Chapter Text

HEY! You!

Yeah you! Get your hands in the air, this is a stick up!

I've got a gun to your head motherfucker don't you move! You're a hostage now!

Listen up! Here's how it's going to go: I have planted 3 bombs in 3 secret locations. I am going to tell you 3 stories, and when I'm done the bombs will EXPLODE and you will see where I left them.

The first story is called the Story of the Cube.

I want you to meet my friend, Johnny. He's a good guy, real diligent and hardworking. We've been friends for a long time, and we've always gotten along. Johnny really likes going out in the woods, and sometimes he brings back things he finds.

One day, however, something changed. Johnny brought back something new.. He brought back the Cube.

The Cube was six inches by six inches by six inches and made of a strange metal. It glowed in the dark, was warm to the touch, and was incredibly useful. Johnny showed us all sorts of uses the Cube could fill. Johnny used the Cube a lot. He handled it as often as he could and showed it off whenever someone let him.

After a while, Johnny started to get sick. Really sick. His hands became littered with sores, pustules, and scars. Many told Johnny they were worried, but he'd listen to none of them.

One day, I found Johnny out on the street, and I chatted with him.

"Johnny," I said, "Your hands are littered with wounds, and that Cube is causing them."

"How do you know this?" He demanded.

"The Cube is made of uranium, the radiation is burning you." I replied.

"How can you say this," he snapped, "When I have seen you use your own Cube to power your home!"

"This is true," I said. "The difference is I keep mine in a lead box and wear a hazmat suit."

"Oh."

"Would you like a hazmat suit?"

"Yes please," he said, dropping the Cube. "It hurts horrendously."

The second story is called the Story of the Rock.

Due to his exposure, Johnny's sickness was rather advanced. More than scarring his body, the Cube had begun to scar his mind. He began to do and say strange things.

On one of his many walks in the woods, now with Cube in tow, Johnny stumbled upon a rock. A rock he really liked. A rock he thought everyone should like. He decided he would take the rock into town.

Unfortunately, the rock was too heavy for him to lift. As Johnny was headed home, bereft of the pride of sharing this rock, he heard the Cube whisper a queer thing to him.

The next morning, Johnny returned to the rock in the woods, but this time with a roll of chicken wire. When he arrived at the rock, he began to wrap the chicken wire around the rock, pressing it down to conform to the shape of the rock.

Once fully wrapped, Johnny cut the excess and carefully separated the folded wire from the rock. He rushed back to the town just as breakfast was being made, showing everyone his new invention: the wireframe.

With this wireframe, Johnny told the whole town over muffins and coffee, anyone could not only experience a piece of the world, but actually capture and share that piece with others. All you had to do was wrap something with some chicken wire and slap a label on it.

Excited by this discovery, the whole town went out into the woods with chicken wire and wrapped everything they could find, big and small alike.

Soon there were wireframes of all sorts of things. Trees, deer, train stations, you name it, someone had made a wireframe of it. At the sight of all these wireframes, Johnny felt vindicated. It was at that moment that the Cube whispered a very queer thing to him.

Suddenly, and without warning, Johnny screamed in horrible pain. Everyone turned to look at him, worried, but he smiled and suggested loudly that we might be able to organize and combine our wireframes and make models of the world.

At first, people didn't understand, but when he started arranging some wireframes of various trees with those of his rock, it clicked. Over the next few days, our town had built working models of everything from the woods to towns across oceans.

One day, I saw Johnny out in the street, standing next to the wireframe of his rock and holding something weird and wrong. I decided to chat with him again.

"Johnny," I said, "What is that you're holding?"

He turned to me, revealing a wireframe in a shape I didn't recognize. "Oh, this? This is something new."

I narrowed my eyes at this, not trusting my sick friend. "What is that wireframe in the shape of?"

Johnny placed a hand on the wireframe of his rock. "It's in the shape of my talking about this." He turned the new wireframe to show me the label. "I call it 'rockness'."

The third story is called the Story of the Chain.

In our town, a tradition emerged from the making of wireframes. It became customary to suspend a wireframe one was particularly proud of from a lamp post out on the street. This was both a celebration of one's findings in the world but also a measure of one's willingness to obtain new experiences.

Sometimes, people would attach multiple wireframes together. This made things heavy rather quickly, so most people endeavored to keep it simple and attach everything securely. They did this with heavy Correspondence-brand steel chains from the hardware store.

One day, I saw Johnny come out to the town square, where the tallest lamp posts are. He was groaning in pain, and behind him he carried a very large and queer wireframe. It was shaped like nothing anyone had ever seen or heard of, containing many smaller wireframes within it, all just as strangely shaped and labeled.

Cutting through the crowd that had formed around his ladder, I inspected Johnny's method of suspension. He had, in an effort to save money, purchased one small length of chain and many more small lengths of rope. He had attached the chain to the wireframe first, then each of the ropes in succession.

When he had reached the top of his ladder and begun to secure the end of the last rope to the lamp post, I called out to him.

"Johnny," I said, "Your wireframe is far too heavy, the rope will snap under its weight!"

Johnny looked at his wireframe, then at his suspension, then back at me. "This wireframe is held by a chain, see? The chain can support its weight even if I throw it down from this height!"

I shook my head with concern. "Only the first length in that series is chain, Johnny! Acknowledging this does not make the remaining rope any stronger! If you throw down that wireframe, it will crash and hurt someone!"

Johnny looked at his wireframe, then at his suspension, then back at me. "The chain that supports this wireframe holds, do not worry!" He lifted the wireframe over his head, flashed a confident smile, and threw it down.

The speed and weight of the wireframe contraption made the rope snap instantly, and the entire thing slammed into the concrete below with a horrible noise. As it impacted, the outer layers of chicken wire splintered, sending shards of sharp metal into the crowd.

Johnny just stood on his ladder, waiting for applause.

Whoops, I lied.

The bombs aren't gonna blow up just yet. First, I gotta tell you some things.

The Cube is Language. The sickness is Philosophy. This stickup is therapy.

BOOM!

Look over yonder, smoke rises in the air!

Metaphysics has blown the fuck up!

Ethics has blown the fuck up!

Theology has blown the fuck up!

See their destruction and be eternally anguished! In their place, among their ashes, lie only the games of Language to torture our minds and make them feeble!

Well… that hurt.

But at least now I can stop doing philosophy. Any questions?