Noise Read Online Free Page A

Strategy.
    I.A.

    “PLACE”

[1] (i) The principles behind selecting a Place are simple. (ii) It should be remote yet not excessively so—later, Trade, exploration, and recruitment will become vital. (iii) Your Place should offer security. (iv) That is to say that while it may not be equipped
ab initio
with ramparts, palisades, or the like, it must at least offer a high degree of visibility of the surrounding territory. (v) In the event that you attempt too late to secure a Place and the available locations offer neither fortification nor visibility, then you must settle for something discreet, preferably a cave or other such enclosure. (vi) In the unfortunate situation that, post-Event, you have neither a Group nor a satisfactory Place, you must immediately gather the necessary resources and equipment to sustain and defend yourself. (vii) If youpossess a skill set that would make you a worthwhile Addition to a Group, such as small electronics or generator repair, husbandry, medical training, or engineering, then you need only concern yourself with sustenance and defense. (viii) If, however, you lack a skill set with which to Trade yourself to a Group, then you must hoard, secure, and transport items of worth, including medical supplies, ammunition, or essential knowledge.

[2] (i) Your Place will require a name. (ii) With the other territorial, cultural, and discursive landmarks of your old “self” dislocated, Foraged, or destroyed, you must very quickly project yourself into your new Place, which, for a time, will be all Places. (iii) A Place is a form of extended consciousness, in that it delimits and defines perception. (iv) Motivated perception, in turn, delimits the construction of your world.

CHAPTER THREE

    w hen we first found out about Salvage, skipping class in the coffee shop, we became obsessed. We stopped playing Dungeons & Dragons. We became like soldiers, disciplining each other: class, homework, work, Salvage. We took notes, indexed broadcasters and jammers, and followed directions. We asked around town, over and over until, finally, someone sold us a crib sheet for two hundred dollars. A dictionary of stencils and graffiti, for what was being written into Slade. We studied it, tested each other. We began compiling our version of the
Book
, which was the manual. Holy Writ. The collected Salvage manifesto, assembled from the snippets and fragments and bits of useful information buried beneath all the broadcast noise. Everyone had a different version, which was good. If we all followed the same framework, we’d end up competing.
    We dropped classes to lighten our homework. We couldn’t drop out altogether. We were taking financial aid, and without it, we’d have to work too much. We wouldn’t have time for the
Book
.
    We bought books secondhand, so there would be no record of purchase. Things like
FM 21–76, Department of the Army Field
Manual: Survival, The Anarchist Cookbook, The Survival Bible
. I still had copies of
The Official Boy Scout Handbook
and
Unintended Consequences
. It had been five years since I earned my Eagle Scout Award. I was the youngest in the troop to ever do so.
    We weren’t far from the house, a duplex with only one livable half. We lived in the annex, tacked onto the old place in the 1950s, but we stockpiled things in the old half, the 1890 half: some books, a picture of Thoreau, a fifty-pound bag of salt we’d taken from L. D. Pizza, where we were delivery drivers.
    We only had to make one turn, then onto Broadway Avenue, the civil artery that wormed past the road to the university on one side and to the square on the other. But we had to shoot one car to make it. One of the people we stacked in the parking lot, before we moved to the pharmacy, had been carrying a snub-nosed .38. Unloaded. Ammunition in its pockets.
    People were driving in whatever direction they wanted, particularly college guys in lifted pickups and sports cars. They were smashing what they could reach