Heaven's Gate Academy: An Interodelic Adventure

Followup to Into Interodelia: A Probiotic Drug Cocktail Adventure [Campaign Setup]. If you see something with a *, it's a reference to the first post.

Thanks to Dan of Lacrimis Draconis for proofreading and moral support.

Heaven's Gate Academy
Everyone knows that life is suffering and the world is broken. It's just that you're a little more broken than the rest of the world. Or, that's what the world is telling you. The mission statement is that they're going to fix you, but nobody really maintains the pretense on the inside.

Bad things happen inside the Academy, seriously. Violence, dehumanization, indoctrination, forced biochemical and body mutilation. It's some real dark shit. You've been warned.

Even so, some people are actually happy here, or better off at the very least. I don't know what to tell you, you'll just have to roll with the messiness of it all. At least it's campy too. Just wait until you see Mr. Doctor Priest's Enochian Cyber-Cock.


The Academics of Movement
You are always being monitored inside the Academy, except when you're not. During the day you will have two supervisors, and at night just one, and you can only go where they let you go. You'll spend most of the time in The Dorms.

Fortunately, space and time are relative, and therefore so is movement. You can always escape inside yourself in the Positive Plane*, or dissociate into your own holographic rainbow shadow, the Negative Plane*.

Where there is uncertainty or contradiction, you may find respite. But you have to be willing to sit with the discomfort of the unknown, like balancing on a bench of arrowheads.


The Teleology of Interodelia
Remember, this is all magic. Which is to say, a drug trip of misremembered memories. And only some of those memories are your own.

The goal is to escape, and this is agreed upon, including by Heaven's Gate Academy, although they won't just let you do it, what would be the point in that?

But anyway, when the trip ends and the magic's gone, you will escape. You were always going to escape. It's really more in how you do it.


The Dorms
In addition to yourselves, other dormmates include Carolina*, Del*, and Rabid Dog. Jakky* will come and go as he pleases. There are other dorms as well, but this one is yours.

The Dorm is a small nondescript living room, a couch and tv, a narrow hallway, and a few rooms of bunk beds, each with their own bathroom. They're not so bad, but there's only so much to say about them. Which is unfortunate, because you'll be spending a lot of time here.

The PCs' and NPCs' room assignments should all be mixed. I know that might seem inconvenient, but sometimes that's just how it goes.


If you room with Del, keep in mind, he's generally a decent guy, but sometimes he can be mean, or want to roughhouse, sometimes a little too rough. Del isn't violent by nature, no more so than anyone else, that's just what the trauma did to him. And once Del gets riled up, then Jakky follows shortly afterwards, and then it's a real problem because Jakky's a fucking ghost tiger who thinks he's people.


If you room with Carolina, she really is kind and sharing. You can see how the world would chew her up. It's not that she can't defend herself, she's actually tougher than you'd think physically, you'll find out for yourself if she ever gets her hands on any drugs, it's more a personality thing. She's also smarter than people think. People treat her like she's stupid but she's not, she just doesn't show it the way other people do.

There is one and only one true fail state in this game, and that is if you help Carolina escape. Incidental* will remind you of this fact in case you forget, or get any ideas. Worse, even just helping her, or showing her true kindness, could cause a Calamity*. You were a bad friend, and even in this magically misremembered memory, this failure must be relived.


Not long after you arrive comes Rabid Dog. Never before have you seen such eyes. They’re too-human eyes, full of cold intelligent violence, modern and primal. And should you ever find yourselves unsupervised in the Dorms, and should it seem that a physical altercation might ensue between yourselves and another, then Rabid Dog will intervene to break up the fight, and you will see those hyper-human eyes differently, because then you will see a love purer than you could have imagined, and you will feel joyous enlightenment, and also something like the shame of post-nut clarity, and you won't want to fight anymore, you won't even understand why you wanted to fight in the first place, you might even want to cry. Please, if you would resent a game telling you what your character should feel, just listen to your character, that's all I ask.


If Rabid Dog is ever in The Stables and the only supervisor is Zombie, he will grab a wooden 2x4 and he will bludgeon Zombie until his skull fractures and his spinal cord snaps and then Rabid Dog will run, and he will be captured, and taken somewhere else, somewhere worse, and you will never see him again. But you'll remember his hyper-human eyes.


