EMP axis flip; the return of Rabbi

March 31, 008
Black Rockalypse

Okay. So this happened: Rabbi’s back.

Yes Rabbi, who was kidnapped, or whatever he was. Dressed in fancy Gore-Tex snow gear, unconscious, lying half-dead out on the Frog Pond side of the playa. Doyle and Natalie and Fitz found him while out patrolling on “Gunwatch” the other night. He returned — or was returned — wearing the Not-Suit he bore when he disappeared. The other Not-Suit is still missing.

Rabbi doesn’t remember anything but the vague image of a forest. Feels bad about it, and he’s been trying to rack his brain, but he says the last thing he recalls is running toward Dragnet right before he died.

His clothes smell like the redwoods to me, with overtones of science-y chemicals and cigar smoke. I used to live in the Russian River, and it’s been so long since I smelled anything but wet Black Rock playa dust, my nose sent my brain reeling with memories of West Sonoma County, or Mendocino, where Lark Camp is … I could detect that redwood-moss-sunshine-riverbank smell anywhere.

Personally, I think this means the goons have established (or simply dusted off) a war room at (or underneath) Bohemian Grove … but of course I’m wacky Summer, evangelical Christian baby turned adult armchair survivalist who fantasizes about the dark forces who run the world. But I’ve been right about a lot of things so far. I stand by my hunch … especially since Arwen’s got a sensitive nose too, and the same hunch.

How and why did Rabbi show back up? We don’t know. Nobody heard or saw anything. Between Gunwatch and the heat-seeking devices, Perimeter staff surveils the borders diligently … and since Dragnet’s accident, no news has been good news.

They (?) let Rabbi keep the suit so he could come back inside. We guess. Why? They know even with the suit, strangers trying to get in would die anyway. Only the Chosen can traverse the Not-Dome’s barrier. Ever the Gate/Perimeter soldier, Rabbi surmises the goons probably implanted a device inside him. It’s highly likely. Some sort of bio-engineered spy camera, maybe?

No X-Ray machines live on the Ranch, so after checking him out medically, we immediately allowed our more psychic types to lay hands on Rabbi to try to find out where the snooping-device might be. Arwen can see metal in people’s bodies — the first time she looked at my bare foot, she “saw” the titanium pin inside it, holding my hoof-bones together — and Arwen says there’s a tiny spherical object hidden behind his left eye. Obviously we can’t take it out, so Rabbi wears an eye patch now. All the time. Rabbi the pirate. Do the goons get audio? Who can say. Probably.

People have started to avoid Rabbi, to prevent saying anything security-breachy in his presence. So he and I hang out more than ever, because for months, people have been avoiding me, too … when they’re not flocking to me to try to send personal messages or dictate what I should say in this blog. I can’t talk to anyone, for any reason, without them being squicky about it, so I’ve been keeping to myself. Now I have a keeping-to-myself buddy.

The other night while listening to the Misfits on my laptop in my cold cold trailer, Rabbi discovered he hears music in color now. Pretty cool, right? So that’s the positive aspect of him being kidnapped by thugs working for the rich assholes who run the world and getting a foreign object inserted into his peeper. “Hybrid Moments” is mostly burnt-orange, apparently.

——-

Electromagnetic pulses. EMPs. What do they feel like, physically? Because I’ve got a sweet announcement to make: All our cameras work now. Neener neener.

We guess this means when Rabbi brought Dragnet out to the 12-mile, the military — who were strangely absent except the narcs and an almost-cosmetic line of riot cops — must have triggered an EMP outside, in order to render the news cameras useless … and inside the Not-Dome, ours turned ON!

As yall might’ve guessed, we’re on lockdown, with no line out. But this is our ace in the hole. Thanks, military ace-holes! Now we’re filming everything. Not sure when we’ll release any footage, but production has begun.

Not-Dome TV, here we come.

This is the dawning of the Age of Illumination, and we’re armed with our generation’s #1 weapon: instant info. Whether it’s concentration camps secretly being built in America or celebrities exiting limousines without panties on, we’re there to catch it on the digital.

So we’ve been meeting and not-arguing for days on end now. About everything. With all the new developments, the rules have changed. Soon, planet Earth will know and see all aspects of our experiment. And we now assume the military knows everything. Here’s the rub: We never had anything to hide, really, and still don’t. We never asked for a battle.

None of us are getting too excited yet, though. Who knows if the devices holding the footage will even work between worlds. I mean, the cards and letters didn’t.

———

My compost bins are still frozen and worm-less, so I’ve embedded myself with the kitchen crew, straightening the Crack Rock bar and dining room during the day and gathering burnables for the fireplaces after lunch prep. Rabbi, formerly a perimeter demigod, has joined us, and is now chief controller of the Walk-In of the Apocalypse.

Why am I not strolling around observing and reporting, you might ask? Well, I do, a little bit every day, but … besides the fact that I can’t say much of anything due to security … observing without participating is a violation of our primary code of life. It wouldn’t work any better than the last time I knew better than to try it. And though I surround myself with mechanically-inclined people, my knowledge of such things only extends to the realm of fabric and collages.

Plus, I’m not dumb — I’m close to the food AND the heat.

———

The goons outside swept everyone off the road after the not-accident. Everyone. Period. Just us — no curious campers, no human-shield heroes in RVs, and no alleged Blackhawk employees in sight. It’s been a week and a half. They likely possess the missing Not-Suit. Everyone else who received a Not-Suit on the outside has camped in here for now, maybe indefinitely.

New clouds sit and linger above us and on the horizon above the Black Rock. Clouds we know there’s something behind, just like last fall. Not-Clouds.

The Not-Us still haven’t come back, but something tells me they’re up there. Only thing is, now, it seems there are two kinds of clouds. The “new” ones look the same … almost. They just don’t feel the same. It’s making some of us wonder if there’s more going on up there than we’re aware of down here. If there might be some supernatural element to our opposing forces on the ground.

Or maybe I’m talking more crazy-talk.

——

Luckily, spring is almost here and we can grow food. Luckily, we’ve still got a truckload of beans and rice and sauces and other minor sundries until then. We’ll get even more Survivor-skinny, just in time for bathing suit weather. 13 and Medack and I joke about filming our own Not-Dome fashion program called “Involuntary Anorexia Island.”

The roustabouts out here do their best to pretend not to be bored to death with what we feed them. They know when people bitch, it brings kitchen crew down worst of all. But food is a tender spot in the psyche, especially when a whole tribe of people are threatened with undeserved violence and possible extinction. No wonder we half-dozen dirtbags slinging hash are all so surly. No wonder one of us breaks down and cries during at least a few of the 21 meals we prepare each week.

All hatches are battened down, but the work cycle has been injected with renewed vigor, because things are being filmed now. Everyone’s the star of her or his own how-to reality-show-to-be. Everyone’s a specialist. Everyone’s helping each other out, and encouraging each other, and hamming it up for the camera. For the CAMERA! So weird. Before, our kind avoided cameras like aboriginals.

We still don’t allow cameras in the kitchen. Nothing to see. Eat your beans and rice and move along.