Cyberpunk Apocalypse Issue 1: an Intellectual Property

CYBERPUNK APOCALYPSE Issue 1:

an Intellectual Property

Welcometothe CYBERPUNK APOCALYPSE Issue 1 An intellectual property The Cyberpunk Apocalypse is a new writers’ project in Pittsburgh PA, USA. The project is composed of an event space, a residency program for burgeoning writers, and an open source publication that work together to support a network of creative thinkers, and to incubate positive and inventive ways for existing in times of unprecedented resemblance to the climax of a science fiction novel.

You are currently looking at the first issue of our publication, Welcome to the Cyberpunk Apocalypse: An intellectual property.

We chose this sub-title because the content of this issue predominantly deals with themes of open-source material, intellectual property, and physical property, and also because we feel that it reflects one of the main goals of the greater Cyberpunk Apocalypse project: to create a physical environment that encourages intellectual growth for individuals both within and without its boundaries.

This publication is a product of that physical place, and by reading these words you have been inducted into our network of creative thinkers. If upon finishing this piece of media you find that you desire more information (and we sincerely hope that you do) you can find us at: 5431 Carnegie Street Pittsburgh PA, USA: 15201 Or on the web: CyberpunkApocalypse.com

Apocalypse:

A revealing or revelation; often associated with cataclysmic themes in the Book of Revelation, in which “revelation” and “apocalypse” are used interchangeably.

Cyberpunk:

A term used to refer to people, writings, and objects that embody a mixture of high-tech and low life.

CONTENTS Virtual Philanthropy................................................................01 Sara LaBuff

Fused Plastic: A Medium of the Moment...............................06 Patricia McCloskey

Cleaning Up Your Dirt.............................................................08 Sara LaBuff

The Physical Avatar..................................................................10 Meteor Boy

A Short Rant on Steampunk.....................................................12 Meteor Boy

Build Yourself a Jacob’s Ladder...............................................13 Prof. Offlogic (from Steampunk Magazine)

It Can’t All Be Brass, Dear: Paper Mache in the Modern Home.........20 B. Zedan (from Steampunk Magazine)

Love and Real(ity) Estate.........................................................24 Todd Faltin

Cyberpunk Senior Thesis........................................................26 Ross Rader, Sara LaBuff, Daniel McCloskey, Todd Faultin, Nathan Kukulski

Writing in Code: Fluxus, The Art of Conversation...........................36 Ryan Nadel

Our Planet.................................................................................40 Meteor Boy

VIRTUAL PHILANTHROPY

The typical person from an affluent country refuses to give up his excess, or gives a very small percentage of his excess, in order to quell some of this suffering. He’s just not ready to sacrifice his comfort. The typical person, Singer says, is like the observer of a drowning child who doesn’t save her because he doesn’t want to get his feet wet. Both are aware of life being painfully wrenched from other(s), and both can prevent it without inflicting comparable harm to themselves or anyone else. True, revamping your lifestyle is a tougher sacrifice to make than jumping in a pool with your clothes on, but then, the pain and death that confronts you daily is attacking far more than one child.

If we accept Singer’s argument, morality impels everyone with the means to become a monetary philanthropist, and so something of an ascetic. It shouldn’t be considered especially praiseworthy, he says, to donate the greater part of one’s resources for the benefit of others—just the duty of every able human to do so. Maybe this claim seems too demanding, but Singer isn’t the first to say it. Nearly a hundred years earlier, Andrew Carnegie, in his “Gospel of Wealth” essay, wrote that the wealthy carry a moral responsibility to invest in the good of others rather than in their own luxurious lifestyles. He believed that undoing poverty and contributing to one’s community took precedent over other uses for money.

For his part, Carnegie funded thousands of libraries and founded a number of educational and cultural trusts, as well as some organizations for the facilitation of arguably magnanimous causes like learning and world peace. The benefits he effected didn’t stop with his life either. A man who hasn’t existed for

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ninety years is enabling me to recycle ideas I read in Carnegie Library books. Someone who never heard of a computer or the Internet is making it possible for me to learn about him on Wikipedia and type this sentence.

But before he gave away over $350 million, he had to earn even more. Carnegie did not inherit his wealth; he was the epitome of the American “self-made man.” All his life he maneuvered up capitalist rungs. Finally, ten years after he wrote “Wealth,” he was able to create the largest steel company in the world, only to sell it two years later so that he could devote himself fully to his philanthropic dreams. If Singer’s conception of moral duty leaves any room for an exceptionally moral lifestyle, Carnegie’s fits the bill. Not only did he channel his excess resources toward the benefit of humanity, but he worked years to put himself in a position to do so. In the financial department, Carnegie was a saint.

Sort of. If you count his philanthropic career as penance for his period of self-making (see: donating a library to Johnstown after his yuppie fishing club’s dam broke and flooded the whole city). As a businessman, Carnegie wasn’t losing sleep keeping an eye on meeting others’ needs. In order to secure loads of resources to his name, he employed masses of subordinates to carry the weight. And he wasn’t exactly prioritizing their interests. Arguably, it would be impossible to reach a position like his while continually looking down. And though he tried to distance himself from the violent injustices against Carnegie Steel workers of the infamous Homestead Strike (well, he was out of the country), it was his wage cuts that instigated the strike in the first place.

The thing is, Carnegie’s philanthropy wasn’t penance. He wasn’t particularly worried about paying his workers enough money so they could eat. Unlike Singer’s ideal, Carnegie didn’t use most of his money to meet the physical needs of the poor on a large or lasting scale (although he did fund trusts for public baths and child welfare in his hometown). But Carnegie would have argued that he gave gifts more valuable than health- and even life-preservation to the public. As he wrote in a note to himself, “Man does not live on bread alone.... It is the mind that makes the body rich.” He sought to wipe out cultural and intellectual poverty rather than physical poverty—or rather, he sought to ease the cultural and intellectual suffering that so often accompanies physical poverty.

Today a new brand of philanthropist is undoing intellectual poverty too, but, unlike Carnegie, she’s not spending the greater part of her life building herself up (and putting others down) before looking to others’ needs. She’s not even using money as a means to do it. The means she shares with society are ideas and information in the form of what are called “free cultural works”. A free cultural work is any creative output available to the public for use, study, application of knowledge derived there from, copying and redistributing, changing, and

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distributing such changed versions.

Perhaps the most widely known and used examples of free cultural works are (most of) the articles on Wikipedia, which most anyone in the world who has access to the site can edit and immediately post. You probably know this. You may have even edited a Wikipedia article. And though your revisions may have only survived a short while on the article’s main page due to subsequent peer editing, they will survive indefinitely on the “History” page attached to the article.

What you may be less familiar with, unless you’re part of the (hopefully) growing computer nerd community, is freelibre/open source software, or FLOSS (the platform that supports Wikipedia, MediaWiki, is an example of FLOSS).

Free software carries the same requisites as all free cultural works, so that software put out under a FLOSS license allows any user to change and redistribute it however she chooses.

This method of release preserves and encourages further development of research and tools that may have otherwise been lost permanently behind bars to outside interference (e.g., improvement). It also subjects software proofs to worldwide evaluation so that errors come to light more often and more quickly. Thus, FLOSS philanthropists lessen waste of research (in many cases supported by individuals’ tax funds or consumer dollars) and avoid the various harms connected to software inaccuracies.

Nor does the work of FLOSS software developers and editors stay within the bounds of the computer nerd community.

There are FLOSS programs for word processing, image editing, and countless other tasks that “normal” people use computers for regularly. Software has taken root beneath an increasing number of human lives, and its tendrils are creeping into every corner of society. It is shaping the greater community of humanity without us knowing. Such a consideration might inspire us to take a class in computers. Or it might inspire a little gratitude toward those who offer the fruits of their cerebral labor for peer review and revamping.

Unlike the avenues to education that Carnegie opened to the public, the information provided by free cultural workers is something of a sacrifice, an act of humility. Surrendering their hard-earned ideas to an unknown number of unknown others, they forfeit any say over how their work is applied or “corrected” or re-

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released. They don’t put their name on every good they achieve (at least they don’t require anyone else to put it there), and they don’t thread their resources through eyes pointed unblinkingly at their own intentions. And they don’t (typically) spend the greater part of their lives amassing the resources they plan to share with the world, either. That’s not to say that free cultural workers don’t profit personally from their efforts. FLOSS, at least, is by no means incompatible with commercialization. But the giving is more of a cooperatively developmental one; there is interplay between givers and receivers, and often a continual switching of roles.

