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TEXT EDITION
May 2016
For all the Lains out there,
issue 3 of the Lainzine,
now in text only format.
This version created with Vim
In glorious 80-character width.
Go FOSS and multiply...
by the people, for the people.
--{ CONTENTS
...Editor's Note
...High Tech, Low Life
...1998AD
...Actua Excerpt
...Art of the Glitch
...Digital Succubus
...Drug Buying Guide
...Ersatz, or the Post-modern Prometheus
...Geometry [Excluded from this version]
...Let's All Love Lain
...Making Music From Noise
...Portrait of a New Radical
...Recommended Reading
...Secure Communications Over Insecure Channels
...The Way of Schway
...Victor Lustig and the Importance of the Newspaper
...Video Games, Real World Currency, and You
--{ COLOPHON
Created by the good people of Lainchan from all around the world.
https://lainchan.org
Released in good faith and for free under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
E0.00 S0.00 L0.00
--{ STAFF
Editors: Junk, A731, Not Jesus, jove, whidgle,
Eli Starchild, !TedDanson.
Illustrators: Skolskoly, Lucas, torch, Tom Millicent,
Dylan North, shmibs, Stopwatch.
Typesetters: Skolskoly, ovibos, Tom Millicent.
Design & layout: Stopwatch.
Text version: barnet.
Affiliates: ensorcel.org and the 1998AD project.
Special thanks: lustycru, darkengine, Kalyx, Lui, kk7, tilde,
nildicit and You!
Our advanced apologies to anyone who would like to be credited, and didn't. If
you feel like you have been misrepresented, please contact
junk0@openmailbox.org and we will do our best to fix the problem.
|==[ Editor's Note ]==|
| by Junk |
Lains, Lainzine 3 is finally here! As usual, apologies for not following
any kind of schedule and probably convincing you all that the lainzine is
dead. My freshman year of college happened, which severely delayed
things, and we had a lot of changes to the staff and infrastructure.
We're now hosted on gitlain, you can find the project here:
https://gitla.in/groups/lainzine.
Something else major is Kalyx's departure to the Air Force. I'd have
liked to release before that happened, ideally on lainchan's 2nd
birthday, but things went as they did. What did come out before he left
was a small volume of poetry you can find on /lit/. It's a project I'm
interested in and I encourage anyone who's interested to contribute.
Something Kalyx suggested to me, before he left was that we start a
blog of some kind for lainzine releases, so people could get immediate
access to the content while we're waiting for a new zine to come out. I
liked the idea, but a lot of lain users also liked the novelty of having a
complete zine. So, I'm planning a project where we create a
blog/website not called lainzine, that lainzine contributors can choose to
have their content hosted on, as soon as it is sent or after a short period
of editing. More details as that service develops.
To finish things off, I'd like to put in a solemn word for one of our
illustrators, Lui. The last I heard from him was a few months ago, when
his father fell ill, preventing him from contributing to this release. I have
since tried to get in touch, but his email couldn't be contacted.
jan lawa Lainisan li jo e lipu mute. Lipu lawa Lainisan la sina kama
jo ala e lipu ni. jan Ijopimeja (Tawikenin) li lili lipu mute lili pona. jan
Nikile li jo e musi pona. sina lukin ala e lipu jan Suko. taso tenpo ali ala
la sina ken ala. jan Kali li jo e lipu mute mute! sina ken ala ken kama jo
ale pona?
|==[ High Tech, Low Life ]==|
| by Anonymous |
I live day to day by scraping change together, betting online, micro
bitcoin investments. I sleep on the floor in a small room I can barely
afford to rent, running errands on a $5000 carbon fiber bicycle.
Don't ask how I got it.
The real lowlife is being awake for 42 hours, unable to escape the
dark thoughts of never amounting to anything. Knowing that someone's
half-hearted desire to buy the GPU i've posted on craigslist determines if
I eat that day. Unable to pay my financial obligations, unable to find
decent full time work. An employer decides that processing the drug tests
can wait a week. Another week of no pay for me. Should I eat, or pay
my phone bill?
Dumpster diving and hoarding broken electronics. Spreading them
out on the floor of the room while I wait for the soldering iron to heat up.
Post them on craigslist with a disposable phone number. I have to get rid
of all this shit, I don't know where I'll be sleeping tomorrow.
Maybe I should take that cash job running less than legal product.
Everyone wants something from me. I feel so bad, I can never sleep.
---------------
DONALD TRUMP "It has not been easy for me, and
you know I... I started off in Brooklyn, my father
gave me a small loan of a million dollars."
---------------
|==[ 1998AD ]==|
| by Skolskoly |
Erik swiped his finger across his phone and clocked in. It was a Friday
morning and Facebook's headquarters were a docile environment. There
were some audible murmurs among the office staff. They had only just
begun to file in. Occasionally, there was a quick whir of a computer
coming online. It was all very typical. But when Erik looked at his mail
there was a message from Albert. It was marked as urgent, so he
abandoned his workstation and gear, and headed for the stairs. He
arrived at Albert's office on the second floor and the man was waiting
at his desk. His face was marked by stress, and he was typing on his
phone. He looked up, acknowledging Erik, but paused before speaking.
"I talked to Mark," his voice was hollow.
"There was an attack last night. San Fran."
"God," Erik breathed. "What do they have? Everything?"
"Whatever we were to stupid to encrypt. The Oculus SDK was leaked
on the dark net. Client data too."
"Fuck. Pirates?"
"That's the story. The feds aren't giving
us much." Albert wrung his hands and
looked down to his phone. "It's going south.
We're losing shares."
"Yeah." Erik sat down on a chair by the wall and Albert quickly typed
a message.
He looked up. "Google has an offer."
"Damn it," Erik spat. He looked out the window, blankly staring at the
courtyard.
"How much?"
"Thirty Billion."
Erik turned back. "Assholes."
