2.00	CYBERNETIC JAPAN

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: About a month has passed since the first session.  The patient seems a little more agitated than the last time.  The patient’s face flushed and he is to sweating despite the air conditioning of the room. 

Dr. Delta: The virulence and infectiousness of this meme cluster of memes is medium.

DG: Before we digressed with your fascinating story about the six Half Squares, you were describing your experiences with the so-called Squares in Tokyo.  Could you continue?

FS: Back in Tokyo, The chauffeur drove me to a section of Tokyo where I could easily find a hotel.  As I mentioned, Tokyo really was the capital of the Squares. 

DG: Did you meet other Squares in Tokyo?

FS: Occasionally, I would see Squares talking to each other using a Japanese version of HKP that I found pretty impossible to understand.  Erotron had suggested I watch a Kabuki show. 

DG: Why? 

FS: According to Erotron, Kabuki was a form of traditional Japanese theater that was used to teach very young Square children basic Japanese HKP. 

DG: Kabuki as far as I could tell was a bunch of guys dressed in face paint whirling around in ancient Japanese costumes.

FS: Well maybe this is the case on this Earth.  The faces were color coded so that a Square child could more easily develop their HKP.  Different colors represented different categories of nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives that the character would focus on during the story.  Vascular color changes were hidden by the face paint but the lesson was meant to teach basic grammar rather than develop vocabulary.  I went to a couple of shows but just couldn’t hack it.

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: I have seen Kabuki and after twenty minutes was ready to run out the door.  My Japanese host would probably have been insulted and I smiled through the whole performance.  The explanation of Kabuki’s true purpose almost makes sense and I can understand how the patient infected his three prior counselors.

DG: Kabuki is pretty weird but I don’t think we have to invent a whole conspiracy to explain this art form.

FS: Again this was the purpose of Kabuki on my Earth I have no idea why Kabuki exists on this Earth. 

DG: So were did you stay in Japan? 

FS: I got a hotel near some sort of red-light district, or at least I thought it was some sort of red light district.  I had a nose for that sort of thing, but red light action was more underground in Japan than Mexico or the United Americas.  I drank a six-pack of a Japanese cerveza.  The cerveza was only 5.3% alcohol and not strong enough to get a good buzz after my forays into 190 Octane drinks.

DG: What a tragedy.

FS:  Hey, I’m a resourceful guy.  I went ahead and stood in the bathtub.  I then made a hole in the bottom of an unopened can, put the can over my open mouth and then opened the cerveza.  The air pressure forced the cerveza out of the can and into my mouth and ultimately my stomach. 

DG: This is known as shooting a beer and only done by teenagers and alcoholics.

FS:  I guess I am a teenager at heart.  I had learned that this action wasn’t accepted by all and generally did it in private.  I would buy a six-pack and finish it off in about two minutes.  Sometimes you puked your guts out but this was the price of feeling really good.

DG: Don’t you think all this drinking might have had the long-term effect of impairing your sense of reality?  So what other adventures did you have in Tokyo?

FS: That night Erotron and I went to the Sleeping Beauty Bar in Tokyo. 

DG: Did she look at you with affection?

FS: That would be hard to say. Erotron was a master of HKP control.  You could never tell what she was thinking.  I thought she liked me and I tried to sneak my arm around her waist but she quickly pushed me away but then, almost as an afterthought she put her arm around my waist and I did the same in response. 

DG: How did this make you feel?

FS: Totally confused, that is basically how I always felt around her.  She made me feel like a total fool. 

DG: So she made you feel bad.

FS: Not bad, just confused, but horny as well and confusion and horniness combine to make a cocktail that goes down smoothly even if you do have one hell of a hangover later.

DG: Maybe you were in love?

FS: Maybe, I just know I felt something I never felt for my girlfriend Zorra at the Panther Club in Tijuana.

DG: So you were walking down the hall then what happened?

FS: As we walked around the hall she pulled me into a private corner and kissed me.  Her tongue hungrily sought mine out.  At the same time she massaged my crotch and the other hand massaged my behind.  My privates were sandwiched between her hot aggressive hands.  She knew what she was doing and I came in my pants almost immediately.  It was as though she knew exactly which pressure points to push down on.

DG: Yeah, this sounds like a real plausible story.  Gorgeous rich gal just grabs you out of nowhere.  Well, why not?  It’s about as plausible as the rest of your story.  What was the rest of the bar like?

FS: I kind of was in my own little world after the experience with Erotron.  Maybe I wasn’t floating on air but I was floating.  The cerveza was a little pricey so I doubted I would be back.  On the same street there was a large sign for Eroticom.  I made a mental note of the location and promised myself to visit that place soon.  Erotron told me that the Money Squares would contact me not the other way around.

DG: Too bad, so what other adventures did you have in Japan?

FS: I went to the arcade that Friday. 

DG: What sort of arcade.

FS: There were any number of people in all kinds of costumes and this was known as cosplay that was short for costume play. 

DG: They were like Trekkies dressed in Star Trek outfits when they go to a Star Trek convention.

FS: Exactly, there was in fact a costume contest in the evening that was a lot of fun.  They had Western medieval characters, science fiction characters, samurai type characters and traditional Chinese characters. 

DG: Is it possible you once went to a Star Trek conference and invented the similar Eroticom conference?

FS: I would never attend a Star Trek conference in this Earth or my own.  I hate Star Trek.  The whole premise of the show is too unbelievable.

DG: Star Trek is unbelievable!  This is truly an example of the kettle calling the pot black.  How is Star Trek unbelievable?

FS: The people in the Federation, the good guys, are just too nice and human. 

DG: What do you mean?

FS: Where are the cyborgs in the Federation?  The good guys get their asses kicked by the Borg, a group of cyborgs, but don’t use cyborg armies in response.  If an army is beaten by a technology, then the first thing they would do is appropriate some of that technology and use it against the enemy.  Why wouldn’t humans use technology to make themselves more powerful at the individual level? 

DG: I am a big fan, and the premise is that you have a hard time using Borg technology without becoming a Borg yourself and losing little things like individuality and free will.  Is this your only objection?

FS: Hell no, where are the new drogas?  Where are the transsexuals?  Star Trek ignores every controversial social trend of our century and just assumes only the moral majority stuff will be amplified by technology. 

DG: So you think Star Trek is too clean cut and therefore unrealistic?

FS: For sure.

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: My Christmas present from my wife was a scarf knitted “correctly” as she put it, unlike my mother’s knit cap, or at least according to my wife.

FS: I became a friend with one guy that called himself U-Kato that explained the cables to me.  He watched my shock and smiled.  He said, “You’re American, I got my bachelor’s in Computer Science at Cal Tech.”  He let me examine the base of his skull and underneath the hair there was a computer plug.  The plug was very small, more like a coaxial cable plug than your normal computer plug.  He told me this was the latest thing and, “Much, much better than even sex.”

DG: Tell me more about these cyberplugs.

FS: Cyberplugs were becoming more and more common.  All the plugs had the same basic design by were slightly modified for different purposes.  You are fooling around with creating an artificial hippocampus on this Earth.  As I recall, this was the first step on my world that later led to the creation of cyberplugs. 

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: Cyberplug may be a symbol of the super ego that the patient is trying to ignore but cannot since he cannot plug into the “system” or larger society until he gets a cyberplug, i.e., reconciles his own conflicts between his id and super ego.

DG: I notice that in your Earth you don’t to do mundane things like work.  Don’t you think this is odd?

FS: Work is for dorks.  Actually, I was running out of money.  I had left my compucard on the windowsill of the hotel in order to charge the nano-solar cells.  The nano-solar cells were solar cells that had been improved using nanotechnology.  The nano-solar cells meant that I never had to plug in my compucard for power.  I wasn’t too worried about a maid stealing the computer since the seguridad function had been turned on. 

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: Am I paranoid or is the institute board, under the instigation of Dr. Arrow, out to get me?

DG: Why not?

FS: This meant that moving the computer would cause a high-pitched alarm to go off.  Within 30 seconds a wireless web message would be sent to the policia and that message included the time of movement, the GPS coordinates of the compucard, and how to contact the compucard owner immediately.  Most people refer to a compucard as a CC.  Only entering my thumbprint at a pad on the back of the CC prior to the 30-second time limit could stop the message from being delivered.  The fact that CC had this feature was common knowledge.  Crooks would describe a particularly hard theft with the saying, “Like trying to steal a CC.”

DG: Finally, some technology that doesn’t involve sex!  Okay, tell me more about this compucard.

FS: The compucard was a computer that was exactly the same size as an old fashioned credit card.  I surfed the web, transferred money from my secreto offshore bank account.  I then deposited nanopayments into a regular bank account in Japan.  I then took some money out of my Japanese account using my compucard that doubled as an extra secure ATM card.  My offshore account couldn’t be accessed directly from street ATM machines that increasingly were broken into by teenage hackers.

DG: There’s just one little problem with your story, how do you type in information into such teeny weenie computer?

FS: As you pointed out, the only drawback was the super small keyboard and screen.  I generally typed stuff in with a pen on the road.  The compucard had a small built in color LCD monitor that was practically useless, but you could project a holograph of the screen image.  The holograph was semitransparent and was best projected unto a plain background.  Similarly, a holographic keyboard was also projected.  A laser projector projected the holographic keyboard and also acted as a laser sensor that reacted to any movement in the holographic keyboard area.  It took a little getting used to typing air but it beat lugging around computers the size of books!  There was no mouse, but instead the holographic screen projection acted like one giant laser grid sensor and reacted like a touch screen when movement was detected.  The union of computer and holographic technology had created the ultimate portable computer. 

DG: Sounds uncomfortable! What if you wanted the feel of a real keyboard?

FS: I could connect the CC to a PDA or even a portable computer if I really needed access to a solid keyboard but this kind of defeated the purpose of having a compucard in the first place. 

DG: By your own admission, you consume enormous amounts of drugs, especially alcohol.  Are you a drug addict?

2.01	Cyberaddiction

Dr. Delta: The virulence level (1.3) and infection level (1.5) are low.

FS: Well at least I am not a cyberaddict. 

DG: You mentioned that term earlier.  I almost hate to ask, what is a cyberaddict?

FS: A cyberaddict received direct stimulation to the medulla and liked it so much that they wanted more and more.  Some were in front of the computer playing games that supported medulla stimulation all day and night.  After awhile even this was not enough.  They didn’t care about the game and just wanted the stimulation. 

DG: So was cyberaddiction legal?

FS: The problem had become serious enough that, while cyberplugs were totally legal, cyberaddiction was not.

DG: I am supposed to believe that there were people in your Earth that were willing to just waste away in front of their computer.

FS: You have people like that in this Earth and they don’t even have the excuse of cyberaddiction.

DG: Good point!

FS: Anyway there was a gray market technology that used portable medulla stimulators.  The stimulator was about the size of a small cell phone. 

DG: Another flaw in your story.  Cyberaddicts just went running around your world with cables sticking out of their head?  If cyberaddiction was illegal then I don’t think so.

FS: The user clipped the stimulator to his belt and then ran the wire under his shirt to the scalp plug that connected to the medulla.  Then user generally grew long hair in order to hide the wire running from the back of the shirt to the base of the skull. 

DG: There would still be some cable showing.

FS: Some users cut some of their own hair.  They then wove and glued the cut hair over that part of the cable that was exposed to outside observation.

DG: This sounds like a benign addiction, since it’s cheap, but there’s always a drawback to addiction.  Booze leads to DT’s.  Take LSD and you can get flashbacks.  What’s the catch?

FS: A continuous stream of stimulation can cause seizures so the stimulation goes on and off about once a second.  The user has a tendency to rock back and forth as the stimulation goes on and off.

