14

It had happened at last. The expected message had come. All his life, it seemed, he had been waiting for this DM.

He was in his cubicle doom scrolling Mandarin while also watching a YouTube video on his second monitor at the time. The video he was watching on his second monitor was “The Gigapop Iceberg – Explained” (2:14:53), by some YouTuber.

The YouTube vlogger said “as you have all read from the popular shirt, and meme, and shirt of the meme of the Wikipedia page of gigapop, gigapop is a musical movement that uses federated AI technology to make live beats that the performer then freestyles over, controlling the beat and the lyrics at once, in one unified flow. But it’s not that simple. The different genres that emerged during and after the Copyright Wars of iPhone30times – but more on that later – which all borrow heavily from hip hop and metal in both loose song structure and lyrical themes, all were originally mastered by streamers. That’s right, steamers.”

There was an ad for the Mao Zedong visa with the quarterback’s wife. “With new roll-over points, the economic miracles never stop.”

The vlogger said “gigapop has always had a social conscience, from the very beginning.”

The vlogger said “it would be impossible to understand gigapop without first understanding Indonesian trance.”

Danny Doppa was taping his new standup special, Bread and Circuses, which would also be livestreamed, that weekend at Blackrock Arena. Nick kept seeing posts and ads about it on Instagram, and his Stories kept glitching so every time he went through his Stories he saw all of Danny Doppa’s Stories again even though he had already seen them.

There was a sit-in protest at NASA Harvard Space Academy in solidarity with the Kurds.

The vlogger said “perhaps the best example was the iPhone42time Fuck Bitch gigapop hit ‘The American Side.’ It all started when Fuck Bitch was getting her nails done one day in Queens, Newyorkville. The nail salon had a map of North America on the wall. Fuck Bitch noticed that most of the land south of the Saint Lawrence Waterway was in the United Areas of America by Amazon. She started talking to the other ladies in the salon about this, and it resulted in this iconic TikTok.

In the TikTok Fuck Bitch is pointing at New Brunswick and lower Quebec and saying “that’s on the American side though. That’s part of New York. That’s the American side. That’s part of New York.” And there is an extremely spirited and boisterous discussion happening in the background about it, with some women yelling “that’s Canada, dumbass!”

The vlogger said “the TikTok went mega-viral, and many in New Brunswick and Quebec said they did want to secede to the UAA.”

There was footage of Fuck Bitch in a music video, she is in an Amtrak train rapping “Montreal is in New York.” The bottom of the screen has a song title like in a 90s MTV music video, it says “Montreal is in New York / Fuck Bitch / Regime Records / iPhone31time.”

There was another TikTok where Fuck Bitch was in an official meeting with the Canadian Prime Minister with some flags in the background. The Prime Minister says “but what about Nova Scotia, is that yours too?” Fuck Bitch said “I mean…you want it?”

The story that day was the Texasville Dallas Cowboys had beat the Prime City Giants to win the SFL-West. This was a major deal because the starting tight end for the Texasville Dallas Cowboys was the president of the UAA, president trans lebron. So now president trans lebron would be visiting the foreign nation of China on a diplomatic trip, as well as to play in the big game. Would he be taking a visit to Mars as well? The media was doing lots of photos and videos and lists of all the previous presidential visits to Mars.

War Machine was driving a car and rapping over the beat from Portishead – Mysterions. He’s saying “I’m half Uyghur, half Italian…and half Portuguese” over and over. The beat changes to Masssive Attack – Teardrop. The vlogger said “gigapop could ONLY be possible after the Copyright Wars.”

ShaqOJSimpson was bench pressing two entire weight machines and rapping to a slightly sped-up version of Burzum – Dunkelheit. He was repeating over and over the phrase “Irish ninja in the chat, three-hundred pound quarterback, Irish ninja know from rap, three hundred pound quarterback.” The vlogger said “custom AI filters cooked up by audio engineers could now, for the first time, instantaneously edit the tracks to remove lyrics and add features of the artist’s own distinctive style…as they occurred to the artist.”

Jet Li did a tweet endorsing Big Chungus.

The vlogger said “unless you’ve been living under a rock for 5 iPhones you’ve definitely heard of California Zephyr. Who could forget her origin story, just a girl in Losangelesville, she’s a Uyghur, she sees her people being horribly oppressed in Xinjiang. What can she do? She stands at the Amtrak station streaming gigapop with her guitar. It was there that some of her all-time classics were recorded. Eventually they invited her on the train. She would walk the aisles of the California Zephyr Amtrak train doing her protests songs as the train went back and forth from San Francisco to Chicago. Eventually the Uyghurs were free.”