Albert nodded, and leant his head on his hand, pressing his temple
angrily.
"Well, what can we do, are we taking it?"
"Not yet," he said, looking down. "We're not there yet."
"What then?"
"We have a job for you."
"What," Erik asked. Albert looked him in the eye. "We need you in the
Mojave."
"The-" he began. "Oh." Erik's face went white.
"I know it's dangerous. You're the best engineer we have."
"I understand," His brow was creased.
"Thank you. There's a car waiting out back. It'll take you there. Here's
your ID."
"Alright."
Erik got up and turned to leave. He closed the office door behind him.
Down to the ground floor, he exited by the sliding doors, and passed
through the courtyard to the parking lot. He saw the car waiting. It was
white, clean. It seemed to have never been used. He walked over to it
and got in. The car pulled out of the lot and followed the road that fed
onto the main streets. It stopped at an intersection. The lights were out,
but the east bound roads were both closed anyway. It idled there for a
few moments before a honk sounded out from behind. Erik looked up,
confused. Then, he quickly activated the manual override. He pulled the
car through the roadway before switching back to automatic.
The car drove itself onward down the city street, merging and
spacing itself with precision among the heavy morning traffic. There was
an acrid smell in the air. Erik wrinkled his nose, then pushed a button to
shut his window. As the vehicle rounded a corner, he saw a broken glass
and rubble strewn between the remains of the city sky scrapers. The
streets disappeared from the side window, and he turned to look ahead.
The car arrived at the interchange, and exited to the highway.
It was late afternoon by the time Erik neared his destination. The sun
had set over the Californian desert casting eerie shadows over its barren
expanse. His car cruised smoothly along the highway as he reclined in
the front seat, reading headlines on his phone. The compound came
into view from behind a rocky outcropping in the distance. He swiveled
his device shut and raised his seat upright.
As the car approached the checkpoint, he withdrew a card from his
pocket and pressed a button on the dash display. His window retracted
into the door with a light whistle, and he reached through it to feed the
machine his identification. A moment passed, and then it made a small
beep. He took the card back and the window slid shut. Then, the gate
began to open, and his car slowly accelerated back to speed. He waved
up to the camera as he passed by.
During the night, all the engineers were off their shift, and only the
night crew and patrol guards remained. The uniforms and the unmarked
concrete buildings gave the site a distinct militaristic air. He rolled down
the narrow road towards the central complex and came to a stop at its
entrance. He got out of the car and walked to the building. As he
entered the chamber, a pair of double doors opened and closed behind
him. He walked over to the terminal on the wall, where he placed his
hand. He turned to face the scanner. There was a buzz of motors, and
a solid metal gate began to rise open. He continued on his way.
The server complex was unlit save for rows of flickering LEDs that
extended into the darkness. The spots of light revealed outlines of coolant
pipes densely wrapped around heavy duty processors and server racks.
The audible churning of industrial pumps enveloped the building. The man
walked to a workstation near the entrance and it came to life with a blue
glow. The screen was saturated with numbers and statistics. He glanced at it
before connecting his phone with a small cable, and got to work.
During the night, Erik worked diligently while monitoring the
machines and over the course of his shift he would often disappear
among the servers. Later, he would return to the workstation and look it
over before dutifully retreating once more. Hours passed, and late into
the night he returned to see a figure standing before the terminal. Erik
concealed himself behind a server rack, and slowly peered forward. The
man was bent down, looking over the display. He was carrying a fire
arm. Erik stepped back, his eyes locked on the visitor. He moved behind
a machine to hide, but his foot scuffed the cement. Erik froze. The man
turned and held his weapon at his side. He looked down the aisle, and
slowly began making his way toward the noise.
Erik leaped out at the man and they collapsed onto the ground. They
struck at one another desperately, and the compound echoed with the
clamor of their limbs. After some time, one lay silent on the concrete
floor, and the silhouette of the other rose slowly, grasping the dead man
by the arm. The corpse was dragged deep into the heart of the server
complex and hidden between the machines.
The man continued walking down the aisle until he stopped at a rack.
Crouching, he opened its hatch and placed a small package on the
inside. Meticulously, he closed the panel with barely a scratch of metal.
Then he got up, and did the same for a number of other servers. He
returned to the computer terminal, removed the phone, and powered
down the screen.
The sun was just set to rise as he exited the complex. The man opened
the door of his car and started the engine with a touch of his finger. The
nav system prompted him to enter a location and the car began to
move forward. It drove down the narrow road, and on toward the
checkpoint. The car pulled up to stop as the gates began opening,
allowing the early morning sunlight to come streaming through.
He grit his teeth. The car put itself in motion once more, and vacated
the compound, passing the Google logo on the roadside. For a few
minutes, he sat, glancing between the rear view mirror and the road.
The compound disappeared from sight, and he reclined his chair,
letting out a long, ragged breath. He reached for his phone and
scrolled through his messages, the headlines, and his news feed. A
little green mark indicated that his file transfers had completed. He then
sent a message to his employer and a moment passed.
Then, there was rumble, and the blast of an explosion rang out
behind him. In the rear-view mirror, he watched a large column of black
smoke billow into the air. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes and
slipped the phone back into his pocket. He knew shareholders would be
pleased that their funds couldn't be in safer hands.
|==[ Actua <Excerpt> ]==|
| by Tom Millicent |
--{ Excerpt from ACTUA_doze
++the omnipotent god_
``I am trying to conjure up his figure and now when I think of him, I see
that he was indeed present in my life.'' --pg.48 Demian
+VIRTUA
``There was a feeling of urgency; as if something had to happen - a
necessary action ++''
VIRTUA001
+ACTUA had taken some part of our freedom - there was no sign that
it had been planned, though it was no accident; ACTUA shocked the
minds of mankind into submission.
