Blind.Faith 2.0.50. Tomasz Tatum

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      Was it about twerps on TARP?

      White punks on dope? Wonderbras?

      Full-body scans? BSE? XTC? ICBMs? G-strings and Xboxes?

      Deforestation and liposuction and pythons and flies?

      TSA and customized CO2 footprint catalogues? Emission trading schemes?

      Was the worldmonde.Planet really only about GNP and IOUs?

      Of course, it was no surprise that some things just had to change quickly and completely if they were ever going to stay the same. In the past.time, any conventional method of forging a national identity often involved long years of arduous deprivation and struggle by the founders. There were conspiracies and inquisitions or Delawares to be crossed, elements to be braved or frontiers to be shoved valiantly aside. To be worthy of any form of serious emulation–and to retain an aura of exclusivity among the ruling elite–it was imperative that these “founding fathers” be sworn among themselves to live as nearly as possible to their profoundly perceived ideological and religious roots and the hardships they were collectively forced to endure.

      Things were somewhat different now, however. These days, geography no longer mattered quite so prominently in the start-up phase. In fact, it was actually largely irrelevant. And so, in striking contrast with historical tradition prior to these times, if new entities were to establish and hold their claim to independence, the forging of their exclusive brand of national and cultural identity would ideally have to be a process that was both quick and accessible in a worldmonde.Planet of rapidly emerging ideologies and loyalties, all competing fiercely in a kind of virtual marketplace for legitimacy. It was therefore not really to be viewed as a disadvantage if a newborn nation’s symbols and their content could be absorbed in a time frame shorter than that typically embodied by the average enlightened citizen’s attention span as he or she sat riveted before the telly.tubes educating themselves about telegenic pseudo-celebrities eating millipedes or toasting tropical spiders whilst they awaited rescue or redemption in their respective jungle camps.

      What was also, in hindsight, unsurprising was that most or all of the new buzzwords naturally revolved around things like wealth, religion, and race. The true degree of innovation evident in development.MoveyourAss, however, lay in how quickly the messages they contained could be transmitted and how effectively they could be employed to permeate carefully targeted societies or particular segments of them.

      Therefore, instead of everyday life becoming progressively simpler, the accelerating fragmentation of the worldmonde.Planet’s societies into ever smaller entities–defined exclusively by their own limited self-interests and emburdened with little or no inclinations toward even the most fleeting expressions of commonality–was rapidly becoming a source of profound confusion and great agitation for many people.

      Among them was Charles’ perpetually disgruntled stepfather. There was ultimately emerging, in the eyes of Niklas Vladimir, an intractable and incomprehensible lattice of global news, global warming, global thinking, global markets, global money, global this, global that which, to him, was devoid of any truly comprehensible logic.

      Whatever merits all of this globalization.bliss might indeed possess was something which he severely doubted anyhow. For him, it was certainly completely irrelevant to any of his most immediate needs or concerns. Niklas had become a deeply angry and suspicious man in the wake of his appearance in America shortly before it, too, set off on its transition across the threshold of the new and improved worldmonde.Planet order that was emerging everywhere.

      “My home is my castle,” had always been Niklas’ credo.

      So shortly after he finally painstakingly succeeded in raising the necessary funds required to facilitate his emigration from what was then still known as the Providence of Gyurgyan, Niklas found himself culturally shell-shocked in an America that was rapidly becoming infinitely more confusing than anything he had ever dared to dream of.

THE PROJECT

      LuniXX brushed a shock of white hair to one side of his head with the back of his hand as he sat perched motionless atop a tall metal-frame barstool, hunched over his work station and squinting long and inquisitively through an antique jeweler’s monocle. He was steeped in a state of extreme and quiet concentration, nearly oblivious to everything around him as he slowly and carefully inspected the intricate mechanical innards of an aged Swiss watch movement spread out before him on the tabletop, disassembled and arranged in a handful of logical groupings. To minimize the risk of losing even just a single one of the miniscule hand-crafted components and to ensure that they remained as clean as possible, he had meticulously arranged the pieces–a dazzling array of tiny cogs, wheels, springs and counterweights gleaming in the brightness of the light–on a large rectangular sheet of stiff white cotton damask cloth that had no doubt once, perhaps in some previous era of gastronomic glamour, served as a table napkin. Proceeding in the unhurried and deliberate, almost mechanical, fashion typical of a person long accustomed, as he was, to working with extremely fine tools and close tolerances, LuniXX cautiously inspected each and every one of the components, handling the pieces deftly with a set of small pointed medical tweezers as he scrutinized the tiny treasures before him.

      Mounted upright on the tabletop to the right of where he sat was a fairly large makeshift aluminum stand, constructed of the same sturdy chrome tubing as the stool upon which he sat. Upon this stand was mounted a broad platform, flat and glaring white, complete with its own integrated lighting in the form of a 14 watt halogen spot, above which was suspended a metal-framed magnifying glass that could be minutely adjusted by turning a tiny thumbwheel. Now and again, he would slowly place one component or another on the platform, sometimes getting off of the stool momentarily and standing upright while peering through the lens, focusing it carefully to attain the optimum degree of magnification. This construction, despite its being the improvisation it was, functioned fabulously, enabling him to easily see whatever object was affixed to the stand while, in the process, both hands remained completely free for him to handle the item of his interest or to work on it as necessary.

      LuniXX was very pleased with what he was seeing tonight. The components he had salvaged would be a perfect fit, he thought to himself as he emitted an audible sigh of satisfaction and relief, for the time machine that he was now in the process of constructing. This contraption was going to be a predominantly mechanical apparatus this time around, devoid of all but the most essential electrical components–whatever lighting was necessary, for example–installed within the confines of an ornately decorated dark oiled walnut wood confessional booth which he had succeeded in obtaining through an unbelievably shrewd trade he had made covertly online against a crateful of government-surplus automotive shock absorbers. He had recently conceived this project to playfully but also poignantly illustrate what he considered to be a uniquely uncomplicated interpretation of the, in his mind, nearly linear defining relationship that existed between organized religion and institutionalized venality.

      Taking a short break from his activities, he donned his glasses again. The sturdy composite frame of the spectacles had a unique light beige-and-brown leopard spot pattern that matched the toes of the shoes he customarily wore whenever he went out.

      In the very earliest beginnings of his deliberations, the first round of concept drawings for this project originally bore the somewhat pompous title Deux et Machina. It was doubtlessly an altogether appropriate and classic description or even a summation of the subject matter that he was determined to present, LuniXX felt. But at the same time, he had to admit to himself that it appeared to be lacking what someone else might have termed as market appeal. A close friend, with whom he had shared a glass or two of red wine while discreetly discussing the project at the time of its inception, had jokingly referred to it as his blasphemy.Box as their evening get-together progressed and the stock of Merlot Primitivo was successively depleted.

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