Real News, Roundtable Live by Zac Russi

Real News: Roundtable Live

fiction by Zac Russi

2.7M viewers at time of stream

Lights. 4k resolution lights. 1080p brightness lights.

Whatever we’re working with lights. Bright pixelated light fills our screens.

Four men and two women, names listed under the theater-view box on our browser windows. The Great Santorini, Bernhard Cartwright, Tim Tilsdale, James Jasper, Veritable Truth, and of course, our illustrious host Cedar Hernandez. Comments and chat sections turned on for subscribers only. Adverts tailored to our past viewing experiences. Ten second musical overture soundbite, ending with vocal clip, chopped and screwed and dripping with reverb, Cedar saying: Welcome to Roundtable Live, tonight we’re sitting down with members of Magic Under Duress, a group without borders in a world of nothing but, along with acclaimed scientist Bernhard Cartwright. A light, high-pitched voice pans from left speaker to right and back: Yeaaaa, thank you, thank you, thank you, now let’s open those eyes folks! An ominous, plug-in distorted voice echoes: And keep them open. DOOM. DOOM. DOOM. Musical overture ends. Round mahogany table, center of the shot, we get to see each of their faces. It’s the kind of television trickery that successfully carried over from the small screen to the smaller screens, from one box to another. We want it all.

Cedar: First, I have to thank you all for being here. I know everyone has such busy schedules these days. Especially after the Fall, your services became, well a necessity. I know I’m thankful.

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Santorini: It is truly nothing to I, the Great Santorini. What a flight, such beauty in the night sky, such mystery.

He is the only one at the table wearing the classic garb, the black suit, the white button down, the bow tie and golden cuff links. He twirls his mustache like a cartoon villain and dramatically shakes his left arm in a snaking wave towards Cedar. He snaps his fingers back and forth, voila, a single red rose appears, as though from nowhere, and he holds it in her direction. She jumps back, her arms retreating, almost falling from her chair. She says: That’s so nice of you Gerald, but I’m deathly allergic to roses.

The Great Santorini blushes and shakes his hand in a small circle until the rose has evaporated.

Tilsdale: Wow Santorini, nice parlor trick, pal. Thanks for having us on the show Cedar, it’s an honor. I can only speak for myself here, but when I was a kid doing backyard birthday parties, I never expected that there would a need for me, you know? It was relieving, you know, to find out that this thing I do, this thing we all do, yea even you Bernhard, this alternate thought thing, magic, whatever you want to call it— this shit has a real purpose now.

Tilsdale puts his hand on Bernhard’s colorful Christmas sweater covered bicep. Bernhard shakes a little. Tilsdale removes his touch, ending the gesture, which to us, seems forced. Bernhard scoffs and fumbles around with his hands on the table, before moving them up to his cheeks, grappling the in-seem of his lips and pulling them apart in the shape of a smile. He grunts and puts his hands in his lap. He says: Yes, well, very funny. I don’t know why I’m here.

Cedar: That’s actually a great lead in. Bernhard Cartwright, you’ve said in multiple interviews that you don’t feel the same as the rest of the magicians in the union. I think I speak for all of us here and millions of streamers worldwide when I say that the Cure was an undeniably magical act. We wouldn’t be sitting around this table without it.

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Can you say a little about what it’s been like to be thrust into the public eye, post-vac?

Bernhard: Yes, it’s been, a task. I’m not a, how they say, ah, a people person.

Jasper: That’s ironic, considering the service you’ve done for humanity.

Bernhard: Sure, yes, well, I get your joke. I suppose I’ve always spent an inordinate amount of my time on this planet engaged in solving puzzles. As a young tyke I was obsessed with coding my very own homebrew web-games, determining the murderer in a movie as fast as I could, well, I even put a fair amount of effort into debunking charlatans like that David Blaine fellow that this man seems to adore.

The Great Santorini: Blasphemous! Oh. Please pardon the interruption. But do go on, sir. We thank you for your great service.