The philanthropy of free cultural workers isn’t the handing down of possessions from the more privileged to the less. They have taken the elitism out of charity, and the egoism, to boot.

There is no real ownership, no true possession, of the ideas flowing through and between them and us and them. In a society where most thinkers slap copyrights on any “original” or potentially moneymaking ideas, free cultural workers live as if it’s just common decency to share them with the public. And since they are part of the public—since the others they benefit are increasingly less other than themselves—they grow as they nurture the community.

By dedicating their lives’ works to helping others in this way, free cultural workers meet Singer’s rigorous moral standards as nearly as Carnegie did—bypasses them, even. Underlying the philosophies of both Singer and Carnegie is the presupposition that money translates directly (or at least easily) into help. This

claim is dubious at best, and Carnegie’s life isn’t an isolated suggestion that money corrupts. The free cultural worker’s donation of ideas instead of money, then, may be a significant part of what makes her philanthropy more, well, philanthropic than Carnegie’s. And although she, like Carnegie, doesn’t aim to eliminate the same evils that Singer deems of foremost attention, ideas and ingenuity can manifest themselves in the form of meeting others’ physical needs as well (see: Food Not Bombs). In the end, whether money more readily generates food for the needy body and mind or confused moral priorities for its holder is a toss-up, but the free cultural worker forgoes, if nothing else, Carnegie’s mistake of isolating himself from his beneficiaries with a barrier of bills.

Does this mean that Carnegie’s style of philanthropy is outmoded? Downright selfish? Sort of. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t, or shouldn’t, invest what money you have in easing others’ suffering. It doesn’t even mean that you shouldn’t try to make money in order to do good for your community.

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If you’ve got a knack for posturing the imaginary bones of our economy, there are ways to do it without compromising your goodwill in the ways that Carnegie did. There are even ways to capitalize on free cultural works, so that you could simultaneously invest ideas into your community and generate funds for future investment into the common good.

The only problem left for us, then, is which common good to channel our philanthropic resources toward. Should we, as Singer wants, work to prevent physical ailments and death? Or should we, like Carnegie, work for the movement of cultural and intellectual enrichment? Or perhaps combat some other perceived ill? Opponents of Singer have pointed out that, unlike the person who witnesses one drowning child, the person who knows of millions of suffering people all over the world cannot possibly save them all, and therefore cannot possibly be expected to try. Likewise, it’s overwhelming for one person to try to dedicate himself to eliminating all the injustices he is aware of. There are too many varieties and too many causes.

But each of us is not called to be the savior of the rest. If we, like the free cultural worker, dissolve our own needs and desires and loves and works into our community, we won’t have to worry about collapsing from the exhaustion of investing ourselves in others. Our philanthropy itself will sustain us.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: “Andrew Carnegie.” Carnegie Council: The Voice for Ethics in International Policy. 16 January 2007. http:cceia.org/people/data/andrew_carnegie.html.

“Andrew Carnegie.” Wikipedia. 30 September 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_carnegie.

Carnegie, Andrew. “Wealth.” North American Review, vol. 148, no. 391 ( June 1889) pp. 653-665.

“Definition.” Definition of Free Cultural Works. 24 June 2008. http://freedomdefined.org/Definition.

Singer, Peter. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Philosophy of Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1972) pp. 229-243 [revised ed.].

Wheeler, David A. “High Assurance (for Security or Safety) and FreeLibre/ Open Source Software (FLOSS)...with Lots on Formal Methods/ Software Verification.” 2 June 2006. http://www.dwheeler.com.

“Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia. 4 August 2008. http://en.wikipeda.org/wiki/Wikipedia.

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KNOW YOUR RESOURCES While doing research for her essay “Virtual Philanthropy” Sara LaBuff pointed out that there was an odd presumption in the literature that you could fix any problem by throwing money at it. It seemed obvious to us that the world is a little more complicated than this—that money doesn’t translate directly into solutions, even if you can get it into the hands of the right people. It could be argued that the world is so large and varied that there is no one solution to all the bountiful troubles of the world (even one as popular as money tossing).

In the absence of a panacea, the Cyberpunk Apocalypse would like to offer its best advice: stay creative, stay flexible, and know your available resources.

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FUSED PLASTIC

A medium of the moment Etsylabs.blogspot.com has a tutorial for fusing flimsy plastic shopping bags together to make a sheet of tyvek-like material. Briefly, they recommend using six layers of flimsy plastic from store bags. Neatly cut off the top handles of the bags, then across the bottoms. On an ironing board or other suitable surface lay a sheet of parchment or regular copy paper, then the six layers of plastic, then another layer of paper. Run an iron (set on rayon or a cool temperature) over the plastic for no more than 15 seconds.

Never let the iron rest in any one place or you may melt a hole. Lift the paper to see if the plastic is fused. If it is, then peel back the paper on each side. You can cut shapes from different colors of bags to make patterns, and the finished sheet takes well to permanent marker.

The Etsy web site sells numerous items sewn from these plastic sheets. However, realize that sewing and therefore seams are unnecessary. You can wrap the layers of paper and plastic around a 3-dimensional object ironing each surface to form a finished product. I cut and stacked cardboard to the length, width, and height of my son’s cell phone. I wrapped it and fused the plastic in the shape of the phone, at the same time fusing a braid of plastic to the back like a watch chain.

The phone no longer hits the ground every time he dismounts his bike. http://etsylabs.blogspot.com/2007/05/long-overdue-fusing-plastic-bag.html

(Since writing this article Patt McCloskey has continued to experiment with this material, and has used it to repair a broken water pump.)

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Cleaning up your DIRT.

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KNOW YOUR RESOURCES

You may know convincing reasons for starting a

personal garden, and you may live in an old building near a busy road. Probably your soil is contaminated with a lot of undesirables. Here is a way to sterilize it:

01 Take a pan full of soil.

02 Put a potato in the middle of it.

03 Put it in a hot oven, hot enough to cook a potato.

04 Cook the soil until the potato is cooked.

05 Eat the potato. (The potato is just an indicator of how

long to cook your soil, and an immediate reward for your efforts. It’s not a sponge for the soil contaminants.)

TITLE OF STORY GOES HERE. TITLE OF STORY This is also a way to kill desirables in your soil, but they will find their way back in quickly.

Very quickly if you have tea with your soil, and often.

Here is how to do that:

01 Get a small amount of compost. You have a compost bin, right? You should have a compost bin.

02 Add some water to the compost to make what some call “compost tea”.

03 Drench your soil in the compost tea.

You can drink tea, too. Different from compost tea, though.

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KNOW YOUR RESOURCES

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the

PHYSICAL AVATAR Idea: putting a PDA equipped with WiFi and Skype on a

remote-control car.

If the individual who is skyping through the PDA can also control the car, a more interactive portal into the distant physical world is available to the user. This would give the skyper the ability to mingle, which would be useful in situations such as remotely attending art openings or various conventions.

Of course, the more advanced the capability of the car, the cooler stuff the skyper could do. Anyone familiar with any sort of science fiction knows that the next step is robotic skype avatars of all kinds, that exist for different types of interaction, available for rent in different cities around the globe. Instead of wasting resources traveling, you could teleport by effectively moving your consciousness through the body of a robotic avatar.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves—the next step never comes before the first step. I don’t think this is beyond us kids’ grasp. If anybody thinks they can build us a prototype avatar (or rustle one up on the internet), keep us in the loop.

I’ve always wanted to teleport.

(While working on the layout for this publication I found it in an issue of Make Magazine, sitting on top of the toilet in Bill’s bathroom. A guy by the name of Marque Cornblatt made the kind of device I describe above in the early ’90s, using AV equipment, and upgraded it more recently to run via WiFi. The best part is that Mr. Cornblatt has put open source instructions on how to make your own physical avatar at: makezine.com/16/sparky Let’s hear it for Marque Cornblatt: creative thinker, inventor, and intellectual philanthropist.)

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A SHORT RANT ON STEAMPUNK (If you don’t know what ‘steampunk’ means, don’t fret. Just go to www.steampunkmagazine.com and start reading.)

About eight months into my search for a home for the Cyberpunk Apocalypse, people started to ask how involved I was with “those steampunk kids.” I had no idea what a steampunk was, so I didn’t know what to tell them. After doing some research I found that there was some overlap between steampunk tendencies and the concept of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse, but they are not identical. So allow me to take this opportunity to do a little compare/contrast: To start, we both have roots in cyberpunk fiction, we both promote a creative and hands-on relationship toward our possessions, and we both promote a re-thinking of how we live in this modern world.