DG: This would be a dead giveaway of cyberaddiction.

FS: They user tried to control this rocking but this was extremely difficult.  The street term for this behavior was “rocking”, and users that couldn’t control their behavior were called rockers.  Many users also carried portable radios, and wore earplugs and this made it appear that they were rocking to music. 

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: Rocking is probably a reference to withdrawal symptoms the patient experienced that may be related to his prior comatose state.

DG: So how bad was the rocking?

FS: Pretty bad, there was a type of portable cyber stimulator that looked like a radio and the stimulation wire ran from one of the earplugs, under the hair and into the medulla connection.  The user could be so addicted that he did nothing but rock back and forth until he died of thirst and/or hunger.

DG: This sounds as bad as it gets!

FS: No more than any red-blooded American.  I accidentally walked past a cyberaddict alley.

DG: What was that like?

FS: There was one Japanese guy in his twenties rocking back and forth next to a garbage can.  His clothes were ragged.  He had a little area cleared out and had put down a tarp and a box that took up part of the tarp.  He was rocking outside of the box, and I guess he just wanted to spend some quality time on the front porch and absorb some of that life-giving neon light. 

DG: So there were cyberaddict communities.

FS: In a way, the cyberaddicts tended to hang out together in particular alleys that were out of the way and near 24-hour electronic stores.  The worst thing that could happen to a rocker was to be caught without the high-tech batteries you need to get the voltage for a really good high.

2.02	Cyberzombies

Dr. Delta: The virulence level is low (1.2). The infection level is low (1.6). 

DG: Sounds pretty bad.

FS: There are worse things than rockers in the world of cyberstimulation.  Human traffickers sometimes created cyberzombies.  The brains were deliberately fried in such a manner that the person could do simple mechanical tasks but not much else. 

DG: Why would anyone do this?

FS: Many young ladies were made into cyberzombies. 

DG: How would you know about this?

FS: Well, maybe someone I know went to one of these places.  There were cyber-zombie houses of prostitution all over the Third World on my Earth.  Some poor families in Africa even sold their daughters for this purpose in order to have enough money to eat. 

DG: A friend told you about cyberzombies?  Didn’t the police try to stop this activity?

FS: Even when the poor lady was found by the policia, she couldn’t answer the most basic questions about who she was and who did this to her.  The movie Cyberzombie on my Earth was sensationalistic but is accurate in terms of how the technology was depicted.

DG: So, a third party created cyberzombies?

FS: Not always. The average person in Africa could not afford the portable stimulator and got a type of plug that was much bigger but could handle current directly from the outlet in the wall.  They were first generation plugs developed for early experiments with animals and were not designed for humans, who had much more complex and delicate brains than animals.  These first generation plugs made a hole about three times bigger than the second-generation plugs at the base of your scalp and were quite ugly. 

DG: Why would anyone mess with primitive technology?

FS: It was cheap.  The outlet current from Africa was not very stable and you could literally fry your brain if too much electricity floods the plug.  Some Africans tried using a strip plug as a protective device, but I was told this provided no real protection from a serious electrical spike.  As mentioned before, the stimulation should go on and off about once a second.  Plugging into an outlet directly means that there was no oscillation of the stimulation. 

DG: And no oscillation means what?

FS: Constant stimulation could cause seizures, and worse, a pleasure loop.  The stimulation was often so intense that the user could not gather the will power to pull the plug and stop the stimulation. 

DG: Sounds like cocaine. 

FS: Much worse, every day cyberaddicts in Africa were found dead of malnutrition with their brains still plugged into the outlet.  The victims had an insane smile etched into their face and this was known as “the electric smile”.  The plugs were installed in black market clinics with terrible sanitation and many died.

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: The patient exhibits incredible imagination.  Like many metaschizophrenics he has created a detailed fantasy world but the disturbing aspect is how this world almost makes sense.  His ability to create believable technologies is quite good but I wonder if he has as good an imagination when it comes to characters in his imaginary world.

DG: The last time you mentioned a person named otaku.  Could you describe them?

FS: An otaku was a type of person who lives, eats and breathes Japanese pop culture.  They were especially obsessed with anime, a type of Japanese animation.  A typical otaku spent hours in front of the TV watching animated robots and monsters battle it out.  The sex games were an adult version of anime. 

DG: So they were TV addicts?

FS: Not totally, otaku were ditching the TV for the computer because of the greater interactivity of this medium.  Most of these guys were pale from only getting light from the tube and couldn’t run around the block if their life depended on it.  Otaku had hygiene problems and could go for days without changing their clothes or taking a shower. 

DG: So these guys had no social life?

FS: For some mysterious reason, these Japanese guys had a hard time getting the babes.  I couldn’t imagine why women didn’t want to watch anime for days and years at a time with stinky, overweight guys. 

DG: I notice you are pretty pale yourself and according to your file, pretty much spend all day and night watching TV.  Would you describe yourself as an otaku?

FS: I think you have to be Japanese to be an otaku.  It’s written down as a requirement in their union manual.

DG: They had a union?

2.03

Cyberlady

Dr. Delta: Virulence level is medium (2.3). The infection level is high (3.4). The infected host actively seeks out software similar to this meme after exposure to the meme.

FS: On my Earth they did.  U-Kato was a big fan of something called Cyberlady.  According to U-Kato, Cyberlady had solved the female problem to some extent. 

DG: So what was Cyberlady?

FS: Cyberlady was an interface that could be attached to your computer’s operating system, in order, to mimic a woman. 

DG: I think there is something like this in real life.

FS: Cyberlady was a direct response to Atad a similar product put out by Macrohard, which was a huge failure.  Atad was an onscreen person that guided you through the Macrohard computer operating system. 

2.04

Macrohard

Dr. Delta: The virulence and infectiousness of this meme is low.

DG: Yeah, yeah, now I remember.  This sounds a lot like the failed Bob interface from Microsoft.

FS: Similar in more ways than one.  I told you there were counterparts to people and organizations in our Earth that were similar to people and organizations in your Earth but Macrohard would have eaten Microsoft for lunch.

DG: Why do you say that?

FS: The technology at Macrohard was fifty years ahead of anything Microsoft could even dream of.  I think your version of our Macrohard CEO is a far, far nicer person than our version. 

DG: Then I wouldn’t want to mess with your version.

FS: You bet!  The Cyberladies were a lot better looking than Bob. 

DG: How did Cyberlady work?

FS: When you turned on the computer you got the face of a lady that came equipped with speech recognition and speech generation capability.  You then told her that you wanted to open a word document or a particular game and the software proceeded to open the particular word document. 

DG: How many commands could Cyberlady handle?

FS: The software came with about 10,000 preprogrammed commands and responses that could be customized by the user. 

DG: Why so many commands?

FS: Many new household devices could be hooked up to a PC so you could have your Cyberlady turn on the vacuum cleaner, dim the lights, handle the microwave cycle, etc. 

DG: So Cyberlady ran household appliances?

FS: Actually, a commercial version of Cyberlady could run everything from a nuclear power plant to a jet fighter.  Men were just liked telling a woman what to do.  The software had various verbal modes that could be selected. 

DG: Verbal modes?

FS: A verbal mode is roughly a set of verbal responses that have a common theme.  For example, in the curious mode the Cyberlady asked a lot of questions like an innocent schoolgirl.  In the masochistic mode, the Cyberlady objected to the commands in a tearful voice.

DG: Glad to know the finest software programmers in Japan in your Earth were hard at work making the world a better place.

FS: Glad you approve. 

DG: This really sounds like phone sex with animation tossed in.

FS: Good analogy.  There was a nude option for all the programs, which interestingly, was not used very much.

DG: Why not?

FS: Most otaku thought that this would be disrespectful. 

DG: What about software for the ladies of Japan?

FS: There was supposed to be a Cyber-Gentleman for the ladies but you had generally had to order that software program via the web since it wasn’t stocked in most computer stores and I had never actually observed this program. 

DG: So the guys in your Earth spent all their time talking with Cyberladies?

FS: You couldn’t really have a conversation with the Cyberlady since the software did not have true AI capability and really couldn’t learn.  However, the number of commands/requests was so large that you did get the feeling that there really was a lady living in the computer.  For example, all the Cyberlady versions asked how you were when you turned the computer on. 

DG: Didn’t otaku get bored with their Cyberlady after awhile?

FS: No, they just added new routines.  Otaku spent hours adding new commands and responses to the software so that the software would give preprogrammed verbal responses to any number of questions and comments. 

DG: So basically, Cyberlady was a high tech animated parrot and couldn’t say anything that wasn’t preprogrammed.

FS: This lack or originality did not seem to bother most otaku. 

DG: Why not?

FS: Many, otaku said that real women were cruel and inconsistent but they could always count on their Cyberlady.  You typed in the command and then typed in the response.  The software then converts the text into a speech using a speech generator similar to the ones used by the phone companies on this Earth. 

DG: A machine can’t love you.

FS: No, but Cyberlady could be faithful which is more than you can say for most women.  You could program the Cyberlady to only respond to your voice and this in fact acted as a type of seguridad function since no one else could operate your computer. 

DG: What does a security function have to do with faithfulness?

FS: In my opinion, faithfulness is a biologically based seguridad function.  Most otaku did in fact use this seguridad function but I thought it has less to do with seguridad and more with a type of possessiveness.  They didn’t want to share their Cyberlady with other men!

DG: So how was this done?

FS: You could turn the Cyberlady software off. Most otaku just the program to go to sleep.

DG: Sleep, not off?

FS: This seemed more natural and polite to the otaku than saying, “Turn off Cyberlady program”, which was the other, preprogrammed response.  I think the off option was a major advantage of the Cyberlady over a real lady.

DG: I agree with you about the off option.  Still this is just a fancy phone sex machine.  Cyberlady sounds like a poor substitute for a real woman.

FS: U-Kato hoped that with new developments in AI that there would be new heuristic Cyberlady software that would learn just like a real woman. 

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: The patient seems to be obsessed with technology and I will try to ask some questions in this area to see what the root of his delusion is.

2.06

Homobot

Dr. Delta: The virulence and infectiousness of this meme is low.

DG: What are some other types of technology existed in your world? 

FS: Homobots were everywhere.

DG: Homosexual robots?

FS: Homobots are not homosexual.  “Homo-“ in the homobot case is being used in the Latin sense of  “man-like” as in Homo sapien rather than in the Greek sense of the same as in Homosexual.  Homosexual of course means love of someone that is the same sex rather than love of a man.  Homobots are not homosexual robots but robots that are “man-like” in scale.  

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: The patient shows an abnormal knowledge of English etymology for someone with such a limited formal education.

DG: So homobots were all over your Earth?

FS: Yes and no, homobots could be found in the armies of the United Americas and on construction sites but not in people’s homes.  Except for sexbots, consumers didn’t want human size robots in their homes.  

DG: Why not?

FS: Robots that were much smaller than humans were accepted but not robots that were the size of humans or larger. 

DG: I wonder why that would be?

FS: Some cyber-anthropologists suggested that this was similar to most people accepting a small dog but not wanting a wolf in their house.  Humans were a little scared of robots at some level and felt more comfortable with a robot that was smaller than them and therefore less of a threat. 

DG: I guess in this case small is beautiful.

FS: Yes, for example, pets are generally small because small animals can’t eat us.

DG: So small robots were less dangerous.

FS: Actually some of the most lethal robots in the United Americas arsenal were minibots. 

DG: What is a minibot?

FS: A minibot was smaller than a human was but bigger than an insect.  Despite the lethalness of minibots kids found them cute.  One minibot could place antipersonnel mines in just about any nook or cranny due to its small size and had probably been responsible for more deaths than Stalin but people still thought the little guy was cute. 

