Getting The Joke (fiction)

Technically, anyone who wanders out into crazyspace is a scav. If you didn't get powdered up, or injected, or dipped in blood, or whatever the hell else the other orgs do, if you look up and find yourself out in The Big Dark, you're one of us. Maybe you're not plugged in, or you don't have the right friends. Maybe you're not going to survive getting your magic ghosty brain buddy. Maybe you won't survive the afternoon. You're still a scav, one way or another. Even when half the scavs out there are looking to carve you up, looking to serve up some justice for crimes they imagine you've committed. You're still a scav. Like me.

The thing about scavs is, information has a way of spreading around. Even if some people want to stop it, want to hide it, it gets around. Like you reading this right here, right now. There's a lot of people who want to shut me up. They want to make sure what I got to say doesn't get around. I have to admit, they've got a point. My name is Twistbaby, I'm a goddamn monster, and this file is all about The Big Joke.

Have you heard about it? Anyone mention it? Maybe you saw something about it. Maybe you read about it in bloody handprints, smeared on the wall of a burning kindergarten. The Big Joke. It's real. It's out there. But if you don't know what I'm talking about, you should stop reading this. Seriously. Unplug your computer and get out of the house. Go run a lap. Go punch a ghost or shoot a Malleus. This shit is above your pay grade. People who talk about The Joke usually wind up cutting off their genitals and building nukes.

We good? The kids gone? Okay. Let me first apologize here. What I'm essentially going to do is explain The Joke, or explain how I see it. Best way to ruin a joke is explaining it, sooo yeah. Spoiler alert. or something.

The first thing you should know about it is that it is a state of mind. It's like the purple haze, or the thousand yard stare. You live this life, running in between worlds long enough and you just wake up with it. It's like you get this 'cannot unsee' kind of way of looking at everything. A lot of scavs don't talk about The Joke because they're worried it'll spread. Trust me, when you first see someone who Gets It, you'll know. You don't get there from reading some little thread, or overhearing a couple heavies brag about boogeymen. The Joke is either a strangely specific, chronic, psychological epidemic, or more likely a state of inevitable enlightenment brought on by exposure to Shadowside. That's what makes The Joke so scary. Everyone's worried it's true.

So what's it like? What is the mindset? Why is it so funny to run around in a dress made of ladyskin? Best way I can put it, think of the ocean. You've got so much water, uncountable gallons. It's everywhere, it's huge, it's amazing. Now you find yourself near this little tidepool on some remote shore. Someone came along some time ago, to this little tide pool, and made little mud people.

There are millions of these silly little bastards running arpund the tide pool, eating and screwing and killing each other. When a little muddie dies, he turns back into water and sand, but the water gets all stirred up, so you kind of get this silt cloud and...

Okay, shit. My ocean metaphor is starting to get convoluted. Bear with me, this is tricky to explain.

So we've got mud people in a tide pool, and dead mud people kicking up a cloud of murky silt. The silt scares the mud people, who are all so terrified of dying they keep making more mud people. This means more muddies end up dying and the tidepool gets even more cloudy. Maybe sometimes bits of the dead mud peoples' personalities stay in the cloud and haunt the muddies. Maybe there's muddies that sit around and worship the silt, or talk about how the murky cloud is the 'real world' or at least the 'first world' and it all looks like a pathetic farce to you.

You want to tell them about the ocean, about everything out there, about how stupid the little tidepool looks, about the pettiness of their fears and desires. They won't listen. They've all got their mud heads up their mud asses, running around the tide pool trying to help and save each other, trying to make themselves happy. Even the silt, so close to becoming one with the ocean again, to BECOMING the ocean, gets stuck on clinging to the mud person it used to be, cutting deals to stay attached. It's a lie, a big, fat lie. There all terrified, all running around and they keep making more little people. You've been out there, out in the ocean, and these little assholes are shouting out, "Save me! Save me! Everything is so scary and I want to be a mud person forever!"

They're all just water and sand. There's no reason to be afraid. There's no reason for fear. No reason it should exist. Sentience is a blight, an accident. If the mud people could just stop screwing for a second, the silt would settle, everything would clear up. Maybe they'd even catch a glimpse of the ocean. Maybe they'd find themselves wanting to be free.

But no, you quickly find out that's not going to happen. They're too attached to their little mud people sports and mud microbrews and secret mud handshakes. You could go around and stomp them out one by one, but they just breed too quick. The real trick, and honestly the only solution, you gotta do something dramatic. You gotta blow up something big, you gotta chew up a number of 'em in such a horrible way that they can't get the sight out of their heads. You gotta really shake up their view of the world, get them thinking outside the tidepool. You reach out like that, commit atrocity enough to affect thousands and maybe one of them will understand. They' ll pick up where you left off, freeing people from their petty fears. They'll Get It.

To me, that's the real joke, right there. Those blood-soaked loons scalping kids and sewing dogs together, they're the good guys. They looked at all the stupid everywhere and decided to give up everything to help the rest of the world catch up before they blow their brains out, rejoining the ocean. It'd take a real proper prick to Get It and just sit back laughing. A real prick like me. So crack open another coke, fuckos, and try to get the taste of mud out of your mouth. You ignored my warning and read the whole thing. Don't blame me if you start to look at your family like they'd be better off with their insides on the outside.