As Victor walked around the campus watching life's hopeful candidates, he
candidly contemplated realistic futures as a genuine prophet may have seen them
from the beginning of the twentieth century.  Victor's foresight may be no
better than anyone's but he has a clear perspective of the present and his
hindsight is certainly no worse than that of others.

   The purpose of blocks stacked as a pyramid is to support the top block, the
2E0 block.  If each subsequent 2nth layer is made of 2En blocks and you are near
the center of the 2E28 level, you are surrounded by more than 250 million blocks
on your level.  Looking about you can see only parts of about ten other blocks
around, above and below.  Only the block at the top has a very good notion of
what the structure is all about.
   Extract yourself from the pyramid and walk around it.  See it from all sides.
Fly over it.  Enjoy the view.  Don't divert your attempt to gain perspective by
trying to count the blocks.  Don't spend energy trying to climb to the top.  A
monumental waste of time.
   The pyramid poorly serves most of its blocks.  It should be dismantled and
the summation of 2nths layers of blocks encouraged to seek associations that are
more to their own benefit and liking.  They were coerced into believing the
pyramid is best for them.  They fear for their existence if they are not so
formed.
   It is unfortunate that most blocks foolishly believe a pyramid to be the only
reliable structure.  Freedom scares them.  When one does complain it is told to
look below at a layer that bears more than it does; to be grateful for its
position and jealous only of its peers. They are not permitted to look up and
relate what they see. Occasionally one is taken up and vicarious  satisfaction
is enough for the remainder.  There is never much room near the top.

   Victor harbors hope.  He knows there's little probability he'll ever be
employed again as an engineer.  Hell, there's only a 0.4 probability of minimum
wage day labor on and given day.  If he "gets out" it means exhausting his body
and time and getting barely enough money to survive and not enough to rent a
room.  What's worse is the surrender of dignity and autonomy required by the job
shop and the temporary employer.  The maintenence of self esteem is sufficient
reason to depend on begging. At least panhandlers and welfare recipients can
delude themselves into believing they are defrauding the system and therefore
superior to their benefactors.  But that's not altogether efficient since
publication of such notions tend to interfere with the ability to get handouts.
   In any case, a moderate amount of self respect is required to allow Victor to
create an independent means of survival.  That is what he hopes for.  The only
survival society provides for him at present is based on begging, scarce and
growing scarcer social services and slave labor.  The "post modern"
internationalism means less for most and more for the few.  He is superfluous in
America since the jobs have gone to cheap labor countries overseas.  (Though
where, ultimately the products will be sold when the plastic gets too heavy to
pass around, he thinks is a mystery.)  So he's on his own and must self generate
the confidence necessary to create the means to acquire the necessities of
survival.
   What is that means to be?  Victor doesn't have high probability options.
He believes he must simultaneously work at a number of possibilities.  As an
engineer he designed and programmed communications devices among other computer
related activities.  In his spare time he created PC applications, especially
for his children.  He did job related technical writing and played with prose
and poetry at home.  In the past twelve months he's taught himself HTML and some
JavaScript while exploring the web and developing several (free) homepages,
using public access machines, mostly in libraries.
   The inventory of his resources includes an aging 486 powered by photopanels.
These he keeps at a campsite fifty miles from Tucson and ten miles from
pavement.  While in his retreat he writes prose, poetry and windows
applications.  Of course there is no phone or internet access.  That's what he
goes to Tucson to get.  Not to mention money for food.  You can only eat so many
jackrabbits before you begin to miss the peanut butter and baloney sandwiches
from the free kitchen. A strange sort of cabin fever but it helps him to
remember his commitment to humanity.
   The most likely payoffs he can see, and they're not very likely, are attached
to his writing and programming.  He offers both for free on the net, publishing
on his own pages.  He asks for handouts to support continued activity.  This
Cyber-Panhandling scheme hasn't payed much yet but he's only been at it a few
months.
   If he gets kicked out of the library it will increase his difficulties.  The
problems of the homeless are painful to themselves and apparantly to the middle
class as well.  Victor has become aware most people don't care to see him.  Some
tell themselves they are trying to help as they scheme to get rid of him.
   Meanwhile he still has to see to his day to day survival and consider the
world's problems...

   I'm not sure how I grew careless enough to take on the task of awakening my
fellow humans.  Who would listen to a homeless, jobless idiot that attempted
something so foolish?  I can only really hope to undelude myself but I think
the truth can at least be presented to others.  Other's writings have assured
me of that.  I fear though, to really get it in, it will need to be pounded in
with the same force and frequency with which the bullshit is instilled in the
first place: a course of positive and negative reinforcement, sufficient to
counter the media delivered behavioral conditioning of the masses of thralls.
