The Shooter's Manifesto

A Novel in Five Chapters

Chapter 1

A Mess Unsatisfied

Nobody ever talks about it. The way I look at the computer screen. Lost in a daze. The way my millennial parents pushed me into being gay. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Trying to push out all the events so fast. I had the childhood of childhoods.

Being a child to millenials is not what you think it is. Some of my friends were too far gone. Maybe we saw things that we shouldn’t. I did.

Looking at myself, small and scrawny. My millennial parents didn’t give me time outs. It was amazing. Being uncontrolled. Unsatisfied.

I guess you can say that’s my theme. Even if you wanted me to admit I didn’t have style or panache. The understanding beyond my own implication is that I don’t have to admit anything. This might as well be used against me in a court of law. So, for now, my name is Andy Card.

I guess you want to know how I look. For the record, I’m a red head. I can’t even begin to stress how many times I don’t ever look at myself in the mirror. Like I would crack the mirror. But I don’t mind it. Hurting people is easy once you know how to manipulate the system.

Don’t worry, my dad’s a lawyer. He worked for the big time democrats. He knew they wanted big rewards, and sometimes I saw it. The complete mess that was my childhood, being subjected to weird PBS shows, and often times weird thoughts like “all Republicans are evil” is what made them fuck all night long. My mother introduced me to Molly, no not her friend down the street, but the street drug.

I didn’t know if this was a joke or not. Trying to find a friend in my mother who stared at her IG page, and tried to relive her glory days through me. I think she always resented that I was a boy, first. She was a 21st Century woman with a 20th century mindset. It was hard to tell whether my mother, who was gorgeous, always, still saw herself through subconious lens.

My mom, Gretchen, as she called herself Get, sometimes, saw this as a no win. She was always saying she was fat. When she had 2 percent body fat. She was a model, once. Her unmitigated threat of a body made all her work friends uncomfortable. Even her gay friends. Who were all so physically fit. So, it was no surprise they made fun of me for being chubby. It made sense. If I had a vagina, maybe things would be different.

Often my own joy came as a kind of failed dependency on a lost soul who couldn’t look directly in the mirror. Sometimes I felt like I couldn’t even try and think about it. But the more I thought about the fact that my own mother didn’t even like me as a boy said more than I thought it would. Although she did, in her own right, support physical exercise, because her own path of defaulting on her beauty instead of her intelligence. Nothing allowed. She couldn’t actually admit she was sad, sometimes. She was so dependent on people’s joy that it made her sad when I admitted I was sad, and then she became enraged when I was sad.

Later on I knew this was a bi-polar thing that she later on received medicine for, and no matter what the world thinks, it was real. She had to stay busy all the time. She couldn’t even watch a movie or read a book. Sometimes I doubt she could even read, but that’s not the point. I think it led to me resenting her presence, but I couldn’t stop pretending I didn’t share those qualities. Plus, being the children of millennials always wanted others to fix their own shitty qualities as parents, and I’m pretty sure the world didn’t care about her problems.

That’s what made my mother angrier. How could I care about a country, like Lybia, when we bombed them into extinction, and somehow give my money away to them? That’s worse than giving it away to a local church. Plus, being atheist was somehow so cool for my parents. I think it made them worse off. Somehow we had Christmas but couldn’t talk about Jesus. We weren’t even Jewish, either. So, nothing we had came without some extreme moralism, “helping mankind” without mentioning God.

After I made the transition, I could see why God was so important. But I was still entrenched by my parent’s ideals. Another potted plant. A growth festering underneath a rotten nail that wouldn’t stop growing. A cold masturbatory excellence from another failed housewife, but then, I couldn’t always blame my mother.

That was before the transition. The idea of being someone else always came from my mother. The outcome is with bursts of rage, crying fits, love bombings, and unconditional love/hatred that made her as unbearable as she was lovable. So, later on, it comes as no shock as she was supportive of my transition.

I want nothing less than to forget the nightmare of my millennial parents, who thought nostalgia was so admirable. But then, they had some good qualities. They held onto every blessed piece of entertainment they could. I remember blowing into cartridges before I gave my first blow job. For such annoying ideas, they did have the backbone of entertainment, which proved that knowing celebrity food preferences really helped on debating politics on the world stage.

But being political meant it was their personal identity. Like it ultimately mattered because watching Jimmy Kimmel somehow helped them debate no finer form of bullshittery and unfunny ideas that didn’t come from their heads. If you think it’s impossible not to be as well versed in shitty reality television, my parents had endless conversations that almost bordered on narcissistic selfishness. I can’t even get my point across when they are in some nostalgia fest where I’m not even involved in the conversation.

It’s easy to be involved with yourself when your parents didn’t see you anyway. It’s better when you have friends, but then only want to talk on forever and ever about their problems. I didn’t really get along with people, and don’t think the gay community doesn’t care about you. They don’t. Everyone is in a contest to out talk the other, pretending that they care when they don’t ever do something cool for someone else. But being alone is easier when you know your worth.

I guess I used coding to help deal with the small time stress. It made me remember that I didn’t have to rely on people in order to make it through the world. Coding made me remember what I could do and not. But through uncontested luck, I could make things with my hands, too. I guess coders know they can look at things with identitical lens and think about how they move through the world.

Plus, making guns is the best part of being a thinker. The slide, and how it feels in my hand. The way I don’t have to pretend that when I see someone, they deserve what they get. But anyways, that’s my brain overthinking, but something is bothering me anyway.

But popping drugs is easier. I can look at it through a high fueled lens and think the test of being irresponsible or communicating to someone who thinks they can be “my friend.” I guess it makes sense if people want something from me. It’s easier to pretend that people are kind and good when they certainly don’t live up to their reputation’s status.

I guess social media doesn’t help. Staring at a screen, trying to find someone who can understand me, but we’re all just trying to find a status or health boost, while we do. Everyone is so accessible but so busy. Drug addicts still have to wallow in self misery while ranting to someone for hours on end. I’m not sure if the failure of being so smart is that you have to drown yourself with alcohol, or the condition of being drowned by another’s voice when you can’t hear your own.

All that “main character” shit is false when you have no way to express it. No way to feel like you belong in a world that hates you. So, guns are the only form of expression that I don’t have to be afraid of. I’m worse than the enemy itself. I used to think it was Republicans, but somehow, it makes sense. They don’t care about me. They care about their own reputation.

But I guess coding sort of gave me respite for a while. I didn’t have to betray my own defeatist logic. I think it made sense why I retreated because nobody wanted me in the first place. But it’s too early for this. I don’t want to be normal. Being normal is when you have to accept what’s left of you after all the booze and drugs leave your body.

I’m not so sure about anything anymore. I think it’s all the estrogen but I can’t pretend they work anymore. It’s all a numbing effect. I think it’s the weird fractured feeling that comes with being trans. I got that my parents kind of supported it but my mother wasn’t the best when it came to my manhood. I can’t pretend the way that disembodied feeling comes about with anger and morbid self talk I always heard.

“Maybe you’re a woman.” Was my mother’s response to everything. I think she just wanted someone to go into the dressing room with her that wasn’t my dad that could undress her. She did feel a little creeped out whenever I was in the bathtub. She couldn’t touch my penis. I think I got a rash because her OCD compelled her not to be normal. I think if I hadn’t listened to her as much maybe I would have been better off.

My father was a wilted flower when it came to her needs. I can’t think of a time when he wasn’t a gentlemen and I think I respected him less for it. I always used to watch 80’s action movies and I respected them all. And my father, who was weak, a loser, accountable to no real goals in life, told me, “They just have small dicks.” Yeah, and that really helped in the way he waited hand and foot over my mother. I did feel sorry for him, the way she ridiculed him.

“I would rather be beaten than looked at that way.” She later let him fuck the shit out of her, almost borderline rape her. She always liked rough sex, but maybe this wasn’t just that. I didn’t understand it at the time.

It wasn’t easy having the prettiest mother in the PTA board meetings, either, as it was like learning all over again that I was just a male version of her disappointing life. Being waited on hand and foot by a maid. She continued to think of herself as the only mother who wanted me, her boy, to be as progressive, as possible. But having gay friends were as based as any straight person. There’s nothing left but the conviction of one simple fact. All my gay friends were all pro gun supporters. It was strange seeing how they loved guns and they knew how to pick them apart. Trying to make the questionable threats a mother makes and a father is like watching the opposite happen. My mother actually watched reality television shows and thought they were reality. Yeah, have fun pretending that you can hold a debate about politics and think that can put you together in the same room as a politician, I can’t hold up the same candle but my mother is made of melted wax. She was already burned before I got there.

I hated the way she always made progressive values so important when my gay friends sort of looked at me and just shook their heads. “Don’t impress anyone but yourself.” Cory Beemer, whose both gay fathers, were republicans. It was an amazing thing. To learn about the Constitution from gay parents.