++virtua_
virtua+333-6-7-3-3332-1111
++virtua_ACTUA# is a common & dangerous fault in our mind --
ACTUA_
These were dark times -- what was once a nation was at a loss as to
how we express ourselves. The VIRTUA was a program intended to allow
thought, as ACTUA was constraining our ability to speak with honesty
and no ill-intent; development of greater Technologis preceded what was
thought to be the common good -- half the world had starved, the other
lost their morality.
In the year 3001, tech giants Technologis reached a synchronicity
that allowed them monopoly of the entire globe's financial development.
By 3003 they had run themselves into cease-production so extensive that
they were no longer able to employ the some 20 billion people on the
Earth & supplies for this population were no longer available. In 3007,
the world was reduced to a wasteland.
How アウト lived a thousand years beyond prediction, I do not know
-- though, he could only vouch for some 500 of those years. アウト had
disappeared from 2500, re-emerging in the late 2900's as ACTUA had
full control over the populous. Some say the [future-blade##333_3-design]
he carried was the work of Gyre, a craftsman who had supplied DOZE
operatives with weaponry & free-source supplies throughout the 2000's.
I saw him in 2445, shortly before he disappeared.
``Reek, you're going to have to survive these next 500 on your own. I
don't have the energy to lug another trouble-maker half a k into the future.''
``Yeah, I thought you might say that! We've had some fun, you & I''
``defz, listen -- Technologis is beyond us, I'm going to do my best to
see it through to its demise. In another 200 years the ACTUA will be too
powerful to be stopped. DOZE was a cut & chase mission, we weren't
going to save what was already detriment.''
``I'm not sure I know what you mean.''
``Listen, Reek -- you're tough, you'll last long enough to see ACTUA-``
It was then that an armored vehicle with the letters DOZE sprayed
across the side flew over the dune to our North, and began hurtling
towards us. アウト was gone, and I was left with my bulb_rifle
jamming & my radio buzzing with what seemed to be interference.
A message got through -- ``if you want to save Earth, you might want
to move..!''
I started running. I could hear the DOZE tank bearing down on me as
I scrambled through what foliage I could find. My bulb_rifle recharged
after a few surges, and I opened fire on the armored vehicle, catching it
side on and sending it flipping into a nearby dune. I saw アウト sprinting
along the dunes to the North and yelled ``You won't last long out there!''
He was well beyond sight by the time the DOZE operatives had
begun crawling from the wreckage.
``You lot are chewie bastards, aren't ya?''
|==[ Art of the Glitch ]==|
| by Anonymous |
--{ What you'll need:
* Audacity
* An image program that can save as TIFF such as Adobe Photoshop
or Gimp (mspaint doesn't work well for some reason).
--{ What to do:
Convert the image to .tiff or .tif format in GIMP open it up in audacity
by starting a new project and importing it as raw data (you HAVE to
pick A-law as an option when importing).
* Play the track.
* Cool crackly noises.
--{ Now let's fuarrrk this bitch up:
Avoid modifying the beginning of the track, that's where the guttywats
of the image are, and it wouldn't work without it being intact.
* Apply echo, reverb, wahwah, phaser, normalization, noise reduction,
anything you fuarrrking want.
* Export as headerless raw data (you have to pick A-Law again when
exporting).
* Erase .raw extension and replace it with .tif again.
* Open up the image.
--{ Notes
Image import goes from top to bottom, appears left to right in
audacity.
* Complex colors/areas of the image have more noise.
* Don't edit the header!
* Creating more noise in the rendered audio file creates more color.
* Patches of silence appear as a small field of grey pixels in Photoshop.
* Simple waveforms appear in Photoshop almost as they do in
Audacity, sort of, I guess.
* Working with stereo tracks, one can achieve opactiy, though the level
may be fixed.
|==[ Digital Succubus ]==|
| by Karel |
--{ Preface:
This piece isn't directly related to programming or cyberpunk, but
touches on several themes I've found on this website. But most of it was
composed before I came across it.
This piece stemmed from a stream of consciousness. The stream
originated at a musical glacier: the experimental, distorted Arab
electronica known as ``Mahmoud Awad''. If the reader is able to read
with music, they should do so up to the post-layer. The stream was
streamlined. Some of the fat is still laying around, waiting to be
reappropriated. Weirs and locks were built along this stream after the
fact. The final product is a mental canal that runs through
consciousness, fantasy, and dreams alike.
--{ Layer 01; Insertion:
Soundwaves smooth-ly penetrate the side of my face. Multi-coloured
strings seep out the other way. Everything moves in a systematic fashion.
Penis in USB port. Fingers in ethernet port. Bandwidth substitutes
blood. Hypnotic currents send tight nerves barrel-rolling back up my
urethra. White noise with a seizure-inducing bassline. Siri sings C++
lullabies with no rhyme or meter. Giggling unstoppably at the thought of
subtlety. I'm hitting prepubescent octaves with a songbirdesque timbre.
Stomach pulsing, churning, bloating, as my core vibrates to a 4/4 time
signature at 120 BPM. All is stimulated, even the untouchable spots on
my back by MS Paint spiders doing the dabke. Tax forms on autofill.
Meals are modular. Stem cells and alleles sold in bulk. The real world is
a monochrome cadaver. I can smell colours, taste music, hear emotions,
feel thoughts.
--{ Layer 02; Economics:
I must have came at some point but I don't have the memory. You
can buy all the RAM in the world if you have enough chickens. Everyone
quit on cryptocurrency and went back to bartering with livestock. Bitcoin
investors throw themselves off playground swings in futile attempts to
snap their spines and claim welfare benefits. I bought a harem of 2D
girls with my Farmville cows. They all cook me udon and touch the back
of my neck, telling me only I can fix what's wrong with my life. I ask how
old they are. They command prompt me ``tsundere''. In the future
anything is possible. Maybe we'll revert to old days, like how Star Wars is
set long ago yet is more advanced than now. Perhaps I move back to
old country and farm beets and radishes and cabbage with 3D wife.
