Performance

An important question that arouse out of the creative development of 'Senseless' is what is Mitnick's journey? Not only this but why is she performing? Why does she feel the need to deliver these stories, and in the context of this science-fiction world, who is she delivering them to? Who is the audience?

Solutions to these problems had been attempted at, yet we were unable to reach a clear, valid and interesting answer. I think that the most part of her journey comes down to watching an A.I grapple with humanity, experience self and individual thought. The content of this can also be quite amusing, clumsy and ambigious. Who are we watching, is it human or A.I? And how does this person that exists in between these realms relate to us, the audience?

Most of these questions are best realised in the rehearsal room, but if anyone has any thoughts or creative solutions, I'd be happy to hear them...

The question of Mitnicks journey is a question (for me) of motivation and the audience.

Who is she telling the stories to?
In the mono-culture of the future world she inhabits, Mitnick is something of a future jihadist minus the religion. She threatens the powerful and empowers the disembodied. This makes her storytelling very dangerous. It endangers her and the pseudo-fictional audience that is watching it. Why are these people willing to die (or worse) to performa and see some theatre? They, and Mitnick must share some common motivation. A motivation that is compelling and powerful.

Some potential motivations:

Suicidal; death wish
Spies of the TNA
Insanity
Antithesis; counter-culture
The Enemy; the UNE encouraging social disharmony in the TNA
Stupidity/ Intoxication; not realising the danger (implies innocence)

I was thinking along the lines of a sense of urgency coupled with a sense of failure to perform, "It was working fine yesterday." The audience enter the space and Mitnick is there, frantically trying to make these 'phantom agencies' come back, but they don't quite seem to be working for the minute. The space is filled with hundreds of different sized tubes and Mitnick is attempting to plug them into her costume. This is how she is able to become a 'phantom agent'. This would also allow for more of a sense of cutting in and out of transmission, continual failure, slippage between the video medium and live medium. Different tubes have different mediums to, some sound, some video etc. I will endeavour to write/edit a script so that all this is possible to direct. When are we using tech and when is it live, when does the slippage occur?
The other thing I was thinking is that Mitnick has come to the TNA Lab where the Censored are lobotomised. She is creating a sort of radical protest and there is a great sense of urgency as she is being monitored by two scientists inside the Lab. Occasionally the scientists come out to check on her and she has to cover up, lie, coax and cheat them.
Finally you end up with a scene wherein all three performers are plugged in, telling the story one by one and simultaneously.
Still needs development but I think is on the road to an idea that encompasses performance more so than the C. Dev did.
Thoughts?

I was thinking that Mitnick's journey could shift through out the performance from a complicit agency to an unwilling, forced agency.

This might actually help highlight the urgency, or struggle, as suggested above as it could be happening because she fears being captured for telling these stories.

It's also interesting to highlight what Mitnick says in her script, which is, "The Censored: when I found out about them I did everything I could to become one."

I also like the idea that the characters possess her so strongly, forcefully, urgently, that she begins to break down, as suggested by Rohan too.

PERFORMANCE:

- for stage: working to develop the monologues to a point where they can be performed, either by yourself or Olivia, or where the pre-recorded voice can be used as a track underlying the performance.

- for film: as either an embodiment of one of the characters channelling through Senseless, or as a friend, lover, colleague or family member of one of the characters.

If your interested please post your relevant skills, ideas and abit about how you logistically envisage working on Senseless.

The question arouse today as to whether or not Mitnick is actually part of the Censored? Perhaps due to her father's position in the world she is unable to be Censored, even though she 'tries everything in her power to become (one) so.' This would allow for a focus on Mitnick, as complex human who is radically reacting against her father, an ex- member of the TNA Board.

Furthermore, it would allow for a stronger representation of oppositional tension between being human and being Censored or Senseless. That way we see Mitnick the emotional, feisty, paranoid, reactionary up against Mitnick the controlled, robotic, channelling storyteller.

Thoughts?

This is a draft idea of what script material could be used for this development and in what order.

I should be asleep by now.

My parents are sleeping. And so are the neighbours who live behind little red doors. But I’m afraid if I fall asleep I might never wake up. Sometimes when I close my eyes I imagine a world behind the lids. It looks like the secret garden and it reminds me of death. I have been lying awake for twenty years.

By Adena
----

I
A prisoner cannot be subdued
even with a knife at throat.
Take my voice.
Take it now.
even with a knife at throat.
Feel how it rummages in the mouth
Like the first foreign tongue in your mouth
furnishes the space behind your lips
the patterns
the arch
And raises the temperature in your brain
Speak it louder.
A serrated blade of consonants strokes the vocal cords
with a knife at throat.
LOUDER!
Take these words.
That is why at this time he is a
prisoner.
It is the essence of being a prisoner
today
They’ve been spoken before.
By me. And others
Take them with my voice
Take them now
he cannot be subdued, only
murdered.
Speak it.
There is nothing they can do.
It has no master.
You have it all
And I have it
And after a while, we forget what we own
We can only feel a strange
Tickling

By Jen
----

In the beginning, my parents sat at the edge of my pillow and told me a story. It was about a rabbit and a fox. As they recited the story pages started falling out of the book. One by one. We were terrified. There wouldn’t be any stories left to tell. And then, my teeth started falling out like the pages. My mouth was full of blood and my mother was crying. I said: its going to be ok. Everyone is full of blood. That’s how they stay alive.

I don’t know where they went. Twenty years ago my parents went back to their room, and I haven’t seen them since.
At night there is a room. And a moon. And a cup that ran away. Or that’s what I remember.

The sea is a dream. There is no end to the water. The water is blue. I want to dance but I can't feel my legs. I could float away in this dark room.

By Adena
----

It’s not just limbs you miss. There is a nauseas ache for the whole body. A part of the mind that does not stop mourning. For touch. For all the things it can’t express. I can think of something, a memory say, of us on the rocks, my legs around you. And in it I am happy. But I have no face to make the smile. No eyes to see. No fingers. Without the subtleties of body language to express ourselves. A fluttering hand to make our shyness known or a strong gaze to indicate confidence.
[Beat]. So there is no point.

By Willoh
---

I am hooking up.
It's mandatory for me. Mandatory for me but not for everyone. Prostitutes and sex offenders.

By Jane
---

Here I am having sex on the floor of my apartment
One hand on the keyboard one between my legs
Are you shocked?
If you are, write a letter of complaint. Tell them how sick I make you feel. How I have broken the law.

By Adena
---

I am hooking up.
They know what we need. I take what they give me. I slide the cool metal into the poor puckered vein of my arm and I wait to see if anyone's going to miss me.
Afterwards my eyes will be rolling back in my head and my feet won't walk one in front of the other. They know what I need and for a long time I take what they give me.

By Jane
---

The blackout occurred three years into my employment with bASE. We were mediated through the subcontracting by-law resolution #418 - Trade Nation of America subsidiary, quantum cryptography - unbreakable. Medicated through it, too, supplements to maintain protein integrity and ease the decompression of logging off. Our workpod connections were high-load sucrose filament. After ten hour shifts dissembling, my head would throb. Even with the supplements, my head would just pound, like the bursting of billions of vessels in rhythmic, fire cracker brilliances of pain. So after a while, I stopped taking the pills. Fuck it. What difference does it make?