The reality is simple: my mother couldn’t be a good mother because it wasn’t in her nature. The ordinary things were just missing from her upbringing. But my father, in all his good qualities, tried his best to help her. I guess it’s why I probably came out this way. He had to go to the car and listen to rap music, because she didn’t like how they used the word “Nigga” as it was “still racist to do so.”

What I did admire about my father: his secret life was far more interesting than when he was with my mother. I can’t pretend this doesn’t interest me. We played video games in his man lair. He had posters of the original Super Mario Bros. 3, and his cart collection was amazing. He actually kept it on a shelf where he had a code that even my mother didn’t know. He told me the combinations, because I was his son. Daughter now, but for chronology sake, that is.

Here, in that lair, the white room, where my father could actually smile and be himself. He was really disappointed when I transitioned. He couldn’t look at me for three years, as if I wasn’t in the room. Maybe I was always jealous of their wealth.

I did look at the cartridges, plus his DVD’s, CD’s, and his books as if he was holding contraband material. He made sure his defiance was withheld from his wife, my mother, who didn’t have a personality. But maybe that’s what he found charming. He had to think of everything, and even when he was meticulously cleaning the cartridges. I never saw something more clean than his CD’s.

“Just don’t tell your mother.” When we listened to rap CD’s in the car. The Devil’s Advocate, the Game’s first mixtape after he signed to 50 Cent’s G-Unit records, was one of his favorite mixtapes. His eyes lit up when he talked about his passions, as if he wasn’t just a father, but someone holding onto his happiness. And he gave me that willingness to find people who can have hobbies. I never hated my father, but I wish he acted like a man, sometimes.

I wanted him to yell at my mother.

I wanted him to show me what a man was. I couldn’t actually take him seriously when I saw my mother and how he was so kind to her. I wish he would have beat her within an inch of her life. But when you’re robbed of your masculinity, as your mother dictates what you do and how you live your life, then things are never going to be easy. Most people just run away from home at 18. I had everything so good that they tried to make me stay.

No I decided to make the smart move and leave. But then, I didn’t have the average existence, but maybe, I liked being at my million dollar home. I had so many friends over my parents were that cool and hung out with us. But I went out and did some things too. Besides, I was never satisfied.

Chapter 2

Bite Me Coward!

There’s a few things I did whenever I went outside. I made one crucial note as a transexual person: I hated the environment. I did like dogs and cats, but I really hated their fur. And no I didn’t always like torturing things, but I will admit, I got prickly hairs when a torture scene happened in a movie. I was always aware of its presence, even when it didn’t feel like I was becoming something else. Hey, being a massive dick is easier when you can cut up your flesh and become something else.

Having a sense of humor about things is what the gay people did for me. They helped me realize it wasn’t that bad, but being a boy in a world that hated masculinity taught me that I needed to have selective speech.

Being a boy was harder, because all that female empowerment bullshit taught everyone, in my generation, a few basic fallacies, as women are always great. Yeah, and the rainbows are made out of fairy cloud dust. Secondly, men are inherently evil. If the congestive heart failure of an obese teacher taught me anything, it was to turn all my rage on myself.

But something, beyond flesh and bone, was moving inside me. Like a curious gift of beckoning dire residual blood, shit, and urine was moving up toward my mouth. Like I couldn’t speak or say what I really thought. And being lost to a convincing enemy of self doubt is what the gay movement prides itself on.

I think about how that really does create so much doubt that it pushes everyone away. It’s like being so professional that you have to mask away your self worth. Being a trust worthy indication of what you really value. Being successful meant moving forward in a tech profession that helped me remember who I was. Eventually easing the tragedy of flesh and scalding hot water can make any seismic activity inside me turn super saiyan.

Also, what and who doesn’t come to the tech world and find a nerd that doesn’t make them realize they have lost everyone and everything. The way nothing beyond their own temptation, of realizing the missing puzzle piece is their true equal.

Being in the tech world, which made me remember a few key phrases: “I’m special” in the tech world means you have skills far superior to man and God. Every single techno freak thought just because they pressed a few keys meant they needed to evolve into a new figure of Krishna and Christ. Puesdo religious, yes, it was. But I couldn’t stop thinking about firearms. Like the little facts amazed me.

But being in tech helped kept me focused, and all that puesdo religious crap in the tech world almost made me want to freelance, instead of walking into a building. I met all those weirdos and they did prove a few things true. They wanted transhumanism so bad that it was like talking to southern baptists, except they saw tech as their god. And it’s kind of scary, to people outside the clique.

I get it. I get why people don’t like it. I’m sure the infused congestive farts that all Californians have that are building up within their blackened lungs have no use for the real world. They can’t even communicate, which is why they have to use machines, and there techno babble of a better society is more sci-fi than reality. But they pushed it on people and it’s how they used the trans movement to help create this new world that you are in.

But it’s often guns that make me realize we, as a species, don’t have to be something less. I have no other greater will power than being lost in a mirage of clacking keys and the people who use it in order to better society think guns are bad. I understand why. They think it’s primitive.

But to me, I saw all the big tech geeks and they have little else to say at dinner parties except being less than human.

Watching it up close almost felt like staring at a Rorschach painting that everyone had no way to describe. The few, like myself, who dared enter, knew that electrically charged volts only spared no man’s consciousness. I am sure reality doesn’t agree with this, but these tech guys were freaky. They already had fake eyes that could replace real ones. Moving around, looking at me as if I was less than human.

And this was in modern reality. The very world of green and good thoughts that push us toward a final solution. A weird amazing brutal world where the working class are slaves to their pleasures and have and own nothing. This was feared by the very smartest of people who were called crazy for speaking out.

But a gun is what the tech creeps feared. They wanted Americans to lose their rights a long time ago. They were the nerds who used legal power to threaten ordinary people to have no rights. A gift wrapt sensation of pleasure over individual power. A modern society, like America, didn’t want that, but sloppy people didn’t want personal freedom.

And trust me, I didn’t believe it. I thought being around these people let me become what they think. And to me, I became enthusiastically quiet about guns.

With my job, in tech, I was allowed to buy whatever my heart desired. Typing gobbledygook on a computer screen made sense to me, but to everyone on the outside, it was number and code. I just wanted to be able to be myself, and increasingly so, having guns helped me remember why I always feared the tech weirdos.

After a while, I learned what not to say. But being covert meant coming home and indulging in all the things I couldn’t say. And that drives your partner crazy. The things I always remembered is the weird aspect that the men who made fun of it were often dealing with queer ideas that they couldn’t intellectualize. And if they did, they were power hungry queens that didn’t have enough stamina, because they were living on Asian standard time.

The one thing that did help us come together is the entertainment we valued. Anime, manga, but I was always going for more American old school aesthetic. Muscle bound men who didn’t give a fuck what anyone said. So, I kept that to myself. But having anime and manga meant nothing new.

I think delayed sexual thoughts are worse for a child. Teaching them to be docile, boring little folk, is not manhood. It’s a ridiculous claim to be docile and nice, and people like Alex Jones gave me dragon energy.

I was tasked with no ordinary pleasure than to watch Alex Jones, according to my superiors. A fledgling little shriveling shit named Mark Zuckerberg. And it was weird. He wanted to fuck me, and I wasn’t interested in his way of thinking. He was all into super secretive spy stuff that he made into existence, as he later on abused algorithms that would destroy him and the world he sought to protect. But having to understand it almost took a narrowed in approach.

But it was ultimately a way to find and meet people. And that’s somehow how we all met one another.

Fray, Scooter, Devo, and Buzz. All of us somehow managed to be understood as the top coders of the world, but being the oldest, I had some skepticism. The contrary thing is brewing along a weird outline. Where no one and everyone saw the consequences and did nothing. I am sure before all this is over you might understand.

When Mark Zuckerberg made advances on Buzz, his response was, “Bite me asshole,” but later punched him in the face. I knew we would never be welcomed back to his vacation beach house. Because I thought, what the hell, but maybe Mark will tell you something different.

Because nothing is weirder than being asked to have sex with tech guys who don’t find you attractive as you are. But nothing here proves anything yet. Data, in its full clump, only allows schematics to pop up. Infrastrctures and power lines. All the weird animalistic qualities of moving through the human brain now encounter a new biosphere that none of us could predict.

But none of us were interested in Zuckerberg, and somehow, we never got invited to his little dome of the rock.

What I knew was just trying to have a normal life.

Fray Ling, in her own way, wanted the usual things. A house, husband, kids, and to settle down. Her name was Fay, but I always heard it as Fray, since her English was broken. Fray, an attractive blonde Chinese American girl with slight gray tips, wasn’t afraid of an all male crowd. Her mind worked well with putting hypotheses together, as it created new intelligent discussions, but I was never so sure if she considered her ideas theories or just ideas that wouldn’t make it past testing data. When I took her to shoot guns, she wanted to break it down and start showing what the individual parts were. Fray Ling, as I called her, managed to ignore it, as she didn’t mind calling me whatever slurs she learned in her half breed voice did. But I couldn’t stop pretending that I liked her. Like the way she often approached things. Scott didn’t like being subtle, as his autistic mind usually crowded his thoughts with an ammo dump of information on his enemies, and sometimes colleagues.