A major difference between the steampunk movement and the concept of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse is that steampunks are interested in Victorian era and steam technologies, while the Cyberpunk Apocalypse is interested in sustainability and trash technologies. Sometimes there is an overlap here as well. When we moved into the Cyberpunk Apocalypse’s home base there was an old foot-pump Singer sewing machine that had been converted into a saw, with the use of some wood and a hacksaw blade. This is both an excellent example of a creative use of pre-electric technology, and a sustainable piece of trash-tech. On the other hand, a steampunk revamping of a computer would likely involve encasing it in brass and wood, while a computer I would be excited about is one that uses the cardboard box that the computer parts came in as its case.

Another difference is that the concept of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse inherently entails a little more futurology than steampunk and little less fantasy (but just a little). The concept of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse also focuses on developing and understanding a complicated and changing world, which is an aspect less present in the steampunk movement.

All this being said, perhaps the biggest difference is that steampunk is a movement and the Cyberpunk Apocalypse is a concept. You can be a steampunk or you can not be a steampunk. If you believe in the Cyberpunk Apocalypse then everybody is a citizen of it, whether they know it or not. When it comes down to it, the Cyberpunk Apocalypse is a way of seeing this world that focuses on problems and creative solutions, and when it comes to inventing creative solutions you have to hand it to the steampunk movement, which posses some excellent citizens of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse in its ranks.

It is because of the compatibility of portions of the steampunk movement with what we are doing here that we have decided to steal some articles from SteamPunk Magazine. SteamPunk Magazine is an excellent publication, and A SteamPunk’s Guide to the Apocalypse is part of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse’s permanent book collection here at the space.

I hope they like us as much as we like them.

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The following article was excerpted from Steampunk Magazine, Issue Four: Our Lives as Fantastic as Any Fiction!

The Good Doctor is puttering about in his workroom when Igor dashes in.

“Doctor!” gasps Igor.

“What is it, Igor?”

“It’s the peasants!” Igor gibbers, gesticulating in the general direction of the front of the castle and the road leading up from the village below. “The peasants are revolting!”

“And what else would the peasants be if not revolting?”

“Doctor, unless you think it likely that the village populace are heading up the road en masse and prepared for a nocturnal hay harvest, then I suggest we quickly pack your work and head out the back way!”

“What? Oh, it’s another ‘torches and pitchfork’ parade, is it? Fear not, I have a plan!”

“I’ll bring the carriage around back!”

“Not necessary, Igor! First, switch the nameplates on two rooms: swap “Conservatory” for “Laboratory” and we’re halfway there. Then, go down to the storeroom and return with whatever old jars and vials you may find handy, and bring up the ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ apparatus”.

“Doctor, what are you talking about?”

“The good people of ‘Shtuppstein’ are looking to inspect the laboratory of a ‘mad scientist’. We can help them find it by displaying a Jacob’s Ladder, as I believe that few Shtuppsteiners could read the nameplates, could they? They’ll sniff around in the ‘lab’, look at some vials of colored water, pet that basket of kittens we rescued last week, and find nothing to shock their delicate peasant sensibilities... provided they don’t get touchyfeely with the Ladder, that is. In the end they’ll be apologizing for their intrusion and then all go back home, and we can get back to our more sinister work... in peace!

BUILD YOURSELF A JACOB’S LADDER WITHOUT BURNING

YOUR HOUSE DOWN IN THE PROCESS written and diagrammed by Prof. Offlogic

(ONE WOULD HOPE)

A “Jacob’s Ladder” is essentially a set of electrodes with an electric arc cycling from the bottom to the top. Since electric current is lazy, the arc will start at the point of least resistance, near the bottom where the electrodes are closest. Once the arc starts, the air conducting the arc is both ionized and heated by the current. Ionized air is more conductive than non-ionized air, and heated air tends to rise, so the arc will rise with it. The electrodes slope away from each other, so eventually the gap is too wide to support the arc. It re-forms at the bottom again, where the going is easier, and the cycle repeats. It is truly a wonder to behold, like watching the Devil’s own yo-yo!

Although a Ladder serves no direct scientific purpose, having one is a requirement for recognition as a “mad scientist” (the preferred term is “ethically-undaunted science worker”) and it is the internationally recognized symbol of “forbidden science in progress.” Having one in operation greatly facilitates engaging the services of reliable resurrectionists, infernal device contractors, and members of the International Congress of Hunchbacked Henchmen.

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YOU ARE WARNED YOU ARE WARNED YOU ARE WARNED This project involves high voltage and AC line power. This how-to isn’t intended to be a college course so beware! These directions do cover making two types of Ladders. Be careful, and stay safe by following some minimal precautions: — Never work on any mains-powered device with power applied.

— Make solid electrical connections and insulate them.

— It is a good idea to work with a friend.

— Evaluate both your level of expertise and your karmic burden before attempting this or any other electrical project.

— If you have any doubts at all regarding safety stop immediately and get help from a technical expert.

Remember these three primary points when building or operating a Jacob’s Ladder: — High voltage really hurts! Think ‘bug zapper’, and remember that you are the bug! Probably not enough current to stop your heart outright, but the arc will definitely burn you and make your thrash in an uncoordinated way, subjecting you to other injuries as you collide with walls, floor, other equipment, and people.

— High voltage burns and ignites stuff! This is a big spark plug, so do not power it up around flammable vapors (paint fumes, natural gas, anything that smells like airplane cement, nail polish remover, gasoline, spirits, etc).

— High voltage kills electronics! Many modern appliances, from coffee makers to cellular phones to I-pods, contain delicate circuitry, and one taste of the Ladder (even filtered through your body), will like as not render them “food for the land-fill.”

the PRE-PACKAGED SOLUTION (facing) The easiest, most basic system requires only a neon sign transformer and some insulated mounting blocks. It’s so easy it’s almost cheating, but it is a bit bulky. eBay has a couple of neon sign supply sellers at any given time, but you will need a “neon sign transformer” not a “neon sign power supply”. If it says “UL-2161” (a safety requirement that, among other things, keeps it from making an arc) it is of no use for Ladder makers.

I managed to score three Transco #4B15N3-02 transformers weighing over 20 pounds each on eBay. Caveat emptor: “removed from working equipment” doesn’t mean they were careful when doing it, and they all had damaged insulators. It was nothing a couple of 2 inch PVC couplers filled with Bondo couldn’t fix (a whole other article in itself).

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Next you’ll need some electrodes and an insulating base to hold them. I used ceiling tile hanger wire for the electrodes. For the base, I was lucky enough to have a weird looking chunk of cast urethane lying around, but a block of wood will work nicely (dry wood, varnished is best). Attach the electrodes to the base in a manner that makes it easy to adjust them for maximum effect (with the power off, remember!). Connect the output leads from the transformer to opposite electrodes using highvoltage wire if you have any; I didn’t, so I made due by keeping the output leads short, separated from all other conductive objects, and clear of probing fingers.

For proper operation, a Ladder requires a location that is level, dry, and sheltered from drafts or breezes. Level because the electrodes need to be where the arc wants to go (up), dry to keep you from frying yourself or other, and sheltered because drafts and breezes will try to carry the hot gasses in the arc away, spoiling your fun. You might keep kids and pets out of the area as well, since they tend to lunge at things.

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When you switch on the power to the transformer for the first time, one of the following will likely happen: — No arc at all.

— A continous arc that just stays put between the electrodes.

Remember how the electrode mounting needed to be easily adjustable? Here’s where that part comes in. You will need to iteratively: — Remove power to the transformer.

— Adjust the distance/angle between the electrodes.

— Reapply power and observe outcome of adjustment.

— Repeat until the desired results are achieved.

To deal with the first problem, a rule of thumb is that electricity will arc about 1/10th of an inch for every 1100 volts. For my transformer, rated at 12,500-16,000 volts, I positioned the electrodes just a bit further than the arc would theoretically jump, by drilling two holes about 2 inches apart, attached the wires at the base of each electrode, then bent the electrodes in to form a “wasp-waist” configuration. I dealt with the second problem by adjusting the angle of the electrodes above the “wasp-waist” more and more toward the vertical until the spark began to rise up between the electrodes.

