P R I N C I P I A T R I O O N I C A
while in lock-down before the vaccine
Soup-Line to Armageddon
This was caught on cell phone video last weekend… Looking up through the bars of a shopping cart, it shows two middle-aged lads of similar backgrounds, economic status and dress-sense standing in the segmented line at a food bank in Rubberneck, Arizona.
Sorry, it's just a transcript.
Social Supplicant A: "You strike me as one of those sciencie types who believes that the world moves."
Social Supplicant B: "I didn't know it showed. Am I leaning?"
A: "You're showing your leanings alright. It's the red hat that says THE EARTH MOVES. Do you wear that to set yourself apart from normal society?"
B: "Like any good citizen, I am expressing my concern about the direction in which this country is headed. It's headed that way at about a thousand miles an hour. There is no turning back. I live in a world that moves at great speed."
A: "Can you try to understand how nuts that sounds to the rest of us? You people run around in your fast flying la-la-land squawking about 'equilibrium of momentum' like it's a more reasonable explanation for the stillness of the world. Folks know by their guts that the world is still. It has to be to aid digestion. Motion is a fraud."
B: "You can remain motionless in your beliefs or you can pursue the evidence until it leads to the truth. That's what it means to live with motion. The earth moves on while you're just standing there, standing there."
A: "That's looney talk. It's your brain that's spinning. If I had my way, I'd knock your head to the ground and watch it roll away!"
B: "Why? Just because my red hat says something different than your red hat? If I had my way, the world would leave you behind in the vacuum of space as it hurls around the sun."
A: "But it doesn't! I can jump straight up and land in the same spot. You saw me. That was evidence in plain sight. You cannot refute what it plain to see!"
B: "I saw that your brief departure from the ground was insufficient to disturb your equilibrium of momentum with the earth."
A: "There you go with that secret bafflegab you get from those elitist podcasts. Tell me you're not living in a different reality than the rest of us! I don't doubt that you sincerely believe but why? It so divisive and petty."
B: "I believe what divides us is our tolerance for plain sight. If you watch a swinging pendulum all day, you won't need to believe. It is an observable fact that I'm sure anyone can see if they can tolerate seeing it long enough to see it."
A: "I don't have the time to navel gaze at some plumb bob! Convince me right here and now while you have my attention! I should believe that the earth moves because… five… four… three…"
B: "You're asking me to stuff a mattress through a bathroom window. You are right that we cannot refute evidence but we can refute what is plain. It is stressful at first but, in contemplating motion, we can increase our tolerance for plain. What is plain to see can take all day if that is how far the evidence leads us. We will see when it stops at the truth as long as we don't let our plain-sightedness stop us first."
A: "What a load of showy nonsense! My point is, you cannot stand in front of me right now and give me any reason to believe that the earth moves. The Motion Movement is a ploy by the Deep State to impose burdensome building requirements that will make the economy collapse. You would tilt us away from our steady foundational truths! I'm wasting my time with you!"
B: "Only because you can't waste enough of it to matter, short-stuff! If your brain can't satisfy reality that's your problem!"
A: "That's it, buddy. This is the point where I have to punch you in the face really hard."
B: "You're right. It is plain to me as well that this is the point where we start punching each other in the face."
A: "Really hard, too. And we'll want to keep on punching until our arms give out. The only exercise my arms get these days is carrying baskets of food."
B: "And I can plainly see the events we will set in motion. Punching is stressful for both of us. My arms must tolerate carrying kitty litter for six as far as my wife has evidently parked the car."
A: "Oh, good. You listen up, pal. After the vaccine, we both come back right here to this parking lot. You fast-bull pitcher! Topsy-turd-tosser! Stop the rotation!"
B: "You shorty-shit-stop! I mean, you spotty-stork-tit! It's a date!"
Sorry... it was Rubbers Neck, Arizona.