The outcome of Fray’s timidness is that she was always listening, and with a group of weirdly functioning disgruntled outsider tech nerds, sometimes she needed peace and quiet.

“I can see why you were so handsome as a man. But I’m not attracted to you as a woman.”

“Cool.”

I was never disappointed in Fray, as long as I knew her. She wasn’t afraid of being herself, which is how and why we belonged together. Finding out what we really knew and whether the cables through computers sang songs to us. The weird connective tissue in between our brain could tell when the other was sad. It wasn’t like we had difference of opinion on most matters technological but the weird conviction creates something worse. When we disagreed, we almost felt like a oil and water. But nothing we said couldn’t be solved without a hug or the way we settled it through ice cream.

When Fray was mad at me, I think it was about whether the hypothesis x or y axis funneled through a wide range proxy table could move hold large sums of data to carry out numerous was true, I always said, like the retard I was, “I got you some ice cream.”

She sort of smirked at me, but she was always so ready to not win the argument, but I always encouraged her to fight back.

“It’s easy when you give up your rights in order to be nice. Or at least think the other person is right.”

The outline of her face always shined against the brittle light. Like she couldn’t actually pose a smile without revealing a few trinkets of faith dangling around her neck. The consistency of thinking about someone else communicated something in a rightfully absurd but almost cute existence. When someone can’t help but force out a squeak thinking it’s a roar. She turned to me and said, “You know how to be an asshole. Luckily your doctor gave you two with your surgery.”

The immediate question is seizing a weird thrill inside my body. The need to tell her to fuck off but also make her remember what she claims. “I have two assholes. That’s why I think people don’t how to fuck me or not.”

Fray Ling was always trying to balance out her insults, and that silence followed.

“Don’t worry, I don’t mind fun. Trust me, I might have a vagina, but at least I’m not stupid about who I am.”

Helping people have fun, even when I wasn’t supposed to, seemed like a good trait to have, and the world I grew up in, didn’t mean I was supposed to be serious all the time. Hell, at least I could laugh. But something else made me just want to say outrageous things until Fray Ling shook her head, but I knew when to be quiet and enjoy her tranquility.

Having straight and non queer friends helped me remember what I used to be, and it was nice. But what I didn’t realize is that what I wanted is the same thing I could have had before. But coding helped me remember what outliers were. What I could put down on a screen and help remember the questions that prove their unjustifiable worth. The only person I thought I could be wasn’t the same as those I could become. It’s often what I don’t see it as a bad thing but the queers I met were often times scarier than I imagined. They were so transfixed by transhumanism. We just sort of accepted it, but I had never delved too far into it. Some codes were just not available for me at the time. But what I could see, maybe it was just too much sci-fi shit that scared the average people. Hell, I didn’t mind it, but the weird thing is, who doesn’t want a little upgrade. But I hadn’t seen the worst yet. You know, certain passcodes come down from the chain of command and the terrible things that speak in the worst kind of memento fragments. The unblemished chemicals that move through the water. Did you ever wonder why California went through a water drought? Because they knew they couldn’t explain how thirsty they were, even when the government withheld it.

But the outcome for my friend is that I loved her, just as much as my other crew. So, we did manage to get solid work, even though were just contracters. It fit our schedules and we slept through the days we didn’t work. I had fun knowing that I could create the codes and move through non-linear equations that eat through entire infrastructures. But was I a hacker or maker?

Whatever it was, money is the beautiful outcome of being independently wealthy is the powerful injunction of returning a soul through an underlined firm basic C+ course and realize video games didn’t change reality. Yes, they were fun to live in, but the discourse behind such coding didn’t mean that a trick of light couldn’t just change a light at a street corner, but entire worlds operated together off basic human needs. And nothing I saw made me believe that anything bad could happen. But being naive is always great when you’re wealthy.

Hell, we all laid in the same bed, but we never touched each other like that. Maybe cause we all had one room, and we lived in one big queen size bed. It’s easy when you all like the same things. I’m not joking. We didn’t ever think differently until it came to a big decision.

“Who wants extra toppings on their pizza?”

Then a little discourse came about. Whether it was beyond the regular tones or the unlikely thoughts that happen. But we did always split the bill on turbo force. Hell everyone in the tech world loved Alex Jones before 2016. It’s amazing how many think they are on the right side of history until they see who pays their bills. And this was in my firm, clientele, the rich who thought they could buy their way out. But nothing is worse when I had to see, later on.

Buzz Eaton, the blonde haired straight guy of the group, always kept us guessing. Like he could look at a pigeon and try to see the movement in the way they measure up to other pigeons, like when they see through the clouds and try to figure out their hydration in each individual peck. It was a little crazy, but he had a sketchbook where he drew pigeons, as if he was watching even the slightest microscopic detail that could be added that could help his hypothesis. He admitted that he liked flying. Like the way Superman did. He hated the way DC comics made Superman gay. He wanted no reality in his comics. I never got on him about that. I personally didn’t care, but I do understand why people would be mad. As a trans woman, I can understand things before when I was a man. I’m not a simpleton on social media. I understand how things work. I wouldn’t have gone to the heights I had, and he knew how to pinpoint the exact phrasing. It’s irresponsible to think he was “trans-phobic” but the idea is that not everyone was going to find me attractive.

But I did have some love interests. But sometimes I got a little too clingy. So, I understand why people need their space. They need to be away from toxic women in order to find out that’s not who they want. Every toxic woman just wants to be loved but they need to shout out there love because no one would listen to them. I never had to shout, because merit and intelligence drive people in relationships. Being beautiful is one thing, but for me, it was coding and having the same interests.

I saw Buzz and letting him have his silence is what he needed. He played Paganini, and was a trained violinist. Something about the violin always calmed me. Made the humming in my brain calm down when I was overwhelmed with too much code. The question of being alone, than to find that one true linkage between emotion and code, is the reality that most of us often see when pursuing a brand of code. That one true piece of knowledge that we all seem to look forward to. Eating something beyond our very skin. Overcoming some obstacles to prove our very point. The unspoken code of Lions that eat through the infrastructure, the very thing we seek to protect and nothing out there can look directly at it.

I have seen the AI that governs this very nation and you really can’t comprehend it yet. It’s too early.

I saw the drawings of pigeons Buzz made and he made me smile. Remembering what others then put together before they look directly half way and spot the central gust of wind moving out of touch. Seizing the soft bottomless envy of his manhood, and admiring what I didn’t. The coded structure in between the tongue and the roof of my mouth sift over the soft predictive clutch of a stick shift car easing its way into the building. I could offer such intuitive thoughts that breathe and think its way out of such natural disasters. Buzz Eaton was ready for it. He had a go bag, if the shit would go down.

“If you look deeper into the red swans eyes, you will see what others don’t.”

I didn’t really know what he was saying. It’s like hearing a calm river speak through a decibel of lost frozen intuition. But he was sure it existed. Tragically, being in the know can’t excuse you from personal ignorance. If rich people didn’t want their children to have cell phones, then you listen to that.

Sometimes we all just said racist things. Yes, I know this doesn’t make us evolved, but then again, we were making so much money and speaking words society didn’t like. People think they have to be so prim and proper. Only for what we knew, racism is what people always thought when they didn’t have to say it. A cold eye will reveal whatever people think. Sometimes people are distant, but a cold eye can tell you everything else. What the weather will be. How can a person go to a bullshit steady day job with no real health benefits, to rich, if the person is willing to sacrifice everything they can to do it. I, nor did Buzz Eaton, want to be broke. I’m not like many trans people who think being an activist will keep them satisfied. I at least learned a good work ethic from my parents.

*The consequence behind much of this did prove an unsubstantial immediate image data system moving through an unparalleled gift beyond the mortal coil. Behind an animal that doesn’t yet prove its own weight in gold. I am the unproven question that holds its own over the gifted triumphs eating away at the jackals of coded algorithms eating its own hard earned efforts moving its way out of the private test of strength or gifted results I have yet to earn. I am nothing else but a wanted defeat of selfish gifts. Then proved by an unbattered self. Now, I am that only perspective wanted from an unbalanced thought. My friends meant all and the world to me. I didn’t want to see them hurt, but sometimes, a lot of the triumphs we had didn’t come out of some proper self edification. An unchallenged mortal eats it way out of the soft belly grip. Maybe it’s own private thoughts then help out some lovers quarrel. But even my own friends had their problems, too.

