Something from Nothing, Act One

What you think you become What you feel you attract What you imagine you createi

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something from Nothing act one

John Berry

To Svetlana

’Based on a true story’

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SOMETHING FROM NOTHING John Berry

Mikideas Publishing

all rights reserved

September 1st, 2022

– Act 1 –

sfn Fan Mail = [email protected] Business Inquiries = [email protected]

Telegram Channel = t.me/somethingfromnothing

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Thank you, early birds!

Karina Krivogub

Lara Cerutti

Ercan Köse

Aylin Anık

Selma Talbot

Jane Williams

James Anderson

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“Being a fan of Star Trek, I love the tormented souls often portrayed in the series. In a high-tech setting age old questions are pondered once again to create different perspectives.

This is what I have found here as well. While reading about someone’s desperate need to make sense of it all, I came closer to understanding what’s wrong with today.”

Jane

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“Having read this first book in the SFN series, the world looks so much uglier now that I can hardly look at myself. Yet, strangely I feel empowered at the same time. It seems, if we have the courage to step out of the loop, to take a left instead of taking a right when going to work so to speak, we can find new friends in unexpected places.”

James

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Thoughts on a friend’s journey

Not every app gets its book. Software applications either live a life of their own or they come out as cheap memorabilia accompanying commercially successful products aiming to increase their longevity. This book, and the application it was based upon stray away from that path and instead, portray the moving story of its creator as he visits Heaven, Hell and all the places in between.

Brutally honest pages often move along the farther edges of sanity, shamelessly expose inner lives, and question our demeanor. They try to provoke us into doing something … something we can no longer remember… something that is quite alien to us.

As it is always the case with original works of art, this book doesn’t look like the ones that came before it and it will never look like the ones inspired by it. It will remain in the distance, cold and unforgiving. It will be a Rosetta stone for some, but it will remain as complete gibberish for the most.

The main premise of the story may not be obvious after a first reading. Because while the author elaborates on every nook and cranny of alternate realities page after page, he only discreetly makes his point. He doesn’t explicitly express it, because he, like Richard Wagner, knows that deep and hidden meaning of our lives cannot be accessed through a literal expression of life.

The secret knowledge must be dispersed over time as clues in critical experiences. They must be hidden from praying eyes, so that only those who truly experience the journey, those who are worthy… may gaze upon it, “that all of future art will be a combination of arts in the hands of the common folk, an opera performed by people with ugly voices”.

These stories will be quite unlike the stories that came before them, those written by crafty authors and illustrated by talented artists. Even further, they will be different from what they entail.

While these stories will look ordinary, their effects on people’s lives will be profound, meaningful, above all useful. They will be written in real-time by people as they lived their lives. The story (or the fiction) will not be separated from life (or the non-fiction). Whatever an actor does in a story will manifest in the physical world. While people dream, they will play.

While they play, they will make dreams a reality. In doing so, they will change their world for better or for worse. And that will be the new medium for all art… Gesamtkunstwerk.

Judit Diós Budapest, Hungary

December 31st, 2021

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So, it begins…

When I was a little kid, I used to watch a TV series… can’t recall its name. At that age you are not interested in names. You’re only interested in matter. One of the episodes shook me deeply. In that particular episode, three old friends were meeting after so many years. They haven’t seen each other since high school.

It seems, one of them turned out to be gay and he was quite content with his life. Another was a bored businesswoman on maternity leave. Regular, forgettable figures of every TV series… but the third one captured my attention. He was like me. He felt at home anywhere, yet he really didn’t have a home.

Being a kid, I could not know most homes were artificially created worlds that hid broken lives; and having a funny feeling about them was actually a good thing. That’s what every child has to endure when growing up, so that he won’t become a misfit. All rough edges are polished to the extent that child becomes a man… by losing his humanity. I never accepted it.

Yet, while being an outsider, I always adored what laid inside.

So, I started to watch this guy very closely to see whether he had the answers, and he did! He was in jail for a long time, and he got out only recently. Captivity being his desert, he behaved like Jesus. “All problems solved”, he used to say. “All problems solved”. Back when he was in the joint, he had a breakthrough. It was just another day.

After having lunch, he had a fight with someone who didn’t do anything wrong as usual… just to release tension… just to start the day in a good mood.

When he was sent back to his cell beaten and very pleased of his new bruises… battle scars… he was quite messed up. “Must be getting old”, he thought. “Fuck it!” Kicked the bed and threw the water bottle with contempt. Felt good that everything that could be kicked and thrown were in close proximity. Splash! Oh, how he loved a good splash. Screams followed him like old friends in need of cash. Went to bed like a dead man.

It wasn’t until three or four hours later; he came to his senses. Got up, pulled it out, “Ah, the release”. Just when he was readying himself to get closer to death one more day, he saw it on the wall… the face of our Lord. Smiled and immediately knew how he would spend the rest of his days.

And so did I.

John Berry Houston, Texas, USA

February 25th, 2022

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A techno-tragedy for the post-modern world in 8 acts.

1) The Beginning * 2) Worlds 3) Experiments 4) Tree of Life 5) Borders of Reality 6) Mojo 7) Winds of Change 8) A New Beginning

If you get all 8 books, you get the requirements, the source code, and the working app, the Abacus version of the Matrix!

And you can do whatever the fuck you want with it!

If you don’t prefer e-books, you can print SFN1 and distribute it freely!

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Sfn the beginning

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Act One

(intro) The Stream Theory … 17 1- Last day on earth … 19 2- The first day … 21 3- The first month … 23 4- The number of the beast … 25 5- Crossroads … 27 6- Fear … 31 7- String theory for dummies … 41 8- The seventh letter … 49 9- Them or us … 55 10- Dark … 65 11- The sleeper has awakened … 75 12- The quantum shift … 83 (outro) The Warrior’s Psalm … 101

Spotify playlist for act one = https://tinyurl.com/sfnactone

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The Stream* Theory

When a user plugs into a game, he “falls into a world”. As long as he stays connected, he “communicates” with the components of the game universe. At any given time, the consumer of a particular game aspect lives at a certain “level of reality”. While the user lives in the game universe, he uses a “thought board” knowing or otherwise to make sense of his experiences in the game.

During this process he uses “presupposition specification”.

The act of thinking is interfered by a “virtual conscience” and the user’s ability to comply with or to reject what is offered by that game mechanism constructs his “personality” in this alternate universe.

As the user loses himself in the game, he encounters several “cover-up stories”.

After one point, through the use of a networking technology like the “Internet’ or by participating in ‘real’ life with a ‘modified state of mind’ the user “enlarges the game universe”.

During these game sessions, if the user takes a chance to elaborate on the “absurdities” he faces, he may develop valuable insights about the meaning of his existence in one world or the other. All the user’s interactions with the game universe are recorded by a “symbolic language” which can be retrieved and consumed by another user of this particular game universe at a later time.

* Life does not hold us with strings, rather we hold each other with Streams.

Notes from the journal of a bored developer, Houston, Texas, 1993.

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Last Day on Earth

It doesn’t matter who you are. This is the very definition of evil. Evil is the bearer of the zeroth question. We’re all allowed to live and love and die as long as we don’t ask the question; but if we no longer play within the borders… If we ask the question… When we finally reach the end… We can either go back or forward, but we can never forget.

Near yet far, how can I get through this feeling… of doubt and fear and agony? How can I stand still knowing I and I alone stand in between? The anticipation of the end makes me nervous. Not even remembering what they once meant, saying these words calms me down: “Never before we reach the end, my love.

Never before we reach the end.”

I have become a writer of sorts for quick cash. First, started writing stories, then commentaries and finally code. I guess, I’m good at making things up, but not so good at making ends meet. Little by little, this has become my life. Then, came writing notes… after notes leading to compositions for the guitar.

Not necessarily musical or following a coherent pattern, minute pieces of music living calmly in the chaos I call home soothes me. All is nothing, but a conglomerate of different ideas brought together so that whoever’s exposed to it feels good about herself. So good in fact, she can look at the world with eyes wide- open, seeing for the first time what she’s meant to be.

Dancing deliriously like a Dervish; she takes pleasure in wishing a universe into existence.

I can neither live nor die in this world which puts me into a unique position. Given my strange disposition, I cannot help myself but think how I may write my own reality like reverse engineering myself. A lowly snake eating its own tail and becoming a dragon in the process… There is nothing on this earth that moves me. To me it’s always the same hour. The clock doesn’t tick. Clouds gather.

I hear the rustling of the wind. Lightnings strike in the distance. Smelling the morning air, I devour your memory. My atoms split. Rain pours.

I’m yours.

Come to think of it, most people are like vending machines. You insert something somewhere and then; you receive the item of your interest. Even the most adventurous lives are just combinations of simple transactions. People don’t have any control whatsoever over their lives if you know which buttons to push and how to conceal yours.

And when you put enough of these transactions together, you compose a story long enough to create a new reality. A reality which can only be deciphered by understanding its irony. In that regard, it’s hacker-proof. They cannot get to me. One must have keen eyes to spot the gateways leading to the sources of inspiration behind sweet dreams and who has them?

This is the three hundred and sixty fifth morning after it all started. It was on the news in every channel. Futurists, whisperers, story tellers and chief executive officers of every obscure tech startup were talking about it with such enthusiasm that made you shiver thinking they might be thinking about a merger.

“If you need to connect with someone you don’t know but ought to meet” was the slogan we all knew by heart. The difference was this time it was mine. I knew they would readily swallow it, but I couldn’t have guessed their hunger. Just seven days after the release more than one million people downloaded the app and began meeting each other in the world’s first service-oriented architecture made of human beings.

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It was like the beginning of cloud computing. You know, when they realized that they had all these computers lying around and doing nothing, that they could rent them. Yet, slave labor is always cheaper, especially if the slaves are loving it.

The great Parmenides once said that if you told people the truth, they would never get it, but if you lied to them and your lie was so venomous that it could kill, then you could rest assured that you have done a good job. Those who see through your lies can pull you down and tear you apart, and live, while the unworthy is consumed by it and fall. Am I compassionate? Am I trying to solve a problem?

This isn’t even revenge, for I don’t seek an end. May whoever come after me see the wisdom in this.

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The First Day

Every game must have programmable entities that resemble living creatures. The extent of their programmability isn’t too extreme. You just have to define what they can and they cannot do. You must come up with the equivalent of the ten commandments for the universe you create so to speak, because every universe deserves to have a God or a Goddess. And every God or Goddess must have a universe to play with and creatures to torment. That’s the nature of things.

No matter what kind of games you prefer to play, it always becomes boring at some point granted that you’re an accomplished player with a fully functional brain. As a result, I quit playing games long ago. If I choose to waste my time with one, that’s only because of my desire to see how natural breasts jiggled in that one. After a minute or so it becomes boring again.

Yet I cannot move away from the console. I just can’t find a hobby that’ll keep me occupied, live my life, help me mingle, you know, with real people in a face-to-face situation. Whatever people are passionate about doesn’t turn me on. Whatever I’m passionate about, well, I’m not really passionate about anything.

Hours become days, days become weeks, weeks become months and you get closer to your grave with nothing to show for. Still, it was my dying interest in games that showed me the way out and it happened not on the monitor, but in front of it.

I had to work overtime again, because some jerk managed me into futile attempts to finish a set of vague requirements leading to nowhere. As usual, I put them together the way I wanted and made up a bunch of business rules, because let’s face it, I had to go home and eat and fuck and sleep.

Just before I disappeared into the dark of the night, a couple of guys came by and to my surprise, Jannicke, that Norwegian überfrau asked me to play a shooter with them in a one more for the road fashion. Fuck me dead, I said “Yes”.

I’m human after all. I can always play and fuck… and go home and eat and sleep.

Do you know Jannicke, that night you solved all my problems? We just went ahead and played deathmatch because we were burned out. Nobody cared about teams or flags at that godforsaken time of the night. Having played the game countless times, I could multithread easily. I could kill the guys and undress Jannicke with my eyes at the same time. Her nipples hurt my eyes.

I could sink my teeth into her tush. I could taste the holy of holies. “Malty with barley sweetness, buttery toast, wood shavings, hay, and walnut. Orange zest spiciness perks up a malty core of nuts, oak and toffee, hints of cut grass. Oaky, rich with good length, some fruit lingers.”ii Can one have an orgasm in the eye? To this day it seems unbelievable to me that I could shake it off.

My brain somehow managed to beat my dick in a game of chess of immense difficulty and pointed me in the right direction.

What I saw made me come to my senses at once. Her being a Viking didn’t make any difference. The person in front of the monitor was as predictable as the sprites programmed to act as stupid monsters in the game.

The only question was: “Who’s dumb and who’s dumber?” I thought if I could orchestrate a storyline of my own and have it streamed through a phone’s black screen using people’s thumb-power, I could make them do whatever the hell I wanted. Did I ever feel calm before? I felt like Siddhartha under Arasa Maram where all was revealed to him.

All of a sudden, I didn’t want to go home anymore. I had a purpose for the first time in my life.

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The First Month

Rule One > kendini gizle The art of creating diminished lives lies in reducing a person into one of his urges. That way what you want becomes you or more precisely, you conceal yourself with an apparent need. Mating rituals are excellent examples of this behavior. So, the best way to conceptualize my initial thoughts was to go with the basic instinct and the racier it was the better it was.

After giving it some thought, I decided to play the old strangers on the train routine with a dangerous twist. I was going to be the stranger with a taste for the rough.

To have a good match I came up with a way for the interested parties to expose themselves showing what they had in mind explicitly without any room for conflicting messages. Click once, swipe twice… What dreams may come?

There, there… here’s one. She needs to be taken by a ruthless stranger who doesn’t take “No” for an answer. She must be disciplined so that she would be relieved of all the guilt. Sin-free is the secret word here.

Whatever you do always stay sin-free.

Entered a dark room where the only illumination source was a beat-up lamp, painting my way in the red. She was waiting, eyes blindfolded. Could smell her, she was already wet. As my footsteps approached her, she opened more and more. As if something in her head went: “Go all the way, leave no door unopened”.

Trick is doing the unexpected. Be gentle when roughness is expected, be rough when she bares her soul to you. My hands tied her hands in her back with unnerving precision. Moved closer to smell the fear, trembled with ungodly pleasures. Inside, yet far away. Strangers in the mist, just a glimpse of where we are… what we are… never seeing the person… behind this.

A word can break the ice, but the game is ice. The feeling that creepy-crawlies may be fucking you gives you the chills which in return makes you high. Serpents move in, cold like calculating machines. Screeching sounds of their footsteps echo in your ears. Knowing is boring and unknowing is a gateway to infinite possibilities.

A tortured figure, quivers and moans. Not knowing what to do next, just blindly follows. Yet, somehow knows that it’s not meant to be like this, not like this.

Two is a sad number. Pain is always better with audience. Water drips from walkway above constantly. Someone coughs and then bites her lip… blood… Another laughs nervously scratching his arm. Eyes… moving from flesh to flesh. A deeper sigh and she screams… Warm breath… Turning towards me, looking deeper into the abyss… Another scream, then another… Children of the night, what sweet music we make.iii

Barely decipherable from the shadows… who are they? Coming from all walks of life, they are the guys and gals next door. They are your mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. Having seen the light only once, they are blind.

There is a body, and another one, and another one. Arms stretched out, moving all over me. I don’t know whose leg it is I’m feeling. Someone’s behind me. Two or three in the front. Thousand kisses and more.

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Is it her? Does it matter? Isn’t this gentler? Isn’t this wiser? The drumless sensuality of a screaming damsel in distress caresses me. An old truth is whispered into my ear. In the blackest of nights, I woke up to witness a higher ground.

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The Number of the Beast

Rule Two > resimleri reddet Sitting calmly in the ticket boothiv, people come into Seanna’s life without a why like children. A slight nuisance at first, but given enough time, it brings the variety one lacks in her ever so slightly changing days and nights. Time is something they don’t have, always leaving as unexpectedly as they arrive.

Scanning every minuscule detail, not at all paying attention to the big picture, thinking it’s a given. Collecting data, retrieving information, broadcasting what was retrieved not a moment ago, always optimizing… The hand does not know who commands it.

Constantly moving, making decisions, reaching goals. One might argue that these are conscience decisions about certain things like which movie to watch, the seating arrangement or the brand of soda that’ll quench their thirst, not just involuntary reactions to the moment, but they don’t know when to stop… when to start… when to look… when to talk. No, they don’t have to be there right now.

They could have been there last Thursday after taking a sick day or they could be there next day and have an exciting affair afterwards. Something really kinky, while the wives at home tried new recipes for meatball spaghettis.

They would be finished off way before little Timmy expectantly sits on his bed waiting for that night’s story… it’s just sex… He wouldn’t smell anything funny, until one day his girlfriend questions his commitment issues and he begins to have premature ejaculations.

Capitalizing on the moment, Seanna takes a good look around and playfully welcomes one. No? Strange… nobody gets it. Home is right there, and nobody gets it! “Refuse all you want” she sighs. “You’re in a ticket booth and you’ll remain there as long as you are theirs”. People spend their whole lives… at the crossroads as if it’s a bus stop.

Waiting for a bus that never comes, they fear they will lose their roots even if they are nothing but chains. Roots give people purpose… meaning. Human beings are meant to be stable-expendable.

The moment you understand this, your world gets uglier. To escape it, you want to turn that bus stop into a world. You feel a presence much greater than yourself whispering into your ears, “Get out of the way”, but you instinctively resist. You’ll do anything and everything in your power to play your own game… thinking your very soul depends on it.

Yet, a world is created only if you have infinite potential… when you truly believe in other worlds… when your interests lie beyond yourself. If you are curious and have the guts to go along with it, you may have your world.

Of course, you can stay at the crossroads as long as you want. Your heart beating like a synclavier crashed in a loop, you carry yourself from one point to another, minute by minute describing a world full of promise… full of excitement, but you cannot find home in a dictionary. It’s just a dungeon for cowards… an end in itself.