By Brandan
---

They have all our information. They have it on our smart cards. The data is there in black and white and there isn't anyone to argue with.
I clock on, hook up, don't meet anyone. If I don't clock on every two weeks they come to meet me.
You can try to call. You can try but you'll be redirected and redirected, you'll be put on hold
(long frustrated pause)
and even then you'll have to press buttons to categorise your query but my query didn't fit into the options they gave me.
Everything meant the same.
They removed me.

By Jane
---

II
Performance is a high-risk area. You know this.
Performance is normalised. No/rmalised, you know what it means.
No interaction of the limbs.
No co-ordination of the organs.
No one is out there touching.

Instead, they design wonderful dreams down at the Fantasy Design and Maintenance.
I was out of a job, and Switzerland didn’t care for performers.
They offered me money for dreams.
To sell to the people sitting in their little bedsit apartments with their hands on the keyboard, looking out the window, occasionally down on the street.
And I said yes.
And then I was down there every day posing and developing movements for people to see, to sense. They absorbed my body heat. Packaged the smell of cunt.
I spent most of the time as a thirteen-year old Filipino girl, or even younger schoolboys, like I’d seen them in pictures, uniforms and big eyes.
Occasionally, I’d be something else.
Or nobody. Some people already have their memories to fill in the gaps. They just need my shadow.
But in all my characters, I never had a voice.
The customers were quiet, too.
All I could sense was the climaxing grunt.

By Jen
---

Compulsory additives were introduced to the drugs we take, clothed in different names; Maldendiocin in contraceptive pills, Pelcin 4 or Disrodexin in antidepressants. They break down resistance, these additives.
People worked long hours and bought a lot of stuff. The world functioned well.
Only the army was a problem. It was easy to recruit, to conscript, conscientious objectors were few and far between. But the army needed to advance aggressively, to slaughter, shed guilt like a reptile. They needed to win. Something was done to their pills. The soldiers were frightening people. The armed forces of the Trade Nations of America could blow up a dog from three thousand meters, could break a neck with a strand of their stinking oiled hair, but they couldn't get a half decent erection between them. Can you imagine what that does to an entire army? So the Cold War hasn't resulted in face-to-face combat yet. We're in a state of emergency until the soldiers can get it up.
#
Eight Executive Members. They all jack off online. It's a known fact. There's a lawyer, a general, a financial advisor, a shrink, the ex-president of the United States, an IT man, a robot and Father Nicholson O'Brien of the Evangelical Church of America. Someone designs their fantasies for them. Skin and hair little boys and little girls, opium dens and hot breathed animals all made of ones and zeros. You'd never know the difference. It's much safer for them that way.
But I wanted
I wanted
I wanted
to lick the prayer from your face.
#
I do not take their pills. I do not take their pills. The choice is mine. The pills exist to make life more comfortable. The pills exist to normalise any imbalances and an imbalance means not being able to get up in the morning or crying every time you smell camphor or wishing your mother wasn't dead or acne or always having dirt under your fingernails or feeling like your ears are stuffed with cotton or having two sick days in a month or sleeping in or forgetting to wipe your shit off the side of the bowl.
When you take their pills you bleed when they tell you to. Just like clockwork on the Wednesday pill, once a month for five days exactly. So efficient they could bake an egg on you. It makes women feel comfortable, to menstruate, there's no reason for it but it makes them feel comfortable.
You take the sugar pills
and you bleed the sugar blood
out into the drain ways.
#
I have a passion. Not like those on the pills. I have a passion. I watched his face in his yellow bathroom light when he got up to pee. I watched him fold the scarf around his neck on an autumn morning as he walked through the park.
The leaves.
The leaves.
You should see the colours they designed for autumn. It'll blow your mind.
#
It doesn't make sense, to shift people off into High Security Bunkers, when they mess up as I did. But a nip, a tuck, edge off the aggression, pep them up all hours of the night and put them to work. Well that makes sense. Prison costs but workforce pays.
But after that... if you mess up again, then they'll rip out your brains and feed your body to the police dogs, they'll rip out your brain and hang it out to dry with their dirty underpants. They'll hang it out to dry but they'll never let it die. They'll never let you sleep. You'll feel those damned dogs sinking their canines into your grey matter, licking your frontal lobe till it's shiny and clean as a hubcap. Oh they'll never let you sleep; it's a known fact.
#
So I am castrated. Made to clock into family planning. Once every two weeks to hook up and be normalised. I'm walking around and I can't feel sensation on my skin. They dull me out, slow my heart to the pace of a dead person's and I can feel the mute buzz of it, like a television in the corner, when I lie down to sleep.
For a long time I don't bleed at all. I sleep and do not dream. I have no fantasy. A half fried egg, gone cold. I can function but I cannot fire. My motor skills are fine and polished but my thought processes don't go beyond the practical. I work. I work. Like everyone I work in a big building for big company... I am employee of the month. I work quickly and well and I never bleed and never cry. I remember wanting him the way I remember a childhood song. I can't quite get a hold of it. I can't quite get the taste of anything. I'm so dry that my thighs are chafing, my piss burns like petrol. I'm so dry that my body is a cactus. I lose all my weight. No one notices. No one notices. I am employee of the month.
#
I stop clocking on. I stop hooking up. I lock the doors of my apartment.
#
And the first drop of my blood falls. I feel the ache of my reproductive organs grinding, the work that they do. I feel the contraction and the opening of my sex parts when the first drop of my blood falls and I catch it. I catch it in my hand and they come for me.

By Jane
---

Executive Members are crap customers. (Pause.) Wouldn’t think so, but shit. You get all the entitlement of a rich client. Along with that tasty government brand of scorched-earth paranoia.

Pause.

Growing up I thought the big boys were made of marble. Superhuman motherfuckers shat down from the Almighty. But you grow up…gain a few of them as clients…well. Old boys are made of bile and jism just like the rest.

Pause.

Nine years I worked in Fantasy Design and Maintenance. Could have gone for a job more dignified. Less interesting. (Pause.) But come on. Who wouldn’t want to design self contained erotic realms? Guys I grew up with are fiddling their lives away with industrial robots. Nine-to-five and home to a pair of cottage cheese thighs. (Pause.) And here I am. Working half the hours. Pulling down wicked commission. Just to…engineer a little realm apart. Where a busy power broker can plug in, tune out, and retreat to a place…tidy. Extrasensory. Where they are the sexual lord and savior.

Pause.

Jesus I was good. Proper good. Man told me he wanted an opium den. Circa 1870. Full of…preteen Filipino girls. (Pause.) Average hack would just clone the bunch. Regurgitate the same damn girl. Maybe garnish each one with…a different hairstyle. (Pause.) Me I took time. Care. To design heartwarming back story algorithms for each Little Filipino. Wasn’t long before I had more than two hundred fantasy platforms. Humming all night. On call for each client. Each one of them a player. Type of person you only see in pictures.

Pause.

I ran a database that could blackmail the most powerful people on earth and I never. Once. Thought—

Long pause.

