The weekend before my Motorola deadline, I sat in Matt's suburban apartment. "Guys, look. I have to get this completely done in four days. I don't know what the hell I'm even going to do yet. It should have been almost done and I haven't even started. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to approach it, I don't know why I'm doing it...where is everyone else at?"
Predictably, Perkins leaned forward on the couch. He had been waiting for at least nine seconds for his turn to talk. "I've got it all mapped out. 100%. Check it out. We'll make it a conspiracy angle. Think about it. Why are there so many different kinds of modems? Do any of them do anything different from any other modems? No. They're all the fucking same, and I think everyone knows that. Of course, it all breaks down to which company can manufacture their product cheapest and pitch the best deal to the various ISPs. But let's sell it as some sort of massive conspiracy. It's been in the works since the late 1800s, not long after the Civil War. Let's say that there was a group of these Illuminati-esque guys that pulled all the strings in the world. One's the President of the United States. One's a major banking financier, another an oil tycoon. Whatever, you get the idea. These guys have already identified the United States as the future most powerful country in the world, which worried them. They observed the progress of human technology and understanding, and a consensus was reached between them that within a century, the quality of human life in America would reach its apex. After that, the great American technology machine would be unable to throw the brakes, and it would begin to make available certain possibilities that would be ultimately unhealthy for society."
Wes reached for the magazine on the coffee table, rolled it up, and spoke through it like a bullhorn. "IT'S CALLED TIME OFF. GET SOME SLEEP."
Perkins laughed, bowed his head, and pointed with an open palm in an gesture of concession. "Well hey, this is all for shits and giggles, right? And we're having fun, right? At least I am. And as long as that much is happening, it's not a waste of time. Anyway. We'll say this: that their solution to derailing the American machine was to split it up into four decisively different directions. Like, one idealizes democracy, one a totalitarian regime, one absolute anarchy, another a racially superior theocracy of some sort. Whatever, the specifics to those are negotiable. It--"
I spoke up. "All right, so why the hell would anyone swallow it? Hypothetically I mean."
"Well, I was getting to that. Remember, these guys are pretty much the Illuminati. They pretty much know everything about everybody. So they'd know who should hold membership in which faction, and why. We'll say that they were beginning to nail down specifics regarding how exactly they were going to communicate these things, and were just about to put this plan into place -- which, when talking about orchestrating a worldwide conspiracy, means they were about a generation away. But then, all of a sudden -- again, over the course of a generation or so -- popular culture began to flex its muscles. Now there weren't just newspapers. There was radio, and the telephone networks were growing. Thirty years later there was television. There was no hope for such a plot without it becoming immediately exposed. The Illuminati were forced to back off, and wait for the right moment to make their play. They had to plan for a scenario in which the world, which was becoming increasingly and incredibly interconnected socially, would fall to its knees and leave it vulnerable. This finally happens during the end of the world, or whatever you want to call it. Now here's the best part. If some kind of global catastrophe were supposed to happen soon -- China decides to nuke or whatever -- people using these modems would presumably be completely unable to access the Internet -- their main dependency for information -- due to communications breakdowns. I read some shit about this in Psych classes at school. If you take away the pop-culture channels from an socially dependent person -- all of us -- amazing things can happen to your level of desperation and ability to swallow anything that has anything of even mild interest that offers an answer, no matter what it is. And what one website can you access when you can't go online?"
We all cracked up. Matt threw himself back on the couch. "Fucking 192.168.100.1. Wow."
I distinctly remember myself saying, "That's going to be the most fucked-up apocalypse ever, dude."