Before anything else, I have good news; I was listening to one of my “writing” albums (The Associates’ “The Affection Punch”) when I came across some news on the Internet: Radio 6 has been saved. According to the BBC Strategic Review Interim Conclusions, not only is the station “well-liked” by its audience, but also “was highly distinctive and made an important contribution.” To all the supported and love Radio 6, the support has paid off!
Imagine living in a world where at the end of every week your memories are wiped away from your mind, leaving you tabula rasa. Imagine for a moment a world in which all of your worries and concerns could be dissolved into thin air. Well, in reality, it is happening everyday: between television and radio programmers selling us what is “hip,” partisan cable news stations in the USA dismissing different points of views and trying to brainwash audiences, and reality television telling us what reality really is, we are constantly forced to reconfigure what it is we really think, but just for a moment, imagine even all of that was wiped clean every week. Welcome to the City of Abacus, and let me introduce you to the MX-41.
Volume 1 of “The City of Abacus,” titled, “MX-41,” introduces the reader to the technological “marvel” of the title’s sake. Though Queen Virusos will respond to any request from her subjects, these requests disappear when MX-41 wipes clean of all of their worries. With a tabula rasa for a brain, everyone melts into a reality of conformity and ambivalence. Even our heroine, Freeda, suffers from this ambivalence, surrounded by relics that have “no clear use, she sits and wonders…”
But the plot thickens with a stranger, a fight, a keyboard-looking device, and Freeda’s being unaffected, for some reason, by the scans. The stranger narrates a partial tale, stating, “We were once an advanced city, we enjoyed progress, arts, literature, music… We had ideas. … [W]e were quickly reduced to brainwashed subjects, barely able to question the world around us.” And the adventure begins…
As I have stated before, this is a story that is urgent and relevant to our day-and-age. When we are wiped clean of our concerns and our very thoughts are not allowed to flourish, we lose our individuality, culture, and existence, and conform to living in ambivalence. This is why “The City of Abacus” should be on your must read list over the next few months.
Keep up with City of Abacus at its homepage, MySpace, and Facebook.
Also, here are a few links of where you can purchase Volume 1:
The City of Abacus homepage (via Paypal).
For those who do not have PayPal, here are some of the national links for iTunes where Volume 1 can be downloaded:
• Argentina
• Australia
• Belgique
• Canada
• Chile
• Columbia
• Danmark
• Deutschland
• España
• France
• Ireland
• Italia
• Méjico
• Nederland
• New Zealand
• Norge
• Österreich
• Portugal
• Sverige
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Venezuela
• 日本
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