JOURNAL "EDGES" OCT2022 (INTEROGATIVE)

 The primordial edge of the desert, sagebrush between the Sierras and the gaping dip of the Great Basin. It is nineteen ninety-four for the first time and the state is slim with extermination. It is bloated with the records of four decades of constant surveillance, the storerooms exploding inward, ballooned with cassettes and documents. It is fetid with age. It is a paranoiac colossus, lying heavy on the land, suffocating under its own weight.

Anything could happen in the fade to black. The unknown is pure potentiality, like seven minutes in heaven. Every unknown contains the possibility of threat or defect, and every threat and every defect must be reduced at all costs, the eroticism of the unruly a threat to pure and excoriating knowledge. Every citizen is dissected, laid on the table, itemized down to the organ, an asset of sometimes insignificant value, gathering suspicion and debt until they quietly disappear into a nursing home or a quickly-closed missing persons file. There are always spare bodies to be pinch hit for the missing, reduced to the anonymity of a body bag.

But how to bring this into being? How to bring this weight to bear?