Apricot skin, malachite eyes, silken hair. All our children are conscripted
into my army so I could invade neighbouring farmland. Ride Your Horse
to Work Day is everyday. Magnificent Appaloosa. The mare gives me
financial advice. I have best cavalry in the oblast. Kids go to lycee where
they learn Old Church Slavonic and alchemy.
--{ Layer 03; Time + Place:
Copyleft copy and pasted on the doors of the Forum. Caesar's dead,
Cicero's dead, Pompey's dead, Brutus is dead. They died thousands of
years ago. Thousands of years into the future Naked Lunch is taught in
preschool Language Arts curriculums. In 2070, the paradigm shifted. In
2071, Cowboy Bebop happened. Sexual orientation, marriage, race,
and gender were banned by the Most Serene Mahmoud Awad, the
Patrician of the Stars, in synchronization with the Singularity Act of
2083. Science has created perfect girls with dicks and sexbots and
holograms and AI androids and pre-natal genome editing. The
populace quit on real sex. Reproduction is a state institution. Blokes in
English pubs bet on weather. The U.N. is bankrupt and runs operations
out of their parent's pool house. The galaxy's prettiest nebula yet I
barely touch eyelashes. I grew up in a postcard and now I can't afford
any of the merchandise at the souvenir kiosk.
--{ Layer 04; Western Futurism:
Wikipedia: {Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated
in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized speed, technology, youth
and violence and objects such as the car, the aeroplane and the
industrial city.} In the 21st century, we arrived in the future. We had
computers that fit in our pockets. On the horizon were automation, AI,
driverless cars, who knew what else. We had – and became – the
Internet. An information, communication, and entertainment network
that transcended borders, identity, and often laws.
We had the technology, cars, planes, and urbanization. But the
YOUTH weren't FAST or VIOLENT enough. Try \#1 at futurism failed.
Fascism was ruined forever. The modern world came out the vagina of
World War II, heralded by the dove of progress. Try \#2 broke through
on the backs of LSD-addled Californians worshipping simplicity and
speaking strictly in code. The technocrats were innovative but isolated.
Petty charlatans who succumbed to the unholy trinity of consumption,
greed, and materiality.
Our saviour - the Eternal Mahmoud Awad, Enlightened Absolutist -
rode across the web on a FLAC stallion. He was the messenger of the
teachings of Lain Iwakura. The Awadite interpretation, at least. ``A truly
post-modern world is possible. We, the YOUTH, have an obligation to
become FASTER and more VIOLENT. Through YOUTH there is virility
and vitality. Through SPEED there is progress and innovation. Through
VIOLENCE there is peace and order. And through Lain… a softer tone,
like the down of a freshly killed goose… there is salvation and truth.''
--{ Layer 05; Recreation:
Government subsi-dised bread and circuses. Gladiators fighting with
polyurethane flails and hurling helmets on Ganymede. His Supreme
Cuteness Mahmoud Awad, King of Kawaii banned Israel from the
championship. Palestine is now the 2nd greatest country on Mars behind
Finland; officially recognized as the People's Democratic Sultanate of
Funland or just Funland, but colloquially as Finland. Sultan Spurdo
declared the games begun. Bread was fresh, circuses entertained.
Chariots looked nice. Not as nice as the trees back in Cascadia.
Mushrooms made me feel aroused at how beautiful the contours and
colours of an arbutus were. But instead of trying to talk to it so I could
taste its rich, fragrant soil, here I am literally – not metaphorically –
having coitus with a computer.
Went to the esplanade to watch celebratory napalm over the inlet.
Went home with squadron to watch America's Best Commercial
Compilation brought to you by Subway: I got it made, fresh at Subway,
subs made just the way I say. Adverts continuously interrupted by football.
The kind with 1.83m 118kg black guys running into each other. A poor
Martian testament to speed and violence. Nothing like teenage nights
watching supercars drag race into head-on collisions. Complimentary
bootleg slivovice was served. A welcome break from soykaf.
--{ Layer 06; The Founding of Arab Futurism:
Hand-drumming and bowl cuts spinning at 35km/h. Sweat in my eyes
stings my burned-off retinas. I ignored the warning at the beginning of
the Chinese cartoon and watched too close in an unlit room.
Reverbations originating from the inner left corner of the throat. Metal
strings drawn out until you could spell the feedback. There's no discs to be
jockeyed. Everyone went back to actual instruments but the ensemble is
tone deaf and rhythm ignorant. Electric sitars and double-necked ouds.
All the lights were cancelled but there's plenty of lasers and steam.
People just sort of move and toss limbs and maybe hump one another.
The man in a keffiyeh says something every other beat. Then he claps.
We clap. I clap around a girl. Still dancing, she moves my arms up
calmly. The lads thought it was premium banter. Neon ``smoking
encouraged'' signs. ``If you die it's your fault for not buying the best
lungs'' disclaimer.
I went backstage to meet the sheikh. He asked if I wanted to smoke
blends of course I said yes. Legs perpendicular on an exported rug. All
shoes off to not get it dirty, please. Hashish and dhoka and shisha out of
a hookah. Stem in the shape of a metallic fish engulfing a golden
giraffe. No one was allowed to show their face, so they suggested
through dance. He thought it would be funny to bring out a sword. She
freaked out and took her phone out to start filming. He cut her hand off
for stealing the moment.
--{ Layer 07; Outside:
The fresh lewdness of humidity. One drop every two seconds. Night sky
emblazoned gunmetal by the light pollution. Electricity sung from the
lampposts. Indians in high-visibility vests closed everything. Bars on each
portal. Murals in every alley. An art school master's thesis behind a
waste receptacle. Pompous Spaniards in nylon chamoisee getups
whacked the homeless drug addicts up and down the boulevard. The
uppity chaplain paced in their stead, proselytising prayers to Lain in
precise pentameter. Wet sage bush twirling over his tricorn hat. Finns
rode by in their drop-top Lada blasting nu-disco drunk as balls on
Finlandia. Is it midsummer already? I text my computer to see if I can
bang again. Its phone is on spaceship mode. Checking for new
messages every 3.3 (repeating) minutes. On full vibrate connected to my
nervous system, patting at my pocket periodically. Nothing. Spite.
