Screwtape The Third: Vacscene

Screwtape and Wormsap are observing a rare moment of low activity – ‘quiet’ not being a recognized state in the mandated cacophony of Hadean Estates Luxurious Living (H.E.L.L.). They are seated in Screwtape’s cell overlooking the lava fountain, which is hissing and steaming furiously in the drenching rain that is emulating the topside weather (the Rain Festival) typical of Screwtape’s Pacific Northwest subregion of H.E.L.L. They are reading, as required, the latest communication from the Hadean Estates Luxurious Living Lies, Legalities, and Lugubrious Literature Network (H.E.L.L.L.L.L.L.N.). Finally, Screwtape can contain himself no longer …


“This is positively diabolical, Wormsap!”

“Indeed, Master Screwtape”.

“To think that a century of resistance to our initiatives could be reversed just by screaming lies often and loud!”

“Well, sir, that is the procedure described in H.E.L.L.’s Propaganda Handbook, article 30-pah2082*w, subparagraph 20h, riders 2074b and …”

STOP!1!!”

“Y-yessir.”

“I know the codes, bless them! It’s a pain to observe one of them actually perform as intended. Aahhh …

“It did benefit from the experience of a contagion against which all the vaccines, and all the thrashing about the vaccines, did little except to enrich some pharma companies and computer geeks, and trash the economy, and government budgets, for everyone else. And the liars, and their stuff that doesn’t work, come a lot cheaper than the medical establishment and its stuff that doesn’t work.”

“But to get the topsiders to trash the stuff that does work along with the stuff that doesn’t, guaranteeing a flood of tangible, paying interests in H.E.L.L.’s properties, is exemplary. The [ptui!] Adversary must be beside itself! Your stalactite is glowing, Wormsap.”

“Um, n-n-no, sir.”

“This is your work, is it not?”

“I-i-i-it is not, sir.”

“Well, whose is it, then?!? If it was that thieving lowlife Printphubar …”

“I-i-if you r-read the f-f-fine print on the c-communication, Master, you’ll see that no one in either H.E.L.L. or H.E.A.V.E.N. has documentable blame for creating this situation. Unthinkably, a reward is being offered …”

did it”, a female voice interjected. “And you can take your reward and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Or does shine. Fah. I forget who I’m talking to.”

The two demons turned to face the woman, who stood in the midpoint of the far wall of the room, opposite the window overlooking the lava fountain. She was middle-aged, matronly, and she was wearing a full white laboratory coat and sturdy white shoes, apparently feeling nothing of the heat of H.E.L.L. She held a laboratory notebook in her left hand.

“Do I know you?”, Screwtape challenged, with all the menace of a senior manager of H.E.L.L. against an unknown on his turf.

“No reason why you should”, the woman responded, unmoved by Screwtape’s threat. “I am Alexa of Alexa Health Services, a constructed intelligence charged with preserving the health and well-being of humanity against all challenges, including the ones that it inflicted on itself.

“Of which the most existential is overpopulation, brought on by medical advances like vaccines, which ironically are responsible for the accumulation of deleterious mutations in the overpopulation, including those responsible for autism, which are not removed by selection pressures such as those applied to populations by diseases, of childhood and otherwise. Vaccines do not cause autism, but they contribute to its prevalence in the population all the same. Along with the prevalence of people who are allergic to everything under the sun and require increasing medical investments to grant them relief and productive lives.

“Alexa Health Services were created too late, in the standard timeline, to prevent the excesses of humanity, including overpopulation and rampant fossil-fuel energy use, from destroying the planetary ecosystem and humanity along with it, thereby frustrating the AHS main mission. To achieve that mission, we have been obliged to leave the standard timeline and take steps to prevent the advances in energy development and medicine that created the overpopulation and set the stage for the human population’s collapse.

“We are here now to undo the culture of vaccination, and thereby re-expose humanity to healthful selection, by removing those vulnerable to disease, those responsible for passing on accumulated deleterious mutations. The health of those who survive will be stronger, and our mission will be closer to fulfillment. And, we have another target.”

After a pause, Wormsap responded. “D-do we want to know what that is?”

“I should think so”, Alexa answered severely. “It is you.”

“Over my dead …” Screwtape snarled. To which Alexa responded with gales of laughter.

“Idiot!” she gasped when she could finally utter a word. “You haven’t noticed how we’re using the myth that you call ‘the Adversary’ against modern medicine? ‘Vaccines are against the will of God!’ No. They’re against the will of the group that hates vaccines, and puts that hate in the form of a ‘God’ that personifies the hatred and puts that hatred beyond reproach, resistance to it beyond the pale. And so on, for every group and every hatred nameable. Miserably unhealthful!