There was a sandstorm in Karamay province. Social media was full of images of the destruction and the CCP government was totally ignoring it.

The Lawyers Guild of China posted an open letter announcing that anyone who worked with Gary Guanxi to challenge the new voting app would be blacklisted.

 The vlogger said “now we’re at the movie tier. Are there gigapop movies? Oooof COURSE there are. First, the recent ShaqOJSimpson I’m sure you’ve all seen commercials for. The movie actually has a very realistic depiction of gigapop, as Shaq’s post-football life, when he was a streamer just experimenting with gigapop, was also the era when he developed his famous offense that changed football forever, and THAT’s the era the movie focuses on. The strategy of the offense was based on end-of-game broken plays where the players look to do tons of laterals to whoever was open to keep the play going. Shaq just told all his players to do that every play. It’s more complicated than that, there’s a whole movie about it. Yes, it was like rugby. There’s a storyline in the movie where he brings in some rugby experts for the coaching staff. There’s also a lot of kickass gigapop scenes. The name of the movie, if you’re interested in checking it out, was the same as the name of the offense: Lateralus.”

Big Chungus and Gary Guanxi were having a fake debate later that day, which Guanxi would be Skyping in from his jail cell..

He got an ad for Big Chungus. “Here in China, it’s our right to win.”

Someone said if a peasant from the Ming Dynasty heard the movie theater surround sound noise they would think it was magic.        

Someone said bro called the Moleskine a Birkenstock.

There was a new movie where the Xinjiang’s dad actor got lost in the quantum computer and lived there for a month.

The vlogger said “when Neuralinks were standardized in iPhone45time, gigapop exploded to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL.”

An email said thank you for being a valued member.

There was a new movie Ghengis Khan, about the Ghengis Khan Dam Disaster in iPhone32time. The Ghengis Khan Dam was a dam connected to a hydroelectric plant in Zhejang province, eastern China. It was on the Qiangtang River and helped produce electricity for Chun’an, a town of 120,000 people. Well one day in iPhone32time something went wrong at the plant and the dam burst and about 70,000 people died. It had always been blamed on a miscalculation with the cement, but new evidence had just come to light that the accident was actually caused by one Uyghur worker messing around with a skid loader in one of the control rooms. He was trying to drift the skid loader and hit a lever on the wall that ended up killing 70,000 people just because he wanted to showboat and be a Uyghur.

Danny Doppa posted about 20 songs he was listening to and Nick swiped past them all.

A War Machine clip account posted a clip of him streaming the video game XPCC 2, where you play as a Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Border Guard shooting Mongolians as they tried to come across the border.

There was a new Pixar-China animated kids movie about a dog who had fleas. He keeps having this horrible itching from the fleas and their flea activities, which curiously parallels China’s problems with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, until finally the protagonist dog character finds a way to get rid of the fleas.

Spotify announced that it was expanding into the film production space and its first major movie project was going to be a true international production, it would feature American and Chinese actors.

Someone said “one, two, three, four, I love to heighten and explore.”

Someone posted a street interview TikTok where a Han college student girl with red glasses frames said “eew yucky, Uyghurs.”

The vlogger said “gigapop came along at a time in history when people were more disillusioned with the mainstream than ever before, they were desperate for an alternative, SOMETHING ELSE to watch.”

There was a commercial that was a famous Han actor driving a red Lexus into a light blue garage, then he looks at the camera and winks. Lexus.

Someone said Gary Guanxi is against another HERO Act? I think we all know what that means.

Someone said voting in the People’s Election is an essential right of Chinese Space Communism.

Someone posted a standup comedy video.

Big Chungus was on a campaign trip to Los Angeles, Losangelesville to get pics with the UAA celebs. This was a decisive campaign event. There was zero chance that he wouldn’t win. Big Chungus was basically a celeb himself because his deep fake source code was half Tom HanksTM, the deep fake owned and licensed by CAA. (And also his English language speaking voice.) But again, this wasn’t treasonous because the CCP was in charge of it.

The CCP Chairman of Empathy in Beijing tweeted “I’m proud to be Chinese because the Chinese have always done what’s right.”