One of the daytime supervisors is Jesus. He's more rotund than the usual White Jesus, and he's a ginger. Frankly, he's as broken as any of the students are purported to be, and has problematic views towards women, I mean really he's a misogynist, and he's deep into conspiracy theories. I know this all makes him sound unlikeable, but he leaves an impression, he's intelligent and convincing in his own way. He'd start a death cult of his own if he could but he doesn't quite have the charisma for it. But every once in a while he hooks a student into his madness, and even though he has the best of intentions, it doesn't usually end well for them.


The other daytime supervisor is Markov. He's small, wiry, a little past middle aged, bald and goateed, with rough skin, and he always wears sunglasses. He doesn't look that tough, but the students know that if you fuck with him, he will fuck with you back, and you just know you're not gonna win that fight, even if you think you can take him. But usually that's not a problem, because the students love him, he's the Cool Dad who lets you break some of the rules if it means you won't break the important ones. If Corporate ever had a clue they'd have fired him a long time ago, and that would be a shame, but that doesn't happen until after the drug trip ends, so you don't have to worry about it. He'll take a smoke break and mock you when you're jonesing, but it's all in good fun and when he comes back he'll let you sniff the nicotine off his fingers.


The nighttime supervisor is Mountain Dew. He's chill, nondescript. No ambitions, but not too bothered by it. He got his name because he drinks a lot of Mountain Dew and plays videogames all night, or reads comics, or watches hentai. Obviously none of this is allowed, but he does it anyway, and sometimes lets the students join him. If the drug trip would be coming to an end during the night shift, he'll give you drugs and a real fucked up indie comic book, and then you get to have one more wild adventure, recursing through both trips and eventually back up into what we erroneously call the real world.


The Stables
Do you ever wonder if they're called Stables because they provide stability? I don't want to look it up, it's better to wonder.


The Stables hold Majestic Beasts, and you get to take care of them, and learn to ride them. The Majestic Beasts are all large, at least as large as horses, and strong, because if they were small, or weak, someone would abuse them, they'd find a way, so you don't get to have something like a dog, even though that would be nice. I wonder if the Academy learned this the hard way.

The primary supervisor of The Stables is Zombie. He was supposed to go to Heaven, but due to bureaucratic error he's stuck in this broken world a little longer, and they didn't know what to do with him, so he's here. He is intellectually divergent and is legally not culpable for his actions, he has a legal guardian, but anyway they let him supervise The Stables, and he can do that just fine. He comes from a red state and has some regressive beliefs, but if he finds out that one of the students is "a queer" and he otherwise likes them, he'll find a way to rationalize it to himself.

Fat Tony is a student from another dorm, and he has the most experience of the students in running The Stables, and is often allowed to assist Zombie. He's a bully, a huge asshole, and remarkably ugly in an understated way, like he's actually uncomfortable to look at, but it's not from a disfiguring scar or deformity or anything, I mean he does have a disfiguring scar, but that's not what this is about, that's just a coincidence. He just exudes ugliness. Or maybe it's more like extrudes, because it's greasy. If you're the forgiving type you might indulge the question of how such a person came to work The Stables.


The Corrections Facility
At Heaven's Gate Academy sex is forbidden, because sex is life, which means sex is also suffering, and violence.

Every student at Heaven's Gate Academy is forced to take medications that halt their sex drive. And there's a three strike rule; if you get caught engaging in even the most innocent and playful of flirtations, that's a strike, and after three strikes, they use chemicals and instruments to tame you, and then there's no coming back from that.

But you know what? As monstrous as that sounds, some of the students really like it. No longer to be made an object of, no longer to fear that kind of violence, or the implication of it. And likewise, to be free from those urges, to no longer feel enslaved by them, or want to enslave others by them.


The Corrections Facility is managed by Mr. Doctor Priest, who prefers to go by Dr. Priest. He has an Enochian Cyber-Cock that he's really proud of, and always finds "subtle" ways to bring it up or wave it around. What Mr. Doctor Priest doesn't know about his Enochian Cyber-Cock, is that it's very easy to hack with a SQL Injection, because he doesn't actually know how to code Enochian, or really how to code in general, he just kind of muddles his way through it, like many do with life. Even though he's not a licensed therapist, they let him run the mandatory therapy sessions. Many students who would have benefited from real therapy will never get it, because he gave them the wrong idea of what it's about and so they'll wash their hands of it forever, and that's a real shame.