Only something else had some irresponsible edge. I didn’t even talk about guns with my friends, but somehow it scared them. And I wasn’t just a crazy gun nut. I am sure they had some weird complex about it. I could digress but you get it. The simpler tests of code were often a struggle between how much caffeine we had and the pizza’s we ingested. We  didn’t seem to ever disagree on anything. But nothing we saw in those simpler days gave us a reason to worry. It was just coding and trying to make the world a better place. But sometimes, things don’t always come up easily summarized. I’m not that good at this, but I can do the whole surprise thing, and somehow it makes it all better. The worst proper thoughts that move together are surely after are combined by the will power it took to master such complex algorithms. The way someone stares at a screen can kill their eyes. The world itself proves nothing less than a microscopic pin point of lost admiration. Nothing we see is what it is. As I had such offers from big name companies and the world of big tech gurus moved around private islands, something was always there but it’s like background noise. White noise from the center of the universe but the situations is always more dire than it should be.

I can’t pretend the universe is some gigantic pussy, but I am the pussy. I am the undeniable thirst that no man would want to not have. But nothing in my hand can’t erase the lovely anger that I feel. I can’t ease it. I want to feel the quiet thrill in between my toes. The way someone comes home and they can get under the covers with their lover. Not have to be afraid of being vulnerable. Like someone trying to find out if the world was a disappointment before they were born or after. I want to erase that emptiness I feel when I move away from the computer. No honest job could ever make me feel thrilled or ever looking back at the days when we all would be happier making codes.

We got a job to look at some codes, and Scooter, my next example, was the kind of person who knew how to put bombs together out of pencil and play dough. And electrical wiring. I could tell he spent time in the lab. The kind of petri dish that could talk back to him and tell him what the little cells could think and feel. If the world looked like a narrow pin, he could look through the codes and not try to focus too closely.

“You’re always trying to push it all together. Try and space it out with your eyes. And then narrow it with your eyes.”

*The way he did things reminded me that people always had their ticks. Being irresponsive wasn’t Scooter’s way of dealing with things. He didn’t have the time to pretend he was somebody else, because he wanted to be the thing most people weren’t. The best. He could look at someone and realize they weren’t worth the time talking to.
“Most people are talking and nothing leaves their mouths. The world itself doesn’t want to understand that every microsecond we are all dying. No amount of code is going to save us, at al. The realization is that we don’t ever look behind us when a gun is in our back. The consequence of it is learning that nothing we have is the worthy auspicious death that looks directly at the sufferers daunting task. We all suffer but today we aren’t communicating thoroughly. Code, when you spread it apart, always has some ideal perspective, as the worry that we all have is the way code looks through the binocular like view. It’s always smaller than our microscopic view can see things. But when we look directly at something, it’s like looking back at our hieroglyphs and realize that the language the ancients had were sometimes looking at ourselves through a pictograph of words that we can’t define anymore. The outcome is that we don’t always control ourselves in the substance fueled diaspora, and the healers who look for some distraction to help the slaves move all the boulders one day at a time. I am sure the morons who think I’m saying a bunch of words think they are smarter than I am. They are just slaves and they don’t realize it yet. I’m looking at it from a cynics point of view. Because the code tells me what I need to see. What I can intellectualize vs learning about through constant repetition. Eating out of the hand of Gods is better than learning about it through faulty people. Being complimented when they don’t have the viewpoint to express it. I am angry but at least I know what the evidence gives me. I am sure the world is at fault for where we are, but the code, through such eloquent discourse, helps build society.”

I didn’t mind listening because somehow, it was better than hearing about overweight pop stars that sing and somehow can’t find their own muse within society. I guess we all heard it in different ways, but it was easier trying to find out what others said, but hey, I wasn’t a God, I just read their text. I’m not going to pretend that we’re the most sane people. I’m a complete retard who can’t even tell you where my socks are, but I can look at code and tell you what it’s exactly telling you. Telling you whether or not it’s going to link up right but Scooter, in his own right, is not going to tell you what he can’t do or deny his own right to speak. Sometimes, it’s painfully obvious what he cares about. And sometimes it’s okay. I can’t pretend that his logic won’t make sense sometimes. But his code does. The way he often types and makes it jell, is like being in an aroma therapy session.

*I could smell something that rises up from the profitable wanted persuasive technique that moved and bit through the ether. Where the unlikely testing ground could move and devour an unlikely test. Where the code could benefit something out of some terrible information, chiding others who dared boast that strategic influence, combining others who wanted that ordinary threat posed as a status of national security ease. Like it was gracefully administering the wanted threat of becoming something else. Terrorizing the simple erosions that become earnest, or unlikely threats against the tech/government existence. He saw it, and he didn’t like the rapture of code that incensed a heightened worth of becoming a laughter, beyond the stretch of imagination, coming beyond the testing ground of a data dump. Where the dump itself turns around its own powerful threat, where the talons of industry/government become once again, a throwback to old government havoc. We never tried to decrypt anything that could bug us, or would destabilize our offices.

Scooter, in his own right, comes as no contribution of reality, but through his playful attitude, helped us all see through the minuscule form of binary function that most numbers helped people see. Through a strict code, the infusion of seeing others who dared to commit such a wanted violation of horrible persuasion comes at a terrible cost. Scooter had no problem with easing into a soft combustible edge of his rotten core existence.

Outside of his terrible fortune, removing his own gesture, combined like an emergency power meeting, where he could let his fingers sit on the keys, and tell us where the code could link to. It took a computer to try and make code, but his own senses could outright derive the morning aspect, conditioning the way the package of code could be a goldmine of information or a bundle of sticks sent by the government.

He was in charge of our security and setting up deals for us, and the way he looked into it, almost had some shaman like quality that we all listened to, before we ever opened up mail. Firstly, we never opened up mail, and secondly, we wanted to approach it with such gloves that no other entity might yet perceive our mortality rate quickly shifting downward behind a sloped coffin.
Nothing erased from a heavenly scope of downward terror, that benefits the enemy of a lost colladoscope. Overall, we had some scruples, but sometimes, a wing and prayer just didn’t cut it.

Devo, the final component, the missing scale between us and the world surrounding our little troupe, comes as no problem behind an army that fear creates from a sacrificial taste of teeth gnashing proverbs. Devo, who was our muscle headed meat eating jerk, comes to us in the form of a second generation Mexican American who had his own values and trust issues. But he didn’t mind that connection that already perceived in value beyond the emissaries who understood that perceived likely-hood of a bapohmet like indusive threat behind a mortality control. Deciding that simple introduction, combined through a keystroke, where not even a heart attack could see that baphomet stare. Where the introduction of a government controlled virus could move its ugly face through our structure, as even Devo could yet point out a government erasure point. Combined through big tech secrecy, we didn’t fear what would come our way. Maybe we were young and naive, but that helps when you’re facing off against the National Security State and many other governments who think they can look directly at us, and attempt to bully their way into our lives. We were the paranoid type because we know what is out there. The Chinese and the Iranians wanted us, but we were smarter than them. We knew they knew that we knew who they were. And sometimes they sent us a wink. We didn’t respond and Devo could tell where it was coming from.

Chapter 3

You’re kidding right?

You guys are the magicians of the 21st century. Don’t let anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit. Go out there and create some magic.” -Elon Musk

I want to say a few things that you won’t ever see. The world throughout my circle always had some few simple cautionary wants that prove there gift thoughtful enough to claim the energy in between the scales of a piece of frozen fish. Sometimes I could watch the asians in a fish market and concentrate on the souls in between the half written jar of a scale holding weight above the fish’s lower lip.

I think about dead fish sometimes and maybe they are better off knowing that they have to survive and no have anything to comfort them. A fish that used its imagination probably threw itself into a predators mouth. Now, the question remained, did the ordinary thoughts that entered my crew, the Firing Squad, tell anything that we might have missed.

Only something comes as no ordinary surprise. Being lazy and slothful wasn’t in my thesaurus. The only thing I’m looking at, when I look at code, is a thousand swimming fish moving toward the final plunge of a scaled impersonator moving through society that can reflect an animosity back from the enemy’s central gaze. Eating half a dozen carp in order to survive. But nothing I am afraid of is going to bite without seizing what they think is the bottom line.

The travesty in between the throes of new options behind the mortuary skins move and deny, moving out of the simpler thoughts that beat toward my heart. I can feel the electronics moving through the building. It becomes a new experience when your gear is almost buzzing through the wires, and I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it feels. I should have butthole cancer as to how many times I have been near electrical explosives, and somehow, that wasn’t the closest fate I could come to grips with.

It’s an immediate thrill, being responsible for the restrictions we all have. I guess something that I didn’t commit to is looking at the central hub, where all the movement then pressed forward. Biting against the concrete, where we all can taste our freedoms slipping away.

But I did come to see a few things. When there was a big secret summit in 2013, with a tech fest, I did meet someone that would come to be our next president. Elon Musk. Something about him made me remember why I always had to find out that next implication. The final echo of a standing order beyond the frail midnight grave that would talk in the middle of the night. Trying to wake us all up out of a soft shrill in between the ordinary complicit enemy moving toward me. I can’t stop looking at it. The way a shark fin moves out of the water.

