Bullet Hell

I sleep long and deep and dream in symbols. I go to war in haywire visions every night, deployed into a hot red waste, a brutal goon in Bullet Hell. I wake up battered half to death wrapped in vines, red in tooth and claw.

In waking life I range the streets bedevilled by homeless drug-addicted warlocks, fat-tongued witches, brutal diviners deployed in hot blitzes to ravage and charge me. I turn them back with dry power spells and bloodhex their bodies— they angulate groaningly, splitting open in grey ash clouds. I beat them hollow and mince them to chalk, and they return later as hypnagogic apparitions, enterprising to destroy me in another plane. There too, I turn them back, split them open again. I am under Interminable assault, savaged by sigil-drawing gas station summoners who conjure from the air1, vulgar lizards with faces on their backs, ballistic pythonesses cracking shellfish raw in bars. I strike three limbs at once and turn them back, split them open, spilling ash taken by the wind like murmurations of starlings.

I’m training bodyweight and kickboxing, transformed into a mutagenic goon by Clean Soul Protocol2 (CSP) and rigorously controlled sensory input. Bodyweight training minmaxes on two axes in mutual tension to optimise for Strength to Weight Ratio (S/W), a universal metric ordained by God. Biological hierarchy is revealed by the S/W. There is no harm in being heavier than one looks; only benefits. Body fat is an affront to the virtue of pure physiological economy; a bag of pollution belying the mechanoid goblin under your skin. Dense limbs swing faster and harder, making calisthenic training symbiotic with combat striking, a better and more dignified art than the weaponized cuddling of jiu-jitsu, which binds you up with a single opponent and necessitates lying on the ground, vulnerable to head stomps from accomplices.

there’s nothing in my stomach so my body eats itself, dining on dead wood and growing leaner, harder. My bones grow dense as cast-iron and my raw fists move fast when I hurl them. I can leap vertically as high as my head, plant my back foot and swing a leg through a telephone pole like it’s made of cheeto, heavy bone cracking dry wood to splinters. when I see people I look through them and when they talk I dodge words like flicked matches— I flick matches at the bouncer and am thrown out, onto the wet street again with the reptiles.

Biomimicry

Corpses walk the street these days, every second person you pass has some piece or other hanging off them, grey skin with brains herniating out through their skull. People amble around haggard like they’ve been through labour, wilted and doubled over, blood turned to battery acid. The spine is a cannon used to shoot the soul up to God3, and walking around bent over causes misfires, and black smoke. People decay and come apart like wet paper as they stray from the path of God— he bears wounds who brawls with indomitable fate, and he who spits acid has a mouthful of sores— it pains him to speak. Homes carved into walls, Virgin Girl Massage Palace, Lotus Eater Marble Temple Tea House, Police Station.

  1. Self-assembling crystalline microstructures (low-temperature Mother-of-Pearl enamel)
  2. Energy regeneration (Swarm logic software)
  3. Structural color (Peacock tail pigment-free material shading)
  4. Aquaporin desalination membrane (Forward osmosis filters)
  5. Fungally innoculated seeds (Volcano farming)

Boiled Angels

Late Friday evening I’m praying at the Chinese restaurant with the abalone and dragon crayfish in tanks, buckets of blue swimmer crabs and swarms of tiny shrimp, wet bald ducks swinging shiny in the window. Here I meet with two angular chainsmokers, twins who speak as one like bald androids. They brought a girl too, skinny neck with a fresh cattlebrand peeking out under her collar. It seems clear she’s some kind of military technology, a viperess with the spirit boiled out.

This building has seven floors, three below and three above. We descend, stepping downward into the building’s machinery, leaving ginseng tea steaming on the table next to shots of deer antler tonic.

Below ground now, we descend past rows of sweatshop slaves embroidering demonskin brogues and bat-leather belts, bent over like scribbling chroniclers, they don’t look up as I pass. The viperess leads us deeper, past meat fridges lined like vineyards with bloodless carcasses swinging among the blinking lights of server racks whirring in the dark, rows extending back further than the eye can see. By the stairs a skinny bald child in mandarin collar and clogs is sweeping away ice crystals and dust with a millet broom.

  1. Psychic Defence against Enhanced Warlords : Pyramid sets of 10 classical mudras cycled + Pranayama breathing — Extended upside down hanging counteracts psychic attacks and Sahasrara Chakra floods with kundalini; the body becomes immortal. Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā will not teach you this fortification against alien intelligence / altered entities. ↩

  2. for breakfast, 3 cloves garlic, kelp, cold terrine, blueberries and a probiotic pill with tonic tea (pounded dry ginseng root, deer antler tonic, and goji berries, teaspoon of brown sugar). Fast until late, broken by white fish, salmon roe and oysters, or dark greens and chicken hearts with black broth. 30 minutes rowing or kickboxing, 5x8 clean and press, and a pyramid set of deadlifts or 4x farmer’s carries to failure. 2-5 minutes cumulative dead hangs. Eggs, glycine, cinnamon and taurine, prayer. Sleep 9 hrs. ↩

  3. Posture — Unblock all spinal meridians and the barrel of this cannon is cleared for launch. Fire travel upward. Horse-riding stance when stationary, Opening Outward Movement each day. When walking, head should remain on a single horizontal plane, and steps should be long — Heel makes contact with ground as toe leaves it, foot rolling forward like a wheel with calf muscles activated as ankle extends to point toe toward ground, propelling body forward. ↩