digital hyperstition

So the story was true? And we'd been given to think it was a fiction. His cheeks exploded as tho' filled with an aluminium nail cluster.

An eminent Victorian scientist and radical free thinker unlocks ancient evil (beyond time and space). Girl had daughter or, should that read...? Married into English aristocracy who now hold key to terrible secrets. Most of apocalyptic events of 20th Century directly responsible to havok unleashed by said Victorian and hidden psych-fear. Nazis, Mau Maus, Pol Pot, Amin, mere distractions to throw us off the scent of something really fuckin' bad. This unholy 'family' is widespread throughout England, Massachusetts and parts of Lithuania. Just think, the limey aristocracy responsible for the impending...Barker knew this (so he should).

So his intentions were good?

In the limited sense of the vocabulary, yes, at least we think so.

What was shredded then?

Papers-

Papers?

Journals, jottings, notes. Some strange group vaguely affiliated to an eldritch department of a hidden English University had stumbled - accidentally and chemically - onto similar. Threat was thwarted before it was too late. Group sought to cause similar disruption through platforms deemed popular tho' unpopular with authorities. Filled graphic novels, stories with K-cantos: audience would unbeknowingly recite. Imagine if we'd had let this out? Jeeesh. They'd created a whole pantheon of gods - Mur Mur, Katak, the like - thing is, what these limey schmucks didn't realise was that these things actually fuckin' existed. We call it the poetic parallel ("as above, so below" the idea's been around for centuries) - if it's in yr head it's there cos it exists! Then it's only a matter of bringing it out. See? Magic, technology, drugs, sex - even fuckin' yoga - any stimulus'll do the job. Barker knew this (so he should).

What happened to the group?

They had to be eliminated, taken out.

Liquidated?
No, people would become suspicious. They were branded insane - neutralised - made outcasts: this was the most effective way. We're still mopping up the trails, some as far off as Czechoslovakia, Southern England.

You should leave now. Haven't you got to be in Washinton?

Thanks for the drink...

The future was inevitable. He knew this now. Like a laser moving onto its target. Fixed. Impenetrable yet lucidly clear. The Fuzz knew what Barker was. Barker probably was The Fuzz. Interchangeable. Waiting outside that hidden door. He hadn't been cloned. This was puerile gossip, a fact-lie mythed about by rogue Fuzz sentinels (d-railed in the distant 60s fracas) linked vaguley to a Colombian cartel (paid off in snow). Fact: cocaine was seriously destabilising Western economies but too many politicians had a habit. Make note...deface from journal: that's another story.

Barker was real, as far as you could call anything real. A self-replicating proto-eluvial organism probably been here 65 million years - landed from distant star, far beyond our galaxy; maybe first asleep in ice caves under earth's crust - a spore, woken by said natives of island nr Krakatoa after earth shift thousands of years before. Records - what still exist - show him appearing throughout history at key points...possibly one of Barker's selfs was emminent Victorian who messed up real good. Then in the latter part of our time Barker had set up DigiGenetech software engineering and completely dominated (read decimated) global markets. Spiked email; vicious clown simulation games; horror typing packages; sinister tentacled datasavers...What a perfect way to K-os; every little programme encoded with some fuckin' sooth; each key pressed; every mouse click phasing energy, strengthening our oldest, unnameable enemy; debilitating our own already debilitated senses...Part of Barker had learned to love humanity; part of him to pity it, but by then it was too late anyway. The gossamer thin mesh of cosmic time and space had been wrenched. Each little diversion was wearing us thinner.

The journal was stained with slightly browning sweat; old fashioned paper gliche this time. These leads keep disappearing into each other and now I'm not so sure. The stars look even more bright tonight. A comet flashed past, illuminating the whole of the town - it's tail orange, fizzing pink. Fax is chucking out reams of unintelligible script. Am awaiting next move. Anticipate call from Fuzz operatives. Any time now. Carnival would be starting soon. The inhabitants of Dunwich would celebrate this every year as they had done for hundreds of years ever since the festival was introduced by travellers who returned from Easter island late 16th Century. Tobias Barker, merchant, was one of those travellers.

Children flashed past the window: screaming, laughing. Partly hidden by street lamps; their faces masked in some strange amalgam of cotton, wood and plastic. It's already beginning...

I thought I heard a knock at the door.