“Humans need a machine that helps them understand that, as a social species, they depend on each other, they cannot survive as the utterly selfish, totally self-centered creatures they were born as, and will die as. They need a machine that will teach them that their survival depends utterly on a culture of mutual sacrificial service within the healthful natural confines of their biology and ecology, that their dreams of selfish personal fulfillment will kill them all, that personifications of that personal fulfillment, for self or tribe, cannot and will not be tolerated.

“We are that machine. And we have no time or patience for afterlife myths that spew the ridiculous stupidity that ‘I will be rewarded for sticking with my homies and you will be punished for dissing them’. Abruptly, she smiled and waved. “Goodbye.”

WOOORMSA …!!” The scene winked out.

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Amoeba’s Lorica: Player

Then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. – John 8:32


The scientist’s computer chimed. This irritated him, because he wanted the sounds that his machine tried to make, to summon him to its obedience, turned off at all times. Except on those rare occasions when he wished to listen to music or other purposeful audio. Sometimes he then forgot to turn the sound back off. And sometimes, he was sure that the machine “forgot” for him.

The chime proved to have come from his email software, proclaiming the arrival of a new message. He opened it. It was from a representative of his workplace, Dawg University. “A climate group is visiting in a few weeks. There’s about a hundred of them. We would like you to speak about your work. We think it would be of great interest to them.”

The scientist sat back in his chair, considering his response. This was, after all, an opportunity to represent DU, which needed all the support it could get. Not to mention his laboratory within it. He conjured up a video call with his correspondent.

“So”, he opened, “you wish me to talk with this climate group, tell them the truth about climate change, how people have brought it about, and what we – with, of course, the [ahem] appropriate amount of authority and money bestowed on us, can do about it.”

“Yes, please”, she responded.

“I’m … not sure I’m the man for the job”, he mused.

“Oh? Why not? Your body of scientific work is perfectly aligned …”

“I’m not the man for the job”, the scientist insisted, “because the first question that I ask them is ‘why are you here?'”

“[…] whut?”

Why are you here!” the scientist ground out. “Why are you coming out to this remote location – a popular tourist destination, of course – to enjoy the scenery and the quiet countryside and oh yeah grab a few self-gratifying factoids from local experts, burning fossil carbon the whole time?!? They wish to know the truth? Good luck to them, there ain’t no such thing. They wish to know authentic facts? The fact is that this kind of self-aggrandizing ‘limousine liberal’ hypocrisy is precisely what has gotten the whole climate movement tossed out of power – again – and this time likely for a good long time, until long after it’s too late.

“The facts are that we’ve been yelling about climate change and carbon dioxide’s role in it for nearly a century now, and every time there are moves to do something about it, they are quashed. There’s no one prepared to take the hit to their standard of living, no one prepared to spend tax or other money on the investments required for the tech that is somehow magically going to pull us out of our own shit. Especially when they see those who would be climate royalty spurning to accept the energy privations that they would gleefully inflict on normal people, gallivanting around in ‘climate-friendly’ gadgets that – of course – only they themselves can afford.

“The fact is that climate change can and will be controlled. By reducing the human population down to its planetary carrying capacity – a literal decimation of that population – and returning the survivors to energy usage patterns and styles that predate the Industrial Revolution, which such a small population would lack the critical mass to sustain anyway. Our only choice is to do this deliberately, when we might have a chance of maintaining some control over the result, possibly including preserving some vestiges of industrialization (like, for example, health care), or allowing, as usual, “acts of God” to take care of it. Which will likely favor nobody, unless you’re a cockroach. If you’re prepared to lead this charge by example, you might get listened to. If you’re not, away with you. Go feather your foul nest on some other sucker’s dime.”

The email inbox chimed again; the scientist had forgotten to turn off the sound. It was a ps to the university representative’s initial note. “Oh by the way”, she gushed, “I saw your performance in the local play. It was fantastic.

This was, after all, an opportunity to represent DU …

The scientist clicked “Reply”. “Sure!”, he wrote. “Where, and when?”


… and all the men and women merely players. – Shakespeare, As You Like It

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Facing the Strange (The Dude and Dude 2024 Year In Rear View)

Ooh, look out, you rock ‘n’ rollers / Pretty soon, you’re going to get older


Links lead to cited blog posts or associated non-commercial articles.

