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[excerpt: ECoBomber Manifesto.pdf. last modified: 02/05/2022. stanzas 1-3, 18-24]
[1] The agricultural revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. All subjugation began with the first planted crop.
[2] The ancient Greeks said that one day a child of Zeus and the goddess Intelligence would rule on Olympus. That day has come. You may not know it, or maybe you do. But in all the ways that count, you serve that god. The god that emerged when we bowed before technology.
[3] We (the Rabble Rousers' Club) call it the Machine.
[...]
[18] The conquest of the native Americans did not end a hundred years ago. It is ongoing. New native Americans are born every day. Native to their country, native to their town. They're no more conquerors than any Indian tribe. But natives in this country, whether red or white, share a common blues. They will be displaced, and driven off their land, by company agents with contracts signed in other peoples' blood.
[19] First it was manifest destiny. Then it was gentrification. Now it's urban renewal. But homelessness, by another name, still smells just as foul.
[20] The trail of their tears follows the track of the Pilgrims' progress: Holland, Plymouth, California. Nobody wants it, but everybody serves it. It's the reason people go insane, start gunning people down. What else can you do? Once you realize you're a slave, there's no going back. You'll know it for the rest of your life. Where can you go to be free, when the planet is owned by the Machine?
[21] Even suppose you own some property or land. If you step off the wheel, get off the grid, then the Machine will come for you. It wears many faces, and every kind of uniform. You will know the pain of the Sioux, who watched their real estate vanish, deal by inky deal, like a magic shrinking circle. You, too, will holler like an Okie, and defend the ancestral farm with the ancestral family gun. But your flintlock ArmaLite is already obsolete. Your militia is pathetic. Like the Lakota bowmen, your closest political relatives.
[22] To stand against the Machine is to lose everything you love. If you fail to worship the god, the first thing you'll lose is your land. Then you'll lose your weapons. Then, hungry and harmless, dependent for everything, you'll give the Machine without a fight whatever is left of your soul.
[23] Black Elk speaks: "This is my home."
[24] Thus spake the Machine: "The bank foreclosed your home. You can't camp here. Don't make me call the police."
Ella sat at the little side table, face illuminated in the blue-white light from the screen of her laptop. The hotel suite, already lavish, was overlaid with welcome bouquets and the ceiling was crowded with balloons.
A glow from the half-open bathroom door. The air conditioner hum. Otherwise, quiet. If not for her appearance (that four-digit dress) you might've thought she broke in, so furtive in the corner was she.
But Ella's body and Ella's wardrobe had since puberty stood her in excellent stead, far better than actual luck. They had many a time saved her, when a less well-dressed woman, less well-possessed or endowed, would surely have lost it all.
Ella's problem was that she couldn't tell the difference. She took credit for many things which were not her doing. And by the time she figured it out, it was far, far too late.
Her teal colored contacts floated in saline in their case beneath the bathroom mirror. Eyes with no hue roved the screen behind glasses with clear plastic frames.
Ash blonde updo above a toasty gold neck. A few wavy strands hung down past her shoulders, thin as the straps on her blue party dress. Bare feet comfy on the luxe carpet floor. Heels tossed aside like casualties of battle.
A voice, muffled by distance, came from the other room. Someone was calling her. Ella Mae Hearst stayed locked on the screen. The ribbons from all those silver balloons hung down everywhere, yellow and blue pigtails illumined shimmering in the light from the bathroom like a slow-shutter photo of snowfall.
"Ella?" The voice came closer now. Ella's eyes flicked in the direction of the sound, but then they went back to her laptop. Text rolled up the screen. Approaching footsteps, soft on the hotel carpet. Cassie swished in her dress. She put a hand on the jamb as she came around the side of the door.
"Hey."
Ella looked at her friend through the forest of balloon strings. The ends dangled at shoulder level. They brushed your face as you walked through the room. It had been enchanting, the first time she'd seen it, thirty hotels ago.
"Hey, babe." Trying to be nonchalant.
"Where'd you go?"
A beat.
"Here."
"Obviously." Cassie rolled her eyes. Thin brown hair on a thick white body. She wore a garland, plastic white carnations in her hair.
She'd paused. But now, "are you okay?"
Ella turned in her chair, over there in the corner between the wardrobe and the window. The laptop threw light on half her face. Her skin looked purple and gray.
"I'm fine," she said. "I was reading."
"You disappeared from the party."
"It was boring."
