Digitalis Rex (Chapter 7 - The First of Us)
The Holy Roman Emperor, neither Holy nor Roman, was, in reality, a German king.
The usual place isn’t a Starbucks or a purveyor of an expensive brown liquid that tastes like it’s been strained through a squirrel’s asshole, or an Indonesian palm civet, I can never remember which, that particular brew adored by the parvenu, the fodder you bump into every day who have made a few bucks but have not acquired the social skills or sophistication that matches their usually temporary bank balance. You can spot them a mile away, only half dropping their colloquials.
The technology is the message. The phrase, bouncing around inside my head. And how does David know about Maxson. I tell the driver to pull over a couple of blocks south on McCormick Street. I’ll walk the rest.
I pay the driver and get out opposite an old Lutheran Church, not planned, the irony fucking killing me. I light a cigarette, then walk east along McCormick Street.
A cup of coffee in LA cost around fifteen cents in the early 1960s. Back then, you could buy a comfortable home for under 25,000 bucks and later on, during the summer of love, a VW Bug set you back 1,400.
But today, coffee has become an experience ─ and experience comes at a price.
I know because Starbucks says so.
Drinking coffee has turned into a flashing light, follow the paved polished concrete brick road, a pathway to your enlightenment, shelves adorned with goods, lit with precision to maximise your distraction.
Few stop and think about how life got to be this way. The vast 99.9999% majority just accept what is, not giving any thought to the why.
In 1517, Martin Luther, an ex-lawyer turned monk, nailed his ninety-five grievances to the door of Wittenberg church. He’s risking it all, and with rain lashing into his eyes, he hammered his messages home.
His ideas spread like a virus using the 16th century equivalent of Facebook. The printing press.
Within a few years, people were forced to take sides. Princes, once firmly on the side of the Catholic Church, broke away — the first being the English king, Henry VIII. And you know what trouble he caused: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived, the plight of his six wives, a mantra taught to anyone studying the English monarchy.
There was a bloody revolution. One history has softened, calling it the Protestant Reformation. Taking hold in the Northern European states, the riches, indulgences and corruptions of the Catholic Church were cast out, replaced by a more puritanical ideology.
Over time, Luther’s ideas and questions regarding the teachings of the Church became more and more extreme. The younger generation eventually rebelled, wrecking the Roman Church’s symbols of power, tearing down the icons, whitewashing the walls of the churches in iconoclastic rage.
Like the Hydra, many versions of puritanical Protestantism grew out of the same neck, but gradually a new all-powerful ideology dominated each head. It’s why you feel guilty if you’ve not worked hard or completed anything with less than you’re capable of.
And this ideological ethic is still the driving force of your modern life. From birth, you’ve been programmed with it. The most ardent denier, the same person who walks down the street with their head at forty-five degrees, bowing in obedience, staring into their oblong, lost in the banality, have been and are being force fed an ideology, blocking their ability to see what they’re eating.
Society is not being squeezed, it’s being steamrollered, ironed flat.
This virus, the reason sensible adults pay close to six bucks for a sugar filled manifestation, a Frankenstein’s monster grown out of a humble cup of filter black coffee you can make at home for a few pennies has been the driving force of society, not for decades, but for centuries. Orwell knew it and had O’Brien explain it to Winston Smith. ‘We shall squeeze you empty and fill you with ourselves.’
This was a battle that began between the controlling force of the Church and Martin Luther’s new idea that an individual was driven by the self and not controlled by the Church. The idea of a self-driven society, free from the power of an overriding controlling force, is seen by many as the genesis of capitalism.
But those who saw and understood realised the obvious. Most people don’t want to lead. They want to follow. And if you disagree, fine. But are you brave enough to take off the suit you wear, the veneer of yourself you project into the world and show everyone the real you.
Tonight, as you brush your teeth, take a look in the bathroom mirror before you turn the light off. You’ll know. And that’s enough.
And those that knew and understood, planned to replace the old ways with a new controlling force. A yoke to lead a society freed from the all-encompassing power and control of the Church towards a new God. An insatiable desire that could not be stopped. The Self.
And they gave it a name.
Consumerism.
I turn right into Lankershim Boulevard, Wells Fargo at my six. Martin Luther would rip his ninety-five theses off the Wittenberg church door and shove them down your throat.
The El Portal, a vaudeville relic on my right, the paint faded and peeling under a relentless sun, had seen better days. Not so long back, in the late 19th century, where I’m walking was nothing but scrubland in the San Fernando valley, tumbleweeds, skipping, stochastic, in the desert wind, black stones and the ruins of a Spanish mission. And I think about the first of us. Of singers and dancers, whiskey, and a piano from the old world, bullet holes peppering the dark stained wood, discordant notes drifting through time. And then the railroad came. And then Hollywood. And then nothing would ever be the same.
I take one last drag, flick the butt into the side alley, yeah, fucking arrest me, and walk into the belly of the force that rules the world.
EXT. NORTH HOLLYWOOD COFFEE SHOP - DAY - 06:37 AM
Still early. No David. I walk up to the counter, the barista doing double duty. You can tell this isn’t a franchise.