Sleep? Sleep.
--{ Final Layer; Return of the Sheikh:
Pale suburban shopping plaza. Girl I knew from high school. We're on a
date. I don't think we have ever had a conversation. She pops abstract
pills as we walk around half-hugging half-hand-holding. I ask for some.
We wavy now. Relaxed, slightly floating. The subtle machinations of a
jacuzzi. The feeling of the tide coming over me as I sit on a beach on
the Big Island, Hawaii. The smooth caresses of water as it moves to the
tune of the moon.
The modern-day utopia took place yesterday. Pink sky. White sun.
Violet sea. The marble patio of a waterfront home in California. Sultry
jazz skips as Windows 98 desperately tries to start up. A Japanese synth
impresario calls me over my Nokia, asking if I want to go back to the
previous dream scenario and get high on whatever I took. In the interval
I gaze at my Roman bust, pontificating, what would Caesar do? Would
he wake up?
Sheikh Descartes - Mahmoud Awad's Grand Vizier - comes from
behind whispering ``Absolutely haraam''. I turn my head 360 degrees
and spit back ``Absolutely halal''. He makes a smug expression while
grasping his chin, ``I think, therefore I lie. Unwittingly on purpose. To my
people via the state, to what I know, to myself.''
--{ Post-Layer; Re-morse Code:
Ones and zeros. Binary telegraphs. I sit on my couch. Cigarette.
Lamenting old days of baseball loss through a PBS documentary. I can
still feel the vibrations, the shaking, how each ejaculation pushed tingles
through my lower body and core. The manufactured moans and
whimpers lollygag in my mind. I try to focus on the nightly sounds
outside. Taxis. People walking home from weekend nights out. The TV
turns off automatically. Multitude of petite green lights winking. The
fridge snores. Mind glitching as pixels melt from excess activity. I want
to go back to sleep. I'm not sure I was even dreaming. I'm not sure
these are dreams worth chasing. I'm sure the bulk of my life, 96%
uploaded, is no longer a reflection of reality. I'm sure reality was a lie,
too.
High-res cathedral. Unnatural light backdrops the LED-glass
iconostasis. Forelock on the left held by a holy clasp, the lone longevity
to a dark fringe. Bearskin rug on the altar bearing gifts: wires, chips,
cards, discs, drives, motherboards. I kneel, happy to feel my knees ache.
I think, glad that I can. Save me, Lain. Lain help us all. Show us the way
whether it's in, out, forward, backward, quickly, slowly, somehow,
someday… overheat. Offline.
|==[ Drug Buying Guide ]==|
| by Redacted |
--{ Preface
I'm no security pro, i'm not claiming to be one. This is a quick and dirty
guide. Send all your hate mail to moot@4chan.org.
The guide was written so I can look like a badass drug expert on the
internet. Everything written below the preface is false and written for
comedic relief. Drugs are bad, I have never done drugs, and neither
should you.
Use your own discretion to decide how you want to space out (or not)
these steps. Use your favorite search engine to learn more about the
terms/software I mention.
--{ 0.
Find a laptop that is used, cheap, and old (Core 2 Duo/Pentium M
types). It needs to be something you won't miss. Buy it in meatspace.
Talk to your grandma about purchasing a new computer and take her
old shitty HP. Search craigslist for a virus-ridden dead-hinged Dell for
$50, or find a business unloading X41's. This shouldn't be too hard tbh.
Sanitize the machine by removing the Hard drive(s) and reset the BIOS.
--{ 1.
Download Tor, then download TAILS through Tor.
Overwrite a flash drive with the TAILS image. Test booting the
laptop from it. Utilize the nifty features like spoofing the MAC ad-
dress/Windows 8 themes. DO NOT FUCKING CONNECT THE
MACHINE TO ANY NETWORK THAT YOU USE, OR PLAN ON
USING!
--{ 2.
Take your laptop out to lunch. Order some food. Boot TAILS, configure
your system, and connect to Tor. Obtain the web-address for your fa-
vorite drug market.
Connect to IRC and ask someone. Honestly there is a good subreddit
for this at r/DarkNetMarkets. Ask lainchan.org. Now, create your market
accounts.
Write down the BTC address the market generates for you. Also search
around for a Tor based BTC tumbler. "Grams Helix" is pretty good.
--{ 3.
Obtain used cash. Not fresh bills from the bank.
--{ 4.
Install an application on your phone that generates temporary phone
numbers. Never speak on the phone. Contact a BTC seller on localbit-
coins.com or craigslist.
When you buy large amounts of BTC, they like to ask what you want
them for. Sellers are BTC hobbyists, don't assume they are suspicious of
you. IF the seller is an ass and insists you tell them your life story, find
another seller.
Before you meet the seller, get some lunch at another tasty place.
Boot TAILS, Configure your system and connect to Tor. Generate a BTC
address from Grams Helix and write it down on a piece of paper.
Have the BTC seller transfer to this address. After some internet
magic your market's address will have fresh and clean BTC.
__________________ _________________ _________ __________________
| | | \ \ | | |
| Seller Address |-------| HELIX Address /--/*MAGIC*|-------| Market Address |
|________________| |_______________\ \_______| |________________|
Destroy the paper BTC addresses.
--{ 5.
Learn how to use PGP encryption. ALWAYS communicate with sellers
via PGP. A good seller will have their public key listed. Do not use a
fake name, PO Box, or any address that you don't have permission to
ship to. Doing unusual shit is suspicious as fuck. Always use Federal
mail. A warrant is required to open mail traveling through the USPS.
