Tricksters of the Terminal Ooze

Finality Quest

Image courtesy of Jon T

What’s going on in my zombie twin? He is physically identical to me... identical to me functionally... He will be perceiving the trees outside, in the functional sense, and tasting the chocolate, in the psychological sense... He will even be “conscious” in the functional senses...

It’s just that none of this functioning will be accompanied by any real conscious experience. There will be no phenomenal feel.

There’s nothing it is like to be a zombie.

David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (1996)

SEQUENCE 1

I said to Praxis Sally as she was haulin my embers:
I'm just a workin stiff. There's nothin I really want out of life ‘cept a burger and a beer, a soft place to lay my head, and a sweet cunt to come inside of.

She says to me, she says:
Don't you want nothin more, ya deadbeat? What about th’ ooze, f'rinstance?

But I don't care about no ooze. I got enough to worry about just findin a job.

I find a good job one day, then it's time to find a burger and beer. A place to lay my head. A cunt etcetera. This is the daily round. This is what it's like being a workin stiff.

---

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Bryan ‘Tusker’ Krabiner, hottest new star of adult combat content platform HardBang, is the latest influencer to climb on board that welcomin’ ooze bandwagon
For me there are just oozers and losers, says our priapic warlord. I'm set on the grindmind 24-7

He glistens gently as the ooze seeps out of his skin and onto the floor. His eyes leak slime tears. He gazes into the lens, grins in mixed abject fear and gladness.
I been wayward and loose in my time, but now I'm well and truly capturvated.
Th’ ooze has me — praisegod — and I'm happy now, 25-8

He whimpers in faint infrasound, emitting sublimated signals to Those Who Can Hear:
I'm excited to relate to you folks that adult combat content is pivoting to ooze, so you folks can catch all the hardcore action 26-9 — now with extra of everything!

---

SEQ 1 CONT

Let me tell you: job don't get any easier. Today it was cleanin encrusted stuff from the gratin of AC units in our local hoosegow, Maximal Securifyin Solutions LLC.

Stuff was devilish hard to get off the crustygrilles. Just below me a prison guard was slowly beatin an inmate to pulp, slow and tired like it was dull work.

He says to me, he says:
Don't let anyone tell you that we have it easy in here
Brother, it's tough
Tough times and no shit

Gobs of prisoner flesh and brain were flyin off the end of his baton prodigious.

Cool show, but this only made extra work for me. The app I work pays only results, in this case clean AC gratin, without takin into account extra flesh and brains accruin.

My app stars went all to shit.

This is what I'm sayin.

---

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Here at this year's OozeCon, the atmosphere is both electric and gooey, if you can credit. Ooze bigwigs from around the world are gathering for the keynote, this year delivered by Hoss Mountjoy, CEO of OozeCrooz.com. He's gonna be laying out the groundwork for how you can buy into new ooze emissions on the ground floor.

No more FOOO — Fear Of Oozing Out! Join us at 3pm Central for livestream!

As the camera view pans across the convention center floor, one of the female attendees is seen to become engulfed in slime from the knees down and sticks, tugging bubblegum stretches and snapping back to immobility. She’s apparently destined to be dissolved in a viscous mire of yellowish taupe and crimson.

The camera halts and then tracks back to zoom in on this individual, who’s laughing awkwardly and covering her mouth as her legs disappear slowly into the pinkish froth. Rather embarrassing to dissolve so in public; no greater cringe possible, one imagines.

---

As above, so below

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SEQ 1 CONT

So here's how it is: for me the whole thing changed radical. Today I was fixin the pineapple pump when a voicetext came through on the app. Turns out I was chosen for a ooze sharin scheme. Pilot to see if staff could be incentivized or some shit.

They lay it all out, they go: Life's gonna change for you bigtime, bucko. This time tomorra you gonna be swimmin in th’ ooze. Gratulations.

Much as I hesitate to go all aspirationally excite prematurally, for fear of slumpified disappoint on the backend, I gotta admit somuch: lookin pretty good all considered.

Ooze startin to seep out from under my fingernails and my newlife's just beginnin.

This how it is when you win a hard-won success. I owe it to myself. An nobodies else.

ONSCREEN CAPTION: Keynote address

Lotsa folks fail to see the benefits of ooze. Fail is the oprah tiff word.
They say to me, they say:
Hoss, bro, you blowin smoke up my ass.
Not true, blue!

