Hole Punch

by Garth Simmons

I liked to try to imagine myself through a camera lens. Transplant my eyes from my head and view myself, like how I viewed people on television. It was years before I learnt that what wanted was “third person perspective.”

Nothing I did with my eyes achieved third person perspective. No matter how much I closed my eyes or pressed them in. My body was just another parameter. I could only go deeper into myself. I didn’t use the word parameter, I hadn't learnt it yet.

His inner child is an angry eight year old, who kicks a rag doll effigy of Everyone. He imagines impact. Not always into a net. He would like to collide into freedom at high-speed. He would like to set them all free. He would like to collide into their faces.

He sleeps himself awake all day. His world is a forever tunnel of human shaped

containers with other versions of himself inside, all wearing different masks, a stretching sla...

"I am plugged into a network of controlled information: an illusion of choice. All choices are false choices. Puppet strings held by a dictatorship of facts." "Do you ever hear voices?" “Only the tones of reason. Beeping measurements and statistics. Quoted and misquoted into a storm of vapid opinions. The lies we choose to advertise and the lies that form our shapes."

All police officers on Conglomax had a small area of their ventrolateral cortex removed; the area labelled ‘the social conscience’. Without this burden the law is able to administer justice and feel really good about it.

The Smear feels Victor Qubert pushing and probing with his fingers; digging deep into the Smear's cells and pushing them all nice

and hard. The Smear's zeros all multiply their formulas with excitement. Victor Qubert was the Smear's special friend.

“The beating was not important because you are not important.”

She was right though. If he died without paying off the mortgage then they would upload his consciousness into the Data Pits. Then he wouldn’t be able to get out until he had mined enough Bit Coins to pay his way into oblivion.

He blamed her, but he didn't stop loving her and he cried dry tears as her bones were crushed.

Richard wished that his wife had gotten insurance on the air conditioning. Paying to fix the air conditioning is what got them into debt in the first place. He loved her but he can't forgive her. That was the greatest pain of all, that he may never forgive his one true love.

“We congratulate your planet for discovering peace,” said Mixelle to the cowering cats and lizards. “Like all peaceful civilisations you have earned the sneer of the Human Empire. We have come to your world to open a trade deal. We take everything. You receive nothing.”

A stray dog barks at me. I grab a brick, and as I beat the dog's head in I swell with pride for the industry that the brick represents: the bygone beauty of this wonderful village that was castrated by international companies and politicians who took away our pit.

I stand over dog's brick-smashed skull. It seems to me a bloody metaphor for the struggles of the northern proletariat. How much more blood needs to spill before the fat cats in parliament get their finger out and gave us back our unions?

“Here comes Gribblesmear!” Laughed the townsfolk, as the man in the dunce’s hat walked pigeon-toed down the street. “Dance for us then Gribblesmear!” Laughed the normal people, as the man danced on a little wooden box in the town square. “Let’s throw him down some stairs!” Laughed the moral majority, who threw him down some stairs. “Get out of town freak! And you are a freak as well!” Laughed the virtuous community, as they pushed the man's corpse off the town wall.

“And that’s why you don’t want to be a weirdo around these parts,” he tells them.

HOW TO BE HAPPY The man asked me for money. I told him he didn't need it. The physical world alone would never make him happy and to attain true happiness he had to search within himself. He must go toward the divine light of every creation myth from the Demiurge

to the Big Bang. All forms are shadows cast by the hot smelter of universal birth. Our souls (our very existences!) are little but impermanent, dancing embers encircled with the darkness of chaos. The man asked me for drugs.

When they died who would punish the Substance? Who would make the Substance tingle? When this world expired the Substance hoped it would be found again, so it could be pleasured by another species. Eternity's Gimp.

“It is more like a low resolution scan than a photocopy. Every time I die the electric spark of my consciousness creates an inferior copy of the life I've lived before. Everything is reduced over and over into more and more undefined forms. All that I perceive of life is a blurred remembrance of my original consciousness in a better defined and more living universe. Each time I die I will relive my life in a more pixilated way, a more low resolution way. When you turn on the radio and you hear static; that is the sound of the future, the sound of our universe turning into abstraction. Every

death leads me closer to a universe of empty static. The lowest resolution of all.”

"You’re breaking and entering," said Mr Robinson. "We can all hide behind laws Mr Robinson. Laws were invented because otherwise we would be tearing open each other's throats in order to assert supremacy. In this new world we must subvert our artificial control mechanisms. This is a modern jungle, but a jungle all the same.”

Mr Robinson saw illegal pornographic images on the computer screen. "What are you doing?!" “The police will be very interested when I tell them I saw you masturbating to this child pornography when I passed your window.” The sideburns man smiled. "It appears that your societal defence systems are turned against you, Mr Robinson."

“Would you like me to buy you that stuffed cat?” asked my nana. “She looks very expensive!” I said. “You’ve done very well at school recently and you've managed to catch up with all the other children,” said Nana.

I didn’t know why that would have any bearing on why I suddenly deserved such a lovely stuffed cat?

