index

int.
a crow looked at me alt.red/a-crow-looked-at-me
AOTY lists alt.red/aoty-lists
AOTY 2018 alt.red/aoty-2018
AOTY 2019 alt.red/aoty-2019
AOTY 2020 alt.red/aoty-2020
AOTY 2021 alt.red/aoty-2021
AOTY 2022 alt.red/aoty-2022
AOTY 2023 alt.red/aoty-2023
AOTY 2024 alt.red/aoty-2024
AOTY 2025 alt.red/aoty-2025
a man who wanted a son alt.red/a-man-who-wanted-a-son
anther alt.red/anther
a review of arca's self titled album alt.red/a-review-of-arcas-self-titled-album
a review of baseball alt.red/a-review-of-baseball
a review of Ghedalia Tazartes' album Diasporas alt.red/a-review-of-ghedalia-tazartes-album-diasporas
astral projection alt.red/astral-projection
comis alt.red/comis
dangerously creepy alt.red/dangerously-creepy
ducks alt.red/ducks
entertainment squared alt.red/entertainment-squared
home alt.red
hypertext alt.red/hypertext
index you are here already
large projects alt.red/large-projects
look for their eyes alt.red/look-for-their-eyes
misc. nonfic alt.red/misc-nonfic
monthly playlists alt.red/monthly-playlists
ned alt.red/ned
new alt.red/new
on film alt.red/on-film
on literature alt.red/on-literature
on music alt.red/on-music
other projects alt.red/other-projects
press alt.red.press
short projects alt.red/short-projects
signification restriction in media + journalism alt.red/signification-restriction-in-media-journalism
skyrim alt.red/skyrim
thanks! alt.red/thanks
the cat is hissing at you alt.red/the-cat-is-hissing-at-you
the property brothers alt.red/the-property-brothers
the shipwreck alt.red/the-shipwreck
transanima alt.red/transanima
unusual destiny alt.red/unusual-destiny
who-is alt.red/who-is
xxx alt.red/xxx

ext.

autocompletion heatdeath.net/syntropy/autocompletion.pdf
can i endure more than the 9/11 first responders? spectrumcerebrum.substack.com/p/i-am-better-at-climbing
computerfriend slugzuki.itch.io/computerfriend
consciousness hologram slugzuki.itch.io/conholo
did the minions do 9/11? substack.com/home/post/p-139681133
familiar slugzuki.itch.io/familiar
flickr flickr.com/photos/192822838@N04/
geneva convention violations in 'big fat liar' substack.com/home/post/p-92615309
let me tell you who you are slugzuki.itch.io/let-me-tell-you-who-you-are
north alter slugzuki.itch.io/north-alter / heatdeath.net/adz/northalter.pdf
piele slugzuki.itch.io/piele
poezii slugzuki.itch.io/poezii
universal hologram slugzuki.itch.io/universal-hologram
verses slugzuki.itch.io/verses

The room was concrete with no windows but thankfully vitamin D capsules fell alongside your food each day through the PVC pipe that jutted out from the ceiling. At least you think you remember these orangish translucent things from a pill bottle back home. There was no light at all at breakfast but you saved one of these pills until midday once and when the TV came on you took a look in the gray flickering light before swallowing it.

Pills are a fundamentally stupid thing because it's like a meaningless exterior and a meaningful interior. You remember when you asked to be put into the room they told you that you would not be able to leave until you had watched the movie 1000 times, once each day, and you told them it couldn't be stupider than the things you were already doing, like taking pills in the morning and using a computer and cell phone and walking around stupidly everywhere and driving your ridiculous car to work and to the store for no reason.

The stupid people you'd meet at restaurants and in buildings. When you said something stupid they would leave earlier than you'd agreed. Driving home you would wish you weren't in a car. You'd wish to be in a room.

After a while you decided to set a world record for staying in your house longer than anyone else. You ordered everything on websites and after a couple days you began to think deeply about how when a package arrived you would bring it through the door, or "mouth" of the house, and move it through the "digestive tract" as it shed its external shielding until it had eventually found its correct place in the "body" & was utilized appropriately until its usefulness had been expended, at which point it was excreted through the back door in a black trash bag.

You made it about 70 days which isn't even close to a record.

When you did eventually go outside you took hundreds of blood capsules you had bought on Amazon.com into mall food courts and Home Depots and chewed on them and just freely bled everywhere, expecting it to bother someone, but it never seemed to and when you returned to the Home Depot a couple weeks later to buy Google Play gift cards (the preferred payment method of the people who would eventually put you into the room) the fake blood was still there on the floor untouched.

If you live in an inescapable pit for long enough you begin to have opinions on things like which of your legs taste better. Your thinking was that you wouldn't even have food, just media, and you gave them a flash drive with all this stuff downloaded that you had always wanted to see but had never gotten around to. But the fucked up thing is that every file had gotten corrupted except for about twenty minutes of this one Al Pacino movie, so every 24 hours the television would crackle out of its black unreality and you'd watch a few scenes:

1: Al Pacino ate lunch with a beautiful woman and said nothing stupid, only intelligent things.

2: Al Pacino left the restaurant and drove a normal car, then another man you didn't recognize got into the car, then that car got chased by another car.

3: Al Pacino crashed his car and the two men got out and were separated and ran in different directions. 

Then the rest was just Al Pacino running through beige streets with sweat slicked hair and at some point the frame would stutter and freeze and the TV would shut off.

On the stupidest day of your life you shouted that you wanted to be let out of the room and someone told you that you didn't understand why you were in the room in the first place. Even though it had been your decision to go into the room.

They said that the room was the only thing that existed in the world now. You thought that was stupid because you existed, and the food, the vitamins, the television. Before, when you'd been outside of the room, nothing had existed and you'd just been a creature. A container for various fluids: blood, saliva, semen, each one gradually increasing in microplastics.

Thinking about this had become a ritual, like something satanic, like the molecules inside your body were forming pentagrams or the anarchy symbol or something else scary. When you got too scared you'd close your eyes and in the darkness of the room literally nothing would change. It would be as if you weren't even in that room, but in a bigger room that was also totally black. Or it would be as if you weren't in a room at all but outside in a place where there wasn't a sun, moon, or stars. Or it would be as if you were in a normal room with regular lighting but you had no eyes. All of these things had meaningless interiors and no exteriors. All of these things were fine to you. None of them actually existed, though, so did you? Did Al Pacino?

Then the voice said that you were right actually. 

Something that exists can only be itself. Something that doesn't exist can be anything. 

Do you understand?

Then the clock said 1000 days and the walls fell away from the room and everybody was there: your mom, your dad, your wife and husband and Al Pacino and your kids looking clean and beautiful, and they were all clapping for you.

The end