(electronic version only)

It was early 1998 when I first discovered Gravity. At that time, you needed to know someone in the group to get in; and by that time, depending on your circle of influence, that wasn't particularly hard (their motto at the time was "Someone you know is one of us," a double-edged slogan with far-reaching ramifications). I had been lurking on the fringes of several Internet "subcultures", dabbling in esoteric mysticism and neocyberphilosophy, ignoring the more stringent duties of my psychology background for something more tangible, more direct. I found myself attending raves on a regular basis, despite the odd and suspicious looks from the young pioneers; I thought my presence might shake them up a bit, do them some good. And you could see me walking across the parking lot after any one of these events, talking to myself and doing magick tricks ("sleight of head" as I liked to call it) and generally drawing attention to myself. Ultimately I was looking for a connection of some kind. I was no longer interested in my scientific curiosity; there was something much deeper which needed to be satisfied.

February, 1998, saw me leaving a giant warehouse just outside of San Francisco, the same routine as usual, only the flames on my hands were a deep shade of blue tonight instead of fiery red. Some part of my energy was slowly leaking away, lost in the shuffle of countless posts fired off to mailing lists that still didn't count me as a regular. Perhaps because I was lost in a contemplative cloud, I didn't see the approach of the young woman who fell in step beside me, walked almost to my car with me before I noticed her. "That's quite a talent you have there," she said. "Listen, can you give me a ride back to town?"

As we walked to my car, she asked, "How do you do that thing with your hand?" I replied, "It's an illusion of sorts. It isn't real." She said, "It looks real enough." And I told her, "Even if it burns you, it probably isn't real." We fell into a somewhat whimsical discussion of serious topics as we rode back into town. I could tell she was still under the affects of any number of possible chemical alterants. I asked if she had come to the rave with friends, and she replied, "No, I tend to travel alone most of the time. I just like to dance." And then, a beat later, "Most of my friends are on the Internet." Our discussion took a turn across the various Internet communities we had in common and a few we didn't, and then it was time for Andrea to get out.

As she opened the passenger door, I found myself suddenly noticing a deep purple bruise on her left cheek. I can't imagine why I hadn't noticed it before. I said, "What happened to your cheek, Andrea?" She replied bluntly, "I got punched." I was too startled to question her further; in the pause left by my hesitation, she thanked me quickly for the ride and leapt from the car, dashing off just in time to catch an arriving bus. I was left with the distinct feeling that I would never see this woman again -- until I saw the note on the seat next to me, with the word "GRAVITY" written in bold letters and an email address listed below.

The person who responded to my email was a figure known on the Net as Scotto. His email to me was terse but not unfriendly: "Yes, I know a woman named Andrea. Gravity is a mailing list, to which I can subscribe you. Gravity is also a phenomenon, a community, and that which holds you to the face of the planet. If you join, you might be asked to help us Reverse Gravity. Should be fun, though. -- Scotto" And with that, I found myself suddenly at Home.

By mid-1998, there were two prevailing attitudes within Gravity's so-called "Concrescence" movement surrounding the so-called "end of the world" memeplex: those who felt, with or without adequate justification, that the world would end at the turn of the millenium (2000ers), and those who felt that the world would end twelve years later, in December (the McKennites). The former apparently considered "pre-millenial tension" their aesthetic purview, intending to milk humanity's natural apprehension as its calendar "rolled over" for all it was worth. They were an active crew, no doubt due to the fact that they would be put to the test first. Meanwhile, the McKennites preferred to take the long view, concocting elaborate schemes with the luxury of years to watch them play out. As 1998 rolled along, the ideological competition between the two groups was fierce, and Gravity entered another in a long succession of phase transitions.