That is what is required to do the job.  The greatest obstacle to overcome,
may be our desire to be fools.  Do we want to be told everything is OK?  Or
have we just been trained to resent the truth.  Aside from all the diversions
lies, and automatic answers in our program, have we been conditioned to reject
unconditioning?
   More hopefully, I sometimes believe if enough of us present the message
wrapped in humorous "fiction" or other trappings, it may have the same effect as
beating it in with hammer.  The difficulty, though, is compounded by the
politician slaves of the ruling elite and their CEO overseers.  They can pick
off our ideas one by one.  We could attempt to incite a pogrom against the
masters but Hitler and Stalin have depopularized such tactics.
   Working class people tend to be more enthralled by the delusions of the past
but all in all are more down to earth and less foolish than the psuedo cynical,
wannabe yuppies of the middle class.  All yuppies, right up to the politicians
and the CEOs who own them, are wannabes.  Even though downsizing is disappearing
them in greater and greater numbers every year they refuse to see what's going
on; just as they refuse to acknowledge their slavery to the corporate culture.
That culture is owned by one to five per cent of the population, just as
everything has been for thousands of years.
   Corporate culture, team work, we called it "the system" in the sixties.  They
change the names of things more often than they used to but the things themselves
haven't changed in 6000 years.  Like hunter gatherers ten thousand years ago,
we still cooperate with one another to provide for our common survival.
Somewhere along the way, earlier in some cultures later in others but general
today, our work in the common interest has been diverted to the providence of
luxury for the few.  The rest of us face a more miserable existance every year.
   Even though some of us have more material wealth than our grandparents we
still have a smaller share of our cooperative produce than the average family had
had in 1970 America.  If the pattern of concentration of wealth ever changed
to one of more equitable sharing it has certainly changed back in the past
thirty years.  The resulting distribution has been sometimes more and sometimes
less top heavy but it has always rewarded best those who contribute the least
work.  We carry the load while we are kept off balance with a constant barrage
of collateral ideologies that serve only the rich.  Like, there's something new!
I wonder if I could get a job as a spin doctor for the interests of ordinary
folk?
   Anger with the system tends sometimes to cloud my thought and if I fail to
notice I continue to talk.  Then I sound like a raving lunatic without even the
grace and articulative ability of the average street corner prophet.  Even
though most others appear to me to be insane, I don't think it's me that's
crazy.  And there is a distinction, seemingly lost on most, between rational
fear and paranoia.  If I'm right and we are collectively insane, the individuals
who make up the majority, the normal, can't be too clear headed.  It angers me
that we put up with conditions as they are.  That we don't recognize much less
do anything about a group dynamic incorporated as an uncontrolled and
destructive force.  We all recognize that we need direction but accept it only
as unbridled greed and the desire to amass personal wealth.  We are so stupid we
think it is available in the greatest pyramid scheme ever invented.  We believe,
irrationally, that we can each get to the top.  We fail to notice that
competition among ourselves, the holy dogma that is drilled into us daily, is
what keeps us divided and unable to even own the products we make with our own
hands.  While we delude ourselves with the belief, the statistically ultra-low
probability, that we can get off the bottom.
   Stupidity, as I say, angers me.  You probably think I'm unaware that I'm
angry with myself.  I certainly am when I forget and allow myself to act
normally.  I'm angry when I allow myself to fall for any of the idiotic scams
to which the average and pretentiously superior "individual" succombs.  I don't
wish to be normal.  I try to see beyond the ordinary delusions and distractions
that enthrall the middle and working classes without falling into the even
greater foolishness of cynical yuppie wannabeism.
   If I stay around Tucson or any moderate or large population center too long,
I mis-step at some pitfall.  I try to get out as soon as I notice I'm trapped.
I bicycle the fifty miles back to camp.  There I don't see many other people.
The coyotes and crows, the deer, the quail, the rabbits, all the life in the
desert quiets and comforts me.  They aren't stupid.  They know what it's all
about and have a good idea what their chances are in a given situation. My head
clears and I get back on track.  Simple survival becomes the reality. My self
image/identity becomes dependent on life in general instead of idiotic, doubly
one-sided interactions with my own insane species.