Look at them! How certain they look as they consume what always seem like intermediary steps to them, slowly getting to the point they have invested on so much. Linear lives born out of agent-entity relationships… perceived as desirable mythologies about the self. One dark look into the mirror and you’re

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in… creating an endless stream of points in your own image. Life becomes nothing but a long line of acknowledgements… pleasure moments faking purpose. Only someone who’s lost can be that certain… whistling on his way home… knowing he’ll never get there.

When the points ahead are desired with such passion, ports emerge. They let you travel from one point to another with the speed of light. Each point is a temporary resting place corresponding to a hierarchy with its specialized inlets and outlets which force you to provide certain services during your stay and in return, you earn the right to consume other services. It’s like your first beer. You hate it and then, you are hooked.

One day, you get to a point where you’re going to spend the rest of your life. You have arrived!

Some cannot even walk the path on their own. They can’t self-actualize. They have to physically travel from one place to another and to be subjected to the rules and regulations of cultures completely foreign to them. Uncle Toms… define their being not by what they do (creating a balance between the inner and the outer world), but by what they refuse to do (creating a barrier between them and the world).

They must travel from one place to another constantly searching for a certain stimulus… something that wasn’t there when they were little kids, so that one fine day they can stop. It’s the key which could have prevented the event that created this self-loathing rejection machine. And when they find it, they must choke on it. They must transform themselves until nothing’s left of their original selves.

Somehow being aware of their condition, they try to hide themselves, but spotting them is quite easy. You can see them in old age wondering why they have done the things they did, as if one can know time when his eyes are fixed on the points ahead. If you are always on the run, moments are for maneuvers.

And when that road ends, you’re left alone with yourself and there is nothing there.

The bell slices the moment into broken dreams. Stumbling they search for their seats… as they have searched for their places in the world since they left their mothers’ wombs. Popcorn in one hand and in the other their lifeline, sitting neatly in the dark, mesmerized by black screens… can’t stop for a second.

Constantly creating synchronicities. Writing stories… convincing themselves that they have lived. Handling things… managing things… or is it them who are being managed? Stop for a second and the whole thing will come crashing down. No… they don’t have to be there.

And then, there are those who see opportunity everywhere. With lusting lips and soul-piercing eyes, he who seeks nothing walks into my world. Power without guilt, love without doubtv… my sadness ends.

“Hi Seanna”.

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Crossroads

Rule Three > anahtar ol “Hey, yourself”, she chuckles.

Raising her eyebrows, she sniffs the air like a brave squirrel. “Is something going to be different this time?” Pinches a nipple, nothing sexual, just needs to wake up to the moment… Short bursts of pleasure or pain… a reminder of what we are.

“Doesn’t even look at me”. How he loves to leave me on the ledge. There isn’t even a thought process behind his being here, now… “And he smiles”.

That’s why we love to submit…. to an arc devoid of any human element… to avoid the embarrassment and the heartache by being a part of a well-oiled, smooth-running machine. Instinctively we all know, we’re not meant to be there. We’re meant to be lost, but we endlessly torture ourselves. By design we cannot wake up on our own.

Being always alone… in the crowds… at home… at work, we hopelessly crave for a tall dark stranger. Someone, break this never-ending loop, look at us in the eyes and without moving a muscle say, “Fuck it!” Where there is heartache, there is love.

“You seem to be in a good mood. Tell me you did it… you finally asked for your pink slip.” He laughs loudly with his shrieking natural tenor. All the walls seem to appreciate it.

“No… there are… options”. She shrinks her shoulders. “I just feel fine”. Leans forward and with a perfect Poker face squeezes her breasts together to create a focus of attention. Her erect nipples command obedience. Her short shorts are meant to be broken. Bartholin’s glands working like war horses as she enthusiastically rubs her leg with her inquisitive right foot. One can be loved or one can love herself.

“Have a question for you.”

“Oh, yeah? Another riddle? Shoot.”

Playing a predator’s game only not as skillfully, she asks “What’s the difference between self-absorption and enlightenment? Aren’t they both about… being trapped… in the moment? And what are the implications of caring so much about the moment? I think it’s overrated…” to seem even in more control, she adds “the moment”.

“Simple”, he softly kisses the tip of her nose making her blush.

“If only he would say the word…”

And he moves away.

“A selfish person cannot see beyond what he wants, while the enlightened can… because he seeks nothing. That’s why they seem similar to you. They both seem distanced, lost in their own worlds, but the enlightened person isn’t distanced at all. He is just… there unobtrusively. It’s your turn to do something about it.”

“How can we seek nothing?”

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And the walls go wild again. “At the brink of death, we cease to be another potentiality. We see ourselves in other people’s lives for the first time. The nature of our being is revealed to us.”

“After dying?”

“Of course, you are wondering how one can achieve that and yet, live. All you have to do is to learn to be there. Practice the proper ways of making love. We die and then we are born again when we become one, my squirrel. And you have a very good teacher.”

She cannot take it anymore.

“Do you want to go to the backstage?”

“Who are you going to be this time?”

“I want to be the lady with the view”.

“Again?”

She smacks him.

“Don’t just stand there. This way!”

Someone with an annoyed face, “Shh”. So, the audience is aware!

Both of them, “Shh yourself!”

Nothing turns him… neither darkness nor light. Truth revealing, heartbreaking moments bound bosoms beating together as one. It’s deafening!

“Hands… firm on the banister, yes. Eyes… fixed on the screen. The lady screams and the white knight is on his way. Gently rubbing where his hands belong. Throat’s aching for his lips. Come on, feel the blood pumping in my veins. Open like a human spitting uterus my legs are shaking. Aah… Aah … I don’t feel him anymore.”

“Owoooooooooooo”.

Groaning like a moonstruck animal, he makes the unsuspecting crowd anxiously look around. Unsuccessful in their attempts to spot the beast, they fake control, “What a great sound system!”

“But he’s right there! There, I can feel him changing. I can sense the torment behind those gentle hands. Another minute and they stop searching and he goes completely dead… just to be resurrected by me… seeing me… from millions of parsecs away.”

The music swells.

“Raising from his tomb, he’s sleeping-conscious. He doesn’t lust for me. He lusts for Him. Like a frantic monk who has seen the ultimate truth, he must constantly fuck-preach it conquering everything in his path while he himself is conquered.”

“Shh… easy now”.

One more step and it’s over. He wants immortality. And that’s exactly why he will never get it.

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A fighting… questioning pussy is a system with no collision detection. No detection, no prevention. The perfect environment for self-reflection… which only happens blindly. What piercing questions cannot uncover becomes obvious… when you are home. When the guest and the host are one. Lights change invariably, from bragging greens to provocative reds, emphasizing the importance of the moment without giving a clue.

“Lead me in the dark, catapult me towards the door. Make it a world. Make it a world!”

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Fear

Rule Four > yolunu yürü My friends often compliment me because of my keen eyes. Yet, that changes nothing. Such a trait doesn’t seem very different from having, say, a better golf hand or being a good fuck. They carry on with their lives as if nothing happened, blinded by the past or the future… always looking ahead, observing nothing.

“If only they knew what my eyes can see”.

A sleeper is tempted by his own reflection. Nothing else triggers him. A more desirable image of oneself unfolds the way to a throne blocking every possibility of human touch, keeping the world hygienic while terraforming it.

Must make this reality sustainable-bearable and by doing so, must preserve its scientific-sanctity. Possessed by the residue of a long past initiation, must make sure that all doors lead to the shortest possible distance between two points.

“If we don’t live there, we don’t live, period”.

Kan looked attentively at her buttocks feeling the cold breeze coming from the wide-open window. Turned faced down she did not have any feminine traits, but she didn’t look masculine either. Two perfect hemispheres peacefully snuggled up against each other proving everybody wrong. No, opposites do not attract.

“The most beautiful ass in the world”.

Purring like a cat in heat she rubbed a cheek, “If only you could have seen yours”.

He lowered his moist lips until his warm breath marked the spot. Kissed her where the hemispheres collided like an octopus madly in love. He was in love, but not with her.

“I have to go to work, you know?”

“I know… I know. Me too.”

Software firms are great places if you are into anthropology or philosophy. Perhaps, you can even have a second major… in moral issues. Kan was into both not by choice, but because of necessity. Whenever he had the chance, he would watch people and take notes undecipherable by the prying eyes. He would try his best not to seem like watching.

Because it’s the ultimate insult for those who think they are the watchers themselves not the others. While thinking you are the experimenter, suddenly realizing you are just one of the subjects in someone else’s experiments is a real low.

It takes away all the mystery of the world leaving you behind … An entity without an agent… without a purpose… is an entity on a collision course taking down everything around him with him. Dangerous…

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Only understanding creatures in their own worlds reveals secrets which are otherwise very well hidden. Adaptations are about perfection. Thus, they are at their best when one cannot answer why questions. Understanding them also means finally understanding yourself. For you are too just another adaptation. That’s why you must answer “how” questions. Only fools would dwell on “why”. “Why” is a silly question.

Following the trail of that thought Kan would go to meetings where he wasn’t invited. He would claim tasks that had nothing to do with him, tasks he wasn’t even planning to finish. He enjoyed his failures. Tasks or goals didn’t interest him, the life around them did. He would stroll up and down as if he was at the zoo, observing the chimps, sometimes rewarding them with peanuts, but always taking notes after notes.

It didn’t matter which firm he was working for at the moment. Management always felt his presence as an unexpected sign of divergence and immediately hated him for it. They would intuitively know he didn’t belong to the world, their world… but, that wasn’t all. If it was, they could tolerate him. Because he always did the job. Somebody must do the job.

What made it unbearable wasn’t his not belonging there, it was his effortlessly making whatever world they belonged to worthless while not even trying to do so which is a greater insult. That their whole lives were nothing but a joke. And nobody wanted to hear that, not since Jesus was crucified.

“Today’s task” Kan said to himself “is to formulate the underlying mechanism. I already know how the matching function will work.”

While he was good at abstraction, he always tested his ideas as much as he could. Remembering how Antique Greece fell, he never relied on reasoning alone. He thought, “Reason is a broken ladder”.

The difference between the underlying mechanism and the functionality servicing the user was obvious. Since he could not contain the human experience, squeeze it into a tiny little app, he had to come up with a smart scheme which had to work in two different layers at the same time.

“A seeker” he thought, “defines whatever he’s after explicitly and a willing provider in close proximity lets him know about her availability, eager to ease his pain”. He liked to think of Seekers as male and Providers as female. He was modeling his alternate universe after pimps and hookers. “A perfect relationship. Someone with a clear motive meets another who can get him off, if the price is right, of course”. That would be the visible layer. His Tombstone.vi

The other layer had to be hidden skillfully. Only the best and the brightest should be able to sense it and, only after so many trials. They would speculate about it and yet, cannot prove or disprove it. Another “Why are we here?” question for humanity.

“It mustn’t make any difference whether whoever’s using the app is good or evil, innocent or guilty, but when they ‘touch’ it, the app must leave a mark adding another brick to the wall. Like termites creating intricate cities out of simple structures without being aware of what they are doing, the choices people make must create different notions of reality, all competing for dominion.”

“So” he thought, “I must come up with the basic building block. Something that can take any form like Lego pieces.” Oh, how he detested Lego pieces and the fools who liked them. Regardless, he furthered his thoughts.

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“When you use something or something uses you, in some way you relate yourself to it, have a different kind of experience only because of it… then, the most obvious thing you observe about it has to be a manifestation of it”.

He put a blank sheet of paper in front of him in a neat nerd fashion and took out his good pen, the one that drew perfect 0.5 mm thick blackness. He was on the verge of saying something important. As it was always the case, imagining a catastrophe helped him think. Exaggeration always fueled his mind. Being Turkish, he loved to live on the edge. They were binary creatures… those Turks.

He considered a virus outbreak that never ended, an outbreak that killed the old and preserved the very young.

“How would people survive in such a disaster?”

“How would they live? What would they consider a good life? What kind of people they would turn into?”

“What would assholes do in such circumstances?”

It didn’t take long. He was good that way.

“The rich would rot away in luxury. They would suffocate in their three-ply toilet paper piles while discovering the virtues of homemade bread. They would get fatter and fatter while cursing the ordinary folk in TikTok.

Fearing for their lives, they would never go out. They wouldn’t risk catching the virus, but all their servants were long gone. They were either dead or elsewhere dealing with their own problems. Friends were ignoring friends, taking refuge in their YouTube gourmet channels. Couples were finding some merit in monogamy or talking to their lawyers about settlement options.”

“To gather more supplies, they would use a strategy Ottomans were famous for. Being members of the Western civilization, they would add a Nazi touch, of course. They would make it… more efficient.”

“Ottomans gathered some of the children living in their newly occupied regions. They would provide for them, teach them the skills of warfare and of course, the principles of Islam.

They would pay them handsomely and make them the elite force of the empire. In return, those children were expected to be completely loyal and fearless even when facing certain death. They called them Janissaries.”

“So, the rich began buying the commodity nobody wanted, the children. No, poor wasn’t using birth control pills or condoms. Instead, they were procreating like rabbits because it meant good money. Being a father or a mother didn’t mean much anymore. If it meant anything at all, it meant clean shirts, loaves of bread, packages of cigarettes and cans of beer, nothing more. They were fucking for a buck.”

“All around the world, poor gladly gave themselves up hoping for some kind of future”.

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“All around the world, rich gladly gave themselves up hoping for some kind of future”.

“The poor still had dreams of competing comforts, but the rich had only one thing on their minds. They needed muscle power as always, but this time with a twist. They needed immunity as well, the immunity of little children. They would put them on leashes. They would force them to scavenge whatever’s left in the outside world. Rigorously trained for it, these little dogs brought back everything they found controlling their own appetites.”

“If one could survive out in the open for a while, he would see children upon children with torn out clothes, yanking their leashes in agony, dying of hunger with unopened packages in their trembling hands, destined for their masters. Even if one couldn’t see them, he would easily understand where they were because of the traces left by the endless streams of dirty ropes tied to their leashes.

Here they were, sniffing the air, eyeing the shabby apartments, searching for goods they were asked for. Only reddish eyes broke the hegemony of dirt on these sad doll faces. Licking their saliva from the corners of their mouths, they kept on searching and searching.”

And he found the answer. “Streams!” he said to himself, “Streams”.

“So, the Seeker and the Provider must be connected at all times, not necessarily physically, but their manifestations inclined towards the same path must be one. Two pools of complementary entities should be able to switch back and forth if one fails to deliver the goods. With the touch of a button, switch to be the pimp or switch to be the hooker… Everybody should be expendable. No one should go home empty handed.”

He drew two figures apart. One was drawn normally representing the Seeker. The other was drawn upside down. He erased the latter within seconds. He drew another figure, just much smaller than the one on the left. This would be the Provider… the child hooker, pointing out that a hooker too can be a Seeker the next time … and maintain this world.

He drew a big sip from his coffee and justified his technique, “You cannot precisely describe a world, because what makes it one isn’t only the immediately available things one interacts with every day. Still, you can easily describe what it isn’t, what it should never be.”

Parmenides in him kept talking, “It is the responsibility of the entities that reside there to differentiate what’s fake from what’s real on a day-to-day basis. That’s what life is, figuring it out along the way while creating what you will shortly figure out yourself. There, a better explanation of the Schrödinger’s cat for you.”

In a single stroke, he came up with the formula:

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M . U . W . a . s . m “If you are desperately searching for something, you must have a MUWasm when you finally find it.” he said to himself laughing. “And if you both handle it masterfully my minions, you can come at the same time!”

“NEEHEEHEEHEEHAHAHA!”

He understood it right away. His creation had to be a multiverse. Because even if he could define universes hand crafted for specific communities easily, he could not make these universes large. Since he took every precaution to define these universes for a perfect market product fit, he had to exclude strangers to make the resulting reality coherent.

This approach limited the number of possible relationship types in a single universe to 256. Not a small number, but if one imagined only the different types of foot fetish, he would immediately see that it’s not a big number either.

He knew from experience that different universes co-existed side by side. Their inhabitants, often unaware of each other’s existence, mingled as one harmonious community. When they came into contact for daily affairs, they behaved as if they could see one another, understand one another, feel for each other, but the truth was the other way round.

That prick who considered himself your biological manager lived in one universe and you who had to take his shit day in, day out in another. More often than not, shit eaters had their own factions in universes among universes, again completely unaware of the alternate experiences. When you are lost in class struggles with bourgeoisie tendencies, all you can think of is whose shit is better.

For attaining the maximum variety, worlds belonging to alternate universes had to be brought together to form more interesting post-modern notions of reality. He realized that he had to take the multiverse thing more seriously.

His creation had to be three dimensional (Multiverse, Universe, World) and a Seeker or a Provider should have the ability to link with one another using Streams from any universe. Simple way to do so is to give every Person the ability to switch Multiverses upon will… making defection possible.

This way a Person may define his romantic life as a merciless dominatrix, his casual life as an avid golf player, his business life as a relentless stockbroker and his compassionate life as a God-fearing Christian who loves to donate his old belongings to those who desperately need them.

“That’s something”.

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Kan was a natural born bullshitter. Any Jewish comedian would be jealous. He could write a story out of anything, but he too had a weak spot. He knew only one universe… his to be more precise. And it was such a homogenic universe. It didn’t give a clue about other lifestyles. There everybody lived according to their stereotypes. Stereotypes you could see in any TV show.

You had the nerds, you had the babes, you had the athletes. Of course, you also had always-blue-teachers-who-cannot-get-an-orgasm and dumber-than-the- second-coat-of-paint-students and no-children’s-behind-is-left-priests and sell-first-think-later-traders and shower-head-loving-housewives and alcoholic-provider-husband-slaves, but who gives a fuck about them? Kan wasn’t one of them.