Part two…
How well can the food-bank video serve as an inspiration for a Star Trek episode? Here is the same scene re-imagined for the pilot episode of Star Trek: Warp Zero Lockdown. Sir Patrick Stewart masterfully plays both roles.
Social Supplicant B is responding to a challenge about how his hat sets him apart…
B: "I wear this stupid ballcap because with its simple embossing, I bring your damnation and put it in your face. With this hat in plain sight, you cannot hide from the truth. Your innocent stumbling in the dark is over. This hat makes you in-denial and a liar. You are complicit in holding back a better world. The motion that I know in my head to be true goes where I go. That is why my head bears this fiery red subpoena. You have been served."
A: "I beg your pardon… Where was your hat when mankind struggled to survive and civilization scraped itself together? How would a moving earth have changed the way anything happened? Everything we have achieved was achieved without the earth moving. You say the truth of motion can be seen in convoluted and contrived circumstances. There's your answer. Don't convolute and contrive things and the earth will keep perfectly still. Maybe some folks can sometimes see a greater truth over the horizon. Let it stay on its side of the horizon and we'll stay on ours. You're out of your jurisdiction on my side, petty officer! Damn your hat!"
B: "You know damn well we're stuck here together until one of us learns to make a vaccine. You will find there is none for enlightenment. Once the idea of motion has been assimilated, once its hat has been franchised, our individual minds can know there is a great collective of facts. I can hear them whispering to me… there is no going back… Re-booting is futile!"
A: "You are as meaningless as genitalia on a frozen lake of methane. This society is going nowhere without an established course. It's too risky. Once society reaches escapist velocity, we could careen into a mushroom cloud of super-heated gas! You want us to trust that motion knows where it's going. Tell me about your futuristic visions of la-la-land!"
B: "Can you imagine the day when starships are no longer plywood sets in a secret warehouse? I want a prop department that uses experts versed in real science instead of technical-advising elites who make up fanciful bullshit! I shouldn't have to endure an extension cord up my pants just to maintain this false reality! I believed I came here to go where no one has gone before. Instead, I've been co-opted into this conspiracy to fool gullible people into worshiping merch!"
A: "You are tampering with farces you cannot begin to imagine!"
B: "That's because I have finished imagining them. To go back risks creating a paradox of cognitive dissonance. I've have seen celestial motion and there's nothing in the universe 'can stop it!"
A: "Then get the hell out of the galaxy! Your hat is destabilizing local reality and threatens both the economy and the Universe with total collapse!"
B: "All it takes is one man with an idea to set changes in motion. Others will come and take up the cause that will, with perseverance, build a better world where diversity is absorbed by the sum and technology finally delivers its promised contentment. Production is underway worldwide. You cannot cancel it this time!"
A: "Oh yes I can. I don't need perseverance. All I have to do is break things. All you have to do is establish a stable bond between social democracy, a free press and intellectual curiosity- the three most unstable substances in the universe. I can take advantage of your fragility long before you can expose mine. I caught you with your badge and your bangs on the wrong side, you mirror-world dunsel!"
B: "I'm warning you. This is might look like an ostomy bag but it has a transporter and I have the coordinates of your XJ's parking spot."
A: "Don't over-excite yourself. Your pace-maker has exhausted the power pack. You'll have to remain full of it."
B: "I'll remind you once more that this is still a Trek episode. Sooner or later, someone has to punch someone in the face. You wanna make it so? Engage me you inedibly-fanged pile of carpet-padding!"
A: "You heard the Governor's Prime Directive. We cannot transport with our shields up. We will have to wait until next season. Then, we shall don our dotted tights and meet on the screen of green in virtualous combat. Unless you're still insisting that all things are black and white, you network-nipple-taper!"
B: "Your wife prefers the stunt-double and reports a loss of impulse power, you inertial-ly-damped port-thruster!"
A: "That does it. We've reached the point where I will punch you anyway and then run away really fast in slow motion as the virus dramatically spreads behind me. The franchise has lots of places to hide. Stream me up, Scotty!"