By Ben
---

12,896 of us, including you and I.
But not including the ones who don't talk.
79 days for me.
19 since I found you.
The rhythm of the seconds has become second nature.
13/05/20-27.
If my maths are correct today should be a Sunday.
PAUSE
One time.
The one time I flagged one of them.
5 years I dedicated...
5 years of service.
Today is my 19th Birthday.
Lenny.
Lenny.

By Olivia
---

My sister. Should have gone to work. Silicone recycling. With her friends. (Pause.) But the girl did figures like nothing. Thirteen got fast tracked into Revenue Service. Knew how to spot a tax dodge before she knew how to pull a boy. Week on week the kid nailed twice the departmental quota. Like one of those violin prodigies except with…taxes.

Thank fuck she never investigated me.

Pause.

Instead. She finds this…guy. On a data trawl. Name of Carl Raine. (Pause.) Son of an Executive Member. Real peach. Trust fund baby revolutionary…splashing around in shallow white guilt…always up for a benefit so long as the drinks are free…you know. (Pause.) Little Carl had millions. Untaxed. Stashed in these random fucking accounts. So my sister flags him.

Pause.

And the department doesn’t respond. Disputes her evidence. But she is who she is so the little…she sends a letter. Straight to the Executive Board.

Pause.

Next day. Few shy of the kid’s eighteenth. My Mom calls. All panic. She thought work might know something but the department…They Have No Record of My Sister’s Employment There. Seventeen years old, their top goddamn caseworker, and overnight the kid’s a phantom. Not even disappeared. Just…deleted.

Pause.

I’m not. Some activist. Jihad fuckhead. But there I was, at work. With this nasty library. Sexual escapades of the upper crust. Including most of the Executive Board. So I think: right. (Pause.) Copy the platforms of my Executive Board clients. Clean out my flat. Clean out my Mother’s house. Check both of us into this dodgy damn no-tell motel.

Pause.

My mother…woman was beyond scared. Staring at the wall. Crunching ice cubes. While I send an encrypted message to the Executive Board. (Pause.) You know: Dearest Fellahs. Release my sister unharmed. Or your predilection for underage Filipinos will…morph. Into a big fat steak for tabloid consumption.

Pause.

No reply no. Reply. Three days. My mother and me live off the instant coffee. I sent the message again and again and the third night wanted to move. Somewhere. New location. Safety in mobility. But my Mom…afraid to leave the motel room. Afraid we might miss the Executive Board’s reply. (Pause.) So I send the message again. Give them a deadline of twelve hours.

Pause.

That night. Three hours to deadline. Mom locks herself in the bathroom. I’m at the desk. Caffeine wears off and I doze. In the chair. (Pause.) When the light. The noise. And the syringe.

Long pause.

It’s not like phantom pains. Not like you wish you had an arm and you don’t. You just… miss. The strangest things. Like dandruff.

Pause.

This is a database. Like any it’s connected. Ways in. Ways around. And out. They aren’t very bright guys and I’m…not sure. They thought this through.

Pause.

Putting me. Lenny Chen. In a database.

By Ben
---

We knew of course, years ago even, about the disappearances. It wasn’t exactly a secret when you work for the state. They quietly paraded their lobotomising of people they considered dangerous. Published the occasional paper about their findings on the criminal mind - fucking B Grade Neurology. It didn’t dawn on me until I was censored and ended floating around like a piece of mucus in an ocean. The reason the reports where so half hearted is they didn’t really give two shits. See the only thing we never really worked out is how to stop people fucking. When you have a population that is growing at the rate we are, everyone is replaceable. So if people were so much as hinting at a little fetish for opening up state files. Bam. If they are even slightly enamoured with group meetings to discuss...Bam. Which is why I ended up in purgatory not with revolutionary intellectuals but with a bunch of fucking morons who want to talk about squash.
Beat.
What have you lost?
Apart from my body?
Yes.
I thought it would have been obvious. Hope. I’ve lost hope.
Long pause.
Oh for what?

By Willoh
---

a: a fisherman
b: a simple man
a: don’t pretend to understand
b: the mines
c: the city
b: the TNA
c: the rules
b: the censorship
c: the population policy
b: the contraception policy
c: we were given a concession
b: everyone here was given a concession
c: ‘we need more farmers’
b: ‘more primary producers’
a: they said
c: you can’t police the country like you can the city
a: the boy is our only saving grace
c: our pride
b: our joy.

b: never stepped out of line/no, never once
a: a good man
b: a simple man
a: a fisherman
c: but still, I never took their drugs
b: mindnumbing drugs
c: lulling
lulling/false sense

a: not a headache pill nor a laxative/never trusted them TNA medicos
b: I’m an simple man
a: a fisherman
b: an old man
a: things were different back then
b: they should never of changed them
c: the boy never did either, never took the medicine, no puffer for his asthma, no antibiotics for his gastro, we toughed it, didn’t we boy?
a: yeah, like men

By Lauch
---

Used to sit and throw rocks at the ducks in the lake.
Used to do that before they stoppped us goin' outside much.
Used to pick lemons off of Mr Jenkins tree too.
Used to do that before they started sendin' us frozen foods.
Used play with me dog.
Used ride me bike.
Used to be good livin' round here.
Used to be real good.

By Olivia
---

Dogs.
D,d,d,d dogs..z.z.z.
Saints.
Glowing white light.
Religious dogs.
Boys.
Boys in black.
Candle. Light. Dark Corner.
Boys. Boys shorts.
I.
I, i, i zip. Zip. Zip.
I, dd. I, dd deviant.

By Olivia

This is a draft idea of what script material could be used for this development and in what order.

The third section is under developed and would have more intruptions by Mitnick.

SECTION ONE:

Sausage I am sausage
my fragmented heartbeat/
the spattered fault line
i imagine
it creates/
my heartbeat
it dangles
at the end of a line/
---
I hook myself up like a carcass on a wall and the girls around me their heads are hanging with great long strings of drool like catgut trailing to the floor
---
I am hooking up.
It's mandatory for me. Mandatory for me but not for everyone. Prostitutes and sex offenders.
By Jane
---
Here I am having sex on the floor of my apartment
One hand on the keyboard one between my legs
Are you shocked?
If you are, write a letter of complaint. Tell them how sick I make you feel. How I have broken the law.
By Adena
---
I am hooking up.
They know what we need. I take what they give me. I slide the cool metal into the poor puckered vein of my arm and I wait to see if anyone's going to miss me.
Afterwards my eyes will be rolling back in my head and my feet won't walk one in front of the other. They know what I need and for a long time I take what they give me.
By Jane
---
The blackout occurred three years into my employment with bASE. We were mediated through the subcontracting by-law resolution #418 - Trade Nation of America subsidiary, quantum cryptography - unbreakable. Medicated through it, too, supplements to maintain protein integrity and ease the decompression of logging off. Our workpod connections were high-load sucrose filament. After ten hour shifts dissembling, my head would throb. Even with the supplements, my head would just pound, like the bursting of billions of vessels in rhythmic, fire cracker brilliances of pain.

The major contract is the DNA junk code - dissembling, sorting, storing, cross-referencing the junk, matching, refining the search, connecting the dots. I don't know how many of us. Millions, maybe. Our hands work like pincers and knives, a slice here, a cut there. Store the junk extractions.