My neon transformer Ladder throws off a very noisy 3-5 inch arc at the top of a pair of 4 foot electrodes. I christened it “Herr Baron” (it just seemed fitting).

Unfortunately Herr Baron is just too much power for use inside. For that niche, we can turn to the second, more accessible design...

it came from the SALVAGE YARD... and the HARDWARE STORE (above) I came across a very simple means of producing a Jacob’s Ladder, built around an incandescent lamp dimmer (600 Watt, like you’d replace a lightswitch with) and an automotive ignition coil (mine was from a 1990 Ford Escort, your mileage may vary). The dimmer is wired to an AC cord in a manner identical to its normal use. The output of the dimmer is connected to the ignition coil through a capacitor (details below). The capacitor blocks direct current, but allows pulses from the dimmer through, giving little kicks to the primary of the ignition coil, which multiplies the primary voltage hundreds of times and puts it out to the electrodes.

The capacitor needs to be at least 1uF with a working voltage of at least 220 VAC. The capacitor must be non-polar, rated for an AC voltage of at least double the AC voltage in your area (triple even better). Since I’m in the US of A, standard mains power is 120 VAC. Now, you can spend $50 on a big motor start capacitor, or $10 ordering a 4.7uF/600VAC poly cap from an electronics

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distributor, but if you are lucky enough to have a real hardware store (not any kind of “depot”, but a dusty old independent store) in your area, you might be lucky enough to find “ceiling fan speed control capacitors”. I think mine cost $6, cash and carry.

Ceiling fan caps are usually two capacitors in one, with one input wire shared between a 1.5uF and a 3uF capacitor, each with separate output wires. These are perfect because you can connect the two output wires together to make a 4.5uF capacitor rated at 250VAC. I built this smaller Ladder inside some 4” diameter PVC drain pipe.

Most electrical connections were made using “peanuts” (or “wire nuts”), though the Ford Escort ignition coil did require some crimp-on connectors to make connections. The highvoltage output from the ignition coil was a socket close to1/4 inch in diameter, so I coiled a bare copper wire around a #10 machine screw and forced it in. The other end of the high voltage lead and a connection to safety ground were attached to two “banana plug” terminals I’d mounted through the square

wrench-end of a 4 inch PVC clean-out plug cemented inside a 4 inch-to-3.5 inch PVC reducer. The smaller end of the reducer fits nicely inside the 4 inch PVC body of the Ladder.

For added protection against internal arcing I enclosed the high voltage lead in a good packing of “Bondo” glass-filled body putty, which also anchored the ignition coil to the underside of the clean-out plug.

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Once the base assembly was complete, I made electrodes with 3/32 inch bare brass welding rods. A 90 degree bend about an inch from the end of each of them allowed them to stand upright after being screwed down into the banana plug terminals. A 4 inch diameter glass candle chimney picked up from a resale shop for $1 completed the ensemble.

The completed assembly was finished in hammered bronze using Rustoleum “Hammered Paint for Plastic”.

OTHER OPTIONS It is possible to construct a small Ladder powered by a “flyback transformer”, but the process is somewhat involved for those not already electronic tinkerers.

Using the flyback as a source of high voltage makes for a very compact unit, though bulky heat-sinks are required for the driving electronics. Due to the high resonant frequency of a flyback (15-16KHz), I found the audio appeal of these lacking when compared to the 60HZ models... just not enough crackle to suit my taste.

REFERENCES Sam Barros (the mac daddy of high voltage) self-resonant flyback driver (and lots of cool other stuff): http://www.powerlabs.org/flybackdriver.htm Don Klipstein has one of the most comprehensive collections of high voltage information out there: http://members.misty.com/don/igcoilhv.html The dimmer/ignition coil idea came from Snock’s High Voltage Page: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/lab/5322/simpleign.htm

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The following article was excerpted from Steampunk Magazine, Issue Three: The Sky is Falling!

It Can’t All Be Brass, Dear

Paper mache in the modern home written and illustrated by B. Zedan

Paper has proved its enormous strength by resisting the great power of gunpowder in rockets, cases, and is now used extensively for water-pipes, lined with a bituminous coating. And when, finally, its beauty is gone and its strength is consumed, the refuse still serves in the untiring hands of Industry, and rises once more to renewed beauty and usefulness; for the scanty remains, mere stray bits of paper even, are carefully gathered, stamped into a paste, pressed into shape, saturated with oil and glue, and finally finished off by an artist’s hand into the thousand beautiful forms which we call papier-mâché. Tiny boxes embossed with classic patterns, and gigantic house-ornaments rivalling ancient marbles, come forth from the despised fragments; the same past makes the heads of insipid dolls and the works of art that adorn many a lordly hall.

Thus it is that paper is one of the powers that rule the day; giving work to the lowest and to the highest, drying the tears of the poor by easy employment, and enabling the genius of the artist to mould the loftiest conceptions in pliant material.

-De Vere, Schele “A Paper on Paper.” Putnam’s Magazine. April, 1868.

We live in an age of plastic. From our perspective, the materials available to the Victorians were simple things; glass, wood, metals like brass and an exciting new invention called “vulcanised rubber.” In adapting and re-imagining the Victorian era to suit steampunk needs, those materials are what we turn to for historical accuracy and to achieve the right feel to a piece of work. There are, of course, drawbacks—cost and weight being most obvious. That metal, wood and glass could be prohibitive materials was not news to the Victorians.

Enter papier-mâché, which is literally translated as “chewed paper.” A favoured substrate for the popular art of black lacquer work, called “Japanning”1, in the last half of the 1800’s innumerable applications for papier-mâché were in use. Of course, there were a multitude of trinkets and decorative objects, ranging from jewelry boxes and dolls to mirror frames,

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clock faces and architectural ornament. Beyond such fancies, papier-mâché was brought into honest service as a lightweight and portable roofing material2, tables, and as a key part to an improved process of casting iron type for printing3. Papiermâché could imitate anything, cheaply and easily: In the same articles it can be made, if required, far lighter than plaster, terra-cotta, metal, or even wood. Neither heat nor cold affects it; it can be sawed, fitted, nailed or screwed, quickly adjusted or removed, gilded, painted, marbled or bronzed. It can be made as light as cork, or as heavy as stone; never discolours by rust, as will iron; is not affected by temperature or oxygen, as is even zinc.4 And it was cheap to produce. Papier-mâché was the plastic of the 19th century.

How a relatively flimsy material such as paper can be made water-proof, fire-proof and incredibly strong is a surprisingly simple process. In sheet papier-mâché, absorbent sheets of paper were layered into moulds with a flour-glue paste. The moulds were then put in a “hot room” and dried at 200˚ fahrenheit. The formed pieces were then saturated with oil and put back in the hot room until dry. The final step of soaking the papier-mâché in oil waterproofed it. A cheaper method was to pulp paper scrap with water, mix it with paste and press it into moulds5. Extra strength for structural elements was added by forming the papier-mâché around wire mesh and a piece could be fire-proofed by adding clay, borax, or phosphate of soda to the pulp6. Once formed, sanded and smoothed, it could be decorated after any fashion. Popular finishes were black lacquer and enamel work with embedded shells, bronze painting, and faux marble.

What use now does papier-mâché have for the steampunk practitioner, beyond novelty? For one, papier-mâché can replace the plastic parts that sneak into our work. It’s malleable, cheap and easy to use in the home, without the need of specialised tools. It is a fantastic use of scrap paper and old newspapers, is lightweight and a historically accurate material. For every reason that the Victorians chose to employ papier-mâché in Industry, so should we.

Possibly, as a recent writer remarks, “when the forests of the globe are regarded as curiosities, and the remaining groves are preserved with the same care that has guarded historic trees, the cast-off rags of mankind, and the otherwise useless weeds, reeds, and grasses of the marsh and swamp, will take the place of timber in construction, and many will welcome the change, if for nothing else than it will obviate much of the nuisance of frequent repaintings.

-”Practical Chemistry and the Arts”. Boston Journal of Chemistry and Popular Science Review. August, 1882.

The basic ingredients to creating papier-mâché at home are paper and glue. That’s it. For paper, newspaper is most commonly used because it is easily available. Textured or

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coloured papers work wonderfully as a final decorative layer, instead of paint. Many water-based glues work well in papiermâché; watered down PVA or white glue, wallpaper paste and flour glue are the most popular options. Pulp papier-mâché is available at most craft stores, but the modified sheet papiermâché process, using layered strips of paper, is the sturdiest and most malleable.