DG: So in this case small was deadly?

FS: Sure, there was a minibot that resembled a large tarantula and mimicked the behavior of a tarantula. 

DG: A robot tarantula?

FS: Yes. Actually pretty practical, if you think about it.  The robot tarantula was attracted to body heat, would crawl on the victim and deliver a paralytic poison before the victim knew what was happening.  Half a platoon would be paralyzed before anyone realized what was happening. 

DG: Why not kill them instead of knocking them out?

FS: This was a robot used for capturing prisoners for interrogation. 

DG: Why not just give your paralyzed troops the antidote to the poison?

FS: Only the attacking army had the top-secret antidote.  The remaining soldiers, if there were remaining soldiers, had the option of killing their paralyzed comrades or fleeing the ataque that was sure to follow.  Still kids thought the tarantula robot was cute!

DG: You know I think a cartoon based on the tarantula robot would be a big hit with both the little kids and the teenagers.   

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: The imaginarybook is an obvious attempt by the patient to rationalize his own misogynist tendencies that are probably rooted in his poor relationship with his mother.

DG: How was your relationship with Erotron progressing?  Were you at war with her?

2.07

Vampires

Dr. Delta: The virulence and infectiousness of this meme is high.

FS: I spent my time in Tokyo like a Ping- Pong ball between Erotron and U-Kato.  Erotron and I finally started having sex at her place, no dates, just sex, kind of weird but I didn’t complain.  She only had me over at her place at the same time of the month.  The chauffeur would pick me up from my apartment.  We didn’t talk much.  She would pretty much pull me into the bedroom, do it and then she kicked me out immediately afterwards.  If I didn’t know better I would swear she didn’t like me but if she didn’t like me then why were we having sex on a regular basis?  She once told me she thought of me more as a younger brother than her lover.  I mostly hung out with U-Kato.

DG: So what did you and U-Kato do for fun?

FS: At a Tokyo comic book convention, U-Kato introduced me to a subgroup of otaku that were known as vampires. 

DG: I suppose it would be waste of time to point out that there is no thing as vampires.

FS: They were not really vampires but otaku who role-played being a vampire as part of a group.  The vampire movement started in the United Americas about ten years earlier on my Earth.  In the UA, groups of teenagers form vampire clans and engage in ritualized blood sports among other things.  Blood sports consisted of making small cuts and then drinking blood from the cuts.  For example, a man might cut his arm and let his girlfriend suck his blood and vice versa.  Blood sports were a type of fetish behavior that seemed to have been around for ages.  Not all people who did blood sports were necessarily vampires. 

DG: I have heard about blood sports.  It’s a serious problem among teenagers with low self-esteem.  Why would vampires be at a comic book convention?

FS: The guest speaker was Alan Miller the creator of the comic book “Swamp Bat”.  There was no Batman comic book in my world but Swamp Bat was similar except that the Swamp Bat operated out of New Orleans and derived his powers from the fact that his mom had been a voodoo priestess while his dad was a vampire.  Swamp Bat only had half the power of a regular vampire but was also less vulnerable to sunlight and had access to the voodoo lore of mom. 

DG: Never heard of this comic book.  I notice that the Swamp Bat is a half-breed of sorts.

FS: Yeah, I guess you have a point.  Swamp Bat does not exist on this Earth but was one of the most popular comic books of my Earth and was especially popular with both United Americas and Japanese vampires.  The United Americas vampires added gothic ritual to the blood sports, dressed in black, watched movies about vampires and hung around graveyards.  This UA based cultural trend had migrated to Japan but with some major differences.

DG: What sort of differences?

FS: The Japanese vampires were not into blood sports with the exception of one clan that will be discussed later.  First of all, the Japanese were much more scared of AIDS than Americans and theoretically blood sports could lead to the transmission of AIDS. 

DG: So fear of AIDS is a major motivator in your Earth.

FS: Not just AIDS but disease in general.  Biotechnology had gotten a little out of control on my Earth.  I would also think that most otaku were wimps and would probably faint if they saw any blood.  I also thought, Japan was simply not as violento a country as the UA and the sight of blood could still shock the Japanese. 

DG: Glad to hear it.

FS: When you saw people getting shot in front of you on the daily news, as you did in the United Americas, a little blood wasn’t going to shock you.  For whatever reasons, the Japanese had substituted the used of tetrodotoxin for blood in their vampiric rituals. 

DG: Tetrodotoxin?  Where do you come up with this stuff?

FS: I am not coming up with anything.  Tetrodotoxin is a potent anesthetic that is found in some puffer fish.  Puffer fish could be found in many parts of the world but the ones with tetrodotoxin were only eaten in some traditional Japan restaurants. 

DG: A Japanese master chef that was certified by the Japanese government prepared the puffer fish.  If the Chef made a mistake then you died.  I thought I saw a movie that mentioned tetrodotoxin.

FS: Tetrodotoxin was also the active ingredient used in zombie powder by voodoo worshipers in Haiti.  The ethnobotanist, Wade Davis, discovered this in 1982 and wrote a book that was later made into a movie titled The Serpent and the Rainbow on both our Earths. 

DG: That is an actual book.

FS: Of course, I don’t just make this stuff up. 

DG: Yeah, right.

FS: Tetrodotoxin was widely synthesized only on my Earths as a recreational droga.  You could also make a home brew of tetrodotoxin using some techniques available on the web with a puffer fish bought at a Japanese fish market, if you had the guts.  Most people just bought the synthetic stuff on the illegal droga market. 

DG: How did tetrodotoxin effect a person?

FS: Tetrodotoxin put the person into a death like trance for about 12 hours.  You could hear and see everything but you were totally paralyzed and appeared dead.  Even a doctor would think you were dead. 

DG: Why would anyone mess with something like that?

FS: Traditionally, to make zombies.  The voodoo sorcerers of Haiti, known as bokors, blew this droga on their victims.  The victim was also given a powerful hallucinogen.  The victim was paralyzed and hallucinated heavily.  Keep in mind this is the victims own funeral.  Tetrodotoxin was absorbed through the skin and was actually more dangerous if ingested.  The victim was then reawakened after having been buried and considered dead by friends and relatives.  The victim believed they had actually died, was shattered psychologically, ostracized by the living and was psychologically manipulated to be a zombie slave of the bokor. 

DG: What does this have to do with vampires?

2.08	White Death

Dr. Delta: The virulence level of this meme is high (3.2). The infection level is very low (0.2).  The infected host actively tries to create White Death.  Teen-age populations are especially at risk.

FS: The vampires of Japan just took some of the techniques of the bokors and adapted them to their own culture.  In Japan you could buy this powder in small vials on the black market and the powder was affectionately known as White Death. 

DG: Couldn’t Japanese on your Earth just stick with coke like everyone else?

FS: Most Japanese on my Earth preferred coke but vampires were different.  In Japanese vampiric rituals, the vampire leader known as the sire first put wax on his lips.  He then smeared the tetrodotoxin powder over the wax.  The wax prevented the powder from being absorbed into the body of the sire.  The sire then kissed the initiate on the jugular vein.  The powder was quickly absorbed into the body of the initiate and he or she “dies”.  This death was known as the embrace and both Japanese and American vampires.

DG: What was the motivation to be embraced?

FS: Vampires were obsessed with death and this was a way to explore death as closely as one could without actually dying.  One was also supposed to get great mystical power and insight from this experience.  As one vampire told me, “The shores of death contain sand that was gold in the land of the living.”  In America the sire and the initiate would exchange blood instead of using tetrodotoxin. 

DG: How were vampires organized?

FS: Different vampire groups known as clans did different rituals.  The most common ritual was to put the initiate into an open coffin in the center of the room and do various occult ceremonies.  Usually the coffin was at the center of a pentagram, a five pointed star, created using red paint.  Candles were lit and placed at the five points of the star.  This was the only light in the room and gave the room a soft light.  Mystical but pleasant, New Age music was played in the background and there was often a good deal of chanting.  Members laid hands on the initiate and tried to give the initiate some of their life force.  Some clans had the females of the clan strip the male initiate and wash him down with a moist towel and then anoint the initiate with scented oil as a rite of purification.

DG: And what happened next?

FS: The next day the initiate was kept in a room lit by a single candle in which no sunlight was allowed the next day.  It was explained to the initiate that contrary to the movies, vampires couldn’t be hurt by light but instead darkness was a powerful tool of a vampire.  I thought this day of darkness caused extreme temporal disorientation since day becomes night.  The initiate spent the day of darkness learning the ways and secretos of the particular clan.  Clans that follow the described rituals were known as White Vampires.

DG: White as in good?

FS:  Yes, the initiates said the room was filled with love and caring and that they felt extremely comfortable.  Being paralyzed means you had to trust the clan.  The clan treated you with respect even though you were helpless.  This went on through the night and the droga was usually given at such a time that the initiate was reborn at dawn.  The ceremony was a little different for female initiates.

DG: So the men got to hang around a totally paralyzed female during this ceremony?

FS: Strangely, women also purified female initiates rather than having men do the purification ceremony.  The women that went through this ceremony said that they preferred it this way and this strengthened the sisterhood within the clan. 

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: Matriarchy, and female vampire fantasies are all based in the patient’s feelings of sexual inadequacy.

DG: Sounds like your Square matriarchy.

FS: Maybe the Squares had made society on my Earth more matriarchal in general.  The women who had goon through purification saw the ceremony as more sensual than sexual.  The general otaku population was almost 99% male. 

DG: And the vampires?

FS: I would say that 20% of all Japanese vampires on my Earth were female and were some of the sexiest women I ever met in Japan.  In other words, if you were an otaku and you wanted to meet women then you became a vampire. 

DG: You mentioned how UA vampires dressed, how did Japanese vampires dress?

FS: Most Japanese female vampires went with the punk look, which included accessories like black leather skirts, black leather boots, corsets, fetish-wear and/or super skimpy black dresses.  Another group of Japanese female vampires had a more gothic look and wore long flowing black evening gowns.

DG: Punk or gothic. What a choice!

FS: The two looks were not totally exclusive and most Japanese female vampires mixed and matched the two types.  Japanese female vampires spent hours on putting on their makeup.  They were always super-pale and wore bright red or black lipstick.  They say that they preferred American makeup if they were in a hurry but Japanese makeup was better for the vampire look, if you had the time.  They had tried American stage makeup and thought it was absolute garbage and couldn’t believe that American female vampires messed with that stuff as they had heard. 

DG: Not big fans of the natural look.

FS: The faces didn’t have a natural look and did look painted on but they really were painted on really well.  The female vampires also used pheromone delivery jewelry.  For example a skull ring would contain pheromone that could be sprayed by pressing a stud on the ring.  These were really hot chicks! 

DG: Did you get to know any of these beautiful girls?

FS: No, most of them only spoke Japanese.  U-Kato and I went to a vampire fiesta.  The fiesta was held in large greenhouse owned by a wealthy Japanese vampire.  The greenhouse had orchids that had been genetically crossed with Venus flytraps.  The orchids didn’t actually catch flies like a Venus flytrap but the orchids would move if touched. 

DG: You saw that in the movie Minority Report.

FS: The plants on my Earth move but they don’t go around attacking people.  Lots of plants move and moving plants are cool.  When the genes responsible for movement are identified then you will have moving plants soon enough on this Earth. 

DG: Something to look forward to.

FS: The greenhouse had also been decorated with Reality Dolls dressed in fetish clothing and contorted in various positions. 

DG: Some sculpture.

