Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

Awoke from a lyrical, deeply allegorical dream. Warning, it’s ultraviolent. It began in a restaurant I’ve known since I was little, with familiar scenes. A longtime chef was getting an old-timer’s award, and a longtime waitress proudly showed off his collection of nametags; he went on a breaktime walk with his son through an alley, debated quitting smoking (he only took a few puffs a day); I was working a waitstaff job, but doing so poorly I barely made it through my first shift with customers humoring me. Then a small spaceship materialized (it just fit in the dining room). The graphics changed to SNES RPG. On one side of the spaceship’s one room, were collected twenty men in ordinary clothes, including five or so who’d been on the restaurant’s male staff, and now appeared there. On the other side, were about forty women in futuristic armor, almost exactly like shown, except that many or most had their helmets off. They all had powerful guns. Ten or fifteen of them had been on the restaurant’s female staff, and now appeared thusly. The women leveled their guns at the men. One of the guys who worked there guffawed on recognizing the longtime waitress, “I know you, you’re not gonna hurt me.” Yet she and her coworkers, like those who were strangers, aimed their guns without a word, and in a second shot and killed all the men. There was some rote audio message one of the women said, “Let this be a lesson to you…” The ship dematerialized just as it had appeared, but the corpses of the men remained. I hadn’t been one of the killed men, but saw all omnisciently. This was called Quality Network Delivery, or QND, and I was aware that never had there been a QND run where the women who knew the men had broken ranks, and pleaded with the others to spare their lives. I don’t think QND was a vetting process, or litmus test for the women to qualify for something else, it was the objective in itself. Like Roman decimation. In this case the goal was shaping the consciousness of the pool of potential killers (women) and potential victims (men). QND was like Rawls’s original condition, in that the goal for women was to build the sense that any one of them could be in a situation x (tasked with killing men they knew at a moment’s notice), and she would then be expected to cast off all ingrained affections, and display her loyalty to her sex. To women, to the gynocracy. It was to then ingrain the rejection of right and wrong to the end of keeping power in the female consciousness. Implicit in all of this was that, while so far QND had proceeded without protest every time, at some future moment, there would be a man selected as victim who so affected the women, that some or them would break ranks and plead for his life, and they would be spared from QND—and precipitate the fall of the gynocracy in short order. I should stress that the gynocracy was nothing other than what we know in real life. QND was an absolutized figure for the kinds of choices women already make and are expected to, as feminism and gynocracy cannot exist if women listened to their hearts. Choosing to go with their hearts, and turn from cruelty and injustice, would make the whole edifice fall. Doesn’t this sound like the ultimate dystopian thriller? Let this be a lesson to you… fear and expect QND! #QND #feminism #deathsquads #allegory #dreaming #dreams