The overall process of creating an object out of strip papier mâché is as follows— 1. Decide what you’re going to make. A box? A goggle cup? A decorative cane topper? A mask?

2. Build the framework or mould for what you are making.

Wire, mesh screen, cardboard of any type, modeling clay and even crumpled newspaper work very well as armatures and frames. Plaster or any non-absorbent shape works well as a mould. Keep in mind these questions: How light do I want the object to be? How sturdy? Will there be moving parts or pieces that need to fit together snugly? Experimentation with different forms is key. Everybody has a different way of going about things, you must figure out what works best for you and your needs.

3. Gather your materials. Paper, glue and a stiff brush for working the papier-mâché into tight spots are about all you need. It can help to take the time now to tear your paper into strips and small sheets. Consider the object you are creating, will narrow strips work best, or larger shapes?

4. Begin layering your paper, dipping or brushing each piece with your glue. Strips of papier-mâché, when layered perpendicular to one another, create great strength; topping a base of such layers with larger, smoothed, sheets can make for a finished look that is very strong.

5. Let the object dry between layers, or every other layer. This allows everything to dry evenly, avoiding buckling and mouldering. A warm oven, around 200˚-250˚ Fahrenheit can be used to speed up the process, but direct heat can warp some pieces, as it dries them quickly, but unevenly.

6. When finished, if the piece needs to be water or weather proofed, brush three or four coats of linseed oil on it and bake the object at 200˚-250˚ Fahrenheit until dry.

7. Uneven spots can be smoothed with spackle, and the object sanded, before applying a primer coat of paint.

8. All that is left now is decoration, a process with as many options as you desire.

a BASIC RECIPE for FLOUR GLUE

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This glue is perfect to use in papier-mâché and decoupage, or anywhere you’ll need strength. This is just one version of the many flour glue recipes out there, experiment and look around for what works best for you. The basic ratio is 1 part flour to 2 to 4 parts water, mixed and added to 20 parts just boiled water.

• Something to mix in

• A saucepan • 2-4 parts room temperature water (1/2 cup) • 1 part flour (1/8 cup) • A fork to mix with • 20 parts water (2 1/2 cup) just boiled Set the 2 & 1/2 cups water to boil. While it’s heating, mix together the 1/2 cup water and 1/8 cup flour, dissolving any lumps. Once your saucepan is boiling, take it off the heat and add the water and flour mix from earlier. Stir well. Do remember take it off the heat when doing mixing the flour in, or you will end up with dumplings.

Simmer your flour glue until it is a thick, almost mucus-like consistency. Let cool to bathwater temperature and use. Flour glue penetrates the paper best when warm, so store any leftover in the fridge and warm it back up in a saucepan when you need it again. Adding oil of cloves, a natural fungicide, will keep it lasting longer.

A fantastic source for those interested in the many applications of papier-mâché is The Art and Craft of Papier Mâché, by Juliet Bawden.

NOTES: 1-Ripley, George. The New American Cyclopedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1860.

2-“Notes and News.” Science: An Illustrated Journal. May, 1889.

3-Partridge, C.S. Stereotyping, the Papier Mache Process.

Chicago: Mize & Stearns Press, 1892.

4-“Practical Chemistry and the Arts.” Boston Journal of Chemistry and Popular Science Review. August, 1882.

5-Urbino, Madame L. B., Prof. Henry Day, et al. Art Recreations.

Boston: J. E. Tilton and Company, 1863.

6-Thorne, M.A. Robert. Fugitive Facts: An Epitome of General Information. New York: A. L. Burt, 1890.

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Love and Real(ity) Estate

I don’t talk to girls, which is kind of why I don’t call the

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numbers on those For Sale signs in the windows of marketable homes and storefronts. Two different levels are on display here, and I fall in love with each of them, sometimes several times a week, by the day, or even hourly.

My cyber(pop)punk apocalypse begins with imaginative speculation: I wonder if this girl wants to hold my hand and listen to MxPx; or, in the other realm, I wonder if this house wants me to strip its lead paint while I look hot in protective breathing equipment.

I fall in love with property now more than with girls. Dan and I go out cruising and perusing through abandoned business districts and the nearby residential areas, but he’s got a girlfriend and I don’t. He calls all the numbers on the placards in windows; I stalk the properties through their Howard Hanna profiles and on the county property site. We talk about an intimate future that may always be just out of our present reach.

I don’t really want to be in love with girls, and if I wait long enough before saying anything to them, then some impossibleto-ignore flaw is always revealed: She has a boyfriend; the roof is made of tarp; she doesn’t like chickpeas; there’s a basement full of raccoons in this one; she likes Saves the Day; there’s an inescapable tax lien from the DPW, $75,000 worth of mortgage leftovers that smell like old lasagna, and an ex-porno theater around the corner.

Every experience urges me onward and embarrasses me publicly at the same time. It’s kind of like walking through Frick Park while holding hands with a girl on the right and walking a magnificent, well-behaved Great Dane on leash to the left. We round the bend and the sun drops from the sky like a head from atop shoulders or the tower from Allegheny’s Carnegie library. There’s now a cold, lifeless manikin hand where once there were callus-free palms and fingers with endearingly dirty nails; and the Great Dane on the other side has somehow morphed into The Devil’s Horse, carrying his liquor in full tow, staring you down with a Massive Horse Face that could turn the best Kombucha into a pint of Late August’s Dumpster Juice.

I experience unrequited love every time I remodel a superficial storefront with my mind. I fall in and out of love nearly every time I see a new girl. And I think I’m never getting married, for fear of commitment basks through long hours of pointed exploration and on top of longer days of research.

Speculate the market? Get approved for loans? I just wanted to replace the shingles, hold hands, and get high on your roof.

posted by vegbreath at 7:08 AM 25

One sunny afternoon several contributing writers of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse voluntarily stayed in a small room with no windows, reading graduate theses in the creative writing department of a local University. Unfortunately, this was not a very pleasant experience, but it did inspired our writers to produce their own “senior thesis” with plans to spiral-bind the completed manuscript and hide amongst those dusty volumes. The idea being, that if future snoops couldn’t find anything brilliant and inspiring, at least they might find something fun.

The following story is representative of this goal. No one person wrote two consecutive chapters, and no one, upon receiving the manuscript was allowed to edit, or alter any previous entries. We hope you find this experiment to be enjoyably, fun, or (at the very least) funny.

CYBERPUNK SENIOR THESIS an experiment in writing shitty fiction CHAPTER I —It’s a small room with no circulation—for air or for the stale stacks of paper that prove to you (without a doubt) that writing can be learned but not taught.

MFA manuscripts dress the hard wood table and you realize that a good book (which this (and all of these) is (are) not) is the only real diploma for a fictioneer. These stories are boring and unrealistic. After all, the real world is exciting, and you promise yourself that if you make it out of this alive, you’ll write a completely realistic semi-autobiographical piece about your life as a freelance writer and DOG CATCHER (gotta pay those bills).

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It’s DOG CATCHING that got you in this pathetic little shithole up five floors in the world’s second tallest educational building. Some kid wanted to get out of taking his finals and released a pack of chimera mutant mutts in the building. Not the store-bought variety either. Part Pit Bull, part snake, and part imagination, most of ‘em have at least two heads to bite you with, and their claws cut deep gouges into the solid stone steps.

It shouldn’t have been be a big deal, but you came underprepared.

Your flamethrower’s out of juice, you only have 14 irradiated hollow tipped tracking bullets which you saved because they cost a hundred times more than they ought to and you’re low on cash.

Five mutts are still out there and walking. Your heartburn was making you regret the chili-soy dog you had for breakfast but it’s wearing off. You’re a professional—you can do this. You take out your taser and put it on its max setting, grab your collar-cuffs and chain. You’ve decided to do this the “humane” way—It’s cheaper. You take a deep breath, warm up with a little tai chi, and kick open the door.

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CHAPTER II There is no explanation.

A thick fog and the sound of the ocean’s surf fills the corridors.

A figure stands in front of the elevators. You approach it cautiously and your grip tightens around the taser. You’re taking tiny steps, making sure to approach silently, but you know the figure hears you. It is a woman. A tall woman without a neck.

You stop.

Her neck grows, slowly expands like the bellows of an accordion.

“Where have you come from?” she asks in a chorus of voices.

Her neck shrinks and again, it rises and expands.

“Do you want to live?” she asks. The sound of the surf seems so close now. Behind you.

