Clearing House
Eric Peterson && Jon Irons, “Party Infty – PATRICK.txt”; 2010-09-04
Breathtakingly elegant and beautiful PATRICK, wired into a vast communications array…
Bitter, brilliant, aged PATRICK, imprisoned by those she once trusted…
Young and ruthless PATRICK with an elastic past and morals to match…
Flighty and indecisive PATRICK, destined to be the mother of a world…
…WHICH DOYOO LIKE
Peter Chimera && (Jon Irons || Raymond Pasco), “patents.txt”; 2009-09-30
Richard Stallman waited. The OLPCs above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were patents in the WiFi. He didn’t see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Karl Marx were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway. Richard was a hacker for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the PDP-10s and he said to dad “I want to be on the terminals daddy.” Dad said “No! You will BE KILL BY PATENTS” There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the office base of the MIT he knew there were patents. ”This is Marx” the radio crackered. “You must fight the patents!” So Richard gotted his GPLv3 and blew up the wall. ”HE GOING TO KILL US” said the patents “I will shoot at him” said the BSD License and he fired the closed source. John GPLed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill. ”No! I must kill the patents” he shouted The radio said “No, Richard. You are the patents” And then Richard was a copyright.
????, “patrickFic.txt”; 2010-01-10
“In nomine patrick et filii et spiritus sancti.” –Verse 297 of the Mandates of Antiquity
Scientists tend to take note when meteors hit the Earth. Why, then, did no one record patrick’s impact?
The true story behind the Silencing began centuries before Man ever set foot on Titan. But who wants the true story now that legend has obscured it? Who deserves the far more remarkable history of not only madness, but of Word and Deed, that serves as shrine to patrick? Before today, I thought the Lord of Lave Currency had enough shame to claim any right to the truth.
I was wrong.
***
As I smoked my third pipe of hasish that morning, and watched Jupiter rise over Titan’s rim, I noticed a dispatch marked “urgent” on my command console. As overseer of the Archive of Solar Knowledge, I only checked my dispatches rarely, and even then simply because one of my assistants notified me. Either Fondulus is slipping, I thought, or he just passed this along to me. It would be a new sensation to get the drop on my most diligent underling. With satisfied bloodshot eyes, I gazed on the message that had come all the way from the homeworld.
My satisfaction vanished. The dispatch outlined the details in that terse language known only to high-echelon officials and the near-illiterate: Earth’s primary Lord of Lave Currency had already sent a servant to gather all information that existed pertaining to an entity whose name was censored into oblivion with the glaring text TERMISFORBIDDEN. The servant would most likely reveal to me the true name of the subject in question, but I knew deep in my roiling gut exactly what–who–this censored thing was.
Jon Irons, “failed_sketches.txt”; 2008-03-28
Hip-slung gun-man, firing from a trench; concussions overhead punch through him of habit and he goes on. That thin beam, unseen but for its collision with particles, pierces from his finger tips and mates with a head. Skull cracks under helmet from the boiling brains therein so the owner’s scream is either shortened or his lungs go empty after minutes because he has become an automaton. Such a way to die, such a way to give death, so the source of that beam feels like a coward. His work, however, must continue; therefore, he slaps his conscience until it bleeds. A few things fly out as pods of memory and he remembers the Underground World, maybe his sister or brother there, and is glad only those like him can see him now. Eyes straining, he finds a scurrying figure on the starlit plain, his fingers convulse, he misses the shot, a counter-beam pops the seam on his environment suit. Time is now limited. Trench to plain, the vainly heavy boots kick up dust that oth marks his passage and conceals him. Those stories he heard: doomed men meeting in the middle to use laser torches on each other. Hiss. One opponent meets his challenge in time to penetrate his arm with that tight cone of light. No pain seeing as the ripped suit is cold now, and that particular piece of him numb. Beamer jabs his own torch through some suited mass in the dust that clears, spreads, shifts amidst flailing limbs of a dead man. Knees, the young soldier drops to his knees, air almost gone. Taste the poison, he says to himself. Where is the sense in this, that a world need fight on behalf of two Earth Mothers? Neither knows what I know: sheer pure violence under the starry sky–please let me go home.
He dies.
Jon Irons, “venice vidi vici.odt”; 2009-03-23
Venice Vidi Vici
by Jon Irons
Characters
TRAGICO THE CLOWN
Male clown, early thirties. Dark hair kept under a conical clown hat. Clothed always in baggy clown garments.
MEDITERRANEA THE BOATWOMAN
Female, early twenties.