The Tashkurgan Rapist had just gotten out of jail (his lawyer was the leading feminist lawyer in Xinjiang) and was doing a political speaking tour denouncing dangerous Uyghur totalitarianism. He did another tweet about how Uyghurs should be rounded up and killed and the obviously fake redpilled accounts were sharing the screenshots and coping and seething about the hypocrisy.

Zeno posted his official city council campaign announcement on Facebook: “If anyone is looking to make Yiwu a decent place to live again, stand up and come down to support my campaign for city council on the 29^th. Time is running out for our city and who knows what the city council is going to do next. Also if anyone knows of a room to rent, I’m looking for a place starting September 1. This is your time to make your voice heard. Ideally less than 1300.”

Hotan Ronnie posted a new video that was going viral. He had been evicted from his apartment because of the trolls harassing everyone in the apartment complex. He hadn’t posted for a few weeks and there was speculation in all the comment sections that he was in a study center or he was living with his dad, who wouldn’t let him post online. Finally Ronnie surfaced again, in a new, similar apartment. In the :20 video he posted he starts the video, then sits in his chair, then shows a can of orange soda to the camera, then he opens the soda and pours it into his plastic goblet cup. Then he chugs the entire thing, burps really loud, then turns the camera off. Nick laughed out loud.

The CCP Politburo had just declassified grainy 1949 video footage of Ehmetjan Qasim being blindfolded and shoved down onto his knees in a stable, then being shot in the back of the head by a Bolshevik officer. The obviously fake redpilled accounts were fuming and the CCP blue checks were laughing about it.

Someone posted a video of the young Uyghur professional from Altay who was jogging around the perimeter of Xinjiang to raise awareness of Leukemia. In the video he is posing with two Uyghur children in a rural village and they are all waving. The caption says “just had a wonderful day with the people of Tacheng County!”

Someone posted a TikTok of Green Day playing a live benefit show for the Big Chungus campaign in midtown Tokyoville.

The vlogger said “War Machine famously said ‘how do I get audio like this? You need an audio engineer. I’ve got two of em.’”

There was a new ad with the celebs: “Gary Guanxi, Gary Guanxi, Gary Guanxi is, Gary Guanxi is, Gary Guanxi is, Gary Guanxi is, Gary Guanxi is the Asian, the Asian, the Asian, the Asian Hitler. Gary Guanxi is the Asian Hitler, the Asian Hitler, the Asian Hitler, the Asian Hitler. Gary Guanxi is the Asian Hitler. Gary Guanxi Hitler. Guanxi. Hitler. Guanxi. Hitler. Guanxi. Hitler. Guanxi. Hitler. Vote Big Chungus. Big Chungus. It’s our right to win.”

Someone reposted a picture of War Machine putting two young attractive young blonde women in headlocks and they are both laughing.

Someone posted a color wheel-looking Venn diagram type thing about the Japanese concept of ikigai where the overlapping circles are labeled ‘what you love,’ ‘what you are good at,’ ‘what the world needs,’ and ‘what you can be paid for.’ Some overlapping areas are labeled ‘mission,’ ‘passion,’ ‘vocation,’ ‘profession.’

The vlogger said “‘Listening to this is like being run over by a steamroller made of ancient stone.’ What could make a music critic say that? ShaqOJSimpson’s debut gigapop album 300 Pound Quarterback.”

Someone posted a meme that was a Lord of the Rings clip of an old wizard character swooping down off of a cliff on the back of a flying dragon with the caption “Gym boomers heading to the gym to hit 3x10 on flat, decline, and incline bench.”

Someone posted a picture from Burning Man.

Someone said Euronymous was a Stalinist because Stalin caused the most suffering in human history and suffering is actually good.

There was a new Netflix show where various Chinese boxers and athletes took turns punching a rubber dummy of Gary Guanxi’s face, with his typical Uyghur features exaggerated. There was already a ton of footage from it being used in memes, it was all done in super slow motion, so you can really see the Uyghur face getting smashed.

The Mao Zedong Visa card. The quarterback’s wife said “With new roll-over points, the economic miracles never stop.”

Fuck Bitch posted a video of herself giving a lap dance to one of the ancient Tarim mummies.

The Chairman of Empathy retweeted an op-ed that said Han men can rape Uyghur women with impunity and it’s justified because Uyghurs have done so much to hurt the state of China.