And it gives me an erection.

So, I guess the tech fest, as we called it, came at no surprise, as it was in Geneva, and there were people who weren’t afraid of being called techno facists. But they were dressed like regular people. Yeah, when they weren’t Klaus Schwab German inquisitor death mask like assholes, and somehow, that wasn’t even the strangest thing. The tech billionaires were dancing as if they didn’t have bills to pay. Not shocking, or even meant to be that surprising, but maybe, just a little bit off putting. They danced like a deranged chicken fucking, and it was like looking at puke if it could talk or fuck. There were no black billionaires in sight. If they were, it was few and far between. Mostly diamond smugglers and warlords who were looking to build new infrastructures in Africa. I would be remiss if I didn’t see some old USA style colonel walking around, trying to socialize when he couldn’t speak the lingo or know what he was talking about. The complete logical dissonance of becoming some other person, switching brains, using the endorphins to power up the speedy lingo and conversational pieces. It was like seeing an all out celebrity tech squirt fest, with super soakers and all. They were all children with access codes. The autistic weirdos you would have never talked to in your life are now running the world. Like myself, at the time. But I was just a contractor, still, unknown, and trans, so they were sympathetic to my cause. But later the creepy shit began to take place.

*Execs having orgies with one another, placing coins on their lovers bodies. It was a little paeanistic, but the ideas always sufficed to become another poised defilement of the world we lived in. We watched but sometimes I jumped in. I wanted to have lots of sex and find out what it meant to become something else. Private planes or commercial, nothing I saw came as no surprise. Each cock or pussy came as packed with a different flavor, but ultimately, I didn’t pretend the value that came with sex provided a last nourishment. It was just fun, trying to be as close to the action we could get. Yes, people who coded did have sex, but many were there just walking about, trying to pretend they saw but were thinking about it. I hope those guys got laid.

They looked awkward, moving around like an untrained duck at a fuck fest. Feet often moving against the will power of another man deciding what travesties might happen if he didn’t eat his tuna sandwich at exactly the time he needed. The question is proving others combined like a detailed list that could make them think they were better or at least fill out their day. The question became simply put: where did I fit among the world of thoughtful, yet sexually aggressive, tech billionaires. There wasn’t much pillow talk, but sometimes there was.

I couldn’t pretend the value system we had meant anything to amoral tech geniuses. I didn’t come with nothing, because the connections we needed made sure our bread and butter had more to do with business rather than sex. I just wanted to enjoy myself.

Buzz was trying to figure out the crowd of girls by the way they used their perfume. Buzz had to use pick up lines, but he didn’t sound mechanical. It was like watching a man who didn’t use words then become a surging lothario, where the enemy becomes a lover. The outcome is that he was slapped, later one admitting to Buzz that it was hot, in private. Buzz, on a final attempt, met the woman who became his wife, laughed at him and talked the whole time with us. Fray was equally shy, but we talked in front of her to some tech moguls and she met a few nice men. But she wasn’t interested in rampant sex.

Although the D&D die was rolled against her. Someone had to meet someone here, and nothing else proved far less intrusive. Eating its way out of his hand, is the next little bird to join our group. Buzz’s then girlfriend, Tilda, who looked without expression, a dyonisian feast. Perky breasts pointed against her tight blue dress, where it resembled water cloth at some times. Her body smooth like Swiss cheese. The average definition of a woman’s body was lost on the keyboard surfers who didn’t know what lotion felt like, either. But they did get laid, and I was glad for Buzz. Something calmed his inner anxiety. He didn’t know what to think of it, at first. Because being alone was all he knew. And the terrible question is, would she leave him.

I liked her. She didn’t join the orgies, either. So we knew Tilda was all right. Nothing can be confirmed but the love she felt when staring at Buzz. Like she didn’t even look at me. As if I didn’t exist.  The way she downsized modern video games and said, “Let’s play sometime.” I knew that was code. She didn’t even have a system on her. Her smile gave everything away, and I was just waiting for the next day.

He want back to his room with her, and a day later he walked out smiling. It was weird seeing Buzz smile. But he was starting to feel happy again. Like someone trying out new clothes and realizing he didn’t have to wear a size extra his original weight. Like someone realizing that he could look directly at himself in the mirror and not have to be afraid of who he was.

None of us were. Problems like this provided a soft decor. The way someone can feel their wounds start to heal. But Buzz’s loneliness hurt more. And now he didn’t feel it.  I was glad for Buzz. His rather articulate manner now felt smooth, like he knew he was going to live out some preconceived notion that each time he talked wasn’t some major disaster. Being confident, for a straight man, took a chance on getting his dick sucked. I didn’t have one anymore so I was glad for him.

The tech convention had its pleasures. But we did learn things that even in our current culture was infatuating. Coding that could manipulate the way lights turn off and on. The way algorithms acted predictably in irregular behavior patterns in the power grid system. The outcome of being unloved or even sacrificial, as they were working on machines to move toward a final pit boss mentality. The way arms and limbs would help the broken and destitute. But tech people saw death as an obstacle rather than living life in the moment. Tech geniuses always wanted to change the future but never their bad habits in the present. Like going outside for a few days instead of working endlessly. If it can happen in everyday life, tech geniuses had it just as bad. But sometimes it doesn’t have to be that bad. But I couldn’t tell geniuses how to act or behave, but sometimes, it’s easier to be critical of others worst nature than our own.

I think many of my ilk used trans identity as a crutch to get what they wanted. It’s becoming worse and lost to the aromatic gust of wind that each windmill called out to a Don Quixote, and said, “I see you, asshole, now chase me.” Every genius has a windmill they want to chase, and sometimes it can be daunting. Looking at our aromatic gift of turning over a new rock to breathe its own life. If a scientist wanted to make a rock talk they would look at its sedimentary history and prove how long a rock could exist without losing all of its minerals, and have a mid life crisis. But for me, it came as no excuse. Whatever passed the pinnochio test in the tech world came with raw scientific data that had to be studied endlessly.

Even when our Sharp Shooters met a few disingenuous people we always saw it as a cipher. The way rap battles ended up. But we knew it had to be seen. We tested each other, trying to find our way through an endless coded parameter where we could outweigh our techno babble skills. Where the undying thoughts then prove a gentle breeze manipulated like a soft hand of fate moving across the skill backward, as if we watched tennis balls move over the net, instead of hearing the racket hit the ball. The way wind often speaks to genius and not individual movements. I think speed and sound often fascinate the way people think about their perceptive voices. And tech geniuses often operated out of code, which to them is a voice that no other person hears. But every genius can’t relate to normal people. I think that’s what separated me from my clique. I had to hear what normal people thought. And sometimes speaking plainly helps you seem easier to listen to, and demystify your intellectual stigma.

Little people never say what they think, and normal people just call others out without tact or grace. I’m sure my compatriots would look at me with sniveling noses but today I am surely not speaking out of turn. Geniuses are often unbearable, and having sex is what makes geniuses remember they smell like shit when they walk outside their houses. That nothing is to be taken for granted.

I don’t think I learned this at the secret Geneva convention, and prior to this, maybe I learned this more from my parents. Maybe it’s why I wanted to cut up my body. Beauty is a currency in LA, and being smart is the same for intellectuals. But being a cut up doll for both beauty and brains, damaged souls often have to learn something by the end of their life. That one can’t exist without the other.

I see those fools who would come and try and attack us again. Challenging our theories with prideful scholarly airs. I couldn’t stand seeing their cynicism. *Like their wealth told a story and not their intellect. I couldn’t help their smug disposition but I insulted them with reason and logic. They acted like little children caught off guard with hot air when I served them with the quick lead rapid fire dialect. The outcome is that I didn’t have to create some clandestine conversation that might not be remembered or forever grudged into the next millennia. Without terrible outcomes or lost preservatives in  circle, I gave them the business end of my anger. Because who wouldn’t want to be taller than the rest. A dick measuring contest between phantom geniuses that didn’t like one another but always thought being nice made the world an easier place. But I’m not fake or a loser. I knew how to talk to tough, but I did go back to room and heave a sigh of regret. But usually if it was all in good fun, I would know. Sometimes I might not. Only what makes me remember failure is how others look at me. And I can’t stop pretending that somehow, through all this, I could see code and flittering numbers wink through their eyes. Mostly now, I just remember the keynote speaker, Elon Musk, and the way he turned all of our heads.

I did like Elon Musk. He never gave me the chills when I talked to him. I would argue that I went up to him and had lots of conversations and pretended I was some genius coder. I didn’t, and my honesty rings a certain bell within the tongue. I am the only person who admits what others can’t.

