Cosmo speaks Notes from the absolute elsewhere
10. Our world is poison. We live in space-suits of immunity, Boys in Bubbles struggling to live while the world seeps toxically around us. What about mental immune systems? Do we have any?
20. Konnectikron up and running. 3 x 5 file cards, a hole-punch, curtain rods, handful of chemicals. [secret ingredient— hitherto unknown species of ergot grown on supermarket ryebread]. I created it, yet it knows more than I. “If the human brain was so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.” There you go.
21.
TO: DIRECTOR, FBI DATE: 5/27/68
FROM: SAC, NEWARK (100-50166)
SUBJECT: DISRUPTION OF THE NEW LEFT
Certain key leaders must be chosen to become the object of a counter-intelligence plot to identify them as government informants. It appears that this is the only thing that could cause these individuals concern: if some of their leaders turned out to be paid informers. Attacking their morals, disrespect for the law, or patriotic disdain will not impress their followers, as it would normally to other groups, so it must be by attacking them through their own principles and beliefs. Accuse them of selling out to “imperialistic monopoly capitalism.”
21.1 Dig the date on that memo: two weeks ago. How did I get a copy? Konnectikron knows. Philosophical basis of Konnectikron: If a thing had no connection to anything, it would not exist, not be a thing. So every thing is connected. Material basis: see 20. Anyway, it works.
21.2 Genius of the snitch jacket: it forces the accused to prove his innocence while removing any venue in which to do so. The accused is reduced to his core: Do his comrades dare believe him? Is it in their interest? The source of the snitch jacket openly acknowledges itself as the evil of which the supposed snitch is the internal manifestation. Resonates deeply in psyche of the persecuted. Enemies outside the gates must be linked to enemies within. The enemy will be happy to rat them out, falsely.