FS: No kidding, there were also very realistic plastic skeletons of every animal imaginable.  The skeleton of a whale was the centerpiece of the greenhouse and various reality dolls were inside the whale.  I saw the whale as he turned a corner and was so surprised that he backed up into an orchid that drew back quickly.  U-Kato watched me and found my discomfiture interesting.  I figured the party master was a fan of the Bible.

DG: How do you figure?

FS: Well the gals in the whale are obviously a modern version of Jonah being swallowed by the whale.

DG: So what message are they supposed to deliver?

FS: That Eros lies in the belly of the beast Thanos.

DG: Explain.

FS: Eros is the life force and sex is its most potent manifestation.  Thanos is the urge for death and destruction and the skull is it’s most popular symbol.

DG: Have you ever been psychoanalyzed?

FS: Not consciously.

DG: Were you attracted to the female vampires?

FS: All in all in I felt that vampirism really did seem to agree with Japanese women.  Think of all the sexy female vampires you ever saw in the movies and then add Asian charm and you’ve got Japanese vampires.  The clans were one of the few places a Japanese lady could be overtly sexual and feel that her behavior was appropriate.  Female vampires were supposed to be sexy.  Unlike American clans, Japanese clans usually had a sisterhood that included all female members of the clan and if you messed with one member of the sisterhood then you messed with all the members of the sisterhood.

DG: Why do you think that was?

FS:  I suspect women had a lot more power in Japanese clans than in American clans.  I also got the feeling there was a lot less actual sex going on in Japanese clans than in American clans.  I think that the sexual relationships that were formed in Japanese clans were more intense than their American counterparts.

DG: So how did you become a vampire?

FS: There were also a much smaller group of vampires known as Red Vampires. 

DG: These Red Vampires sound ominous.

2.09

Red Death

Dr. Delta: The virulence level could be very high theoretically but so far no one has become infected.

FS: They were, Red Vampires used the Red Death powder instead of the White Death powder.  Red death was a mixture of tetrodotoxin and LSD. 

DG: Why was the powder red?

FS: The powder was dyed red so that it wouldn’t be mixed up with the pure tetrodotoxin.  Red Death was a lot harder to buy on the black market than White Death since there was very little demand for this droga,

DG: Gee, I wonder why?  What did Red Death do to you?

FS: You are paralyzed by the tetrodotoxin but hallucinate heavily due to the LSD during the twelve hours.  I was told that the combination of paralysis of the body while the mind was unleashed was an ordeal that was hard to imagine and very, very dangerous.  Some of the more extreme Red Death clans put you in a coffin that was buried under ground.  A hose that was connected to the surface was taped to your mouth so that you could breath. 

DG: Why would Japanese put up with this nonsense?

FS: The Japanese were bored.  Robots did all the work.  Most Japanese spent the whole day watching a robot do the same thing over and over again on a video monitor.  There was no sense of purpose.  The vampire rituals provide insight into the basic nature of the universe. 

FS: What can I say?  The Japanese on my Earth were pretty jaded.  I only hung out with one clan of White Vampires although I did not join the clan.  An ex-member of a Red Vampire clan and now a White Vampire clan member warned me against seeking out the Red Vampires.  Their more extreme rituals seem to have a dramatic affect on their thinking.  Many ended up hallucinating about snakes and death endlessly and had to be hospitalized.

DG: What do you think about these rituals?

FS: The Red Vampire rituals shook the very core of the identity of the members but created greater self-awareness. 

DG: Did you go through this ceremony?

FS: I thought about how pleasant it would be to be buried alive and decided to pass.

DG: What was the biggest difference between the Red Vampires and the White Vampires?

FS: The Red Vampire clans had moved into a lot of criminal areas and had a lot more money than White Vampire clans. 

DG: Who became Red Vampires?

FS: The Red Vampire clans appealed to younger, more criminal Japanese who found the White Vampire clans too boring.  There were teenagers that saw the Yakuza as too square and the otaku as too wimpy.  They were pop culture addicts like the otaku but had criminal interests like the Yakuza and didn’t really fit in either world.  The Red Vampire clans combined elements of both these worlds.  Japanese were not loners.  Even criminal Japanese wanted to belong to some larger organization and the Red Vampire clans fit a social niche that no other organization fit.

DG: I thought there wasn’t a lot of crime in Japan?

FS: On my Earth, there had been a dramatic increase of violento crime among Japanese teenagers and the White Vampires thought this was almost totally due to the increasing number of Red Vampire members. 

DG: What about the police?

FS: The problem was that the Japanese policia were pretty old fashioned.  The Japanese policia totally dismissed stories about Red Vampires as the product of some poor deranged teenager’s imagination.  Therefore the Japanese public at large was totally ignorant of the pattern of violencia and who was behind it. 

DG: Was there some way to tell who was a Red Vampire?

FS: The symbol of the Red Vampires was a logo similar to the Swamp Bat logo but in red rather than black.  This symbol was often tattooed on the upper left arm of Red Vampires.  The really hard core Red Vampires had a tattoo on their neck that was pretty dangerous since the neck has many veins that could be punctured during the tattooing process.  If you saw someone with this neck tattoo in Japan then you needed to avoid this person.

DG: Sounds like good advice.

FS: Advice can be a vice.  There was one clan of Red Vampires that you really had to watch out for.  They were known as the Clan of the Red Sword and generally practiced Kenjutsu,

DG: Ken what?

FS: A Japanese swords fighting system.  The rumor was that a Yakuza boss that was even too violento for the Yakuza, got kicked out of the Yakuza, saw the potential of having some mindless Red Vampires as troops and created this Clan.  They totally monopolized the Red Death trade and even scared the other Red Vampire clans.  It was rumored they did engage in blood rituals using the katana, which no other vampire clan in Japan does.  There were two major promotion rituals. 

DG: What is a katana?

FS: A medium sized Samurai sword.  The clan used a paramilitary model for promotion not a family model.  This was extremely interesting because the Red Sword Clan has Yakuza roots and the Yakuza always used a family model. 

DG: How about other Japanese organizations?

2.10	Red Emperor

Dr. Delta: The virulence level of father figure memes tends to be high.

FS: The only Japanese underground organizations that used a paramilitary model were the ultra rightists and terrorists.  The first promotion was to capitán and the next one to general.  They did not call themselves a clan but a nation.  The leader was called the Red Emperor.

2.11	Ceremony of the Five Cuts

Dr. Delta: A common mutilation meme.

DG: So what sort of hierarchy did they have?

FS: If you were promoted to capitán then you were bound to a cross in a Christ like manner.  An expert with the sword then did the ceremony of the five inside cuts to the potential capitán and using a katana, quickly cut a star pattern unto your lower abdomen. 

DG: Wouldn’t the guy just bleed to death.

FS: If done correctly, the cuts healed over and you had a star made up of scar tissue on your lower abdomen.  If done incorrectly, you were dead.

DG: And who cut whom?

FS: A member of a rank higher than yourself must sponsor you.  The sponsor performed the ceremony.  A general promoted a capitán.  The emperor promoted generals.  In the beginning the emperor had to promote the first captains and later the first generals. Getting cut by the Emperor was a special honor. 

DG: Your Japanese had funny ideas about what an honor is.  How could you be promoted twice?  Wouldn’t your stomach be a scarred mess?

FS: The first ceremony made a star.  In the second ceremony, the five points of the original star were connected with five more cuts on the outside to form a pentagram.  In a fight, you could focus on the middle of the pentagram on your lower abdomen and draw ki, Japanese for life force, from your hara.  The hara was a point in the middle of your lower abdomen in which ki was centered. 

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: Further evidence of the patient’s latent homosexuality that is repressed but manifest in compensatory fantasies.  The sword is an obvious phallic symbol and the ceremonies are symbolic of a homosexual orgy.

DG: I have heard of the hara.

FS: All Japanese martial arts used the hara and ki to develop super human power.  This promotion system makes sure that the members took their Kenjutsu lessons very seriously.  You never knew when you had to promote someone.  If you were not skillful then you would end up killing a friend.  In addition you would be expected to commit seppuku as the penalty for your mistake.  Seppuku is also known, incorrectly, as hara-kiri in the west.  Seppuku was a type of ritual suicide with Samurai origins in which you take your katana and cut into your own belly.  Afterwards, you were beheaded. 

DG: What would be the rationale for such nonsense?

FS: The leader, whose true name was unknown, felt that Japan was becoming soft and that these rituals would help Japan become strong again.  The emperor had been quoted as saying, “The rising sun failed Japan.  Japan would succeed with the darkness as an ally.”

DG: So this is basically some ultra-nationalist movement?

FS: More of a cult, if you messed with them then if you were lucky they would cut you up into little pieces with their swords.  They used to cut and then bite their victims in a type of pseudo cannibalism.  This practice had stopped because some members were convicted by matching the bite marks on the victims to the dental records of members. 

DG: Any other lovely habits?

FS: They occasionally drank the blood of a bleeding enemy to absorb their strength.  This was actually a demonstration of respect.  If you drank the blood of a weakling then you might absorb their weakness.  You only drank the blood of someone you thought was strong and brave.

DG: This is standard cannibal reasoning.

FS: If you were unlucky they would subject you to the Red Vampire burial ritual but with a difference.  A little bit of sugar water was poured down the hose used for air.  They weren’t trying to choke you with the sugar water. 

DG: What were they trying to do?

FS: The sugar water was bait for red ants that were poured down the tube and follow the sugar water trail down the tube, into your mouth and finally down your throat.  You finally die choking on red ants.  This was supposed to be a very slow death.  Remember they had given you a little dose of Red Death in order to make the experience even more pleasant.  I was warned that I had shown a little too much interest in Red Vampires and told this little story.  

DG: So what did they do to people they really liked?

FS: If you really pissed them off then they might throw a special type of tarantula or two into the coffin to keep you company.  There was supposed to be a type of tarantula that was not poisonous, but still big, hairy and scary, that was sold in pet stores in Japan.  Theoretically, the Clan of the Red Sword had a spider farm in which they raised most of these tarantulas for sale in Japan.  One way you could recognize members of the Red Sword Nation was because they often had these tarantulas on their shoulders.  Another sign of this group were missing fingers among the members.  If you were a member and screwed up then you were expected to cut of a finger, this was a leftover from the Yakuza roots of the clan. 

DG: I have read about this.

FS: Many members of the Red Sword Nation had their incisors, the teeth used for tearing meat, sharpened to make them look more like vampires.  This also meant that a bite from such a person was especially deadly.  Some members were rumored to slowly increase the dosage of a traditional Japanese poison until they developed immunity to the poison. 

DG: Homeopathy?

FS: Yes, they then smeared the same poison on their teeth just prior to a fight and their bite becomes especially deadly.  In addition, many members grew the nail on their index finger and middle finger to an unusual length.  They then smeared poison on these two nails as well.  Usually they tried to scratch your jugular with the poisoned nails but actually any part of your body was vulnerable.  If they wanted to capture an opponent then they used the Red Death powder mixed with petroleum jelly and scratched the arm of the victim. 

DG: What sort of martial arts did they know?

FS: A few members studied martial arts such as the Chinese snake and tiger systems.  These were hand to hand; combat systems that focused on using your hands to slash and tear like a knife rather than hit with a fist like a club.  They take years to be effective without poison since your fingers had to become like steel knives after years of conditioning to do any real damage.

DG: What sort of conditioning?

FS: Serious students thrust their hands into a jar of sand that was replaced by a jar of beans and finally a jar of gravel until they could thrust their hands with sufficient power that they could penetrate flesh like a knife.  The poison on the nails meant that you could do a lot of damage minus the years of hand conditioning.  This shows that the Red Vampires were more eclectic culturally than their Yakuza cousins. 

DG: How so?