   I once thought, if there is a God and God is not indifferent to life, there is
a way to affirm the existence of such a being.  We can build a starship.  A self
contained colony ship that could travel, if necessary, for several generations
could be launched towards another star.  Certainly a caring God would act to
contain the human parasitic disease to this Planet.  That quarrantine may seem
cruel to the rest of the life here but we could take comfort in the fact that
the existence of a caring God would have been proved.  The hope for outside
intervention in response to our group sub-conscious cry for help would not be
so unlikely as it appears to be at the moment.  There would be someone to clean
up the mess.
   But if the great mother of all still exists she must be smoking crack!  She
doesn't care about us.  There is no one to clean up the mess but ourselves.
At the moment those of us who want to clean up have less power than those who
benefit from the mess.  Those benificiaries, by the way, are the same ones who
are always trying to get us to put our hope and faith in outside intervention.
Our real hope lies in undoing the lies.  It looks dim but I'm still writing...

   As Victor sat down in front of one of the library's internet exploration
units, he noticed Buf (whom Vic calls "library Buf") talking to an apparent
friend in confidential tones.  Vic went about his business without paying too
much more attention to his surroundings.  His interaction with Buf seemed to
have been predicated on the librarians fear that homeless people may damage the
computers.  Victor had tried to reassure him that he posed no security risk but
Buf, being up to ninties' speed "knows" what one must do and think in every
situation.  Victor wonders if there is a special console of sopisticated digital
controls under the White House which sets the latest fad in paranoia and
determines it's level of intensity.  Such a device would be so much easier than
carefully seeding disinformation through the media and waiting for it to sprout
in unearthly art such as sitcoms and TV drama.  While that may be an interesting
fantasy, they'll probably have to wait until cloning technology is perfected
before they can build the necessary circuitry into the populace.  In the mean
time, whatever they do to the lower middle class psuedo professionals sure works
good.
   Vic continues his net surfing.  Today he is using search engines to look for
"Economic Justice".  Several have already told him, 'there is no "Economic
Justice".  He refuses to take the hint.  Finally, the search turns up five
patriotic (red, white and blue color theme) sights, a couple of Christians,
a get rich quick scheme and his own "Homeless Homepage".  The right wing
patriots and one of the Christians sport a revolutionary fervor and intensity
that makes Victor muse on why so many who have sufficiant desire for change are
so misdirected politically.  Most of their positions and scapegoat boogeymen
seem to be selected as if the deliberate intention was to fortify the
institutional exploitation instead of seeking real freedom.  He didn't pursue
that thought just then because Buf's friend took the seat next ot him  and
started a conversation.
   Actually he started mumbling to himself about some problem he was having with
a web page he was working on and Victor, not realizing it was a setup,
commented, "That's nice work, is it your page?"
   "It's the high school's Computer Club's home page but I've done most of the
work.  I just wish I could get these pages to load faster."
   "The big graphics files take a while to load, especially when the net's
busy.  But the browsers might not be as efficient as possible.  I may explore
that some day."
   "How could you do that?"
   "Windows provides API functions in winsock.dll that implement all the
functionality of Unix Sockets.  Besided there's NetBIOS, INT 5Ch."
   "Do you know how to use them?"
   Victor noticed some suspicion in the tone of that last question then,
remembering his new acquaintance had been talking to Buf, finally put two and
two together and started wondering what this friendliness was for.  He said,
hesitantly, "Well, I'd need a newer computer with an upgraded C++ compiler and
internet access.  I think, given the resources, I could make a utility browser
that could monitor net traffic for study purposes within a couple of months.  By
the way, my name is Victor."
   "Bart Tomson.  What you're talking about is a lot of work and not very easy.
Have you done network programming before?"  Are you sure you could do it in two
months?"
   The suspicion was better covered than a few seconds ago but Victor realized
this guy had been sent over by Buf to uncover his low crimes and and subversive
demeanor.  Victor wasn't sure how to procede but he knew he didn't have much
chance of convincing Bart that he wasn't a "hacker".  After all, the newspapers
and television have created the image of the malcontent from Geekville who is
responsible for every operating system bug and application error since 1953.
(Yes, there were some computers in 1953 but hackers and viruses weren't invented
until a decade or two later.)  The reality is that most computer errors are
simply that, errors!  But television is indiscriminate in creating paranoia.
And to be told America's premier computer program manufacturer and the world's
richest man puts out substandard software is not the sort of sensationalism
the middle class will pay for.  An insidious, paranoia that describes a subset
of incompetant but somehow effective (a touch of schizophrenia never hurts)
virus makers and mainframe burglars who are unscrupulous enough to make our hero
look bad is a much easier delusion to sell.  Besides, there is so much money in
selling security and protection for your machine, that admitting to bugs in
mainstream products might undermine our entire economy.  "Do you work for the
high school Bart?"
