Bursting Bubbles ~ Excerpt from Mourning Sky
All of their illusions shattered. Religion, the State, the market, all safety nets burned with the sky overhead. For generations, these people lived in a bubble, certainly a bubble that was leaking air, yet a bubble whose membrane stayed intact until this day. This bubble was created by their own technology and their economy. The membrane of this bubble consisted of their hermetically sealed homes with central air, their air-conditioned cars and their shopping centers where they consumed fulfillment.
Into this empty bubble was pumped an artificial environment with which they interacted. The sensory input of this environment came from the internet, from computer games, from commercially recorded music, and most of all from the television. This artificial input created a stultified, atomized world where the residents in their bubbles were taught to accept what they were told, not to question, not to look outside their bubble, and to limit their outside interaction to the simplified format offered by the manufactured input.
They were taught that this lifestyle was good, righteous even. Anything that deviated from it was foolish, perverted, criminal, or downright evil. Divorced from reality, entire generations learned not to trust the world around them, the real world. They projected their fears and hatred outside of their bubbles and sought refuge in their delusions.
Lew first became aware of the psychotic nature of these bubbles in Iraq, when he was a part of the invasion that tore that country apart. All around him, he saw the bloody, inhuman brutality of war and occupation. Yet he also saw how valiantly his fellow soldiers strove to keep their bubbles intact so they would not see the horrible truth of what they were doing. The government and the military did everything they could to help the troops distance themselves from reality and so strengthen the membranes of their bubbles.
Back stateside, the divorce from reality was even more complete. There was an entire society in a bubble. This bubble became so pervasive that the only way to escape it was to flee into the wilderness and become a hermit. Lew tried to patch his own bubble and fit in, but the walls of his bubble became transparent. Nor could he ignore for long the illusive nature of everything around him.
For a few years now, the membranes of the bubbles had grown thin. The bubbles failed with increasing regularity. When this happened, people holed up in their houses, hiding from reality until the bubbles were reinflated. Until now everyone knew the bubbles would be reestablished; the failure was only temporary. But now there could be no doubt the failure was permanent.
Kicking and screaming, the public now had reality thrust upon them. Furthermore, the nature of that bubble-bursting reality became extremely inhospitable. The fears and hatreds they projected on the outside world were now reflected on them. Their heavenly bubbles burst, and they found themselves in hell. This is what they saw, and this is what Lew saw: a world that was hell on Earth, inhabited by people who were little better than dæmons.
Without the input of their manufactured environment, finding themselves in a ruined and hostile world, weak of mind and virtually incapable of rational thinking and critical thought, they succumbed to mass hysteria. Many gave in to their baser instincts. Those who sought to make sense out of their terror were left extremely suggestive, looking for scapegoats to blame for their woes. They fell upon anyone who was different, and that was Delbert. Not that Delbert helped matters himself.
Murderer’s Sky ~ kindle ~ print