I viewed this schism within the group with something of a skeptical eye, and those of us who felt the whole "end of the world" thing to be a bit much formed our own third camp, calmly watching the battle of words with a bemused air about us. I knew world history well enough to know that, regardless of the coincidences which surrounded both the end of our calendar millennium (actually taking place in 2001, of course, a full year after the world's computer systems were supposed to grind to a half) and the end of the Mayan calendar (in 2012, though this "ending" actually signaled the beginning of a new "third era" for the Mayans, a fact conveniently overlooked by the McKennites), human civilization had already endured its share of "end of the world" scenarios. It happened when the Roman Empire fell, it happened dozens of times in China, it happened when the Soviet Union collapsed and when the Berlin Wall came down. For those people, living in those times and places, the end of their world certainly did occur. I said this over and over on the list, to seemingly deaf ears. Mine was not a welcome viewpoint, and I came to look at this young, apocalyptic crew with a certain amount of disdain. They were marshaling an enormous amount of energy, but to what end? Global nihilism?

"we don't take any of this seriously," said the voice of free agent .rez. "we can't possibly. there has been no end of psychic malaise on this planet, since we realized what humanity was capable of. since we saw what took place in nazi germany. since we saw what took place in hiroshima and nagasaki. in cambodia and russia. on the streets of los angeles. what we imagine is trivial in the face of such events. we know full well there is no Hope for our attempts. there will be no changing of the world order, no way to slap civilization in the face. even as we attempt to engineer the planetary wake up call, we know our work is doomed. we give ourselves so-called 'target dates' (2000 or 2012, take your pick) to give ourselves something solid to marshal our energy toward; otherwise, we might marshal the same energy toward finding a useful job and earning a living and going out to vote and (god forbid) raising a family in this society. 'would you prefer another target, a military target? then name the system!' perhaps, dr. solitude, you may come to view us as performance art. perhaps you may find the poetry in our work. perhaps you will see in us the tragic figure of the best opera, the finest theatre. and perhaps you will join us. perhaps not·"

"I'll tell you what I see," said the voice of THE INNER GORILLA. "I see a bunch of kids -- no older than myself, undoubtedly -- finishing school and spending their years learning how to be bored and oppressed. Who gives a flying fuck through a rolling donut about the coffee shop on the corner? Who gives a rat's hairy diseased ass about the club down the street or the rave coming up this weekend or the church I pass by every day on my way to my dead end miserable life as a tool of the Man? Fuck that, and fuck that hard. I'm no magickian, Doc, and don't pretend to understand what the Genuflector and all the Islanders are doing down there. But I'm joining them as soon as the next plane leaves. It's not about destruction, you gotta understand. 'Concrescence' means culmination. The inevitable, coming to fruition. It's our own inevitability, maybe, but who gives a shit."

And they continued convincing themselves, spilling their strange eschatology all over the mailing list. Until the day we saw this post, from a longtime Gravity regular:

From: Anon of Ibid
Subject: you should know

Sometimes the only way to get through life is to imagine all the different ways that life could be worse than it is right now. And then, you say to yourself, "At least I'm not in that situation. At least I'm not THAT person." Sometimes the only way to get through life is to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. You think, "Well, at least I'm not starving to death." You think, "Good God, that would be the worst, to be thoroughly and completely starving to death, to have NO FOOD whatsoever, to have a distended belly and all sorts of deficiencies and imbalances and to have so much agony and to be on the verge of dying. THAT would be the worst." And when you think about people like that, nothing you ever do will ever seem significant again, and nothing that happens to you will be quite so awful again. Your own suffering won't ever matter again, and you'll never take pride in your own survival again. And when your husband comes home late again and knocks you straight to the floor with a vicious punch, his wedding ring tearing open your cheek again, and when he lifts you to his feet by a handful of hair and spits in your face and punches you again, this time ripping open your lip, and when he flings you against the wall so hard that your head snaps back and your extremities go numb, and when he throws the nearest lamp at you and watches it shatter against the side of your head, and the blood from your forehead and the blood from your lip and the blood from your cheek runs down your neck onto just about the only clean shirt you have left, and when he kicks and kicks and kicks and doesn't care what he fractures, and when his coup de grace is to strangle you within an inch of your life with the lamp cord, all because you didn't have a plate of food for him when he walked in the door... none of that will matter. It won't matter to you and it certainly won't matter to him,
never mind that there are men in the world who don't have the strength to beat a woman because they haven't seen food in weeks and maybe they've seen their wives and children die overnight from the heat and the hunger, never mind all that, and better yet, take pleasure in it, because those are people worse off than you, thank God. Let them starve, that's the way to help you, is to let every last one of them starve to death, so that their situation is no longer the worst in the world, and finally, you might be able to try a little self-pity.

