“They haven't lost everything,” she declared with jubilation. "The 
memories. The memory is still there. | told him my name and he just 
told me he remembers. Him told | the very first time we met, just like 
that, and he remembers.” She jabbed four of her fingers at the 
screen which still displayed Jeremy on it and didn’t notice the blood 
drain from Dr. Devane’s face. 


"If that memory is there, maybe other there are memories are there, 
she went on, her speech quickening. "If the other memories are 
there, maybe we can fix this. Everything might not be lost after all. 
They’re still there. Everything is still there, locked away their in 
heads but we knew that already." She continued to pace, her words 
erupting from her like machine gun rounds. 


“We can stop it,” she said as a smile suddenly exploded across her 
face. She burst into laughter without warning and continued. “We 
can fix things. This doesn’t be have apocalypse to the. All we need 
to do is completely reinvent language. We can things fix so 
everyone is jxrhs bohten and everything all be will alright. Again.” 
She stopped. Her head swept from person to person as she took in 
their expressions. Dr. Devane’s eyes were wide and his mouth hung 
open. Why was his face doing that? She couldn’t remember, and it 
didn’t matter. It was salvageable. She could save her husband. 


The bullets from the gun in Dr. Wythers’ hand struck twice her in the 
heart, killing her instantly. She didn't have time to ask why even if 


she had been able to. 


Notes towards a manifesto 


WE ASK THE QUESTION HERE 
1. deviating from or inconsistent with the common 
order, form, or rule; irregular; abnormal: 


SMASH the confines of reality! Purge Art of modernism, 
commercialism, post-modernism, galleryism, pre- 
modernism, manifestoism, consumerism, ismism. Art 
dies by inches, confined in glass & steel & paint. Release 
it into the world. Art is life & life is Art. Create Art reality. 
2. not fitting into a common or familiar type, 
classification, or pattern; unusual 3. incongruous or 
inconsistent. 


REMAKE the tools of expression! An expression made is 
an expression made unoriginal. Art is not regurgitation. 
Reduce, reuse, recontextualize, redact, demake, 
unmake, destroy. Never think of the same river twice. 

#. not organized or planned in a conventional way 
27. encouraged to function or evolve without 
advance planning; spontaneous. 


UTILIZE the canvas! Expose the people to Art reality. Art 
is for the people & people are for Art. Mourn the loss as 
a cochineal or spent paint. 

}. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of surrealism; 
surrealistic. ?. having the disorienting, hallucinatory 
quality of a dream; unreal; fantastic: 


SUBVERT the aims of the collectors and aficionados! 
Curators to academics to directors, seek to explain & 
cage Art & expression. Do not avoid or purge. Make Art 
from their actions. 

-8. any member of a class of words that modify 
nouns and pronouns, primarily by describing a 
particular quality of the word they are modifying. 


For thousands of years, Art furtively asked the questions 
of the age. What is Life? what is Art? what is god? Now 
we pile upon the altar of art and ask our own question. 
Life is fleeting, Art is everything and nothing, and god is 
away. We seek a far greater question, found in the clubs 
you don't know. The bands never heard. Find it all, but 
don't show it. Show it off, but not too obvious, make it 
public, but limited. It defines this modern world, from 
computers to walking. To even ask is to fail, to reflect is 
heresy. 


Are we cool yet? 


Sheridan sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose and dropped 
the sheet of paper to the desk. 


"What the fuck did | just read, Braun?" he asked, leaning back in his 
chair. Braun gulped. 


"Well, sir," he answered, "we think it's some kind of manifesto from 
the group that did the Ossify thing. It's just..." 


"Just what?" 


"Well, we've recovered nearly three dozen of these, and no two are 
the same. Not just in the style or wording, either. They all seem to 
advocate contradictory positions." 


"Are there any consistencies?" 


"Well, every piece seems to call for the use of anomalous objects to 
create quote, ‘art reality.' We think. Some of it's pretty, uh... pretty 
abstract." 


"Fan-fucking-tastic." 


"There's something else, sir... Several of the documents suggest a 
knowledge of the existence of the Foundation, as well as several 
other groups of interest. There's even a few lines that a few of the 
analysts think might be references to currently contained objects." 


"So, there's a bunch idiot kids making 'statements' about man's 


inhumanity to man or whatever that we have to clean up and 
contain. We don't know how many there are, what they stand for, or 
where they operate from. And they know about us somehow." 


"Basically, sir, yes." 


"Christ, even with the Church or the Iranians, we at least know 
where they stand. When | first started, you had the Cl and the GOC 
and one or two others. We hated them and they hated us, but at 
least we were playing the same game. Everyone wanted skips. And 
y'know what? That was fine! Now we've a half-dozen idiots making 
objects, you've got that weirdo in the suit, and now there's these 
assholes." He sighed and motioned for Braun to leave. 


