lot of bad apples especially as leaders.
    If you want peace you need good spies...But if you have spies there will be endless strife. If you know what I mean.
    In the end, in the future, everyone will want to be a God.

SOME CITIES OF FOOLS

    On planet Earth in the year AD 2105, clever people would hide in cities of fools so that the government could not find them. All clever people were rounded up and slaughtered by the tyrant who didn’t want any competition.
    Some people spent their entire life acting like a buffoon. Strangely it was like second nature to clever people to act stupid when the pressure was on.
    In the country of fools the blind man is happy.
    All the world’s a stage and here everyone played dumb.
    Some said in secret that it was an easy world to live in.
    Meanwhile if the government identified you as a dissenter, you would be eliminated. The government was satisfied that they had gotten rid of almost all, if not all, of the clever people.
    Just another “genocide” type action in the long history of Earth people.
    Only this one would never be recovered from. Henceforth the human race would be totally mediocre.
    Some of the few remaining clever people said it was like sending humanity back to the state of mankind millions of years ago.
    It had taken millions of years to develop a lot of clever people.
    Now civilization would probably break up and people will go back to living on the farm. Just like peasants of the Dark Ages.
    Life would be short and cruel.

KOWTOWING TO GLOBAL WARMING

    In history the weather was always changing. Some ice ages other hot ages like the dinosaur periods.
    Now people say the world is getting hotter due to CO2 but they can’t prove it comes from CO2.
    In any case if the world keeps getting warmer, coastal cities will just need to build dikes like Holland did. Even produce more land with the dikes than previously. It would be the greatest construction project ever by a long way.
    And they need to change the weather...
    They need more rain in some areas and they need more warmth in other areas. All this would prepare humans for terra forming planets and moons.
    There’s a lot of heat trapped under the surface of the Earth which could be harnessed to change the climate for example
    All this new land would allow many people to live in houses rather than apartment if they wished. With fast air cars and the Net, people didn’t need to live in big cities any more.
    But some preferred “real nightlife” of the cities, they didn’t like the Net chats; but country dwellers were never more than a few minutes from downtown by air car taxi or their own air car if they were rich.
    And not much land would be needed for food. Plankton and soil machines would produce abundant food very cheaply.
    However some areas of the Earth were more crowded than others. But this trend would become less as people spread out a bit more to new lands. Like Russia and Canada... and even the North sea, the Beaufort Sea and other shallow seas.

EVERYONE IS CORRUPTIBLE

    Live with truth.
    Corruption is everywhere but more in some areas than others.
    In the future they will use lie detectors on those who wanted to be part of the government. Such tests were also conducted regularly on all those in high positions.
    Some people, such as the Inter World police thought it was a good idea and soon most colonized planets made use of lie detectors.
    It kept the peace anyway.
    Some said testing people with new and improved lie detectors was the best thing the human race has ever done.
    Of course some people complained. They said it was a violation of their privacy.
    Others said that finally you could trust people again like back many years ago.
    But some lovers found difficulties using lie detectors on themselves. It caused a breakdown for lovers...
    The truth hurts in most cases. And these people who insisted on the truth didn’t get what they were searching for.
    The truth is people are all mixed up and confused in many cases and don’t know how to live with people watching them so closely.
    Many people went completely insane over lie detectors.
    Some said we should ban these truth detectors... But the majority wanted them.
    People who failed lie detector tests were often imprisoned until they could think right thoughts. Some could not do so and remained prisoners.

VENGEANCE

    I told her to “go to hell” after she took all my clothes and recycled them. I left her but as I did so I sold her air car cheap.
    She must have really liked that air car because she had a private investigator track me down in Africa. So I had to pay compensation.
    After that I got a job on a space ship of 20 crew headed for deep space. They carefully selected the crew and I was lucky enough to be chosen.
    But wouldn’t you know it, my ex (of the air car fiasco) was also chosen as crew. I didn’t find out until it was time to blast off.
    We loathed one another and gave each other the silent treatment.
    One day she tried to throw me out the escape hatch. It was all captured on video of course so her punishment was 5 years in chains (the voyage was 25 years). I laughed at her and mocked her and finally they put me in chains for 2 years.
    It was excruciating to stay chained and no one would talk to me. But I didn’t dare yell as then I might get even worse punishment.
    Finally we arrived at the destination where our group was broken into four. My friends and her friends... and the others (two groups).
    We lived separate from the other groups and built a very different village. Our village was of crystal; theirs was of clay...
    But as time passed tourists liked to observe that the four villages were distinctly different and we were totally at odds with each other.
    Strangeness were what every tourist craved. But the tourists predicted this civilization would not last given the rancor that we lived in.
    The whole planet was based on hate and there was little love, tourists mused.