The Dining Hall
The food comes in plastic containers or bins of things made from powder and water, everything wet and greasy and white. There is a notable lack of scent, flavor, and nutrition. It’s filling and makes you tired and accomplishes very little else, but The Lunchlady really does care, and somehow that makes it worse, because you’ll hurt her feelings if you complain about it.

Occasionally The CEO will eat at The Dining Hall (and on those days the food is notably improved), and he’ll talk with the students. It's always a one on one conversation, and he's a very good listener, curious, and thoughtful. He has a clean and unthreatening handsomeness, like a diet Mitt Romney.


The Glassed Desert
Heaven's Gate Academy is located in the middle of a Glassed Desert, Shevet* knows where. The Nuclear God Shevet detonated here long ago, and it's never really been the same since. There's a tragic beauty in this desert in the middle of nowhere, mountains off in the distance. Serene and empty. You misremember it once being quite naturally beautiful, without all the weird baggage and feelings. Now it's all glass and charred vantablack trees, cauterized branch-collars like eyes that see into 無, the contradictory negative space contained within the cycle of being and becoming of existence, and maybe if the circumstances were different, there'd be a beauty in that too. You realize you too can stare into 無 if you follow the line of their sight.

There are also monsters in this Glassed Desert, but it's the people you really need to watch out for. They used to be a family, but after the war, after everything they did and everything they didn't do, there's not much left of them except their failed humanity laid bare, and even still they cling to it, they've learned nothing, and will continue to learn nothing, and that nothingness radiates and destroys everything it touches.


The Threats We Face
Whether on the run or sleepwalking through the day, we face obstacles in our path, inevitable conflicts, and lurking threats.

The Victims: No, they are not survivors, although maybe one day they will be. These are the victims of circumstance. Those circumstances can be anything; sometimes it's a demon in the head. It's not that they don't deserve sympathy or help, it's often the lack of either that got them here, but all the same, they've lost their fucking minds and so you don't know at any time whether or not they will hurt you, or hurt anything weaker than themselves, because that's all they have left to do.

The Inmates Who Run the Asylum: The supervisors are not so different from the students they manage, but they have the power and the students don't, and so even the weakest and stupidest of them is a threat.

Monsters: Because of course there are monsters.

The Outside: The system is designed to keep you inside. Whether on a supervised excursion into town, or escaping into The Glassed Desert, everything is out to get you. The failed humanity of The Glassed Desert despise you the way they despise everything that is not themselves (and also themselves in a different way), the people in town fear you, or they fear what would happen to their town if The Academy fails, or they think nothing of you, just that you aren't supposed to be here and that's enough.

Time: Time is not on your side. The longer you stay in The Academy, the more likely it is that they break you further, or fix you, which may be even worse. The part of you that is a student of The Academy becomes a greater part of your identity, it defines you until you are nothing but a student in this place. Time distorts your personal reality from the inside out like a microwave, like sickness and neurochemical imbalances in the Positive Plane, and rumination spirals and distorted perceptions in the Negative Plane.

Yourself: You are, perhaps, your own greatest threat, whether you can admit it or not.

Wrote the original draft as early as March 2024 (maybe earlier?), made a lot of progress on it for a month or so, then fell off. I had originally intended to gamify it up a bit more, maybe I'll finally do that in some hypothetical future third post.

I was very worried if this post was a little "much", again thank you Dan for advice and encouragement!

Into Interodelia: A Probiotic Drug Cocktail Adventure [Campaign Setup]

There are no contraindications to Into Interodelia: A Probiotic Drug Cocktail Adventure (it’s system and setting agnostic), but it pairs well with:

• Maximum Recursion Depth Vol. 3, or Everybody Wins if We're Having Fun: The Animapunk RPG
• Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix
• The Positive and Negative Planes

“What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”

― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

In this adventure, your body has been reduced to a state between life and death, and your mind downloaded into the consciousness of a drug-induced microbiotic gut bloom. Your vagus nerve has been torn from spacetime as you know it, uncomfortably bundled to fit within the confines of the curled dimensions, and yours and all the other's stitched together like string puppets pulled by the GM's trigeminal nerve somewhere past the fourth wall. The entire world as you perceive it is disseminated through the pain of the GM as immunopathological signals.