As the door clicked shut, Sheridan picked up another manifesto from 
the pile and began to read. 


Nothing and Five and Five 


| could never see clearly, no, 
But five times blind, 
Five times declined. 


She stared into the cloudy surface of her tea, and tried to remember 
the song. It was on the tip of her tongue, she was sure of that, but 
she couldn't quite find the right words. With each idle spin of her 
teaspoon words swirled like dried leaves. She used to sing that song 
every night when she was young. How could she not remember? 


| could never be happy, no, 
But fives times broke, 
Five times a joke. 


"It sounds so close to what it was, but it's not. Never is. Ain't it so, 
Taps?" the old wolfhound lying motionless on the threadbare sofa 
turned his head slightly, but made no reply. Taps wasn't much of a 
talker most days. Was... was his name Taps? She could swear it 
was something with a 't'. Tangle? Torpor? She couldn't recall. She'd 
forget her own head if it wasn't loosely screwed on her scrawny 
shoulders. "Comes with age, Tansy" she told the dog, who turned 
his one working eye at her direction. A baleful glare, that dog had. 
Hmm... must be hungry. 


! could never find love, no, 
But five times hate, 
Five times too late. 


She went to the kitchen to get the hound something to eat. The 
fridge was empty, as it always was, so she went to the counter to 
see if there was anything canned left. As she searched the mostly 
bare shelves she felt her eyes drawn to the wooden cutting block. 
There was a knife, a butcher's cleaver, stuck right in the middle of 
the scarred wooden surface, though she couldn't for the life of her 
remember how that got there. Wasn't because she was cutting any 


meat, since she couldn't afford any, not for a long while now. And 
how was it stuck like that? She didn't have the muscles for that, 
unless that thing was incredibly sharp. Why did she own a cleaver 
anyway? When did she get that? "Is that yours, Tipsy? Been cutting 
some meat, have you?" she asked the hound. He didn't bother 
answering, of course. Ungrateful pest. She couldn't find anything to 
give him. "Sorry, boy. Ain't nothing left for you to eat. You'll have to 
wait until something shows up, | suppose." 


! could never have a life, no, 
But five times dead, 
Five times | fled. 


It was raining outside. Seemed to her it was always raining lately. 
She returned to her chair by the window and took another sip of 
her... coffee? Wasn't that tea just a second ago? She could have 
sworn... ah, but never mind that. Tea, coffee, cocoa, hemlock, it was 
all the same when push came to shove. "Did it rain so often when | 
was young, Temper?" she asked the dog, but the thing just kept 
staring at her, gaze unwavering, unrelenting. She remember when 
she used to like dogs, before that mangy thing somehow found his 
way into her apartment and on to her sofa. Or... did she like cats? 
Birds? Someone once brought a bird to the old club, when she was 
singing. She remembered its feathers, as it sat there in its cage 
below the stage. Reds and blues and greens, and the low lights 
played on them, making them glow in a thousand different hues. 
When she reached the high notes it would squawk and flap its 
wings, like the sound made it feel like it was flying again. Nostalgic, 
the silly thing. How could she remember that bird, but not the song? 


! could never find a voice, no, 
But five times mute, 
Five times a brute. 


A knock, followed by two more. Polite yet hesitant. She sighed and 
reached for her purse, looking for something. Mints, maybe? 
Cigarettes? Did she smoke? There were no cigarettes inside, so she 
decided she probably didn't. Another knock, a bit less polite this 
time. She rose from her worn rocking chair by the window and went 
to the front door of the tiny apartment. Had she still been young, she 
might have stopped to peer through the peephole first, but those 


days were long gone. She had nothing left worth taking anyway. So 
she opened the door to find a small bespectacled man in a white 
coat, holding a brown paper pad in front of him as if it was a shield. 
His bald head glistened in the dull florescent light. He opened his 
mouth to say something, then shut his mouth again. He looked at 
her, looked at the dreary grey corridor he was standing on, 
attempted to look behind her shoulder to see what was inside her 
apartment. He again opened his mouth, again shut it back without 
saying anything. He began to sweat. 


"Can | help you with anything, honey?" 
"Er...hi?" 


His eyes darted to and fro, and the sweating intensified, dark stains 
appearing on the white coat around the man's armpits. 


"You alright there?" 


"I'm...fine? Yeah, I'm fine. | just... | don't know what | was expecting 
when I... huh. Not this, that's for sure.” 


"I'm sorry, | don't really follow. What is it you wanted?" 
"Um... to find out about... something.” 
"You'll have to be a bit more specific, sugar." 


The man cleared his throat and looked desperately around him. 
Finally, his gaze settled on one of the other doors in the hallway. 
"What's over there?" 


"Over there? Just an apartment. People, | suppose. You'll have to 
excuse me, | don't exactly go out much." 