You do not know what to say.

“Take my hand,” she says. She reaches out and instead of fingers, anchovy growths, tentacles twice as long as any finger. “Take it.

There is no time.”

You hear barking. You hear thunder. The surf.

You reach out. Her tentacles wrap around your hand, tightly.

CHAPTER III And even more tightly when you tase her voice(s)box. This is the opposite effect you were shooting for.

“So it seems,” she choruses (though the choir seems somewhat diminished), “you do not want to live.”

You still do not know what to say. You weigh your options: 1) Apologize for the attack, excuse it as panicked indecision, and inquire as to the woman’s origin and intent.

2) Come up with a biting retort.

3) Maintain silence and hope she reads it as cool unconcern.

4) Peel her fishfingers from your hand and run.

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4 seems like the obvious choice, but where to run? Where are you? Did the Cathedral of Learning turn into a beach?

Are there still chimeras running at you? What percentage imagination are they? You make a mental note to investigate your surroundings once you’ve made this decision.

2 also seems good--not practical, perhaps, but gratifying. No, this is no time for indulgence, and besides, you’ll probably botch it. Your capacity for clever discourse is buried beneath a river of hormones at the moment. In fact, let’s rule out talking altogether. Scratch 1. 3 it is.

The woman is gone. And, as if she had been holding a conch shell to your ear, so is the sound of the ocean. You would have noticed that, though. Maybe you can’t hear the ocean anymore because the barking has gotten a lot louder. Or closer.

You look to your left. There’s a snake-dog sprint-slithering towards your foot and another mid-bound, its three faces pointed straight at you. It is three, two seconds away. The door latch behind you won’t move. Cursing fate for designating you a key holder rather than a knock knower, you plunge your hand into your pocket as you fall.

CHAPTER IV Ah, a pocketful of Universal Dog Treats. Some say that diamonds are a girl’s best friend—but forget all that poppycock.

Those clichés are only truth for the people who can afford them, or strive hard enough to realistically fake it. Unruly dog-leopard-snake-creature beasts know not the language that birthed everyman’s token response—Dogs: Can’t live with ‘em, can’t avoid stepping in their poop in the hallway after the new roommate neglected taking his parka-liner pooch for a walk.

You know the saying, right?

Universal Dog Treats, No Bake Version–Author Unknown One pound of fresh, never frozen ground beef Vegetable Oil Two cups of Vital Wheat Gluten One quarter cup of shredded, fresh raw ginger root A dozen garlic bulbs Two cups of oats Begin by pulling out your garlic crusher and pulverizing the garlic. Let it marinate in the raw meat as it festers gnats and promotes seemingly unsolicited growth of fly eggs into larvae; this adds protein and crunch, which is important for taming dogs of the Cerberus variety, a group in which this episode’s nearby beast would most definitely have been classified.

Darwin’s “Origin of Species” could never have documented such genetic gumbo.

After the meat has collected enough wriggling, infantile insects, toss it all into a lightly oiled skillet (preferably cast iron) on high heat; let the meat brown, then add the ginger and stir.

Once the mixture is cooked completely through, mix in the oats to absorb excess liquid, and then the gluten. Gluten adds a rubbery, raw flesh appeal to the biscuit, which makes it suitable for all situations a dogcatcher might find himself in. Cut the now-solid glob into various-sized chunks, but do make sure that none of them are too large to fit, at minimum, five in a regulation-sized pant pocket. Sure, other dog catchers are going to smell the treats from across the floor at the pound, and they’ll definitely make you feel as if you’re walking around with sacs of frog legs on your person, but just remember who’ll get the

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best commission in the Once Volatile, Now Domesticated Dogs and Otherwise Uncategorized Creature category.

The scene played out like a bad sci-fi story: One breath ended in the middle of a suspenseful scene, the next started with two pacified dogs, owners of an undetermined amount of faces and scales, waiting attentively on the hallway floor for orders.

“I’d tell you to sit, but I’m not sure who’s qualified to give commands around here.”

The three-headed beast’s two outer heads opened their eyes wide in comprehension, revealing the middle to be a prosthetic addition to enhance fear and confusion when confronted with too many options in deciding where to pet a dog with too many petting combinations. As if the glue had worn off with the left and right heads’ admittance to playing tri-headed tricks, the middle head fell off to reveal a tangled mess of wires beneath.

“I didn’t need to take Wiring Beneath Fur: An introduction to Mammalian Cyborg Design to see that one coming,” you say to yourself, because no one else could possibly be listening right now. “It’s time to find out who’s been signing up for extra time in the cyborg lab this month…”

CHAPTER V

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(that’s Latin for “5”) You put a collar-cuff of the right head of the one mutt as the more doggish head sniffs you and the snakish one flicks out its tongue. The second mutt the slithery one, only has front legs and they look pretty useless. He’s eight foot long like a dachshund from hell, and has unhooked his jaw, pushing a hunk of dog biscuit into himself whole. When his mouth re-closes his ears perk up and he sort of wags his whole body. You put a shock-collar on him, but you only chain the bigger (the one with two heads)--betting that he’s the dominant one of the two.

In the end you’re wrong: On the way down toward the lobby you run into the other three mutts--two of which fall in line right after DOC (the name you decided to give the dachshund-

ish mutt). When the last dog (a behemoth with five heads that was unable to leave the main study area due to its bulk) decides to make a stand, Doc rears up, displaying cobra like fins made of razorblades. Three of the heads seemed intimidated, and before the others could convince them otherwise Doc struck--just a nip on the flank, but enough to make that half the beast turn limp quicker than DOC could retract his fangs.

For that you give Doc a second treat. When you dial Jeffy on your work-cell the behemoth is already dead (pretty impressive). If a kid could make these you’d think he could handle a dumb written final. Whatever.

“Hey Sophie,” Jeffy says over the cell. Jeffy’s a poll, but he’s alright. “Don’t need any backup do you?” Jeffy’s teasing.

“Shove it. But clear any civilians away from my truck, I’m walking out with some live ones,” you say.

“Got it.”

The crowd gasps as you walk out with 4 mutts (three unchained (you love that)). You stroll toward your truck where Jeffy is leaning casually. You use your cell to open the back door and throw the last doggie treat in the back. “What took you so long?” Jeffy asks with a wink, as you shut the door behind the scampering/slithering hounds. Jeffy is a female-male sexgender. You don’t know what his sexuality is, except that he seems to want to jump your bones. Not your type though.

“Is that a gun in your pocket,” you say. This wouldn’t be funny except Jeffy wears spandex instead of the standard police-issue trousers, and he stuffs them with a sock. Maybe it still isn’t funny. You think about this, before saying. “All the ones in there are cold, the janitors can clean em up, but you might want to get the Pitt cybernetic professors out here and see if they recognize the work.”

“Fucking kids these days.” Jeffy shakes his head.

“You might also want to check for psychotropic chemicals and waves,” you add, thinking of the woman at the sea. You’re already in the drivers seat.

“Ok,” Jeffy says. Lifting up a notepad, “Could you to give a personal number in case we have any follow up questions?” he smirks.

“Five-five-five, five three one, eight hundred, eight,” you say and slam the door (if somebody doesn’t think that’s funny they are obviously too mature (you should tell them to type that number in a calculator, flip it upside-down, and join the club)).

You look in the rear-view mirror and snicker at Jeffy who is hurriedly typing digits into his notepad. ### Back at the pound you through the Mutts in the Bell Jar and turn on the juice. There’s supposed to be a ten-day waiting

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period, but nobody ever comes for ones like these, and this guy sure isn’t going to.

The pound’s a cozy enough place--a little man-made island in the Allegheny River, with a pretty serious fence and a drawbridge. You live here, you keep up the place. Sometimes you get an intern to help out, but they quit quick.

That’s fine with you. You prefer the company of howling mutts echoing amongst concrete and white tile. It helps you write (most of the time). You’ve been having a little blockage with the “true drama” stories you’ve been commissioned to do by ol’ Buggz. That slice of life crap always gets you down, but you’re not a quitter. You sit at your desk and cue your cell to project a screen and key-pad.

It’s at least a half hour of staring into space before Jeffy calls the pound business line. You let it click to message and listen as you go check the Bell Jar brand gas box.

“Hey Sophie,” Jeffy says to the machine. “Looks like you gave me some bum digits. I’m just calling because It turns out Pitt hasn’t had a cybernetics branch for years.”