"It was for you."
"It wasn't for me."
"You were an honored guest."
"Would you just listen to this?" Ella swiveled in her chair.
Cassie sighed, and settled her weight against the doorjamb.
"As long as you're sure you're okay."
"It's this reporter I've been following. He has this Substack, writes about corruption in LA." Ella read aloud:
Police responded last night to a call reporting a bombing in progress at the Outreach housing project downtown. They arrived to find an armed suspect. The suspect resisted arrest and threatened the officers, and was shot to death at the scene. Shortly thereafter, the suspect's backpack detonated, apparently on its own.
The armed suspect turned out to be Owen Hornsby, 47, an aerospace manufacturing executive and resident of West LA. A father of two, Hornsby had recently lost his son, Tyler, 17, to suicide. It is not clear whether his son's death motivated the elder Hornsby's actions.
"We do not know the motive," said Lonnie Xu, speaking for the mayor's office. "We don't even know if [Hornsby] acted alone." Xu went on to say, "rumors have circulated that this was politically motivated. But right now there isn't any evidence that was the case."
"Owen had anger issues," his ex-wife Jeanette said. "But this was completely out of character."
Cassie had come into the room while Ella read, and now she sat on the edge of the bed. Apparently rapt. She sank deep into the plush comforter. Backlit, her face was dark, with the bathroom light on behind her. Hands folded in her plus-size lap.
Ella paused, and Cassie jumped in.
"That's so sad," she complained. "Why are you reading me this depressing story?"
"Because that's clearly not what happened." Ella swiveled around again. Merry excitement on her face. "Don't you get it? This is some kind of coverup."
"That's even more sad," Cassie said. "Sad and scary."
"Yeah." But Ella didn't seem scared or sad. She seemed to derive a lupine pleasure from the tragic tale she'd read.
"It just makes me feel bad." Cassie shifted on the bed.
"But doesn't it seem fishy?"
"It seems really dark. Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine," Ella said. "I'm trying something different."
"You're bored." Hope and worry in Cassie's voice. As is often the case with the voice of reason.
"I'm not bored." Ella's face in profile was all purple now, laptop-lit, and she blinked. "Just interested in other things besides what my followers see."
"I knew something was up," Cassie said, half to herself.
"And sometimes I guess I do think about running away."
"Running away where?" Cassie asked.
"I don't know, anywhere. Hawaii. Italy. Argentina."
"You've been all those places."
"The moon."
"What's going on? You don't like it here? Is it the hotel?"
"It's okay," Ella sighed. "Reminds me of the last one."
"Well, it is a hotel. I don't know how different they can be."
"Isn't that the problem?"
Cassie smiled and frowned at the same time. "Huh?"
"They're all the same."
"Well, they're all hotels."
"But shouldn't they be more than that?"
"More than hotels?"
"More exciting. More new. More... something. Present?" Ella exhaled. Her fifth or sixth deep sigh. "I don't know what I'm saying."
"Maybe that means you're telling the truth." Cassie smiled quiet as a hint. But Ella didn't take it. Her face wrinkled.
"Ugh," she said. "It's like being lost in space."
"It's not that bad. You sure you're not just tired?"
"I wish." Ella glanced at the window. Curtains half-drawn and Vegas, the midnight Strip, down below. "As soon as the sun goes down, I can't sleep."
"Are you worried about something?" Cassie let herself be silly. "Or are you... a vampire?"
"I don't know." More a sigh than a sentence. "My knees ache. Like my legs want to get up and run. Even though I'm exhuasted. So I toss and turn. It sucks."
"Is that what's been bothering you? You're not sleeping?"
"Bothering me?" Ella looked at her friend.
"Yeah." Cassie spoke horse-breaker soft. "We've been best friends a long time, right?"
"Uh-oh." Ella closed her eyes. Smiled, waiting for impact.
"Half of college plus five years is..."
"Seven years," Ella finished.
"You can fool four million strangers, but you can't fool your best friend. Not after seven years."
"It's not that I don't want to talk about it. It's that I don't know how. There aren't words."
"Ennui?" Cassie said, allowing herself a smile.
"Huh?"
"Existential boredom." Before Ella had to ask, she added, "like life just makes you tired."
Ella nodded. "That's close."
"It's French," Cassie couldn't help but add.
"Of course it is," Ella said. She actually smiled for once. Something like a tender moment followed. But then Ella's eyes flicked back to the computer, and soon her body followed. She swiveled back and scanned the screen. "This is the part I wanted to show you."
