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  ...presents...                 Possibilities
                                                         by Obscure Images

                      >>> a cDc publication.......1994 <<<
                        -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
  ____       _     ____       _       ____       _     ____       _       ____
 |____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|

     The small room was almost claustrophobic with the clutter of living. 
Terry wasn't concerned with it; she was comfortable there.  The room held a
smell of incense and stale cigarettes from months of alternating the burning of
the two substances.  Her nerves were jangled from a long hard week, a week of
uncertainty and despair.  Since graduating from college, she'd been on her own.
She'd been paying the rent on the one room apartment from savings and a lousy
part time job in a hippie clothing store.  It was a bit more than that, though.
New Age crystals and pseudo-Oriental religious tracts filled the spaces that
the tie-dye products weren't.  She'd spent all week going to interviews and
applying for more jobs than she cared to remember.  All of the places wanted
experience, and being fresh out of college, she didn't have any of that.  It
used to be that you could get experience fairly easy, but these days there were
more than enough people with experience looking for jobs.  She dropped herself
down on the lumpy futon that she had thought would be great to sleep on
sometime in the distant past.

     She was staring at the ceiling, looking at the dirty white paint and the
outdated fixture that held a single low-wattage light bulb.  She was too wired
from the shitty week and the awful looking prospects for the future to get any
sleep, so she tossed and turned trying to get comfortable.  She soon remembered
the tape some guy had given her that afternoon.

     The guy was really strange, she thought, as he wandered around the store
earlier in the day.  He was tall and overweight, with long brown stringy hair
and a scruffy beard.  He was wearing a dirty old trench coat, but underneath
the coat he was dressed completely in black.  He stopped at a rack here and
there, muttering to himself.  She wondered what a person that looked like him
would be doing in a store full of color and nostalgic capitalism.  He looked
like he belonged in some old film, one that nobody had ever seen.  He
eventually made his way over to the checkout counter were Terry was standing.
Instead of moving onward, he stopped to look at her; his prying brown eyes,
amplified by the thick black glasses, digging into her own.  Strangely enough,
she didn't feel frightened by the probing eyes, just a little awkward.

     "Can I help you?" she asked, somewhat haltingly.

     "No, I don't think so," he said.  "I think I can help you though."

     "What do you mean, help me?" she questioned, beginning to feel nervous.

     "You know what I mean.  Take this and listen to it later after reading the
instructions on the inside of the case," he stated, handing her a cassette
tape.

     "What is it?"

     "You'll see," he said, smiling kindly.  "I promise you it'll help."

     He gave her a final grin and then walked out the door, and then down the
street, out of her sight.  She was confused by the whole event, but before she
had a chance to examine the tape, a crowd of Birkenstocks flip-flopped through
the door, demanding tie-dye and pretty baubles.

     Reaching off of the futon, she grabbed her purse and pulled out the tape.
She removed the paper that the tape box was wrapped in, to find a note taped to
the case.  It read: "Terry - You opened the package, that's the first step.
The next step is for you to put the tape into your tape deck.  Once you do
that, dig out the headphones and put them on your head.  Before you push Play,
let me explain what you will hear.  First there will be a series of droning
oscillating tones that will seem to pulse inside your head.  When you feel
relaxed and drowsy, don't panic, the tones are designed for that.  Next, on top
of the tones there will be a loop of a word or phrase.  This loop is optimized
for your particular mind.  I know you're asking yourself how I know these
things, but don't worry about that, you'll find out soon enough.  You should
get yourself ready for this tape.  Go to the bathroom, dress in something
loose, or nothing at all.  So long as it isn't constraining, it's ok.  Turn off
the lights and lay down on your futon (they're awful, I have one too) and press
Play.  You'll have a few seconds to get settled down before the tones start, so
try and relax and let your mind open to the sounds.  Ok, enough of my ranting,
it's time to start.  Oh yeah, my name is Paul.  Good luck, and good life.
-paul023 E.L.F."

     "This is too fucking weird to believe," thought Terry, as she hunted
around the room for the headphones.  "What do I have to lose," her mind
wandered, as she popped the tape into her deck and got up to go to the
bathroom.  She came out of the bathroom, stood in front of the futon and
thought, "Nothing constrictive, eh?  I wonder if this guy is watching me from
somewhere, trying to get me naked.  Hmmmm, oh hell, if he's gone through all
this trouble just to see me naked I might as well oblige, just for laughs."
She stripped off her clothes and laid down on the futon again, flipped the
light off, and pressed the Play button on the tape deck.

     The tones began.  Not much else seemed to be happening at first, but soon
she felt her tension slipping away, and a feeling of warm pleasure swept over
her.  Slowly the words began to phase in.  It was one word repeating over and
over again.  As the loop went around a few more times, the words seemed to be
changing, as did the tones underneath the words.  She thought her eyes were
closed, but she couldn't tell any more.  The dim vision of the room faded away
and was replaced by a fuzzy group of objects in vivid colors, some of which
were moving.  They were all beginning to take shape and come into focus.

     Terry walked along the wooded path in the state preserve.  The trail was
seldom used and was long overgrown with long grasses and sharp weeds.  The sun
was up, but very little of the light fell on the path.  She hummed a tune of
her own creation as she made her way through the sensuous woods to a
destination she did not know.  A bird in a nearby tree chirped happily to
itself.  The twigs and rigid weeds on the path made a crackling sound as she
stepped on them, unaware of their existence.

     Terry's mind was swimming in the sea of sullen warmth that surrounded her.
The musky smell of decaying leaves made her feel a bit heady, feeling a joy
that was almost out of place this woods.  It was by pure chance that she had
found the trail that she was walking on.  She was walking along one of the
other trails in the woods when she happened to notice something out of the
corner of her eye.  When she looked straight on she noticed the little path
that she would have otherwise ignored.

