Has The Truth Behind The Surreal Engine Been Revealed?
Editors Note: What follows is a first hand account by what could be termed an amatuer investigative reporter. The development of the New Mexico Surreal Engine is both to be celebrated and feared. Just now, as we receive reports of the gathering at the San Andreas Fault, this letter seems to be even more pressing. The author has promised more letters will follow, but we have doubts - his sanity seems to be in question. Hopefully, however, this is the first of many, as we are all keenly interested in the truth behind the Engine, and equally hopefully this information is true. We have here published,with no edits for grammar, typos, or structure, the letter. The author has requested to remain anonymous, so that, as he puts it, “I might retain what little tether secures me to the real world.”
“Below are my attempts to sort out this whole issue. To discover the cause and future of the most important single development of humanity - namely, the STAIRWAY TO THE STARS.
Reality has been shattered. We must come to accept this fact. It has been broken, and fractured, and pierced, destructed, obliterated, revealed to be nothing but a phony mirror reflecting back at us, seedy tendrils of surreality behind it. I know how this happened. It begins in a lab underground in New Mexico. I worked there as a janitor, but secretly I was undercover. I mopped up the dead insects and the spilled food of the scientists as they poked and prodded reality. But really they were trying to trap HIM - the manifestation of surreality which powers the Engine.
HE was a lawyer sometime in the 60s, and surreality - that strange force which pervades but is universally elusive - came onto him. They called him a schizophrenic. Yet he was right, correct, affirmed, conclusive. He perceived reality as it is, and as it isn’t - the basis of surreality. What can be surreal if there is no real? What can a note be without a counternote? HE was a prophet of sorts, a fountainhead for this surreality. His writings have been hidden away, but I was able to take pictures with my secret camera during my days at the lab:
... “Synthetic people, with saturn organs on that dark planet. Punk-thug menaces upstairs and down stairs - as in HEAVEN AND HELL. Angelic invasion - cyborg menace electric chair Old World Order Neurologic “FAST AS LIGHT,” invasion of YOUR reality - clearly present to all who see. I reveal these truths to you, for your ONE LAST CHANCE TO LIVE.”
Such words cannot come from our reality alone. There was something different about HIM, and this is why the scientists - or as they really are, the secret scientists - were so interested in him. Indeed, HE forms the basis of the Engine itself. It is unclear to me whether they smuggled his body in, or somehow extracted the surreality from his old corpse. Either way, he is gone, and if he was alive when the secret scientists found him, they killed him shortly thereafter, like the hangman rope gangsters they are.
Can you tell? Has it become apparent yet? At some point I got a whiff of that surreality. And my brain has never been the same. It feels like a herd of hornets in my brain, little pins and needles, like a brick in my brain that is expanding and expanding and pushing outwards and outwards and outwards and outward - it is very similar to being on an antipsychotic. (Note - I suspect they were putting antipsychotics in the water in an attempt to ground those living in the lab) Initially the secret scientists were unaware of this contaminative - is that a word? - property of surreality. No one knew that from whatever vestige remained of HIM mere exposure could debalance your brain - in other words, take your EXECUTIVE FUNCTION and shift it to be neither on the real plain nor the surreal plane, but somewhere in between both planes, seeing both reality and surreality.
Often as I cleaned and snooped I would overhear the secret scientists talking about the planes. They struggled with several questions. You see, reality cannot exist without surreality. As soon as one is removed, the other becomes normal. If there were only one plane, it would not matter if it was surreal in nature or real in nature - in the absence of a counter-plane it would make no difference. This should raise the next question: how does one know what plane we live on? Is it perhaps that we have become NUMB to surreality? That what we perceive as surreality is in fact NORMAL REALITY STEEPING IN? The secret scientists could not come up with a convincing answer to this.
The Surreal Engine changed all of this. What had previously been reserved to HIM - namely the ability to perceive the other plane - was now available to all. The secret scientists first subjected animals to its destabilizing rays, but this led to yet another question - can an animal experience surreality? And if it does, how does one measure it? How does one know if an animal is surreal - perhaps it has had an encounter with mundane derangement, ordinary hallucinations, everyday delusion, typical dysfunction? And so it would appear that the animals were insufficient. There was perhaps an ape or two - I was strictly forbidden from entering the Engine room - but I cannot say for certain.