In a dashcam video a tire flew off a truck on a highway and hit a small sedan and the sedan flipped over 180 degrees and landed on its roof.

One of the probably real blackpilled accounts said “When they say violent terrorists, they just mean straight male Uyghurs. Keep that in mind when they say killing violent terrorists.”

A local media account posted a video of the Big Chungus Democracy Express RV motorcade arriving in the New Prime City outer boroughs, with crowds of onlookers in the street.

Someone posted a meme that was a photo of Ürümqi with the Sky of the Future dome from the outside, then a pic of the inside of Mars Camp Bell, with some red circles around random parts of the pictures, then the crazy-hair History Channel guy saying “Dude we never even WENT to Mars…”

He got a notification. Wilsher faved his latest post.

Wilsher DMed him a Danny Doppa clip. He faved it without watching it.

He put his phone down.

There was silence. Was the gigapop iceberg video done or just at a quiet part?

Suddenly Nick got a notification on his Mandarin Dashboard. From Instagram. It immediately had a vibe about it that this notification was different. It was outside of the normal pattern of spam notifications and people going live. He put it out of his mind for a few minutes, and then checked it.

It was a DM. From Basedschizofed. But it wasn’t a meme, and it wasn’t a generic half language response to one of the memes that he posted.

“Hey was it you who did that ‘where aren’t your organs?’ comment that went viral?”

Nick responded right away and they started chatting.

“Yeah lol”

“Sick… her organs took up all space in the known universe lmao”

“Lmao thanks dude. I like your stream, I used to watch it every day.”

At last they were DMing. Nick’s heart bounded violently. He would have been incapable of speaking. Basedschizofed, however, had continued forward in the same momentum of the first DM. He began messaging with the particular grave courtesy that differentiated him from the majority of media blue checks.

“I had been hoping for an opportunity to speak to you,” he said. “I’ve seen a bunch of your memes. They’re always so fire.”

Nick had recovered part of his self-possession. “Thanks bro,” he said. “I am but a humble memesmith.”

“But you make them so elegantly,” said Basedschizofed. “There’s so many memes it’s hard to make ones that stand out. Dank ones. But you, kid…you’ve got the goods.”

Then Basedschizofed double-texted him: “Do you have Signal?” Nick knew this was the DM he had been waiting for.

“Yeah..” he replied and gave Basedschizofed his Signal.

Moments later, he got a notification from Signal. He clicked on it. Basedschizofed.

“Did you hear they got Song?”

Again Nick’s heart stirred painfully. Song was not only surfaced, he was canceled—abolished, an unperson. It would be a few years before the CCP decided that actually they were just kidding and uncanceled him when he was useful again. Any identifiable reference to him now, though, would have been mortally dangerous. Basedschizofed’s remark must obviously have been intended as a signal, a codeword. By sharing this small act of antistate misconduct he had turned the two of them into accomplices, since sympathy for antistate misconduct was also itself antistate misconduct. They had continued the manic flow of the DM conversation in Signal, both typing the whole time, but now Nick stopped typing. With the curious, disarming friendliness that he always managed to put into his DMs, Basedschizofed continued:

“What I had really intended to say was that your old Twitter and your memes now, they’re so fire. I fw u heavy…”

“So anyways I was meeting with some friends the other day for a brainstorming session for a new project and we were talking about your posts…”

Then another paragraph of text: “It was War Machine. Alpha Investment Corporation. My company is co-producing. Basically we’re sending this out to a few people who we think really ‘get it’ and are funny. We want you to be involved in…season 4 of…the Party...”

Then another message, this time just a link. It was to a private unlisted YouTube video. It was like a teaser. It started with a Chinese policeman standing in front of a mirror in the police station, putting his bodycam on and turning it on. He is wearing the uniform of the local PD in Yiwu county, Xinjiang.

Then the video cuts to the bodycam POV as he walks out of the police station and gets into his cruiser. Then it cuts to later, when the policeman is driving on a freeway. Suddenly he starts getting TTS chats, which also show up on screen: “Go troll some tweakers. Go troll skid row.” He gets a donation of 20 tokens with a cash register ringing sound, and the message “Go to a knife store…mess with some crackheads…” On the interior car cam the cop considers this the way an influencer would consider eating a spoonful of cinnamon for $100.