He belonged to a very small, negligible subgroup among the nerds, misfits.

Misfits naturally have the ability to become aware of their circumstances by observing other people’s behavior. Other nerds are oblivious to what they are, where they are… why they are. He simply wasn’t.

Yet, most misfits are cowards. It doesn’t matter whether they are aware or not. They prefer to be exploited in return for their daily bread, rather than going out in the open and taking a risk. By the miracle of birth, he wasn’t brought up that way. Because of this, he was all alone. He would look at the world and see no role models.

Even if he could go anywhere, he didn’t want to be there, not like this. He wasn’t hopeless though. He was eager. He was looking for something nobody was looking for. Eyes wide-open, he knew it before he knew it like the way a panther desired her prey. He knew, this is how all the good stories began.

He faked another number, 12. If there were 12 multiverses each having 12 universes, then the possible number of relationship types would be 36,864. He could create a megapolis with that number. His minions… Mikideans… could go wild and reinvent nature.

“NEEHEEHEEHEEHAHAHA!”

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Mikideans can find each other following the trail of their urges. They cannot get lost. By bending space with transactions, they create custom wormholes between parallel universes, escape the rules forced upon them by their current communities. Their fates become what they make.

He rocked his chair back and forth yawning. It was almost noon. Everybody was eyeing people nearby, checking what they had in mind for lunch. Up until then he had not done a single thing that had to do with work. He smiled victorious, “My real work is rebooting humanity. I do the computer thing to finance it, pal.”

A good writer writes what he knows. So, his first universe became a nerd’s universe. He named it “Silicon Valley” without giving it much thought. Then, renamed it “Silicon Valley 2.0”. It was going to have four distinct worlds. Every other universe would have the same structure for simplicity. There was going to be a business world, where one could run his business using the latent resources of other people.

“What kind of resources?”

“I’ll figure them out later on, as usual”.

There was going to be a casual world where antisocial people could intermingle without the fear of embarrassment, even get the girl if they managed to not to come in their pants upon first contact. This world wasn’t meant for romantic affairs, but nerds being nerds, they would probably try to fuck anybody they met regardless of the context, with no success as usual.

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“So, the means and the goals are a good match”, he thought. “…but there must be more to a fire”.

A Seeker’s need provides him with the context where the means for achieving that goal becomes visible.

While he accumulates these Streams, which may belong to any universe from any multiverse, he effortlessly creates an alternate Notion of Reality for himself… his utopia… which may seem like a dystopia to other Seekers. Yet, character traits belonging to alternate Notions of Reality which could otherwise cancel each other out will reside cozily side by side, tolerating even the most disgusting ideas.

He added two more worlds, romantic and compassionate. In the first one, a nerd would be able to automate so to speak, his gratification needs according to certain fetishes. This world would be the next step for casual encounters. Alternatively, this could the differentiating factor among nerds whether they were predators or prey… their much desired chances to show off in a lousy reunion.

The other one was quite different from the rest. While business, casual, and romantic worlds were all about taking something, this one was about giving something to make their universe balanced. The potentiality of being cannot be all evil or all good. To be able to exist it must be both. Those who do not like a universe should have a fighting chance. They should be able to either convert it or be converted.

M . U . W . a . s . m Normal . Silicon Valley . { business, casual, romantic, compassionate } Now that the Seeker has explicitly defined the context by selecting his current world (MUW), all he must do is to point out his goal. To be able to do that efficiently, Kan came up with three interlinked nodes, (asm). The Seeker would first select his archetype and browse through the candidates.

If he had to be more precise, he could narrow down the list of candidates by selecting a specifier and a merchandise.

Seeker = M . U . W . a . s . m = Provider S = Multiverse . Universe . World . archetype . specifier . merchandise = P Tarzan = S = Multiverse . Universe . World . archetype . specifier . merchandise = P = Jane Tarzan = S = Normal . Silicon Valley . business . developer . mobile . Xamarin = P = Jane He put his pen aside and looked at his creation.

This simple sentence would be the building block, “MUWasm, msaWUM”. Another manifestation of “Selamünaleyküm” and “Aleykümselam”. It looked elegant… perfect. He had pleasure in creating it. A small test? Yes, the Stream could be deciphered from both ends. One could start with the hooker and find his customer, or one can start as a customer and find a suitable hooker for himself.

Now, he had to find a way to consolidate these experiences.

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“A person can be a Seeker or a Provider anytime he sees fit. So, there will be two different sets of Streams for each Person, consumer streams and provider streams. The frequency and fulfillment degree of these streams will be different from each other. That is to say while the customer may think he is the greatest, the person on the other end may be thinking about what she is going to do afterwards.”

“Of course, some may end up being perfect Seekers or perfect Providers lacking the opposite set of Streams completely”.

“Also, a Seeker may favorite a Provider or vice versa. They may have loved ones in a loveless realm.”

“Take Tarzan, for example, after using the app for months, he would have quite a number of Streams, each with different combinations of nodes creating new memories, a Personality very different from Jane’s”.

He had a knack for naming things. He liked the uncommon, made-up ones. He detested nameless things. “If a thing did not have a name, it would fall beyond the grace of God”, he used to say. He had the urge to relate things or at least put them in jars for future analyses.

“These Stream collections create the Personalities of the Persons hiding behind Seekers and Providers”.

Tarzan = Personality = “A Person is the Summation of his Streams” = S =

Normal . Silicon Valley . business . developer . mobile . Xamarin = P = { Jane … Joan } {

MUWasm 1

… MUWasm N } “A Slice is a vertical or a horizontal snapshot of a Person at a particular time. If you slice Tarzan vertically, you get a peek at his romantic affairs or business dealings, for example… one at a time. If on the other hand, you slice him horizontally, you can see his whole Personality as projected at a certain point in his life.

You can see how he did in all four worlds at that time.”

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“A person is what he seeks”, he said to himself. “Thus, a person can be anything. While no one has any control whatsoever over what he wants, everybody has control over how he wants them. In that regard, we have freewill. Of course, one can go anywhere with his freewill, but I’ll make sure everybody gets what he deserves.”

“Hey man, don’t you hear what I say? The meeting is beginning. Hurry up!”

“Huh? What meeting? Don’t you see I’m working!”

“Your performance review, dummy!”

“Shit”.

40

String Theory for Dummies

Rule Five > bir artı bir eşittir bir “Here we go again”.

He sat down across three managerial figures without saying a word. With a twisted smile on his face, he looked at their notebooks. They were blank… untouched like the books you would see in manager-rooms.

That was what they were going for, an undecipherable goo that can take any form.

So, they were ready to solve the mystery that is Kan once again. What he immediately felt when he looked at them has been his inspiration for the upcoming app all along. Out of nowhere he was a part of a spontaneous event that involved audience participation.

Just another meeting where pricks from the sales department met the pricks from the marketing department to question the pricks from the IT department under the supervision of their powerless-prick-manager. Two useless pieces of shit… marketing and sales… hookers and pimps… And that was precisely why he had to endure such encounters.

Because understanding hookers and pimps were crucial in today’s business world. We were living in a whorehouse. This would give him a strange idea sometimes. He would think whether real hookers would charge for kisses and hugs after their markets were invaded by the amateurs turned pro. Took a deep breath and patiently waited for what was to come.

Because it gave him all the information he would ever need for his creations. Once he created a cage for these stupid fucks, he would be able to use the very same cage to liberate those who somehow preserved their humanity. Two birds with one stone… smart… Something a computer scientist would do.

Performance reviews are a must. It’s a part of the modern office. Yet, nobody believes in them. Still, not knowing any better, they keep doing it like watching the same movie over and over expecting a different ending. The only difference between this firm’s or that firm’s performance review is the amount of cruelty involved. His firm was creative on the subject.

Others would have a one-on-one meeting. His firm preferred trinities. Every developer had to endure the excruciating pain inflicted by a marketer, a salesperson, and the current so-called manager of the software development department. “So-called”, because every fucker has ideas concerning software. “Current”, because that prick changes all the time, being weaker than the other pricks.

The prick who is actually stronger than the other pricks is weaker. Go figure! Those who waste their lives near money are more valuable to the soul devouring bosses, because they associate things in close proximity to each other. That’s how their serpent brains work. Marketers and salespeople… they don’t even have brains.

They just do what they are told while they spend most of their time trying to convince themselves that it’s the other way round. If you have a similar itch, know that you are a marketer or a salesperson. You are not a person.

Kan had to get an OK from all three for his freedom… to be let go… to get a raise. If the software development department’s manager is fired in the middle of these proceedings as usual, he had to go through the same shit again. So, he always tried to give a pivot-instrument to that prick even if he hated his guts.

The owners of the company lived like asymptomatic carriers infecting everybody they touched. One could argue whether they were really asymptomatic, but under all those suits, ties, earrings and high heels, you can never tell. Those who showed the slightest sign of immunity were immediately discarded pointing out creative differences and their overly enthusiastic replacements were easily found the next day. The

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newcomers always looked like they have just hatched their eggs. They immediately belonged. They all had great ideas that would turn the tide this time. They all had something to share, something to show, something to give and something to get. They all looked like the final solution to everything.

When a graphics editor needed help because she couldn’t go down… the stairs, the natural result of wearing ridiculously high heels, they were there. “I mean, that kind of ass wouldn’t even look good when elevated to Heavens, but who listens to me? For such a combination to work, you must have a perfect heart shaped ass… An ass that would make any man get down. An ass that would make any man go down.”

When one of the owners, not the one who ran away when he saw a certain employee in the restroom, the employee who said something reasonable for a change during a crisis… the other one, the nasty alcoholic, the artist, the Star Wars fanatic who loved his managers to be seated on short stools so that they would always look up to him, yeah, that’s the one…

When he asked for someone in a hurry as usual, shouting his lungs out from the comfort of his room thinking every minute is the last minute… they were the first to run down the stairs. Because of their ultra-agility, they would sometimes miss the direction of the stairs and end up on the wrong floor… going up instead of going down. No problemo.

They were always quickly forgiven because of the flexibility of their tongue muscles.

He was supposed to speak first… to detail what he has been doing these days like Catholic confessions, because he was in the presence of… reviewers. Kan didn’t say a single world. Instead, he savored the awkward silence.

“Don’t fool yourself. Accept it. This is your world and the only way to escape it… is to make another one.”

Marketer smiled. Salesperson smiled. Manager smiled. Kan stared.

Since it was his all-important day, the manager smiled even more, “So, what have you been up to?”

“Still working on the project”.

The powerless-prick-manager wanted to impress the reviewers. Kan was his excuse to prove that his talent pool wasn’t large enough. That he could have moved mountains if he did.

“They told me you’re already done with it while the rest struggles”.

“So?”

“I understand, you’re asking for a new challenge”.

“No, I don’t”.

“…but you have free time”.

“If you want, I can work slower. Then, I won’t have any free time. Would that satisfy you?”

“OK, OK”.

And he was back in the saddle again.

Unlike popular belief, every person is the continuation of the tool he uses not the other way round. On one hand lies whatever a Person wants to achieve, something practical or an impossible ideal. On the other hand

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lies that Person’s childhood memories which formed the way he looks at the world. Meetings are perfect for observing such links. If they were useful for what they were supposedly about, they wouldn’t be.

When someone is asked for a meeting, he finds himself in the dark even if it makes sense. He does not know why he’s there. He does not know what he should do. A fuzzy past and an unfamiliar future… the only time one experiences the full extent of his freedom granted he does not know what fear is. He may look back and try to understand why he is there.

He may try to formulate a tactic that will take him one step further. Of course, he may also do the opposite. He may look beyond the confines of that room and formulate a tactic that will help him escape this unnerving experience like the ones that came before.

Regardless of his decision, he must be able to focus and do something accordingly.

“So, the plot thickens”.

“One must be able to switch between alternate Streams with the touch of a button”.

M . U . W { Business, Casual, Romantic, Compassionate } . a . s . m “Forget about multiverses or universes right now. Don’t pay attention to archetypes, specifiers, or merchandises. First, focus on the worldhood.”

“Think about the meeting that took place a couple minutes ago. If the marketer wasn’t so annoying, I could do her.”

“While the powerless-prick-manager was pretending to talk, I could let her know that I wanted to take her right then and there, and nobody would know what we were up to”. a Person will have a large number of Streams belonging to various Worlds the nature of his involvement in daily affairs will be whatever his active Stream enables at that time Having found where it ticked, he lost interest in his dreams of world dominion.

He looked around hoping to see someone who could accompany him for lunch. Nobody was there. So, he started doodling to kill time. He was obsessed with the combinations of eyes, noses, and lips. All quickly drawn with a few sharp strokes. No shadows, no color. They all looked the same, the way someone looked when he has uncovered the hidden truth.

A couple of minutes later, he saw Jannicke. Bald with unfortunately repressed blond hair which would make fathers cry. Her statuesque body concealed by an all-black costume. Only an almost see-through jersey shirt gave a small hint of what lied beneath. Over it was a worn-out black leather jacket going phenomenal with the tightest of jeans which were apparently blue in some distant past. No socks.

No shoes either, just sandals. She could work only in sandals shamelessly exposing those otherworldly toes which had to be sucked one by one to get a better feeling.

“Hey, want to grab lunch?”

“Sure, but give me five, OK?”

“OK”.

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It’s in our nature. Life is spent on the way. And when you get it… when you realize that you are not going anywhere, a new life arises.

We’re locked in by evolution. We have perfected seeing things in two ways… what’s behind us and what’s ahead. We are machines that excel at getting through the night. Point A to Point B… Nature, being blind, could not conceive that this would bore us to death one day. Self-awareness wasn’t in the cards for so long and when it was, it fucked up the whole system. Just ask any Catholic priest and they will all back me up.

A tiger loses all that makes him a tiger when he starts to have an existential crisis. He stops worrying about survival. He would no longer need gut wrenching claws, neck breaking teeth or the ability to focus on the tiniest of things.

That’s the human condition. We are not only self-aware, but also, we’re barely equipped for survival. If we can make our skills relevant and exploit whatever information we may have, we will live yet another day. That’s why we create culture and we are the products of culture. That’s why we resist change. We keep repeating the wrong answers not because we don’t know any better, but because we don’t like who we are.

Houston, Texas, 1993

7 o’clock. An alien hour for a computer scientist. After left over Canadian pepperoni pizza and half a can of root beer, and a slow journey made bearable by watching people get to work with a bus full of sleepy spectators, an old man enters the classroom. He looks out of place, but peaceful. He looks at the students over his eyeglasses for a while and takes a deep breath.

Swallows it like aged Whiskey, appreciating every bit. After scratching his chin while unintentionally displaying two rings on his ring finger, one gold and one silver, he vomits a disturbing question: “Why is it any different … the killing off of a few million Jews during the world war… than killing the cockroaches in the kitchen?”

Not a single gesture which may give us some clue. His eyes don’t blink. A very strange man indeed. A complete minute passes and not a single word… Everybody is quite alert though. Everybody woke up. You cannot be more alert at that time of the day. They are all formulating their answers. They know there is something fishy about that question. I mean, who can ask a question like that… today?

Then, someone takes the leap. The husky voice that puts Kim Carnes to shame shakes me up. Yes, that’s her. The Chocolate Princess finally speaks, “It’s in the Bible… It says, you should not kill.”

He looks at her with great satisfaction and replies, “It wouldn’t be a problem, if it wasn’t mentioned in the Bible now, would it?”

“I love this guy!”

When a Person becomes a collection of his urges activated or disactivated depending on his circumstances, he wants to be efficient. He will try to link these urges to the pools of possible Providers to simplify the transaction process. One-click order is the best, don’t you think? This way, he will always have a backup

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plan. I mean, what’s the difference between Jane and Julie? Can you really tell the difference between two warm wet circles?

He elaborated on his first drawing. This time he turned each Person into a collection of Seeker and Provider manifestations. Nobody would exist on his own in his universe. Everybody would be a collection of immediately interchangeable fake identities. This would hide the real identities of Persons behind, just revealing what they’re after or what they are offering. Human touch diminished to a shopping frenzy.

“Nobody will be alone anymore. It’ll be like Christmas every day.”

“Of course, this also gives one the ability to be invisible”.

“When I don’t need what you offer, I don’t even see you. You’re not in my space.”

“When you aren’t after what I offer, I don’t even see you. You’re not in my space.”

– A Stream is like a two-way telescope – From one end you see Providers – From the other end you see Seekers – Regardless of where you are looking from, you are blind to the rest of the world

– Streams are consolidated in the background creating Personalities – Personality is a function of time. You can go back to the Person you once were or you can go forward to the Person you want to become.

– At the ends of each Stream, there are pools of Persons as Seekers or Providers – a Person can always connect with those complying to a certain lifestyle – a Person doesn’t have to know where he is or what he wants While you may be faking it because of your curiosity, scared on the inside not knowing what would be if your wish was granted, faking always creates its grounds. Like a virus, it too needs to convince its host.

It’s as real as making it in that sense.

“What you think you become. What you feel you attract. What you imagine you create.”vii

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It was all becoming very clear to him. The entrance point for his alternate reality was right there. Whoever tempted by it would be able to distort reality in their favor where only good things happened to them. With the touch of a button, one could change a boring business meeting into a dating game and get away with it. The secret question for today and possibly tomorrow, and for all the days thereafter is one and the same, “What if nobody knew?

What would you do then?”

Miki is a system of fours. You can reveal your mood in just two clicks and make your intentions crystal clear in four. Changed your mind? No problemo. You get back to square one in one click. And from there you can take a completely different path. Then, you can do the same over and over under a minute… anywhere … anytime.

As you are making all these decisions, creating new relationships, and always getting what you want, you also keep evolving. Every time you feel the urge to devour something you get better at it.

