Internet Chronicle

Giving a dedication speech at a ceremony dedicated to Dr. Angstrom H. Troubador’s future grave and unveiling a fantastic bronze statue in his own likeness and honor, Barrett Brown smiled for local news cameras. His speech was eloquent and mesmerizing, awing all the people present, “We analyzed the entire situation of the world from within the most classified backchannels at the very core of the Pursuance Project’s alpha test. I beg to differ with Dr. Angstrom H. Troubador, who has been stalking me online! You’ve got to understand, the American Dream is a series of these classic, 18th century liberal self-destroying enterprises, from Raleigh Theodore Sakers Company to Myspace and on now the unimaginable cyber shores beyond the depravity of Crash and the mind-programming Silicon Valley lifestyle-franchising mafiosos seizing power with weaponized teen pussy in Snowcrash, Mason & Dixon, multiverse computer games, and Jesus Christ himself reborn once again as Advanced Human, former Voice of Anonymous, and only man with the cell phone that can text God himself, Christopher “The Voice” Nemelka. Whereupon you find yourself at the mercy of a pussy grabbing game show host who’s been barking fake news about Obama’s Nigerian Daddy for years and now he’s telling you, ‘you’re fired.’ That’s the American Dream.”

“Wow that made profound sense and had something to do with the world of politics and it increases my value to read all those inside jokes. As an erudite and attentive reader of incredible literature this is what I enjoy most. But that couldn’t have been Barrett Brown,” Dr. Troubador tugged at his beard once, and stroked it harder and harder as he came to a logical conclusion. “Firstly, he loves classic liberalism. To him it is the same thing as anarchism in that they’re both an extreme form of naturalism, both the same as his original Randian objectivism. This is very well documented. And besides, he would have said something about Pursuance Software Systems.”

“Pursuance Software Systems? What’s that?” Randy said as he walked in. “Yun’s havin’ a pot party?”

“I’m fuckin’ glad you asked,” yelped Barrett. “You motherfuckers just log on to purusanceproject.com and type in all your social media site passwords and then you’ll automatically tweet and faceboook me and my friends posts. When you post dank shit of your own that follows the idea of destroying governments everywhere you’re issued points that will allow you back into the chatrooms ultimately of elite people like myself who will task you further with more intense retweeting, comment writing, and other posting schemes that may even land you in control of more power in the future anti-government. It’s a whole universe going to emerge out of this incredible new web site. It’s Anonymous 2.0! It’s a superorganism.”

“Superorgasm?” Randy scratched his head. “That don’t make no sense but I guess I like the idea of it.”

Dr. Troubador laughed in the face of Barrett Brown, pulling out a butterfly knife and whipping it in the air around his face to show he didn’t give a fuck. Slashing open that flat, mechanical Roy Batty face, Dr. Troubador revealed Brown was in fact a robot body in which Ayn Rand implanted her preserved brain. However, with a quick Kaspersky analysis he determined that the Pursuance Network and by extension the control of Brown’s robot body had already been compromised by dank hackers associated with Chronicle.su as early 90’s era style credits rolled and generic tv jazz dissolved the dramas of our day.

“Wait a sec.” Dr. Troubador asked Barrett Brown. “If Ayn Rand is just powerlessly trapped inside your body and not in control of it, who is?”

“Oh, I’m simply an AI program that the Board of Directors created specifically to torture Ayn Rand. She gets a parallel feed of all my senses and I retain total control. She can’t in any way communicate, not even with me, so just forget about that.”

“Terrible.” Dr. Angstrom H. Troubador said. “How can I give you some bitcoins…”

INTERNET — In an exclusive interview, Free Barrett Brown spokesman Kevin Gallagher told Internet Chronicle reporters Barrett Brown “resigned in protest” from Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald’s flagship publication The Intercept.

Brown’s row with The Intercept broke out over a story Motherboard later titled What is to be Done? and subtitled It is time to consider alternate systems of governance. 

Gallagher told Internet Chronicle that Brown’s editor at The Intercept found the story “problematic,” adding “[Brown] resigned in protest and joined VICE.” The article was likely rejected as a longwinded, self-congratulating mess that takes far too long to get to a sales pitch that hardly makes sense.

Before spending a half decade in prison, Barrett Brown was the most visible man to be associated with a string of computer hacks done under the icon of ‘Anonymous’. Brown’s word was often enough to shape media narratives, and as a rule he offended many hackers associated with Anonymous.

Newly free of all parole restraints on publishing, Brown has become only more silent on internet freedom, Anonymous, and the state of the world in general.  His only terse statement expressed no confidence in Anonymous as a force for good and mentioned a new thing called “Pursuants” which will replace them and eliminate the flaws that ruined their organization.

Brown is publishing less stories than when he was in prison and the latest row with The Intercept over his dirty old purusance jibberish has led Dr. Angstrom H. Troubador to conclude that his career as a writer is in trouble. “He’s writing a big ugly Mein Kampf style book and the editors cain’t control him. Things are breaking down. As a professional psychoanalyst I can tell you this right now, the pursuance fixation is just about power. That he’s shifted from a human form of persuasion to some mechanisms of computer code means he’s crossed into a psychotic territory and is very unpredictable. Possibly he will just remain in hiding, quarreling editors into dead shit or perhaps he will go full out on the Pursuantism until he’s put in prison again. Time will tell.”

Ayn Rand’s cyberacolyte has always been astray but now maybe he’s lost, too busy with Pursuants for this world. Even Brown’s spokesperson Gallagher tweeted, “… this Pursuance thing has been stewing for years and it’s now time for somethin new.”