Flies of the Lords

What? Yeah, so I'm naked with a giant sleeping fly tied to my back. Of course I'm bent over! Yes, I know walking this way isn't good for my back! Have you ever walked around with a giant sleeping fly tied to your back with ropes? No? Then shut the fuck up. If I walked upright the fucking thing would wake up. Have you ever had a giant fly buzzing its wings while tied to your back? No? Well, bully for you. I have and it hurts like the mother Bejeebus. Scary as all fuck out, too. The noise, dear God, the noise!

Why am I naked with a giant fly tied to my back? Would it surprise you if I told you that's not a question I want to answer? I know you want to know. I would, too. But if you knew what I knew you'd shut the fuck up about that and ask me if I wanted some water. Yes, damnit, some water! Do you know how long I've been walking like this? I don't know, either. Longer than you've been alive, I'll say that. Is it true? What the fuck kind of question is that?

Look, I am an American from the future. I've been sent back to let you know what's coming. Not so you'll be able to change the future, but so the rulers of the future can have the thrill of scaring you shitless. They've gotten bored scaring, imprisoning, humiliating, and torturing us. We've been scared so long it's not possible to scare us any more. But you, it's still easy to scare you so they sent me back to your time to let you know how bad it's going to be for you. Yes, all of you. They're not going to let you die. No one dies in the future. That's the hell of it.

These aren't my words. They are in the sense that I've been programmed to say them--I'm human, not a computer or a robot or an android. I've been programmed through techniques you will suffer through yourselves some day. I don't have a choice. Even when I say "I" the identification is meaningless except for storytelling purposes and to account for your naive beliefs in individuality and personhood. You are already part of the hive -- you always have been -- but you haven't been aware of it since the dawn of civilization. You were granted a dream life that, thus far, has lasted a few minutes. The past lives you believed you lived? Those were embedded thoughts from seconds ago. It's more complicated than you can imagine, especially since you are incapable of imagining anything -- none of your referents are real!

Let me tell you what's been happening and what will happen. I'll tell you in the form of a story, a third-person story. It's a story about me, insofar as there is a me, but it will make more sense to you if I tell it through a third-person narrative. You think a little better that way, most of you. Not all of you. Hell, those of you who are dyslexic understand it completely. Well, you would have if you hadn't been brain-washed to believe you were the ones reading things wrong by those who really are reading things wrong. That was by design; the rulers had to figure out how to keep those who could understand from, well, understanding.

See, everyone's been reading everything wrong. It's not Lord of the Flies; it's Flies of the Lords! What the hell do you think I'm carrying on my back! Why would I, a man, succumb willingly to carrying a giant sleeping fly on my back? Because I serve the Lords and this fly on my back is but one of the billions of flies of the Lords. There are billions of men and women like myself carrying flies like this, hunched over so as not to wake the violently buzzing giants. We cross deserts and mountains, swim lakes and walk across the hot ashes of fires, all to deliver flies from hills of dung to the Lords spread around the edges of the worlds, walking through portals that no man or woman was made to walk. We do not begin transporting flies when they are fully grown as the one on my back is; no, we tie the larvae to one another's backs then go on our way.

It's easy at first. The larvae squirm, yes, and it feels grotesque, sure, but it's okay to walk upright. But as they grow, feeding on our fat as we walk, they become adults. The first time I felt the stinging pain of the wings buzzing I fell to the ground. If the fly is tied on wrong then it will be face down, turned toward the back, and it will chew on the spine, the neck, the head. Death comes too slowly ... especially since there is no death. A thousand years could be spent with a giant fly gnawing on a man's body. Then, maybe, someone or something will discover the woman, escort the fly to the Lords and enslave him, use her to flavor soups or to hold down papers on a large desk to keep them from blowing away when the window is open.

Most of the time the maggots are fastened correctly, as mine has been. The giant flies sleep when upside down. That's why I walk this way, why we all walk this way. This, though, is not the story I will tell you. That is a third-person narrative. I will let you know when that story begins. First, I have to help you understand how fucked up you are. The dyslexia. That's one issue, but not the only issue. But there's more to it. I mentioned the Flies of the Lords. Yes, well, there are many other book titles you've mangled. The reason that is important is because you have gotten fiction and nonfiction backwards. You've been thinking a biography of Abraham Lincoln is somehow related to a real-world truth; no. It was Lincoln Abraham, anyway, but that's not all that important. You believed Lincoln was an important figure in history, the emancipator of slaves; no, he was the subject of a children's story about the enslavement of emancipators.

Literature contains everything that was, is, and will be. What you call science fiction is what has already happened; you've lived through those things. You don't remember because you've been living in the short dream you believe has been going on since the Big Bang (or God's creation of the universe or -- quite a lot of other bullshit). Now that is fiction. Realism is abstraction; abstraction is hyperreal. Surrealism is super-realism; absurdity is "things as they are." Reality is absurdity -- you would think that would be obvious! Ha! Dick Cheney? Clearly a fictional representation of the very real Darth Vader. The hobbits from Rings of the Lords -- oh, yes, you know it as Lord of the Rings -- they are you. Some of you.

But if you really want to find out how things are now -- beyond the dream life you've been living for only a matter of minutes -- read Kafka, Dostoevksy, Burroughs, Murakami, Garcia Marquez, Ellison, Cervantes, Huxley, Atwood, Angelou, LeGuin, Robbins, Boccaccio, Melville, Oates, Woolf, Dickinson, and so many more it's impossible to list them all. Go to your local library and look through the "fiction" section--poetry, too. Then you'll know the world as it is. Don't read Shakespeare, though. Those ideas are saturated in your dream world.

There is a reason you believe what you believe. Do you want to know why? Do you really want to know why? Because you've been programmed to think you live in "the twenty-first century" while in the real real world you're naked and bent over walking around with a giant fly tied to your back. Now that you are aware, move your ass because the Lords are waiting for their fucking flies!

Oh, the third-person story? Fuck you and keep walking.