The virtual tracking of my hands seemed to lag - and the headaches continued, phenomenal, until one day I blacked out. In the pod. I blacked out. For maybe five seconds, thereabouts, and when I came to... I realised I - I realised…

After a while, I stopped taking the pills. Fuck it. What difference does it make?
By Brendan
---
They have all our information. They have it on our smart cards. The data is there in black and white and there isn't anyone to argue with.
I clock on, hook up, don't meet anyone. If I don't clock on every two weeks they come to meet me.
You can try to call. You can try but you'll be redirected and redirected, you'll be put on hold
(long frustrated pause)
and even then you'll have to press buttons to categorise your query but my query didn't fit into the options they gave me.
Everything meant the same.
They removed me.
By Jane
---
MITNICK – laughs and excuses
---
Compulsory additives have been introduced to the drugs we take, clothed in different names; Maldendiocin in contraceptive pills, Pelcin 4 or Disrodexin in antidepressants. They break down resistance, these additives, that was how it began.
You all worked long hours and bought a lot of stuff. The world functioned well.
Only the army was a problem. It was easy to recruit, to conscript, conscientious objectors were few and far between. But the army needed to advance aggressively, to slaughter, shed guilt like a reptile. They needed to win. So the additives were changed. And the soldiers were changed. They were frightening people. The armed forces of the Trade Nations of America could blow up a dog from three thousand meters, could break a neck with a strand of their hair, but they couldn’t get a half decent erection between them. Can you imagine what that does to an entire army? So the Cold War hasn’t resulted in face-to-face combat yet. We’re in a state of emergency until the soldiers can get it up.
By Jane
---
II
Performance is a high-risk area. You know this.
Performance is normalised. No/rmalised, you know what it means.
No interaction of the limbs.
No co-ordination of the organs.
No one is out there touching.
Instead, they design wonderful dreams down at the Fantasy Design and Maintenance.
I was out of a job, and Switzerland didn’t care for performers.
They offered me money for dreams.
To sell to the people sitting in their little bedsit apartments with their hands on the keyboard, looking out the window, occasionally down on the street.
And I said yes.
And then I was down there every day posing and developing movements for people to see, to sense. They absorbed my body heat. Packaged the smell of cunt.
I spent most of the time as a thirteen-year old Filipino girl, or even younger schoolboys, like I’d seen them in pictures, uniforms and big eyes.
Occasionally, I’d be something else.
Or nobody. Some people already have their memories to fill in the gaps. They just need my shadow.
But in all my characters, I never had a voice.
The customers were quiet, too.
All I could sense was the climaxing grunt.
By Jen
---
Listen to me. Listen to me! (aggressively)
Eight Executive Members. They all jack off online. It’s a known fact. There’s a lawyer, a general, a financial advisor, a shrink, the ex-president of the United States of America, an IT man, a robot and
(pause)
Father Nicholson O’Brien of the Evangelical Church of America. Someone designs their fantasies for them. Skin and hair little boys and little girls opium dens and hot breathed animals all made of ones and zeros. You’d never know the difference. It’s much safer for them that way.
But I wanted
I wanted
I wanted
to lick the prayer from your face.
your face
your face
f face f
(MITNIK IS SEIZED AS IF BEING SHAKEN VIOLENTLY)
Listen to me!
#
When you take their pills you bleed when they tell you to. Just like clockwork on the Wednesday pill, once a month for five days exactly. So efficient they could bake an egg on you. It makes women feel comfortable, to menstruate, there’s no reason for it, but it makes them feel comfortable.
You take their sugar pills
and you bleed their sugar blood
out into the drain ways.
#
To begin with I don’t take the pills. The choice is mine. The pills exist to soothe a headache, to regulate menstrual cycles. The pills exist to normalise any imbalances, like not being able to get up in the morning or wishing your mother wasn’t dead or having two sick days in a month or acne or feeling like your ears are stuffed with cotton or forgetting to wipe your shit off the side of the bowl.
But I have a passion. Not like those on the pills. I have a passion.
---
Adean’s Film starts again…
(MITNIK STARTS TO STREAM ADENA’S FILM… AGAIN SHE IS PHYSICALLY SEIZED)
Shut up! Shut up! I’m not finished with you.
#
Trains don’t run anymore. The TNA doesn’t invest in public transport. People stay home with their home entertainment. But once. Three years ago. I spotted him in Central Station, pure luck. Follow him underground and onto platform 9. The carriage is crowded. In the crush, I press behind him, unbutton my overcoat. The smell of him, my god… oranges, dust…hair wax… The pitted skin of his cheek. My fingers lace with juice and I smear, along his back a silver trail. I mark him as mine. The train rocks. We rock. My bladder clenches like a fist, sends shots of agony through my body, contracted, against him, the lights flicker and he watches for his station.
#
2017: compulsory contraception is introduced. For everyone. 15 and over. No exceptions.
My desire becomes property of TNA.
‘The pills don’t agree with me,’ I tell the doctor and he says, (patronisingly) ‘how so… exactly?’ I swipe my card at reception when I leave.
#
One small mishap. I flush the pills and it comes flooding back with intensity to make up for lost time. I want to hunt him. One small mishap. One small flout of the law.
It doesn’t make sense to ship people off to high-security bunkers when they mess up as I did. But a psychological nip and tuck, edge off the aggression, the faculty of desire, loosen the long-term memory and put them to work? Well that makes sense. Prison costs but workforce pays. And my research skills are impeccable.
But after that… if you mess up again, then they’ll rip out your brain and feed your body to the police dogs, they’ll rip out your brain and hang it out to dry with their dirty underpants. They’ll never let it die. They’ll never let you sleep. You’ll feel those dogs sinking their canines into your grey matter, licking your frontal lobe til it’s shiny and clean as a hubcap. Oh they’ll never let you sleep, it’s a known fact.
By Jane
---
MITNICK – ‘The Censored’

‘The Censored’? We’ve all heard of the Censored, except we don’t seem to now much about them.
The Censored are a random group of dissidents captured, paralyzed and some might say, brutalized by the TNA.
Harsh or worth it?

What you must understand is that the Censored are brains. They float, amidst nothingness, an excuse for research, for population control? Who knows?
Their bodies, depending on the condition, are implanted with artificial intelligences. Roam the cities surveying and occasionally work as cheap labor.
They are Optibots.
Displaced.
Unknown.
Unforgotten.
I am Mitnick and I should be one of the Censored.
By Olivia
---
SECTION TWO:

I
A prisoner cannot be subdued
even with a knife at throat.
Take my voice.
Take it now.
even with a knife at throat.
Feel how it rummages in the mouth
Like the first foreign tongue in your mouth
furnishes the space behind your lips
the patterns
the arch
And raises the temperature in your brain
Speak it louder.
A serrated blade of consonants strokes the vocal cords
with a knife at throat.
LOUDER!
Take these words.
That is why at this time he is a
prisoner.
It is the essence of being a prisoner
today
They’ve been spoken before.
By me. And others
Take them with my voice
Take them now
he cannot be subdued, only
murdered.
Speak it.
There is nothing they can do.
It has no master.
You have it all
And I have it
And after a while, we forget what we own
We can only feel a strange
Tickling
By Jen
---
Mitnick – 'Upbringing'