“So, seeing means seeing someone who is willing to do whatever you want her to do. If there is no possibility of an efficient interaction, one’s blind. That’s why so many people walk around like ghosts not paying attention to the world. They think they are by-passing unactionable objects… distractions along their ways to somewhere very important. They are not of the world.

This is what a city is then, an arbitrary place created to serve sellers and buyers. In between lie the rest of the world… merchandises.”

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The Seventh Letterviii

Rule Six > göremezsin “Today has been fruitful”.

He felt he was in autopilot. He could instant-compose without thinking. That’s when good ideas emerge. Thinking doesn’t lead the way. It prepares the subconscious so that it can take over. On a night like this all he needed was a good tune and maybe, a glass of Singleton… of Glendullan. He would just sit down and write like a prophet preaching what his God has just told him.

Within the hour he would fill all the holes in his theory and create even more theories. He never knew what a writer’s block was. Still, he didn’t consider himself a writer, not even a developer-writer. To all his friends and enemies, he simply said, “I’m just the messenger”.

Sipped a mouthful. Didn’t swallow it all at once. Let it move all around in his mouth, do its magic. Only his tongue took charge… occasionally… briefly. Patiently swallowed it in very small dozes… breathed in just a little like a perfect blender, just enough to keep the fire going.

He slow danced to a tune in his head while sitting down. He had a vision of a beautiful brunette with tears in her eyes. Her trembling lips were trying to say something. She grabbed his hand and didn’t let it go. “Never forget these words” she said with an arousing voice. Continued with interruptions, “When you’re in trouble… when there’s no hope… all is lost… just recite these words and all will be well. All will be well.”

“la la la la la… la la la la la… la la la la la…”ix

The whole séance took no more than two or three minutes. It was one of his powers. He could stop time by French kissing the works of art. He could dig deep into their core. He could understand the artists behind their art. Licked his lips and started hitting the keyboard.

There are only two types of people. All the other character traits, abilities, traumas, wounds, or obsessions do not matter. They are all there for one thing… to hide the truth… from oneself no less. You just have to know whether the person in front of you is type 1 or type 2. That’s all. Once you’re set, you will win every confrontation… granted you are type 2, of course.

Those in the first group believe that when they feel fine, everything’s just fine. The ones in the second group believe that this is not necessarily the case. That’s the only difference between them. Small it may seem, but it’s enough to separate them by an ocean. Every fight we see in the world, every conflict small or big arises from this simple fact.

Two rival factions trying to make their opinion the rule of the land. They wouldn’t say it like this, of course. They would say, “We will uncover the hidden truth!” pointing out that it’s not their truth. It’s the truth.

“The second group isn’t important for what we are trying to do here. One cannot conceptualize type 2, because they are not an end in themselves. What they are is revealed in time… guided by care and concern for one another. They belong to a community which belongs to a time. In that regard, they are headed for certain death which makes their lives meaningful.

Thus, it’s essential in our exercise to lure those in Type 1 into a world of their own making. And I have to do it gracefully, without making them suspicious. That world

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must be neutral. It mustn’t have immediately identifiable features. It can’t be evil or good either. It must adapt to whoever’s using it. It must be a mirror to his soul, a picture of Dorian Gray kind of a mirror.”

“Then, only the trick for luring them into…”

He stopped for a second. He was naming it.

“…Mikiverse remains”.

“No problemo. That’s the easiest part.”

“These fuckers are already knocking on the door. All they can do in life is to make selfish calculations. They are pragmatic and goal oriented. They have to take a bite out of that apple at all costs.”

“Look! Another coward takes a step.”

“Having no connection with reality calms their nerves. It’s what makes them tick… never questioning even for a second what they do when they tick. They can brag about their wine collection when the world is on fire. They can consider a cruel move a once a lifetime opportunity and act on it at the expense of all the others… and never, not even for once, feel guilty.

And the creeps humping their legs… Yes, they do have pets… Pets that eat whatever’s thrown at them. Eat, drink, fuck… When they are performing these bodily functions, they see themselves as deities who have just solved the mystery of the universe. That they have squeezed the whole of human enterprise into a ball… and kicked it with vengeance.”

A couple of years ago, Kan saw one of them while waiting for Peter Jackson’s King Kong in the foyer. He was standing next to a pillar as if he was hiding from something… himself? He was an old friend, but quite unrecognizable at the moment. The veil was lifted. He was his urge.

Scanning the area with outmost seriousness, he was trying to understand why something he experienced elsewhere wasn’t happening here. What was wrong in his system? He was determined. He was going to crack the code. He believed he could crack the code… any code.

“What was wrong with his Stream?”

“They doubt everything, but no, they never doubt themselves, even after a life spent in the desert. If you delude yourself with details, a very difficult problem. On the other hand, if they are greedy, it’s so simple.”

Still, he had to make sure. You never know. If one of those pricks gets suspicious, he could find a loose end. Software being software, there are all kinds of loose ends where you least suspect them to be. He wouldn’t be able to grasp the big picture, of course. That’s what they are all blind to. One cannot see beyond what he wants. Only those who seek nothing can do that. Still, one of those pricks could very easily ruin the whole thing if Kan wasn’t careful.

He needed a unifying theory for his universe. Before he could do that on the other hand, he had to find the theories needed unifying. Then, he could mold them into one. Within seconds the bullshitting show began, “If there is only one God in the Heavens, then there shall only be one unifying theory!”

First, he thought of Nash’s equilibrium theory, because of their shared interest in pigeons, to be more precise, the stupidity of pigeons. It was a general-purpose theory which went good with every decor. His target audience had a certain quality that separated them from the normal folk. Thinking they were so smart; they were stuck with their favorite moves corresponding to particular circumstances. They were very

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predictable. As Nash pointed out, “[Nerds] don’t have an incentive to deviate from their chosen strategy, because when confronted as a team none of them can choose a better strategy given the choices of other [nerds]”.

“So, after every pleasure moment, they will think that they have just cracked the code while the ignorant masses remained clueless. Points of pleasure will be considered as revelations of truth.”

Remembering one of the teachings of his master, Kan wanted to combine two theories. If one took Nash’s equilibrium and understood it within the context of John’s interpretation of the tripartite soul argument in Plato’s Republic, he could easily uncover the reasoning behind a nerd’s willingness to accept such a strange proposition.

“Listen” John said one day, “I will share something with you which made me collapse when I first thought about it. I just laid there for almost half an hour.”

“Way back in the past, people not only lived, but they lived well. We may have all these technologies now, but in return we have lost something.”

“Remember the daredevil we talked about yesterday, the one the Eleatic Stranger pointed out in Sophist to prove his point? Remember how easily they agreed on the subject, while their opinions seemed quite different?”

“Yes”.

“Well, they readily agreed, because they both had the same presupposition… that being is nothing but power. People can experience only one type of reality, the reality experienced during efficient interactions.

Being is the power to interact with each other efficiently.”

To show his master that he got the point, Kan concluded his thoughts, “That there is no such thing as care and concern for one another. There is no such thing as historical existence.”

They needn’t say anything. They just smiled.

“So, the Seeker will identify with certain Streams and he’ll ‘self-actualize’ through them. He will use them again and again. He will have caretakers hiding behind his favorite merchandises, all expendable, all ready to please him the moment he taps his fingers.”

“Persons will survey their worlds with sensitive inlets and outlets sustaining their Streams. They will guide Persons to where they belong, so that customers bond with hookers effortlessly. And when they find their sweet spots where they can serve and be served without causing any trouble… achieving a steady state where they can conserve their energy, when what they are offering is equal to what they are getting… they become peacemakers… men for all seasons.”

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Took another sip. Changed the serene tone of Khruangbin to something more expressive… something wilder.

Began enjoying the duet between Gidon Kremer and Janine Jansen.

“It all comes together now. Transactions create hierarchies. It’s inevitable.”

Checked the time. Four o’clock in the morning, “Time flies when you’re having fun”.

Looking at the empty bed he contemplated whether morning sex would do him any good. No, he was alone.

Seanna was somewhere else doing God knows what. What would she share next time? Another threesome in the restroom? Did she swallow or spit this time?

He wasn’t sleepy. He could go to work directly. There was something missing, though. Something important…

He wanted to perfect his creation. Went to the dresser searching for a cigarette or two. There it was!

“Thank you Jannicke!”

Smelt it. Switched back to Khruangbinx. He needed the oriental touch with a Texas twist. “Lucky me” he thought, “The morning prayer accompanies the music”. Lit it. Inhaled it, “Good coffee, indeed”. Smelt the last drops of Singleton, shook the glass in a circular fashion, gulped the whole thing, but did not swallow it.

Kept it in his mouth until the very end.

“Where were we… right… Where did this hierarchy come from?”

It doesn’t matter whether they are Seekers or Providers. Their Streams keep pulsating in every direction like photons. They both rejoice bonding with one another remembering their favorite experiences. With limbs stretched afar, they crave for hugs.

While a Person is defined by what he seeks, he switches back and forth. Look, he’s a Seeker. Look again, he’s a Provider. These two-way roads create layers in time. Persons move about while they unknowingly knit a quilt of infinite dimensions. One moves along in a certain direction by giving something and then goes even further by taking something in return.

Some leave more sensual traces behind reminding one of crochet, while others create pure junk like a lousy t-shirt. Of course, there’s this optimum point where whatever someone is getting is equal to whatever he is giving… again. That’s their promised land!

They will kill themselves for it while trying to optimize their experiences for the best outcome like those who are left with only one option to come, erotic asphyxiation.

“Good. I need junkies for my experiments.”

So, that’s the foundation. It’s the junkies who make up the pyramid, true believers, the religious-scientists, those who are willing to become… statutes. Those who feel at home only when they are completely lost create the hierarchy.

What a pity, even if one’s born into it, he can still make a difference. The way he communicates and collaborates with the nearby cells determines whether he’ll be just another brick in the wall. How strange, he can break free so easily, but then again, he cannot.

“And that’s Conway’s Law for you, bitches”.

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He has unified three theories so far, Nash’s, John’s and Conway’s. Any normal person would stop there, but being “a madman, full of shame and melancholy, and despair…”xi he just couldn’t stop. He didn’t even have to invent things. Just by his stepping out of the way, the wind kept blowing.

“When someone feels at home… his Streams don’t change much anymore.” he said twisting and turning his body, “His lifestyle is formed. It is the precise moment when he has created a world of his own.”

He started typing again with a Devilish smile on his face.

The Seeker wouldn’t have to search anymore. His nest would search for him. Wherever he is, whatever’s in his mind, this alternate reality would take charge and it would find new extension points for him, enlarging itself. It would make him yearn for more while sustaining itself with his life energy, making itself the nerve center, commanding the meat with eyes.

A dark figure stood up slowly gazing at the blood red sun. Clouds moved apart quickly, embarrassed of chasing yesterday’s dreams, making way for the new king. Looked down the earth like certain death, “In dark corridors you shall walk feeling only the preys ahead… like termites blinded by instinct, follow every road leading to nowhere. Come up with every explanation… Prove every theory… And not a single one of you will utter the only thing that matters.”

“I cannot see, because you’re not with me” xii.

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Them or Usxiii

Rule Seven > sadece ekmekle yaşanmaz It’s a big step, moving from the world of ideas into the world of action. While the former is trickier, you can easily ruin your creation when trying to flesh it out for appropriate hosts. A parasite somehow knows that hosts are a rare commodity. It desires to prolong their existence, to find a way to co-exist by preserving the critical faculties of its hosts, to keep them ticking, so they handled the necessary muscle work unawares.

While dependent, it would take charge and it would also do all in its power to make the hosts enjoy the ride. Not a win-win situation you say, but the next best thing. That’s why slave owners are out of work today, and sugar mommies and sugar daddies are so much popular.

“Let’s see… what do people do?”

“They make a living… they chill… they fuck… they help each other”.

He immediately came up with the opposite of that notion, “They steal… they colonize… they rape… they kill”. This would be the other end of the spectrum. For anything to exist, it had to have opposite forces within fighting against each other… complementing each other… fueling the entity therein.

Of course, most of the time one side takes control of the other, because human beings are at their weakest when facing reality. And voilà, someone comes of age. Yet, no one who submits to one side can mature. This is a battle no one side can be allowed to win. What lies in between… that itch you cannot scratch… is what makes you tick.

“To be able to go forward, one must remember what he has learned the last time and then, bind it to this balanced equation”.

A person is what he seeks = a collection of Streams which determines “Who he can see” = “Who can see him” “What he can do” = “What he can’t do”

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a Stream draws a Border between the physical world and an alternate reality The formula looked sound. No matter how hard he tried to break it, it held. Still, he wanted to make sure it had all the necessary qualities. So, he made a list.

– A Seeker can find a willing Provider with an appropriate merchandise – A Person can be a Seeker or a Provider upon will – A Seeker or a Provider can focus on pools of willing Persons – Every good match creates a memory (Stream) – Streams can be traced from both ends revealing Persons – When focused, a Seeker or a Provider blocks the rest of the world – When focused, a Seeker or a Provider creates an alternate notion of Reality (NoR) – A Seeker or a Provider has complete control over the context (NoR)

The last three items were almost identical. He loved to say the same thing over and over in different ways. He has learned that looking at a thing from different angles always revealed the missing information.

He considered every task at hand as an elephant identification exercise performed by blind people. The assumption that he didn’t get it made it possible to get it. Unlike him, a Person always looked down to his world.

He continued with the work, jotting down the names of the worlds in this universe. Their names were not separate from their nature. Since his app had to be neutral, these worlds welcomed all kinds of visitors. Being good or evil, living in the past or creating a future for himself should be solely the visitor’s job.

The king must only provide a fair playground. That’s it.

Of course, he could intervene once in a while. Given to temptation, he could urge someone in one direction dreaming of hot steamy sex or something else in that order, but he couldn’t be the one who walked the path. Devil never walks the path. He is too smart for that. He talks the talk. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to balance the equation.

I mean, who would bother to do something, if they knew they were destined to lose? Everyone loves the idea that they can change things, that they matter… even if they don’t. An unbalanced equation leads to a universe that collapses on itself. It’s nothingness.

Mikiverse . Silicon Valley . { Business World = a Seeker should be able to find everyone he needs to complete a project.

Casual World = a Seeker should be able to focus on a hobby and find new friends to go about it.

Romantic World = a Seeker should be able find a companion who’s into the same fetishes as he is.

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Compassionate World = a Seeker should be able behave in opposition to the other worlds. He should be able to do something for the others.} “If Miki is a system of fours…” he thought, “then, everything will be in sets of four”.

“Why?”

“Why the hell not? After all, the number zero while being phenomenal is arbitrary.”

He named his application Miki, more precisely MikiMoka, because of a street dog he once met.

Their encounter was brief, but he never forgot him. He was a middle sized light brown easy- going peaceful looking kind of dog. The kind of dog that wouldn’t bark when people passed by.

The kind of dog that wouldn’t beg for food, that wouldn’t hump your leg.

While being very rare, you can still find dogs like that. What set this one apart was something else. He was smarter than most people and kinder too. Although he was colorblind, he could sense the color of the traffic lights and behaved accordingly. He was the one who sparked the idea in Kan’s mind.

He thought, “This dog evolved on its own, but many people need a helping hand”. He named him Miki because he looked like one. He couldn’t stop there, however. “Look at him” Kan thought, “He is better than me in every way”.

So, he had to have a surname too. That’s how Mr. Miki Moka was born.

Went to work, killed time, had lunch, killed time again and came back home. No, no orgasms today either. As soon as he got back, he started working on a marketing slogan. He hated marketers, but he loved slogans. He loved propaganda even more.

He often fantasized about becoming a morality enforcer in a dictatorship. “Nothing’s more fun than watching people suffer”, he used to think, “If they are anything more than flesh and bones, they would stand up”. Yes, he was a perfect Parmenidesian.

A short, direct slogan piercing one’s flesh like a snail’s love dart… something that would catch people’s attention even if they were watching the tornado watch… even if their eyes were glued to that news anchor with the tightest of skirts, nicest of smiles… something that would interrupt any conversation, disrupt any event.

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He considered the typical American TV Series. They were always targeted at high school students because of what hormones did at that age. You had the captain of the football team, his cheerleader squeeze, his somewhat uglier somewhat less capable best friend with an extremely fuckable girlfriend if she lost the glasses, followed fashion trends, and did something to her hair… the nerds tortured daily by everybody and the lucky few who did not belong to any group… heroes of the story.

He focused on the nerds. They were helpless. So helpless in fact, they would try to make their own girlfriends or develop defense mechanisms in secret meetings to handle the next day’s beating. Also, he’s been there. He knew them intimately. He was practically one of them, if one ignored his ability to form complete sentences in the vicinity of beautiful girls. They were his kind of people, his target audience.

“Exploitation begins at home”.xiv

Being a developer, he could no longer carry on with the philosophy. He was getting tired of formulating requirements. He had to code. If the code didn’t work, he had nothing. Being an animal of habit, he designed the standby functionality of the application first. This would provide him with a framework where he could easily see the ideal ‘places’ for the additional features.

After he got this right, he could design-implement the rest of the functionality easily. Every application has to have some kind of coherence. It must feel like a single thing serving the single most important need.

Of course, an application may get quite large, but even in that case only a handful of features are important. And, if you’re smart enough to ignore your natural tendencies, you can come up with a good product. This wasn’t his strong suit, though. He was great at making sense of obscurity, finding relationships between seemingly unrelated things, and bringing everything together elegantly like a mathematician.

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Yet, he was a lousy developer or even a lousy analyst. He always got bored after getting the general feeling of a solution. To him the rest wasn’t important. It was for mortals, not for him. He always knew what to do and where to go, but he didn’t have any interest in doing it or going there. However, this time it all depended on him. He was the last man. He had to do everything on his own.