FS: The Yakuza usually studied traditional Japanese hand-to-hand combat systems such as karate and judo.  Most karate moves center around the used of a fist.  Long nails actually interfere with the formation of a fist.  A tightly clenched fist means that the poisoned nails could dig into your own palm.  Judo was a wrestling system and the Red Vampires preferred to slash and tear rather than closing in on their opponent.

DG: Did they use any weapons?

FS: The nation had a few members that had taught themselves how to use a blowgun.  Guns were hard to come by in Japan and these members used the blowgun as a substitute for a real gun in pinch.  The dart was smeared with poison.  Even a spit wad propelled by a simple straw was fairly deadly if smeared with Red Death since the effects were instant upon contact with exposed flesh. 

DG: Sounds like a great weapon.

FS: Unfortunately, there was no way to develop immunity to Red Death.  You could easily poison yourself while applying Red Death to the projectile.  Disposable surgical gloves provided some protection from the Red Death but were very visible in Japan.  Regular gloves were hopelessly impregnated with Red Death. A third option was to use a thin film of wax on the hands when handling Red Death in public but this was less effective than surgical gloves at keeping out Red Death. 

DG: So why did they use Red Death at all?

FS: The traditional poison, to which the members were immune, was much slower than Red Death and the opponent could shoot you several times before he went down.  For these reasons, guns were preferred over blowguns.  The Red Sword Nation usually attacked their enemies at night.  They took Belladonna, a psychotropic herb, before the ataque. 

DG: Why?

FS: Belladonna improved their night vision.  Needless to say, no one messed with the Clan of the Red Sword. 

DG: Was their much contact between Japanese and United Americas vampires on your world?

FS: There really wasn’t much direct contact between Japanese and UA vampires and most of the similarities came from common pop culture roots and common social needs.

DG: Both groups seemed to be creating their own families because they were alienated from their real life families.

FS: I agree, most Japanese vampires saw their clan as a type of substitute family.  One of the criticisms of the Red Vampires by the White Vampires was that the clan should protect their members and the extreme rituals of the Red Vampires hurt rather than helped clan members.  Also, White Vampires argued that the Red Vampires were in trouble with the law to a greater and greater extent.  In the long run this could ultimately lead to a backlash against all vampires similar to the backlash against many cults in Japan because of the activities of a few extremist cults.

DG: So the White Vampires wanted the Red Vampires to show some restraint?

FS: I doubt the White Vampires would have ever said any of this to the face of a Red Vampire.  The truth was that the White Vampires, despite their greater numbers, were scared of the Red Vampires.  The United Americas vampires had gotten a lot more publicity than their counterparts in Japan and many Japanese vampires liked it this way. 

DG: Didn’t it bother you that you were hanging out with people that were so weird?

FS: Yes, I was warned that some people had noticed me and that maybe I was exploring things in Japan that were better not explored.  I was not too worried about the White Vampires but I thought I needed to watch my back a little when it came to the Red Vampires.

DG: Were the vampires Squares or Sloppy Squares?

FS: There were no more or less Squares among the vampires than among any other group but Erotron liked a lot of their jewelry and outfits despite not being a vampire.  Erotron really liked pheromone delivery jewelry.  Pheromone delivery jewelry is really effective stuff. 

DG: What did the stuff smell like?

FS: You couldn’t really smell the pheromones but they worked.  Just before I came she would put her ring under my nose and spray a whiff of pheromones.  This intensified the orgasm.  Cheapskates substituted the pheromones with amyl nitrate and even perfume.

DG: You mentioned who became a Red Vampire.  Who tended to become a White Vampire?

FS: The White Vampires, unlike the Red Vampires, were typical otaku.  They were pop culture junkies but were more into Western pop culture than other Japanese.  In particular they loved Western horror films. 

DG: Did they have any other Western interests?

FS: They loved Halloween type paraphernalia that was a little hard to find in Japan since Halloween was not such a big deal in Japan.  Many vampires went to the UA during winter break, January to February, and bought tons of Halloween paraphernalia that was discounted heavily around this time of the year at party stores.  They also bought a lot of stuff at the few stores in Japan that sold Christian stuff, especially crosses.  Many of these stores were run by missionary types, I think the owners would have been shocked if they knew what type of customer they were dealing with. 

DG: Aren’t crosses used to ward off vampires?

FS: Japanese vampires mixed and matched stuff from horror films about devil worship and vampires in a haphazard way.  I think they looked at Christian rituals as a type of magic rather than as a meaningful philosophy.  I would say this view of Christianity was not limited to the vampires but reflected how most Japanese viewed Christianity.  

DG: Did only the vampires use tetrodotoxin?

FS: Vampires weren’t the only Japanese that used tetrodotoxin.  We have all had the fantasy of attending our own funeral.  Some Japanese teenagers had used tetrodotoxin to make this fantasy a reality.  They went ahead and took the tetrodotoxin and faked their own death. 

DG: Attending your own funeral is in fact a typical teenage fantasy.

FS: Yes, for twelve hours the teenager got all the attention in the world at their own, open coffin, funeral.  The teenagers made sure to make their funeral wishes known ahead of time either verbally and/or in writing.  The three rules given to the parents were no cremation, no formaldehyde and no burial for twenty-four hours.  When they recover, mysteriously, 12 hours later, no one was the wiser. 

DG: Still it sounds pretty dangerous.

FS: Absolutely, the problem was that parents didn’t know what was going on.  In the case of Miko Tanaka the parents went ahead and had the teenager cremated immediately despite the fact that that Miko had told them over and over again how she wanted her funeral to be arranged.  Her best friend, who knew about the tetrodotoxin trick, went to the funeral expecting to see an open coffin ceremony.

DG: And what happened instead?

FS: The friend was supposed to take lots of photos of the funeral for Miko.  Instead, the friend saw an urn with the ashes of the poor Miko and a large black and white photo of the now truly dead Miko over the urn.  Keep in mind that with tetrodotoxin, you were paralyzed but could hear, feel and see everything around you.  The best friend fainted and when she woke up she tearfully told the parents about the terrible mix up. 

DG: Poor Miko.

FS: Yes poor Miko, this case got a huge amount of publicity.  The press portrayed Miko as victim of her own selfishness.  She had tricked her parents in order to got more attention and paid the ultimate price.  Many teenagers in Japan knew about this case and this did decrease the use of tetrodotoxin among non-vampires.  Now if a teenager even mentioned funeral plans or acted too self-centered then the parents often respond with the comment, “Well make sure you didn’t end up like poor Miko.”

DG: You mentioned that the Red Vampires didn’t appreciate your attention did anything happen?

FS: Oh yeah, I was followed by some Red Vampires.  I spotted them following me a mile off and figure it would be pretty easy to give them the slip but this was not the case.  When I ran, they released male bats that followed me wherever I went.  The bats had a small radio-tracking device attached to their legs.  The bats tracked me and the goons tracked the bats.

DG: How could you get bats to do this?  This part of your story doesn’t make sense.

FS: They later explained that they had broken into my apartment the night before and impregnated all my clothes with female bat hormone.  They also told me that the East Germans had used a similar tactic but used female dog hormone and found their prey with male German shepherds.  They liked the bats better since it really caused their opponents to flip out even before they showed up. 

DG: Yeah, I see how being swarmed by bats could be pretty bad.

FS: I had to admit that there was something pretty unsettling about being followed around by half a dozen bats.  The bats swarmed about me.  I tried hitting them with my sawed off baseball bat that I always carried in my backpack.  Before the group got close enough for me to start swinging, a dart hit my neck and then passed out. 

DG: What did you do after the warning?

FS: When I woke up the Red Vampire explained that it was time I moved on. I left the vampire community alone. 

DG: That’s it?

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: The vampire construct is an obvious externalization of violent impulses caused by early childhood trauma.  The vampire is probably a Jungian shadow and an aspect of the unconscious.  The vampire is a personification of darker aspects of the unconscious.  Vampires represent dark erotic impulses that the patient cannot deal with directly.  Dr. Arrow wants to observe me via a two-way mirror during treatment sessions in “order” to learn from me.  Dr. Arrow doesn’t fool me at all.  I know the real motivation behind Dr. Arrow’s request.  I have denied his request.

2.14	Transmigratory Brain Fingerprinting

Dr. Delta: The virulence is unknown. The infection level is also unknown.  Transmigratory Brain Fingerprinting research has started.

FS: My world used a method to figure out your past lives known as brain fingerprinting.  Your brain reacts to visual stimuli it has seen before by giving off certain brainwaves.  In other words visual recognition has a particular brainwave pattern that was different from the brain wave pattern that you generate when you saw something for the first time. 

DG: The FBI uses brain fingerprinting.

FS: Our BIS used brain fingerprinting as well but some churches used it in a totally different way.  Young infants had their brain patterns measured while they were exposed to computer-generated pictures and symbols of various cultures and historical periods that they had never seen in this lifetime. 

DG: Like what?

FS: For example, an American infant might be shown a kanji character, a Japanese character, and if they showed a brain pattern of recognition then they were probably Japanese in their last lifetime.

DG: And what was the next item shown?

FS: The software used computer adaptive testing so that the next item would also be Japan related and the program would then narrow the search.  After an hour a pretty clear picture would emerge as to what places and historical periods you were familiar with in past lives. 

DG: So what do you do with this knowledge?  That is my second gripe with all this past life stuff.  What are you supposed to do with all this karmic knowledge?

FS: This knowledge was then used in some kindergartens.  Students could learn languages that they knew in a past lifetime with much greater ease than students that did not have this past lifetime experience could.  The student was encouraged to study languages and skills from a past life.  Children in this special kindergarten generally remembered two to four languages and a therefore could become multilingual by the time they were in first grade.

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: Brain fingerprinting actually exists but the patient has come up with a novel way to use this technology.

DG: Let’s try to focus on your relationships instead of all these fanciful technologies you keep bringing up.  Tell me about Erotron.

FS: Erotron was almost as tall as me and was very tall by Japanese standards.  This was one gal that didn’t blend in.  The second date, after the Sleeping Beauty Bar date, didn’t go very well at first. 

DG: Where did you go?

FS: Erotron wanted to see an opera.  I had never been to an opera and went along with the plan.  We went Dutch of course.  I figured you paid for hookers but you tried to get free sex from nice girls.  I fell asleep during the opera and was very well rested afterwards. 

DG: Opera has the same effect on me.

FS: Yeah, but Erotron didn’t seem too pleased with my nap but a little voice told me that wasn’t the right way to go. 

DG: Well I think you need to learn to listen to this little voice a lot more often.

FS: You might be right.  Erotron opened my fridge to get a soda and said, “You have enough cerveza here to start your own bar.”  I was glad that Erotron realized how well prepared I was.

DG: You are one smooth operator.  What did you do next unzip your pants and show off your manhood?

FS: That would be too obvious for a classy gal like Erotron.  Instead I grabbed one of her breasts.  She told me I was crude and a drunk.  I refused to be discouraged and kissed her hard on the lips.  She seemed to melt.  I finally made out with Erotron.  I noticed that she had little pink flowers on her white cotton underwear.

DG: So obviously Erotron suffered from serious self esteem issues and this would explain her attraction towards you.  So how did the relationship progress?