   "I volunteer there.  If you're willing to help us a little I might be able
to get you access to the systems you need to do your network programming.  But do
you really know how to do what you say you can do?"
   Victor should have known better.  He did know better!  But he was so desparate
for an opportunity to continue his project that he was tempted to let the voice
in his head go unheaded.  He knew Bart was fishing for a demonstration of the
application.  He knew he wasn't supposed to be using it on the library machines.
The permissions were set to deny that sort of access but Victor had found a way
around them.  If he shows Bart what he can do he'll give his secret away and
possibly lose access to the library computers or at least they will slam his
back door.  If he gains legal access to the high school's net it would be worth
losing the library but if Bart is just baiting him his position degrades further
by the loss of this resource.  If he'd thought to ask Bart to take him to
the other school for the demo he might have saved himself some hassle but who
thinks of everything at a time like that?  Besides, Victor, like everyone, wants
to show of what he can do.  Though he did question Bart a little more before he
sold the farm.  "So, what do you do besides volunteer at Tucson High?"
   It turns out Bart has a Phd. in Systems and Industrial Engineering but no full
time position.  He get's a little contract work out of the University and barely
maintains the pretense of a middle class existance.  Victor has met a lot of
people that can't find full time positions.  Corporate culture managers don't like
to pay benefits.  Vic remembers that a bloated stock market is not the same as a
healthy economy and says to Bart, "I think corporate culture is a dead end for
America."
   "How's that?  The economy has never been stronger.  If the government would
stay out of business everything would be fine."
   "Bart, I don't think the economy is as good for you and me as it is for the
upper middle class and the five percent who own ninety-five percent of everything
including the corporations..."  Vic had a lot more to say on the subject but
hesitated, realizing he had started by asserting the forbidden knowledge.  He'd
implied a ruling elite that contradicts the dogma of freedom in America.  His
mind was working fast trying to think of a way to undo that mistake.
   Bart interupted before Victor got a good start.  Jumping to the standard
conclusion, he said, "You don't think it's allright to be rich?"
   Too late!  There's no way out.  If he evades the question Bart will be
convinced that Victor is a communist.  The rest of the conversation, no matter
what tack he takes, will just be a ritual argument based on conditioned responses
Vic know's have no real connection to Bart's individual thought process though
they are deeply embedded in his mind.  Like the Suarita man, Bart's defences will
be up to the task of fending off lucidity because Victor triggered them upfront.
Instead of carefully feeling them out, Vic just jumped to the attack.  His
impulsiveness cost him an opportunity like so many before.  But there's nothing
he can do now but be straightforwardly honest.  "Humans form groups for mutual
protection, to assist one another to survive.  When the dominant culture fails at
that task for the majority, while a minority live in luxury, then the culture is
a dead end for the majority.  Morality, ethics, patriotism and religion are all
bullshit if you don't have what you need to survive!"
   Though Victor sensed that Bart wasn't buying this in the general sense, it was
also apparent that he did feel some compassion for Victor's specific situation.
Either that or he thought Victor was crazy; another thoroughly conditioned
response.  Whatever, Bart softened his tone and asked Victor to show him the
partially completed toolbox application.
   Bart was dutifully impressed and said so as they walked out the front door
together.  They had resumed the ritual discussion and Victor allowed it to take
more traditional directions.  "Library Bob" came shuffling along after them.
Pretenting Victor couldn't understand their elevated discussion Bob almost
blatantly asked Bart what he had learned.  Bart, to his credit, attempted to
answer equivocably, "Yes, I think we found our network guy."  Supposedly Victor
was to interpret that to mean he would be allowed access at the High School and
Bob, that the hacker was found.  Bart was to E-mail Victor concerning an
interview with the director of the project within a week.

   No E-mail ever came from Bart.  However, the security breech in the University's
library computers was patched within a week.  Victor was angry for a few moments.
Not because the library had hurt his chances to survive through their predictable
paranoia.  He was pissed because he'd let himself fall for that childish shit
after swearing to himself it would never happen again.  But he wasn't upset for
very long.  That wouldn't help.  Anyway, if disciplining one's own mind was easy
there would be indications that others were doing it, instead of letting it be
done to them.
   John Le'Treue, on the other hand, wasted no time in filling Victor in about
all the common sense things he would need to do to be a successful teacher.
John sent an E-mail within hours of their conversation which detailed Victor's
need for a place to live, daily shower's, presentable clothing  and a proposed
budget for the less than two hundred dollars per week he would supposedly earn
at the community college in the spring semester.  It even included beer and
trips to Nogales.