I had a normal upbringing…
At the age of nine my father was elected an Exectutive Member, appointed the Justice Figure of the TNA. So I engage in the privilege of training and working for them. Stay home Higher Education, an Artificial Intelligence Program taught me everything I need to know.
I do remember when I was child, but it makes my face scrunch.
Laughter…
By Olivia
---
I should be asleep by now.
My parents are sleeping. And so are the neighbours who live behind little red doors. But I’m afraid if I fall asleep I might never wake up. Sometimes when I close my eyes I imagine a world behind the lids. It looks like the secret garden and it reminds me of death. I have been lying awake for twenty years.
In the beginning, my parents sat at the edge of my pillow and told me a story. It was about a rabbit and a fox. As they recited the story pages started falling out of the book. One by one. We were terrified. There wouldn’t be any stories left to tell. And then, my teeth started falling out like the pages. My mouth was full of blood and my mother was crying. I said: its going to be ok. Everyone is full of blood. That’s how they stay alive.
I don’t know where they went. Twenty years ago my parents went back to their room, and I haven’t seen them since.
At night there is a room. And a moon. And a cup that ran away. Or that’s what I remember.
The sea is a dream. There is no end to the water. The water is blue. I want to dance but I can't feel my legs. I could float away in this dark room.
By Adena
----
It’s not just limbs you miss. There is a nauseas ache for the whole body. A part of the mind that does not stop mourning. For touch. For all the things it can’t express. I can think of something, a memory say, of us on the rocks, my legs around you. And in it I am happy. But I have no face to make the smile. No eyes to see. No fingers. Without the subtleties of body language to express ourselves. A fluttering hand to make our shyness known or a strong gaze to indicate confidence.
[Beat]. So there is no point.
By Willoh
---
MITNICK - 'I always hated my father.'
I always hated my father.
You and I am the result of the Public Safety Law passed by him and it turns out, I am not the only one in an eternal state of emergency.
Since the state of emergency was declared in 2021, I left the house all of 17 times.
After my 18th birthday and two months as a Network Security Consultant, 57 times.
Do you keep count?
(Pause)
I figured there had to be something better than this , some other way.
I’d heard of the Censored. So when I strated work for the TNA, my only way out was to do everything possible to become one.
I broke all the rules, selling passwords to the UNE, fucking up files, loosing data, simple shit like that. Much worse than the stuff other people had been Censored for, and nothing.
Turns out they won’t Censor me coz my father is an Executive Member.
---
SECTION THREE:
Executive Members are crap customers. (Pause.) Wouldn’t think so, but shit. You get all the entitlement of a rich client. Along with that tasty government brand of scorched-earth paranoia.
Pause.
Growing up I thought the big boys were made of marble. Superhuman motherfuckers shat down from the Almighty. But you grow up…gain a few of them as clients…well. Old boys are made of bile and jism just like the rest.
Pause.
Nine years I worked in Fantasy Design and Maintenance. Could have gone for a job more dignified. Less interesting. (Pause.) But come on. Who wouldn’t want to design self contained erotic realms? Guys I grew up with are fiddling their lives away with industrial robots. Nine-to-five and home to a pair of cottage cheese thighs. (Pause.) And here I am. Working half the hours. Pulling down wicked commission. Just to…engineer a little realm apart. Where a busy power broker can plug in, tune out, and retreat to a place…tidy. Extrasensory. Where they are the sexual lord and savior.
Pause.
Jesus I was good. Proper good. Man told me he wanted an opium den. Circa 1870. Full of…preteen Filipino girls. (Pause.) Average hack would just clone the bunch. Regurgitate the same damn girl. Maybe garnish each one with…a different hairstyle. (Pause.) Me I took time. Care. To design heartwarming back story algorithms for each Little Filipino. Wasn’t long before I had more than two hundred fantasy platforms. Humming all night. On call for each client. Each one of them a player. Type of person you only see in pictures.
Pause.
I ran a database that could blackmail the most powerful people on earth and I never. Once. Thought—
Long pause.
By Ben
---
12,896 of us, including you and I.
But not including the ones who don't talk.
79 days for me.
19 since I found you.
The rhythm of the seconds has become second nature.
13/05/20-27.
If my maths are correct today should be a Sunday.
PAUSE
One time.
The one time I flagged one of them.
5 years I dedicated...
5 years of service.
Today is my 19th Birthday.
Lenny.
Lenny.
By Olivia
---
My sister. Should have gone to work. Silicone recycling. With her friends. (Pause.) But the girl did figures like nothing. Thirteen got fast tracked into Revenue Service. Knew how to spot a tax dodge before she knew how to pull a boy. Week on week the kid nailed twice the departmental quota. Like one of those violin prodigies except with…taxes.
Thank fuck she never investigated me.
Pause.
Instead. She finds this…guy. On a data trawl. Name of Carl Raine. (Pause.) Son of an Executive Member. Real peach. Trust fund baby revolutionary…splashing around in shallow white guilt…always up for a benefit so long as the drinks are free…you know. (Pause.) Little Carl had millions. Untaxed. Stashed in these random fucking accounts. So my sister flags him.
Pause.
And the department doesn’t respond. Disputes her evidence. But she is who she is so the little…she sends a letter. Straight to the Executive Board.
Pause.
Next day. Few shy of the kid’s eighteenth. My Mom calls. All panic. She thought work might know something but the department…They Have No Record of My Sister’s Employment There. Seventeen years old, their top goddamn caseworker, and overnight the kid’s a phantom. Not even disappeared. Just…deleted.
Pause.
I’m not. Some activist. Jihad fuckhead. But there I was, at work. With this nasty library. Sexual escapades of the upper crust. Including most of the Executive Board. So I think: right. (Pause.) Copy the platforms of my Executive Board clients. Clean out my flat. Clean out my Mother’s house. Check both of us into this dodgy damn no-tell motel.
Pause.
My mother…woman was beyond scared. Staring at the wall. Crunching ice cubes. While I send an encrypted message to the Executive Board. (Pause.) You know: Dearest Fellahs. Release my sister unharmed. Or your predilection for underage Filipinos will…morph. Into a big fat steak for tabloid consumption.
Pause.
No reply no. Reply. Three days. My mother and me live off the instant coffee. I sent the message again and again and the third night wanted to move. Somewhere. New location. Safety in mobility. But my Mom…afraid to leave the motel room. Afraid we might miss the Executive Board’s reply. (Pause.) So I send the message again. Give them a deadline of twelve hours.
Pause.
That night. Three hours to deadline. Mom locks herself in the bathroom. I’m at the desk. Caffeine wears off and I doze. In the chair. (Pause.) When the light. The noise. And the syringe.
Long pause.
It’s not like phantom pains. Not like you wish you had an arm and you don’t. You just… miss. The strangest things. Like dandruff.
Pause.
This is a database. Like any it’s connected. Ways in. Ways around. And out. They aren’t very bright guys and I’m…not sure. They thought this through.
Pause.
Putting me. Lenny Chen. In a database.
By Ben
---
We knew of course, years ago even, about the disappearances. It wasn’t exactly a secret when you work for the state. They quietly paraded their lobotomising of people they considered dangerous. Published the occasional paper about their findings on the criminal mind - fucking B Grade Neurology. It didn’t dawn on me until I was censored and ended floating around like a piece of mucus in an ocean. The reason the reports where so half hearted is they didn’t really give two shits. See the only thing we never really worked out is how to stop people fucking. When you have a population that is growing at the rate we are, everyone is replaceable. So if people were so much as hinting at a little fetish for opening up state files. Bam. If they are even slightly enamoured with group meetings to discuss...Bam. Which is why I ended up in purgatory not with revolutionary intellectuals but with a bunch of fucking morons who want to talk about squash.
Beat.
What have you lost?
Apart from my body?
Yes.
I thought it would have been obvious. Hope. I’ve lost hope.
Long pause.
Oh for what?
By Willoh
---
a: a fisherman
b: a simple man
a: don’t pretend to understand
b: the mines
c: the city
b: the TNA
c: the rules
b: the censorship
c: the population policy
b: the contraception policy
c: we were given a concession
b: everyone here was given a concession
c: ‘we need more farmers’
b: ‘more primary producers’
a: they said
c: you can’t police the country like you can the city
a: the boy is our only saving grace
c: our pride
b: our joy.
b: never stepped out of line/no, never once
a: a good man
b: a simple man
a: a fisherman
c: but still, I never took their drugs
b: mindnumbing drugs
c: lulling
lulling/false sense
a: not a headache pill nor a laxative/never trusted them TNA medicos
b: I’m an simple man
a: a fisherman
b: an old man
a: things were different back then
b: they should never of changed them
c: the boy never did either, never took the medicine, no puffer for his asthma, no antibiotics for his gastro, we toughed it, didn’t we boy?
a: yeah, like men
By Lauch
---
Used to sit and throw rocks at the ducks in the lake.
Used to do that before they stoppped us goin' outside much.
Used to pick lemons off of Mr Jenkins tree too.
Used to do that before they started sendin' us frozen foods.
Used play with me dog.
Used ride me bike.
Used to be good livin' round here.
Used to be real good.
By Olivia
---
Dogs.
D,d,d,d dogs..z.z.z.
Saints.
Glowing white light.
Religious dogs.
Boys.
Boys in black.
Candle. Light. Dark Corner.
Boys. Boys shorts.
I.
I, i, i zip. Zip. Zip.
I, dd. I, dd deviant.
By Olivia