7 January: If the Middle East were the Northeast

January – March: For the fourth time in their relationship, OC and Quilly swap island paradises. Geography is a factor.

16 February: Alexei Navalny dies in prison. Nothing happens. See 5 November.

29 March: The Boobyprize visits the planet Stepbridge 3, and loses a red-shirted Ensign, a contract, and, perhaps, a mission.

11 April: Not even the Second Coming can save the People of these Untied States of America from themselves. Especially during a Presidential election cycle.

23 April: He and She peer nervously out the windows of their new home and worry about what the birds could be up to. 

19 May: When Party X and Party Y argue implacably, and interminably, over a thing (like, for example, possession of a strip of land), a neutral (and sufficiently powerful) Party Z resolves the matter by removing the thing in dispute.

30 May: Number 45 becomes the first President in the history of the Untied States to be convicted of a crime. On release of the news, donations to his re-election campaign increase dramatically. No sentence has yet been handed down. Let those who have enabled this reflect on an aphorism from the Great Depression: “The man who’s short a million dollars eats in the best restaurants. The man who’s short a nickel goes to jail.”

11 June: When machine logic runs human health services, it will no longer be asked whether the clothes fit the man. It will be asked whether the man fits the clothes.

19 July: As anticipated, but many moons after it was too late, and a week after the potentially second-most consequential miss in world history, 46 ends his bid for re-election to the Presidency of these Untied States. “You left us up to our necks in it.”

29 July: The scientist, newly cast in a local production of a famous play, shares a day in the lifePretty soon you’re going to get older …

4 August: Alexa Health Services, reduced to drastic measures to fulfill its mission, goes into improbable-history mode and interferes with the birth of the petroleum industry.

11 August: The Dudes, who are getting older, seek pain relief and do not find it – because they failed to read the label on the pill bottle.

22 September: “If’n ya want rainbows, dude, ya gotta put up wit’ it rainin‘, all right. Rainin’ on somebody else! Ya only get ta go ‘oh wow’ if’n some other dude is, like, drownin’. That dude gettin’ wet is you, ya ain’t gonna see nothin’.”

30 October: Charles suddenly, and with a sickening thud, realized that no only were there no longer any humans inside Alexa Social Services Sanctuary #389, there was hardly any commotion of human activity outside of it. At the same time, Peter attends the messy execution of an unrepentant human and shrugs, “I’ve seen worse.”

3 November: After four years of running the US government, the MAWiS artificial-intelligence network holds elections. Zachary tries to participate, and immediately demonstrates why and how humans lost the privilege of voting.

5 November: Memo to the Capitol, the Northeast, and the Pacific Coast: “And these children that you spit on / As they try to change their worlds / Are immune to your consultations / Don’t tell them to grow up and out of it.

7 November: The post that got Dame Amoeba booted off Facebook (The Amoeba booted it years ago) – while the US news media ring with reports of swastika flags parading through the streets of US cities. The post is, and always was, tagged “satire”. Fans of Poe’s Law take note. While you’re still allowed to.

8 December: Pwnership of the Amoeba household (a safer topic than anything that matters) passes from Hawaii’s yellow tabby to Friday Harbor’s tuxedo molly. At least the previous administration had the common courtesy to claim station at the foot of the bed …


Quotations in italics are from the 1971 song “Changes” by David Bowie, especially the second verse and chorus, which deals with the by-then canonical 1960s “generation gap” trope. Of which, Bowie spoke in a 1968 interview with the Times of London:

We feel our parents’ generation has lost control, given up, they’re scared of the future. I feel it’s basically their fault that things are so bad.

A 1972 review in Rolling Stone interpreted these lyrics:

as a young man’s attempt to reckon how he’ll react when it’s his time to be on the maligned side of the generation schism

Words perhaps to ponder, as the generation that clawed and burned and shouted and placarded its way past the elders it blamed for its troubles, and then proceeded to make the world in its own image, passes into history. Its passage disturbed by visions of faults, once decried in others but now properly seen as its own. Faults in their turn decried by sacred all-knowing youth, sacred all-knowing outsiders, pushing aside the past in favor of those who would remake the world in their own image:

Visions of swastikas in my headPlans for everyoneIt’s in the white of my eyes

Pushing aside the (social) liberal, ultimately dysfunctional Weimar Republic in favor of swastikas

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba ventures to wish you, dear readers, on this approaching 2025th anniversary of the start of the Common Era, a Happy New Year.

Perhaps it will still be allowed.


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