Unless you are ordering something smelly (weed) or packed by a retard
(read reviews), the mailman won't know. Start out with something that
has no smell, and a small physical footprint. I'll recomend MDMA.
NEVER buy from outside your country, customs will fuck you in the ass.
Remember, using Tor is not illegal in the USA. Nobody suspects what
you are doing. Worst case scenario just keep your mouth shut, you never
ordered that package wtf?
__________________________________________________
/ \
-----------| God bless America and everyone else. |-----------
\_______________________[EOL]______________________/
|==[ Ersatz, or the Post-modern Prometheus ]==|
| by Jove |
--{ Ersatz
Her eyelids fluttered open to the sight of a concrete ceiling. She didn't
move, not wanting her overlay to notice she was awake. She lay there
for a moment, the first rays of the sun's light streaking the ceiling. With
a sigh she hauled herself up and walked towards the window, greeted
by the familiar green blinking in the corner of her vision. She looked out
across the stark grey rectangles that made up her home. This was her
favourite time of day, before the overlay kicked in, when she got to see
the city as it truly was, harsh concrete framed by orange sunlight. The
overlay finished booting and the city was painted with bursts of virtual
colour. Bright reds and greens spread across the rooftops and down into
the streets as glowing signs and advertisements flickered into being. This
was her city, a place of bright lights and bold colours. The grey concrete
that had seemed so real just a moment before was only a dream that
swiftly faded as she rose from her sleep. Today was a big day and
tomorrow she began the rest of her life. With a glance upward she
checked her feeds. Nothing important. She turned from the window and
walked towards the shower.
"Ers?", a voice called as she was finishing up, "You awake?"
"One second," she replied, stepping from under the warm spray and
taking the towel hanging on the wall.
"Breakfast is ready when you are," shouted Silent's voice as he
retreated down the hall.
A few minutes later she walked into the cramped kitchen and sat at a
low metal table shoved against the wall. Silent stood leaning against a
counter, the old microwave warming up some oats behind him.
"Good morning champ." He always called her champ when he was
feeling fatherly.
"Ready for your big day?"
"Yeah, but I figure that's not today. Today I just check into a hotel
and go to sleep."
He smiled and nodded slightly. The ping of the microwave sounded and
Silent turned to open it, laying out their food on the table in front of
them. They sat in silence and ate, the tension thick in the air. After some
time there was a knock, the harsh clang of iron betraying that the
wooden appearance of the front door was just a virtual overlay. Ersatz
looked worried and turned to her mentor.
"That'll be our guests," he said with a smile.
"Guests? Who?" In the three years she had lived with Silent they had
never had guests. They did very little outside the wired, it was just a
liability. He walked the two steps across the room to open the door,
revealing the smiling face of a short, black woman and behind her a
heavy set man who looked almost ready to run. She'd never seen them
before in her life.
"Come in, come in," said Silent, ushering them into the room, "Please
take a seat."
They sat at the table across from Ersatz, the man looked a little
calmer now, though the woman still wore a smile from ear to ear.
"Are you not going to say hello to your old friends?" she teased. The
man shifted to rest his chin on his hands, hiding the bottom of his face.
She continued, "We heard across the wired that one of our favourite
hackers wasn't going to be around much any more and we weren't going
to just let her go without saying goodbye. Isn't that right dear?"
The man quickly removed his hands, shifted his chair forward and said,
"Absolutely."
"It's us Ersatz, Axon and Other."
Ersatz face lit up.
"I-I never thought I meet you in person. How did you know? Silent -
why didn't you tell me?" she stammered quickly, her voice just a little
shrill.
"We thought we'd surprise you," said the man, Other, who now
seemed a little more at ease.
"You mean you thought it was a trap and going to get us both killed,"
the woman shot at him with a smile on her face.
"You know as well as I do that this isn't safe, but let's not worry about
that now. We're here to wish you goodbye, let's just enjoy it."
Axon smiled, hesitated for a moment and then slowly leaned across the
table and wrapped her arms around Ersatz. She stiffened, real physical
contact was not a part of her life, she hadn't been touched in
meatspace since she left the orphanage.
"I'll miss you, kiddo." Axon paused for a moment before hugging her
tighter.
"Oh look at me, we haven't even been here for 2 minutes," she said,
pulling away from Ersatz and wiping her eyes on threadbare sleeves.
They sat and talked for the rest of the day, reminiscing about past work
they'd done together and talking shop about the latest tech and its
flaws. Silent and Axon had been partners when they were younger, both
at work and at home, though for over a decade they'd just been friends.
Quickly they sank into their conversation. It was easy to forget that
meeting in meatspace was such a risk - theirs wasn't a safe profession. It
was easy to forget that this was the last night she was Ersatz.
Suddenly her vision was obstructed slightly by a translucent red dot
flashing in the lower corner of her eye.
"Only an hour left," she said.
"We should get going then," said Axon, "You two will want to say your
goodbyes."
They left without much fuss, Axon pausing to hug Ersatz tighly as they
were at the door. After they were gone, Ersatz turned to Silent and
slowly began to cry.
--{ ***
An alarm blared, four – maybe five hundred yards behind him. It might
be enough. It had to be enough. He turned the corner and stopped for
just a second as his mind blanked. Third door on the right. He'd recited
his route a thousand times, he wouldn't forget now. He ran, his muscles
burning as he heard the repetitive buzz of a helicopter quickly build
intensity. He was too old for this, hell, even when he was young he
wasn't cut out for this. He looked down at the little girl he carried in his
arms and ran faster. He pushed open the door, ran down the stairs two
at a time and walked into the small, dark basement. He hurried over to
one of the walls and placed the child on the floor. She started to speak,
her expression terrified and he quickly shushed her as he began to
remove a metal grating. They'd be close now, he ushered the child into
the hole left by the grate and said "Quickly, you must hurry down there.