Too much information squeezed through coiled wires like electrons, the only release existing outside the body, outside the mind, the magnetic field in this too tightly stretched analogy.

A low resolution low-fi virtual reality, a sub-conscious cloud of pain-protecting signals. When consciousness is compressed into computational clouds, real and virtual become an arbitrary distinction.

“I am, because we are; and since we are therefore I am.”

― J. S. Mbiti on Ubuntuism

Fools as you are, you cling to a semblance of self, even as inevitably you bleed into one another and all of existence, which as far as you can tell has reduced to your interior body outside of spacetime and a handful of very vividly misremembered memories that are probably some of yours.

Nothing but yourselves and each other, and the bare nakedness inside you, all the bile and mucus and piss and shit and blood; and metabolic warmth and white noise whooshing bodily fluids. Simple comforts cramped inside your body and the paradoxical ease of an embodied reality.

It was drugs that got you here, and you consented to it, and the rest is Incidental. All the same, you've got a few hours to make some magic.

Who am I?

You are the most reduced, prototypical version of yourself, whatever that means to you.

Where did we go?

Within the computational space of the gut bloom, signals of consciousness are reduced into a binary perspective. The Positive Plane, material reality as we understand it; and the Negative Plane, like multi-dimensional shadows, holographic reconstructions full of impossible colors, the metaphysical things. You navigate your own insides, spindles and fibers and gristle of the positive plane, and holographic rainbow shadows of your memories in the negative plane. But, they all kind of bleed into each other, it's all dream-like.

Each player should supply a list of misremembered memories for the GM, and you can roll them up as needed.

And mixed up all in it are also Pain, Sickness, and Ennui.

What can I bring with me?

• You may bring the experience of a single album of your choosing, but the songs must be played in order, and each song may only be played once.
• You may bring the symbolic representation of one piece of technology or equivalent, and consider how it extends your body, offloads your consciousness, or expands your senses.

That's it?

As you go through this Interodelic Adventure, you'll find that it's really much more useful to think about what you don't have than what you do.

“To know that we are only angels weighed down by filth, free of guilt? The bacteria in our bellies are responsible for the farts which shame us, tiny monsters shitting in their billions all over our pure skin create the acid reek of "our" sweat. And Slade: when the "inner voices" tell us we're unworthy or instruct us to "love" and "hate," despite our best instincts... are these incessant distracting thoughts our own? Or do we only hear the voice of the eternal germ screaming in our heads?”

― Grant Morrison, The Filth

Into Interodelia

Each player starts in the negative plane, in one of their own misremembered memories (you share the memory with the party).

If the memory was of a physical act like a sports achievement, you might connect with the party in the positive plane via a muscle. If it was a concert you attended, it might be the banging of the tympanic drum, or sweating skin, or strobe-addled eyes. And so on.

You didn't come here to defeat evil, collect treasure, or gain XP. Here we are our most reduced selves, before space and time and causality. Those are just means to justify the ends, but magic is in the journey itself.

It's only a few hours, all you have to do is explore, and survive.

...the rest is Incidental.

Or so it feels in Interodelia, but then we still have to go to work tomorrow, don't we?

Unless you're like Del, the shared delusion destined to die, a sacrifice to The Nuclear God Shevet. Crazy, snarky, cynical Del, who was secretly a bit of a dork as well. Lost in Interodilia for Shevet-knows how long.

And besides, you'll need to clean Jakhodo's litter box. Jakky can be a real homicidal maniac if he doesn't get his way. Jakky doesn't believe he's a tiger, he was conned into thinking he's a human. Jakky is also dead, but he doesn't believe he's mortal either. He's made a home for himself in the memory buffer of grief, and like any cat, he will not be told where he can and cannot go.

And then there's Carolina. Oh, Carolina, did you forget about her? Everyone else has, but really you of all people... Sweet Carolina only wanted to please, but all she ever received in turn was scorn, or nothing, nothing at all. Wouldn't it be easier if you forgot about her again? Because, we all know, whatever happened can't have been good. She really looked up to you too.