Suffice it to say, it wasn’t long before the secret scientists began trying human subjects with the Engine. Now I must pause here, to elaborate on something I discovered at about this time. You see, there were gradations WITHIN the secret scientists themselves. They were all secret scientists, but a group of them were concerned less with science than with breaking reality. This group, this first subset, I term the dis-realists. They were interested in destructing reality. Now within that subset there was another group. These I call the surrealists, as they were interested both in piercing reality and in ushering in surreality simultaneously.
Here is a horrible truth about the surrealists. These madmen are not interested in just the Engine. They are interested in COMBINING the planes- THE FUSION OF REALITY AND SURREALITY PERMANENTLY. This should put fear into the heart of any hot blooded realist. But I have digressed, and I wish to return to the current part of my story. We had just arrived at the first human test subjects. I could do little except listen in at the crack of a door, but I heard plenty. The secret scientists - that is to say all of the scientists at the secret underground facility - had a backchannel to get things in, hidden to me and the rest of the custodial staff. The existence of the Engine was known to all - the signs of surreality it produced in the entire facility obvious to anyone - and even the animals had been brought in openly. But the human test subjects were brought in by this back channel, and for this reason I am unsure as to whether they were alive or dead. It is also possible that they were heavily sedated for the experiment.
Regardless, at the door, I heard a whirring and a single clap of thunder - unusual for even the Surreal Engine - and a great many gasps. I believe I even heard some weeping. But there were no shouts of success or joy. It would appear that the experiment had failed.
Later that day, as I entered a bathroom to relieve myself, I caught two secret scientists in separate stalls. Luckily my sneak radio recorder was going. I have transcribed the conversation, which I caught mid sentence.
“- think that the subject needs to be willing?”
“I think that the surreality was too much. It needs to be toned down. Total planal fusion might be too much for one organism rooted in reality to comprehend.”
“But what if the subject truly wanted it? What if they longed for the fusion of the planes?”
It should be obvious that these men were surrealists. Unfortunately, that was all I got before I was discovered. A security guard caught me listening in. For the days thereafter, tension was high, and I was worried I would be discovered. Once found out, it was possible they would try to beat the truth of my intentions out of me. And so I left, but the manner of my leaving was carefully planned.
During those tension-filled days I had a new goal in mind. Through furtive observation of the plans of the facility, in short sneak bursts, I had derived the location of the back channel the test subjects had come though. On the day of my escape, I had charged my camera and confirmed my suspicion of the tunnels location. I made for the passageway.
There was little remarkable in the that dank corridor. At the outside exit, I found a strange grain by the door. I picked some of the fine dust up, and it smelled like cooked pork. I swore to have it examined later, and secured some for the road. I had made a clean break, and for the duration of brief travel back to civilization, I consciously emptied my mind of the whole affair. Unfortunately, when I saw the skyscrapers of the city again, it came right back. I would have to report to my masters. The fine dust would have to be analyzed.
These two tasks occupied for the next week. However, something happened which I did not expect. The secret scientists WENT PUBLIC! They published their finding - now tuned to work on humans - to many major newspapers, even the one to which I am sending my report now! My masters would not be pleased. At least, I think my masters would not be pleased. Truth be told, I have never directly communicated with them. You see, the surrealists are mistaken. There are not just two planes, but three. In descending order, there is the surreal plane, the real plane, and what I call the hyper-mundane plane. My masters exist in this third plane. At least, I think they do. I WILL prove that they do. This is why I have begun to put together the final piece in this game - the HYPER-MUNDANE ENGINE.
However, there is more business to attend to. As I write this, it would appear that the surrealists have organized a gathering at the San Andreas Fault in California. The people there beckon that most degenerate of rituals and plans - the STAIRWAY TO THE STARS.
I have laid the groundwork for understanding the STAIRWAY. I will write more when I can.
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