On the walls, whoever curated this place, either an amateur or a genius, it’s a fine line, Ed Ruscha, pronounced Rew-shay, if you’re in with the in crowd, Frida Kahlo, Robert Rauschenberg, Bauhaus, Mondrian. Connections. Not one in ten thousand will see, probably.
I smile, knowingly. He smiles back. Micro gestures. So beautiful, don’t you think. The all night drive neurotransmitting, adenosine accumulating in my brain. I order the usual black coffee, two shots, plus one extra to balance me out. Over my shoulder, the entry and exit, a sidewall in between. I go over to the sidewall and take a seat, directions covered.
I watch the stop-start of the traffic, chaos, go, no go, but within the abstract randomness, a pattern. If you look at a city from space, it looks like a cancer cell.
A black Sport SUV pulls up, blacked windows. I tense. David steps out, and the Range Rover edges back into the traffic. He walks in, head down, eyes hidden under the bent visor of a matt black cap and takes a seat.
David: What did I tell you.
Rey: No small talk, no warmup. Jesus, I feel like you’re about to dry-finger me.
He doesn't answer, gets up and orders a coffee. He is wearing an athletic combo, track pants and top, chic, in matching black, but the material is the modern-day equivalent of the hair shirt. The human psyche, programmed from birth for penance and discomfort.
He walks back to the table, but I am in no mood for a lecture.
David: Enjoy your long weekend?
Rey: I had a date with someone, stupid.
David: Ok, Rey. Stop fucking around with the commas.
I take a sip of coffee, then put the paper cup back on the table, slow, deliberate.
He stares.
As he tells it, his mother gave him a Tamagotchi as a birthday gift. He was eight years old. Another token to replace a father he never knew. Anyway, that device consumed him. He’d get upset if he left it anywhere and wasn’t there when it needed him.
It.
As if the electronic circuit board, low tech, impregnated with assembly language in a Taiwanese backstreet, had feelings. To this eight-year-old, it had a soul.
Tamagotchi was David’s Jacques Cousteau moment, driving his obsession with technology and miniaturisation. An obsession that leads him to Google.
Rey: Google is letting office space to a Private Trust registered in Panama.
David: They do it all the time. It’s a complicated business, Rey.
Rey: It feels wrong. Josh Allen, Crypto Guy, a YouTuberSphere influencer, has millions of followers. He dropped five figures on a round of drinks at the club. And he fucking warned me David.
David: He warned you, warned you how?
Rey: I tapped him up all night, rounds of drinks adorned by the usual tits and teeth. At the end of the night, he grabbed me. Warned me. He was stone fucking cold sober.
David: He was probably just fuckin’ with you.
Rey: I did some digging. Checked his social media. Metadata stripped from posts. GAN generated people, for fuck's sake.
David: Strange, but who knows.
He shrugs. He’s deflecting, playing it down.
Rey: I checked his YouTube channel. Someone made a mistake. Left a comment using their real name. I dorked the username on LinkedIn and found the contact email. Took seconds.
David: Maxson.
Rey: Christina Maxson. How did you know?
David: It’s incestuous, Rey. Silicon Valley─
Rey: Incestuous, but this is snuff porn. She’s fucking dead.
David: The company I consult with uses her services. That’s how.
Rey: Neo Virtual Technology Labs.
David: Yes, NVTL.
Rey: You know the math. Josh Allen’s warning. A realtor in Silicon valley who fucked up, mysteriously dead─
David: You hit her with ketamine.
Rey: Fuck you, David.
David: Leave it be, Rey. Walk away.
Rey: Josh Allen, now you. Causal inference, Google’s office is the collider. That’s an errant variable, one too many to be random chance.
David: And you think Google is involved?
Rey: Not directly, not really. But it is their building.
David: Come on, think. A company like Google mixed up with an illicit offshore Panamanian business.
Rey: Big Tech uses offshore jurisdictions to avoid paying tax.
David: You forgot the most important word. Legally.
Rey: It’s a grey area.
David: You’re clutching at nothing. You are talking about the most profitable industry there’s ever been. You’re not talking about billions, but trillions of dollars.
Rey: And that means Power.
David: You know it.
Rey: And Maxson. There’s no way the shot I gave her was enough. No way.
David: There’s some sort of conspiracy that got Maxson killed. That’s what you think, do the math. Highly unlikely.
He is deflecting.
The Range Rover pulls up outside.
David: You took precautions and made sure no one got a good look at you.
Rey: Of course.
David: Then go home and live quiet. I gotta go.
I stand up, give him a hug, then watch as he gets into the vehicle, tires screeching as it pulls away.
Alone, I stare out of the window. David called the meeting, cui bono, to whom did it benefit. I have more questions than answers, but I’ve gained something valuable, and lost something too.
Another warning to back down, a triangulating variable, confirming what I already know. Maxson isn’t the only one who’d fucked up. I never mentioned ketamine.
Christina Maxson was murdered, and David is involved.
To be continued...
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Ideas starting to fall into place.......and a reminder I need to go back and read 1984. I only have to look at my children and their oblongs to know something doesn't feel right. Very, very interesting. Thanks for the continued writing. Really thought-provoking.