But that's all Incidental. Or so we keep saying. But Incidental has a way of making incidents out of accidents and Shevet help you if Incident insights a cohort of colluding co-incidents and then you have a Calamity on your hands. All I'm saying is keep an eye out for Incidental, no matter how innocuous it seems.

Pain

Some would have you believe that happiness cannot exist without suffering, and to that I say, go fuck yourself. Have you ever experienced Pain? It fucking hurts! If you really think Pain is necessary for Pleasure, then come on over because I've got a five-finger treat for you. Oh, you're a masochist you say? Well fuck me, that's another matter entirely… Anyway, Pain and Pleasure may or may not necessarily go together, but they certainly both exist in Interodelia. 

In this reduced reality, the spectrum of Pain and Pleasure is the one and only signal of embodied experience. The spirits, anima, ki, djinn, daemons, however you want to think of it.

Sickness

I want to say something about Fire, and Being and Non-Being and Becoming, and Prometheus and Dveikut, and Oxidation and Inflammation, and Pathogens, and Anxiety and Depression, and Hangovers. I want to say these things, but I'm just so tired. There is no space for thoughts inside me, my head is full of explosions. My skin burns. I can’t keep a single thought straight, it dissipates from me like light and heat.

There is a fire inside me, a controlled burn that firewalls me from the rest of existence. This raging flame allows me to be strong, but I don’t feel very strong right now. I recede inside myself, my cells, a cell. The divine light and warmth of my existence, all of existence, illuminates and enlightens the universe like stars. But all I feel of it is like a candle dripping away to nothing. A pool of sticky spent wax, and crusty white ash.

The Sickness mutates my DNA and sets my body and mind on fire with inflammation. As I flicker away impotently providing neither light nor warmth, as my most notable quality becomes my conspicuous absence, I remind myself, we are Phoenix.

In Interodelia, Sickness is paradoxically the source of both strength and weakness. It is an ongoing process, like the relationship between fire and fuel.

Ennui

Because “boredom” is a boring concept. A lazy, unexamined, flattening of a maddening sensation. The cyclical pattern of learned helplessness and cortisol angst towards that which is beyond your control. The illiminal spacetime of a late train that cannot be compelled to arrive. The psychopathic rage of being surrounded by a bunch of ignorant fucks without a clue, and you without the faintest idea of what to do about it all. Knowing it’s all wrong, and it’s all outside your control, and therefore it’s all pointless. A lazy, unexamined, flattening of a maddening sensation.

Ennui manifests in the physical plane as a kind of anemic, unaroused, seething frustration. But in the negative plane, it is imagination and creation.

The man who said I was a joke and my life was a joke—he may not have been there in my final moments, witnessing my final breath, but what I realized was: he foretold my death. He could only have foretold it by seeing me to my core—by having been my soul’s witness. When he said those awful words, he witnessed me into the future, a future he knew I would meet. During our fight, I tried to convince him that he was wrong. “I’m not a joke!” I cried. “You’re the joke! You’re the joke!”

― Sheila Heti, My Life is a Joke

And then we find ourselves at Heaven’s Gate Academy…

Which is neither in Heaven nor an academy.

(And if you feel you've been railroaded, truly you are more lost than was intended.)

I came up with the majority of this adventure / micro-setting in Fall 2023 and never quite finished it but even in its current form I thought it worth posting. It's supposed to be a whole adventure. If I follow up, I'll elaborate more on how the songs work and maybe more concretely how Pain, Sickness, and Ennui work mechanically, and also maybe write the Heaven's Gate Academy adventure.

A World in Two Times

Each player is two characters, an Ancestor and a Successor. 

This is a world of circular time, or at least for the PCs. Actions in one time affect the other. If it's easier, think of it like a surrealist dream. A whole other life, a world with its own rules, and maybe no less significant. Quite literally, this is how luck is made. 

Like Karma, attaching to the present at the expense of the future (or past, as it were) accrues debt. Even though you represent both interests, sometimes it feels like you just don't have a choice.

The Ancestor and Successor are each other's spirit familiar.

Lucid to each other's dreams.

