The Book of Knots - Jags

Book of Knots - The Symposium
70
So I said I’d listen…
And here was the pitch. You
don’t leave your job. You
start working with certain…
executives. Members of the
board. Top, top, top guys.
But it’s all quiet. It’s
secret. And you’re working
with guys from other fi rms
also.
And the payback?
When it goes down-–and it
will go down–-you’re like the
only ones left. What’d I tell
you about winners and losers?
We win.
You lose.
It’s that simple.
Don’t ask me why the fuck
I do this, or if I feel bad
about it, or anything else
that stupid. If you have to
ask shit like that, you know
what you are? Yeah. You know
it, don’t you.
Get out of here. Don’t come
back.
[Laughs]
No. I’m not worried about
anyone believing it. Fuck,
I’m not worried about you
even publishing it. We got
lawyers, buddy.
Go away.
Initiation
Imagine you’re one of the top four or fi ve guys in the world. You run
a multinational empire of drugs that make people happy, erect, and
(hopefully) thin. Imagine that it’s not enough—it’s never enough.
Then you start having visions. In the vast cathedral to chemical
salvation that your building has become, many, may Chessboards of
reality down, your Shadow has been brought before a terrible and
magnifi cent queen. She has taken it and warped it and dictated to it
over and over again what it is to do. The tenuous link between it and
you is strengthened and thickened until you, on Chessboard Zero,
begin to hear voices.
The procedure requires vast expenditures of power. It requires
skill and luck. It requires exotic techniques that almost nobody
understands—but in the end, you know something is coming. And it
does.
Your Shadow is snapped from you, creating a Whirl—a vision of you
that is an Ambassador from the lower realms. It embodies everything
you are afraid is true about yourself. It is every desire you’ve spent a
lifetime trying to destroy made fl esh. You can’t see it ... yet. But you
know it is coming.
It travels upwards with a retinue of guard. It travels upwards guided
by constellations that you’ll never see. It travels upwards, looking
for you. It has been made powerful and mad. It has a message and
it casts a feeble refl ection to Chessboard Zero when it arrives on
Chessboard One.
If you are ready: if you have been prepared you know its there,
patient. Waiting. You begin to seek and eventually, in mirrors,
probably, you fi nd it. You suffer the schism of reality that makes
you Unsane. You’ve been prepared in a very, very specifi c manner
and you can meet with yourself—with the dark image of yourself
then, talking
in mirrors,
hearing voices,
making
contact.
Interview 2 (The Doctor, A leading research Physician)
The idea is not to cause depression-– whatever that means. But if you ask
the suits that’s what they’ll tell you. [Sighs] It doesn’t matter because
fortunately we understand the objectives of the project.
Oh? It’s simple – to remove hope. The Doctor – the Hypotherapist – is very
clear about that. Hope is an illusion, the result of millions of years of
evolution, that makes life bearable. And when you remove it, you see things
the way they really are. Hopeless.
Do I? I… Well, when you’ve seen what I have, you start to suspect that maybe
there’s something to it. I mean… in the project we know what’s out there. Most
people—the folks walking around on the street – they have no idea. And that
makes it, you know, bearable to them.
I like to think we’re in the business of bringing them Truth. [Smiles]
The message is
... the message
is ... so awful
it fi lls you
with awe. So
terrifying it’s
like lightning.
This thing that
you do not