Cedar: I’m sure the larger demo of our subscription base doesn’t follow the history of magic. To clarify, Blaine pioneered a resurgence for new media. Bernhard, I can understand the desire to cut through the theatrics of media—

Jasper: Can you?

Cedar: Yea, James, I really can. I’m in this role because I love talking to people, but I could definitely do without the more over-produced aspects of the medium. Bernhard, what was it about the virus? Were you just trying to prove a point, like with the Blaine debunks, or did you set out mindful of the greater good?

Camera zooms around the table, giving brief glimpses of nodding heads, assenting in grateful delight, an obvious after effect, before finally landing close on Bernhard’s face. DOOM. DOOM. DOOM. He presses a pointer finger to the bridge of his marbled wood, wide-rimmed hipster glasses, pushing them up to his forehead. They fall back down. He harrumphs.

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Bernhard: Yes, well, you see, it was more about the obsession than anything else. When government officials and scientists alike, these were people I respected for the most part, the scientists anyway, well, when they said there was no chance for a cure, I took that as a kind of personal challenge. No chance. There’s almost always a chance, it’s just a question of what level of effort are we willing to exert to change that probability. But oh, what price will we pay for playing at godliness? So, yes, my obsessive nature. That. It has the effect of avalanche, once I get going on a thing, it’s like I can’t, rather I will not be stopped. Not until I have solved the puzzle.

James Jasper: I hope the streamers at home are taking notes. Be obsessive. Don’t listen to government officials and reputable scientists. If you believe in yourself, you can solve any problem, you can fix it!

Tilsdale: He looked for something that didn’t exist, right, like Santorini over there with his little red rose trick. There wasn’t a cure to be had before old Barnhard here pulled it out of the ether.

Bernhard: Yes, well.

Picture in picture insert in the lower left-hand corners of our screens, the upper righthand corners of our screens, somewhere on our screens: a Real News Rap Up of the day Bernhard went to the White House, flash clip of the press conference, flash clip of the crowd, lingering clip of 4 star decorated, Army General P. Sanderson ugly crying through bursts of laughter, such wild abandon dripping down his face, such joy. Freeze frame on the joy, zooming until the joy covers our screens. All we see is the joy on the General’s face.

A cascade of colorways. A drop in the quality. DOOM. DDDoOM. DOOM. Lights.

Cedar: Our subscribers have first-look access to a special event with Bernhard this

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Thursday at 7 standard. Remember, all you have to do to subscribe is press that little red button on your screen. We have work-pay programs if you’re low on funds. Speaking of funding, let’s talk a little about Magic Under Duress as a whole. Veritable Truth, you were one of the founding members of MUD, what called you to establish the union? How were you able to secure Big 4 corporate funding?

Tilsdale: She’s a straight up beast, that’s how.

Lights down. DOOM. DOoM. doom. Camera refocus on Truth. She shoots a fuck-youtalking-bout look over at Tilsdale.

Truth: We saw an opening and we took it. The reality with the whole thing is that our government, I mean, let’s call a spade a spade, the face of neo-liberal capitalism had been falling apart for such a long time that people were ready for something new. We were offering folks a way out of their shitty nine to five lives, we were saying, ok, you’re right, everything is trash, but what if we start from scratch? What if we actually manifest our destiny, instead of playing into this colonial ideology of Manifest Destiny? Are you following me? Just let me know if I should slow it down.

Tilsdale: Emphasis on the manifest here, right T?

Truth: Right, T. So, essentially everyone in big government had given up. The factions were so divided, so uncomfortable in their opposing viewpoints— look, we all know now that there wasn’t much to be done within that framework. These were true-believers, I should know, I was one of them. I lost a brother in Civil War 2. It was. It’s. It was a rough time for me.

Overhead pan, pullback to full view of the round table, all eyes on Veritable Truth, who, we can tell, is looking not straight forward, but deep into the past. Camera zooms back to close in on Truth. She itches at a circular object hanging from a wire like a necklace.

