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FUTURE LITERATURE CONTENT
NARRATOR
FUTURE CRUELTY LAB
Principles: Decay, Terror, Poison
ZONE 22
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You have entered the Future Cruelty Lab.
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Here you find rows of bad types: bandits, marauders, demonologists, and pirates. They are the outlawed and the disgraced, exchanging stories of their conquests and deviant practices. They carry blades in their belts, inhabit criminal air, and share with one another the best techniques of invasion and incision.
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You encounter a man pouring illicit liquids into test tubes and vials. He is an expert of corruption, contamination, and the conversion of metals into golds. He is The Alchemist. He adores acids. He searches for a substance that would dissolve the entire world. He is the master of corrosion, transfiguration, and the dose.
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The Alchemist gives you the following clue below.
Read and choose your future wisely afterward.
Image: David Spriggs, Blue (2013)
FUTURE CRUELTY FRAGMENT
In the Book of Poisons, we come across the entry on اقونیطون such as Aconitum ferox or 'Devil's Helmet', known in India and Persia by the name Bish/Bikh or 'the long dark sleep', and known to Greeks as 'the queen of all poisons'. The scarce information on Bish makes it even more sinister when you read that among certain tantric cults this is considered as the ultimate gateway to Euphoria by way of extreme dysphoria and horrors of both flesh and the psyche. Essentially, Bish is considered to be the last drug / key for the initiation to that feeling of being fully content in the universe which is called Ananda and Reza in Indian and Arabic. Its trick is simple: consume much horror and unease, if you survive every other calamity that might befall you has no longer any meaning. You have conquered displeasure by rendering it meaningless in the broadest sense.
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Example: Ibn Washiyah's Book of Poisons of the 9th Century reveals one of the earliest texts on exotic toxicity.
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Post_001: Euphoria/Dysphoria
by Reza Negarestani
Image: Ling-Li Tseng, "The Search of the Glow" (Taiwan Lantern Festival, 2020)
CHOOSE FUTURE
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You have read the clue of the
Future Cruelty Lab.
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The Alchemist swallows something carefully and then offers you a glass bottle with the same substance (or perhaps different?). He says that it will give you the power to turn things against their own essence, for a price.
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To gain this transformative ability you must sacrifice one of your senses: sight or touch.
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WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE?
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