I sat and watched him remark on the rising boon of technology and magic. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was sitting with my friends and it felt like I was grafted some new option of being largely responsible for a new age. The idea of becoming another fortunate soul in a lost age comes as no conclusive botulism. Or brain aneurysm that could lead to a new way of life. But nothing in Elon’s soft gravelly voice comes as no real conclusive evidence breathing through a mortician’s like stare. Understanding comes with real failure. Disappointment. And Elon knew that too well. Only what I saw came with a risk takers ability to keep rolling the die without ever once considering if he should have made a more traditional route. If the loss of his family fortune didn’t force him to become another risk taker, nothing else could. And to possibly pretend that valued effort comes without hard work is lying. I felt the hard work in my fingertips. I knew the question and value comes with a few conditional risk takers that moved out of the heavens that seek its own personal vault. Denial is the worthy underlying force of opportunity to become a better person. I didn’t deny myself. I knew that coding and security meant knowing a few other values too. A gun meant protection in a world where cops didn’t always come quickly enough. In ghetto’s, nobody ever calls the police.

For Elon, nothing but sitting down and committing to a task meant erasing that simply avoiding a half chewed bullet that could eat away at the skin.

“Being a target means you’re always moving until you know when to become what you’re not.”

I remember those words. Those aren’t words that historians will remember Elon Musk for. A secretive thought to a group of coders and tech billionaires who likely never once had to think about personally using a gun. My people, the Sharp Shooters, knew we were targets, but that little gem was whispered among the group. A man like Elon didn’t keep secrets, because if he wanted everyone to know, he didn’t use language that people didn’t understand. Sometimes a philosopher had to learn how to become a stone mason, just to know how hard his hands could hurt.

Erasing no guilt or shame came with a cost, and being unashamed, even as I am now a woman, was a man, now came with a cost. Identity was always the way someone often looked at a mirror or a character creation sheet in a board game tournament. What makes the world simpler is that humans want a little in order to gain the entire pot. A treasure trove for a pittance, but whatever gold I learned came at a cost.

“Don’t pretend you came here just to hear me speak. Learn from each other. You can achieve what others can’t. You can and will do great things. What others won’t tell you is how to succeed. How is up to you.”

Again, going to this shit was merely to find jobs, and also connections, but guest speakers in secret societies know we are inching one more step toward self disgust. Botulism and decay. Fortune is just another willing power play to rising up the ladder.

Here and now, I see Elon and I wish I could touch the man. Know what he thinks and why we are lost. But I didn’t try and be the buzz kill. I know so many LGBTQ asses that are a buzz kill. The outcome, not that gay people care, is that nobody wanted to talk to them. I think if I made myself look weirder than I was nobody would listen. But a young person always thinks they can fill up the silence with people or more conversation. The timing and love someone has to give can maybe fill up the void of loneliness and despair. Contradiction, in its own right, fills up my heart. I think it comes as no surprise I was trying to avoid my family. But I didn’t mind. They knew I was at least paying the bills and in my chosen career. So, at least, I was fine, then.

Buzz had been more than calm the last few days, and Tilda Harper, her full name, of course, because I’m a dick and forgot the full name, made us all feel like we were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Our April O’Neil, as we called her. She made the Firing Squad food and Buzz even helped out. We were all shocked because we didn’t even know Buzz could cook. He didn’t want to make food for us, but it was funny to see him drastically change overnight. The worship of a long lasting friendship often came with substance burning addiction coming together by a worldly heaven that through our desperate logic, comes as no excuse to abide in the carnal flesh. Watching her make miso soup made the world far more pleasurable, and even helping out. Even Fray Ling knew the Tilda Harper, in her own right, was the blessing the group needed. But continuing the foundation behind our gestures, she did know a few things. But we were so ready to pop quiz her, but we didn’t, considering that the world we felt was awful and ready to kill us all, gave us nothing in return. Tilda didn’t mind that we all held onto each other but now we saw our flesh as the same. Confirming our bias and beauty as if we didn’t have the choice but to unlearn our suspected emotions residual change in a piggy bank.

Irascible gifts that downgrade past a tumultuous thought that even I didn’t know existed. Here, and now, could code only speak through me and now I have nothing else but to change my own mind. I am staring at a screen, but I’m distracted when I’m relaxed. I’m really not paying attention, but right now, Tilda leaves with us from Switzerland.

She does have some words to spare in her own moments of being lovely and divine: “I was thinking. You guys need an extra security team, and I can find some people I trust that can help Buzz, I mean, us.” Her own distraction caught up with her, and I didn’t know or comment the words that needed to construct our own basis of life. “You have understood the complex theories needed to become careful, or at least mindful, but the observant test of time means that some hungry young person will work tirelessly to destroy you. Even if you don’t even want to hurt them. They are vengeful, even if they don’t realize it. But one thing I do like about Elon is simple. He does want the human race to exist beyond death. It’s not like humans shouldn’t exist beyond the mortal realm, but living in a space age world, where life beyond the stars can exist. But we need to evolve first. No matter the technological sacrifices we make to our bodies. But I’m not sure if the world right now is ready for it. To undergo a physical change that could damage us if not done correctly.”

Hearing this, I honestly didn’t know what to make of it. I asked her what she meant and the reality was almost like staring at a central wall with wires moving through the building. As if I could see herself and the world around us.

“It might not be feasible, but what if we did become something more than we should. No matter the results of our own individual psyche. But I don’t think it’s good. I don’t want to become something worse than the world should want. But if it could cure Buzz’s autism, maybe that might be useful. But if not, I would be fine, too. I just don’t want people to suffer.”

Hearing this made me want to go back to my parents. Try and figure out a few things. But I couldn’t escape Tilda Harper’s dead set obsessions, but she took a breath and changed the subject. A subject that would openly seek out some new fortune, but no matter the worthy hope of becoming something else. I am sure no death could put Tilda off a conversation. Which scared me, too. Hearing such words turned me into a final blink beyond the scolding threat. Defying options is what coders did, but this meant looking through the human genome.

Only something happened I didn’t expect. Buzz Eaton wanted to get the neuroplastic surgery to put machine parts inside him. Tilda had nothing to do with it. I was worried that it might mess up any internal organs that might not be able to handle the new tech inside him.

“You’re kidding, right?” Was Fray Ling’s response. It was almost mine.

Chapter 4

Forged Titan

The unlikely testimonial of a Buzz Eaton came as no surprise as the test between the soft mildew and the unkempt tests then prove and eat away the best gift of surprise and loss. Here, in the unspoken wants, are right here. I look at the unbroken threat, and become my best friends confidant.
“You can’t be serious.” I said.

“What makes you think I wouldn’t consider any other option?” Buzz said. He didn’t seem to be puzzled or curious. Like his eyes told the same story his eyebrows seemed to agree with. The connection or loss between a delusional being is the reminder that not all who searched for the final existence between a profitable gift, and the terrible questions that eat their way out of depression, didn’t happen here. A calculation of the profitable result of lost seizures then ask or deny someone their fate. I am looking directly at him. Not averting my eyes. I see his determination, even when he shouldn’t be administering that final moment of private auteur suspension. An underlying constant presided over the testimonial, and the heavy sigh and there was no pretension. Objectively, there is no coincidence presided from fixated pussy syndrome.

“I think you should reconsider.”

“Don’t you want me to get well. Don’t you think I have a problem?”

This was the first time I had ever heard this kind of talk. Like it resembled infomercial talk, instead of a child who heard something from someone else. But nothing here presents evidence of a lost shadow self rising up from another perspective.

“I don’t think you have a problem. You’re fine.”

“Unlike you, I can’t just cut myself up and call it a day. I want real results and to get fixed in a way that’s not a cosmetic.”

“Truthful, but I get it. You want to fix your problems, and maybe, I should have understood that before I transitioned. But nothing in your life can be solved by this.” It felt somewhat hollow, but the attempt was like listening to a song in the background while surrounded by white noise. The outcome is that nothing we see is what is the result of code or algorithms that should make things clear.

“You know humans need correction.”

As I said that he chimed in, “exactly.”

I couldn’t have felt worse but the outcome is that nothing definite ascribed that short dissolution. When the enemy of my logic comes to find me, nothing is worse than being wrong and right. Defined and controlled like the daily tendencies of lost aromas. I could remember smelling chicken, and Buzz was using a deep fryer. He didn’t like fast food and packed his own lunch, if we went out. I didn’t mind it when he put his own food on the plate, and the waitress just stared at us. I just motioned it away, and she went about her business.

But today, nothing came as lost as my own words. When I was usually right about things, but society always never listened. I hated that he wasn’t listening to me, but Tilda didn’t even like it.

“I tell him that he’s beautiful the way he is.” She told me.

She looks struck with fear. Like something that even I didn’t even see. “I love him so much. I just don’t want to see him turn this way. It’s not what I want of him. I want to be with the beautiful person that he is. He just doesn’t think he’s beautiful. He’s been alone for so long,. Sometimes I think he locks himself in the room, and I don’t hear him. I think he’s crying, but he’s looking at himself in a mirror, trying to find out what is wrong with him. I just don’t want him to hurt himself.”