SENSELESS – April/May 2007
This is a draft idea of what script material could be used for this development and in what order.
SECTION ONE:
Sausage I am sausage
my fragmented heartbeat/
the spattered fault line
i imagine
it creates/
my heartbeat
it dangles
at the end of a line/
---
I hook myself up like a carcass on a wall and the girls around me their heads are hanging with great long strings of drool like catgut trailing to the floor
---
I am hooking up.
It's mandatory for me. Mandatory for me but not for everyone. Prostitutes and sex offenders.
By Jane
---
Here I am having sex on the floor of my apartment
One hand on the keyboard one between my legs
Are you shocked?
If you are, write a letter of complaint. Tell them how sick I make you feel. How I have broken the law.
By Adena
---
I am hooking up.
They know what we need. I take what they give me. I slide the cool metal into the poor puckered vein of my arm and I wait to see if anyone's going to miss me.
Afterwards my eyes will be rolling back in my head and my feet won't walk one in front of the other.
By Jane
---
The blackout occurred three years into my employment with bASE. We were mediated through the subcontracting by-law resolution #418 - Trade Nation of America subsidiary, quantum cryptography - unbreakable. Medicated through it, too, supplements to maintain protein integrity and ease the decompression of logging off. Our workpod connections were high-load sucrose filament. After ten hour shifts dissembling, my head would throb. Even with the supplements, my head would just pound, like the bursting of billions of vessels in rhythmic, fire cracker brilliances of pain.

The major contract is the DNA junk code - dissembling, sorting, storing, cross-referencing the junk, matching, refining the search, connecting the dots. I don't know how many of us. Millions, maybe. Our hands work like pincers and knives, a slice here, a cut there. Store the junk extractions.

The virtual tracking of my hands seemed to lag - and the headaches continued, phenomenal, until one day I blacked out. In the pod. I blacked out. For maybe five seconds, thereabouts, and when I came to... I realised I - I realised…

After a while, I stopped taking the pills. Fuck it. What difference does it make?
By Brendan
---
Everything meant the same.
They removed me.
By Jane
---
Here I am, sitting at my work pod. Two legs spread apart, two hearts breaking like glass. It’s a workday and I am hard at work, numbering the minutes until you jump on line. But don’t get too excited. We’ll have to wait until later. There’s a censor and a webcam, an eye cocked like a gun. We will have to wait for another hour, a later, darker one when we can travel from site to site, and play our virtual game of cat and mouse.
But for now, let’s play a trick on the camera. Women have been doing it for centuries.
(Throughout this section, she wraps her leg around the door of the work pod and rubs herself against it slowly)
Look at me. I can be such a good worker. I’m smart and a fantastic multi-tasker. I can even type and smile at the same time.
(She starts to become aroused)
I am so efficient. There’s no time for daydreams or dirty thoughts in this job. It’s a domino effect. One dirty thought can lead to mismanagement, indecency and unbalanced behaviour.
(She pushes herself up and down against the work pod while continuing to type. The work pod shakes like a car)
---
MITNICK – Laughs and Excuses
Oh, sorry. I didn’t realise there were going to be visitors. It’s not usually like this. I’m so sorry. How embarrassing. You must think I….No, well, not really…
---
Compulsory additives have been introduced to the drugs we take, clothed in different names; Maldendiocin in contraceptive pills, Pelcin 4 or Disrodexin in antidepressants. They break down resistance, these additives, that was how it began.
You all worked long hours and bought a lot of stuff. The world functioned well.
Only the army was a problem. It was easy to recruit, to conscript, conscientious objectors were few and far between. But the army needed to advance aggressively, to slaughter, shed guilt like a reptile. They needed to win. So the additives were changed. And the soldiers were changed. They were frightening people. The armed forces of the Trade Nations of America could blow up a dog from three thousand meters, could break a neck with a strand of their hair, but they couldn’t get a half decent erection between them. Can you imagine what that does to an entire army? So the Cold War hasn’t resulted in face-to-face combat yet. We’re in a state of emergency until the soldiers can get it up.
By Jane
---
II
Performance is a high-risk area. You know this.
Performance is normalised. No/rmalised, you know what it means.
No interaction of the limbs.
No co-ordination of the organs.
No one is out there touching.
Instead, they design wonderful dreams down at the Fantasy Design and Maintenance.
I was out of a job, and Switzerland didn’t care for performers.
They offered me money for dreams.
To sell to the people sitting in their little bedsit apartments with their hands on the keyboard, looking out the window, occasionally down on the street.
And I said yes.
And then I was down there every day posing and developing movements for people to see, to sense. They absorbed my body heat. Packaged the smell of cunt.
I spent most of the time as a thirteen-year old Filipino girl, or even younger schoolboys, like I’d seen them in pictures, uniforms and big eyes.
Occasionally, I’d be something else.
Or nobody. Some people already have their memories to fill in the gaps. They just need my shadow.
But in all my characters, I never had a voice.
The customers were quiet, too.
All I could sense was the climaxing grunt.
By Jen
---