Let me tell you what Concrescence means to me, Nicholas Solitude. I won't be making a mistake like this ever again.

Anon of Ibid

Suddenly all the science fiction fantasy drained away from our discussions. Suddenly reality intruded in precisely the wrong way. Suddenly we were reminded that, for all the fancy words we chose to throw around ourselves and our beliefs, we could never escape our nature. We could never escape the inherent.

And, one of us seemed to be in trouble.

I emailed Scotto, my initial Gravity contact, asking him if he knew Anon's identity, if he could locate her and find out more about her situation. His reply was typically terse: "I assume there's a reason she's known as Anon of Ibid, so perhaps you should ask her instead." But I couldn't find the strength to email a complete stranger, known only via an Internet mailing list, and offer my support. Indeed, how in hell could I support an individual who chose to remain hidden, whose very identity was the measure of secrecy? Meanwhile, the Genuflector posted an immediate note to the list, saying: "Anon, I don't know who you are, but you are welcome on the Island of the Dance. Indeed, I've seen video of your appearance at GravityConIII, and you would be a most welcome addition to our community." She did not respond. Posts began to trickle in, tightly controlled outrage visible in their voices, but as long as Anon stayed silent, there was nothing to be done, no direction in which to funnel our anger and our desire to help.

By mid-1999, approximately half of Gravity had relocated to the Island of the Dance. I remained in my tiny bungalow in San Francisco, losing contact over time with the community. I still read the list daily, but found less and less to say about the strange goings-on. And I noticed the ardor with which the term "Concrescence" was bandied about diminished immediately following the infamous Anon of Ibid post of 1998. It was as though they'd been playing a certain kind of billiards, willfully ignorant of the pool hall around them, and someone lobbed a grenade onto their table. The detonation of so much resentment and pain in their midst distracted them from an ideology which was, as they described it, doomed to begin with.

The 2000ers "disbanded," if you could call it that. At last report, a fair number of them had purchased three or four old school buses and were traveling the highways and byways, so to speak, occasionally checking in via cellular modem. Meanwhile, the Islanders plugged silently away, their doings and goings-on becoming ever more closed to the rest of Gravity -- what "rest of" there was. The list lost its focus; the community lost its cohesiveness, even as individual groups within gained cohesion (at the price of seemingly impermeable boundaries). And I went to raves alone, just as I always had.

As difficult as it was to imagine, Anon of Ibid's message of rage seemed to be the decisive factor in the leakage of energy from the Gravity mailing list. The theory now goes that these psychedelic brigands had embarked upon a dangerous course of memetic rewiring. They had convinced themselves of something nearly impossible, and were pursuing the impossible with tremendous amounts of energy. The "villain" in their scenarios was monstrous and large: society, civilization, the world as we know it, diseased to the core and deserving of nothing less than "immanentization." And as they contemplated the notion of hitting the global "reset" button, they left absolutely no room in their plans for something so precise, so terribly specific as Anon of Ibid and her husband.

I finally posted my unsubscribe message to Gravity in October of 1999.

From: Dr. Nicholas Solitude
Subj: Unsubscribe

I must confess, I miss the old days. I have no end of nostalgia for the days when this group actually thought it could work ridiculous miracles. Sally Ann and Feijh and the whole 'bus caravan' crew are their own clique; the Islanders are off on their own now, more than ever; haven't seen free agent .rez or Scotto or unsane or any of the old gang in months now. I don't have to ask what's going on; I know full well what's going on.

One big rude awakening: someone you thought you knew, by the name of Anon of Ibid.

