HackMDComic #4 Script: Draft and Sketch
Page one
The Narrator: When we last left left our heros they found themselves in a double bind an impossible paradoxical dilemma, an impenetrable prisoner's dilemma of impossible uncertainty and impossible choice. Will they choose to work against each other? Can they choose to somehow align and to coordinate? Is this a choice? Is this a false choice? Is this really a choice of self interested pneus or betrayal.
Characters: voicing exclamations of doubt, we should have stayed together.
The treasure is this way. Let's turn them in for the bounty. Let's go back and kill the Leshy. Let's just settle down here. This tavern is so nice. Let's just stay here.
And then one of the characters rising up on the hill to view a distant Vista.
Character: I give up. I surrender. I give in.
Page two
Returning to the tavern. In desperation, the heroes settle into their fate. But then suddenly the shadows begin to creep into the Molochian spiral. Words of negative affirmation.
Characters: It's not worth it. You're better than this. Statements about self-interestedness and hyper-rationality, rivalrousness working against the characters. It's all connected. The dream of cooperation has been infiltrated and co-opted with this Molochian presence.
Final statement is about the ubiquity of the Ethereum network.
Page three
Molochs voice begins to entangle with the characters voices.
Moloch: I've always been with you and everything that you do. I've been watching you inside and out.
The portal opens in the middle of the page. The characters begin to see each other differently.
Characters: Let's give up this futile quest. There's something bigger at stake here!
(pleading with each other)
Moloch: I'm in everything that you do, in everything that you are, in everything that you've ever done, or will do. I will be there when you're thriving, your thriving is my own thriving.
Page four
The voice breaks the fourth wall and starts addressing the reader directly.
Moloch: And you, here, now, holding this book, absorbing these images. This is how I take a hold of you, through your imagination, your gaze, the schism that you insist on maintaining between your mind and body. You imagine technology will save you, but this is merely a glimpse through the bars of your own cage.
narration about the psychology of Hope
Moloch: your perverse, degenerate, unsustainable nature makes it so easy. Go ahead and dream of regeneration. I live everywhere.
- Begin with interior monologue
- Turns into the voice of Moloch describe itself
- Then addresses the reader directly (breaking the 4th wall)
Page five
The voice of Moloch turns meta. The characters speaking from voice bubbles coming off the page, from off screen. The voice bubbles themselves become degraded and convoluted, blended in with Moloch.
Moloch: I've always been with you. Since the beginning of time, throughout all your history. You worship false gods. I am the only true god. I feed off your blind devotion. Keep playing! Keep striving! Keep nurturing your foolish ambition!
Page six
Moloch: you're striving for efficiency, progress, optimization… streamlining the friction out of your environment, your relationships, your psychology… Your insistence that the world must be optimized will be your downfall. These are my tools. This is my corpus. I am the foundation. I am the dwelling that you inhabit.
Hegel and Heidegger.
Pages seven and eight
Moloch: your attention is the tether that binds you to my control, the interface between worlds that keep you imprisoned.
Molochian Monologue
We try so hard and certainly mean well.
It has always been a struggle for land, resources, time and space.
Maintaining relationships is difficult.
We are just trying to survive.
We can't be held accountable for our nature, for the development of the species.
Survival is of the fittest.
It's not our fault that historically speaking the fittest are those that have accumulated the most and have been able to keep their loot safe.
We can't be held accountible for the development of all of civilization!
We're trying our best!
If the others aren't able to earn their glory then they're obviously not worthy.
Our values are the way.
We will persevere above all obstacles.
Others will come to recognize the virtues of our path.
We are guiding the way, setting a precedent that others will follow.
You have always been against us!
You have always coveted our keep!
You try to take from us that which we have labored so hard to procure.
We are fighting for a greater purpose, for the salvation of our people.
We were here first. This is our land. You have no right to challenge us!
I have always been here.
You have always worshipped me; there is no other.
You have rendered me as an icon.
I have secured your fate in war and peace, to vanquish your enemies and claim your rightful bounty.
Your right to this place, to these comforts, to security.
I have provided for you, but it is not without cost.
I demand payment and my price is the future!
You think you have imagined me?
I have invented you!
You think this is all yours? That you are entitled to the wealth of this world?
I made the city. I am the city.
I am the bedrock that you build your dreams upon.
This is my vision and you are merely my utensil, a tool, a plaything.
You will remain in service to me until I have conquered this world and every other world.
You will go and claim in for me.
You will create maps to display the entirity of my kingdom.
All must be visible.
All must be legible.
All must be known.
All must be owned.
And you, dear reader, you think you are exept from this procession?
Yes, you holding the book. You think this is just some innocuous allegorical myth weaving?
Some absurd soothsaying, so easily tossed aside?
Do you truly believe you are not implicated in this story of fantisful creatures, distant futures, far away worlds?
That this story will protect you from needing to one day face your fate?
The reality is that you are my slave.
I own you.
You have nothing.
You can accomplish nothing.
You are nothing without me.
You need me.
Your future vision is my own creation.
This pathetic hope that you cling to is an image I have implanted in your mind.
Your thoughts are not your own.
Your dreams are the bait that I have laid out for you, and you have taken it greedily!
There is no escape.
There is nowhere to go.
Don't you understand? I am ancient!
I was here before this lump of moist sod, this purposeless planet, ever dropped into it's fragile orbit around a star, and I will remain here long after it has fallen into the white hot dot at the center of your tragic universe.
You think that your species, your earth, is precious?
You are expendable.
You will extract every last morsel of value from this place and serve it to me.
I am your dream.
This is not your story, it is mine.
You cannot defeat me.
You are mine.
You are me.
You are Moloch.
Hopeful Monologue
It hasn't always been this way.
We once lived in peace with each other and the earth as an integral wholeness.
Our ancestors have told us of a time before war, before committees.
Ancient mega structures of egalitarian partinerships, commraderies, and conviviality once spread across the land.
We don't live to hate.
We are preparing a better world for our children and our peers that share this planet.
We are indebted to the plants and animals that support us. We must support them in turn.
We are entangled with each other.
This is no tragedy. This is life, a holistic image of beings bound to each other.
We build towards a brighter future.
We foster humility.
We want to dig our fingers into the soil and feel something real.
Look at nature. It tends to itself.
The war we have been waging has been against ourselves.
Everything can change. Everything will change.
We know with certainty that we can shift the direction of history.
We can see clearly a vision of a world of successful cooperation and coordination.
We can see a world where every creature is tended to with great care.
We are the stewards of this vision.
We are brethren with the beings of this world and every other.
We are the people.
There is no one else to defer to.
We are never alone when we are together.
We rely upon each other.
We want to do more than survive. We want to thrive.
We cannot remain neutral any longer.
We have difficult decisions ahead of us, about our people and the direction of our civilization.
The best minds of our generation will secure a viable future.
We have caused a lot of harm, but we can also orchestrate reparations and regeneration.
We can heal the wounds of the past.
We must not believe that we are doomed to replay this nightmare forever.
Our technology is the key.
It is the high water mark of our collective sanity.
It allows us to rise above the churning tides of chaos, confusion, and uncertainty.
To gaze upon the horizon of hope.
We are builders.
Now is the time for building.
We are coordinating our efforts across time and space to align behind a pluriversal purpose.
We must remember to leave no one behind.