Cassie sighed, pretty loud actually, but Ella didn't have ears to hear it.
Ella scrolled. "This guy," she said. "The one building the big shelters."
"Shelters?" Cassie said.
"Yeah, like housing for the homeless. These four huge towers they were supposed to build downtown."
"That's what got bombed?" Now Cassie was interested. "Why would somebody blow up a homeless shelter?"
"I don't know," Ella said, face close to the screen. "That's what I'm saying. It obviously wasn't this random guy. I think it must've been some kind of scheme."
"Did anybody get hurt?"
"Some police, I think." Ella scrolled more. "Here's the guy," she said. She read, pronouncing slowly: "Cheers-laughter."
"He sounds nice."
"He owns the restaurant downstairs."
Cassie's brow wrinkled. "Seriously?"
Ella nodded, and her wolfish smile returned.
"Wait, so he's here?"
Ella nodded harder. "I saw him downstairs. I thought I recognized him. I came up here to check. And I was right. Look." She pointed to a picture on the screen.
Cassie got a good look at the black hair, the adamant jaw, the green eyes—and frowned. She was already shaking her head.
"No," she said. "Terrible idea."
"I could do a special report on him. What do you wanna bet he blew up his own towers? Like an insurance scheme or something?"
"Ella, honey, that's so off-brand for you—"
"Fuck my brand."
Cassie fell silent, as if she'd been slapped. She studied her best friend.
"Where's this coming from?"
Ella looked at her for a long moment before she said anything. She said it one word a time: "I want to be taken seriously," she said.
"Everyone takes you seriously," Cassie protested. "What are you talking about? Honey there are movie stars downstairs, actual movie stars, who don't have the reach you do."
But Ella was shaking her head. "It's not about that."
"What's it about?"
"All I do is talk about makeup and boys and shit."
"People love makeup and boys! You love makeup and boys!"
"I don't, though. I don't think I ever did. Remember how this whole thing started?"
"I thought it was kind of mean."
"But it worked, didn't it?"
Cassie showed her palms, and lifted her shoulders. To indicate the room, and to shrug. "We're here."
"Yeah," Ella said. "I proved my point."
Cassie looked like she had a bad taste in her mouth.
"People will watch anything," Ella finished.
"Not anything," Cassie said, thinking of her knitting and her own channel. Tiny compared to Ella's of course. But then, Cassie still loved her work. Not so with Ella it seemed. At least not anymore.
"You know what I mean. I was right," Ella said.
"But why did you want to be right about that? Yeah, some people will watch anything. And for some reason you gathered all of them in one place. To watch you."
"I was proving a point." But Ella sounded defensive.
"And you did. Now what?"
Ella started to say something. She lifted a finger, apparently to point at the laptop screen. But she swallowed the words, even physically gulped, and her finger drooped like a dying erection. "I don't know," she said. Then, head way down between her shoulders, shet let out a word like a quaking squirrel on the very first day of spring: "... journalism?"
Cassie blinked. She considered before she responded. She decided it wasn't a joke, and she didn't laugh. Thank the gods for that.
"You want to do journalism?" she said, therapeutic.
Ella hung her head a little. But she dared a tiny smile. "Maybe," she said. Then, with vehemence, "I already have a platform. I could post about the stories I find."
"You'd lose all your followers," Cassie said. "You know that."
"Maybe I don't care. Like you said, point proven, right? Fuck my followers. I'll get new ones. I already did it once."
"Are you sure about this?" Cassie's concerned voice. Her mother's voice.
"I'm not sure of anything," Ella said. "Isn't that the first rule of being a journalist?"
The two best friends shared a much-needed chuckle. Something heavy went out of the room. But not all the way.
"Well," Cassie said, "you know I support you always. If you want to quit your channel and do journalism instead, I'm behind you." She paused. "I just really hope you're sure."
"I'm not saying I want to go cover metro news for the New York Times," Ella said.
Cassie blew out a sigh. "That's a relief."
"I just want to try it."
"Uh-huh." Cassie, deadpan.
"I'm serious!"
"I've seen that look before."
"What look?" Ella said, trying on innocence and finding it snug.
"That look," Cassie emphasized. She pointed at Ella's face.
"This is nothing like that," Ella said quickly. She tried to wipe all looks from her face. But how do you know if you've succeeded?