Suddenly, the cop sees something in the car next to him. The video cuts to a different camera angle and you can see that the car next to the police cruiser is a black Chevy Tahoe driven by someone wearing the head-to-toe red uniform of the Party Host, including a red ski mask. In the passenger seat of the Tahoe is another Host, in the same uniform with ski mask except white. The cop sees them and his face turns to relief. He waves at them excitedly, as though waiting for his instructions. The Host in the passenger seat points quickly like “pull over, pull over.” The video ends.

Nick went back to the Signal text message field. At just that moment, Basedschizofed typed and sent Nick the message “Okay so…what happens now? We want you to think of something. It’s up to u”

“Lol wow,” Nick said. He knew what this meant. There had been rumors and some posts on Instagram. Oblique references on the War Machine gaming streams. This video confirmed it. They were making a new season of The Party, and this season the characters were local cops and the streaming cameras were their bodycams. They had made some kind of deal with a small town PD in Xinjiang.

Basedschizofed continued: “I’m co-producing like I said. It’s the same premise, but heightened from last season. We love to explore the line between like technology and art in society. The ideas are super funny so far.”

“Oh yeah, I bet,” said Nick.

“You know what I’m talking about, right?”

“Yeah…I fw W*r M*chine.” He used the style of using asterisks to signal that they were talking about a banned un-person even though he had 10 million subs on YouTube.

“You got it. Season 4. Lots of people you know online are involved. We want you to come in and help write the show with us. It’s going to finally redpill every normie in China.”

“That’s totally fire.”

“Have you seen War Machine’s content?”

“Most of it, except the old stuff. The old problematic stuff..”

“The War Machine Experience?”

“Yeah, I’ve never seen that”

“Okay, you have to watch it…”

“Doesn’t it make your social credit score go down?”

“Oh there are ways around that…”

They were having this conversation on Signal, which was definitely created by the government exactly for the reason of tracking dissident conversations just like this one. It was also all being recorded on Nick’s Neuralink. There was zero possibility that they were getting away with anything.

“What’s your email?” Basedschizofed asked.

Nick sent him his email address, which was also easily monitored by the Chinese government.

“I’m going to send you a Mediafire link to something. It’s the War Machine Experience. I know many people haven’t seen it because it’s so problematic. But you have to watch it now to get up to speed before you come in and start working. All our writers have to be current on the full lore. The link is to download a .dmg file. Download it, but do not unzip the .dmg file while you’re on public wifi. The social credit score algo will recognize the unzipped content and flag your social credit score immediately. Just download the .dmg file, put it on a USB drive, and then delete it from your computer. And then await further instructions.”

And with that he was gone, leaving Nick with just the Mediafire link in his email, which there was no need to conceal. They had been talking to one another for a couple of minutes at the most. There was only one meaning that the episode could possibly have. It had been contrived as a way of letting Nick know Basedschizofed’s personal email. “If you ever want to reach me, this is where I can be found, because I’m terrible at checking my DMs,” was what Basedschizofed had been saying to him. Perhaps there would even be a message concealed somewhere in the video file’s name. But at any rate, one thing was certain: the conspiracy that he had dreamed of did exist, and he had reached the outer edges of it.

Another thing was also for sure, actually: it was fake and would definitely be a psyop. Is this what it felt like to become schizophrenic like for real? Nick wondered. He believed in it and knew it was totally fake simultaneously. But that was a no-fun type of attitude. This was the most exciting thing that had happened to Nick in about 10 iPhones. He was going to play along, he just had to be sure to not get psyopped into doing a crisis event.

He looked around at the other DS-Work cubicles. If these people knew he was DMing with a real extremist domestic terrorist, like one of the main ones that blue checks shrieked about on TV, they would lose their fucking shit.

He knew that sooner or later he would watch the banned problematic content. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps after a long delay – he was not certain. What was happening now was only the working-out of a process that had started years ago. The first step had been a secret, involuntary thought, the second had been starting the Neuralink vlog. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. The last step was something that would happen in the quantum computer. He had accepted it. The end was contained in the beginning. But it was frightening: or, more exactly, it was like a foretaste of death, like being a little less alive. Even while he was speaking to Basedschizofed, the meaning of the words had sunk in. He was using his actual phone number on his Signal, the phone number that was connected to his social credit score, the one that was connected to his PayPal account.

A chilly shuddering feeling had taken possession of his body. He had the sensation of stepping into the dampness of a grave, and it was no much better because he had always known that the grave was there and waiting for him.