The illuminatus! trilogy Read Online Free Page B

faces on Mount Rushmore. “Mad Dog, Texas, was the town where Malik thought these … assassins … had their headquarters,” Muldoon said. “That’s where the staff writer was sent.”
    “What was the staff writer’s name?” Saul asked.
    “George Dora,” Muldoon said. “He’s a young kid who used to be in SDS. And he was once rather close to the Weatherman faction.”
    Hagbard Celine’s gigantic computer, FUCKUP—First Universal Cybernetic-Kinetic-Ultramicro-Programmer— was basically a rather sophisticated form of the standard self-programming algorithmic logic machine of the time; the name was one of his whimsies. FUCKUP’s real claim to uniqueness was a programmed stochastic process whereby it could “throw” an
I Ching
hexagram, reading a random open circuit as a broken
(yin)
line and a random closed circuit as a full
(yang)
line until six such “lines” were round. Consulting its memory banks, where thewhole tradition of
I Ching
interpretation was stored, and then cross-checking its current scannings of that day’s political, economic, meterological, astrological, astronomical, and technological eccentricities, it would provide a reading of the hexagram which, to Hagbard’s mind, combined the best of the scientific and occult methods for spotting oncoming trends. On March 13, the stochastic pattern spontaneously generated Hexagram 23, “Breaking Apart” FUCKUP then interpreted:
    This traditionally unlucky sign was cast by Atlantean scientist-priests shortly before the destruction of their continent and is generally connected with death by water. Other vibrations link it to earthquakes, tornadoes and similar disasters, and to sickness, decay, and morbidity as well.
    The first correlation is with the unbalance between technological acceleration and political retrogression, which has proceeded earthwide at everwidening danger levels since 1914 and especially since 1964. The breaking apart is fundamentally the schizoid and schismatic mental fugue of lawyer-politicians attempting to administrate a worldwide technology whose mechanisms they lack the education to comprehend and whose gestalttrend they frustrate by breaking apart into obsolete Rennaisance nation-states.
    World War III is probably imminent and, considering the advances in chemicalbiological warfare in conjunction with the sickness vibrations of Hexagram 23, the unleashing of plague or nervegas or both is as probable as thermonuclear overkill.
    General prognosis: many megadeaths.
    There is some hope for avoidance of the emerging pattern with prompt action of correct nature. Probability of such avoidance is 0.17 ± 0.05.
    No blame.
    “My
ass
, no blame,” Hagbard raged; and rapidly reprogrammed FUCKUP to read off to him its condensed psychobiographies of the key figures in world politics and the key scientists in chemobiological warfare.
    The first dream came to Dr. Charles Mocenigo on February 2—more than a month before FUCKUP picked up
the vibrations. He was, as usual with him, aware that he was dreaming, and the vision of a gigantic pyramid which seemed to walk or lumber about meant nothing and quickly vanished. Now he seemed to be looking at an enlargement of the DNA double helix; it was so detailed that he began searching it for the bonding irregularities at every 23rd Angstrom. To his surprise, they were missing; instead, there were other irregularities at each 17th Angstrom. “What the devil …?” he asked—and the pyramid returned seeming to speak and saying, “Yes, the devil.” He jolted awake, with a new concept, Anthrax-Leprosy-Mu, coming into consciousness, and began jotting in his bedside pad
.
    “What the hell is this Desert Door project?” the President had asked once, scrutinizing the budget. “Germ warfare,” an aide explained helpfully. “They started with something called Anthrax Delta and now they’ve worked their way up to something called Anthrax Mu and …” His voice was drowned out by the rumble of