"People? We never expected... none of the others said anything 
about people, or apartments. Hmm, they wouldn't though, would 
they? | don't understand, why couldn't they remember? | can 
remember just fine, | can-" 


With that, he retrieved a ballpoint pen from a pocket and began 
scrawling on the paper pad, first rapidly and with great certainty, 


then increasingly slowly. As his hand slowed his eyes became 
increasingly unfocused, pupils dilated, rolled to and fro on the white 
surface of his eyes. It reminded her of camels, for some reason. 
Once, one of her rich suitors took her on a trip to the Sahara, and 
they rode on fine Arabian horses to the top of a dune, where they 
could watch that endless, pristine waste that was the desert, its 
surface broken by nothing but the occasional herd of camels. Or... 
was it Alaska, and were the camels elks? She couldn't remember. 
Whatever it was, it reminded her of the man's eyes, which now 
stared at her in a dazed confusion. The hand stopped entirely. She 
reached out to shake the man's shoulder when she felt a presence 
at her side. Looking down, she saw the wolfhound, Tapper, 
practically boring a hole into the poor dazed man's chest with his 
single eye. 


"What's that, boy?" 


The hound slowly advanced on the bespectacled man, never taking 
his eye down off him. It appeared that the sight of the hound was 
enough to make the man come to his senses, as he began to slowly 
back away from the dog, pen poised at the ready like a saber. The 
dog didn't bark or growl (and she could never recall him making any 
sound at all, now that she thought about it), but she still got the 
sense of what he wanted. It was in moments like this that she 
remembered why she let the thing sleep on her sofa, why she kept 
him fed. He had a way with danger, that dog. He could smell it. So 
she withdrew her hand and left the bespectacled man standing there 
in the hallway, sweating a hole through his shoes, pen raised, and 
closed the door, the wolfhound silently padding in as she did. She 
crossed the tiny room and returned to her seat by the window. She 
lit a cigarette from the packet that was surely there the whole time, 
and watched the smoke blow out through the open window, saw it 
disappear in the watery dance of the rain. 


| could never find no peace, no, 
But five times strife, 
Five times a...knife? 


There was something about that pose the bespectacled man took 
before she closed the door. Something familiar. A... a knife, was it? 
Yes, she remembered a knife. In the kitchen, stuck in the plastic 


cutting board. Metal in plastic, yeah. "| don't think that man meant us 
any good, my boy." she told the dog, as she pulled the long-handled 
dagger from the cutting board. It was odd, the hole it left seemed like 
it came from a much wider blade, but that really wasn't worth 
worrying about. A blade was a blade, after all. That was a universal 
truth if she ever knew one. 


! could never have a soul, no, 
But five times took, 
Five times a hook. 


"All those... people coming here, bothering us, it's not wholesome, 
my boy. Don't you think?" for a moment, she could swear the dog 
was nodding, but that couldn't be right. His eye was so steady, after 
all. Like a... like a little sun in the abyss, casting its baleful shine on 
all those poor lost souls. 


"They always come around but it's never because of what was, isn't 
it? It's because of what's now. And what's now... | don't understand 
that at all. But they keep on coming regardless, and they ask and 
they prod and they sweat on my carpet and they only see the 
wrinkles, my boy, only the wrinkles and nothing more." Not a blink 
from old Tatters. He knew all of this already. 


"Do any of them remember how | used to be? Do they even care 
that | was like a bolt from the blue, everlasting, iridescent, 
incandescent? | used to live, my boy, | was young, | was strong, | 
was beautiful. |... sang. But they don't care how that old song went. 
And they don't care that | can't remember anymore." 


| could never keep a secret, no, 
But five times spoke, 
Five times | choked. 


The blade felt so light in her hands as she stepped through the door. 
The small bespectacled man didn't even move as she plunged the 
blade deep into his forehead. Didn't even scream. They never did, 
after all. They just forgot to. 


! could never be alone, no, 
But five times owed, 


Output: 1x IRS Form 4868 (blank) 


Input: 1x IRS Form 1040 (blank) 

Setting: Fine 

Output: 1x IRS Form 1040, with all blank space 
including margins and backs of pages filled with 
imprecations against the IRS and taxation in general in 
the following languages [in order of quantity of text, from 
greatest to least]: Basque, Quenya [see below], 
Sumerian, Cherokee, an unidentifiable language with a 
writing system composed of curved symbols, Classical 
Chinese, English (from the curses used, apparently c. 
1650-1750). After long study of the unidentifiable 
symbols Dr. could identify no commonality with any 
of the other languages present on the form. The 
Sumerian contained three words unattested from any 
known text. The Quenya had its cursing of the IRS 
interspersed with vituperation of someone or something 
called "Morgoth". 


Input: 1x IRS Form 1040 (blank) 

Setting: Very Fine