A gold locket.

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Truth: Look, I’m not going to rehash for the viewers at home, if you’ve been in a coma or something, watch a couple Rap-Ups on the last decade, alright?

Cedar: I’m so sorry for your loss, Veritable. And you don’t have to get into it if it’s too painful. It’s just that I don’t know that I’ve seen you speak about that before, about him, and we don’t have to talk about it, but, if it helps to frame the building blocks of MUD, I’m sure the world wants to hear it.

Truth: My brother’s death is a travesty, that’s all there is to it. As I’m sure y’all already know, this isn’t my birth name or face. And I don’t plan on identifying myself on a substream platform, my brother neither. X. We’ll call him X for the purpose of this conversation. And the shit suits him, he was an activist too. Not the kind of activism you’re thinking of, he never listed himself as an activist or a radical in a bio or whatever. He was out there in the field, making the impossible possible. When the states started breaking down, X took it upon himself to consolidate the leaders. People in power, right? From their areas, first on a server, then they met for real at one of the Hunker Bunkers. X brought people together and said, whoever doesn’t want to change, fine, leave em. He gave everyone exactly what they wanted to hear. He said, why don’t we just break up?

Tilsdale: The states were like franchises you know, each land mass serving as production and distribution centers. The Alphabet Boys were fine with it as long as each of the Big 4 corporations got a split of the land. Easy, you know. They always want the same shit. Land, space, time. These MF’s want it all.

Truth: They want it all and then some. This is getting off topic, but I’ll just say this, X died securing the policy initiative to begin the splits before The Fall. We know. What we know is. He was there the day the Big 4 fractured. We know it was some of the Alphabet Boys who got him, might be the feds, might be Google, or whoever else it might be. Regardless, the people finally got the deal, like, why not? Why not split this thing up?

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It seems silly now that we couldn’t pull it off sooner. Tilsdale and I formed MUD around that time and alternate thought became a legitimate option.

Bold bright-blue banner with clickable links flies across the tops of our screens before centering above Truth’s face. We see layers of wording, logos over language, links taking precedence after a matter of moments.

You Know You Want More…It’s Always Better Knowing Than Not Knowing… Know More: Real News Rap Ups The Fall Who Are The Alphabet Boys? Civil War 2: The One W/Out The Guns

Cameras flash and flutter into a cascade of tiles, which when flipped, reform into a psychedelic swirl, the Big Money Bank logo glimmering behind a curtain of neon CGI pattern overlays. A small coin in the middle of our screens expands. Zooming into the center we see a capital letter M, the script spiraling out and around itself from the left leg of the letter, a hypnotic wave washes over us, we’re listening on a holistic level, our bodies feel a humming, it starts around our temples, the feeling warm, like the sunshine before the heat of a winter day, it feels close, like the hug of a loved one, it lasts for what feels like forever, but only seconds pass, until…

Welcoming Voice: It’s Big Money BWAAAAAAI! Come and get your moneys. Come on now, that’s right, that’s what you like, come and get your moneys. Bad credit? Good news. It’s Big Money Bank, baby we can make it work for you.

The coin spirals inwards, the M becoming indiscernible, the humming inside of us skips and sputters, its going too fast, we can’t keep up, the warmth now an oppressive heat. Then. It stops. Blank screen for less than a frame. doom. doom. doom. Cameras realign, overhead pan, falling close over Cedar, who smiles as she moves a strand of curling hair from over her eye.

Cedar: Can someone say more about alternate thought?

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Jasper: Alternate thought is basically a big flaming middle finger to the new religion of science and dogmatic pragmatism.

Truth: Thank you Jimmy, but it’s more—

Bernhard: What they call “alternate thought” is simply thinking outside of the box. Sorry to cut you off, Ms. Truth.

Truth: That’s fine Bernhard, really. Honestly, I would love to hear your take on this. Everyone at MUD sees you as a real pioneer of alternate thought.

