interrupted-transmission

Matter without spirit, clockwork men.

Men are working outside. They work all day and all night. They work under the red and burning sun. They work in the black frozen night.

Early each Christmas, mother would go out into the garden to place a Christmas pudding in the middle of the lawn, for the blackbirds to eat. I can remember every white Christmas. Those years were my favourites. A dense, dark and gleaming, flapping ball of blackbirds in the middle of the snowy lawn.

Breath froze in the white garden.

Arching nebulae, starfire, pirouetting galaxies…

‘Wind up the clockwork men, work is about to begin.’
The workers take a pill which renders them unconscious as they work. Throughout the duration of the working day they are mindless automata capable only of following the orders transmitted through the headset. The drug is not obligatory, but is taken by all.

The chipboard partitions between individual minds were splintering. Walking through crowded streets we heard voices which were not our own, speaking inside our heads.
We overheard the thoughts of others as if they were spoken aloud.
In the early stages the only thoughts which leaked were those which concerned ourselves. This was the worst time. We felt all the hostility and contempt our fellows felt for us. Derision, scorn, revulsion. Threatening, unfamiliar voices. People were seen to flinch and cower on crowded streets and in the shops and supermarkets. Some began to take pleasure in this power to induce discomfort and would march around the city thinking the most malicious, hurtful things about people and taking great pleasure in their pained reactions.
Some people assumed they were going mad, that the vindictive voices came from within, voices inside their own head, goading them, taunting them…
Paranoid schizophrenia. But it was real. The hate laid bare.

Relationships between friends, lovers and family were strained and fractured as suddenly the flimsy, rotten and dishonest foundations such relationships are built on were exposed.

Murderous coot, brigand, poisonous toad…
Animal harem
Revolutionary groups

The sin of sensualism is punished in this way. The sinner is drugged and taken to a harem, laid on plump pillows filled with feather and covered in silk and satin. Tens of beautiful girls are brought before him, of all races, shapes and sizes. He is told to sate his lust. Food will be brought to him. The drug makes him feel woozy and delicious. He is permanently aroused. He will be there for seven days. The food is of the highest quality. There are delicacies even rich men will die without tasting.
He is told to have his fill, in this way his desires will be quenched and he will be deemed fit to return to society.
The sinner gorges himself on endless banquets, exhausts himself with seventy girls, agonies of lust.
After seven days his erection subsides, the veils the drug has draped before his eyes are lifted. The harem is revealed to be a barn, with bales of hay for cushions and rats running across a dirt floor. The seventy women, seventy dogs, lame and emaciated;
jack russells, bloodhounds, wolfhounds and Dobermans, greyhounds and basset hounds, sausage dogs, highland terriers, bull terriers, bulldogs and bullmastiffs, German shepards, miniature schnauzers, Pekingese and Tibetan terriers, sheepdogs and Irish setters.
The sinner’s punishment is recorded digitally and played back before him, his family, workmates and friends. The sinner is then executed in this way. A small metal ball is inserted deep into his rectum. The ball then swells in size enormously. Eventually, internal bleeding and the rupturing of organs causes death. This is done over a long period of time. His family, workmates and friends watch. They are told when to cheer and laugh.