They what we call: the losers. Not the oozers.
The. Lose. Ers.
Because they fail to see - they fail, they simply fail.
An they lose, they simply lose. Lose. Ers. Losers.

[Sounds of squelchy applause, footstomping]

I say: Good luck bein poor, loser!
I'm on the ooze cruise to the moon.
Now you can choose to come with me.
You can choose - altogether with me!.. to OOZE!

Or go the other, if’n you a dickless wimpsack.

Yellowish fluid drains from his ears and drips gently onto his shoulders. Special nonstick gutters or runnels are built into his suit epaulettes as a prophylactic option.

Greenish sludge sticks to the stage where he paces back and forth, back and, ever more slowly. Sputum seems to collect at the edges of his mouth, where it falls in parallel streams to meet at the apex of his smooth-shaven chin.

Drip and hiss. Has to smart.

He commences to whine softly, a resonant frequency, in the brief silences between his urgent exhortations. Only some can hear it. Like a dog thing.

---

SEQ 1 CONT

I spilled all to Praxis Sally at home: I ain’t a workin stiff any more.

She told me how I looked lordly, how I was oozin confidence, how it’d all turned out real good despite of all. And without anyone else’s help which was the good part.

I says to her, I says: Here on in, things gonna be different round here. You're gonna see.

I told her not to pay no never mind to my new rich ooze odor which could be easily masked. I tried to hold it in, but I did flinch some regardless. It smarts some.

She asked me how it felt to be a someone. I told her, I say:
it don't feel of anythin, it’s just the same.

---

SEQUENCE 2

My transformation from indigent worker to entrepreneurial powerhouse was swift. I left far behind the feckless habits of yesteryear, along with my erstwhile companions and all their ne'er-do-well ways. ¹

Praxis Sally was regrettably cast by the wayside like the waif she was — no space for passengers in my rocketship! I always knew in my heart I was to be a self-made man and now someone had come along and made me into self-made, as had been destined for me. A had great expectations.

My first move as ooze-magnate was to leverage my existing ooze into an MLM-blockchain-NFT hybrid package, which doubled oozestocks overnight on peripheral Asian markets. I was, as the saying has it, swimming in slime. Pumpitypump and dumpitydump.

My lifestyle adjusted accordingly. Fine living requires fine companions and fine vittles.

From burgers and beer I progressed to caviar, truffles and champagne. My nights were spent with topclass leisure workers, all strictly 10s — at the very least 9.6s as a minimum. Pretty tiring, but there was little to do during the days except lounge in my man-den and sip on smoothies while watching the Ooze-Oriented Outlets, the O3-ecosystem. So I had vim and vigor to spare of an average evening.

All jolly good and tickety-boo, then. Oh, but...
Oh, the tedium of what came after. The very dreariness of it.

For I was tapped to become advisor to the Department of Commerce Subsect on Ooze-Related Matters, the SORM. A number of credentials were spuriously attributed to me - MBA, PhD, and STD from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Vatican City - and I did not demur. Shameful to relate, I accepted such factitious honors.

I assumed these borrowed trappings and attended the commission hearings as required, for here in Congress call-girls-and-boys and ooze galore were mine for the asking. How my sorry head throbbed on the morning I was conferred the title of Chair to the Board of Advisement to the Executive on Viscous Semi-Liquid Assets and Securities, an office colloquially known as Ooze Tzar.

All that occurred next was down to happenstance and blindest fury. Nobody could have foreseen that a slime-addled trader at his desk one day would have dripped ooze onto the motherboard of his computer. O tempo! O mores!

That then a glitch would spontaneously emerge like a glistening newborn monster from the subprimeval sludge of the cybercurrency markets, migrating sideways to ooze futures. I, in my role as Ooze Tzar, would be subsequently held responsible for the unravelling of the secondary and tertiary ooze markets that immediately ensued.

I took prompt action. It was the wrong action. I consulted with my advisors and implemented their recommendations. They were the wrong recommendations.

From this point onwards I was increasingly of what you might call an atrabilarious temper. I struggled for life. But it turns out I was mere patsy-boy, required to seize the scalding potato of blame. I faced the goolags consequent. .

Terminated I was to be, lamentably.
Tossed on my derriere, nary a word.
Not a goodie bag of truffles to show.
Out of paradise on my squishy ass.