They remember science, order, structure and logic. All of these are now crushed and stretched. Imploded and exploded. Reconstituted into a muddy mush of confusion that moves in every direction; besides the direction they are looking. No more assumptions. They've been carved apart. They cannot be measured anymore. At random moments on the curve of the Clockwise Periphery, they hear something laughing backwards, a sidewards gash in the swirl of All-Sworling.

“The unascended man is not evil, only primitive, he needs a shepherd.”

In Zone D43, the ''lower'' life forms flourished. They enjoyed killing one another. Killing was good sport and helped to prove who was best.

“War declared today on the peaceful people of Vadlaria,” said the vidscreen. “Earth Empire War Bricks will level their pacifist civilisation to dust in less than three hours, and the people of Vadlaria will be lobotomised for comedy and humiliation purposes.” “I warned them!” the cowboy shouted, knocking over the table and spitting out a hunk of tobacco goop. “Peace can only be achieved down the barrel of a gun!”

“Why were the humans so stupid?” “There are many theories. Some say their problem was greed, some say it was aggression, but I believe their problem was

love, or lack thereof. Humanity was ugly. Nothing could love a human. They were naturally selfish. Repellent. Love was not real to them, but they wanted it. They wanted something or someone to validate them. They were always searching for love and beauty, because they were so ugly. Ugly in body, mind and heart. The world they created did nothing but confirm this ugliness. This caused wars and hate and “you are uglier than me” debates. Humanity couldn't be loved. So they were in the grip of their own death instinct. They engineered their own suicide. Can you imagine how painful it must be? To despise your own species? To despise yourself? To never feel love.”

This felt more like a rant th...

“Mother?” chittered the cockroach larvae. “Do you think this story is biased? Perhaps opinionated? They can't have ALL hated their own species? Some of them must have fel...

“Impossible. Humanity had no grasp on any form of love. They would try to feel love by having children. But they hated their children. They were searching for beauty within their children, but every generation was only a mirror of their own failure and hatred. Nothing could justify their existence....

"The morons march through the door and sit down around the chemical scented corporate table. The table is loaded with cakes, crisps and sandwiches, all ready to be shoved into their fat, facile faces. I don't recall any of their names because they aren’t worth remembering. The workers in this office are a stream of blood tainted shit. Emmett and Julie are leading the meeting, they are the only exceptions to my memory-block, simply because I have to look at them more often. Also, they are having an affair. They must have a lot in common, every cancer cell is different but also the same. If you stare at anything long enough it will project an illusion of individuality. Emmett and Julie are cancer cells of a shared malignant tumour!”

“This circle here represents where I am now and this line is where I am going. These shapes are the illusions of free will. These pyramids are the fallacy of personality, the fallacy of everything.” Their eyes widened, not with shock, but with sympathy. They came closer to me as I continued to explain.

“These notes convey, through non-alphabetical symbols, the exit points in the walls of my prison. It shows what I need to do next in my war against The Way Things Are.”

The thin man leant forward and put his finger to my lips. The thin woman put her hand on my shoulder. “You must come under the fold of Order,” he said. The woman put her hand on my other shoulder and squeezed. “Order permeates everything,” she said. They pressed against me. “You cannot rebel against Order,” he said. They unbuttoned my shirt. “Order folds inwards,” s...

“Blooming and pulsating Order,” she said. Lowering my shirt off my shoulders. “Inward and outward,” he said. They reached into my trousers. “You are not an energy.” My eyes blurred and their faces merged closer. “You are a person,” they said. The s...

Ambrogio

From outside of infinity, they felt the universe collapsing around them. Gravity inverting. At the end of everything, Socrates pulled his penis out of Ambrogio

and ejaculated a stream of hydrogen and helium; creating the conditions for another universe all over Ambrogio's face.

“Remove the subject's vain attachment to their bodily identity. Take away their sex, face, shape and all other deceptions of the flesh. Connect the subject to their holy soul and promise a continuance and elation

of that soul beyond the confines of their flesh prison. Offer the subject a bridge to transcendent purity and joy."

“Only those who suffer are truly alive,” rasped Brother Dead Swan. “Those who resist despair are flailing blind and numb into the sinful delusions of hope.”

A female Ukatraxi stood up. “The humans took my eggs! I will fight with you!” She punched the cavern ceiling with her big fist. “No women allowed!” said the Rebel. “With or without you, I’m going to punch the Human Empire to dust! If I fail then I shall be an inspiration to the next generation! Revolution is possible through Ukatraxi strength!”

“We are entertainment to them?!” shouted the Rebel. “What? The Mining Show? I love that one. The funniest thing about The Mining Show is that the humans have the technology to mine this planet in three hours. It's just that they think it's more fun to do it the slow way, more screams and all that. Much funnier.” The Rebel strangles the Arch-Slime's fat neck.

The man lifted his straw hat. "Let me tell you something, sonny boy," growled the man with his dyed green moustache and silver eyeliner. "Life isn't about being superficial. Life is about looking good!"