VALIS, with its tidings, was published back in 1980. Which raises the question if help has indeed come, if it decided it wanted to be detected by Dick way back then, if it advanced out of its camouflaged state to disclose itself to him back in the 1970s, if it wanted him to announce the good news, which he did back in 1980—well, what the heck’s it been up to for the past forty effing years, for chrissake? What’s it been waiting for?
Me, apparently.
First off, I’m not a person to whom the paranormal happens. Ever.
And yet out of nowhere in March 2020 I had an experience that was, I’m pretty darn sure, like Dick’s, some benign power breaking in, advancing out of its camouflaged state to disclose itself. Only because, again like with Dick, it wanted to be detected. Not because, I can assure you, there’s anything special about me. But simply because it wanted me, like Dick, to see it.
It wanted me to see it because, for its own mysterious reasons, it wanted to show me the hack—the final step—that Dick completely missed, that Waite, try as he might, ultimately failed to discover.
Hack (n.), a quick and inelegant solution. In VALIS
Dick’s Eucharistic hack was a hotdog bun—exactly
the quick and dirty approach you want. A God clever
enough to mimic “beer cans in gutters” cunningly
camouflages itself in the disposable to trigger no
sensors in The Matrix’ defense perimeter.
A champion can stand waiting, ready to do battle only so long, after all. And all those dev engineers in Silicon Valley were apparently too busy—I guess with Google and Facebook and Twitter and all the other necessities of life without which civilization as we know it would come to a grinding halt—to pay attention. So the benign power for its own mysterious reasons picked me, found a couple of loose wires somewhere in the decidedly peculiar circuitry in my head that it could hot-wire. And—zhhhhht!
That’s my best guess, at least.
What Dick missed, what eluded Waite is, if I’ve got my conjecture right, something utterly simple, utterly obvious. To wit—
Hack the Eucharist | Crash the Matrix 