Otherwise, there would be no Miki, no future for mankind. “That’s what a real challenge is”, he thought. Would he say, “Fuck this” and go to Mars like Dr. Manhattan or would he change his mind and start coding?

Unlike most of his peers, he wasn’t a Steve Jobs kind of guy. He despised him. He found the Mac OS insulting.

He used iPhones only for one thing, spotting assholes. He was more like a Bill Gates kind of guy. Opportunistic like him, but also making important decisions like a philanthropist. Likewise, the ability to be able to drink your own urine was more important to him than being able to pay shit loads of money to possess shiny objects twice a year.

“So, when a nerd sticks out his smartphone, he can immediately scan the area for willing hosts of whatever resource he’s after… just like he would in a video game. That’s something every nerd excel at. All I have to do is to open the door, humanity will take care of the rest”.

And he has found the slogan, “It’s you!”

“What do you take with you everywhere you go? Yourself. And everywhere you go, it’s the same story. Because of this or that, you couldn’t make it, again. Don’t you get it? It’s you. You are the problem.”

“Let’s fix the glitch. You plus Miki equals to whoever you want to be. Don’t be a fool, disrupt yourself!”

“NEEHEEHEEHEEHAHAHA!”

He has outdone himself this time. Could he do any better if he fuck-thought these matters? He wasn’t sure.

Checked the phone. Still no message from Seanna.

“Man, if I had the app now, I could so do the Miki!”

He would use nerds’ superhero fixation against them. He would provide them a simple way to get whatever superpower they needed. Holding their end of the conversation was a superpower for them. They would do what they were told. Exploiting other people’s latent resources, they would become complex organisms. And others would become one exploiting them. Add two problems together and, voilà, you have a solution!

In Miki terms, a complex organism is a conglomerate of Seeker and Provider personae dragging Persons behind them wherever they go. A Person is reduced into a beast with specialized functions. Those latent resources didn’t have to be abilities or information. They could be anything. Everything a person may have can be reduced into a commodity waiting for its customers.

While your hands are busy jacking him off, your pussy can be out there comparing candidates in parallel. A cowboy town going global with all its institutions.

The saloon and the whorehouse, the mayor and his questionable business connections, the bandits coming to town after a train robbery… looking for a good time… wives beaten, children smacked, rivals shot in the back… We have means for every filthy urge you might have. Welcome to Tombstone!

He was satisfied with himself. He mimicked his favorite actor Bela Lugosi to enjoy the moment even more, “Home. I have no home. Hunted… despised… living like an animal — the jungle is my home! But I will show

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the world that I can be its master. I shall perfect my own race of people — a race of atomic supermen that will conquer the world!”xv

If a Seeker can teleport between Universes, he can then easily combine otherwise unrelated merchandises. He can go to church on Sundays and yet, he can still enjoy buttfucking his best friend’s mom. That was the answer he was looking for, allowing everybody to cherry-pick their perceived qualities with no one judging them, indeed everyone encouraging them.

He remembered the time when his master brought in a guest speaker, a post-modernist friend of him. He looked at the students with contempt and playfully warned them against their teacher, “John is leading you astray, you know. You are fools to believe him. There is no such thing as the hidden deep meaning of our existence. We create it day by day, often in accord with trivial things… while being hungry, looking for safety or trying to get into the pants of someone.”

“We pick whatever meaning necessary and attach it to a work in progress… our overall life experience. There is no meaning to be found per se, it’s the combined feeling of what we create on a daily basis. The meaning… is overrated.”

How helpful those ideas have been. They were the answers Kan was desperately searching for. Not that he bought it, but the post-modern theory was very useful, especially when one goes about collecting Streams, having his way with life. Seeing no difference between a good fuck and true love… giving meaning to his pathetic existence as he sees fit. This was the state of mind Kan needed for his experiments, “That, life no longer holds him, he holds life Starbuck.”xvi

“Now I no longer trust these eyes of mine The heart must speak to me In tongues of forgotten voices In ancient harmonies So that I can see”xvii A Seeker’s Personality can be formed in a normal fashion or adhering to the post-modern way. After some point, Personalities will be more or less stable. They will have all the natural and unnatural tendencies of the persons hiding behind those Streams. If someone took a good look at another, he would think he has just seen someone there. Someone?

Someone is an entity exposing a group of fragile bits and pieces of character traits held together by Miki, as if they have always belonged to each other. Take a look at that entity in the past or some distant time in the future and you may see a different being, covered with different kinds of bits and pieces of character traits held together as if they have always been there. That indeed this one is his true self not the other one.

To understand this concept, one must read the literature that deals with time traveling. It seems every author has a different idea on how time travelling works. First theory says, if you change something in the past, it will change something in the future. Second theory says, you cannot possibly change a major outcome, no matter how many times you have changed the events leading to it. And finally, the third theory says, you cannot travel to the past, but you can travel to the future.

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These are all American theories. So, Germans had to fix the issue by introducing another theory. This fourth theory says that there is no such thing as the past, the present or the future. It is all one thing.

While Kan loved playing with combinations of these theories, he came up with his own, the fifth theory. He said, “Time is experienced as the sum of consequential slices, but each slice can be individually retrieved, modified and put back in. Whatever you do to that slice will not affect the ones coming before or after it.”

His theory followed the post-modern tendencies of the day. If one can create meaning on the spot just because it’s convenient for him, why shouldn’t he have the ability to do so over the whole space-time continuum?

“Birds do it. Bees do it. So, why shouldn’t we all do it?”

This concluded his work for the night. “A Seeker” he thought, “can move from one personality-community- notion of reality (personacommureality) to another upon will. He can aim a personacommureality and little by little go there by accumulating the necessary Streams.

Later on, a historian or perhaps a philosopher or even better, a computer scientist may take a look at the series of personacommureality a Person has left behind him… his trace… his life experience and elaborate on what sort of a man he was. He could focus on a single snapshot and analyze the reactions of a particular Seeker to a certain group of events.”

“And this is how you may escape your ill fate, my dear.”

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Dark

Rule Eight > sevmek bilmektir One can’t escape reality for too long. So, there he was again… furiously typing business rules for private shopping loops the next day. If a customer bought more than two items in a month in two separate marketing campaigns and has not returned either one of them, then he has the option to order new items without the shipping and handling costs. Another made-up rule in a made-up world… one after another… it never ended.

Not knowing where you come from or where you are going, not having a single question about why you are is the necessary state of mind for sheep. For you have to distract attention from yourself to be able to lead a diminished existence. You must be able to live like an animal. You must tremble with lust when you are taking another step into the abyss. You are where you belong. Escape mirrors for that long and you will believe that you are indeed your true self.

It was the other way round for Kan. So, his only way to look normal was to hide among the masses. “Normal was good”. This way he wouldn’t be picked for the daily harvest. No, a lone cowboy should never be picked. Instead, he must be the one who is doing the picking… being a hopeless romantic, a “harvester of sorrow”xviii.

It was only 9:30, but he had a craving for another doubleshot Espresso. Opened TuneIn Radio to ease the pain. Switched to Houston Public Media Classical where there was always good music, his university’s radio to be exact. Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours made his day. Conducted by Riccardo Chailly, no less.

One quick glance over his cubicle and he saw a small group of people crowding the new espresso machine again, growing in size by the minute. The rate espresso was consumed would give any manager a heartache resembling the one he may have when a loved one passed. One wonders though, does a powerless-prick- manager have any loved ones?

“Obviously, something’s wrong again.”

For any loop to work, it must have a resting place. It must only resume doing whatever it’s doing after a well-earned R&R, at a more advantages point in time and then, rest again waiting for another attractive point in time like a bottom-dwelling shark.

Otherwise, it would all seem like work… something people considered a necessity… something none of them liked… something they all tried to leave behind… if they had a lot of money, of course. That’s what they all think. They are all so fucking perfect and the only thing missing in their lives is just more money! If only they knew…

In the past people could say “Another day of honest work is behind” and sleep like children. Nowadays, nobody is interested in being honest or dishonest. Everybody is trying to reach that divine moment when they wouldn’t have to work anymore. An honest worker is always awake. Even a dishonest one is awake, but those who want to leave it all behind… sleep. To them it’s the best decision they have ever made, to sleep.

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So, if a loop feels forced, the parties involved in the process could wake up ruining everything. Waking up is a bad thing. They must not wake up, no, they must not wake up. To ensure that, they must enjoy the fruits of their labor instantly… and associate another possible labor with the fruit basket over there, and always plan for tomorrow. “We are running a business here!”

He paused for a minute, “That’s what a loop is. You have your triggers, inputs, and outputs. Whatever gets you from one pleasure point to another pleasure point is your logic… whatever gets you off… which is nothing but logical… That’s it!”

Seekers must consider fruits to be… very important… and crave for them religiously. They must be polytheists and see all loops as equals, because points in front of them may require a modified version of them to let them in. Now, that’s the tricky part.

Having heard someone trying to sweet talk another, Kan looked up to behold a middle-aged mother inquiring about her kids while unintentionally revealing her natural beauty. Seeing something that transcended sexuality, he breathed in all the goodness such an occasion brought. Witnessing goodness, truth or beauty cleanses one’s soul… and makes one ready to go to war.

It is like smelling roses and resisting the temptation to pick one up, attach it to your jacket and enjoy it as it slowly dies on your chest.

Ready to continue, he asked himself, “What am I good at?”

“I can create stories upon will”.

“I love creating stories”.

“I can solve problems ignoring the financial dimension”.

“I love solving problems”.

He could not help himself and shared an unexpected laughter with the crowd which immediately turned heads, because it was an anomaly. It was sincere, not calculated, you know, not very professional indeed.

“If you remain true to yourself and have faith, you will find a way”.

Any fool can be made to do the same thing over and over without ever questioning it, considering it a career. Dulled by spirit crushing monotony he can manage his stress levels in real-time which will eventually give him the superpower he was wishing for all along, to be a film critic.

He can criticize the rest of the world without acknowledging his part in all this… feeling just fine when he is the prime mover himself, nobody else, like a spoiled god destroying worlds without knowing what he is doing.

How can one see his salvation in his destruction? Tough question, but… maybe it’s the other way round. Maybe what seems like destruction is just an internal alarm. Unless one wakes up, the alarm will ring louder and louder to the point of no return, causing his destruction.

One cannot keep his eyes away. It’s a struggle between one’s true self and the imagined one. It’s like a self-destruct sequence that not only wins the war against a person, but also breaks him. That’s not the end of it. It’s like convincing a butcher that he has to sell parts of his own body, because the business is so good.

This is better than selling, say, invisible things or things one may expect to get after death. Even priests couldn’t come up with such an idea. Here you are fucking with yourself and loving it. This isn’t even slavery. A slave can be raped, tortured or killed… He could be put to endless work, but even in forced labor, slaves

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dream of escaping one day. Even Uncle Toms are Uncle Toms because they get something in return. Think about it as a step forward. Nazis sent those who could work to concentration camps and executed them when their life forces were depleted. Think about an instance where it’s the Jew not the Nazi who comes up with the idea… and lovingly accepts the consequences, nay, craves for those consequences. A breakthrough, wouldn’t you say? Being an active partner in your own self-destruction…

Being a part of the motion… Does it really matter what kind of a motion it is? As long as it keeps moving and you are moving along with it, it’s good enough. You instinctively know that you are doing your life’s work just like a fruit eaten by a bird and transferred to its final resting place as a seed drenched in shit.

A sign further down the road is not necessarily progress, but when you are detached from what you are any road is OK. You can go as deep as the rabbit hole goes without any discomfort. It’s a wild ride, a way of life.

Have you noticed, they apologize for any minuscule detail, details you aren’t even aware of, details you never think of… yet they never apologize because of the way they live? There’s the rub. You cannot fool them with details. Every fool is an encyclopedia of details, but you can very easily fool them about the main story, the story of their lives.

They are already bought and sold for a million times before. They cannot back away now. They have invested so much of their lives into it or so they think. They think and that’s their problem.

“So, I must encourage those who are inclined to sleep and I must keep them in that condition”.

“Loops will pause when dreams are made flesh in the form of newly encountered surroundings, the next scenes in their stories so to speak. While everything will still be working in the background determining things, controlling things, enabling, disabling, creating, destroying, you know, maintaining things… they won’t wake them up. The things they see, smell, touch or taste will convince them that they have arrived.

The game is paused.”

“Sophists would have loved this”.

“This is crucial. Those who submit to desirable stories must experience their lives as a series of practical goals, the good life, while the carrots provoking them to continue and never stop are nothing more than temporary resting places in an all-automated chicken farm.”

“NEEHEEHEEHEEHAHAHA!”

“Think about a chicken, when she is fed, when a rooster does her, when she has a potentiality for a baby and when she is robbed of her opportunity to become a loving mother… She thinks these are the twists and turns of her life never doubting there is more to them. And one day when everything looked just the same, she will become dog food regardless of her belief in a just world.”

When a Seeker finds a Provider, they will be directed to a preselected location to tie the loose ends. A nice café or a brasserie where they can escape the world and indulge in theirs… get to know each other, determine the terms of their deal… and enjoy delicious meals and refreshing drinks in the process. There is nothing more tempting than a standstill. It is its own reward. Will he do her?

Will she do him? We live on chaos… chaos of trivialities. And the ability to do something when the whole world freezes up for you is priceless. This meeting place is the resting place, the Facility. Facilities will be different depending on the Streams that lead Persons there. Some are more romantic. Others are more businesslike.

Apart from the facilities, there are two more physical aspects of the Mikiverse. These are product resellers (shops) and service providers (other shops). Since why a Seeker is meeting with a Provider is explicitly known

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by the natural intelligence (NI) component behind MikiMoka, the Berry Engine, quality Products and Services which may aid that particular event are collected in a convenient drawer so to speak, so that Persons may choose to purchase some of them at the precise moment they need them like a sex toy that will ease deepthroat.

They have the option to purchase these items whenever they want, since they have held a meeting together. They have created new Streams for themselves and for Miki. They have earned their keep.

Stream touches the physical world forming tangents, while further blinding the Seeker and the Provider as a couple.

These tangents are, – Product resellers (businesses) – Service providers (businesses) – Facility owners (businesses) With a little help from Miki, a Seeker becomes more than himself, a collection of Providers he fancies, Facilities he likes, Products and Services he purchases. Wherever he goes he carries this personal universe with him where only good things happen.

He can easily find replacements for every end node he obtained along the way, a new Provider, a new Facility, new Products and new Services. He can easily make unfamiliar territories familiar. That’s an old itch, to make everywhere like home, turn every town into a whorehouse, make them recognizable, understandable, actionable.

To make it even easier, he can find his favorite Providers, loved ones in other places as long as they are in the vicinity. It’s like traveling with your loyal servants like royalty. Kan could not help but remember his favorite documentary, Microcosmos : Le peuple de l’herbe, the scene where snails made love accompanied by L’Amour des Escargots, sang by the one and only Marie Kobahashi.

When you can share what you seek explicitly with a trusted confidant who will never betray you, you reveal your true identity with all of its intricacies. It’s like talking to a pimp, asking him about the availability of a certain dreamed up whore. The thing is… that pimp… will be a real one in Mikiverse.

Those shop owners… will be Overseers like the ones you could see in slave economies where they and only they get to watch and all the others do their dirty work. Yes, you are right. The real users of the Mikiverse are the Overseers!

“Finally, the whole thing comes together. You have Persons pursuing diminished lives, fake identities they crave, links binding Seekers and Providers in the form of Streams, shops operated by invisible Overseers providing them with all kinds of goodies to lubricate their inlets and outlets urging them to make another purchase.” “Done!”

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Let’s go over it once more… A Notion of Reality is a collection of Persons where a Person is actually Persons, that a person cannot stand on his own. When a Person has an urge, depending on whether he is a giver or a taker, he assumes an appropriate persona, a Seeker or a Provider.

Regardless of which one he is, he perceives his world through Streams which can be broken into a series of nodes… multiverse, universe, world, archetype, specifier, and merchandise. In that sense every Person can only be perceived as a merchandise. Personality is the name of the package which holds a bunch of merchandises which are not necessarily related to one another like Santa’s gift bag.

“How about a test case? How are we going to see whether this really works or not?”

Kan opened his Facebook and LinkedIn profiles side by side.

He had 5,000 connections on Facebook, all handpicked sexy women, there 24/7 just to amuse him. He also had, well over 15,000 so-called business connections. If he had to pick one, which one should he pick? This one or that one, or that one?

That one! There was no competition. One of his Facebook connections was begging for the opportunity.

She was a hot little number who changed her appearance often like a chameleon. Every week she would assume a different persona. Luckily, she had a friend like Kan who cataloged her every achievement hoping one day he would immortalize her.

“Yes. Samantha… Samantha is the best choice.”

A typical Elizabethan, a pretty face with just a handful of cleavage and a big cushion. “Bigger the cushion, better the pushing” as they say in Texas. Her face radiated optimism, but when you really took a good look, you would see that it was fake. She was hiding something. “Perfect”. She looked like a screamer… someone who would always fake it hoping to have real orgasms one day.

A small child accompanied her in some photos, a boy with a sarcastic smile on his face. Probably, a thinker in his old age. Children who don’t get lost in the everydayness of their lives always turn out to be abstract thinkers, more common among boys than girls. And it’s always the mothers who make them, mothers who specialize in faking it.

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Apparently, Samantha had a problem with her ex and had to take some time off. She looked like the fun- loving characters in slasher films who always made the wrong decisions… who always ended up dead. If you didn’t have a brain, you’d mistake her for a movie star… someone who shaped the world… someone who changed things… someone who would go far. The happiest person in the whole wide world.

Having found his prototype, he modeled a persona based on her. Since the prototype was an American, he made the persona Russian. Then, changed his mind again and made her a Ukrainian. He was trying to see whether the formula held in both ends. He started his test scenario by saying, “One day… Oksana… takes the ferry and visits the nearby island”. He was trying to make it as cheesy as possible like a B movie.

