Justified Poetics Radio

[Anonymous]

AUDIO FILE:     JP Radio 27.4.mp3 - 4.06MB


Broadcast over shortwave radio at 27.4 MHz.

"For those of you just tuning in, this is [crackle] Haviah home cooking with... just kidding.  But seriously, folks, let's put our hands together, our ears to the ground and get ready to [brzzt] break some eggs.  Today's dish is strophe-'n'-strife, this is your friendly neighborhood Poet, and you're listening to JP Radio.  

"First I wish to remind listeners that we're changing freq next week, so make sure to dial it down a point and a half.  For those of you who've [crackle] yet to come to a meeting of the Wrong Way Club and certainly for those who never miss one--bring friends--next week's password will be the next prime in the series.  Ask an acquaintance, and make sure to follow [crackle] blue signs this week.  The blue signs.

"Anyone who hasn't tuned in before... ah, welcome to the channel, it's [crackle] always nice to have you with us.  JP Radio, Justified Poetics, is brought to you by myself and those of my acquaintance who do not favor Draconic hegemony, but moving on.  I want to make sure we are all clear as filament on the matter of surveillance, or the survees, as the LCs say.  The winking black eye with much less than 360-degree capacity and such shoddy audio I am awed... [bzzt] indeed.  Now, we in Wrong Way have taken it upon ourselves to mark the safe paths with green for... who knows what for, and I'm taking this chance to remind anyone that the audio ain't too grand.  So keep an eye for the Wrong Way.  It will lead you astray.  

"And then there's the matter of the gray uniforms, the regulars, the lackey guard, whatever you like... ah yes.  What is the terminology, 'I fucked those motherfuckers up well and good.'  Sorry, yes, that was me.  I am afraid they are ill-equipt to deal with psionics, but do not worry, good citizens, and be not afraid, I am not talking about the Pilots.  My friends and I are quite unpartisan, we are on your side, and we want to know how Dragons bleed.  It's all very well to talk about the Network and VCN, but I wish to talk about the streets, the happy little nooks and crannies whence the siren-song of freedom streams like smoke or radio wave... four years ago, three Pilots died in Haviah Lower City.  I wonder why they did not publicize?  I wonder why they would rather we not remember... four years and they've forgotten, but here is the prick of reminiscence.  We do have our modest successes--whoever we are--and they say they are on our side, too; however you may accuse me of exchanging saliva with Gospels, now... well, I admit I have fostered a close bond with at least... ah.  Pilots!  They are not so very much.    

"So, Xico, it is... [bzzt] nine-oh-six.  Do you know where your Pilots are?

"... Gospels, Gospels, Gospels, we grow tired of waiting for you while you languish in... ha, ha.  You think we need so very many fancy encumbrances, but do you know--I am sure you do--weapons technology has advanced but we, not so terribly far; we are all... or most of us... mortal...  You can still kill a man with the edge of a can, and, sorry, a woman too.  Keep it in mind, mind strength in numbers, and never mind the Network.  Don't bother surfing subversive sites or making subversive... webcomics or... no, no.  So much safer to do, and bloodier, too, and Poet is here to protect you.  Now--whoops--I think it's past my bedtime.  Love and kisses to Sylph, Marshal, Alesku, and Xico, and best wishes of freedom for all of you real people out there.  Keep an ear and an eye, and... oh, I think [crackle] our dish is done.

"Good night, and break an egg." [crackle, crackle, kssh, click]

[center:2clor4x0]Contact Poet at his vcn address for more information about the Wrong Way Club.[/center:2clor4x0]

[Anonymous]

AUDIO FILE:  JP Radio 25.9.mp3 - 8.21MB


Broadcast over shortwave radio at 25.9 MHz.

"We interrupt your scheduled broadcast to bring you Practical Home Destruction.  How to practice the right kind of [crackle] self-defense, with useful items you can find around your house.  This broadcast's a little earlier than you might've expected, and, happily, will last a little longer.  The Dragons aren't doing a radio sweep until... [kssh] seventeen minutes from now, so listen up, we are safe.  