“He feels inadequate during sex. He stares out the window sometimes. He yells, and I use all the techniques I can. But he just wants to do this. I don’t think he would be happy, but please, talk to him.”

I felt worse when I saw Tilda. Like she was just as lost as I was. But the condition of her loss is almost like watching gangrenous skin fall off a rotting tree. Like it couldn’t stop looking at the soft rapacious gift of sadness moving through a poisonous river bed. I could have just let him commit a war crime against his body, but the definition of war crime comes at a cost. The reminder of being lost on a sorry state of controlled effort, when the world itself wants every little bit of your soul. I can’t undermine that mortality from an advanced dichotomy of the erased logic between the men who saw their fate before it even happened.

“I just want to be better. I can’t stand being fucked up.”

This was all new. Like I couldn’t prepare a full statement for him. Like I was lost on myself rather than being decided from fixated oblong orbs that move through the ordinary transfixed blessings. Here, nothing felt closer than death and grim touch of nothingness. I couldn’t be as less than than what might happen to my best friend. Tilda saw the pixelated frieze between his heart and the escalating judgement that eased nothing and came at a price. I’m not going to pretend like this was just as soulless as we all have felt. Being so rich that even I felt like I couldn’t stop him, but the twinge of turning a new leaf to watch my friend become something else. A returning momentum of being out of touch but also turning around and betraying that small little inch of love or death that might come with an off switch.

I don’t consider the effort of building such a beautiful worth of turning over a new condition. Where technological worth mattered more than natural happiness. But maybe I created this? Maybe I was just to blame as I couldn’t pretend that no mortality in my head was close to becoming this new formation. The being turned from the organic form into metal obstinate decay. Where nothing else could pretend that we had something else in common. Where the untold voice could decry that imminent discourse from the packed autistic auditorium. Where an untold mourning from heathen gifts then turn and bite the scaled nucleac betrayal from an imminent discourse. His entire being was fixed on this decision, and I couldn’t help but cry. Like I have defiled my own worth. Obstructive worth is being untold from men who defy that natural odd voice is turning around and becoming a monster in between the floorboards. Like I couldn’t see what others then told me I look like.

A freak. Now, Buzz would have cables inside him. Like he was just another piece of electronic filth. I had to avoid him for a while, because that was just in my nature now. I couldn’t argue with someone who was dead set on being who they were, but I hated myself. So, I took to drinking and now I felt like it solved some momentary problems.

It’s coming as no productive elemental brush of death that each responsible person would have to avoid until it was too late. I couldn’t look at a science fiction movie the same way. Everything about it turned irresponsible, where the untold mercy of technology turned violent. But I guess nothing here came as a joke or denied malfeasance.

He did have one simple request. Stay with him at the hospital. It was like how society felt about my trans identity. I know a few cousins who didn’t speak to me after I transitioned, and I’m sure this is how they felt. For it being normal to me, is how I looked to someone else. Somehow, I had to get away. I couldn’t look at Buzz as he wanted to cry all the time. I had to hold him as he was balling in front of me, and I didn’t want to see him cry.

But I did the one thing that could help me relieve stress. Go shoot guns. I did manage to change the codes to my gun safe, and it helped me feel better about myself. But as I stood at the range, I felt off. I didn’t like the way I felt. I think it made sense I blamed my profession. All of it didn’t mean that transhumanism was going to save Buzz, but as I held my .45 Caliber handgun, I couldn’t help but feel anxious. For the first time I didn’t know what to think. I’m afraid of it all. I’m afraid that if I go back to see Buzz, I won’t stop pretending I would be his emotional support.

I did the only thing I could do. Was go home.
Going home.

It felt off, but right. My dad saw me, and I hid my face from him.

“Hey, you all right?”

I just shook my head. I didn’t like crying in front of my dad. He always made me laugh.

I went to his office, and we sat in the game room. *I definitely cried to him, but not to my mother. I didn’t really know how to come to her for emotional support. She was the one who pushed me into being trans, or at least kept promoting it through her social media. I didn’t feel safe or ready to go shoot yet, because it was all still raw. I knew how to make sure everyone else was fine but I needed that gentle support of a fellow gamer and lawyer that could help me find the right words I needed to help guide me through this difficult time. I hated the way Buzz looked as if he his entire face was turning to wax and I couldn’t help him get out of his funk. Like he couldn’t begin to imagine that his unbridled thoughts are just as close to suicidal rage. But I did get it. I was a man once, and I didn’t treat it like it was a big deal, but the hormones kept pushing through. But I was sure that my father knew what to say.

Only the way he spoke gave me some confidence, and the one thing I remember out of my time with him was, “I couldn’t stop your mother from telling you what to do, but I regret that. I regret not being able to stand up to her, but if you’re happy with your decision, then you should support Buzz’s decision. If not, you should be able to guide him back. At least help him remember why this might not be so beneficial. I’m sure things will be all right, but considering the dangers and implications that come with this new surgery, this might be more than what you went through. I can’t pretend that you don’t feel bad, but you’re just as good at finding the words for it.”

I didn’t know what to say. His confidence and disappointment mixed together almost felt like it was just one long laundry list directed towards my cut-up body. But I couldn’t pretend that nothing else happened. I cried, and I felt better about it. I did feel apprehensive at first, like mom was going to be around the corner, trying to listen in. But I don’t think I hated her as much. But I couldn’t pretend that the world I knew was a safe perspective. I decided a few key ideas after our father/daughter talk: I had to be there to guide him back. Another idea: Try and provide counter evidence to his surgery that didn’t feel abusive or at least too controlling. But I couldn’t stop pretending something. I was in pain and I could only treat one wound at a time.

Trying to understand that value is what led me here, to my father. The way old blood trails remind the dead that there attacker was just behind them. Ready to stab a few more fatal wounds into me. Like I couldn’t stop being unobtrusive or undeserved. Cold. I couldn’t stop pretending that this didn’t feel as worse as I should. The outcome is that nothing I hold is when the mortals then prepare there final plunge.

I began my search for any real counter evidence that could help Buzz Eaton, as the world I knew, the LBGTQ inklings could always use emotions over facts. I had to understand that perspective of being inferior, and I got it, but from a new biological standpoint, this was murky territory. Even for the alphabet people like myself could understand. But was I merely just using that as a defense mechanism for my own inadequacies? I could only provide a simple solution that only Buzz could use, and somehow, when I started off on a tangent I realized the new idea was better.

I saw the project as a new discourse, the way only an engineer could understand it. Using code as a language that could posit some neural positive charge that could push him toward a positive feeling. Apathy and emotions were new to Buzz, as it wasn’t for the rest. But they were concerned, too. So, I managed to find a few character sheets online so that I could posit this into building up what we all knew about Buzz Eaton. Logical, consistent, Brave, coffee enthusiast, fast typist, gamer. I listed it with the strengths and using game model strengths that he could use to help him boost his confidence. It was a personal project, but also, making a little game out of it could get Buzz to think about his emotional issues in a less stressful way.

I didn’t want to blame him, or make him feel worse, because it’s hard for me to remember that evolution required some pitfalls in human complacency. The outcome is that nobody ever wants to be wrong, and fixing those human genomes required a way to relieve stress instead of making him worse. The outcome is that nothing without some form of help should be the way to go.

I saw Buzz and he seemed to remember me. Like he was staring into the mirror, focusing on his body, and staring at the table, like he couldn’t concentrate. I didn’t like how he looked and something inside me had to ask: “You eat anything today?”

Before he answered I placed a Godiva chocolate bar in front of him. He shrugged, but I saw him smile a bit.

“You feel a little better?”

“I know you’re trying to help me. I like it.”

Tilda walked around the corner. Smiling a bit.

“I have been worrying everyone. I know it. I sleep on the couch because every time I close my eyes I keep thinking about my problems. I keep thinking it’s a problem because I’m here. I see you guys, and I am aware of what you want out of me. I know you’re all trying to help me, but today, it might not work.”

This was new for me. I hadn’t seem Buzz use passiveness to then address his point. “I never knew you were so coy.”

“I have been using a sense of humor to help get me out of a funk.”

I handed him the page that we filled out. I used his best college picture. Before we all dropped out of college and made money.

“I was young then.”

Tilda was smiling, as if she couldn’t help herself. Pulling his head up, he saw Tilda.

“I’m sorry.”

Rushing toward him she threw herself into him, and her crying became nerdishly applicable to me. Maybe it was the hormones, but I think the character sheet helped. I think it made us remember who we were.

A week later, he told me that Tilda was pregnant.

“I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you. I’m ready to go back to work now.”

And after that, the changes were dramatically improved. Manic but also acceptable. We started back to work on coding for secretive specialty groups. When the outcome can come together like a lost directionless way that nobody else ever feels. Like I couldn’t pretend that the code didn’t look shady, and however much it felt like a trap, we also had a few ways to test our skills. We had to run through it without missing a beat before we were hacked and exposed.