Both images by the Surrealist Max Ernst

Possibilities

• Luck, synchronicities, spiritual phenomena all operate within the circularity of time.
• Ancestor and Successor are arbitrary terms. Ones' history is the others' prophecy.
• Causality as we think of it is merely a heuristic; a reasonably predictive and explanatory model for something much more complex.

The Magical Man Machine

Thank you, I designed them myself! Yes they really work! See that vein there? Yes, I just attach it to the wheel overnight and it's reinvigored by the morning. Oh, those are self-producing bioplastics, I'm especially proud of those. You think I'm beautiful? Gee golly, thanks. I think I'm beautiful too. I mean, I think you're beautiful too. I know it seems impractical, and like a lot of work to have done this, and it is and was, but art isn't meant to be practical. Yes, this is my art. Some people are repelled by it, but I think that says more about them than me. You see what the engineers don't understand, they really just don't get it, is that the system is just one side of the equation, but you can't explain the experience as a system. So I knew, I knew, to really know what it means to be a machine, I had to become one. But it's not enough to be a cyborg, no, that's got it all wrong. Cybernetics is about systems of control, and you can't understand what anything really means through systems and control, isn't that obvious? A cyborg is just a series of interfaces, translation points between electrical signals and those of the body, and then the spirit. No, to embody the machine, I had to reshape myself, the body itself, into something like a machine, a Man Machine. The qualia of it, the pure aesthesia, well, it can't be described, that's the whole point isn't it? To roll on wheels, to see like a camera, to store memories as hash mapped blocks of information! And see, that's where the artists get it all wrong, because they think the machine can never produce art. But it's a moving target, art to them is whatever the human can do that the machine cannot, and when the machine can do it, then it's not art anymore, it's something else. But let me tell you, they've got it all wrong. The machine has an art all of its own, invisible to the perceptual quirks of the human eye, out of phase with the holographic human soul, illogical to the material brain. Let me tell you from personal experience that there is magic in the machine! Am I so repulsive? Don't you want to be a Magical Man Machine as well? Sometimes I miss the oxytocin tingle of a gentle finger stroking along the hairs of my forearm, or the spicy floral fragrance of navratna oil and its cooling sensation on my scalp. I have the memory in block storage, but even in its "lossless" format, I know the je ne sai quai is all wrong, it's a different flavor of experience. And it is lonely sometimes, being the only Magical Man Machine. It's no better nor worse an experience. I mean, in some ways its worse, if only because the world doesn't know what to do with me. But that's where the magic comes from isn't it? The divergence from consensus reality. A vast and sparse noosphere, the joy of ships passing in the night, sailing the ocean of anonymous nobodies and nothings, each themselves doing likewise, whether they even know it or not. Oh my gosh, oh I'm so sorry, I really ran away with myself there. I'm sorry, I haven't even asked yet, how was your day?

The time I got into an argument with Grant Morrison

A little over a year ago, Tuesday September 6th 2022 at 7pm at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square in New York City, I met Grant Morrison. I even brought *them a copy of Maximum Recursion Depth, or Sometimes the Only Way to Win is to Stop Playing: The Karmapunk RPG, along with a shitty hand written note on an index card because I spent years writing and publishing a book but didn't think to write a personalized message to go along with it until an hour or so before the talk, so it's on an index card, it's surely cringe beyond belief, over-written and self-conscious, in my shitty handwriting because I don't hand write, with scratch marks where I decided I wasn't bold enough to say this, or had just enough shame to recognize I would regret saying that, and for whatever reason didn't bother to just rewrite it entirely.

* It is entirely possible I mis-gender them at some point in this post because they were a he/him for most of the time I've known them, feel free to correct me if I do, or feel free to not correct me if you don't want the responsibility, but I'll fix any mistakes if I catch them, no-problem.

So, they talked a bit about the book that I own that they signed and that I also own digitally but still have not read yet (the time will come). Honestly I don't remember much about what they had to say about it.

I remember them talking about their philosophies, mostly the same stuff I've heard them talk about before. It was cool to hear it live, in real-time, to absorb the idiosyncrasies. They went on a long rant at one point about how they don't believe in Karma and reincarnation because of hypertime and superorganisms, that was one lovely new talking point I'd never heard from them. I don't even remember how that came up; I was too nervous and despondent to even try to ask a question in my one chance to do so, let alone to argue with them about why they're wrong about the stuff they've been writing about for decades, that made me so obsessed with them in the first place, that was one of the largest inspirations for most of my ideas that are also probably wrong.