“Since she knows the island is famous for its lobster sandwiches, she has a bite or two. While spending the night at the hotel, she suddenly decides to move there permanently and rents a house the next day. On her first day in the new world, she realizes that the plumbing is too old, and she has it fixed immediately. She goes to a lot of concerts because it’s the holiday season.

When the crowds start to leave the island because of the colder weather, she visits museums, attends seminars, and becomes a regular in book readings to pass the time. Since she cannot stand still, she catches cold eventually. A local doctor examines her and suggests a light pain reliver and chicken soup.

After getting well, Oksana takes a course on abstract painting, but fails miserably. Bored to death, she accepts defeat and decides to go back where she came from. She has always been a city girl after all. On her way back, she doesn’t forget to buy a teddy bear for her son and a hat for the ex, because who knows? It’s a crazy world… As expected, she rejoins with her family.

And within a week or two, she goes back to work as a real estate agent again. Then one day, she meets a tall dark stranger while playing pool after a hard day’s work. They have a couple of drinks and thinking the night is still young, they dance the salsa.

What? You say, what about her family? Well, Oksana thinks she needs a new one.”

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“Cheesy but workable… workable indeed.”

“Still, someone who considers himself to be very logical, so logical indeed he can control all his options… Someone who knows where he is going…”

“He knows where he is going… Yeah, right!”

“Such a person may have a hard time accepting the fact that all our contacts are not contacts at all. They are disjointed pieces of a lifelong shopping frenzy. We don’t really live. We just add clues here and there for our future selves, clues we conveniently forget immediately afterwards, clues that always surprise us when we ‘find’ them later on. Hamburgers, French fries, onion rings, iced tea, cherry pies, cheesecakes… Clues we will later use to make us believe that we lived.

Think about your friends, best friends, lovers, husbands, wives… think about a time when nobody was asking for anything, when they really did something for one another … not another gift, not another bottle of wine, you know, when they were really there for each other… How many did you find? Did you find any?”

He remembered what his mentor once said to him, “Back then, when people not only lived, but lived well… there were dimensions of their lives we cannot even comprehend today. All that is left to us are poor translations of texts written by the witnesses of those times while not being aware of what they were experiencing. We have an advantage though. It’s the only advantage we have.

If those who have forgotten how to live spend their whole lives just searching for what was lost, get consumed with the thought, then they become oversensitive and they can recognize these unexpected elements. Perhaps, starting from there, by shedding light to the absurdities we face every day, we can find what we have lost.”

It was obvious to him. Those who pursued made-up lives could not distinguish what’s fake from what’s real. Because they were fake themselves. And they were scared shitless when they faced life. They were not interested in reading between the lies. They just wanted the lie to continue as long as they lived. They didn’t care what happened before them or what would happen after them.

They passionately believed that they could exist on their own separated from their timeline. That their fate was what they made. They really believed that. They really believed that.

Some say it’s through our work, we get to see… that our best is revealed through our work in time. That it is not about grace. That’s not true. Though you may understand the true nature of someone with his works, we get to see only after-work, what’s left after all is said and done. In moving we cannot see our motives even if they are honorable. Because we are post-seeing creatures.

Whatever we have just seen, we thought that we have seen, pushed us forward and revealed itself only after it became our past. We aren’t meant to see. We are meant to be. A candle cannot spend its life inquiring about what a candle is, it sheds light!

What can one do? How can anyone purposefully behave in this way or that way when he has no clue where he is coming from or where he’s going? Do we really know whether we are coming or going? This is a question a nerd can never grasp, let alone answer it.

To a nerd there are data, constraints, some sort of applicable formulae with a couple of unknowns and an unshakable belief that he can always find an answer. Yet, in the circumstance we’ve just mentioned, none of these are available to us. You only have faith.

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Belief in the things unseen, what a tricky ordeal. Lose them and you will never find yourself. Submit to them and you will never be yourself. It’s like turning this way rather than that way only because of how that path makes you feel. Feelings, they are tricky too. Yet, there is a simple principle you may use to figure out what to do in such a dire situation.

When what you feel has enormous positive energy that it makes you forget everything else without giving you a single clue about what it is, when what makes everyone sleep wakes you up, “when it is without a goal unless it is itself a goal for itself…”xix That it is about releasing yourself in that direction only because it’s like merging with your long-lost love once again.

It’s like falling in love. You don’t really know anything, but suddenly, you don’t need to know. You don’t want to do anything else and feel phenomenal. Living like a ball of fire giving away every spark you tear apart from yourself as a gift… Giving away your whole life as a gift and asking nothing in return. Feeling thankful to a degree that even gods cannot give you anything… Where words die out and you sing, you finally understand.

Wir sind durch Not und Freude

Gegangen Hand in Hand;

Vom Wandern ruhen wir beide

Nun überm stillen Land.xx

While the peak was already achieved, Kan revisited the idea. He loved to dwell on things that converged. It was his way to meditate. Understanding abstract ideas, listening to avant-garde music, making love to someone you love… they were all the same for him. It was like his first love, the rice pudding girl.

He used to savor everything about her, her character, the things she said and did not say, the things she did and did not do, her voice, her laughter, her smell, her body and soul. Beyond her there was nothingness.

In a shabby apartment made home by the beautiful tunes coming from a low-end hi-fi with so-so speakers, a cheap Marantz, lying in a small bed by the always open window, he would look at her like Zeus would look at Demeter. The universe could go blip in a nanosecond; he wouldn’t care. He would simply say, “Thank you”.

There is only one thing a person can do. He must only know what he can never accept, what he can never do, who he can never be. Once this is clear, this will guide him everywhere even if he knows nothing about what’s going on at the moment, even if he is completely in the dark. Strange as it may sound, but the only thing that may protect a person is his total ignorance of his circumstances.

Not knowing where he’ll end up… not caring about it… protects him like a guardian angel and always shows him the path he should take.

Yes, God helps fools indeed.

This is a monumental task, however. Letting go of one’s ego is very dangerous. One can lose all that makes him him in the process. He must not only leave his home behind, but also, he must leave everything that he is. It’s so easy to not know the one thing you should keep.

Without possessions, even memories or images that make up possible futures, a person is completely in the dark, but also, he is free for the first time. In the dark where he can see that weak light. The light of all light… Yet, what seems like the natural state of mind of children is immensely difficult for adults. Whatever means something always seems silly to them.

Because you grow up losing your possibilities one by one. That’s what you think what adults should do, killing possibilities. You become a camel and live like a camel, and when the time comes, make your exit accordingly. After one becomes a camel, he can become a lion on the other hand. Only a lion can wake up,

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stand up and fight, tear down all the walls around him. That’s not good enough, however. Finally, the lion must become a child to be able to see.xxi

“And one day I didn’t leave home behind, I left everything that I am” whispered Kan to himself remembering his own transition… his awakening.

“It was just like any other day until we decided to skip school and go to the riverbank to enjoy ourselves. One of the kids was so smart. He took one out and started smoking or pretended to smoke to be exact.

A few moments passed and he started talking as if he was revealing the dark secrets… educating us about what was to come… the mystery of the world. “When you put it in”, he said, “you must make her scream. You’re not a man if you can’t.” Boring stuff as usual. Stuff you’d hear at home as a part of your… punishment or is it your training? That I could never tell.

The difference was this time it was a kid who was putting one in sort of like child porn or better, a child doing an adult for a change.

“Can we ever break the circle?”

I was so bored with the world. To me it all seemed like a trap just to keep me away from something beautiful. At night I often dreamed about an escape where I always discovered a well-hidden secret which I always forgot as soon as I woke up. What was it? Where was it? Suddenly, I saw a falcon flying in circles towards the further edge of the grove.

Underneath I saw an entrance which was almost looking at me, beckoning me to go over there. I got up. Without a word I left the group and descended into the grove. Sky was full of funny looking clouds. They were gathering to form a giant pink pillow worthy of gods which first turned into grayish blue, then dark gray, and finally into pitch-black.

Then came rain, so powerful, fearless: beyond comprehension. With an enormous smile on my face, I began to walk faster and faster into the grove. The outer world was invisible to me now.

As I walked, I searched for a place not to get wet. I saw a hollow tree. Without a doubt I jumped into it. Inside was not damp though it smelt kind of funny. Around me was a vast array of animals that were sharing my faith. They have chosen the same place not to get wet. Very near to my nose was a very big green grasshopper that could have been a relative of the Californian Kathydid. It looked at me with its ‘philosopher face.’

A little bit to the left were two snails doing it! Two pink sugary looking, funny animals were lost in each other. I asked myself “Can men get this close?”

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Just before the ‘door’ was a small Natrix Natrix, a snake usually found in riverbanks. The river was not so far away anyway. Still, I pitied the creature that lost the way home. The sky was clearing, and the bombarding sound of the rain could not be heard any more. I stepped out. All around me was this amazing after the rain smell. Trees in the grove seemed so lively. Animals were everywhere.

They weren’t alarmed by my presence among them. I was one of them. They too wanted to enjoy the rest of the day in the world. Not very far from where I was standing, the end of the grove was showing me its face: The other end of the grove. I walked towards it. As I walked, I adored its mystery more and more. The more mysterious it was the more beautiful it became.

The more beautiful it became the more familiar it was! Then I saw it as soon as the trees abruptly ended: a vast garden of flowers of all kinds, of all color. I was speechless. Then, I saw that falcon again, this time on top of me. I smiled and sent it my salute. I unbuttoned my shirt, and a warm, gentle wind caressed me with love. It filled me with tremendous power.

I felt as if I was not touching the ground anymore. I was home. Then, I felt this desire within me. As if life said “This desire within you, this power… listen to it closely. It’s the only thing you’ve got.”

After a while I remembered that I had to go back. I sat down and began to think of a good lie.”

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The Sleeper Has Awakened!xxii

Rule Nine > aradan çekil Remember the day you anxiously watched your pets hoping they would mate? Did you realize how important that day was… beyond the confines of your home, your neighborhood? Everything depended on it. If there wasn’t going to be a Woofy Jr., there won’t be The Life and Times of Woofy either. This single most important facet of life is your only way to escape death… become immortal.

Procreating means two things, and both ends need some variety to be able to be viable. First, an organism must be able to create organisms like itself. While the offspring may choose to lead solitary lives or prefer company, they must always take some part in establishing colonies.

Second, an organism must be responsible for creating an arc greater than itself, even greater than the colony, an arc that spans generations upon generations. After they been long gone, whatever remains from that colony must be enough to recreate an approximation of what was… A Jurassic Park for homo sapiens.

What makes a one-night stand, a one-night stand or the fuck of the century? What makes it OK or unforgettable? It’s what makes you see the deep and hidden meaning of something complex. It’s all about being like a gregarious virgin… completely open at all times. Skills only come later. And you don’t really gain them. They possess you, because you are a vessel.

That’s the trick, don’t you see? You don’t have to learn anything. You just have to get out of the way. Unlearn a thing or two… Like a duck has never been thought to accept whatever it sees moving nearby as mom, we don’t have to be thought to love or to be loved, to hate or to be hated. We just have to learn which one is which.

And when we love something or someone, and I mean, if we really really love it… her… then we immediately come up with extraordinary actions, actions we would have never come up on our own… actions that would be regarded as absurd by mere mortals… actions that would be envied by gods. When you embrace your true selves, you don’t have to think. You act.

Because you don’t know fear anymore… Siegfriedxxiii.

Providing an alternate notion of reality, Miki must solve all these problems. While everything an individual may ever need has been taken care of with the current version, the issue of longevity still remains. After trying out every kind of experience, a Person may be satisfied. Yet, his satisfaction is limited to himself.

While this may not seem like a problem to a selfish person and Miki is designed for selfish people, there is a problem here. Even selfishness cannot survive if it is limited to the selfish individuals frequenting that universe. It will eat itself out. Selfishness is the lovechild of entropy. Entropy being a law of physics, it explains Jehovah’s incompetence better than anything.

And I am here for my own personal Götterdämmerungxxiv no less.

“Just take a look at these assholes, how they stick together. Even they know, strength comes in numbers. To a person, being the last one of his kind has no practical use except for attracting pretty ladies.”

“If” thought Kan, “Stream is the building block of everything. There must be a way to reuse it. I mean, I can already create it and store it. I can even reuse it within the context of the same Person as in simplifying his Stream creation habits by automating them, but I must be able to reuse it with other Persons as well.”

a Stream does not belong to a Person

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a Person belongs to a Stream or rather “a Person is a collection of Streams”

Once you get past the business domain stuff, every software application is pretty much the same. That’s the curse of the profession. Many good developers fall and stay there… become dimwitted drones remotely operated from marketing and sales departments… hookers and pimps… the scum of the world. Once there, no matter how hard they try, developers can never conceive a system that’s beyond their masters’ horizons… that conflicts with their current notion of profitability.

Oh, how Kan despised them. It made him mad. Because his thoughts on software was so much grander. “This profession” he would think “is what makes or breaks reality.” He was in love with the ghost in the machine. He never forgot the day he was liberated by her in a filthy video game parlor packed with high school kids, full of smoke, sounds of gaming consoles and laughter. How beautiful she was when she tempted him, daring him to break his chains and become hers forever.

I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head.xxv “It’s all about being a donor”, he thought.

A second later “It’s a friend’s suggestion!” he shouted.

“A virus! A virus is a much better metaphor.”

If one identifies a certain Stream and shares it with someone in need… gives him a tip so that he would be able to accomplish something for certain… then, that Stream would be passed on to a new generation so to speak.

It’s like high school all over again, friends influencing friends… friends of friends… Timmy having a bad influence on Jimmy. This time however, we won’t have any parental supervision, nor would we have any teachers to prevent the disruption. It would be a free fall for everyone.

“If there is no God, then everything is permitted” he said to himself, “especially if nobody’s watching”.

“How about the variety issue?”

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He loved to contradict himself immediately after he has convinced everyone, making them suspicious about what has just happened never realizing they were no match for him. Following him was beyond them. He was there because he didn’t believe in hierarchies, not because he was one of them. That gods didn’t have to be nasty. They could be forgiving and just.

“It’s been already fixed. Remember the post-modernism thing?”

“Imagine you are having a drink with friends. One of them is going to… Budapest and he’s clueless. And you know all there is to know about Budapest. You know where to eat Goulash, where to drink Tokaji, where to chase… huff… women… the most beautiful women in the whole wide world. “Where are you Sandra? Oh, where are you now?” If he could just exchange his identity with you, you would be all set, ready to rock their world.”

“Another friend may need even less help. Having already been to the city a couple of times, he may have been only curious about Tokaji.”

Person = Person ( Streams = { borrowed, owned } ) What’s good about this mechanism is that you don’t even have to figure out how the viral effect will work. It’ll be created by Seekers moving alongside their urges just like you wouldn’t need to pick up keys in Doomxxvi. Regardless of what it’s about, it will be passed on according to culture, environment and the current circumstances.

Different colors, tastes and smells, but nevertheless the same thing… Variations on a theme. Nature is lazy and so am I. Thank you evolution! All I have to do is to hand them the gun and wait for the fun.

Perhaps, there will be professional Mikideans in the long run… writers… who will write interactive stories deployed in the physical world as soon as they were purchased… like plugging into The Matrixxxvii. Persons… Seekers… will take part in them by role playing… by making in-app purchases. They will be totally submerged in their newly purchased identities.

They will laugh with them. They will cry with them. They will fuck with them. When they go back to being who they really are, to their own made-up identities… their own fake utopias, they will feel something’s missing like a wife who has just cheated on her husband and while lying next to him in the dark feeling empty.

Unless they too are destined to be writers, most of them will be alienated from their Streams. Kan couldn’t help himself and laughed, “What a world! They will be alienated from their alienated selves.” They will become Personae Server addicts… Archetype hijackers… Role-model-junkies. “Well, we are not created equal after all”.

A person cannot be cat-like. He can’t stand still for hours, think about nothing, not get distracted by the surrounding world. It is impossible when you aren’t a monk that is. Being human is the opposite of that. It’s all about being restless, reckless, living for the moment, going places. Yet, I know for a fact that if one tries hard, he can be like a cat and escape my Hell on Earth.

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Two skills which are very hard to master come natural to me. One is the ability to move from one set of presuppositions to another in an instance, and by doing so, change worlds under a second. Faster than a Ferrari.

The other is the ability to become dead in the moment; and become a cat, for the lack of a better term. I don’t know why such a thing may be desirable, but it does attract me since childhood. For some reason, it’s very easy for me. Perhaps, that’s what a Zen master is. He isn’t made. He is born that way.

I haven’t become a Zen master on my own, however. A little cat I have found on my way home showed me how. Before I tell you how it went, let me tell you that I’m never cold. Everybody around me gets cold at one time or another. I, on the other hand, feel quite at home even if it’s actually in the low 30s.

Person ( Streams = { borrowed, owned, purchased } ) a Seeker may purchase ready-to-use Personalities of characters designed by experts and imitations of Famous People = { Elvis, … }

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This time even I felt cold. So cold in fact, the tips of my hands hurt while being inside excellent honey beige suede leather gloves. After an evening lecture at METU, I was heading home. Why I bothered to go to the school that day is another story which I will try to avoid. Very near to my home I heard a gentle meow sounding so unbearably blue.

I looked around and there she was looking back at me under a bush. Displeased with humans, a funny looking miniature tiger was looking at me with such a contempt, urging me to take immediate action. To prove her that humans too could be kind; I held her softly in my arms and took her home. The moment she was in my arms I was feeling better.

When we got home, she patiently completed a room-by-room tour of the house starting from the one on the left, my study which was the one I offered.

