End Time
Page 1
ENTER THE WORLD OF END TIME!
END TIME
Notes On The Apocalypse
G.A. MATIASZ
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
© 1996 by G.A. Matiasz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The author can be contacted by writing to: 62 Mile Press, 584 Castro Street #107, San Francisco, CA 94114-2594
Front cover, back cover and spine built by John Yates at Stealworks.
First Printing: January, 1994
Second Printing: September, 1996
As for you, Daniel, keep secret the message and seal the book until the end time; many shall fall away and evil shall increase.
Daniel 12:4
The New American Bible
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with a great fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
II Peter 3:10 - The Bible: King James Version
(may a lost god damballah, rest or save us...
“Black Dada Nihilismus”
The Dead Lecturer LeRoi Jones
(reprinted by 62 Mile Press)
End Time - notes on the apocalypse
“G.A. Matiasz has created a charged, political, and very readable novel in End Time, jump-cutting P.O.V. from character to character, pulling the reader into the plot as each character, quick as a Polaroid, develops into a fascinating persona.”
Factsheet Five
“This is not a happy vision of ourselves and the world we maintain. But it is an honest and compelling one. End Time. Notes On The Apocalypse is excellent speculative fiction. Full of heart and horror. Get it. Read it.”
Pickles McGurck Maximum Rock’n’Roll
“End Time ... is scarily realistic, fast paced, and detailed in vision ... I don’t know of any future fiction this chillingly real published since the debut of Gibson’s Neuromancer.... If Gibson preceded Matiasz, it must be admitted that Matiasz has topped him.”
J.G. Eccarius The Stake
“Matiasz constructs a fascinating and believable technoBaroque California in End Time .... (He) has woven a zeitgeistish thread into the web of futurology.... It’s a compelling read once you get started. AK Press couldn’t have sent a better book at the right time.”
EdMar The Lumpen Times
“This is, at the very least, the novel of the year. The characters really take you along with them. So realistic, it ought to give all sorts of saboteurs inspiration on possibilities for what can be done.”
Irreverend David Crowbar Editor, Popular Reality
“End Time is an engaging, thoroughly realistic novel that might very well frighten you into studying the political agenda of our leaders a bit more closely come November.”
Pirate Writings
“Ackerman showed up, and Bennett - and some guy named G.A. Matiasz whose SF/Oakland-based early 21st-century thriller called End Time I’m currently in the middle of and finding not only highly professional but intelligent, a rare combination in fiction. It’s fun reading, too!”
Bob Grumman Small Press Review
“Although supposedly set in 2007, this intense new novel from a Maximum Rock’n’Roll columnist reads frighteningly real today.”
Left Bank Distribution
“While dealing with future events that may not be, enough of the action takes place in a believable world to call this a 90’s version of M. Gilliland’s classic The Free. Over-all, well-written, near future science fiction novel brimming with believable characters in an all-too-familiar setting. Pick this one up and you probably won’t be able to put it down “til it’s over!”
Dan Profane Existence “Do ya like subversion? How about nuclear terrorism? Good good, glad to see your priorities are set straight. End Time Is packed full of goodies like this & much more. ... A highly entertaining & interesting read, with chapters that may soon be headlines.”
Bruce Young Cyber-Psycho’s AOD
“Solidly-crafted thriller... Provocative political discussion and “what it’s’ raise the book’s intellectual value without spoiling it as a good read.”
TapRoot Reviews
“End Time: Notes On The Apocalypse is a very good book of future fiction, bordering on science fiction. ... (It’s) a fun book to read ... Thick, chunky and tasty... Well done, and well worth reading.”
“Cookie” Mahoney Gene Splice
“The plot is straight forward thriller-cum-cyberpunk ... (I)t’s fast-paced and fun in the way only a fervent anarchist rant can be.”
Q zine
“End Time presents as an apocalyptic future-fiction, but exhibits all the characteristics of a realistic psychological novel... (Matiasz) extends current trends ingeniously to provide a context for characters winning their individual illuminations and liberations. ... (H)is novel (as Marge Piercy did for my 60’s...) will bring the reader up to speed (or some approximation thereof) on contemporary anarchist ideas.”
Iven Lourie Inner Journeys
“End Time is a kick-ass thriller of the near-future political edge; fast-paced and always surprising. This hardball trip to Looking Glass Land is reminiscent of the books of Neil Shulman and Shea/Wilson, and should find an enthusiastic audience.”
—eluki bes shahar, author of the Hellflower trilogy
“A compulsively readable thriller combined with a very smart meditation on the near-future of anarchism. End Time proves once again that Sci-Fi is our only literature of ideas.”
—Hakim Bey, author of T.A.Z.
For the memory of my father and mother,
who were always there for me. And, for ‘Bump City.’
AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER:
This is a work of fiction. Aside from the use of a few well known public personalities and current events to anchor down various parts of the plot, and except for Bob Barley, all of the characters and events in this book are fictional. They may be inspired by, but they are not identical representations of occurrences and people in real life. All are hybrids, composites and combinations. None are exact renditions. Just as the descriptions of southern Mexico are influenced by Spain from 1936 to 1939, and the portrait of the Bay Area in the 21st century is an extrapolation from that region in the 20th, so too are this book’s characters and events informed by reality, but are not documentations of reality. Any author who claims that his or her characters, events, situations and settings are entirely fictional is lying through his or her teeth. All writing is based upon experience. It cannot be otherwise. In turn, those who insist on seeing particular individuals or events exactly portrayed in the people and occurrences detailed in this work have better imaginations than I do.
AUTHOR’S THANKS:
I wrote the first draft of this book long hand in four exhilarating months. I spent the next year and nine months rewriting it, an excruciating process even with word processing software and computers. Several people provided invaluable aid in editing, critiquing, and commenting on this work. I would like to thank Sharon Gregory, David Nestle, Karen Bennett, Karl Bates and Cathy Drake for their substantive help in making this book possible. I would also like to thank Tim Gonzales for his cover artwork and Kim Carlyle for her work on the book’s maps. Thanks to Randall Cornish for his rock-steady friendship. Finally, thanks go to Bob Barley and the entire Chula Vista scene for showing me what is possible.
AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDG
MENTS:
I have relied upon the literature of the Spanish 1936-39 Revolution in particular and the Spanish Anarchist experience in general to flesh out the Mixtecan and Mayapan Liberated Territories of southern Mexico in writing this novel. Gastón Leval (“Collectives in the Spanish Revolution”), Sam Dolgoif (“The Anarchist Collectives”), Murray Bookchin (“The Spanish Anarchists”), Burnett Bolton (“The Spanish Civil War”), and Ronald Fraser (“Blood of Spain”) were invaluable in this regard. I have tried to acknowledge my other influences in the body of this work.
Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a boy. His teacher had a precious teacup, a rare antique. Ikkyu happened to break this cup and was greatly perplexed. Hearing the footsteps of his teacher, he held the pieces of the cup behind him. When the master appeared, Ikkyu asked: “Why do people have to die?”
“This is natural,” explained the older man. “Everything has to die and has just so long to live.”
Ikkyu, producing the shattered cup, added: “It was time for your cup to die.”
“Time To Die: 101 Zen Stories”
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Compiled by Paul Reps
Contents
Dedication, Disclaimer, Author Acknowledgment
End Time - notes on the apocalypse
Palimpsest
PART ONE - Priming the Apocalypse
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
PART TWO - Babylon By The Bay
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
PART THREE - Armageddon, CA 94666
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
PART FOUR - Silence in Heaven
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
About the Author
TO THE READER:
A variety of historical documents have been included throughout the story that follows for readers unfamiliar with the time. The experienced reader knowledgeable in the period may wish to pass over these portions of the work.
PERMISSION:
Excerpts from The Amok World Almanac, New Romantic’ Historiography: A Survey by Allen Meltzer, the BBC Special Report “Modem Counter-insurgency: The Weapons of War” with Nijal Thomas, “Musing on the Nature of Cybernetic CoEvolution” from Hamran Mossoud’s California Diaries, and None Dare Call It Betrayal by Lieutenant-Colonel David Bums have been reprinted by permission of Electrostraca.
PALIMPSEST
Kate Parnell stopped crawling when she reached a three-way split in the air duct. The cramped, pitch black space reverberated with the rush of cool, sterile air from behind her. She leaned her sweaty right cheek against the duct’s cold, invisible metal and closed her eyes. A deeper dark in the dark.
Hail Mary, full of grace...
The Stanford undergraduate senior reached into the backpack she had been pushing ahead of her for the flashlight. She should be praying to Gaia, the Mother Goddess Earth. Yet childhood ritual, permeated with incense and candle smoke, invariably resurfaced under stress. No headaches, and no depression, just the clean adrenaline from the clear danger of her blessed task. The flashlight’s beam, once she flicked it on, momentarily blinded her, shining brightly against the muted blue duct metal. Kate had wormed her way into the bowels of Stanford University’s new Experimental Biology Complex, where they created monsters. Biogenetic engineering. Gene splicing. Playing God. Whatever people called it, it meant taking Mother Earth’s sublime life forms and changing them. Barbarously. Horribly. Dispassionately.
...The Lord is with you...
Next she pulled the bomb apparatus from her pack and took care to set it on the air duct’s vibrating floor. Gene had purchased the CTX plastique from Sulawesi for Kate. Far more powerful than its Semtex H explosive cousin, it was now strung into a detonation frame. There were advantages to being the much doted upon daughter of America’s fifteenth wealthiest man, Barry Parnell. Money had not been a problem. The switch that she unsnapped from a safety housing, when thrown, conducted the charge of a battery built into the apparatus, thus detonating the CTX. Soon, this abomination against Gaia, the Goddess, would be wiped off Her planet.
...Blessed are you among women...