FS: On our third real date, Erotron decided to take me to a Japanese love hotel the next night and find out what I was made up of once and for all.  The room in the love hotel was designed with one thing in mind: sex.  There was a shower and extra large tub, pool, massage table and giant bed.  The floor was white marble.  The walls had been done in black and white tile.  The room was color coordinated.  We made love.  I met U-Kato’s droga dealer named Evil-C.  Evil-C had figured out a way to used cyber- technology to monitor trends on the web using multiple cyberplugs.  He had cyberplugs installed throughout his brain.  The brain is essentially very adaptable at the physiological level.  The brain doesn’t really have any pain receptors but is designed to accept input and make sense of it over time.  At first Evil-C had started out like any other cyberaddict and had the bright idea to add extra cyberplugs to the medulla in order to get more stimulation and more intense pleasure.  Most cyberaddicts die going this route.  They couldn’t handle the extra input and end up dying in waves of pure pleasure, unable to eat or even turn off the current.  Evil-C was different. 

DG: How so?

FS: He lived.  When asked by me why he had survived, Evil-C answered, “Doing heroin in grade school kills you or makes you stronger.”  Evil-C had so many cyber- plugs that one of my otaku friends wondered if he could connect directly to the Global Cyber-Highway. 

DG: What is that?

FS: Each country had followed the United Americas example and created a web Superhighway and ultimately all these superhighways had linked up to created the Global Cyber-Highway or GCH.  This was the main route via which complex data traveled around the globe.  This was also the mother lode of all hackers.  Corporations used quantum cryptography technology to make the GCH impossible to hack.  Quantum cryptography used photons.

DG: What happened if the hacker got into the system?

FS: The very act of hacking into a quantum cryptography system altered the data.  This was one of the fundamental properties of photons. 

DG: What about Evil-C?

FS: Evil-C went along with a buddy and was hooked up to the GCH.  Evil-C got higher than he had ever gotten in my life.  He stayed hooked up for 72 hours straight.  My otaku friend had been worried since Evil-C had lost weight and was totally dehydrated.  Evil-C looked older than he was and the cyber-hacking experience left him sensitive to light or maybe his sensitivity to light made him able to sense photon levels of activity.  Generally, he used a single candle to illuminate his room.  Afterwards, Evil-C had a feeling that certain stocks would go up that week.  Evil-C’s feeling was totally correct. 

DG: Why?

FS: Later on Evil-C realized that he couldn’t actually read the data but he could make out the intensity of the GCH.  He could figure out if the GCH was more or less active.  This was a pretty unique ability.  An active or inactive GCH could mean a lot depending on surrounding political and/or economic events.  As former President Reagan said,  “If your were about to declare war on China then you were either real quiet or real noisy.”  Evil-C got a ton of money as a consultant that said the GCH.  Every morning he would give a GCH weather report and state that GCH was not noisy, sort of noisy or real noisy.  Every once in a while Evil-C told the world that the GCH was quiet and that’s when everybody really got scared and listened. 

DG: So Evil-C was a noise meter?

FS: Exactly, Evil-C and I became good friends. Actually I was his only friend.  Evil-C was what is known as a hikikomori in Japanese. 

DG: What is a hikikomori?

FS: Someone who stays at home 24/7 and only went out to buy drogas and porn and bought both in quantity once a month. 

DG: How can you be a drug dealer and never leave the house?

FS: Our Internet was a lot more developed than your Internet and even on this world drogas are sold via the Internet. 

DG: So why didn’t this Evil-C just buy food and porn via the Internet and never leave the house?

FS: Guys who sell drogas on the Internet usually don’t trust the Internet.  We would often do cyber-surfing together and plug up and wander around cyber-space as buddies.  Evil-C’s place had a row of books about the GCH.  The Squares really hated quantum cryptography.

DG: Why?

FS: Tetrachromatic cryptography was one of their keys to controlling the Sloppy Squares and quantum cryptography meant that the cryptography advantage they had was relatively smaller.  Most of all it was conceivable that Sloppy Squares could talk about the Squares secretly using quantum cryptography.  The Squares had access to the Memetic Map of the BIS but the Memetic Map couldn’t monitor messages sent via quantum cryptography.

DG: You obsession with cryptography suggests an obsession with secrets.  Do you have something to hide?

FS: Not really, but based on my experience I would say that one must ultimately understand that reality is fundamentally cryptological in nature.

DG: Yeah, yeah, life is a riddle.  I get it.

FS: Given that life is a riddle then the big question in life is, “Who is the riddler?”

DG: I never was a very big Batman fan.  So I guess if Evil-C could figure out the quantum cryptography to some extent then he must have been a pretty smart guy at some level.

FS: He was a smart guy and taught me his basic rules of fighting.

DG: So what are the rules?

FS: Rule one: Hit them when and where they are vulnerable.  For example, in the shower, from behind or while they are sleeping

DG: This sounds like prison fighting.

FS: Where do you think he got his ideas?

DG: So I suppose hitting someone from behind in the shower is a good thing?

FS: It works.  Rule two: “Overkill is better than no kill.”  Do hit them while they are down.  Do shoot them thirty times in the head.  Do kill all their buddies and family.  Don’t take prisoners

DG: Sounds overly ruthless.  How does this apply to your Wing-Jutsu system?

FS: Actually, Wing-Jutsu emphasizes knocking the guy down and then killing the opponent with Jiu-Jutsu groundwork once he is down.

DG: Lovely.

FS: Rule three: “Fear is cheaper than combat.”

DG: In other words, use intimidation rather than actual fighting.

FS: Yes, rule four: Over arm yourself.  Always bring a knife to a fistfight or a gun to a knife fight.

DG: Or a machine gun to a gunfight.

FS: Exactly, rule five: “Always bring twice as many guys as you think you will need.”

DG: I guess better safe than sorry.  Were all your buddies psychopaths?

2.14

E-Animals

Dr Delta: Harmless meme.

FS: Yeah, I have to admit that Evil-C was something of a hermit and did have problems when in it came to social interactions.  Still he had great parties even though, like the character in TheGreat Gatsby, he usually didn’t attend his own parties.  Always wondered why someone would do that.  Not all my friends were psychos.  My best friend Fluffy was one of the nicest beings around. 

DG: Who is Fluffy?

FS: Not who but what.  Erotron and I wandered into a pet store in Japan.  A huge cat that was just a giant fluff ball of orange fur stared at me.  I suddenly realized the cat was talking to me using HKP.  The cat was an e-cat a type of e-animal

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: Evil-C is represents the dark animus of the patient and the difficult to deal with male unconscious desires and impulses.  Patient is swaying his head back and forth in a strange hypnotic pattern.  Is reverse transference neurosis possible?  Normally patients transfer attitudes from their therapist and become more like their therapist but can the reverse be true?

DG: E-animal?

FS: An animal that had its intelligence enhanced genetically.  The cat had been too smart for it owners. 

DG: How so?

FS: Fluffy had figured out how to open the fridge and eaten the favorite sushi of her owners and had been given away to the pet store.  Most animals used body language to some extent but this e-animal could communicate at about the level of a five-year old Square.

DG: So you could communicate?

FS: To some extent, Fluffy couldn’t talk like a human since cats didn’t have the right vocal cords and this was pretty frustrating for Fluffy.  Fluffy was wiggling around and basically saying via a primitive version of combined Japanese HKP and cat HKP, “Take me home, take me home, please, please, please!” 

DG: So did you heed her plea?

FS: I was about to leave the pet store when Fluffy told me via HKP “Take me home and I will open your fridge and serve you cerveza”.  Maybe I got the message wrong.  The message was in pretty bad Japanese Square HKP as interpreted by a cat as read by someone who had just learned Japanese Square HKP, so who knew. 

DG: Yeah, I can see how you would have translation problems.  Maybe the real problem is that there is no Fluffy in the first place.

2.15	Golden Tuna

Dr Delta: Harmless meme.

FS: Yeah, on the other hand, what if I had gotten the message right?  Now, who could resist a cat like that! 

DG: Not you that’s for sure.  What did Erotron think of your decision?

FS: I took Fluffy home despite Erotron’s objections.  Using my HKP, I could tell that the pet owner would have given me the cat for free.

DG: Why would the pet owner be willing to do that?

FS: I later found out that Fluffy had eaten several of the fish in the fish tanks including a Golden Tuna that had been displayed in the front window and in fact provided the name of the pet shop.

DG: Golden Tuna?

FS: The Chinese had figured out a way to create a tuna species that collected gold in their gills from the ocean naturally.  You then extracted the gold from the gills and sold the rest of the tuna for food. 

DG: Did the tuna actually look gold colored?

FS: Yes, the tuna had been given gold scales similar to that of a gold fish via genetic engineering so that it could be readily identified.  Gold Tuna was generally only found in captivity either in pet stores or aqua-farms and were kind of expensive.

DG: So I guess eating the Gold Tuna didn’t exactly endear Fluffy to the owner of the pet shop.

FS: Not really, actually now that I think about it, the pet shop owner would have probably paid me to take Fluffy home. 

DG: Another missed business opportunity.

FS: Yes, I got home and I gave Fluffy her new job as the apartment bartender.  Fluffy opened the fridge without too much trouble.  Fluffy had a hard time carrying the cerveza.  Fluffy didn’t have opposable thumbs and that’s really what you needed to carry cerveza around. 

DG: Well yeah.

FS: Fluffy decided to roll the cerveza from the kitchen to the living room by pushing the can with her head.  I opened the cerveza and it just spurted out like crazy.  That was the end of Fluffy as a bartender. 

DG: So go the best laid plans of mice and men.

FS: Hey, she could get my bag of dope from that very difficult to get hiding place and carry the bag between her jaws.  Furthermore, Fluffy didn’t mind having a drag. 

DG: I don’t think I would want to have cat saliva on my joint.

FS: She would take nose hits rather than inhaling with her mouth.  I would blow the dope into her face and she would inhale with her nose.  She usually sneezed two or three times but hey that’s part of the fun.

DG: So your cat was a dope fiend?

FS: No, Fluffy preferred catnip.  At first I just kept the catnip in a shoebox that she could easily get at but the catnip situation got out of hand after a while.

DG: What happened?

FS: After a couple of weeks, Fluffy was zonked on catnip 24/7.  I really didn’t care except she didn’t even want to go outside to do her business.  I got sick of dragging her comatose body to the park and coaxing her to take a shit.  Fluffy was a pretty big cat.  People at the park looked at us kind of funny.

DG: What did you do?

FS: Finally, Erotron and I did a catnip intervention and we asked Fluffy if she just wanted to spend her whole life stoned on catnip.  Actually, Fluffy made it pretty clear that was fine with her.  In the end I had to lock the catnip up in a toolbox with a padlock.  Fluffy really couldn’t use keys.  This was one time I was happy she didn’t have opposable thumbs. 

DG: So that solved the problem?

FS: Not totally, I had caught her trying to jimmy the lock with a screwdriver.  She would stick the screwdriver into various parts of the padlock with her teeth and jump on the screwdriver.  Fluffy just didn’t weigh enough to do any real damage to the padlock.  The toolbox did go flying into the air and crashed loudly unto the floor this was annoying at two in the morning that seemed to be when her addiction really kicked in.

DG: So aside from the racket, you solved the catnip problem.

FS: Not totally, I started to get alarmed when I caught the cat talking with some suspicious looking e-dogs in the park.  Who knew what they were planning?  Nothing good that’s for sure.  Large dogs might have the muscle to break a padlock with a screwdriver.  As it turns out the whole situation resolved itself.

DG: E-dogs?

 

FS: Genetically enhanced dogs.  One happy day, Fluffy showed up with a bag of dope in her mouth!  She had stolen it from one of the apartment tenants.  Fluffy had figured out I wasn’t too interested in dead birds as presents.  She had tried talking to her less evolved cousins about the whole present thing but they just meowed mindlessly. 

DG: Where did she get the dope?

FS: Fluffy could sniff out dope a mile off and could sneak in and out via an open window.  Fluffy was the ultimate cat burglar.  Fluffy wanted to negotiate a trade.  I would get a bag of dope for a bag of catnip.  Sounded like a good trade to me. 

