Public beach:
10am on a Tuesday.
It's peaceful --
Peaceful in a depressing
Sort of way.
It's desolate.
There are gulls and crabs,
But not a human in sight.
It's like the scene in which
A solitary survivor --
Having endured
Disease,
Starvation,
Outlaws,
&
Zombies
While crossing the
Continent on foot --
Realizes he has reached
The end of the line, &
The rumored sanctuary
Does not exist...
But at least the view is nice,
And -- for the moment --
It's Zombie free.
A road lined with burnt out junkers,
And garbage fires 'round which hunker
Cold souls sitting in drizzling rain --
That rain, that rain, their eternal bane.
Blue skies are a distant memory --
Except for in every reverie
That denies claustrophobic skies
The main villain role - e'er reprised.
Where's our long-lost hero, the sun?
Have stout clouds got him on the run?
Or maybe our hero 's bleeding out;
Its feeble showing leaves room for doubt.
When time stopped behaving, I should have known that war was coming - perhaps, something worse. Those who saw themselves sinless grabbed their stones, and started chanting bile -- their wicked curse. The hopeless cried with wide eyes, but in vain as they were huddled around burning fires. The best of us opted to go insane, and build crude armor from old belts and tires. We'd flank a castle that did not exist like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. Better to charge a false monster and miss than to have Folly chase one to the hills. Who says it's worse to slouch to lunacy than suffer the world's fury lucidly?
Memetic by James Tynion IV
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This story takes what happens to a brain on memes to an extreme (if absurd) conclusion. (To get the most out of the story, one needs to understand “meme” in the sense Richard Dawkins coined the term. Not just as a popular image one sees repeatedly on social media, but as any cultural artifact (image, idea, symbol, fashion, etc.) that behaves in a manner analogous to a gene – spreading, mutating, etc.)
In the story, a meme (featuring a sloth) goes viral. All is benign, at first. People are spending far too much time blankly staring at the meme because it engenders a euphoric feeling, but that doesn’t seem so bad (and — quite frankly – it’s not much different from how people engage with social media and online games in real life.) Then, like a time-release bomb in the brain, something is triggered and people start bleeding from their eyes, screaming, and engaging in Zombie-like behavior. [Except, as befitting a story about memes, the mindless activity of these “zombies” is designed to perpetuate the meme — rather than the eating of brains.]
The story plays out in two interwoven arcs. At the center of each arc is an individual who is – at least at first – immune to the meme by way of a “disability.” One story features a college kid who is color-blind, and the other a retired Colonel who is visually impaired so he can only see vague shapes (i.e. either glaucoma or cataracts.) The college kid’s story is the more human-interest piece, with him just trying to survive the apocalyptic world when he feels challenged enough by his usual world. The Colonel leads a team to try to defeat the meme by tracking its author.
In one sense, the perfect power of this meme and its ability to mutate to more effectively spread itself may feel ridiculous. However, without spoiling the story, I will say the author does offer a kind of explanation that may help quell the mental rejection. I’ll leave the reader to determine whether they think it helps or not. But, more importantly, I think it’s a story that knows it’s venturing into preposterous territory, and that’s kind of the point. We don’t necessarily see the freakish way we respond to memes and the online world, and so this story blows the problem up to absurd scale to make the reader more aware. [It’s also fun.]
I delighted in “Memetic.” I found the concept thought-provoking and the telling entertaining. It’s not just a concept, it offers a strong story. I’d highly recommend this graphic novel for those who find themselves aware of, and disconcerted by, how many people in their immediate environment are entranced by their phones.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 