Bernhard: Yes, well, thank you for that. Too kind, far too kind for an old octopus like me. Well, you see, alternate thought, it’s a full stop on circular logic. Insanity is in fact repeating a thing again and again, well, and hoping for something different. We get stuck a lot, we as in humanity, like a child, a teenager experimenting. Throughout history, we see it often really, in periodic events like The Dark Ages, the so-called Enlightenment, even more recently in the 4th Industrial Revolution, though we were only stuck for forty years or so in my lifetime— we are truly moving at an exponential rate now. But as we saw at the turn of the millennium, a lot of the old ideology was stuck, like a wrench in the gears. I grew up in what is now the East Coast Coalition Corps, all over it really, but New York primarily, Manhattan to be specific. My father was a lawyer for one of the Alphabet Boys’ earlier incarnations. I would often sit outside of board rooms, ostensibly doing my homework, though in reality I was listening, taking notes.

Tilsdale: What I wouldn’t give to have switched shoes with you back then Bernie, to be a fly on those walls, you know, that shit would have been hugely helpful when we were hoping to interface MUD within the capitalist system. That’s my whole thing you know, making use of alternate thought inside the old walls. Old radicals said it couldn’t be done. Ha, look at me!

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Bernhard: You would have seen the barriers as they were constructed. The big corps were litigating to undermine any organization they deemed threatening to profit and scale. As I’m sure Mr. Tilsdale and everyone at this table discovered through trial and error, alternate thought struggles to flourish within the framework of many of the oldworld-isms. Capitalism, racism, socialism, classism, communism, etcetera, etcetera, and of course, I won’t forget to mention the old-world religions. While many of these ideologies contained within them myriad pathways, some “good” and some “bad”, if you enjoy such moral value judgements, well, the fact is, they weren’t working anymore. We saw twenty years ago the results of those old-world systems, we called them symptoms. Rampant houselessness, addiction at every corner, mass-murders, teen suicide, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Jasper: You’re not lying, tiger. The issues were stacked on top of issues for a while there. We didn’t have a clue where to get started. I just remember sitting in front of my screen back in the mid 20s, thinking if I don’t disappear the public data record, who will? All reset papa, all reset.

Tilsdale: Yea, you know, it’s like before, at the end of 20th century there was still this hanging veil of the great lie that was America, holding back the vision, and we joke now about 2020 and hindsight and hardy har har, very funny, but that’s when people began to see. Like, really see it. I don’t know who I’m quoting here, so don’t quote me, but someone smart once said, “Crises precipitate change.”

Zoom out. Tilsdale picking at his ear, wearing his best I-told-you-so face. Left eyebrow lifted, lips tight and pulled into a side angle smirk. Cedar slowly sliding a finger up her prompter tablet. Truth opening her locket. Zoom in close on the locket, not a face inside, not her brother’s face, not a person of notable importance, no— yes a slurry, yes a moving gravel pit, yes an animated pile of wet dirt. We can see inside the locket, the picture, it is a picture of a mudslide in motion. She shuts the locket with a snap of her fingers. Zoom out. Close in on Bernhard’s face.

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Bernhard: Yes, well, that’s very astute Tim. The thing about alternate thought is it can be taken literally and at face value. When presented with a wall, a block, instead of going through the wall— breaking the wall down— instead we go around the wall, we imagine the wall doesn’t exist at all, we retrain our thinking to displace the meaning behind the word “wall” entirely.

Our screens go dark. A bright light moves out from the center. We see the picture of the mudslide in center of the center, it morphs into a movie pic, a clip of a livestream, a wild and tumbling mud slide in action. We don’t know in which city it is— it could be anywhere, anywhere where the rain is unyielding. Where the dirt and the dust of development form a wave, we hear a sound like a dirge, draining down the streets. ……….Doom. Doom. Doom. Cameras back on, high pan shot of the Roundtable. Bump to a close shot of Santorini, rolling his cuffs down, some kind of bird beaking out from his left shirt sleeve, we see him shove the bird back down, patting his forearm with an implied love.