You shrug to yourself and unbolt the viewing hatch. Jeffy Just wanted an excuse to call you. Who gives a fuck about Pitt Cybernetics?

“If you have any ideas keep me in the loop.”

You slide open the hatch. The poisonous gas clears, and three dogs lay dead on the cement floor, and one looks very happy.

It’s Doc, wagging his body--black tongue lolling about. The message machine beeps and you slam the hatch shut. You double the gas and triple the length of the session, before going back to your desk.

You stare at the blank screen for another ten minutes, when something sneaks into your consciousness. It’s the woman with the neck, and the beach...

CHAPTER VI …but you don’t want to think about that right now, so you step outside for a smoke to clear your head. Encroaching deadlines alone make you want to vomit and a gorge rises in your throat. The light of the setting sun feebly penetrates layers of chemtrail goo, the downtown skyline glows neon with UPMC holograms, and the Allegheny laps against the concrete pillars that support your little corner of paradise.

No thoughts, now. Just sensations.

Relaxed at last, you allow yourself to wonder what the hell you’re going to do with Doc if the Zyklon D doesn’t finish him off. Sell him on eBay? What with the hyperinflation, the thirty thousand dollars left in your account won’t even cover

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tomorrow’s chili-soy dog or your next pouch of tobacco (which, what with the targeted taxation, costs about twice as much as a 4-pack of hollow-tipped tracking bullets) but of course there’s no way you can afford to ship him. Maybe you can barter him for a Primanti Bros. sandwich. Maybe he’s already dead.

Nope.

“You win, Doc.” He slithers out of the Bell Jar and zips around your office, scattering documents and overturning makeshift furniture.

Beep. Another message from Jeffy.

“Sophie, for Christ’s sake, get back to me.

Psychotropics scan came back negative; as for fields and shit, the Cathedral’s so rife with esmog I didn’t even bother. I did find something interesting on that five-headed fucker’s corpse, though: subdermal biotag, same kind UPMC implants to keep tabs on their ‘patients’. Check the ones you took back with you to see if they have ‘em, too. I need to communicate with you in a purely professional capacity about this shit, and if you’re not interested in doing your job I’ll find someone who is. Ciao.”

Every year at finals time the Cathedral gets evacuated for one reason or another (usually a simple dirty bomb or biotoxin hoax) but this instance has more loose ends sticking out of it than the head-stump of that cyborg chimera. As your curiosity grows, your personal financial and literary crises fade into irrelevance.

Doc knocks over a rack of taxidermy you use for target practice, unhooks his jaw and tries to gobble one of the smaller specimens, which you find oddly inspiring. Had Doc been asked, “Do you want to live?” you know what he’d have answered.

You promise yourself that, no matter how weird things get, you’ll deal with it somehow and triumph.

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You can autopsy the chimeras and report back to Jeffy, chill him out, later tonight. There’s something you have to do first, though, something it occurs to you Doc can actually help you accomplish. You grab your gear, lower the drawbridge, whistle for Doc to follow and hit the streets.

CHAPTER VII You head towards home, where an extended family of raccoons have recently taken over, a rather embarrassing situation for someone of your profession. During the day, when you’re usually out anyway, they don’t bother you, but once the sun’s gone, you have to be too, or they will attack. You know this because you tried to negotiate a peaceful coexistence with them the second night of their stay. They said no and bit you, purportedly because their first day there you tazed each of them while they slept, bagged them and dropped them in a heap in Schenley Park.

You underestimated their memory capacity, and now for the last few weeks you’ve been producing some mystifying sea foamy pus. You’ve also been couch hopping at night. Unfortunately, you’re running out of hospitable friends, and apparently your place holds some charm for the raccoons apart from food. Though you never find any scraps when you’re home during the day, they must be bringing their own, because you’ve sterilized the place of all things edible or once edible, and they haven’t shown any sign of moving out.

Pretty soon you’re going to have to resort to asking Jeffy for a place to crash. You don’t want to. Although, this might be a good opportunity to stop her drooling over you with your own sticky discharge. The pus. From the bite-wounds. No, it’ll never work. Even as a host for rampant infection, you’re unbearably attractive.

When you and Doc arrive at your house, it is just about raccoon o’clock. You pray to the god of snake-dogs, who you concede is whichever devious college kid created Doc and his siblings (assuming they are of the same litter, of course), that Doc isn’t full and pacified from the dog treats and the stuffed fox, then push open the door.

You overestimated your memory capacity, because the raccoons are significantly larger than you remember them being. By the light coming in from the porch you can make out maybe five enormities huddled together on top of the kitchen counter. They seem to be deliberating over whatever is in the center of their circle. Doc isn’t lunging ferociously at the pack of intruders, so you nudge him towards them. He slithers up to the group and sniffs. The raccoon nearest him turns its glowing eyes and lets its head fall towards him, its neck lengthening. More glowing eyes creep out from under the table, behind the counter and through the doorway to the living room as Doc and the raccoon sniff each others’ faces.

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All those eyes are floating towards you, and now so are the heads of Doc’s new acquaintance and its discussion group.

to be continued at CyberpunkSeniorThesis.blogspot.com

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WRITING IN TITLE OF STORY GOES HERE. TITLE

CODE

OF STORY GOES

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Virtual reality is a relatively young term. Collective consciousness assumes it is a technological evolution, or perhaps revolution, and the product of the digital era. However, virtual reality has existed since that first thought emerged in the first conscious mind.

Thinking is the ultimate encounter with virtual reality and the writer is the prophet in the virtual reality of the mind.

Just as the programmer composes abstract code for the computer to decipher so too the writer composes abstract code for the mind to decipher. Computer code creates images on a screen; words create images in the mind.

In both realms, coding and writing, the medium is far removed from the message. Unlike film or theater or visual arts where the medium is the message, the medium of composition and medium of experience with both coding and writing are of different spheres. Reading isn’t about looking at the shapes of letters, it’s about what the words represent, same thing with computer code.

I’m a writer who now spends the majority of my hours creating things with ones and zeroes; I move between these two worlds,

Fluxus is a networked 3D space where avatars interact through movement and text chat. Currently, Fluxus can accommodate up to 6 avatars. When the users sign in to the world they are given options to customize their avatar and the color palette of their ‘word art’.

by Ryan Nadel TITLE OF STORY GOES HERE. TITLE OF STORY grafting the experiences and techniques from one to the other.

The most prominent parallel is appreciating the relationship between the abstract and the concrete – the medium of composition and the medium of experience. Empathizing with the experience that the consumer of your content has.

Earlier this year, I, along with some classmates, designed a virtual experience that evolves written communication into an abstract encounter with the visual and virtual. The project, Fluxus The Art of Conversation, is an exploration of the art of conversation. The conceptual underpinning of the world of fluxus is visual abstraction of text-based communication in a virtual environment. It uses a precise formula where a 3D shape represents a consonant and the vowels combine to determine the color of the word-shapes.

Check out the trailer here: http://vimeo.com/3703532 We have demoed Fluxus at a few festivals. We have observed that when people sit down to use it they quickly lose interest in communicating information and focus on creating visually

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interesting art with their words and letters, exploring the surprises of the system and the virtual environment. Fluxus, as an art piece and an experiment in communication, seems to identify the underlying parallels between our encounter with words and our encounter with virtual experiences. The artistic expression becomes the conversation.

My relationship to the project was from the perspective of a writer. I use words professionally to convey information and create emotive experiences for readers. The goal, however, with Fluxus drifted far from the notion of conveying information; it was only about creating an emotive experience. Perhaps, it is bordering on sacrilege for a writer to undertake such an endeavor. However, the foundation of Fluxus was deconstruction, deconstruction of words and letters and information to a raw artistic experience. It is an expression of the basic elements of communication.

In that sense, Fluxus drew inspiration from the Dutch artistic movement De Stijl. The movement sought to distill objects through pure abstraction using the most basic of shapes and colors. The movement strove to ignore the natural form of color of an object and focus on the abstraction. So too the world of Fluxus does not express the content of a conversation but rather the universality as captured through abstraction.

Fluxus captures the experience of the writer/coder in the relationship between the medium and the message, the code and the experience, the words and the shapes.

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OUR PLANET

Open Google Earth on the nearest computer, or (if you

can) on your cell phone. Pull up your own address. Do your best to match the image on the computer with the view out your window or on the street where you’re standing right now.

Then zoom out. Zoom out again. Zoom, zoom, zoom—all the way out. . . .