Listen to me. Listen to me! (aggressively)
Eight Executive Members of the TNA. They all jack off online. It’s a known fact. There’s a lawyer, a general, a financial advisor, a shrink, the ex-president of the United States of America, an IT man, a robot and
(pause)
Father Nicholson O’Brien of the Evangelical Church of America. Someone designs their fantasies for them. Skin and hair little boys and little girls opium dens and hot breathed animals all made of ones and zeros. You’d never know the difference. It’s much safer for them that way.
But I wanted
I wanted
I wanted
to lick the prayer from your face.
your face
your face
f face f
(MITNIK IS SEIZED AS IF BEING SHAKEN VIOLENTLY)
Listen to me!
#

When you take their pills you bleed when they tell you to. Just like clockwork on the Wednesday pill, once a month for five days exactly. So efficient they could bake an egg on you. It makes women feel comfortable, to menstruate, there’s no reason for it, but it makes them feel comfortable.
You take their sugar pills
and you bleed their sugar blood
out into the drain ways.
#
To begin with I don’t take the pills. The choice is mine. The pills exist to soothe a headache, to regulate menstrual cycles, as population control. The pills exist to normalise any imbalances, like not being able to get up in the morning or wishing your mother wasn’t dead or having two sick days in a month or acne or feeling like your ears are stuffed with cotton or forgetting to wipe your shit off the side of the bowl.
But I have a passion. Not like those on the pills. I have a passion.
---
Adena’s Film starts again…
(MITNIK STARTS TO STREAM ADENA’S FILM… AGAIN SHE IS PHYSICALLY SEIZED)
Shut up! Shut up! I’m not finished with you.
#
Trains don’t run anymore. The TNA doesn’t invest in public transport. People stay home with their home entertainment. But once. Three years ago. I spotted him in Central Station, pure luck. Follow him underground and onto platform 9. The carriage is crowded. In the crush, I press behind him, unbutton my overcoat. The smell of him, my god… oranges, dust…hair wax… The pitted skin of his cheek. My fingers lace with juice and I smear, along his back a silver trail. I mark him as mine. The train rocks. We rock. My bladder clenches like a fist, sends shots of agony through my body, contracted, against him, the lights flicker and he watches for his station.
#
2017: compulsory contraception is introduced. For everyone. 15 and over. No exceptions.
My desire becomes property of TNA.
‘The pills don’t agree with me,’ I tell the doctor and he says, (patronisingly) ‘how so… exactly?’ I swipe my card at reception when I leave.
#
One small mishap. I flush the pills and it comes flooding back with intensity to make up for lost time. I want to hunt him. One small mishap. One small flout of the law.
It doesn’t make sense to ship people off to high-security bunkers when they mess up as I did. But a psychological nip and tuck, edge off the aggression, the faculty of desire, loosen the long-term memory and put them to work? Well that makes sense. Prison costs but workforce pays. And my research skills are impeccable.
But after that… if you mess up again, then they’ll rip out your brain and feed your body to the police dogs, they’ll rip out your brain and hang it out to dry with their dirty underpants. They’ll never let it die. They’ll never let you sleep. You’ll feel those dogs sinking their canines into your grey matter, licking your frontal lobe til it’s shiny and clean as a hubcap. Oh they’ll never let you sleep, it’s a known fact. Apparently it’s the best form of Censorship, keep the brains alive and use them as research into criminal consciousness. Who’s calling who the criminal?
By Jane
---
MITNICK – ‘The Censored’
O.k. O.k. I’ll take it from here.
‘The Censored’? We’ve all heard of the Censored, except we don’t seem to now much about them. That’s why I brought you here.
The Censored are a random group of dissidents captured, paralysed and some might say, brutalized by the TNA.
Harsh or worth it?
See what you must understand is that the Censored are lobotomised. Kept alive to suffer for an eternity. They are brains, floating amidst nothingness, an excuse for research, for population control? Who knows?
By Olivia
---
SECTION TWO:
I
A prisoner cannot be subdued
even with a knife at throat.
Take my voice.
Take it now.
even with a knife at throat.
Feel how it rummages in the mouth
Like the first foreign tongue in your mouth
furnishes the space behind your lips
the patterns
the arch
And raises the temperature in your brain
Speak it louder.
A serrated blade of consonants strokes the vocal cords
with a knife at throat.
LOUDER!
Take these words.
That is why at this time he is a
prisoner.
It is the essence of being a prisoner
today
They’ve been spoken before.
By me. And others
Take them with my voice
Take them now
he cannot be subdued, only
murdered.
Speak it.
There is nothing they can do.
It has no master.
You have it all
And I have it
And after a while, we forget what we own
We can only feel a strange
Tickling
By Jen

---
Mitnick – I am Mitnick
I am Mitnick and I should be one of the Censored.
---
I,I,I dev…dev…dev…d,d,d,d
Dogs.
D,d,d,d dogs..z.z.z.
Saints.
Glowing white light.
Religious dogs.
Boys.
Boys in black.
Candle. Light. Dark Corner.
Boys. Boys shorts.
I.
I, i, i zip. Zip. Zip.
I, dd. I, dd deviant.
By Olivia
---
Mitnick – Upbringing
I had a normal upbringing…
At the age of nine my father was elected an Executive Member, appointed the Justice Figure of the TNA. So I engage in the privilege of training and working for them. A stay home Higher Education, an Artificial Intelligence Program taught me everything I need to know.
The memories of my childhood make my face scrunch.
By Olivia
---
I should be asleep by now.
My parents are sleeping. And so are the neighbours who live behind little red doors. But I’m afraid if I fall asleep I might never wake up. Sometimes when I close my eyes I imagine a world behind the lids. It looks like the secret garden and it reminds me of death. I have been lying awake for twenty years.
In the beginning, my parents sat at the edge of my pillow and told me a story. It was about a rabbit and a fox. As they recited the story pages started falling out of the book. One by one. We were terrified. There wouldn’t be any stories left to tell. And then, my teeth started falling out like the pages. My mouth was full of blood and my mother was crying. I said: it’s going to be ok. Everyone is full of blood. That’s how they stay alive.
I don’t know where they went. Twenty years ago my parents went back to their room, and I haven’t seen them since.
At night there is a room. And a moon. And a cup that ran away. Or that’s what I remember.
The sea is a dream. There is no end to the water. The water is blue. I want to dance but I can't feel my legs. I could float away in this dark room.
By Adena
----
It’s not just limbs you miss. There is a nauseas ache for the whole body. A part of the mind that does not stop mourning. For touch. For all the things it can’t express. I can think of something, a memory say, of us on the rocks, my legs around you. And in it I am happy. But I have no face to make the smile. No eyes to see. No fingers. Without the subtleties of body language to express ourselves. A fluttering hand to make our shyness known or a strong gaze to indicate confidence.
[Beat]. So there is no point.
By Willoh

