Friday, January 26, 2007
Now is the Time
Signs of life are few at the schrockmedia desert complex. You can see the large metal door embedded in the mountainside, a blinking LED of the video camera pointed at it, and a thumb print scanner covered with a fine layer of red dust. A hot gust of wind whips by, bringing scorching air up from the valley. The day has quickly warmed. You raise one arm gingerly to the neutral unblinking eye of the video camera. Why no doorbell?
In the cold hermetic air inside, a figure hunches over a MacBook ringed by a semicircular wall of monitors. They display images from a world in disarray: periodically updating analytics from websites, populations across the world in all states of activity, a badly burned-in antique screen from the middle of last century displaying an enormous unblinking eye. The figure that was waving on one of the monitors is now doing sweaty jumping jacks. Steam rises from the vintage hand-pulled espresso machine tucked underneath the counter.
The figure sighs and takes a vinyl record down from the towering shelves cut directly into the mountain wall. Pulling it from its waxy sleeve, he lays it delicately on a Rockport Sirus turntable. “Hopeful, optimistic music today” he says quietly to nobody in particular. Music begins to play as he pulls up a chair to type...
In the cold hermetic air inside, a figure hunches over a MacBook ringed by a semicircular wall of monitors. They display images from a world in disarray: periodically updating analytics from websites, populations across the world in all states of activity, a badly burned-in antique screen from the middle of last century displaying an enormous unblinking eye. The figure that was waving on one of the monitors is now doing sweaty jumping jacks. Steam rises from the vintage hand-pulled espresso machine tucked underneath the counter.
The figure sighs and takes a vinyl record down from the towering shelves cut directly into the mountain wall. Pulling it from its waxy sleeve, he lays it delicately on a Rockport Sirus turntable. “Hopeful, optimistic music today” he says quietly to nobody in particular. Music begins to play as he pulls up a chair to type...
