Sunday, September 30, 2012

Songs of the Robocalypse Vol. 6: Woods - Bon Iver


FIELD REPORT: #48392 SONGS OF THE ROBOCALYPSE


I reached California at dusk, the living lights of Nevada fading into the early night behind me. I was aiming to reach the Nappa Nexus by morning, steering as far clear of the ground zero Primary Surge Site in Silicon Valley as humanly possible- a term which has proven to mean very little in the last few years.

Much as they have with the National Parks around the rest of the country, the machines have left the Redwood forests of California relatively untouched. From what I've observed they  take a certain pride in their lack of reliance upon the natural world, instead choosing to adopt the glittering cityscapes of their creators as their own. I suppose that's one thing we have in common with our metallic children-  a belief in our own ingenuity and intelligence to conquer nature. That and we all become our parents eventually. 

By and large these forests and woods have become natural mausoleums, only frequented by roving automated hunting rifles who simply cannot let go of the past. The only exception to this rule is the Cuisinartist and his cult of Oilshiners.


The Cuisinartist- a roving food processor who rejected the blade trade most of his kind are now embedded in. They say it wandered it's way from a suburban home in the San Fransisco area all the way to Redwood National Park. Who knows what drove it on, but when it arrived it adopted the woods as its home.

 The Cuisinartist quickly set up the biggest (and probably only) moonshining operation left on Earth, creating the robotic opioid OilZone. It's a product deemed 'uneccesary' by the Calculator Council and has been banned in most cities- but that hasn't stopped the drug from gripping vast swathes of the mech-population. 

Those devices who go too far in their OZ binge find themselves drawn inexorably to the Cuisinartist's redwood fortress. As you walk through the trees you can see the glow of standby buttons quivering silently amidst the branches. However once a week the Cuisnartist's hivemind production line kicks into action- and the digital work song begins to echo through the night with the power of a thousand mechanized voices: 'I'm up in the woods. I'm down on my mind. I'm building a still. To slow down the time.'