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You should now be viewing a very familiar scene, though it was once one reserved for astronauts and those huddled around grainy black-and-white television feeds. What you are looking at is Earth, our planet. It is an image that (no matter how often we see it) seems to resonate in the hearts of all of us who call this place our home.

It was while looking at this spectacle, our planet hanging in space, that America changed forever.

The philosophy of Manifest Destiny has long been used to help define American history; perhaps truly gripping the hearts of the average American during the time of the Louisiana Purchase.

Manifest Destiny was the philosophy of a people who wanted land for themselves and their children. America had the right and the duty to spread “this great experiment of freedom.”

Americans digested the image of themselves as adventurers into their national psyche. They were a people who tamed wild lands for the good of their country. This self-image found a stage most prevalently in the Western genre that gripped the nation through books and films in a way it never did outside of the U S of A. This expansionist self-image made Manifest Destiny a selffulfilling prophecy that propelled America into Texas, across the continent, and eventually to the moon, where America could look out into stars, and out onto space, “the final frontier.” But something unexpected happened. We didn’t look out toward the stars. Instead we looked back.

The stars, it turns out, looked pretty much the same whether you’re standing on the moon as they did when Americans looked up from the back porch. But the view from the back porch looked incredibly different, and it was enchanting. It reminded Americans of the mystery of their own planet, and the mystery in their own minds. This moment encapsulated a paradigm shift in the American psyche. As a people, we began looking inward; we became in shades more introspective.

While some residual media promoting an expansionist type image continued (Star Trek being a prime example of a space expansionist drama), the American people began to shift away from that kind of thought. The Western genre decreased in popularity and people had long been more interested in securing a good job for themselves than staking off farmland. Perhaps the change in the American psyche is one of the reasons that so much scorn fell upon President George W. Bush when he announced a plan to colonize Mars. The simple idea of expanding no longer excites the imaginations of our people as it once did (making the massive impracticality of a Mars walk easy to point out).

Although visually the moon landing seemed like a physical conquering (as Neil Armstrong stepped out and planted that flag into gray dirt), the true accomplishment was the technology and intelligence that got a man there and back safely. In this way, the last great act of Manifest Destiny was one of the early great acts of a new paradigm based around different values.

As I said before, Manifest Destiny was the philosophy of a people who wanted land for themselves and their children. Our parents wanted something different for us—something that again reflects the shifting focus of us as a people. Our parents wanted us to have an education.

Recent American generations are more educated than their predecessors, according to a USA Today article written in June of 2002. More high school grads, more people enrolling in secondary education, and more completing a college-level education. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, that trend followed to 2006 when college enrollment reached 20.5 million, and it’s fairly easy to see that this trend hasn’t let up. We are becoming a nation of college graduates. I am right now sitting next to three graduates—two of them work at a super market and the other drives a bread delivery truck for a bakery. I’m a parking lot attendant. A huge number of people work simple jobs with diplomas in their bedroom closets.

I am not trying to spill the woes of a college graduate that cannot find a “good job.” I would argue that the reason that Americans find themselves drawn toward a secondary education is not (or at least not solely) in order to make more money in the long run, or to get a “better job” per se.

My father recently told me the story of a young man who received an offer for an extremely well paying job right out of high school, as a programmer for Microsoft. His mother protested furiously—she wanted him to go to college. The most interesting thing about this story is that it doesn’t sound

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completely unreasonable or foreign. For rich rock stars or movie actors, taking time off to go to college is not all that unusual. The question is, why? After all, the logic of going to college in order to get a “good job” falls flat on its face when you turn down a good job in order to attend.

The answer is surprisingly obvious: Americans are attending institutions of higher education because they want a heightened education. Gravity compels us to explore our inner mind—our intellectual potential—because that is what excites us as Americans today.

I believe this national desire for education is a positive aspect of our culture; however, there are drawbacks to the current attitude toward education. In the days of Manifest Destiny, many Americans felt compelled by dreams of landownership and wealth to pack up their belongings and head west. Although there were success stories, many of these hopeful frontiersmen met huge failure on the frontier. Hunger and cold came as a rude awakening to many people who underestimated the competition for good land and the difficulties of farming.

Similarly, in a culture where “advancing education” has become synonymous with “going to college,” many Americans underestimate the weight of tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and the competition for well-paying jobs in a given field.

As politicians bang tables, pronouncing the necessity of every American gaining the right to a secondary education, they inadvertently ask for a more indebted America. The answer to this may be as simple as decommodifying education.

Many brilliant minds were self-educated, including Socrates, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln; and none of these men had the advantages that the average American has today.

Look back at your computer screen and at that image of our planet on Google Earth. The computer technology that allowed the first Americans to see this view is nothing compared with the technology allowing you to see it now. Having access to the Internet and scholarly resources via public libraries means that a first-rate education is truly available to everyone. If public high schools and junior high schools shift more focus toward methods of self-education than getting into college, “no child left behind” could be replaced with “every child can advance,” or even “everyone can advance.”

Of course, some subjects are more suited for self-exploration than others, but the framework certainly exists to be expanded upon. For example, scholarly journals and YouTube lectures could make chemistry research simple and attainable, but serious hands-on experimentation is made difficult due to zoning laws and the cost of instruments. However, should the scientific community adopt a favorable attitude toward selfeducation solutions could likely be found. Laboratories could operate in a way loosely resembling rentable practice space for musicians—where individuals and groups can rent a space along with the right to use valuable equipment.

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Other subjects are more readily adaptable, such as history, literature, writing, economics, and law.

While the dramatic moment of this paradigm shift may have been the moonwalk, it would be foolish to believe that the beauty of the Earth solely caused a nation’s shift toward education. There are undoubtedly other factors involved in this shift, such as the explosion of the information age and the continual and rapid increase in technology. People, as a rule, wish for their children to have what will grant them power in the world they inhabit. In Imperialist China, poor parents would often castrate their own sons in hopes that they could grow to be influential eunuchs in high court. In America’s past, parents wanted land or money (often both). Perhaps America’s current trend toward education acknowledges that, more than ever before, knowledge truly is power in an increasingly practical sense. It is hard to know in these modern times where technology will take us, but those individuals who are intelligent and creative enough to adapt quickly (so they can use those technologies to their full advantage or can take part in aiding and marketing advancement of said technologies) are often most successful.

It is important to keep in mind that education is to this new paradigm as land was to Manifest Destiny, and not the new paradigm in itself. Manifest Destiny was a concept that took many decades to accrue meaning. As this new paradigm begins to take shape, it is important to recognize its attributes and take note on how they affect us as a people. This way, we can try to avoid deluding each other as many frontiersmen saw delusions in the majesty of Manifest Destiny. Intellect is not like land. Each individual has a massive personal store of intellect that grows from the influence of intellect around us.

The quest of education is to unlock the potential of the blob of jelly we carry between our ears. Sharing your ideas and thoughts can help to expand the minds that surround you, and they can boost you back.

So, let’s close that window on your computer, and open a new one. Write an e-mail. Tell me what you think. How does a nation act that is becoming defined by its desire for education?

What does it mean? How will the educational system change?

How should it change?

I’ll be waiting: cyberpunkapocalypse@gmail.com Subject heading: EDUCATION Let’s figure this shit out.

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THANKS: Che Elias and Six Gallery Press for providing

an ISBN; Eberhardt Press, for donating the Trusty Binding Machine; everyone who donated their educational page credits for printing copies of this publication; Artists Image Resource in Pittsburgh, and Leanne O’Connor, for screenprinting facilities and help in printing copies of the cover.

Welcome to the Cyberpunk Apocalypse: An intellectual property was designed & laid out by Bill Bernstein. All of the illustrations, except those from Steampunk Magazine, are by Daniel P. McCloskey. The text is set in the following open-source typefaces:

Jura (Daniel J, Open Font License) Bentham (Ben Weiner, Open Font License) Temporarium Italic (chemoelectric, Open Font License)

Certege Italic

(semaforo, Open Font License)

Crass Roots (davelab6, Open Font License)

Geo Oblique (Ben Weiner, Open Font License) OPEN-SOURCE LICENSE: This work is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. You are free to share and remix the work, as long as you attribute it to its source (Cyberpunk Apocalypse, or Steampunk Magazine for pages 13-23), you do not use it for commercial purposes, and you distribute the resulting work under the same or similar license.

View this Creative Commons license on the Web at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Printed in conjunction with Six Gallery Press Spring 2009