"I don't want to see you go down that road again," Cassie explained. Very maternal she sounded. "You didn't see how much you were hurting yourself. Well, not until the end. And I didn't want to say anything. But it hurts me when you hurt."
"It wasn't a big deal," Ella said. But she knew she was reaching.
"And now this guy?"
Ella wore a smile Cassie didn't like. She spoke dismissively, flippantly. Cassie liked that even less.
"That guy was a drug dealer," Ella said. Like that explained anything. She pointed at the picture on the screen, the man in the hard hat and tie. "This guy," she said, "has so much to lose."
"Sounds familiar," Cassie said. But you could hear the resignation in her tone.
"Besides," Ella said, frowning deeply. "It's not like I'm going out with him. I just want to talk to him. Interview him."
"Interview him."
Ella opened her mouth, but no words came out. She seemed surprised she couldn't speak. Perhaps she'd forgotten what she was going to say.
"I'll be safe," she finally said.
"I hope so," Cassie said. Very unconvinced.
They rode the elevator down together without saying much. Cassie stole glances at her friend, who kept her eyes and her thumbs on her phone. Cassie watched the numbers change. She felt like she was descending into something. Hell? Perhaps.
But Hell was always imagined as a place that singed and sweltered and stank of brimstone, with demons macabre for cops, and cackling Satan president at the center of it all.
Caesars Palace had none of that. A juggler onstage with five torches in the air was the closest thing here to hellfire. Even Caesar himself, represented in the plaster cast statue that dominated the entry, looked more like somebody's little brother than like any ruler of the damned.
Why, then, this knot in Cassie's stomach? Was it just Ella, going back to her old addiction? Or was it something about the air in here?
Caesars Palace is the closest the average person can get outside of Google Images to stratospheric luxury. Just to touch the stones of such a place is to partake of its power. To feel that you are part of it somehow. Even though the stones will not remember you. Nor the slot machines, these rows of glowing altars, with the old people prostrate like they only ever are in church, eyes fixed on the fortune-giving symbols that spin sacred across the screens.
Ella shot from the elevator at a fast walk when the doors opened, and Cassie trotted behind her. The restaurant was only a short walk from the elevator. The name glowed deepsea blue against a battleship steel façade.
The restaurant was dark, dark like a club. The scents of lime and salt and seafood wafted strong. Thumping dance music from a DJ in the corner. He moved with the beat. One headphone pressed to his ear.
At first, Cassie thought they'd make for their group, some of the girls and a few guys they knew, a little better than the bulk of this crowd. But Ella stopped and surveyed the room.
Ella had the backhand blessing of vision correctable to better than 20/20. So she watched falconesque through soft plastic lenses the color of Carribbean seas. Cassie needed only average vision to watch Ella. Only average hearing to keen the subtle music of her body language. What she saw, what she heard, caused her great concern.
"You wanna go back to our table? I think maybe dessert—"
"There he is."
Cassie's eyes had drifted over the crowd, but now they came back to Ella. She pointed, and Cassie followed the line of her finger up to the long arc of a bar across the back of the room, a deep mahogany wood lacquered glistening and accented with the same sea-blue lights, so even the shelves of liquor and wine glowed like the Aegean.
A man, tall, with inky hair swept back. A dark suit and a white shirt open at the neck. Eyes green, remarkable even from here. He sat at the bar beside a fat man in chef whites and a dirty apron. Will Cheers-laughter gripped the man's hand a long time. He spoke in his ear. A chef-whisperer.
Cassie caught all this, but kept her focus on Ella, standing tall beside her, returned to her customary resplendence with her heels back on and her war paint touched up. But it still took her by surprise, when Ella took off walking, really striding, across the crowded restaurant.
Cassie called after her and Ella said something over her shoulder and then Cassie was jogging to keep up with her best friend once again. She felt a sense of responsibility for Ella right now. Something had gotten into her blood tonight. Something Cassie'd hoped would slumber forever. The old restlessness, the old dissatisfaction. She was always searching, Cassie thought, and there was always some part of herself she held back. Yes even from her best friend. Yes even after seven years. She needed someone to watch out for her.
Ella was already talking to him by the time Cassie got there. He rested an arm on the bar and one shoe on the footrest of the next barstool. He leaned there like he owned the spot, and indeed that entire place. He had with a cool smile fixed his gaze on Ella. Those green eyes worked their magic while Cassie looked on.