---

SEQUENCE 3

Boom! Our special happy party was finito, buster. Access to fine-talk assistance disconnected jusslikethat.²

Back to gutterlife but things real different now. Not much goin on in the movin and shakin department.

Like… zip, hear me?

Got to scurry some to get me a livin, the way things are in the post-ooze environment.
Wound up haulin dead ‘uns out they homes to the big cleansin stinkpyres.

Oozed-out bodies don't burn so good. Smoky an slow to catch.

THREE OOZE SONGS FOR SINGING IN THE LATE STAGES

1 A Report to The Final Department

Was to that glad bucko
the days of happy flesh -

They, me, etcetera:
rule of oozers abject

Sludge spontaneously strong,
glistening commissions,
slimetrade confidence

Thereafter —

Conditioned workers despite fear
all oozed priapic, wayward.
Dissolved our mindset convention

_________

[Yowza! I done hauled Praxis Sally's slimed-out dead ass to the stinkpyres today. That's one piece o' ass that's never gonna light up my life again, lemme tell ya.

I said some words before I pitched her sorry dead ass into the flames, though. I said:
Here lies one sweet piece o' ass. Never had a bad word to say but one or two 'bout nobody at all. Now gone f’rever: oozed out and slimed to shit.

Didn't burn so good. Slow and smoky.]

_________

2 Through the Champagne I Throbbed

Primeval to real oozeflicks
seep trader's eyes excited -

Commerce paid for smoothies sweet,
made this slick transformation

Nothing but markets markets markets
then ooze found foundational

Bandwagon of translucence,
confidence our computation

Entrepreneurial pyres flame up
and viscous hotties damp the fires

Bucked happenstance if roles do fail,
glitch exhortation follows clacky fall

Fail fury shit out emerging markets:
track flat outlets of our annihilation

_________

[Goblords! Startin to ooze away meself, so I am. Thinkin me status as former lord gave some immunity, but 'twas never to be so. Goolags’re harsh on us goolads.

Fingertips dissolved in pink frothiness, beautiful to contemplate though fatal truly to me sainted boyo flesh.

{{This larkin laddie's days are numbered… whole world's too, by the by}}

Them four horsey fellas’re trottin their way onto the terminal circus sawdust:
pestilential strife, faminous bellyguts, slimin oozification, and th’ other one.]

_________

3 View from OozeCon: Eschaton Imminent

Pretty in/pretty out — 'cept not this time, bud

Hardcore action of feckless light become the thing
swelling like pulp, grubbing our bodies reckless

Newborn glisten dripped aspiration endings
but monster here and hungry: leverage party

Electric greenish oozers, pivoting gooey, call
for combat on flesh homunculi, stiffs failing

Indigent bigs batten on magnate, also fail.
Warrior pontifical and buff bureaucrat…
… all fail.

Scurry now to see last things in lastlight’s dim:
Prison moon overhead sings dirge of nevermore
sludgey world incentivized to end environs —
viscous mire beat disposable froth people,
lifestyle now a whimper of overnight sorry dead

_________

[Zounds! My swansong! 'Twere bootless now to dwell on regrets
as that dissolvin slime edges up legs
now swathed in frothy ooze
pink and marbled like lichen
scattered on treetrunks dead in the forest
and dissolvin now into greyish sludge
like brackish water lappin at the shores of a lifeless pond
dappled like sunspots now
on eyes glistenin with tears,
like eyes dissolvin in tears,
like eyes dissolvin
my eyes dissolvin ]

===== { TRICKSTERS OF THE TERMINAL OOZE / END } =====

Most of the devout ultrawealthy proponents of The Mindset seek finally to go meta on themselves, convert their frail flesh into digital form, and migrate to that realm as robots, artificial intelligences, or mind clones…

Once they’re there, living in the virtual plane rather than any physical territory, they will insulate themselves from what they can’t bear through simple omission... the digital lands to which they have migrated will be free of poverty, pollution, and whatever else the rest of us have to deal with, that primal sticky touch of reality.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

1. [NOTE: To add distinction to the autobiographical extracts, they are from this point on composed with the aid of DICKENDS LLM, the classy AIde-de-camp]

2. [NOTE: Autobiographical extracts from this point on composed with the aid of PASTICHIO, the nutty LLM whose style changes constantly to avoid excessive scarification]

Vestiges ➀