DG: Why didn’t she just steal catnip

FS: She told me dope was about a thousand times more plentiful than catnip in Tokyo.  Most of the catnip in Japan was in pet stores.  The pet stores kept their catnip under lock and key to prevent robberies by e-animals.  Fluffy didn’t want to end up being caught breaking into a pet store and being put in a cage again or worse.

DG: Why wasn’t catnip just outlawed altogether?

FS: Catnip as a reward was the only control most owners had over their e-cats.  Thus began one of the happiest periods of the live of my life.  Fluffy and I liked all the same cartoons.  Fluffy especially loved films with talking animals. 

DG: And how did Erotron fit into this totally decadent lifestyle?

FS: Erotron, on the other hand, was a snob and liked avant-garde French films.  Erotron dressed like a total slut but really was the product of an upper class family. 

DG: So why do you think she acted like a slut?

FS: The slut thing was just to drive her family crazy.  Erotron loved opera, fine food and art.  She didn’t even like punk rock but it drove her mom and dad crazier than it drove her and that made it all worth it. 

DG: Sounds like you and Fluffy would drive Erotron nuts.

FS: Erotron wasn’t in the house much since she had all sorts of mysterious Money Square administrative duties.  Erotron also had her own place, that was basically a palace, and spent most of her time there but still insisted on keeping the fiction we were living together.  She was always taking me to Money Square functions and assuring them we were boyfriend and girlfriend and really were living together.  It was almost like being my girlfriend was some sort of job for her.  

DG: This hatred of her parents probably explains why she was with you in the first place.

FS: Maybe, she paid the rent and we did have sex once a month so I wasn’t complaining.  There was also another reason she was with me.  I will explain this some other time.  Fluffy and I humored Erotron and watched the French films but secretly amused ourselves by making fun of the films using a private HKP language we had developed.  It was our own secreto language and combined elements of cat kinesics and Square kinesics.  I used my hand to mimic the various movements of a cat’s tail.  It turns out that cat’s used their tail to communicate all kinds of stuff. 

DG: Cats do this in our Earth.

FS: Fluffy used her tail in a more complex manner.  Fluffy sniffed her catnip.  I smoked my dope.  We were just two dumb blondes cruising through life and having fun. 

DG: So did Erotron support you?

FS: Just paid the rent and bought stuff for the apartment that she used more than me.  Money was a problem but I would sell a bag of dope now and then and got a little money out of my nanopayment virus account to make ends meet. 

DG: So you and Fluffy got along pretty well?

FS: Fluffy was a lady and a great companion.  It was really too bad Fluffy was a cat.  Erotron turned out to be a real pain.  Erotron said the place smelled terrible. 

DG: I can only imagine.

FS: Actually I thought the dope and catnip smell kind of worked together pretty well and hid the BO.  I tried teaching Fluffy how to take a shower.  Fluffy tried teaching me how to lick myself clean.  In the end we both decided the whole cleanliness thing was a waste of time and took away valuable time from watching cartoons and taking drogas. 

DG: Again with the drugs, don’t you think you have a drug problem?

FS: Only when I don’t have any.  Erotron complained about not having enough sex.  I pointed out that she was rarely around, so how could she blame me?  She complained that I never did anything but get high. 

DG: Well was she right?

FS: She might have had a point.  Erotron said, “You have one chore and only one chore and that is to do the dishes and you don’t even do that.”  The apartment came with a standard ultrasonic dishwasher. 

DG: And I suppose you had an ultrasonic shower?

FS: Ultrasonic showers had turned out to be a little rough on the skin over time but ultrasound was perfect with dishes.  You could use regular dishes in the ultrasonic dishwasher but there were dishes made out of a ceramic that amplified the transduction process that cleaned the grime off.  You just stuck the special dishes in and the ultrasound did the rest but you did have to stick the dishes in and this was way too much work for me. 

DG: What about using a robot to do the work?

FS: There was a minibot that vacuumed the place on a regular basis but the model that also loaded the dishwasher was almost twice as much and I had accidentally spent the extra money Erotron had given me for the deluxe household minibot on a night on the town. 

DG: Some accident.

FS: Hey, Erotron was loaded and I figured she would just break down and buy the better minibot eventually but she refused and seemed to be making some sort of ethical point.  Why she wanted to play house at all was sort of a mystery to me at the time but who ever questioned a rent-free apartment with a gorgeous gal?

DG: So what did you contribute to the relationship?

FS: Hey, I also took out the garbage, I had wondered if Fluffy could take out the garbage and do the dishes but realized this would be pretty hard to do without opposable thumbs. 

DG: Lucky Fluffy.

FS: What Fluffy had kept hidden from me was that she had bought some gloves specifically designed to allow cats to do jobs that required opposable thumbs but Fluffy was smart enough to keep the existence of these gloves top secreto from me.  

DG: How did Erotron and your little imaginary friend Fluffy get along?

FS: While Erotron nagged us, Fluffy and I would just look at each other and roll our eyes at the same time in our own trademark manner.  Usually this got us laughing pretty heavily.  For the record, cats laugh by purring.  Cats had several totally distinct purrs. 

DG: Such as?

FS: For example, there was the “I am having a borderline orgasm” purr.  There was also the “I thought that was funny” purr.  Fluffy taught me the difference between these two purrs.  Fluffy even learned to pronounce a few human words but this made her throat hurt afterwards and used this ability rarely.  The first clouds in paradise started to appear after a couple of months.

DG: I am so surprised!

FS: Erotron and Fluffy weren’t getting along.  Upon reflection I thought there were several reasons for this.  First of all, Erotron had started to develop an allergy to cat hair.  Secondly, Fluffy and Erotron were both female.

DG: Maybe there was a whole catfight thing going on.

FS: Maybe but Erotron claimed Fluffy and I had some sort of codependent droga habit.  Finally, Erotron came over one evening, her face turned red as a tomato, superior Square facial vascularity I suppose, and yelled, “I don’t care what the Money Squares expect of me.  This lifestyle is a living hell.  Choose!  Fluffy or me!  I am walking out that door unless you kick out that cat.” 

DG: And what did you decide?

FS: This was a hard decision.  Erotron provided sex and was paying the rent but looking around the apartment I realized that there were a lot of high value items in the apartment that could be hocked and I probably wouldn’t have to work for ages even if Erotron did move out.  Fluffy provided great dope and also could probably be taught to steal cash. 

DG: So what did you decide?

FS: In the end, I realized that great dope could replace sex but not vice versa.  My experiences in Japan had made me a wise man. 

DG: So how did Erotron respond?

FS: Erotron packed her stuff and left.  I didn’t realize that my days of happiness were numbered.  Later that month, Evil-C invited me to a fiesta at his place.  I decided that Fluffy could use a change of scenery and decided to take her along.  This was the beginning of our downfall.

 

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: Fluffy is an externalization of the patient’s anima.  Fluffy represents the female animal side.  Patient chooses Fluffy over Erotron.  In this choice, the patient chooses to follow infantile patterns of thought and behavior instead of an adult relationship with Erotron.

DG: Falling from the bottom isn’t easy.

FS: But it can be done. The fiesta at Evil-C’s was beyond belief.  There were otaku, Yakuza, White and Red vampires; the whole Japanese zoo was there. 

DG: So what group did you hang out with?

 

FS: I was flirting big time with a gorgeous female vampire.  Like most Japanese gals, her breasts weren’t all that big but she had long thin legs that you could catch glimpses of via the slit of her dress that was some sort of cross between a traditional Chinese dress and a gothic evening gown.  She bit my arm and drew blood.  She smiled and I realized that her teeth were sharpened.  I was going to get lucky tonight!  I hadn’t even talked with a girl since Erotron had left me and I was feeling pretty horny.  I was having a great time. 

DG: I guess bites are a turn on for some.

FS: Not so much the bite but what follows.  We moved to the backyard were Evil-C was using an electronic trainer.

2.17	Electronic Trainer

Dr. Delta: A possibly useful meme.

DG: Electronic trainer?

FS: Computer systems had long ago taken over the functions of a personal trainer on my planet.  All the exercise machines could accept an IC card that took track of how many reps and sets you had done on the machine at what time during the week, month and year and in turn could recommend adjustments to the weights, number of reps and number of sets.  All the weight and cardio machines in turn were wired to each other and could download an overall picture of your workout routine to your PC and suggest the next step in your exercise routine.

DG: You know I workout at a gym and nothing is wired.  They have one set of Life Fitness machines that electronically records the number of reps you do but doesn’t even record the number of sets you have done.  I don’t know about having the exercise machines talk to each other but for sure a simple system could be set up so my reps, sets and weight settings were saved on an IC card and automatically entered into the machine when I inserted the card.  Beats my having to enter all that data each and every time on all twelve machines.  Also beats running around with a notebook keeping track of all this stuff.  This is record keeping 101 but who wants to mess with record keeping when you are sweating?  Funny that no one has thought of this electronic trainer idea yet.

FS: Again, the difference between our worlds is not just technological but a difference in a willingness to use technology.  For example, the company that sold the electronic trainer also got wireless updates on the usage of all it’s equipment all over the world and even had a website that showed which of its machines was being used the most in real time.  This was a marketing tool pretty much used by all the companies selling all sorts of equipment.  At any given moment you could find out not only which machine sold the most but also which machine was used the most.  If the customer argued that they would never use a machine on sale the sales person could instantly respond with data that in fact showed the machine was or was not used by customers after sale.  Of course not too many sales persons volunteered info about machines that weren’t being used.

DG: Given all the gizmos and gadgets gathering dust in my garage, I might find such info useful.

 

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: In the chess and electronic trainer fantasies, the patient shows a basic feeling of helplessness.  The patient believes that outside forces control his environment.

 

2.18	For the Love of Fluffy

Dr. Delta: The Fluffy meme is highly infectious but not virulent.

FS: Totally doable on this Earth and suppose it will happen eventually.  After awhile I wondered where Fluffy had gone.  I started looking around the apartment for the bathroom.  Then I saw a sight that chilled me to the bone.

DG: What was the sight?

FS: Fluffy was in the middle of a giant mountain of coke. 

DG: Oops!

FS: Evil-C always had a mountain of dope on that particular table for decorative effect.  Everyone knew the coke was there for decorative effect.  Nobody would have been stupid enough to even touch that coke.  Fluffy was lying on her back. Her head arched to one side.  Her legs and arms were stretched all over the place.  For a minute I thought she was dead.

DG: Poor Fluffy.

FS: I soon realized that I wasn’t that lucky.  I saw that two thirds of the Coke Mountain was gone.  I had a pretty good idea where it had gone.  I leaned over and put my ear against the chest of Fluffy.  Fluffy was still breathing but there was coke all over her mouth.  Her stomach was tight as a drum.  Fluffy and I were in big trouble.  Fluffy had eaten Evil-C’s coke!  I grabbed the stupid cat and made tracks.  I thought that maybe Evil-C wouldn’t figure out who had messed with his coke.  This was our only chance.

DG: Did you pull it off?

FS: I heard the bad news from an otako friend.  The word on the street was that Evil-C has figured out that Fluffy eaten his coke!  I guessed that the orange hairs all over the crime scene gave it away.  The remaining coke had been given away since a big shot like Evil-C wasn’t going to snort coke with cat hair all over it.  I knew I had forgotten something during the quick get away. 

DG: So I guess real cat burglars need to worry about cat hair.

FS: No kidding, Evil-C was going around saying he was going to have Fluffy dissected and show the dissection live on a web cast in order to make Fluffy an example to other e-animal punks. 

DG: What about the other e-animals?