“This isn’t working for me,” Gene had said, after the third time he slept with her. He had been her section teaching assistant for her required World Civilizations course. She had waited until the History Department had given Gene the boot before inviting him to spend the night the first time. So, they had remained friends. She continued working with him in the Black and Red Bookstore, as well as the Stanford Anti-War Coalition, always keeping the door open, hoping against hope that he would want her again. The sparkling, blinding migraines started then. Kate had taken on the Coalition’s riskiest direct actions, trying to hold Gene’s attention and, miraculously, never getting caught. Trying to impress him with her militancy. The depression descended when Gene began seeing Serena. It had been all she could do to drag herself out of bed to take part in the brief actions he had asked her to join. His vibrant voice on the phone invariably, though only momentarily lifted the heavy gray pall that had enveloped her life. She had told him: The CTX is for the Puertorriqueño underground.”
...And blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus...
Kate’s younger brother, Patrick, was the product of genetic manipulation. Doctors had removed the gene responsible for muscular dystrophy from her mother’s egg, replacing it with a harmless place holder gene before fertilizing the egg with her father’s sperm. She had been old enough for her parents to tell her what was going on, and young enough to confuse the procedure with grandmother Maureen’s stories about changelings. After Pat’s birth, her recurrent childhood nightmare in the cavernous Parnell Pennsylvania mansion involved watching her brother change before her eyes. His ears folding back into points, his canine teeth elongating, his fingernails sharpening... Of course, she had accepted the 1990’s conspiracy theory that AIDS was a genetically engineered virus released, accidentally or on purpose, from some research laboratory. And at the depth of her depression, sometimes too weak and nauseated to get out of bed for days, Kate had seen things; artificial organisms creeping out from under the door, through the cracks between floor and walls, even floating in the air.
...Holy Mary, mother of God...
Satisfied that everything was ready, Kate snapped off the flashlight and welcomed the comforting dark. She closed her eyes, then pressed hot flesh against cold metal. She smiled, knowing that her deliverance was close at hand. The hammering depression shattered, the electric headaches dispelled once she had decided to eliminate Stanford’s bio-genetic labs. Her heart now raced from having broken into the guarded building undetected, through the ventilation system, as well as from the effort to get this far. Otherwise, she was at peace. In synch with the Goddess. Her troubled mind stilled. Pooled down into communion. Gaia.
...Pray for us sinners...
She had vowed to love, honor and protect the Mother visiting an Oregon Wicca on a Spring Equinox four years ago, long before knowing Gene. Surely he would recognize her heroism, after he read her letter. Pat, wherever her true brother was, would understand why she needed to do this. She reached for the switch, through the shuddering black...
...Now...
...And h
it the toggle. White light. Intense. Pure. One.
***
Harold Nishimura knew that something was out of place as soon as he entered his room. He rented in a graduate student house leased by his good friend Gene, a Stanford graduate dropout. His door had a lock. But the flimsy, hollow, particle board barrier was a joke. He had stumbled into it more than once, intoxicated or simply clumsy, and the door had popped open. Popped the lock. Easily. And now, something was missing.
He carefully rested his briefcase on his orderly desk, next to his IBM clone, and pushed his chair into the middle of an equally orderly room before sitting. He minutely scanned his desk and the shelves around it. He did not have a photographic memory; just an excellent, systematic one. Little things were ever-so-slightly off position, as if moved and returned to their places in an effort to cover some search. He had it, after fifteen minutes. He checked a gap in his computer diskette library with the library log he kept in his bottom desk drawer. But he already knew what had occupied the space. Three bundled diskettes— numbers 330 through 332—were gone.
“That’s not what they wanted,” he said, under his breath. The gap in his library was too wide. Harold opened his briefcase, fished out another bundle of three diskettes—numbers 333 through 335—and tossed them on his desk.
The missing diskettes had contained his project done at the beginning of his second year as a doctoral student in Stanford’s Mathematics Department; Harold’s attempt to impress his academic liege lord, Professor Arthur Linscott. His original Hawking Transpositions. The very first instance of the Periodic Matrix. He had backups, of course. But those originals possessed bittersweet memories for him.
An accidental Grail he had let slip through his fingers.
He had come upon Stephen Hawking’s half dozen equations over a year and a half ago. They were an unorthodox footnote to an end note in one of the late astrophysicist’s more obscure treatises on the properties of matter approaching black hole singularities. He had transposed Hawking’s esoteric mathematics into a long series of simpler differential equations, which he had then converted into a computer simulation model using Stapledon 4.0’s program analogs. Linscott had shrugged upon being presented with his graduate student’s work, at the time. Then, Harold’s professor had assigned him to install the Stapledon program into the Department’s compunet, suggesting as well that he run some standard data bases through his simulation. Nishimura had plugged in a periodic table data base quantifying the properties of known elements. The Hawking Periodic Matrix had emerged as a consequence, initiating a profound transformation directly in elemental chemistry and indirectly throughout all of science.