Message-ID: <3A2847FE.1CC97905@uiuc.edu>
From: Julian Waldby <waldby@uiuc.edu>
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Subject: FTSD2: Rocking Horse
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Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 18:53:18 -0600
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Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

23 Oct 1856

The Beatles play Egypt.

12 Nov 1856

A previously unseen virus breaks out in Africa. The victims bleed from
the eyes and the mouth, and grow worms which sinew throughout their
flesh. The entire continent is in terror.

12 Jan 1861

The Beatles play New York City and begin a tour across America

14 Apr 1861

Civil War breaks out in the United States.

07 Feb 2005

I was at home, making a special Valentine's Day card for my sweetheart.
I was running through the clip art, searching for something
inspirational, when I came across it. There it was, the horse. I looked
at it closely, and turned it on its side. Then it looked like Eric
Clapton's face in his "Princess Leia" mouthgear. I ran the
magnification, turning the image and isolating locations and saw that
the various images were preserved down to about 17X magnification - the
trainwreck, the blind man, the boxcar dice, the pope, the "playing dead"
opossum, and so on, all the way down to the gold bug. The next smaller
image, the stiletto was not readily visible.

It was back. I had worked 80-hour weeks in 2001 chasing down the
implications of the horse, visible on the George Harrison CD, "The Best
of Dark Horse". I had been able to connect it to AIDS, the ebola virus,
and the resurgence of leprosy. And now it was back, in Clip Art of all
places. Probably people all over the world were sending messages with
that innocent looking horse.

I looked for a number to call, desperately. Hopefully it was not too
late. I found it. A UK number. I rung up the number.

"Hello. Ringo Starr here."

"Hello, this is Sergeant Getapiss. I am a detective with the Chicago
Police Department."

"Ah, yes, I know you. You're the one that got Harrison's CD taken out of
print."

"Yes, that was me."

"We were anticipating your call."

"This is a very serious matter. The Harrison horse is illegal material.
You must pull it at once, or I will..."

"You will what? It's too late, Detective Getapiss. I trust you've found
the other hazardous images in the clip art we distributed?"

"Uh, yeah," I bluffed. "This is a very serious matter."

"I trust you enjoyed the vintage Prosche image. It has been shown to
cause the explosion of the stomach in 8 out of 10 viewers when taken in
by the subconscious."

"What do you want? Why do you and your group keep torturing people?"

"That's an interesting question. When it started, it was just a hobby of
ours. McCartney thought it up one evening and asked the rest of us if it
was possible. We soon demonstrated that it was extremely effective. But
now, we do it to avenge John Lennon's death. The world is not ready for
us, and we intend to get it sorted.

"Sorted, huh? You don't know who you're dealing with. I will find you,
and make you pay. I advise you to recall all your current distribution
if you want to avoid the death penalty."

"Thank you for your call, Detective Getapiss."

28 Feb 2005

I am being kept alive by a number of machines. Both my lungs have
collapsed, and I am bleeding profusely through the mouth. My kidneys no
longer function, and my spleen is an aching ball of pain. My hands and
legs are purple from blood clot and will need to be amputated. I will
not last much longer. No one will listen to me when I try to warn them
about the clip art. My psychologist says, "the clip art, the clip art,
you are always talking about the clip art, hmm?" The secret to the
images is that you have to resolve them. If you just see the top image,
and perhaps even see the secondary image, you are in for a world of
hurt. I must have viewed the images at a glance. For the horse, at
least, I know that one has to see the seventh image to activate the
"antidote" in the mind. And in this, I perish.

13 Apr 2005

Bill Gates lands a big deal with a software firm, who agree to provide
word processing, spreadsheet, mathematical programs, and...clip art for
the release of Windows '06.

03 Aug 2005 - 22 Dec 2005

Over 97% of the world's population dies in an explosion of freak
epidemics. The deaths are gruesome and horrid, and the world is in
panic. Nations blame other nations for releasing biological weapons, but
nothing can be proven. The world goes down fighting, and goes down to a
new dark age.

2984 AD

A new branch of monks rises up proclaiming the evidence of a band of
saviors who came to rescue the world. They talk of their return again
sometime in the future. They advance widespread distribution of the
saviors' music on CD. These messiahs of an ancient time are known as the
Beatles.

Julian
--
We're not talking about some trophy girl draped all over a car