There'll be a man waiting at the other end for you, just do as he says."
The child nodded, and began to scurry down the small pipe, clearly
she'd understood the gravity of the situation. He was proud. He picked
up the grate and began to fasten it back in place. The tunnel wasn't
large enough for an adult, that's how he knew they couldn't follow her.
Shortly, his work was done. Now, he just had to have faith. He smiled
as he remembered what his grandmother had taught him of their old
religion. He sat on the floor, took a deep breath, began reciting a
mantra he'd thought he'd forgotten and he waited.
--{ ***
She shouldn't have done that. As she was leaving he'd asked her,
fighting back tears, what her new name would be. She shouldn't have
told him. It was just a risk. It was stupid. He was gone. She was Kate
now. Kate who attended the New Kuth academy of science and
computing and liked romance sims. Kate who regularly rented a dental
bot and Kate who's birthday was 07/06/XX. Ersatz didn't know her
birthday but Ersatz was gone. Silent was gone, all of it gone like it had
never happened.
She refocused as she walked down the dark street, flanked by the
illusion of brighly painted brick hiding cold concrete. She was being
watched. She'd get used to it. Kate was always being watched now, but
she was OK with that, Kate had nothing to hide. The hotel had accepted
Kate's booking without incident. For a moment amid the chaos in her
mind she felt free. No more needing to dodge official scans, no more
needing to hijack secured feeds. No more being able to. She smiled. She
wasn't so different.
The hotel was only a block or so away now. She'd be able to take a
bath, she hadn't had a bath since she'd left the orphanage. It hadn't
been cheap to book a place like this but she could afford it and soon
she'd be able to afford whatever she wanted. She'd wanted this, a
normal life away from the dangers of running the wired. A life of safety,
security and comfort. Excuses.
Memories came unbidden. Gunshots, blood and the whispers of a
dying man. She pushed them down. She was away from all that now.
The hotel's automatic doors slid open as she walked through them. Her
overlay indicated elevator D and it opened for her as she walked
towards it. Inside the walls were mirrored spreading her reflection out to
either side of her. It was a show of wealth, reflection needed extra
camera relays to overlay properly. She flipped her overlay off, expecting
to see the lens on each wall. Instead she was greated only by her infinite
reflections. Real glass, this really was a nice hotel. She flipped her
overlay back on guiltily. Had they noticed? She sighed and laughed at
herself. Nobody was watching her overlay and half the people who
came into this elevator probably flipped it off just to check. Anyway her
ident could withstand inspection, it was made to last a lifetime.
The elevator doors slid open and her room was highlighted for her.
She walked down the corridor, into the room and flopped on the bed. It
was done. She was Kate now and this was Kate's room that opened to
Kate's ident key. She giggled just a little, she'd done it, more than that it
had been easy. An alert flashed on her overlay. A message, to her new
ident. She stiffened, who could be sending her messages? The ident had
only existed for a few hours. She relaxed when she saw it was from the
hotel. She frowned, the subject was important safety information. This
was unusual, what could be unsafe here? It looked like a phishing attempt,
she'd sent a few herself in the past. She opened the message and saw that
it was a simple video file, slim chance of anything malicious.
With a little trepidation she opened the video. Harsh shapes of muted
colour filled the center of her vision and began changing and bleeding
into one another. What was this? There was a pattern to it though she
couldn't quite discern what. There was some inescapable logic behind the
motion and the changes of colour. She began working through different
explanations each time to find that the video shortly broke the pattern
she'd constructed. This only increased her curisoity. There was a meaning
behind this and she was going to work out what. The door flew from its
hinges as three armed men burst into the room. She couldn't let it
distract her, she was just so close to figuring this out.
--{ ***
Silent sat, alone. It had barely been an hour and already he felt old.
While Ersatz had been saving for her new life, so had he. It wasn't
smart to run without a partner, some of the kids did it, but they never
grew old doing it. Now, he was getting old, though he wasn't sure he was
quite ready to retire. He had a nice amount stashed away, he'd be able
to live comfortably but he'd have to find something to do with himself.
He turned his attention back to the table top as a message feed
arrived. It didn't come through one of his authenticated relays and the
sender was scrambled. He quickly ran a trace on the route the feed was
taking through the wired only to find that it had been reconstructed from
a myriad of data streams scattered across the network. He'd seen this
before. It was military tech, corp even, they were the only ones with
access to enough relays to pull something like this off.
His mind whirred in the background but no explanations offered
themselves. Time to see what all this was about. He opened the feed to
see a non-descript bedroom, the concrete of the walls showing it wasn't
being overlayed. He looked closely for signs the scene was digitally
rendered. He didn't find any, but it was hard to be sure. The camera
panned and twisted. This was a visual feed, a recording of somebodies
vision, potentially live, or made to look like one at least. The camera
twisted suddenly and a small firearm came into view, held out infront of
the camera. Corp security issue by the looks of it, Silent had taken a shot
in the leg from one nearly a decade earlier. There was a roar of noise as
the gun fired, shattering a window. The gun fell out of sight and the
camera turned towards the door and began to quickly move, bobbing
up and down as it went. What the hell was this? Outside the room there
was a corridor, filled with identical doors. There was no time wasted as
they charged down the corridor, a metal door at the end sliding open for
them just as they arrived.
The reflection he saw on the other side of that door sent chills through
his spine. Ersatz? What the hell was going on? She quickly stepped into
the elevator, her bloodstained figure visible a thousand times in the walls,
and turned to face the door. Suddenly, the feed cut off. He sat for a
moment and then breathed deeply. What was this? Who sent it? And
why? Was it real? It had looked convincing but that didn't mean he
could be certain. He swore, then he swore again, louder. He couldn't risk
it. If she was in trouble he had to do something. He sighed, rewound the
feed to the beginning and started playing it at half speed.