Hackers look for a challenge, not run away from it.

We had a dummy program that came with a time sensitive lock that made us all remember why we called ourselves the Sharp Shooters. Every single stroke was accurate and didn’t waste any time. Like we all saw the moves and downloaded them before it was too late. Any error or misgiving could make us remember why we needed to practice these skills.

“Quick Dunk” is a term that we used to help us keep our movement forward looking and shutting out any or all threats could make us remember why we had any real say in our world. It also meant that nobody could trust us if we didn’t “Quick Dunk” fast enough. The understanding is a vital saying that even most vital coders know how to envigorate or walk through lines of code and shatter the emergency threat. I am sure that the correct response is “bruh” but I guess it’s not so bad an assumption. The weird defiance is that nothing else can come in our way, except if we didn’t respond to any hacking threats.

Sometimes we pranked each other and sent vague familiar threats, and while we might think it was a test, it could be real, too. If the outcome is that each test came at a lesser key stroke, nothing we had is better. If our fingers failed, we were done. Nobody could replace us, and we needed to fix the threat.

It usually happened in the dead of night, and sometimes I even fell prey to the call. I thought of my hands like guns, and each finger could touch the keys like a soft decay or weaponized thread that could betray us. So, keeping the fingers loose, moving, and stretched, is a good thing. It’s a reminder that when an attack takes place, nothing is sacred. Even if you were eating in a high class restaurant, we had to answer the call, open our laptops, and then break into a coded frenzy.

Actually, that happened, to me. Which is why I gave that example. Dating in our world is tough, and it was nice. Seeing a man who somehow got what I had to do, and I apologized after, as it looked like every vein in my forehead resembled a river of loose blood draining out of me.

It made me remember how people felt when I was transitioning. Stuck in a loop. Silent.

I couldn’t pretend that this didn’t make me feel better. Coding for my life n the middle of a date is rather awkward. I didn’t like the idea of putting my boyfriend last, but he didn’t say anything. Reminded me of how my dad acted. I let him pay for the dinner, but I also got him some ice cream. Just to make up for my tardiness. I could feel the sweating fingertips made me hate the fast paced life of being a coder. It definitely made Josh, sorry I forgot your name, rather chilly the rest of the night.

“It wouldn’t be the first or last, but I hope you’re here in the morning.” I told Josh, and he just shrugged.

Chapter 5

Wake Up

All I could think about, sometimes, is when I can’t ever work. I hated the idea of not living my dream. Of not pursuing what I lived and thought was the right path for me and my clique, The Sharp Shooters. We were all a target, and I get it. The idea beyond never having an off day didn’t mean that we would ever think of leaving our comfortable home might be off putting. It’s why I never bought anything. I was the library chick. Always renting, and never owning. Pretending that I was poor but had more money than I could spend. I really was a budget keeper. Sometimes, I just needed a nice refresher from Starbucks.

Hey, it’s all a boy/girl wanted after the pressure was over. The consequence of being so involved in a high tech operative class made the world once again another profitable question that no other person can answer. I have to pretend or look directly at the geysers to make sure nothing can explode. I am not afraid, but I do fear being alone. My dates were always so worried I was working too hard.

The outcome is that irresponsible decision to move forward. There was a moment when I just wanted to leave. Pack up and go. But I didn’t have a reason. Only the creeping sensation became true.

“We need to go.” Buzz said. “We are compromised.”

So, I had to go. I took all my cash, and I told my then boyfriend, “We have to go.”

“Don’t you think it’s a false flag attack.”

“No, I checked, we need to leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I took a deep breath, exhaled, and calmed my voice. “Babe, you don’t understand. I am wanted. The government is not going to protect us. There’s no point in calling the police, because we are wanted by them, too. Even by protecting this country I am still wanted. I told you this before. You’re either in or out.”

So, like all good complacent and naive boyfriends, he just gave me up. So, I left, for Budapest. The same consequence of unlearning everything to gain every facet of self preservation. Now, betraying all of my emotions, now forced me to find out that I would be alone. Fighting along a journey toward a final pitch where an equatable facet of disappointment turns towards me.

The unalienable facade of mortals who understood violence and pitiful questions that describe my self righteous violence coming towards me. Even understanding it came at a cost.

Flying on a private jet, as I could pay extra for an extra cost, all of the Sharp Shooters were together. Even I didn’t feel bad about leaving my boyfriend, but maybe it was personal. Maybe I just wanted an excuse to leave, but I was happy. And somehow, I lost everything, ending up in Budapest, as a result.

The outcome, as the righteous evolution, could responsibly demean or denounce myself as a categorical question of false being. When to erase that silence or create one single question is putting everything together. Betraying the simple self. Smelling the coffee on the flight. All of us, including Fray, looked distraught.

“I left my boyfriend behind. I’m sad.”

“I’m not,” my stupid ass replied.

“Not everyone can be you. Not everyone can cut up their body and become something else.”

Hurtful, but it was true. I let her have this, because she had a life. We were all uprooted together in an apartment, behind enemy lines. Where the code and the wires all moved against us. Only now, I knew the understanding became as inconsequential. We all pitched in for the place, and Buzz began moving wires through the safe house. Double checking, and even Tilda was moved as well.

“She doesn’t mind, but somehow, she’s mad, too.”

“We’ll make this right. I promise.”

No one wanted to talk about it. They seemed more aggravated, and somehow, it felt like it was my fault. It didn’t feel like it, but I definitely had some misgivings about it. Because everyone became damaged, lost, and broken. Only now, I was the only one who felt like the asshole. But I didn’t have proof or evidence.

Only now, I felt some other conversation brewing within us all.

“I want to go back home.” Fray said, in a near catatonic state. “I’m having a panic attack.”

I walked over to her bag, and pulled out her breathalyzer. “You need this.”

She took a deep puff, and then said, holding her chest, “I need to go back home.”

Buzz opened the door, and I saw what came of all this fear.

“I made it up.” He said, almost jolly, like he was amused by this whole affair. “I’m sorry, but this is our new home.”

“What the fuck is going on?” I whispered to Buzz, but I didn’t like how he looked. Almost too confident for his own good. As if he was fixating beyond our skin, trying to read our thoughts.

“You think you’re so smart. We all did. But I did this because right now, we have a golden opportunity.” HIs left eye turned red. “We have been chosen for the job of jobs. And we need to do this.”

“Okay. Slow down.” Reever said. “And what if we say no?”

I saw Buzz’s fist tighten, as if the very words were irritating his skin. The unlikely test of his fist could test his own strength. He saw a fly, and smashed it with his hand. Not even Fray Ling was ready for this.

“The Devil’s Manuscript must be written for Navarro. The broken system we have inherited must be fixed. It must make us all remember who we are.”

“You went all cyborg on us.”

Buzz Eaton’s eye stared me down. As that smell within his nostril gave a slight charge, as if he wasn’t afraid. “ Calm yourself, Andy. Don’t yell, you know how it scratches your voice. You cut up your body. And you’re fine. You just never believed I was in pain. You never saw it. You never saw anyone but yourself. If you had been more careful, you would have understood the violence that happened now. All of us coming together to find our world in a struggling deep state paranoia where we all have our defects become our future. The truth is, our ancestors didn’t fuck up the world, we did. We made this techno hell we complained about. The chips, the way the data moves through me now, makes me remember why I’m not afraid anymore.”

Tilda is ashamed, can’t look at him.

“Why can’t you look at me? Would it have been better if I remained retarded. Unfinished as a human being. I was up so many nights, and if you’re scared of me, I am not scared anymore.”

His red eye disappears. “For one foggy night, I am not afraid anymore.”

Tilda starts to cry. I know where that’s from. I know that he’s still in there, but I’m afraid if I’m too late.

The way we worked almost made the world we sought give this new momentum. It seemed like we would be in Budapest for a while. Like we can’t pretend what just happened. I’m so destroyed. I haven’t slept in over twenty four hours. I try to sleep but I can’t.

Hours. Weeks. Months. I don’t know how long has passed. We see Navarro, as the one piece before armageddon, and the puzzle piece that moves through our coded messages. Without code, we wouldn’t be here. And now, it all makes me sick. But Buzz Eaton is stronger. Only I see no choice. I slip under the knife and become his true equal. Organs being replaced with synthetic oils and meat within me. He’s too strong for me to face on my own. I’m still a woman of course. But I can’t face him without that next upgrade.

I am here, and when I open fire, he welcomes me into his loving embrace. The sparks fly out of the tubes, and we sing through the night with fists punching one another. We scream at one another. Failed promises. Failed mistakes. But we grow tired, as our bodies are pulp.

I pick up the gun and hold it to his head.

“Goodbye, Buzz. I wish I didn’t have to do this.”

“Say the words.”

“I am the trans savior. The scissored philosopher.”