So I dunno, they seemed like they were in the mood of somebody who was doing work travel, doing something that probably used to be exciting for them decades ago but now was fairly mundane, trying to shill their art for the sake of capitalism in a corporate bookstore, close enough in time to a global pandemic to still have that hanging over everything, not really ideal circumstances for anyone.

But it was a life goal of mine to meet Grant Morrison, and there I was, so Grant was going to affirm everything I've done, look into my eyes and realize despite our wildly different life experiences, personal identities, age gap, regional gap, whatever, that they would know in that moment that actually their life was incomplete until meeting me, that they would be forever changed and we're going to be best friends going forward.

Obviously that didn't happen, and was never going to happen, and of course we both knew that that wasn't going to happen, but we're going to play this out anyway. It's funny how, in accomplishing this life goal of mine, to meet Grant Morrison, and giving them a copy of my published book, another life goal of mine, I mostly just made myself inordinately depressed and also reminded myself of how I made myself inordinately depressed for publishing the book, for largely the same category of reason, so it was a recursive episode of life goal accomplishment depression, which in retrospect I can appreciate the irony of a little bit more than I could in that moment.

Anyway, they were heading out, escorted by their "people" and one or more employees of Barnes & Noble. I was passing by the stairway as they were heading down, and I stared into their eyes, and they in turn into mine.

I could see the confusion and exasperation in their eyes, and surely they could see the depression and existential frustration and unrequited longing in mine, and yet we both recognized the inevitability of the confrontation.

And so we got to have a proper conversation, without the audience. It went like this.

They said something to me, to the effect of— and please excuse my poor paraphrasing — "What the fuck do you even want from me? I'm old, jetlagged, busy, tired, hungry, and I've been holding a wet fart for the better part of the last three hours. You think you're the only one who wants to talk to me? I skimmed through your book and I thought it was shite*, you pretentious fuck. I don't owe you anything, fuck you and your Karma."

* "Shite" being my one and only attempt to mimic their glorious Scottish accent in my hoaky paraphrasing of events.

And I wish I could say I responded with something really witty and funny, make them second guess themselves, blow their mind with all of my cognitive neuroscience and machine learning and philosophy and idiosyncrasies and dramatic traumas (and undramatic traumas, and most of all, embarrassing traumas) that make me the ornery, maladjusted, but mostly innocuous bastard that I am, but I've never been that great under pressure, so I mostly just sighed and stammered and sounded like a whiny fuck. And then they were gone, and that was that.

I think in my chicken scratch index card note I gave them along with my book, which in retrospect it would have been clever if I had signed but I don't think I did, I said something about how I don't believe in their magic but still managed to make something of it, like I was making some grand statement. 

And ironically I believe in their magic a lot more now than I did a year ago. I've been embracing the synchronicities, and astral conversations, and the Weird stuff outside constructed reality, which I always was doing in my own way but not in the way that conforms to their magic, but now I've internalized that stuff too, at least a bit. Enough that it's allowed one of my closest personal friendships to evolve to a new level, and contributed to my improved mental health, and made me open to all sorts of other new experiences and perspectives*.

* There's a challenge in this statement, one which I am reasonably confident a non-trivial number of people will fail, or at least they've failed it before. It's clever to me anyway even if I suspect most people don't get it. Also, you (exactly one of you): I acknowledge that you are a good person, but kindly go fuck yourself in circles. I went back and forth on whether to say that, or how to say it, or how much to say. It's petty, maybe more petty for how vague I am about it, but I already acknowledged being an ornery maladjusted but mostly innocuous bastard, so I'm just gonna throw that in their for fun. The rest of you, whether you pass it or fail it or it doesn't apply to you or you figure I can go fuck myself on principle because who am I to be throwing you a challenge— it's all good; as far as I'm concerned, we're good.

So I dunno, even though the conversation didn't exactly go the way I would have wanted, even if we didn't totally see eye to eye, I'm starting to at least appreciate it for what it was, and look back on it fondly. Or at least it's a good story. Even if I mostly came off as a buffoon, how many people can say they've gotten into an argument with Grant Morrison?

And maybe we'll laugh about it together some day.