END OF THE UNIVERSE

    The ship was reaching the ends of the universe (AD 2578)...It got darker as we reached the edge but then suddenly all was blackness and we couldn’t see anything.
    We went on at maximum speed for 2 years without encountering any matter. But then suddenly, we saw a massive star which was triangular in nature and we were being pulled into its gravity. We tried to turn back but it was no use. We were being drawn into this strange sun to be destroyed.
    Just when we were about to be incinerated (it was getting hot) we saw a planet and had enough power to land on the planet.
    The planet was a square cube made up of water, ice and foreign materials.
    We could not go back nor go further so we gratefully accepted living here.
    Some of our crew when walking outside on the surface reported seeing “ghosts of a strange type.”
    As time went by strange objects started appearing outside our ship and improvised camp. They were convoluted things that might pass for abstract art.
    Anyway we figured no one would bother us here so we began to dig tunnels into the gravelly surface. There were a lot of glaciers on the poles but the equator was boiling hot. We decided to put our base on one of the poles. We told each other we were mad to leave our native universe, but it couldn’t be helped.
    Everything was squares here. New elements that were composed of square structures. Space was truly cubed. 3-D.

IN PRAISE OF CLOSED-MINDEDNESS

    I told her I had never told a lie. At first she didn’t believe it, but eventually she could see the truth in me and she loved me for it.
    “But you are crazy to always tell the truth,” she said. “And look at you, how poor you are.”
    I said, “Of course there is seldom any prize for the truth. In fact being open-minded and truthful only makes enemies of others.”
    And I said, “But I am planning to adhere to my principles to see where it leads me.”
    She said, “To be totally open-minded is too cease to exist as a thinking person.”
    I told her, “It’s a dark world I travel.”
    She said, “You have to stand up for your beliefs...
    I said, “Beliefs lead to war and destruction. Many modern day wars (AD 2109) are caused by intolerance of other people’s beliefs.”
    She said, “Mankind has always believed in some things such as peace, God, children’s future and so on.
    But I said peace isn’t happening and we can’t find God and few people want children.
    She said, “Still I think old-fashioned beliefs are best.”
    “You are old-fashioned...” I said.

ASK ME NO QUESTIONS

    My true love thought I was mysterious as I didn’t reveal anything from my past. She said I was driving her “insane.”
    Finally I told her I was a spy for the Inter World police, and could not reveal anything (which was a lie). But that only intrigued her more and she wanted to cling to me and be amazed.
    So I dumped her unceremoniously.
    I reflected the highest love is a mystery.
    Actually I was not a spy, I was a writer. And like a vampire I would take what good stories someone had and write about them on the Net blog.
    I would ask questions, like “What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” Or, “What do you think about this world?”
    I had assembled 2000 pages of answers from 1000 people and I sold the book for big money. It was interesting to learn people’s deepest secrets.
    And I thought to make a book of “8 billion” and have everyone in the known worlds tell their best story. A true treasury of all the people.
    And do it once every 20 years.
    Those with the best stories would be promoted to a high position as “Guardian of the Books.”
    So people would compete for the best stories and a lie detector was employed to make sure they didn’t exaggerate.
    But some said fiction was more free and imaginative than the truth. Many people had thought so in the past, but now many people saw the “light of the truth.”

POWER BEAM III (HOLOGRAMS AGAIN)

    On planet Cool-90, people had all been converted to holograms.
    It was a place of “souls.”
    “People” here had no materialistic desires and lived only for conversation, anecdotes and travel.
    Of course holograms could travel faster than space ships 1000s of times the speed of light.
    Some were unhappy to lose their body, but they were not allowed to change back.
    Their planet had been colonized several times but it was a small and hostile world so starships just used the planet as a place to garner supplies.
    So the holograms had the whole place to themselves. Many went out into space however only to return to this place where every hologram got on well.
    Some of these holograms were bored and wanted to kill themselves, but this was impossible. As their leader said, “the body is mortal, but the soul lives on...”
    It was in fact rumored however that some holograms had gone to other universes, but this could not be confirmed.
    Maybe everyone will be a hologram one day. And we could forget about our material desires...