---
MITNICK – ‘I always hated my father’.
I always hated my father.
You and I am the result of the Public Safety Law passed by him and it turns out, I am not the only one in an eternal state of emergency.
Since the state of emergency was declared in 2021, I left the house all of 17 times.
Do you keep count?
Petrol prices were so high it seemed like the best thing to do. Lock everyone in their homes. It reduced crime by 30% for the first year, made his job a lot less stressful. Meant he was easier to deal with at home.
---
We knew of course, years ago even, about the disappearances. It wasn’t exactly a secret when you work for the state. They quietly paraded their lobotomising of people they considered dangerous. Published the occasional paper about their findings on the criminal mind - fucking B Grade Neurology. It didn’t dawn on me until I was censored and ended floating around like a piece of mucus in an ocean. The reason the reports where so half hearted is they didn’t really give two shits. See the only thing we never really worked out is how to stop people fucking. When you have a population that is growing at the rate we are, everyone is replaceable. So if people were so much as hinting at a little fetish for opening up state files. Bam. If they are even slightly enamoured with group meetings to discuss...Bam. Which is why I ended up in purgatory not with revolutionary intellectuals but with a bunch of fucking sex crazed morons.
By Willoh
---
MITNICK - Excuses
I’m not trying to make excuses. I’m not some goody-goody TNA ass kisser.
I broke the rules, sold top level passwords to the UNE. I spent all day fucking up files, loosing data, simple shit like that. Much worse than the stuff other people had been Censored for, and nothing.
I can’t help who my father is!
---
SECTION THREE:
Executive Members are crap customers. (Pause.) Wouldn’t think so, but shit. You get all the entitlement of a rich client. Along with that tasty government brand of scorched-earth paranoia.
Pause.
Growing up I thought the big boys were made of marble. Superhuman motherfuckers shat down from the Almighty. But you grow up…gain a few of them as clients…well. Old boys are made of bile and jism just like the rest.
Pause.
Nine years I worked in Fantasy Design and Maintenance. Could have gone for a job more dignified. Less interesting. (Pause.) But come on. Who wouldn’t want to design self contained erotic realms? Guys I grew up with are fiddling their lives away with industrial robots. Nine-to-five and home to a pair of cottage cheese thighs. (Pause.) And here I am. Working half the hours. Pulling down wicked commission. Just to…engineer a little realm apart. Where a busy power broker can plug in, tune out, and retreat to a place…tidy. Extrasensory. Where they are the sexual lord and savior.
Pause.
Jesus I was good. Proper good. Man told me he wanted an opium den. Circa 1870. Full of…preteen Filipino girls. (Pause.) Average hack would just clone the bunch. Regurgitate the same damn girl. Maybe garnish each one with…a different hairstyle. (Pause.) Me I took time. Care. To design heartwarming back story algorithms for each Little Filipino. Wasn’t long before I had more than two hundred fantasy platforms. Humming all night. On call for each client. Each one of them a player. Type of person you only see in pictures.
Pause.
I, Lenny Chen, ran a database that could blackmail the most powerful people on earth and I never. Once. Thought—
Long pause.
By Ben
---
12,896 of us, including you and I.
But not including the ones who don't talk.
79 days for me.
19 since I found you.
The rhythm of the seconds has become second nature.
13/05/20-27.
If my maths are correct today should be a Sunday.
PAUSE
One time.
The one time I flagged one of them.
5 years I dedicated...
5 years of service.
Today is my 19th Birthday.
Lenny.
Lenny.
By Olivia
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My sister. Should have gone to work. Silicone recycling. With her friends. (Pause.) But the girl did figures like nothing. Thirteen got fast tracked into Revenue Service. Knew how to spot a tax dodge before she knew how to pull a boy. Week on week the kid nailed twice the departmental quota. Like one of those violin prodigies except with…taxes.
Thank fuck she never investigated me.
Pause.
Instead. She finds this…guy. On a data trawl. Name of Carl Raine. (Pause.) Son of an Executive Member. Real peach. Trust fund baby revolutionary…splashing around in shallow white guilt…always up for a benefit so long as the drinks are free…you know. (Pause.) Little Carl had millions. Untaxed. Stashed in these random fucking accounts. So my sister flags him.
Pause.
And the department doesn’t respond. Disputes her evidence. But she is who she is so the little…she sends a letter. Straight to the Executive Board.
Pause.
Next day. Few shy of the kid’s eighteenth. My Mom calls. All panic. She thought work might know something but the department…They Have No Record of My Sister’s Employment There. Seventeen years old, their top goddamn caseworker, and overnight the kid’s a phantom. Not even disappeared. Just…deleted.
Pause.
I’m not. Some activist. Jihad fuckhead. But there I was, at work. With this nasty library. Sexual escapades of the upper crust. Including most of the Executive Board. So I think: right. (Pause.) Copy the platforms of my Executive Board clients. Clean out my flat. Clean out my Mother’s house. Check both of us into this dodgy damn no-tell motel.
Pause.
My mother…woman was beyond scared. Staring at the wall. Crunching ice cubes. While I send an encrypted message to the Executive Board. (Pause.) You know: Dearest Fellahs. Release my sister unharmed. Or your predilection for underage Filipinos will…morph. Into a big fat steak for tabloid consumption.
Pause.
No reply no. Reply. Three days. My mother and me live off the instant coffee. I sent the message again and again and the third night wanted to move. Somewhere. New location. Safety in mobility. But my Mom…afraid to leave the motel room. Afraid we might miss the Executive Board’s reply. (Pause.) So I send the message again. Give them a deadline of twelve hours.
Pause.
That night. Three hours to deadline. Mom locks herself in the bathroom. I’m at the desk. Caffeine wears off and I doze. In the chair. (Pause.) When the light. The noise. And the syringe.
Long pause.
It’s not like phantom pains. Not like you wish you had an arm and you don’t. You just… miss. The strangest things. Like dandruff.
Pause.
This is a database. Like any it’s connected. Ways in. Ways around. And out. They aren’t very bright guys and I’m…not sure. They thought this through.
Pause.
Putting me. Lenny Chen. In a database.
By Ben
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MITNICK – Lenny
Lenny was one of the first to come through.
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a: a fisherman
b: a simple man
a: don’t pretend to understand
b: the mines
c: the city
b: the TNA
c: the rules
b: the censorship
c: the population policy
b: the contraception policy
c: we were given a concession
b: everyone here was given a concession
c: ‘we need more farmers’
b: ‘more primary producers’
a: they said
c: you can’t police the country like you can the city
a: the boy is our only saving grace
c: our pride
b: our joy.
b: never stepped out of line/no, never once
a: a good man
b: a simple man
a: a fisherman
c: but still, I never took their drugs
b: mind numbing drugs
c: lulling
lulling/false sense
a: not a headache pill nor a laxative/never trusted them TNA medicos
b: I’m an simple man
a: a fisherman
b: an old man
a: things were different back then
b: they should never of changed them
c: the boy never did either, never took the medicine, no puffer for his asthma, no antibiotics for his gastro, we toughed it, didn’t we boy?
a: yeah, like men
By Lauch
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Used to sit and throw rocks at the ducks in the lake.
Used to do that before they stopped us goin' outside much.
Used to pick lemons off of Mr Jenkins tree too.
Used to do that before they started sendin' us frozen foods.
Used play with me dog.
Used ride me bike.
Used to be good livin' round here.
Used to be real good.
By Olivia
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MITNICK – ‘Don’t Go’

Don’t go. They’re all just a bit chatty at the moment. Don’t go.