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Divine Inspiration? Or Dark Imagination?
SPOILER WARNING
This document may contain information that could
spoil the story for readers who have not yet read it. Readers are advised to
read <<<STATIC>>> before
proceeding.
Having been inspired to do the piece I had a loose concept around which the story had been based. The idea was fairly simple:
John Freedman, computer consultant by profession and freelance digital pornography peddlar, discovers (while exploring - by request of a client - the darker side of the net) a wierd cult who have found a way of converting physical matter into digital information. This, they claim, is the ultimate in customized sexuality. Having failed to convert John they try to do it by force.
At this time I had no clear idea of who or what these people stood for other than that they had found a way of becoming electrical/digital entities. The story was intended to be quite long (if you thought it was long enough to read now think about it being about the length of a novel!), but due to the time limit of the project I could only afford to do the 'short story' version.
My own style of working (described in The
Writing of the Work), and the fact that I had a dissertation
to complete, meant that it wasn't until 1st May that actually I sat down to
devise, in writing, what the 'electric people' believed in, and a substantial
plot for the story.
The Birth of Entocyberenism
On this day, the 1st of May, while Britain's nation was voting for a new government after 18 years, and the sun was shining brightly like a midsummer's day, while people were grilling themselves in the scorching heat, while the students were relaxing and missing lectures and not working . . . I was stuck indoors desperately scribbling down ideas.
I started early (unusual for me) and sat away from the computer (feeling the desire to rediscover pen and paper) and began writing, in synopsis form, the plot. So far all that I was writing I knew. I had even started actually writing a bit of it in the past few weeks. I knew the part I was writing back to front, inside out.
And then I came to the part where he is reading the webpage of these 'electric people'. I had always intended for the reader to have John's point of view at this stage and to be given the 'actual' pages to read for themselves. This meant I had to know exactly what was in them.
I twiddled for a moment before inventing the word 'cybersexual' to describe what these people were. Then I began writing from their point of view, a short piece called "What is Cybersexuality?"
It started something along the lines of:
It is the ultimate in customised sexuality. It is the state of being where one is able to program and re-program oneself to be whatever, whoever and however they wish to be. ...
And then I made what was at the time a passing comment:
... It is the new alchemy of the 20th Century moving into the next millenium. It is the future of the human race.
I then described a litte about the ideology behind alchemy, the Philosopher's Stone and the concept of hermaphrodism.
It was at this moment that I had, what any good writer would recogize as, a 'moment of clarity', 'divine inspiration', or whatever you wish to call it. Either way, suddenly everything began fitting into place. I realized that by making their philosophy literally instead of metaphorically a modern day alchemy that I had managed to potentially justify just about every kind of sexual preference. I had also, more importantly, completely justified why I was using pornography on the internet (which, admittedly, until then had been a bit of a problem and I was beginning to wonder if there was any reason for me using it).
Having finished writing the short piece and knowing that I would have to re-write it with the new angle in mind I tore out the pages and began re-writing is as "Pornography: What's it all about?", to be a prelude to their main concept (something which I didn't dare think ahead to as I was on a 'writer's high' and didn't want to break the flow).
In the re-write I made another (and admittedly unexpected) passing comment:
The entirety of human existence can be said to revolve around sex and death. It is true that they are (Wo)Man's two greatest obsessions.
Suddenly, that was it! Another flash of pure inspiration! I could see perfectly how their entire philosophy could revolve around sex and death. I could see exactly why (Wo)Man is preoccupied with the two subject matters. With risk of sounding insane, it was as if They were 'Delivering' Their 'message' to me. I shortly became very afraid of what I was writing. Not so much because it was particularly scary, but because I could, at that moment of suspended reality understand exactly what they were saying. I understoond the philosophy perfectly. In accepted (for the sake of the writing) that there was such a way that one could transfer one's body into the machine I had discovered that I was craeting an ideology that had the potential to justify everything from the most perverse of sexual deviancy to the most heinious of crimes.
I had reached that stage in the 'inspiration cycle' that any good writer (or actor) gets when they can clearly and unequivocably 'see' through their character's eyes, 'think' with their character's mind, 'speak' with their character's mouth and utterly understand their character's entire being. That point at which reality is momentarily suspended and replaced by the one the writer is so desperately trying to make come alive on the page. That moment when everything makes sense, however insane it actually is. Some would say that the character has, momentarily, become real and 'possesses' the writer. I, personally, don't think about it but just pray it always happens when I am in the process of writing and not when I don't have pen/paper or a computer nearby, and am always thankful when it does happen - even though it has been known to freak me out on more than one occassion.
It was while I was writing about (Wo)Man's obsession that I realized these people are going to have to have an 'official' name. Not like a cult's name, but a name for what they were. Cybersexual described their gender (the digital equivalent to the hermaphrodite), but not what they were.
So, taking a break from the 'scary thoughts' I hunted around in my dictionaries looking up different entomologies for words and pieced together 'entocyberens' from 'ento-' from the Greek meaning 'within', 'cyber' the common word associated with machines, esp. computers, and 'ens' from the Late Latin meaning 'being' (as in entity). Crudely pieced together I created the name for the new digital race of Beings Within The Machine (plural, entocyberensus).