Santorini: Not yet, not just yet my queen. Yes, good sir, the walls had grown impossible in the minds of the many. The devastation widespread. The anxiety transcending class and caste. The world in need of magic and miracles more than ever, it was during this time that I first donned the title of The Great Santorini.

Cedar: Now that’s a question I always see in the comments of your channel. Who were you before? Where did you come from? One stands out specifically: bro, you pop out your moms with a tux and a mustache? Santorini, it’s not often we see an unknown in their early 40’s become a stream star, especially with your particular brand of old-magic enthusiasm— can you take us back to when it all started for you?

Tilsdale: It’s hard for me to picture, like difficult even, what a pre-Santorini Santorini would look like. I’m imagining corduroy pants and fluffy plaid polos or something,

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you know, you give off a strong Paul Bunyan vibe. Wait a goddamn minute, was that— was that a dove? Do you keep a live dove in there? How does she breathe?

Santorini: You should know Timothy; a magician never reveals his tricks. As I was saying, before the plague, the only grand illusion I could manage was convincing a four top to splurge on a bottle of something Italian. Then my hours were sawed down the middle. And of course, the rolling mess of shutdowns and re-openings, like tidal waves of misplaced hope. So much time, I had all the time in the world. As my bank accounts diminished in stature, the structure of my days became a haze of existential dismay. I became enthralled with the old magic clips, David Blaine, as Bernhard so distastefully mentioned, but more so the lesser knowns. The occultists. There was a similarity to these people, they believed, or we the audience believed that they believed. What strength of will they had! I thought to myself, I can believe too, I can transcend the boundaries of this mortal coil. And by the middle of the second year, I was putting on webcam shows. More tutorial than trick based. I took Carlotta on as type of familiar and she was a real draw for the followers, let me tell you.

Jasper: Right, fuck, I mean, first time I heard of Santorini it was a meme on a message board with him and that bird. Everyone remembers the “magic-man-meme” right? We thought it was funny at first, like who TF is the big goon in the Houdini outfit running sleight of hand how-tos with this little blue bird. Then I was subscriber. I was a fan years before we met. I gotta tell you Santorini, your vids were a huge inspiration for me and my crew. Like, huge! We needed— actually, let me speak for myself— I needed someone telling me, “You’ve got this, Jimmy. You can pull this disappearing act off.” And, I know you weren’t like, explicitly telling me to erase the data record, but that’s what I was hearing when I watched your channel.

Roundtable is momentarily muted. Picture in picture pop up, top right of our screens. Real News Rap Up: All Reset, The Day the Data Died. Video footage of locations housing the Big 4 server farms, huge warehouses, some underground and underwater, some seemingly skyscrapers, all humming with electricity, the blistering buzz of

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implied information. Flash to CCTV clip of a crowded train, everyone looking down at their devices. Flash to a server farm, buzzing like tinnitus in our collective ear. DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM. Silence, the shot goes deathly silent. Flash to the crowded train, people looking around themselves in a state of confusion, down at their devices, back up. Silence, until a woman speaks, the text overlayed across our screens: Alright, something’s uh, happened to my apps. They’re all gone, like, ugh, gone from my phone. She looks back down to the phone in her hand, the man next her says: Yea, what the fuck, mine too. Flash to freeze frame of an old Real News headline which reads: Worldwide Purge of Unnecessary Data Underway.

Picture in picture pop up diminishes to a clickable icon. Sound up on Roundtable.

Jasper: I’ve always wanted to thank you Santorini, for the validation. So, thanks, bruv. Good looking out.

Cedar: It’s so touching to hear you five speak about one another. I’m wondering, who else was helpful to each of you in your personal journey? Or, if that’s too wishy-washy, is there someone that you view as an inspiration, as far as alternate thought goes?