FS: Fluffy wasn’t the first e-animal that had pissed off the Japanese.  The alleys of Tokyo were starting to fill up with e-animals that were stealing food left and right.  Turns out people didn’t really want super intelligent pets.  Most e-animals ended up getting kicked out of the house within three months.  Most e-animals used all their intelligence for one and only one purpose: food! 

DG: Substitute sex for food and I think you have described most humans.

FS: I’m not sure but if you substitute dope for sex then you describe most of my friends.  The basic problem was that e-animals were intelligent enough to get into a fridge or cupboard for food but had absolutely no self-control.  As the experts put it the e-animals had high IQ but low impulse control. 

DG: Are you sure that you are describing e-animals?

FS: You could talk to an e-animal all you wanted and the e-animal would nod its little head furiously in agreement but as soon as you turned your back the little rascal was stealing food.  People didn’t really like sitting down for a meal and finding out the cat or dog had eaten everything in the house while they were gone.  E-animals could get into an unlocked fridge in a second.  You could padlock the fridge and this would slow an e-cat down. 

DG: Is that what you did?

FS: I personally never padlocked our fridge since there really wasn’t any food in the fridge anyway.  There was also a fridge that had a pad in which you typed in a seguridad code but this didn’t really work. 

DG: Why not?

FS: A cat would spend the whole day punching in one code after another with a pencil in her or his mouth and after a week the cat was in.  Dogs used less subtle approaches when faced with a locked fridge.  A large dog would just tip the whole fridge over and gnaw away at the plastic back of the fridge.  I would say any dog that did this had a 99% chance of getting kicked out of the house that same day. 

DG: So who handled the errant e-animals?

FS: Nobody, animal control refused to touch e-animals with a twenty-foot pole.  No one had decided the legal status of e-animals. 

DG: Legal status?

FS: Where they animals?  Where they sentient beings deserving human rights?  No court wanted to say one way or another.  Nobody in animal control wanted to be charged as a war criminal down the road. 

DG: What about the police?

FS: The policia didn’t want to run around after cats and dogs that they really didn’t have the training or equipment to deal with.  This meant that a homeless e-animal was left totally alone by the authorities.  Fluffy had been lucky to even get a home in a pet store since most pet stores didn’t want e-animals either. 

DG: For a more “technologically” advanced Earth your Earth had a lot of problems.

FS: The Third Universal Law of Technology of my Earth states, “That for every problem solved by technology another problem is created by the same technology.”  Technology should always be seen as problem substitution rather than as problem solution.

DG: So I take it the e-animals caused a lot of problems.

FS: You bet! The e-animals soon formed gangs of sorts.  The traditional rivalry between cats and dogs didn’t exist among e-animals.  The two species complemented each other pretty well. 

DG: How so?

FS: The cats would sneak in via an open window or any sort of crack and let the dogs in.  The dogs in turn provided the muscle for carrying away the food.  The e-animals soon figured out how to get the dogs to wear messenger bags and the cats would push food into the bags.  A big dog could carry fifty pounds of food away without much trouble.  There weren’t too many shops a cat/dog team couldn’t handle. 

DG: Sounds like a deranged Disney film.

FS: Deranged being the key word.  The whole thing was getting out of hand.  The e-animals had shown no interest in money at first. They very well couldn’t go to a restaurant with a bill in their mouth and order a meal.

DG: I can see how this would be problem.

FS: Yeah but after a while they realized they could use human intermediaries.  School kids started buying food for the e-animals in exchange for money.  This meant that a shop wasn’t just burgled out of fifty pounds of food but was also liable to have the cash register emptied. 

DG: How did Evil-C react to being burgled?

FS: Evil-C said this was a matter of showing human supremacy once and for all.  Evil-C told anyone that would listen that e-animals stealing food and money was one thing but once they started stealing drogas, the end was near. 

DG: So he was angry?

FS: Actually, I thought Evil-C’s pride had been hurt.  A cat had ripped off the great Evil-C.  I didn’t have the money to replace the coke.  Anyway, Evil-C didn’t care about restitution. 

DG: What did he want?

FS: This was a matter of honor and when Japanese gangsters starting talking about honor then you were in big trouble.  Evil-C wasn’t Yakuza but he loved films about them.  I figured that Evil-C had probably had picked up an idea or two from his viewing of this particular genre. 

DG: Sounds like you were in trouble.

FS: Double trouble.  At my apartment, I shook Fluffy until fur filled the apartment.  I yelled, “What the hell were you thinking you crazy cat!  You ripped of the worst psychopath in Japan.”  Fluffy just twitched her tail and using her HKP said, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”  The phone rang.  Evil-C was on the line and in a low, strangely soft voice he said, “Give me the head of Fluffy or die!” 

DG: What did you say?

FS: I assured Evil-C that I would get right on the job.  Fluffy was still unconscious and I started to grab the kitchen knife.  After all it was Fluffy’s head or mine. 

DG: You chopped poor little Fluffy’s head off?

FS: No, because at the exact same moment Fluffy muttered, “I love you”.  Fluffy’s throat would hurt for a week because she said that phrase but it saved her from having her head cut off.  I realized that I couldn’t hurt Fluffy after all we had been through together.  Fluffy was more than my cat. 

DG: What else was she to you?

FS: She was my friend and most of all Fluffy was my droga connection.  

DG: Sounds like love to me.

FS: Love is the overestimation of your pleasure connection.  Regardless, it was time to get the hell out of Japan! 

DG: Where did you go?

FS: Shanghai!

2.19	Tombstone Dream

DG: Have you had any interesting dreams since our last session?

FS: I had the dream of my mamá’s funeral again but I saw Paco.  Paco and I played among the tombstones.

DG: Well by your own admission you killed Paco.  The tombstones are an obvious symbol of death.

FS: Yeah, but I never played with Paco.

DG: Are you scared of death?

FS: I am more scared of rebirth.

DG: Why is that?

FS: It just goes on and on like a bad record.

DG: What else happened?

FS: I dreamed of Erotron was at the funeral. Erotron was wearing a White dress that made her seem quite pure but she had a red rose in her hair. 

DG: When I say rose what do you think immediately?

FS: Passion.

DG: The white dress is obviously purity.  You had Lilies in your last dream.  So there is a conflict between purity and passion when you interact with women.  Perhaps you are more conflicted about casual sex than you let on.

FS: Maybe not because she ripped off the dress and suddenly put on a purple robe and a crown.  She was nude except for the robe and crown. 

DG: So what does the robe and crown mean to you?

FS: A queen obviously.

DG: Or your mom.

FS: Gross, no a queen literally.  Her eyes were green in the dream despite the fact they were actually brown in real life and she looked at me with love.  She had a pomegranate in one hand a key in the other. 

DG: What did she do with the key?

FS: She handed me the key.  She then turned into a black cat and ran into a path that led into a dark forest. 

DG: If I say cat what comes to mind?

FS: Feminine.

DG: Just like Fluffy and did you follow the cat?

FS: Yes, the path was lined with columns.

DG: Column.

FS: Gate.

DG: What was at the end of the path?

FS: Yes, I saw a strange creature waiting for me.  The creature had three heads One head had the face of an eagle.  The second head had the face of a snake and finally the third head has the face of a lion.  The creature was carrying a bow and began firing flaming arrows at me. 

DG: What did you do?

FS: I ran to avoid the arrows.  Erotron appeared out of nowhere in her cat form and in a human voice and told me to follow her in order to escape.  We ran into a black fog and she turned back into a woman and we made love in the fog.

DG: And then what happened?

FS: I woke up.
DG: Let’s talk about Shanghai at the next session.

 

Dr. Gamma’s Notes: Paco represents the patient’s male animus and his romp with Paco in the tombstones show that this side of his self is in danger.  The Columns are phallic symbols and perhaps a path to manhood.  To become a man he must face a frightening creature with three faces.  The creature fires flaming arrows at him, another phallic symbol and he must flee the creature.  He fails the male test but finds comfort in the arms of Erotron a symbol of the feminine.  The cat is a symbol of the patient’s feminine side.  The cat appears both in the dream and in his fantasy about Fluffy.  The patient’s unconscious has created the story of Fluffy stealing drugs in order to act as a warning to the patient that he needs to control his animalistic desires.  Fluffy almost dies due to lack of control and this shows the patient realizes he needs to control himself at some level. 

The second session focused on Japan and sexual technologies. 

The Japan construct is a place in the patient’s psyche in which sex can be dealt with in an amoral and misogynistic manner.  The Japan construct provides the patient with an outward justification of his socially unacceptable sexual attitudes.

 

Paco, the Chihuahua, and Fluffy, the cat, both are representations of the animalistic unconscious.  Paco is a representation of the male side, animus, of the patient and is a way for the patient to deal with his violent impulses via externalization.  The struggle between Paco and the patient in the toy chest is especially interesting.  The toy chest is obviously an Freudian externalization of his mother and in killing Paco; the patient kills his own inappropriate incestuous feelings towards his mother.

 

Fluffy, on the other hand, represents the anima or female side of the patient’s unconsciousness.  The patient maintains a nonsexual relationship with the anima and rejects Erotron.  Erotron is a symbol of a mature orgasmic relationship, and in choosing Fluffy; the patient rejects a mature sexual relationship.  This rejection of a relationship with a mature woman is probably due to the patient’s mother complex.

 

Dr. Arrow plans to increase the patient’s Halidol dosage.

 

Dr. Delta: Shortly after the second session, the wife of Dr. Gamma called me. In confidence she told me that she thought the sessions with Freak Show were upsetting her husband and she wondered if I could hand the case of Freak Show over to another therapists using some administrative excuse or another.  I promised her that I would look into the matter.  I talked with Dr. Gamma and he assured me that everything was fine.

 

MEMETIC INFECTION COUNTERMEASURES

 

The main memetic theme of this session is electrosexuality.  Since these memes attack the reader at the unconscious sexual level, mere affirmations will not work.  Sit back and breathe slowly.  Now imagine a beautiful woman.  A woman from your personal history that you think of in erotic terms is preferable.  Imagine this woman slowly undressing.  Go ahead and have an erotic fantasy about this woman. This fantasy will vary with the reader.  Now imagine this woman is slowly but surely becoming steel.  Feel the cold steel skin.  Think how terrible this feels compared to the warm skin of an actual woman.

 

Electrosexuality poses a challenge to family values that are the core any society.  As a people we must say “no” to electrosexuality in general and sexbots in particular.

 

Fox: The above memetic infection countermeasure is of course total crap.  If this session could infect you then why couldn’t any sexual fantasy in print infect people?  Gamma’s Japan fantasy is a lot of fun to read.  I had no idea Gamma was such a sex pervert.

I think he has seen one anime movie too many.  I think the sexbots are a good idea and probably will be built someday. I went ahead and reread the Derrida comic book.  One thing that stuck in my mind were the pictures of the zombie in the comic book and how the zombie deconstructs the concepts of what is living and what is dead.  The cyberzombies seem to deconstruct the concepts of what it is to be a machine versus a living being.  The cyber addiction has turned them into machines.

I dragged Gamma out of the apartment.  We went to CKS Memorial, a basic tourist must see in Taipei.  The CKS Memorial honors the memory of Chiang Kai-shek, the founder of modern Taiwan.  The centerpiece of the memorial is a giant brass statue of Chiang Kai-shek.  There was some kind of protest going on.  There was rally protesting President Chen’s reelection.  Chen was shot in the stomach the day before the election.  Chen won by two tenths of a percent and most people figure the sympathy vote got him the election.  A lot of people think Chen faked his own shooting.  Gamma eyed the protesting crowds nervously.

Chapter 3 at:

http://foxhugh.com/half-square/chapter-3-metametic-east-china/

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