     She kept walking along the path, which was beginning to twist and turn
with a greater frequency.  A slight left slant, then a short right slant, all
at constant intervals.  Terry didnt seem to notice the changes in the path. 
She just kept moving, a pleasant feeling of tension building in her the further
she walked.  The thoughts began to stir within the confines of her mind.
Questions, answers, patterns, disorder, all swirling around her brain with a
greater velocity.  Where would she be tomorrow?  Who would she love?  Where was
she going to get money to live?  All the questions she had ever asked, and more
that she may have never conjectured.

     There was a light of high intensity coming up on the path ahead, so she
hurried along the path with the tension building.  At the end of the path she
was dazzled by the light, and her mind exploded in a rapture of such intensity
that she was knocked to the ground.  Her body had to rest for a few moments
before she dared to open her eyes, but when she did she was startled by the
sight before her.  The path continued out from the forest to the middle of a
huge field.  The sunlight was brighter than she could ever remember it being.
The colors were vivid to the point of surrealism.  She picked herself up and
continued on the path, making her way to the end of the trail, compelled by a
force of will she didn't understand.

     She stepped into the circle at the end of the trail and looked at herself.
She was shimmering; her body stripped of clothing and emitting light flashes of
colors she had never seen before.  The meadow she was standing in was
resonating to the colors coming from her body.  The colors began flashing
faster and faster, until Terry noticed that the meadow had disappeared, the
entire meadow other than the circle she stood in.  In its place were an
infinite number of spinning mandalas, all interconnected by strands of
causality.  Despite the alien nature of the surroundings, she recognized every
one of the unique mandalas as symbols of her soul.  She looked back down at her
body once again to find that it was no longer there.  There was only a small
silver sphere with causal strands reaching out of every available location on
the surface.

     She was confused.  At that time a voice spoke to her from all directions.
"Don't worry, there is nothing wrong.  The illusion has been stripped down to
the barest essentials for your comprehension, although those are not really
necessary either," the voice intoned.

     "Are you God?" she asked.

     The voice chuckled and replied, "No, I'm not God, I'm you, and everyone
and everything else."

     "Doesn't that make you God?"

     "No, it doesn't, not by any means.  Let me explain.  I make no choices, I
have no influence over you.  I don't even exist except for the fact that you
created me."

     "What are you then?"

     "I'm reality, I'm possibility.  I am the collapsing wave.  That's all,
nothing more.  Possibility?  Yes, I am defined by every action made by anyone
at any time, I am also every possible outcome for every event.  Everything is
possible, nothing is forbidden," the voice said, fading away.

     Terry's mind was spinning.  The information was overwhelming.  The answers
were breeding more questions, forming a neon labyrinth in her mind.  There were
no strings attached, nothing to guide her back out of the glowing maze.  Her
synapses fired at accelerated rates as she moved further along the maze.
Climbing over the obstacles, she whisked by Zen koans strewn amongst the
abstract mathematics of the cognition.  She closed her eyes and pushed at the
barriers of understanding.  Possibility, nearly infinite choices, all equally
valid for this one moment outside of time and space.  She felt the tugging of a
mind far away, pulling her away from the end, from the truth.  She diverted
some of her attention, shoved the mind away, and continued onward.  She gained
momentum as she rounded the last turn, her soul racing down the last straight
path.  She reached the end and she understood.  She brought her body back, and
looked at the still swirling mandalas of possibility.  Seeing a small golden
apple with the letter "K" inscribed onto its surface, she reached out and took
the apple into her hand.  The apple sunk into her skin, and she felt the meadow
come back around her.  There was a smile on her face as she made her way back
up the trail, her nude form emitting a soft golden light.

     Her eyes opened to the golden light of the sun creeping into her room
through the window over her futon.  She saw the golden light that was draped
over her body and felt like a goddess.  She got up and went into the bathroom
to look at herself.  She hadn't felt so good in the morning since she was a
kid.  She studied herself in the mirror, trying to see a difference.  Same
face, same breasts, same stomach, same legs... yet there was something that
seemed different.  She shrugged the feeling off and took a shower to get
herself ready for work.

     She walked into work exactly on time.  It was the first time she hadn't
been late for work in quite a while.  The day dragged onward, but Terry didn't
seem to mind as much as usual.  Around quitting time, the man who gave her the
tape came into the store.  He didn't bother himself by wandering around the
store, instead coming straight up to the counter.

     "You listened to the tape, I see," he said, smiling.

     "Yeah, I did.  It was... incredible," she said with a faint smile.

     "I'm happy you listened to it.  You passed the test.  You have the job."

     "What job?  I don't remember anything about a job."

     He handed her a gold-colored business card and said, "You can start right
now."

     "Start what?" she asked, still perplexed.

     "You'll see.  Let's go get something to eat," said Paul, motioning to the
door.

     Terry closed up the shop a little early and walked off to dinner with her
new boss.  He didn't mention what her job was exactly; he just told her that
she'd know what it was when it was time.  Later that night, laying in bed, she
realized what her job was going to be.  She smiled and then fell asleep.
 _______  __________________________________________________________________
/ _   _ \|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.....806/794-1842|
 ((___)) |Cool Beans!..........415/648-PUNK|Polka AE {PW:KILL}..806/794-4362|
 [ x x ] |Metalland Southwest..713/579-2276|ATDT East...........617/350-STIF|
  \   /  |The Works............617/861-8976|Ripco ][............312/528-5020|
  (' ')  |            Save yourself!  Go outside!  DO SOMETHING!            |
   (U)   |==================================================================|
  .ooM   |Copyright (c) 1994 cDc communications and Obscure Images.         |
\_______/|All Rights Reserved.                               11/01/1994-#283|

ÿÿ