Noise - By Darin Bradley Page 0,2

ages at once, the present-and future-past. Stealing a bench grinder was many things at once—Ren Faires and running only two of the more obvious.

THE BOOK:

“ONE”

[1] (i) This Book assumes many things. (ii) Among them, that you are still alive. (iii) It assumes that the world has not been destroyed by fire, that it has not developed radiation flats and a meteorology of fallout. (iv) It assumes there has been a breakdown. (v) It assumes that a new competition for resources has begun; that there are resources yet available; and that primarily, the Event involved ab initio (or has since developed) an economic revolution.

[2] (i) The destabilization of Trade informs the competition for resources—conflict, nationalism, religion, and consciousness are all Narratives for securing these. (ii) These will be your ready tools.

[3] (i) This assumes that you will kill other people. (ii) Begin identifying the people beyond your Group as Outsiders as quickly as possible. (iii) Begin before the Event, if you are able.

[4] (i) You will need a Place, and it will require a name. (ii) Your Place is your strongest Narrative.

“TWO”

[1] (i) If your Place serves also as your residence prior to the Event, then there are a number of preparations you can make. (ii) Of course, stockpiling firearms, ammunition, fuel, preserved or preservable foods, and medical supplies is a priority. (iii) However, overpreparation can lead to disaster (cf 2.1.iv-2.1.v). (iv) If your Place is too near an urban center, then Outsiders may attempt to Forage it for supplies or shelter. (v) If your Place is overprepared, it loses mobility, which is among a Group’s most primary survival characteristics.

[2] (i) A Group inhabiting a Place too near an urban center will endure considerable Administrative stress in the process of negotiating with potential Additions to the Group, for this negotiation inevitably includes a number of necessary eliminations–Rejections that stress the Place’s perimeter. (ii) This is problematic, for in this instance, your Group will be forced to eliminate Rejections before your Narrative has solidified against the psychological damage that can result from doing so. (iii) A Group requires time to identify not only itself but also its Outsiders. (iv) For this reason, situate your Place an appropriate distance away from any urban center. (v) Given time, a Group will stabilize its Narrative such that Additions and Rejections will not stress Administration.

CHAPTER TWO

the thing about a bench grinder is that it’s loud, and it draws a lot of amps. The wiring in our place was old and jury-rigged as it was. Bolting the grinder onto the kitchen counter and unplugging the microwave to free up an outlet meant more than just fucking up the carpentry—we were taking a risk with the breaker. If our place was going to burn, we didn’t want to be the ones to ignite it. Not yet, at least.

But we had to sharpen our swords inside, where we’d attract less attention—if any. Slade was still quiet at this point, still largely unaware. We hoped people would think we were flipping the place—college guys with parents’ money, trying to dip their toes into real estate. We’d even stolen a real estate sign and paid a design major to do us up a SLADE RENOVATIONS AND REPAIR decal we could stick over the Realtor’s. We put my phone number on there, just in case. We told the guy the company was to hedge our bets—to get some business going before we graduated, in case being interdisciplinary studies majors didn’t pan out.

He told us to keep him in mind, for brochures and the like.

We didn’t know how long we had until someone noticed the break-in at the pawnshop, until someone noticed the sound of a bench grinder running at night. We honestly didn’t know if anyone would have time to notice. Who knew when Slade would start falling apart, which would make a hell of a lot more noise than sharpening swords would.

Jo, our neighbor who lived behind and above us, wouldn’t care. She knew us. She knew we did things like this. We didn’t know the neighbor who lived across the shared driveway. It never came outside, even though, every night, without interruption, we could see the blue-strobe pulse of its TV. Sometimes there were shadows of movement between the insufficient blinds.

In shop class, in the seventh grade, we’d learned about tools. Which directions to move things, which machines had which tics, and which were most likely to tear off an arm. I used lines from Frost’s poem “Out, Out—” to