No Aloha is the story
of the future as barbarism. The friendly happy music of the past
appears as chapter headings; the unheard melodies evoke a time
of blind self-indulgence. The United States has broken apart;
the midwest has become a giant factory hog farm; the political
fragmentation of the east has been exacerbated by a devastating
earthquake, and the west has seceded. Ronald Reagan is in his
seventh presidential term; Nancy and the Drug Enforcement Agency
are running the country. Colorado, the site of our story, has
elected Televangelist Kingston "tyrant of the state on his
promise of full employment through the mass murder and/or vivisection
of sinners."
The Surgical Mind Jesus Project, administered
by Team Jesus, has subjected 178,000 sinners to experimental brain
surgery, implanting bioplastic Jesus-loving bits in place of evil-inducing
parts. Not one of the experiments has been successful.
Finally, the United Nations' North American Arbitration
reluctantly intervenes, led by ex-South African President Nelson
Mandela, and sends the tyrannical pastor into gilded exile. The
ineffective UNNAA troops are now preparing to pull out, leaving
the field to Kingston's former lieutenants, Team Jesus paramilitaries,
armed with iron club crucifixes; Golden West Guards, a private
army; and the Tribbers, members of the Secret Rapture Movement,
who wear sashes inscribed with the names of sinners they have
dispatched to the Last Four Things.
In the ruined city of Denver, four teenagers armed
with daggers scrounge and steal, squatting in abandoned buildings.
They scramble through broken windows to board the few surviving
metrotrains (the conductors of which shoot at the mass of would-be
passengers). The teenagers rob anyone with anything left to take,
ripping the clothes from other children, stomping on the weak
and infirm. They share cigarette butts and roaches and quarrel
over food. They argue about which smells worse, burnt plastic
or dead flesh.
The four teenagers are slowly making their way
on foot across the blasted city to a suburb where they hope to
find refuge and food. Gus has a bad stomach; he has trouble keeping
down the UNNAA rations. He amuses the others with tales of his
sexual experiences with a middle-aged accountant who wants to
be called "daddy" at the moment of orgasm. Maude lost
two fingers of her right hand when a landmine exploded. Gladys
is the youngest; she carries a treasured Ultra Playdeck 8220,
which requires precious batteries to function. Walter, the oddest
of the lot, insists on wearing girls' clothing and may be the
messiah.
In this sundered and self-destructing world, the
bourgeoisie has solved the race question: everyone is multiracial,
so the political meaning of race has been erased. The war is all
against all. Five-by-ten-kilometer LCD screens functioning as
stratospheric billboards patrol the skies. The children tramp
through the dying town with nowhere to go and no future.
In No Aloha, Deran Ludd presents us with
a chilling illustration of Marx's formulation: Socialism or Barbarism.
"No Future" was reprinted from Race
Traitor, Journal of the New Abolitionism, #11.