FAKE LOVE

    I told women many lies and finally I usually used a fake diamond to ask for women’s hand in marriage. I’d used the fake diamond trick many times with very large fakes.
    Then I would ask the girls to have a joint bank account. And then I would abscond with the money and never see her again.
    I was truly “lost in love.”
    What girl can resist a handsome, charming suitor who proposes on one knee to marry her? And has a large diamond as well?
    It occurred to me that most people are shallow and can be used and abused... Given their greed for a charming partner.
    Sometimes love is nothing more than greed. Greed for love and money...
    Some are like a beggar for love, others cling. Still others demand love...
    And I reflected women love romance more than men. So give them a candle lit dinner, take them on a cruise and so on and they will love me.
    But I myself didn’t believe in love. Which gave me the upper hand on women I met who mostly fell in love with me at first sight.
    I say take all you can from your lover and then dump them. It is their own fault for being so na•ve... It’s a dog eat dog world.

THOU SHALL NOT KILL

    On Earth in the year 2107, all food was synthetic and it was against the law to kill an animal. Punishment was 5 years in prison.
    India still had the custom of some monks wearing a mask over their mouth so as not to swallow and kill a bug. But it was not against the law to kill bugs.
    These days all food was synthetic and delicious to almost everyone’s taste. Though of course the best types of food were very expensive.
    But one day the pacifist government was overthrown by a tough general and he imprisoned the pacifist leaders and embarked on a program of destroying the monasteries and insects and many animals.
    They were crazy to think they could perpetuate such monasteries... people said.
    “Passive people will play no role in the future. It’s going to be dog eat dog.” Said the general.
    “People who are nice and passive and weak all need to be re-educated,” he said...
    “The strong survive,” he told the people.
    Henceforth he put the whole planet on a military path.
    But he was quickly overthrown by the Inter World police in another coup.
    The IW police gave ordinary people something to cheer about. They were happy to know that someone in power cared about them.
    So their society went back to the way it was before.

HERD OF GOATS

    On the planet of Goats, they played sports with goats. For example a game of rugby would feature hundreds of goats all over the playing fields.
    Many people thought of it as a “sports comedy.”
    The rules were you couldn’t attack a goat or your team would lose the game.
    And they made movies with goats. Spoofs on human society mainly.
    The Goat who Loved me. My Life as a Goat. I Got your Goat. To be a Goat or not to be a Goat. The Narcissistic Goat. Shootout at the Goat Corral.
    Planet of the Goats. Goats in Love. Gone with the Goats. Goat days and Goat nights.
    Goat superstar. A Clockwork Goat. Year of the Goat. The Goat Castle..
    2130: A Goat Odyssey.
    And so on.
    And people in this world who were not creative enough to satisfy the rulers had to wear a goat head over their own head. It was a sign of shame and everyone laughed at the goat men.
    But they made a lot of money on these movies and soon many tourists considered it to be a key stop on the tourist tour of space.
    And many tourists wanted to buy real goat genes to breed back on their home planets.
    What’s next, insects? One tourist remarked.

NEW GARDEN OF EDEN

    I was sitting under the apple tree and a few apples fell on my head and I decided I was in the Garden of Eden...
    For some years I lived off the land picking fruit, eating nuts and meat when I could get it.
    I had no woman but I thought to myself, what do I need a woman for?
    And I amused myself making clay sculptures and thinking about art.
    I was the only one left on this planet. They had grown plants and trees and made for a breathable planet only to abandon it out of boredom.
    I wondered why everyone had left. What could be better than this garden planet?
    But I had no eternal youth so finally at age 70 I found myself dying. Probably cancer. At this time I regretted staying on the planet.
    And that was the end.
    But then tourists heard about it and they built a tomb for the bones of him and were encouraged to live in the garden of Eden together with his numerous sculptures.
    The tourists couldn’t understand why he wanted to live here all alone. And they didn’t stay long.

REVOLUTION

    I told him he was “chicken-hearted” for deserting the revolution.
    He said, “Why should I throw my life away?”
    And he said he would go to a neutral world and wait for the storm to pass.
    “Nationalism means nothing to me,” he said.
    “What was it that Kafka said about revolution? That one just leads to another... something like that...” He said.
    “And there is always a safe place to go during wars. Wars are not precious to me, nor the willing slaves who fight them,” he said...
    I said, “You have to stand up for your beliefs.”
    He replied, “Beliefs are nothing more than prejudices.”
    And I said, “It’s a shame you feel this way.”
    He said, “The world has always been about the strong dominating the weak.”
    “You have to rise above it...” I said.



Scars Publications


Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.




Problems with this page? Then deal with it...