Jasper: I’m sticking with Santorini. Dude’s a fucking legend.

Santorini: Mr. Jasper, sir, seriously, you’re far too kind. Well, you see, aside from the Houdinis and the Blaines, as I said, I grew up interested in the occult. Especially the multi-mediums, yes of course I idolized Jodorowsky, Rasputin, these types of men, but I was also infatuated by the ideas of Alfassa, you’ve heard of Auroville?

Cedar: The only name that rings a bell for me is Rasputin, he was a kind of Russian wizard, right? Subscribers, please drop your questions and comments in the chat! What about you Vertible Truth, who inspires you?

Truth: I’m inspired every day when I see communities question their leadership, not

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out of some half-assed sense of entitlement, but from a more genuine curiosity. I’m inspired when I see or hear a person espousing alternate thought patterns in casual conversation at a food dispensary, or when they’re asking: how can we make this better for more people, how can we make this, whatever this is, hit for the people that want it to hit. And while we’re here on this platform—

Truth looks directly into the camera, staring at us, staring at her. She grabs at the locket for a moment, then lets it go. She says to us: I just want to thank all of the viewers here with us today, and anyone who watches this before the next data purge. If you take just a little time out of your day to think about someone else’s perspective, that’s a huge win for us at MUD. Taking that time. Thinking about how small we are and yet how simultaneously vast. Thinking about our collective pain. Our individual pain. Our joy. Letting go is an act. All you people out there, letting go right now, you inspire me.

Zoom out to pan of whole table. A moment of silence. Zoom in, close in on Tilsdale.

Tilsdale: Look, I can’t follow that and sound even half as good, so, you know, I just want to echo what T was saying. Alternate thought relies on all of us, even when we’re engrained in a standing system. Every thought is a kind of magic. It exists both with and without our interference. But the thing is— you know what? Actually, you know, I’ve got one. This woman from back when I was a kid, my mom’s friend Francine, we all called her Frankie. Anyway, my mom was very political, I won’t say which side, but she was a real true-believer type. My mom would rant on and on about how we needed to help flip more people over to her side of the political spectrum. I remember one night, Frankie was over having drinks, you know, the two of them hung out a lot, even though they had these opposing viewpoints. Well, my mom is deep in her rant, when Frankie says to her: you know you all want the same things right? She says: you want to provide a good life for your families, you want a support system, you want to be loved, you want some sense of validation.

Cedar: Sounds like a smart woman.

Tilsdale: Yea, you know, she really was. Anyway, that moment always stood with me. Shout out my mom’s friend Frankie, a true innovator of alternate thought.

Cedar: What about you Bernhard?

Bernhard: Yes, well, there have been a great many people whose thoughts I admire. Alternate or status quo. All the usual suspects, I fear. Ah, let me ask you this: do any of you have cats?

Cedar: Like a pet cat at home? I do, Curie, after the scientist.

Bernhard: A fantastic name for a cat. I mention cats for this reason: it is clear as day that cats think in an entirely different manner than we, as humans, do. You only have to try to train a cat to do what you want to see their thought process in action. My cat is called Estraven, after a character from a Le Guin novel. He, no matter my efforts, will stop at nothing to knock over full glasses of liquids. If the glass is empty, oh, he couldn’t be bothered, the little bastard.

Close in shot of Cedar smiling, Bernhard smiling, Truth smiling. Flash and a pan view of Jasper whispering something to Santorini, who lets Carlotta loose from his sleeve. She flies over to Tilsdale’s shoulder. He flinches and gives the bird a well-well-well-wouldyou-look-what-we’ve-got-here face. Cascade of tiles on our screens. Darkness for a moment. A personalized ad tailored to our recent watch histories and subscriber status. Some of us will switch to another tab, another video, a game. Some of us will step away to eat, make a call, get back to work. Some of us will fall asleep, some of us will die waiting, while most of us will just keep watching.

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