THE AGENTS OF THE EMPIRE ARE EVERYWHERE
     By J Wilder Konschak
     
     
     This is a dream I had last night. I'm not sure it means anything ... 
     The dream was about a time, not so far away, when the world governments 
actually began to care about their people. Now, I don't mean about the wellbeing 
of the people - no -- instead, actually about the nitty-gritty details of their 
funny little lives. They wanted to know every nickname, whether he snored, if 
she'd ever eaten cous-cous, what their childhood pets were, her favorite color, 
how he lost his virginity, the music they liked, what made him laugh, what made 
her cry, what made them happy.
     The governments gave a shit for this reason: if they gathered enough 
personal dirt, if they could accurately identify you, then they could feed the 
data into a simple machine, and with it, they could blow you up. Like, boom! 
You'd be walking down the street, some official would decide you were too much 
trouble, push a button, and BOOM. You explode. Head goes one way. Arms another. 
Splatter. Messy messy. 
     In the dream, this made for an unpleasant world. Wherever you went, people 
warned you "The agents of the empire everywhere." Mommies would say, "Keep warm, 
look both ways when crossing the road, and remember, the agents of the empire 
are everywhere. You wouldn't want you to blow up, would you?"
     I was in a mall, but I couldn't buy anything for myself, because that would 
give too much away. I bought things for a friend instead. Somewhere, she bought 
things for me. Walking around, I couldn't introduce myself to anyone. I had a 
secret name. I signed everything "Prospero Jones." I saw a beautiful brunette, 
with hard like wet cedar, buying a chainsaw... But we couldn't trust dating. She 
might get angry with me for leaving rotten kiwi in the bathtub, and then go off 
and sell the fact that I didn't take my socks off during sex to the Big-Bad 
Government. Or, she might download the machine blueprints off the internet and 
build an Exploder all their own.
     The amount of distrust in the dream was actually more disturbing than the 
regularly exploding pedestrians were. After a while, and the purchase of a rain 
slicker, the explosive gore didn't bother you so much. What got to you was the 
constant silence, the wall you had to build. It was the fear and the loneliness 
that burned you up inside. The world suffered the ultimate form of isolation: 
the fear of growing close to someone else: fear that they would use your hopes, 
dreams, and details to destroy you: the fear that you could not know who to 
love. For, afterall, the Agents of the Empire Were Everywhere.
     So maybe the dream did mean something.
     So maybe I should learn to stop being afraid of intimacy.
     No. I don't think so. Truth be told, I'm not afraid of intimacy anymore. I 
think it's more likely that I'm afraid that the world is afraid of intimacy, and 
I'm the only one who wants to tell people my real name isn't Prospero Jones, and 
I really don't need to buy Bikini-Bear hair removal products.
     But ... until everyone agrees to stop being agents of the empire ... if you 
don't know me, I'm 6 foot 11 inches tall, have dirty blond hair, love bright 
colors and pop music, and have a fetish involving a girl dressed as a lobster.