"We are going from multipurpose kitchen unit to railgun this time, and many thanks to my dear Nessuno for the research on infrastructure and [crackle] consumer goods.  Never let it be said the Pilots are useless...  many things, but not useless.  

"Right... now, my friend L. tells me I should recommend you order the standing oven-and-fridge combo from KMG Conglomerated.  Most of you will already have this in your house; it is a typical installation in prefab, prefurnished residences in all Lower City districts.   Do not tell them Poet sent you.  If you do not [kssh] already own one, make things easier and get the kind you have to assemble yourself.  If you do own one, all is well, here is how to access the parts you need.  In addition to your oven-and-fridge unit you will need a multitool, titanium screws, and a heavy-duty metal cutter, all available cheaply at retail hardware outlets near you.

"Use any sheet metal for the base of your railgun.  I recommend the titanium-alloy back of your fridge, which no one will notice is missing if you turn the back of the unit to the wall.  You may... take the long copper-alloy strips from the back corners of the oven for your rails, and, bonus, they are extremely heat-resistant, so [crackle] screw them directly in there.  Spread on some of their coolant, accessible... through the vent in the front of the refrigerator, before you mount the armature and thank you, [crackle] KMG, we love your multiuse technology.  The back plate of the unit is aluminum and makes an excellent armature, which will carry your projectile along the rails; cut it to fit and slide it down between the rails so it can move freely.  Later, friends--oh, much later, but we will see--add your projectile, which can be any scrap metal.  Try forks.  Spoons if you wish to be ironical.

"I do not recommend you detach the power source from the unit until you are ready to use your weapon, and.... ah, let us say you will know when that happens, but keep the wires ready.  When the moment arrives, it will [crackle] be simple to access the battery.  Merely unscrew the side plate and detach the nuclear battery, which you can then hook up to wires leading to each rail.  KMG likes to make absurdly overpowered kitchenware, so you will be possessed of some 100 volts and more if you mount several power sources in series.  If you want to get fancy, be advised that the abandoned power grid in districts 4016 through 6287 used to run off of capacitors, ah, capacitated  [kssh] to the tune of 400 kiloamperes, so that's [kssh] nice for everyone; you can add those to the circuit.  If not, lower-amp capacitors are available at your local retail outlet.  Buy several and you should be fine.  Uh, if you are running a raid... [crackle] I recommend accessing that through the tunnels, so ask a Wrong Wayer about... those.  

"If you are really lucky, you can even use a magnetic field tool instead of your power source setup... they are hard to procure and difficult to use, but it is not impossible if you try at some Middle Caste sporting supply stores.  Try starting a Magball team for your local youth center.  You need to register the tool, but... [crackle] can work.

"And there's more!  You may still use your kitchen unit to make a nutritious pre-revolution snack, if you have not yet removed your power source.  

"Come to a meeting or access the VCN site and ask, ask and you will receive a useful diagram; or ask a friend, as always--and you should be all set.

"Now [kssh] we don't really have time for too much else.  I believe, ah, yes, I believe the Dragons should be tuning in just about now.  Welcome, Seekers and sundries.  My public announcement for today, in the waning minutes before your directional trace begins to close in on me... [crackle]  Terrifying.  Today I want to speak about the history of freedom.  History... or freedom... has always been written by poets, hm, or so you could say.

"Freedom, or... what... we... are... fighting... for.  What you overlook when you say that prosperity is freedom, or that pleasure is freedom, oh... no... to create a desire and to feed it is the most grotesque of slaveries... we think for ourselves.  Our own desires, the desires of a free people, need no Network and have no need--no need!  No need of anything.  And you are trapped in your towers and your Eyries, your Network, it is a trap, and it is.  A death.

"History, more to the point... Ipollius, the abandoned city.  Without the Network, what do we have?  Oh, we have so much more than anyone might presume.  Ipollius failed, but not all of its citizens died, whether you put them in prison camps or left them to wander the wastelands.  These are not the worst punishments you can inflict on us.  We do not fear Ipollius.  We do not need the Network and we do not need the Dragons.

"Human beings, fragile and powerful.  But you Dragons, you Pilots... you are the Network, and it will die with you, and you fear death because it is all you know, but we fear nothing, because we know [crackle] that freedom is worth more than the deathly life...

