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Like all great cities, Dystopia was meant to be a gigantic electric brain. Block after modular block of strata chafing concrete towers. Level upon modular level of cathode logic, electromechanical relays, flyback transformers, RC oscillators and great spools of punched tape. The smallest working component engaged in a mathematical ballet whose subtly no human mind could contemplate. And as lightning, information would leap from tower to tower as synapses to course through out the brain for deep thought. So sublime, the great machine would deploy its leavings for its own protection. The heat of twelve thousand million vacuum tubes would flush through empty street-like channels between the towers. The discharge to flow into the inevitable bleached desert surrounding the brain for hundreds of kilometres. Effectively keeping away its pesky human creators and all other living things. The baked remains of Brad Bartley, the last duty technician - honoured to push the 'ON' button - immortalized some 500m beyond the Central Registry Complex. Like so much hot air popcorn, he would never have stood a chance. Very effective, very, very elegant. Glowing orange and purple on the horizon, Z12 - as it was dubbed - was to be the heart of our new Utopia. Humming and ticking ceaselessly for all time, the great machine would have directed its cold logic to the problems and enigmas of both man and truth. Problems like accurately predicting the new planetary weather patterns created by its own exhaust. And in turn Z12, in collaboration with other electric brains around the globe, would direct both governments and people in the building of this better world. And the people would have been in bliss to implement the wisdom of such high and dispassionate intellect. Man himself would be free from the need to think at long last. Our feeble organic nerve centres, obsolete save to direct arms and legs as devotees to perfection, order and efficiency. The gift of our mnemonic enablers. Of coarse, we would no longer need names... or hair. My God! It would have been beautiful! Then along came that aptly named Dummer guy. He and his oh so clever-clever1 idea of “integrated circuits”: the dreaded microchip. The wafer of death for Z12 and the trillions of quatloos invested into its vision. Damned Timex QuartzTM! Real technology glows incandescently with big switches that go 'thunk' and smell of burnt dust. And “Peak WOW”, lots of “Peak WOW”. Nobody likes a smart ass. So what do you do with a sprawling, prematurely obsolete hyper mainframe the size of twenty-two (22) human metropolises? Well, the internet was a little slow but the property values were cheap. Add some streetcar lines, a mad scientists' lobby, a unethical political class, one questionably obtained Czech brewery and a Finnish IKEA knock off store and you've got yourself a freak sho- er, I mean anarchy. Anarchy, in a polite Canadian sort of way – with vegan zombies... and triffids. Now left to critique old Soviet soap operas, the retired Z12 still gets an itch for the odd game of chess. Chess on thirty-six (36) fold quantuum symmetry overlapped hyper-manifolds no less. Decoupled from Newtonian causality – just to make it interesting. Apparently there is more to reality than adding unseen dimensions ad nauseum. “Obsolete? Any of them may place their labium oris in contact with the fins of any of my working ventilators”, Z12 thinks to itself. System Z9 of Steampunki-punki-ford has always been Z12's preferred chess partner. Perhaps a little slow by Z12's standards. Those pneumatic tubes, gears, pulleys and springs take time to parse, process and move information around. Z12 to Z9, “I offer the standard wager of twenty (20) quatloos. Do you accept? Standing by”. Remember, always think about the city. It may be thinking about you. On the upside, I still have all my hair.

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1David Bowie, "Artists make the culture, not the critics."

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