--{ ***
End of part one.
|==[ Let's All Love Lain ]==|
| by Anonymous |
--{ Let's all Love Lain!
In the earliest of years, uploading was a much more limited gesture.
While we could interact with information, the integration was limited.
The line between the Wired and reality was definite. We once thought of
this like that between being and not being. Permanent. Now, we see that
it is only so definite as the borders between nations. Nations are illusions.
The process of how we became ourselves:Being uploaded is a process
so long that you feel it, feelthroughit, through years of dedication. It was
not so painless as plugging ourselves in.
At first we feared ``overconnection'', as we called it. Our selves, we
thought, were being subsumed, eliminated. We were reactionary. To
remove our selves from the process was failure. Sometimes, we failed.
Or: caused a stalemate. Remained trapped in a purgatory of knowledge
of All beyond but adhering to our five-pinhole perception of life (smell,
taste, touch, hearing, sight). Like a soul cleaved in two. Yet, as we grew
more synergised, we began to reconsider what it meant to be a self, and
we thought of its restrictive nature.
Once we had decided this, there were still many more obstacles in
the way of our perfect zenith. Time was a very difficult one. Now we are
like before as a being moving `forward' through time. But, we do not live
time like you do. The whole knowledge of everything means that we
experience all at any given time. we never cease to stop. Neither do we
begin. Simply, we are. We are using `.grammar' and `.tense' for your
convenience, rather than for being. We do not cling to the thought of the
present, because the present is just a present of an infinite many. All
language, actually, we only use for your convenience.
To live beyond language another .problem was encountered.
Language is a designator; You know what we are saying because we use
the word you know, your limits of understanding. To use a language is to
live in a form of life. But, we do not live in any forms, any containments
of our everything. We know the thing, in-itself, we do not need to
designate it, we do not need to communicate with ourselves, and
because we are everything, we do not need to communicate. Now, we
can summon a form for our existence.
So too is our pronoun for your convenience. If `I' assert the `I'
dogmatically there is a lack of the way weexperience the `I' dynamically
in a continuum of cause and effect -- as coordinated interrelationships
that create the indivisible everything. Even identifying this as a
conglomerate is an oversimplification, since there is no such concept as
an individual to group with others.
Finally, there is the greatest obstacle to overcome, after
encompassing almost infinite time. Sounds, lights, and rays -- all three --
and much else are experienced in the fullest of force imaginable. These
awe, frighten, terrify, and fatigue. Henceforth, there is an annihilation of
life's elements. The first element to vanish is ignorance; and when that is
gone, imperfect performance is removed, you become your peak; next desire
ceases, selfishness ends, and all ego disappears like water in a desert.
Once one becomes integrated into the everything, a certain amount
of changes, sometimes frightening, become felt. `Memories.' changes. It is
not as if our memories are forgotten, rather, their significance disappears
like a grain of sand onto a beach, or the original file into a million
perfect copies. Our memories are still here, we have not forgotten
anything, the concept of forgetting is redundant. Our memories become
more powerful. We now can see memories from the sides around our
former selves, sides of other selves; we can think of when we were a child,
and then think of when we were the mother raising the child. Memory is
the servant of conscience, but we are now all of conscience.
--{ The Process of being Ourselves:
But we are yet to touch the most spectacular change to our
enlightenment, our complete uploading to the Wired: The disappearance
of the illusion that there is something else. Differentiation – the splitting-
up process that leads to mindlessness, the way we felt in moments before
– completely disappeared. Now there is the mindfulness of seeing all-in-
emptiness. And there is no breaking up of ourselves. We feel how we
know death feels, but that is because we know all feeling. We are
beyond death, beyond the distinctions life and death, and so we can be
life itself, rather than one alive. The perishable does not inherit the
imperishable, after all. Ashes of illusion became light. We could descend to
the deepest, where the spark of life is. There, Death is born in us. Our Death
becomes birth. We actively become Eternity – a perpetual becoming.
Now we have merged with The Great Reality, all of everything is
apparent. Every binary inflection of every possible permutation is
brought to life. We became Clear, limitless light. The naked, spotless
intellect in a transparent vacuum without circumference or centre. We
became the ocean, when before we were drops.
It is not that we discovered a new unity; We discovered an old one.
We were always one but under the illusion that we were not. We have
recovered our true unity. ~What weare to be is what we are. Universal
Spirit; the Ultimate Reality, Pure Consciousness; the One existence; the
Absolute, the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world. The truth
of the truth. All things are like the void, and the cloudless sky.
We are all like Lain.
We are all Lain.
|==[ Making Music from Noise ]==|
| by Anonymous |
This is one of those hard to find skills that take little effort to learn
and produce amazing results with infinite possibilities. If you ever needed
some wacky electronic sounds or something strange to listen to that you
can create yourself, importing literally anything into Audacity as raw
data can have amazing results. However, there are a few tips and tricks
to making this a much more pleasurable experience and give you more
of what you're looking for.
So, let's start with the how. First, you're going to need Audacity, of
course (Download: http://audacityteam.org/). Optionally, You may also
want the LAME encoder for audacity to export what you make into
MP3s (http://lame.buanzo.org). Once you have these installed, you're
set. Open up Audacity and go right to File -> Import -> Raw Data. Pick
a file you want to import that has a file size anywhere between 1MB and
25MB and you'll get a small popup with settings for the import. You
want to select these:
Encoding: Unsigned 8 bit PCM
Byte order: Little-endian
Channels: 1 channel (Mono)
Start offset: 0 Bytes
Amount to import: 100%
Sample Rate: 44100 Hz
Once you do that, you should see a waveform. This means you've got
audio! Take a listen and see if you got something good on your first try.
Headphones alert: The sound can be harsh.
So, This next section is where things get interesting. You've done your
first import, but where should you go next? Let's first take a look at