She said something to Ella, who turned her head and replied, but just as quick was gone again, vanished into conversation with this tall dark and handsome stranger, who Cassie didn't like at all.
"I'll catch up with you," Ella was saying. Cassie didn't need to hear the rest. It was all a haze anyway. Here we go again, she thought. Ella could protest, could talk about journalism all she wanted. This was exactly, exactly, like last time.
"Are you sure about this, honey," Cassie heard herself pleading. Ella actually paused and looked at her. The guy looked at her, too. He was older than he looked in his picture on the website. Deeper squint lines around his eyes. But not a strand of gray in his hair. It was black as a starless night. Cassie returned his gaze, and for a moment she burned in the spotlight of his attention. Her cheeks flared for no reason and she forgot what she had to say.
But Cassie was built different than Ella, even down at the marrow. Ella was already hooked, but Cassie by instinct jerked away. Every atom of her being strained. She felt something foreign closing around her like a kidnapper's handcuffs.
"Yeah, okay," she stammered, and turned before she'd finished speaking. She could feel their eyes on her, could hear Ella's voice in her mind, she gets like this sometimes, as she walked quickly away.
She didn't go find their group. Her heart beat fast and she felt cold sweat on her neck. The music beat at her head and she worried about a migraine. The air felt close, too close, like too many people had breathed it.
Not that the air of the casino was fresh, but at least there was light, and the crush of people was not so close. Cassie gulped air like she'd been drowning when she finally emerged from the restaurant.
People milled about outside, a wide curving hall lined with bars and rows of slots. Faux-marble statues, deifically tall, glowed white as moonrocks in vast sconces and a nexus of spotlights.
Cassie didn't know what else to do, so she walked. She thought maybe she'd step outside. But the desert nights were cold and Cassie couldn't think straight enough to go up and get on a jacket. She waited for her heart to cease pounding. For her thoughts to make sense again.
What had just happened? Was that the Devil in there? Or was she really drowning, and hallucinating all of it?
She strolled, quiet, eyes taking in the scenery, watching people and statues both. This place made her feel sad. She couldn't say why. It was a feeling like a locked box. She could only point to it, could only speculate what might be within.
Every fifth slot machine had a bent-backed worshiper. The bar to her right, a screen at every place with games of your choice, was almost empty, and the vested bartender looked bored. It was getting late. Even Vegas has something like a bedtime.
"Isn't there anything else?" she said aloud. Actually whispered the words. But nobody answered, not even Caesar. Perhaps he didn't know. Perhaps, having conquered all, he wondered the same thing. Then again he was only plaster.
She answered herself. "This isn't it." She tried to remember the meaningful things. Not the things she had won. The relationships she'd built. Not only with her family and her friends, but with her followers as well. She thought of the ones who'd sent her baby pictures, fontanelles in knitted caps of Cassie's own design.
Thanks Cassie! Pictures of the couple in blankets, wearing sweaters—she recognized the patterns from her videos. Only armored in such memories could Cassie brave the casino.
She wondered if maybe this was how Ella felt. But Cassie was no stranger to this, which was not at all ennui. Nor was it restlessness. The sense of impending doom, like the casino walls could collapse inward and crush them all at any second, grew so strong she started to believe it.
Her heart was thudding again. The sconce lights pulsed in time with the beats. She walked faster, looking for an exit, searching for the signs people use when they're escaping a burning building. The walls seemed to breathe.
She pushed out one of the doors beside the big revolving one at the center, and sucked in the cold night air. There were still people all around out here, but at least the sky was overhead.
"Ugh," she said, and it was a sigh and it was a groan and it was the invisible emesis as she tried to puke up whatever demon had infested her. She pointed her eyes at the sky, not at the people, not at the buildings. She breathed slowly. She had to imagine the stars, though, blotted out by Vegas.
Breath by breath, calm returned. She closed her eyes, standing off to the side of the big stairway leading up to the entrance.
"I'm okay," she told herself. "And this is okay." She focused on her senses one by one. She heard the low conversation of the people walking by, smelled smoke and alcohol and cooking food, saw darkness and buildings and the Vegas Strip. But still she thought she tasted something foul. She felt not only cold, but that something wasn't right.
This is not okay, came the thought. This is not okay because you are out here and she is in there.
"Oh god," Cassie said to no one. She turned, and though dread bloomed in her stomach, she knew she had to go find Ella.
"Whatever good it'll do," she said as she pulled open the door.
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