The two discussions became titled "Erotomania: Why we are obsessed with sex" and "Thanatomania: Why we are obsessed with death". Followed by, the strangest and most 'head spinner' section of the day's writing: "Electro-Alchemy: What's it all about?" in which I described the concept of cybersexuality (the removal of sexual dependancy) and digital immortality (the removal of the fear of mortality), and the results of these.
By now (having been writing solid for most of the day) I felt that I had drunk my fill of the Well of Inspiration and the effects were wearing off.
The Entocyberensus had been born.
The only problem now, was how was it going to develop into a plot? What, if these cyberensus were so seemingly concerned about 'saving Human Kind', was so evil about them? What exactly was it that people had to fear about them? The whole thing wasn't, in essense, so evil or nasty.
I re-read over the whole thing and found the answer waiting in the theory about digital immortality:
The concept of achieving immortality through entering a computer is flawed because it is flipping life into a state of non-lide without removing the possibility of destruction.
However, were a life to enter a computer in a form that was not bound by that physical (and destructable) object then one is not necessarily entering a state of non-life. ... [A]n electrical being could be virtually everywhere and anywhere. ... An electrical being, however, would have to ensure that there was an environment in which it could live. Therefore, it is not 100% perfect as this would mean that there is still the possibility of destruction.
From this, however, we can determine that the best state of existence would be a type of metaelectricity - a thing which is electric in nature yet freed from the pseudo-physical constraints.
So, thinks I, what if the Philosopher's Stone (the infamous program that I had been from Day One been intending to be the start of all the trouble) was a Beta Release? i.e. it was not complete. Perhaps it only allows them to become electrical beings and not metaelectrical. This way they would have something to be fearful of. They could still fear death (of sorts) because there was still the potential for them to cease to exist - however, unlikely the chances of that happening. So they would be out to 'convert' as many humans as possible in order that there be no-one to switch off the power supply, and enough of them to become the power supply.
Okay, no problem. Plot, plot, plot. More concepts and less and less plot. Then I remembered an idea I'd had, ooo, way back when: a computer wiz, hacker/cracker who is 'hired' to track down the Children of Cyberos and inadvertantly becomes one of them. This will place a 'friend' and someone our (albeit dubious) hero can trust.
I then sat down for another 'off-computer' session of plot scribbling and having written a little bit of synopsis plot again swayed back to concept writing when Silki describes the entire plot to John. Here again, I found myself 'discovering' a few new surprises myself as Silki outlined the concept of the 'E-mail Masterplan' and indomitus electricity.
In Search of an Ending
Eventually, I became frustrated at my lack of plot and the fact that I still hadn't managed to get anything substantial onto the computer. So, one day, I sat down and began typing. I began typing diretly into my WYSIWYG HTML-Editor. I had tried using a word-processor to construct the sections and to 'imagine' how they would link together but this was no good. I would have to go straight for the throat and make it up as I go along.
Working solid through the day I had managed to get past the Children of Cyberos' Homepage and had stopped just after that. The next day I spent looking up stuff I needed on the internet and deliberating as to is I should make some posters to put up. The third day I spent making the first three posters.
After the second day of solid writing I had reached Silki's
revelation to John which I had decided to dump all in one e-mail as it was
impossible to present it through a plot and what I had written the other
day had come to almost an hour of slow reading time, so I didn't want the
piece to be too long. As I was wondering what exactly I was going
to do for an ending Silki suddenly sprung the group of entocyberensic freedom
fighters on me. Okay, this was good. Cheesy Hollywood ending imminent: John,
after a harrowing nightmare that the machines are talking to him, wakes up
to find that the machines are playing havoc - the Children of Cyberos are
after him; John escapes to the mountains with no electricity where he hides
for a few months, growing his hair and a beard while Silki sets him up with
an alter-ego and he joins the secret war against the Children of Cyberos.
Brilliant! Sequel/series potential if ever I saw it!
Banishment with Laughter
But John had other plans! After a nightmare that hadn't turned out exactly as I had originally envisioned it, John woke up too early to his alarm clock. Two hours later his alarm clock went off at the correct time. But when John switched it off it came on again. At this point John did something I wasn't expecting him to. He went insane. His reality had been shattered and he had been unable to keep it under control. Suddenly he became convinced that he had caught one of 'Them', and after throwing out of the window to its death he found himself giggling insanely.
The image of him weaing a black leather "gimp" suit (sans hood) to protect himself from the electricity and a pair of yellow marigolds haunted my vision and John well and truely went comically insane!
Upon relection I think that, subconsciously, I realized that I had, uncommonly, been taking myself far too seriously. In that moment I snapped out of it and realized that what people really needed after this was a bit of comic relief, something to act as a reward for having just slogged through so much 'heavy' material. While I was careful not to sink to utter farse (it had to be black comedy, not farsical comedy) I let my imagination take that breath of fresh air and let it run free in the forests of my mind, discovering little treasures along the way.
Yes, that was certainly what was needed. Banish those negative and doom gloomy thoughts with a right old rib-tickler. Now, I'm not sure if it works or not, but it made me laugh. And it also proved to be a universal ending in the fact that if the reader hadn't understood everything that had just passed it really didn't matter because I was, effectively, throwing everything I had just written to pot and saying: well, it could have just been an elaborate dellusion ,and if you didn't follow it all - who cares?