"Now, then, what about Urazria?  I imagine you did not hear about our neighbor on the news.  Rioters in one of their Lower Caste districts succeeded in shutting down ten kilometers of the power grid.  They disabled fifteen percent of the stationed police force and held out for two weeks behind barricades.  Most of them are [crackle] now in.. ah... 'containment facilities,' isn't that right?  I wonder, Pilots, how long it will take you to realize that you are creating soldiers more dangerous than your own behind those walls.  Prison riots... I hear you had another three months ago...  Oh, I have [kssh] ears in your walls.  Someday you will find that everyone you keep imprisoned, and that is all of us, all of us, in the Lower City or on an island or behind a wall or in a dome--everyone is ready to break out.

"We have the tools.  People, Xico... people.  It is a person's world and not a Dragon's we live and die in, and we do not like walls... Freedom.  What is freedom?  You wonder why we are willing to kill or die for our freedom, but that is freedom [kssh] for you.  Freedom is the thing that life is made of.  Freedom, the impulse to freedom, is the impulse not to live in a system that destroys choice.  Freedom... to do things and say things for reasons that are beyond any system.  You do not have it?  You do not have a life I should regret taking.  You, in thrall to Dragons.  You, imprisoned in the [crackle] deep, deep and deathly complacency of your position.  You, who are not willing to look life in the face and say that you are a being and you are free.  None of you are people... to me.  It is only those who choose to choose... who deserve... choice.

"And I ask you... when those of us who do have our freedom act... when we act--will you choose to join us?"

[Anonymous]

AUDIO FILE:    JP Radio 29.0.mp3 - 3.70MB

Broadcast over shortwave radio at 29.0 MHz.

"Freedom.  Do any of you... motherfuckers... understand what it is?

"You don't.

"Aedolis has left you stranded in the toxic twilight [crackle] of an eternal present.  We do not know our histories, and those who do not know history do not know truth.  We cannot discern the shape of our humanity--and the human is a historical animal, a [kssh] social animal, an animal with a social history.

"Why do I wax poetic?  I do it... because we forget the power of words, which require thought and absorption.  We have left only the power [kssh] of images, which do not allow the same kind of thought.  Images dazzle.  They blind.  They are [crackle] also ultimately ephemeral, and their transience lets us forget our own.  How many images do you catch every second on your terminal screen?  The Dragons don't want you to listen.  They want you to stare and be mesmerized.  They want you to die slowly, without noticing, in between the little blinks of the flashing lights.

"You're going to die without having lived.  You're gonna [crackle, kssh] die without having thought.  

"Now, there's a school of thought, I, ah, think my friend Alesku embraces this, which is really very un-Aedolian in a way... there's a school of [crackle] thought that holds that true freedom means freedom from our own desires.

"What... pardon me... what bullshit.  What fuckery this is.  What [kssh] hypocrisy.  Until we know how to think, we can't know what we desire.  And until we know what we want, we will not be free.  And until we're ready to f... [crackle]  fight for what we want, we will not be truly human.  Or, ah... being, as you like.

"Our desires, my fellow Aedolians, are caught in infancy.  You put shit in your mouths and call it candy, because candy is the only thing you have ever learned to eat.  You're insipid.  You don't want to believe there is anything [kssh] in the world but sweet, fluffy emptiness.  A diet of sugar and drugs won't sustain you, and I'm telling you, stop doing the same thing to your soul.

"My friends, shit is shit.  Taste it.  Revel in it.  Remember it.  The Dragons feed you shit every day.  They keep you in a bubble because the air outside would burn out your lungs, and I only wish that were a parable.  If we want to see the sky, we've got to accept that we won't like how it looks.  [crackle] If we want freedom, we've got to accept that we'll have to eat shit, but I'd rather consciously eat shit, and bleed, and die, and kill...

"I'd rather... [crackle]  rather really live, because really living is savage and terrible... and our desires cannot be met in the marketplace.  The marketplace is shit, full of it.  Really live.  That [kssh] is what the Dragons fear.  Humanity.  The human impulse to destruction and chaos, creativity, and the intensity that comes from our realization that life is short, my fellows, life is... short."