Spacemen

**Doing Nothing and looking good doing it…**

**Short Description**: Electric Nihilists

**Dress**: Pale colors, or solid black, severe, minimalist clothing. Slicked back hair in a variety of colors. Scientific gear, such as faux-spacesuits, work jumpsuits and lab coats have a certain popularity. Boring yet sexy. Or is that sexy yet boring…?

**Symbols**: While no true spaceman would ever admit to having a symbol, which would mean accepting a definition, they tend to favor stark black and white designs, often forming optical illusions that trick the eye into seeing them move, checks and spirals and the like. The designs of MC Escher are something akin to a bible to them.

**Lingo**: The Spacemen, by the nature of their vice du jour, aren’t the most talkative of creatures and when they do, they try to keep their language as vague and ‘dreamy’ as possible.

**Music**

* Styles: E-Trance, Powernoize
* What’s on Their Playlists?: Deidre, Maria Mercurial, Teiko Ikemoto, Foreverfall, The Zero Zone
* Local bands: 10,000 Peoploids, In Vino Veritas, The Beyond, SyncSIN, Dry Paint, Translumination

**The Flow**
If the Spaceman can be defined, which would appall them in the same way that plaid-golf-pants or powder-blue-tuxedo would appall anyone else, it’s by the Flow. For those not in the know, the Flow is like what athletes call ‘The Zone’, the state of partial detachment and complete absorption in the task at hand. What the taoists call *wu wei* (Oh, what? You don’t think the Vu’s never cracked a text file? Please…) or ‘non-action’, automatic right action without conscious thought.

In nature, which interests the Spacemen in absolutely no way, states like this are something generally brought about by strenuous and/or repetitive activity, like sports, art or dancing or… the one the Vu likes best, which combines the best of art, sports and dancing ;)

However, the Spacemen, which also call their constant Flow State “Space”, prefer something a little less… active. Le Sigh. What they use has the long and absolutely insomnia-curing name of a ‘Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation’, which, boiled down, is basically stimulating parts of the brain through direct electrical current. While Spacefolk are infamously snobby about BTL’s , tDCS is basically a crude, homemade version of a moodchip, with the benefit of not having obsolesce and DRM built in, but the rather ‘shocking’ downside of occasionally inducing a stroke or electrocuting someone’s brain. Probably the best description of what the Flow is like is this article by the Vu’s old friend Caleb.

The whole tDCS thing has been around nearly as long as people have had electricity to fry themselves with. However, Space culture really has its roots in the Craftpunk  Revival, like so many sad, incomprehensible things. Apparently there were a fair few of the more hard-partying craftpunks who wanted their BTL fix but on their own DIY, non-corporate terms. The first Flow State inducers. Flow snobs insist that their version is not only cheaper and less controlled, but also to be more alert, more focused and more creative. While none of this has been proven, not even a little bit, they will persist in making their strange boxes and cobbling together ‘buzzwires’ or ‘joywires’, the homemade cybernetic components that really hard-core addicts have permanently buzzing their brain cells. Ironically, they even brag about the instability of these units, claiming that by having uncontrolled ‘experiences’, they are somehow braver or more ‘authentic’ (a word that always raises the Vu’s hackles) than the common BTL user.

The main side effect and primary affectation of the the serious Flow State user is the distance and detachment that they begin to feel, from everyone and everything, even the moment they are in as the parts of their brain that feel and focus are slowly burnt out, along with their motivation.

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