I don't know who you are or where you are, Anon, but your post, your situation, stunned us all quite a bit. Took the wind out of our sails. We got this close to thinking we could make a difference, only to be reminded that on the fundamental level, we couldn't even protect one of our own. We were too much a loose confederation and not nearly enough a community. I don't hold you responsible, Anon of Ibid, but I definitely want to know: what happened to you? Are you still with your husband, and does he still mistreat you? Did you ever bring yourself to kill him, as you thought you might? Are you on the run somewhere, have you changed lives? Is your identity truly as fluid as your alias suggests, or are you trapped somewhere, hidden behind the 'safety' of your anonymity? Is there a damn thing we could have done, and should we have even tried? Ultimately, you reminded us of the futility of our actions in too direct a fashion to be ignored. You showed us that when push came to shove, we couldn't possibly be bothered to find you, to wrap our own fragile energies around yours. How could we save the world and save Anon of Ibid at the same time -- both events requiring equal attention, intention, concentration? You were as much a regular as anyone, Anon, but when the time came to really interstand you, Gravity fled. Disintegrated. Fragmented. Its elitism drained away, and reality rushed in to fill the vacuum.

And you're still out there somewhere, Anon, and no one knows what happened to you.

I'm leaving this list now; I don't intend to be here when whoever is currently the listowner eventually pulls the plug. Perhaps the joke is on me. Perhaps I was never enough of a regular; perhaps I was someone you never trusted enough, and perhaps all of the "important" traffic is happening behind the scenes, outside my view, on the Island and more importantly, on the buses, where I am simply not allowed. I have, after all, always been the outsider, the 52-year-old fool amongst the genx crowd. I do in fact hope and pray there is "important" traffic happening somewhere, for it would be an enormous shame to let Anon of Ibid's whining about her helplessness destroy the empowerment the rest of you held.

Sincerely,
Dr. Nicholas Solitude

I had been having heart problems, too many years of chain smoking, and my dancing days seemed to be coming to an end. I went to my last rave, at a warehouse outside San Francisco, and stood by the walls, mostly, watching the empty exuberance all around me with a certain heaviness, a certain bitterness. Here, the illusion of community seemed easily shattered; I was no more likely to make connections here as I was on the Internet, and the problem, I began to realize, was with me, more than anything else. Who did I dare approach, and on what terms? No one, not a soul. I stood against the walls and watched the happiness dance past me. I stood against the walls and watched the present dance past me.

And then, someone I recognized approached. It was Andrea, the woman who had first turned me on to Gravity, all those months ago. She was flushed, out of breath from dancing, her face bright red and her eyes wide from, undoubtedly, chemical alteration.

She said, "Do you still do that trick with your hands?" As if that was a cue of sorts, I held up my right hand and bathed it in an eerie purple flame. "Nice," she said. "Very nice." And then, before I could say a word to her, she said, "I think you know me better by another name." She held out her hand as if to shake mine, and said, "I'm Anon of Ibid. Maybe you've heard of me?"

I was floored. I took her hand in mine, and both of our hands were suddenly aflame. She said, "Even if it burns me, it probably isn't real, right?" I nodded. And then she said,

"Listen, Doc. You should probably know, I've never been married."

I didn't immediately comprehend her. She had to repeat herself.

"I've never been married. Never had a husband." And when I still stared blankly back at her, she said, "And this husband I've never had· well, he certainly never beat me." Pause. "Or anything like that."

"So," I replied slowly, "you made it all up?" Pause. "That bruise on your face, the night I met you·"

"I had been in a fight, in a bar. Nothing serious." She smiled quietly, took her hand away from mine. The purple flames had transferred from me to her; she played with the flames absent-mindedly as she continued. "You were right, you know. There is important traffic going on behind the scenes. You have no idea what's going on down on the Island, and down deep, you wouldn't believe it if you knew. You wouldn't climb on one of those buses if you were invited, which is no big deal, since you won't be. You never cared about what Gravity was really up to. You never allowed yourself to get sucked in. You were like one of those particles of light that bounces off the event horizon instead of getting swallowed up." Pause. "Looks like I got to you just in time for the apocalypse, eh?"

"I don't understand," I said.

"We're never where you expect us to be," she said. "And we aren't what you expect us to be, either. You think these silly purple flames are a trick worth mentioning?" She took my hand again, and said, "I'll show you a fucking trick, Doc."

The room began to suddenly spin, and the walls began to melt. Moments later, we shifted sideways entirely into the Dreamtime. And that was precisely when my adventures with Gravity actually began...