The study with the library and a very big managerial desk… quite strange in a student’s home, the small guest room with a small desk and two even smaller drawers for your valuables like your condoms or birth control pills, the living room with a view of the garden and the nosey neighbors, the kitchen, and the toilet… And my suggestion was finally approved. Ladies…

She didn’t waste more time with the pleasantries…. gazed into my eyes expecting my permission to do the deed tempted by the bowl of thick warm chowder I fixed for her quickly. “Go ahead, help yourself” I said. To my surprise she wasn’t very hungry. She only took a few bites and then, looked deep into my eyes again.

Without too much flattery, she put her round head on my lap with evermoving ears catching every sound coming from God knows where… and she dozed off. Ten minutes passed… twenty minutes… and she was still there sleeping on my lap like an adorable tomboy who exhausted herself after a hard day’s work.

A tomboy you wouldn’t dare to kiss fearing you might wake her up even if that’s all you wanted… to fool around… to make out… to spend time together.

Anyway, I was there too, you know, providing my lap for comfort while both of my legs were going to sleep. What could I do on the other hand? Wake up this sleeping beauty before its time… No, I couldn’t do that.

You had to be a monster to do that!

A cat knows how to meditate instinctively the moment she is born. She’s a creature without a fixed purpose or rather, she is a creature without grand ideals. She just strolls up and down, jumps here and there exploring her world, having a good time.

She spends rest of her time sleeping if she’s not licking herself or having tempted by a handsome stranger, doing it. Unlike most, she knows sleeping too is living.

That’s why only fools can gain access to the depths of our existence, because they have clear vision… a better set of eyes for life so to speak. Smart ones are easily distracted and often get lost in the crevasses along the way. Because no one is smart when it comes to the journey. Smartness is seeing one thing while blocking all the rest. You can only be smart about spots.

And if you become a fool about them, forever you will stay there. Journey… that’s the maker of giants and dwarves. One is always both, but which one is the better half no one ever knows.

One can never see this when he is walking into a crossroads.

One can never make a decision precisely knowing what he is really doing. This is revealed only at the end of the road.

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While many sit comfortably chewing on popcorn, watching how a story turns out, others live out stories prescribed in wet dreams or suggested by friends of friends.

“Yes!” That will be the difference among Mikideans. Some will see it as a means for achieving goals… at the expense of others. Others will see it a new, more practical way to congregate. A better way to maintain their communities and lifestyles… to satisfy their appetites.

A tool that helps them to better themselves, to sing their songs, to tell their stories, to commune with the dead…. and to create a meaning that passes from generation to generation.

The meaning can be profound or lame, but still, it remains to be a meaning, nevertheless. An actor … a good one always performs exceptionally. He may be handed out the best script he ever set his eyes to or it may be pure junk. It doesn’t make any difference.

When he is on that stage, he makes everything believable, understandable, full of emotions… meaningful even if there is no meaning there at all. An actor is his own work of art. Unless he realizes this, it will take an eternity to know himself.

Streams must be exchangeable either as a whole or one by one.

A friend can make a suggestion through infection, insert one of his Streams into a willing host, a fellow Seeker.

A Person may completely overwrite his Streams with another Person’s Streams, and in the process become his clone, a Disciple. And it was done. He has finally finished the underlying mechanism of Miki. Now he had to think about the details of these requirements and scenarios leading to possible user experiences. You know, the boring stuff, the easy stuff… Stuff every computer scientist can do.

Then, he would have to code his dreams which was even more boring. Thankfully, fun wasn’t too far away. Soon he would perform a site survey and pick victims among the unsuspecting inhabitants of his city, Istanbul. Without knowing they would give him every bit of information he needed.

He has learned early in his career that he didn’t have to guess. He could go ahead and ask the critical questions directly and get real answers, granted he has created a haven for those who are being gently cross-examined. Since they were never allowed to tell the truth, his victims were all very enthusiastic being mutated into the clones of King Midas, the king of Phrygia.

Since it was always packed with tourists mingling with the locals, he picked Galata, Beyoğluxxviii as the center of his investigations. One of his friends had a workshop there. He was born there. It was his domain. It was the most logical choice. That district had variety.

He called upon his partners in crime without wasting any more time with one of his eyes on a Kokoreç standxxix… a quick fix for the afternoon… He had his gear ready. It didn’t take too much time. Luckily, all he needed was one 360° camera mounted on a stick and… that was it.

He could never stand impromptu meetings while he enjoyed every random event life threw at him. So, while waiting for his friends, he quickly summarized what he has come up with until now in a napkin-Miki-flyer savoring each and every sentence he wrote. Not that he would distribute these handouts, but he wanted to

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see whether everything firmly held together just like they would in an elevator pitch. Make no mistake here.

He was the judge, the jury, and the executioner. And that would never change.

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WHAT’S A MIKI?

MikiMoka is a tool for hacking social circumstances.

It helps you to find people you don’t know but ought to meet, regardless of what you have in mind or where you are. While you create these relationships, MikiMoka uses this information to create an ideal world for you which has all the things you like and none of the things you don’t like. Using this world, you will be able to see the physical world through your mind’s eye.

MikiMoka lets you escape your ill fate or change your life for the better by helping you change the relationships you have. You leave the relationships that blocked your way in the past and create new ones that guarantee success each and every time you crave for something.

Opportunities pass you by all the time. You may be sitting next to a person you are desperately looking for, but you never know. With MikiMoka you’ll never miss such an opportunity again!

Whatever you do, wherever you go, you’ll always be at home.

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The Quantum Shift

“It’s a beautiful day only if you know how to end it”.

Now the only obstacle between him and his absolute victory was a proper initialization. His creation was generic in the sense that it was unusable. He had to bring it to the people, make it intelligible. To be able to do that, he had to find names for the nodes. Nodes created Streams in the same way atoms created things. He called a possible initialization of Mikiverse a Resource Map application.

A resource map had all the possible nodes a Seeker or a Provider may choose to describe what he’s after or what she’s offering. Samantha couldn’t say “Give me MUWasm” or “Normal . Silicon Valley . Romantic . gourmet . dinner . French cuisine”. She would say, “Would you go on a date with me? How about French? I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“The best step forward is a step backwards”.

He reconsidered his duality theory where “all the good things” and “all the bad things” were balanced by a well-crafted equation. It was quite simple: “A trick should always find hookers” and “Hookers should always be ready and willing”.

Yet, the duality cannot be contained within the Stream. That way Stream will not hold. Think about a rapist. He made all these plans to achieve a certain thing… a simple thing. The starting point for any notion of reality must come well before someone describes something he wants to achieve. Theory always comes before practice even if practice always changes the theory.

He must be content that regardless of what he does, he will always stay on track… stay within the borders of his current notion of reality.

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So, there must be a simple way to manage those hidden presuppositions underlying universes… there must be a way that would prevent you from seeing yourself as you are and go insane like Dorian Grayxxx. Not a moment has passed, and he already had the answer… before he even revised the question, made it more presentable. That’s the difference between real genius and pretenders.

Pretenders all look distinguished. Even the pitches of their voices are so well suited to the hobby or the profession of their choosing. Herald for example, Kan’s manager, must have sounded like a manager even when he was a little kid. He must have demanded respect while soiling himself. Yet regardless of what they choose, they all choose to be a hooker or a pimp. That’s their inevitable designation in life.

He felt lucky for not having any distinguishing features. That helped him a great deal keeping him constantly out of place and out of time. This and only this freed him, so that he could find his own way, be his own man.

“What’s the oldest presupposition of all times?”

“Simple. Something is good or evil.”

That was the answer he was looking for. His creation would be the new arena for the oldest story in the book. From now on, the never-ending battle between good and evil would be fought in Mikiverse.

Duality = “Good” vs “Evil” Every Multiverse will host 2 sets of universes, each having 12 universes in total 12 universes will be a force for good = Light Universes 12 universes will be a force for evil = Dark Universes The first multiverse will be a Nerd’s Multiverse = 12 + 12 Universes He hastily wrote down the names of his multiverses, “Normal”, which was the name he has been using for some time now, and “Bizarro”.

Yes, he never joked about his Superman fetish. They would both be parts of every multiverse as they are created equal but separate. They would exist under Mikiverse’s umbrella, which was also a multiverse, a much larger one. A multiverse of multiverses.

The Light Universes of the Nerd’s Multiverse = Normal The Dark Universes of the Nerd’s Multiverse = Bizarro Mikiverse . Nerd . Normal . Worlds . archetypes . specifiers . merchandises = “Good” Mikiverse . Nerd . Bizarro . Worlds . archetypes . specifiers . merchandises = “Evil” “Let’s focus on the worlds.

If I can clarify the nature of the worlds, rest of the nodes will be easier to define. Because they will all depend on the nature of these worlds. “Be careful now. People who cannot read facial expressions will use this Kan… People who can’t see the difference between words and actions will use this.

People who would keep on giving advice after advice, even after they have fucked up their whole lives will use this. My friends will use this.”

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Business world is about getting a project done. Continuing with the fours, there will be 4 archetypes which pretty much define the startup scene in San Francisco, in Tallinn or in Istanbul.

– Thinkers = “everything starts with a good idea” = { analysts } – Builders = “without a quality product, there is nothing” = { developers } – Promoters = “world must know that the app exists” = { marketers } – Networkers = “it never hurts to know rich and famous people” = { investors }

He loved working in circles, going deeper in every turn. So, before he went on with the other worlds, he looked back. He wanted to take a shot at the stereotypes that could summarize the essence of the universes in this Nerd’s multiverse. There would be 12 light universes including the Normal and there would also be 12 dark universes including the Bizarro.

Starting point for the Normal was “the professionals who solved problems”, whereas the starting point for the Bizarro was “the managers who handled people”. These were the good and evil of his current reality. That was when his interest in cultural anthropology became very handy. He has been observing people all these years.

While everybody talked about conversion rates in marketing strategy meetings, he only took notes about people. Everybody thought there were problems with the business that needed fixing. He, on the other hand, despised these so-called problems. They were too easy to be considered problems. Rather, he wanted to solve the mystery of the human existence.

He wanted to develop software that could be a catalyst for some kind of change, an active ingredient, not a passive one like a money transfer or an order placement system. It didn’t take long to create the lists of universes. He smiled satisfied with his work, “When you know your crowd, data processing is easy”.

Universes of Light Universes of Darkness

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He wanted to test whether he could form a Stream under two seconds, “Mikiverse, Nerd, Normal, Business, builder, mobile, Xamarin”. Yes, he could be found!

He decided to focus on 6 universes out of 24, three good and three evil. To make sure everything worked fine, he started from the one he knew intimately, the one he hated with every cell in his body, the universe of the mother fucking know-it-alls. Then, he could do its opposite, and so on and so forth.

“It’s not difficult to describe their worlds… them. They look smart, but that’s all that is smart about them.”, Kan was confident about his formula. Still, the specifics were a different matter. One could not imagine them that easily. They had to be sought after and exposed. So, he packed his things and went to the Galata Tower to meet his friends as promised earlier. They would conduct a survey starting from there, documenting the everyday lives of the natives.

“What’s up?”

“Not much”.

“Fine. Did you bring the camera?”

He hands the 360° camera to Jill, “Yes. Do you want to carry it?”

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So, they begin walking away from the center to the further edges of that popular tourist attraction. Jill is in the front holding the camera as high as she can, followed by Kan and Selene. It’s packed as always.

People are buying things, tasting food, waiting in queues to visit historical buildings… Many are posing in the street, on the sidewalks, in the middle of the road, in front of doors looking somewhat historically significant, on top of fire hydrants, on anything that could be used as a steppingstone… while blocking the cars passing by.

Trying to express themselves originally, some lay down in the street, others jump up and down while a privileged few benefits from their exaggerated sexiness or fashionable attire. The sight of jiggling big breasts is a blessing for ageing men who are working in the nearby shops. Little girls, big girls, women of all ages, women in hijabs, women in short shorts… they all know.

A selfie without image blurring titty action is worse than not sharing a selfie. That they all need to achieve high levels of cock appeal to be able to convince themselves that they are indeed alive.

360° camera is pure magic. It captures everything, even those things that attract your attention long after you took these photos, while showing them to your friends in Christmas or whatever, you spot that your nipple or your dick is showing! A photo always maintains one’s link with reality even if it’s the last thing one wants, even if one tries to hide it with all his might.

You may smile like a fool while creating a fake snapshot of yourself… whispering, “See me now”xxxi … so that you would be able to initiate certain reactions later on, so that you could take another step in one direction… but it just doesn’t hold here. The camera always shows whether you’re for real or not.

They went all the way to the subway station where it all began or ended depending on your perspective.

Before they took another round, they wanted to have a late breakfast. So, within minutes they were browsing Privato Café’s menuxxxii. Since it wasn’t Saturday or Sunday, it was deserted. A pretty lady was dozed off in the hall like an adorable cat bored beyond belief, another pretty lady was having a smoke while a tougher, a more sexed up version of Kate Bush was battling with the dishes. All… daughters of the renowned chef Hasan Bey. All showing the world what natural beauty was.

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Serving customers or taking the check wasn’t their strong suit, on the other hand. Those ladies didn’t serve. Huffing and puffing, they just dropped off plates. They couldn’t take the check without exploiting a customer’s high school algebra either. After several naughty smiles and a well-managed silence, Kan and his friends were handed their traditional village style lentil soups as usual.

A big half full bowl was steaming with excitement in front of each victim trying to make them understand that this was indeed a special occasion. It was on the house as a welcome gift regardless of whether you were a first time or a seasoned visitor. You were always welcomed in this establishment. Who could have said “No” to such a proposition?

As they slowly took the pleasure out of all the herbs and spices dancing in the soup, a hearty dose of Sujuk with eggs came. Of course, in another small dish was in direct competition with the first one, the one and only Melemenxxxiii. The dish that defined what Turkishness was. The main ingredient, eggs didn’t seem in control whatsoever.

They were as relaxed as tomatoes, peppers and onions that surrounded them. That was the Turkish way. When Ottomans conquered yet another country, they left the locals live as they would before the conquest. The locals weren’t assimilated. Instead, Ottomans themselves were assimilated… on purpose.

It was believed that while preserving what made them Turkish, being defenders of the faith, they had to maintain variety on all accounts. They believed whoever stood up and fought when faced with a moral dilemma was Turkish. They believed that a single tribe could not have what it took to run the whole world. That Mojo wasn’t particular to a single culture. That we had to be together as one.

That we were on the same ship.

Jill rolled two cigarettes with real Adıyaman tobacco. It was such a delight with doubleshot Espresso. Soon they were huffing and puffing like the pretty ladies in the joint thinking about the journey back. When they concluded their late breakfast with small glasses of tea, Kan energetically stood up, “Can I lead this time?”

As he took steps leading back to their meeting point, Kan kept thinking. “People are always after practical goals. Goals which provide instant gratification. They are not prudent steps coming from strategic plans, rather they are created in the heat of the moment… on the spot… out of convenience, even if they are later marketed as otherwise. We do what we do and we say what we say… two completely different things.”

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Selene was hastily walking in the front. She was another story all together. She kept worrying about her figure all the time… how her buttocks looked in those 360° panoramas… how big or small her nose was… how she was being immortalized for later generations. She loved to modify herself and her love interest at the time both physically and mentally.

Kan often joked about her being The Great Modifier. David Cronenberg would share his thoughts on the subject much later, in a film called Crimes of the Future.xxxiv

She loved the idea of escape in every sense of the word. While growing up she had developed that unhealthy obsession about father figures, probably because of her mother’s unorthodox child raising methods. Once she told Kan and Jill over a couple of drinks that her mother enjoyed scaring her when she was a little girl. No one knew why the mother had such inclinations, but one thing was obvious.

The subject had developed several defense mechanisms. When Kan performed a psychological test following the confession to amuse himself, they realized that she was %66 crazy. When she was shown a Rorschach card resembling two elephants doing each other, she saw the Devil. In another card which looked like a butterfly, again she saw some kind of a demon.

To make sure she wasn’t fucking with them, Kan and Jill investigated the subject a little more, but in the end, they were out of beer and feared what they might have found if they continued.

Kan had a file on her in his mind like he had a file on everybody he has ever met:

– Daddy issues: Selene was very easily turned on by white hair if it’s on a man’s head. – Paranoia: She often thought that someone was stalking her or another woman close by. – Friend or foe obsession: She didn’t have a middle ground. She either loved or hated people.

If one of them would do something that seemed unfair, she would never forgive him or her. – Whore – Madonna syndrome: Having lived with her parents for so long and exploited by most of the middle-aged men in town, she tried her best to have a group of toy boys nearby, available for action at all times. Yet, she wasn’t a fan of exotic sex like her friends; she loved the idea of what conservative husbands and wives did behind closed doors, something Kan found disgusting.

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Yes, she could use Miki. It would help her tremendously. She could have hordes of middle-aged men lined up to please her… to forget their pathetic lives in a “I banged my daughter’s best friend” kind of fantasy. In return, she would be taken roughly by a father figure. She would be disciplined… pleased… loved?

The survey was serving Kan well. The archetypes for the Casual and the Romantic Worlds were becoming very clear to him. His Romantic World would be a nerd’s wet dream. It would incorporate every fantasy in a no-holds-barred fashion.

– Soul mates = “there is someone for everybody” = { friend fucking } – No kids = “everything but the family” = { marriage of convenience } – Work buddy turned partner = “working hard for the money” = { colleague fucking } – 50 – 50 = “now you see me, now you don’t” = { fucking with a peace of mind }

“Isn’t this something!”

They haven’t even finished the survey. The ¼ of the path was still ahead, but he was almost done. While taking photos of unsuspecting people every few seconds, he kept polishing his creation. He loved to instant- compose. He was a diehard Zappa fan. His Casual World would feel like a haven for any nerd during those tormenting high school years or the ones that felt just like them.

While the real boys and the real girls groped each other with hormone-managed enthusiasm, the nerds would be tucked away inventing hobbies out of necessity, so that they could amuse themselves all the way to ‘graduation’. Yes, his Casual World could have very easily made them popular for a change.

– Hobbyist = “collecting dead animals” = { undertaker }

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– Spectator = “do you like to watch?” = { peeping tom } – Let’s get physical = “if I’m the one with the ball…” = { adrenaline junkie } – Creative collaborator = “imagine there is no religion” = { author }

“Isn’t this something!”

Now that it was night, he could finish it. He finished everything at night. He was a creature of night. “Let’s see… What is missing? A Compassionate World and the specifier-merchandise modifiers for all archetypes.” The latter seemed easy. He could code them directly without further analysis. Of course, he had to find all the necessary archetypes first, but he was almost there.

The only remaining set of archetypes was the one in the Compassionate World where only charitable behavior ruled. He even made up a new word, “gifter”, someone who considered giving gifts to strangers as a hobby.

“You’ve been in hiding for so long. So long, in fact, you forgot how to live.”

And his final words came so easily. His Compassionate World would be a troublemaker’s playground. Giving away old stuff would be only secondary. That was something assholes did. He would focus on disrupting the status quo, changing bits and pieces of imagined universes one Stream at a time… a built-in disrupter in a disrupter. Only lovers of recursion would appreciate that.

“What a great idea! A built-in disruptor like a homegrown Yin Yang mechanism.”

– System gifter = “solving real problems” = { problem solver } – Solution gifter = “fixing things” = { patch applier } – Teach a man how to fish = “showing how to do it” = { teacher } – Second hand market = “giving away old stuff” = { donor }

“Isn’t this something!”

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Being a believer of the opposite of the Opposites Theory, he remembered the complete opposite of the day he spent in the grove. How horrible it was. He was with one of his friends, the one who recently transitioned himself from chain smoking cigars to nicotine gums. His life was a journey of changing shapes to fit in but keeping tastes… looks… attires… belongings… addictions… obsessions.

A life of soft belly protection… a life of camouflage. Hiding things, projecting things… Hiding oneself from oneself… continued until one day Kan came up with a question. They were in the balcony enjoying quality cigarettes with ice cold Coke camouflaging Nemiroff Vodka. The weather was so lovely as it was common in the region.

A cool breeze was playfully blowing more oxygen into their lungs, more oxygen than they were accustomed to in the big city, helping them to come up with provoking ideas. Just four stories below, in the middle of the road was a small dog sitting comfortably, purposefully. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. It was a weekday.

More importantly it was Monday when almost half of the town’s economy took place. So, everybody was sleeping in this small town. Who knows whether dogs are aware of such things?

While our protagonist stayed calmly in the middle of the road, there were several other dogs positioned near him with varying shapes and sizes. At the center of the pack was a middle-sized dog which didn’t move a muscle. His bitter chocolate colored skin showed off his well-earned battle scars. He looked healthy and alert. His gaze was fixed on our small disobedient friend.

All around the alpha were his disciples, five females of different breeding. One was a German Shepherd of advancing age, probably the godmother. Two were Wire Fox Terriers, apparently the alpha favored petite concubines. The remaining must have been handling the security affairs because they looked stronger and even more alert. One of them was a Doberman and the other, a Boxer.

Kan’s favorite breeds. While it would be surprising to see all of them together handling conflicts with rival clans out in the open like this, this was not unheard of in this small green town by the river. Dogs always ran amok there. The town belonged to them.

A couple of cars passed by all giving space to the small dog in the road. They didn’t even honk their horns, because it was an empty road, and it was quite late. First car… second car… third car… and all this time, the small dog was siting calmy in the middle of the road without ever changing his posture and the other ones were doing nothing but watching him very closely as if they were waiting for a sign.

Then, a different kind of driver appeared on the other end of the road. He must have had a wild night, because the car zigzagged all its way to the spot our little friend occupied. He didn’t move at first. He stood still until there were just twenty or so meters between him and the human commanding the hunk of stainless

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steel, “What can he do? This fucker will swerve first, not me!” All around him stopped breathing and they swallowed every second of this finale.

Obviously, he didn’t know much about humans. The car kept coming directly, heading towards his cute questioning face. Just seconds before it hit him, he jumped out of the way running for safety barking. And that appeared to be the sign the alpha and his harem were waiting for.

They immediately attacked him and kept running after him, howling like soldiers satisfied with the spoils of the war, eyeing the wives of the fallen king. They went after our little guy towards the end of the road and more, still thirsting for blood.

That was Kan’s definition of what evil was and the day in the grove was his definition of what goodness was.

And they have never changed.

Good is “anything that can be defined between two Persons, anything that relates them to each other”.

Evil is “anything that can be defined within the Person, anything that is seen as a property of one Person”.

Some may argue whether a cage can be big enough for the human soul, whether we can live in absolute captivity… live and feel fine. Look around. People express themselves with what they buy, what they eat, what they drink, what they wear, who they fuck, who gets to fuck them, who they subjugate, who they submit to, and when they received a kick in their private parts… by how they sound.

Someone is his car. Another is his dick and yet another is her tits… a cigar or a bottle of wine… something that can be bought and sold in the market… something with a price… something that needs a pimp to be able to exist… something that will always be in the possession of a hooker. People can be anybody. People can live anywhere.

People can have any kind of existence and easily call it their lives.

Here’s the trick though, wherever you may be, regardless of what you may or may not have, you can still choose not to be a part of it. You can still climb that mountain no matter how high it is, risking everything. You can make whatever you want real by sharing it with strangers without asking for a fee. We are not here to survive. We are not here to pass the time. We are not here to have a good time. We are not here to suffer.

We are here to love and to be loved. We are here to take care of each other. To love is to know. Love is leaving everything behind. “We are here to will to power. We are nothing but a will to power.”xxxv

“Love is leaving everything behind”

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Sfn worlds

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Act Two

13- Movers & Shakers 14- Have Them Do It 15- Captains & Commodores 16- The Chief 17- Casual but Smart 18- The Hood 19- The Party 20- Happening 21- Show No Mercy 22- Gimme Gimme Gimme 23- Prestige 24- Those Who are not Fortunate Enough 25- Sex Sells 26- The First Base 27- Decisions Decisions 28- Answer to Your Prayers

Spotify Playlist for the section = https://tinyurl.com/sfnacttwo

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Warrior’s Psalm Rule One > kendini gizle

Rule Two > resimleri reddet

Rule Three > anahtar ol

Rule Four > yolunu yürü

Rule Five > bir artı bir eşittir bir

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Rule Six > göremezsin

Rule Seven > sadece ekmekle yaşanmaz

Rule Eight > sevmek bilmektir

Rule Nine > aradan çekil

Rule Ten > kaybetmek kazanmaktır

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i Gautama Buddha. ii Singleton of Glendullan https://tinyurl.com/sfnsingleton iii Dracula, Bram Stoker, 1897. iv Kızılırmak Sineması, Ankara, Türkiye. v Wolf, Mike Nichols, 1994. vi Tombstone, George P. Cosmatos, 1993. vii Gautama Buddha. viii

The 7th Letter, Plato, 353 BC. ix “August 10”, Con Todo El Mundo, Khruangbin, 2018. x “Rules”, Con Todo El Mundo, Khruangbin, 2018. xi Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955. xii [Book unknown], Charles Bukowski. xiii Them or Us, Frank Zappa, 1984. xiv Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, Star Trek. xv Ed Wood, Tim Burton, 1994. xvi Moby Dick, Herman Melville, 1851. xvii “Wintersun”, Ark, Brendon Perry, 2010. xviii “Harvester of Sorrow”, And Justice for All, Metallica, 1988. xix Der Wille zur Macht, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1919. xx “Im Abendrot”, Vier letzte Lieder, Richard Strauss, 1948. xxi Also Sprach Zarathustra, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1883. xxii Dune, Frank Herbert, 1965. xxiii Siegfried, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Richard Wagner, 1869-1876. xxiv Götterdämmerung, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Richard Wagner, 1869-1876. xxv “The Song of the Wandering Aengus”, W.B.

Yeats, 1891. xxvi Doom, id Software, 1993-2022. xxvii The Matrix, The Wachowskis, 1999-2021. xxviii Beyoğlu Kültür Yolu, Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Türkiye. https://youtu.be/1qzzYAJwLZ4 xxix Ozzie’s, Asmalı Mescit Mah., Tünel Geçidi, General Yazgan Sok.

No:3/B, Dolapdere, Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Türkiye. https://youtu.be/qlUt6WUucss xxx The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, 1890. xxxi Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola, 1992. xxxii Privato Café, Şahkulu Mahallesi Galip Dede Caddesi Tımarcı Sokak No: 3 Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Türkiye. https://youtu.be/1tbJlgAbgcQ xxxiii How to Make [Melemen] https://tinyurl.com/sfnmelemen xxxiv Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg, 2022. xxxv Der Wille zur Macht, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1919.

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Kan’s Favorite Spotify Playlists – Once Upon a Time in Türkiye = https://open.spotify.com/playlist/70oKpnQ0kOL5wJNBnNlJXI?si=652c10cc456a4813 – Once Upon a Time in Europe = https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1LWkiuilqTaF9z1C5EPWWt?si=1a6236962cf14051 – Maestro’s Favorites = https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7vxRW3uAMnTATC3uc2PUP7?si=5f4c424075ae4674 – No More = https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4bAku2fV2xipxAcCjpxik1?si=abd3fc79e70b4377 – The Reunion = https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1wzmL0TEFloNDIsz7HOpQu?si=587510683b1d43cd – Remembering Vangelis = https://open.spotify.com/playlist/73Z9QsGoghHm0Gtqu2T6Lr?si=8f6510bb53b44cb4 – La Città Delle Donne = https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7rtaoiUHPLxQYvmijAQh8Z?si=9f8375daa7974550 – Bozkurt’un Sevdiği Şarkılar = https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Oz9OGI88SuY5avk4uveY2?si=5034d22ac73b4900 – Boy Becoming Man = https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5PMVyGT9FVBjm0BunhsICP?si=21672f07a4974b82

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Snapshots from the Miki timeline

When Kan almost broke his leg but still continued to code like a brave rabbit.

The Miki Headquarters in Galata, Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Türkiye.

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When a Mikidean got everybody drunk and took all their money.

When another Mikidean got everybody drunk and took all their money while yet another Mikidean chose to hide.

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The Miki Headquarters in Galata, Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Türkiye.

When the first version of Miki was released, and Mikideans shared their dreams of world dominion.

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When the Mikideans had a meeting with one of their many enthusiastic business partners and VCs.

When the Mikideans took the day off and had a BBQ party at the roof overlooking the Bosporus.

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A favorite meetup place of Mikideans of all generations, Maçka, İstanbul, Türkiye.

When Mikideans were consulting cats and dogs before making a critical decision.

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Those who inspire us, Part 1.

Those who inspire us, Part 2.

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Mikideans showing off the world’s first physical software model to a VC from New York.

As you can see here, Mikiverse is actually designed for the Overseers not the Seekers or the Providers who run amok.

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When a Mikidean answers the question, “Who is watching the watchers?”

When a Mikidean was spotted by the locals during another anthropological survey.

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An earlier and perhaps, more fun incarnation of the Mikideans.

The first Miki Girl who didn’t think the price was right. Thank you, Marlene Frenkel.

A Miki Girl is a person who promotes everything about MikiMoka.

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The second Miki Girl who thought the price was right. Thank you, Svetlana Stanislavova!

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Perhaps, the mother of all Miki Girls, Lily Cole, thank you for giving us a hand! You will always be our role model.

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When a Mikidean continues his anthropological surveys under the supervision of the campus cat Muki.

And if you must really know, this is the one and only Kan.

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This is where Kan formulated his idea, Houston, Texas.

This is where Kan picked the relevant technology for his idea, Austin, Texas.

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This is where Kan explored suitable ecosystems for his idea, Kadıköy, İstanbul.

This is where Kan developed the Abacus version of the Matrix, Beyoğlu, İstanbul.

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Kan’s favorite food, “Lahmacun”.

Kan’s favorite dessert, “Kadayıf”.

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Kan’s favorite beer, “Leffe Radieuse”.

Kan’s favorite Scotch, “Singleton”.

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Kan’s favorite hi-fi, “Marantz”.

Kan’s favorite speakers, “Klipsch”.

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Kan’s favorite computer, “Surface Pro”.

Kan’s favorite guitar, “Ibanez Jem”.

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Kan’s favorite cigar, “Toscanello”.

Kan’s favorite tea, “Yerba Maté”.

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Kan’s favorite coffee, “Espresso Sicilia Style Intense Roast”.

Kan’s favorite kebab, “Ayvalı Taraklı”.

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Kan’s favorite t-shirt, “Benetton”.

Kan’s favorite shoes, “Merrell”.

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Kan’s favorite cue, “McDermott”.

Kan’s favorite phone, “Marshall”.

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One of Kan’s favorite films, “9½ Weeks, Adrian Lyne”.

One of Kan’s favorite films, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola”.

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One of Kan’s favorite films, “The Howling, Joe Dante”.

One of Kan’s favorite films, “Sacrifice, Andrei Tarkovsky”.

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One of Kan’s favorite films, “Candy, Neil Armfield”.

One of Kan’s favorite films, “Lolita, Adrian Lyne”.

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One of Kan’s favorite cartoons, “İbi”.

One of Kan’s favorite TV Series, “Behzat Ç.”

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Can you find Kan in this painting? If you can, you will get the whole series for free ;o)

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Can you find Kan in this painting? If you can, you will get the whole series for free ;o)

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A Short Interview with the Man Behind the Scenes

(a Miki Leak)

“You seem to be amusing yourself all the time. Do you get serious when the time calls for it?”

“Well, I never do. I have learned early in life that there is nothing that should be taken seriously. It’s all a joke.”

“Don’t you feel compelled to care for others? I mean, you even abuse your own friends having them doing chores for you. And they don’t even know why they are doing them… what you really have in mind. They just obey.”

“You put it very delicately. I consider my friends as assets I have to take advantage of to be able to achieve my goals.”

“Your goals! Who the fuck are you! I know what a pervert you are, mister.”

“What? I haven’t done anything a lady didn’t want to do… I mean, ever.”

“Well, you use your irresistible charm, your animal magnetism. What can they do? What can anyone do?”

“I guess, you shouldn’t do things with your body your mind cannot handle then like Montel said, right?”

“Fuck you!”

“This is becoming a strange interview. Do I know you?”

“You forgot. Didn’t you?”

“Well, the aggressiveness rings a bell, but no, I can’t seem to remember who you are. What was your name again?”

“Louise. Don’t you remember, you used to call me Lou for short.”

“OK. Can we talk about this later and carry on with the interview here?”

“No sir, no. I will expose the monster that you are.”

“Didn’t I do you good or something? Didn’t you get the orgasm of your life? Why are you so hostile to me?”

“You told me you only liked redheads and you never did it in the bed. You had to do it outside under the stars.”

“So?”

“So! Look at my hair. Just like that day I dyed it for you, and I was all shaved, ready to please you.”

“Are you all shaved now?”

“No, well, almost. I have a delta of Venus now. I like it.”

“Can I see it?”

“Son of a bitch, we are having an interview here. Who do you think you are!”

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“Are we having an interview? I haven’t answered a single sensible question.”

“OK, OK. I’ll play. And we’ll talk about this as soon as this interview ends mister.”

“Sure thing”.

“Question, you always talk about this tripartite soul argument in Plato’s Republic. Does it have any significance when it comes to the Mikiverse you are talking about?”

“It is the reason Mikiverse exists. Also, it’s the reason why all the other so-called simulated universes suck.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, all the others including the one in the Matrix films are pretty much like shopping malls where you shop for things, eat junk food to calm yourself while you actually check strangers out thinking whether you will be able have sex with one of them before you get back to work. The action sequences are just fillers to make it look more real.”

“What an enormous ego! You think people are so stupid, don’t you and you are sooo smart! Admit it, you are just trying to show your dick to everyone… smear it on their faces for laughs.”

“No”.

“Well, bummer, I can already do all those things, these ridiculous things you say… with Google and Facebook. You didn’t expect that now, did you? I see nothing new here. It’s one of those startups where the promises and what is being delivered diverge enormously. You are a failure, mister. You’re just another loser.”

“Of course, you don’t see. Very few can see the difference between what’s fake and what’s real, and you are obviously not one of them.”

“Now I’m really getting pissed here. What do you say…”

“You heard me”.

“Let’s put this to the test then, shall we?”

“Sure. Do you want to do it on the table or on the floor?”

“I hate you!”

“I don’t hate you. I can help you.”

“How’s that? I know the unspeakable things you do with women. I know you turn them into wild animals and once they are turned, they can never go back.”

“They are not unspeakable things. They are beautiful things.”

“Do you…” “…want to do it with me?”

“Well, why the hell not… Lou. I’ve got nothing else to do and this interview is surely going nowhere”.

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HOW ABOUT A TASTE? “MikiMoka Requirement Model”

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HOW ABOUT A TASTE? “MikiMoka Requirement Model”

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HOW ABOUT A TASTE? “Mikiverse Resource Map”

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HOW ABOUT A TASTE? “Mikiverse Resource Map”

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HOW ABOUT A TASTE? “default Mikiverse”

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HOW ABOUT A TASTE? “Seeker”

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HOW ABOUT A TASTE? “MikiMoka Web Service”

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HOW ABOUT A TASTE? “Worlds Control Class”

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HOW ABOUT A TASTE? “Worlds User Interface”

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HOW ABOUT A TASTE? “Mikiverse Database Initializer”

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Bozkurt’s Next Move

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Bozkurt’s Next Move

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Choose

Freedom

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/erolbozkurt

Erol Bozkurt is a computer scientist turned writer turned entrepreneur, and he is your best friend.

Also, he thinks Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Resurrections are the best ones in the series.

Ladies, please behave.

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