Encasement was certainly not something we were expecting

April 26, 2016 10:31 AM

Reddit user _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9 is leaving long comments on various seemingly unrelated threads that link together into a very horrifying secret history of LSD, WWII, and the end of the world.

I'd recommend reading from oldest to newest, if you dare.

posted by Potomac Avenue (80 comments total)

TOO CREEPY
posted by bq at 10:34 AM on April 26, 2016

Meant to also link to their "explanation" of why they are posting the "information" on Reddit.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:34 AM on April 26, 2016

I halfway suspect this is the trailhead for an ARG, or maybe it's just good old fashioned creepypasta. Either way, it's excellent. Thanks for posting.
posted by zeusianfog at 10:39 AM on April 26, 2016

Through repeated self-experimentation, I have fractured the time-state of my brain,

Yup.
posted by aught at 10:45 AM on April 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Don't worry, the SCP Foundation is on it!
posted by blue_beetle at 10:49 AM on April 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

So good.
posted by eyeballkid at 10:52 AM on April 26, 2016

God damn, I don't think I could come up with a more subtly malevolent phrase than flesh interfaces if I tried.
posted by Itaxpica at 11:03 AM on April 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

[Mod note: some comments deleted. Please don't copy paste long passages from other websites or in this case, print books. And however you managed to bypass the limitation on inline images please do not do it again.]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:07 AM on April 26, 2016 [16 favorites]

I recently had a dream that echoes (but the dream came first?) certain parts of this story (however, my dream also included clearly seeing a big chunk of the moon exploding). Its a dream that has stuck with me for several days, clearly.

To say that I should not have read this, but also could not stop reading, is something of an understatement.
posted by anastasiav at 11:17 AM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't get it.
posted by cjorgensen at 11:23 AM on April 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

So this numnut is the reason I had to go with the name _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES10?! Fantastic.
posted by bologna on wry at 11:34 AM on April 26, 2016 [28 favorites]

This is great. For those who are into the meta-mystery, there's a subreddit - /r/9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9.

The What do we know so far? post there is a good next step.
posted by mama casserole at 11:40 AM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is amazing.

Reddit gets its fair share of well-deserved hate, but then stuff like this surfaces.
posted by erst at 11:47 AM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Reminds me quite a bit of the Hyperion Cantos.
posted by Sleddog_Afterburn at 11:48 AM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

bologna on wry: "So this numnut is the reason I had to go with the name _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES10?! Fantastic."
You motherfuckers.
posted by _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES11 at 11:51 AM on April 26, 2016 [91 favorites]

Novaya Zemla was recently discussed, with regard to seeing a sunset that isn't there. I think it was here.

Fascinating literature. Would be great to be a part of random creation. I have never been able to fly though, even with putting on the towel and clothespin and jumping off the couch, in the era of my strongest wishes.
posted by Oyéah at 11:55 AM on April 26, 2016

The fractured narrative and staunch refusal to explain anything more than it absolutely has to, relying on the reader to come to their own understanding, reminds me of Instructions for a Fruit.
posted by lekvar at 11:56 AM on April 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

And however you managed to bypass the limitation on inline images please do not do it again.

Yeah, dammit.


Wait, what?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:57 AM on April 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I have to go to "reddit" to read this? I might need more wine...
posted by From Bklyn at 12:17 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

_9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES11

Best use of $5 I've seen today.
posted by Gygesringtone at 12:25 PM on April 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

Is Potomac Ave a mod now?

Part-time. And only in in the case of [redacted]-probability fractures which might lead to [redacted] or other outside-context issues.
posted by bonehead at 12:32 PM on April 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

however you managed to bypass the limitation on inline images

Must have used some kind of special interface.
posted by Iridic at 12:35 PM on April 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

I'm still all weirded out over Borrasca. I cannot. Like I really need to go wash my hands now.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 1:19 PM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Gygesringtone: "Best use of $5 I've seen today."

Eh.
posted by boo_radley at 1:21 PM on April 26, 2016

Seems like /r/FifthWorldProblems is leaking.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:28 PM on April 26, 2016

Since the Reddit user interface is such a segmented nightmare to me, I just want to confirm. There are only 20 (or so) entries, with the first being "a unite a stage a coup a revolution a bring a genocide a new world a" from 5 days ago and the most recent being "Lying in the hold, listening to the bombardment, there is no sleep." from 18 hours ago. I'm not missing anything, am I?
posted by Rock Steady at 1:50 PM on April 26, 2016

That's all I found, RS.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:01 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Am I missing any thing"

Not any more than anyone else is. Missing.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:01 PM on April 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

And you, you are new to Trout Farm?
posted by beerperson at 2:39 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Reading these alongside that podcast Tanis is fun because of how eerily similar they are in premise and execution. But I'm not super familiar with the conspiracy genre. Maybe body-altering spacetime-warping portals are a staple?
posted by picklenickle at 3:41 PM on April 26, 2016

So it's "Outlast" fanfiction, then?
posted by Scattercat at 4:44 PM on April 26, 2016

What in the everliving fuck...?

I've dosed a fair amount of LSD over the years and still this is beyond me. Even my ayahusca-loving neighbor didn't get this nutty. (And he had some damn nutty beliefs)
posted by wierdo at 6:30 PM on April 26, 2016

Whoa. Wait. Wait. Whoa.


Are we up into the 240,000 user numbers?? Holy CROW

Also, I dig this. It's just spooky and plausible enough.
posted by nevercalm at 7:29 PM on April 26, 2016

Definitely a Tim Powers vibe. Good post.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:03 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I want to hear more about how Elizabeth Bathory may have been a precedent for LSD-enabled flesh interface creation! Sounds gruesome!
posted by Lyme Drop at 9:14 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

There's been another comment from them posted since RS's last comment, this time including what seems to be Korean, although I have no idea how good the google translate for that is. There has also been a post by the same account in a different tone, this time about Philip K Dick and alcoholism. That one is actually kind of an effecting read as well, but in a serious way.
posted by neonrev at 9:52 PM on April 26, 2016

Gygesringtone: " _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES11

Best use of $5 I've seen today."

until _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES12
posted by symbioid at 10:05 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Potomac had me going there for a second.

...We've met before.
posted by ostranenie at 10:40 PM on April 26, 2016

I am writing about what has never been, and what must never be.

Unfortunately, our generation has been given a special burden. We are doomed, as the apocryphal Chinese curse has it, to live in interesting times. Soon, technological advances in the field of information technology and bioengineering will fundamentally reshape human existence. There are a number of possible outcomes, and I believe that most of them will result in the human race entering unending era of absolute slavery.

As a free species, we have seen totalitarianism before, and we have destroyed it. But when it arises again, aided by advanced information and biological technology, it will have a new and unprecedented ability to envelop the entire earth and place humanity in an unalterable state of total mental and physical slavery that will last for uncounted millennia until the earth becomes uninhabitable .

Not only do I believe that this outcome is possible, I believe that it is overwhelmingly likely. Out of all the trillions of possible futures arrayed before us, 99.9999% of them result in this outcome. As Christ said, "Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But narrow is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

We must find and enter the narrow gate, but it will not be easy. It order to find it, we must sort through the many possible pasts to find the few possible futures which result in a humanity free to live and die as humans, and not as an unholy agglomeration of mindless flesh. Unfortunately, as we fight against the forces of slavery and death, it will be precisely our instincts towards the preservation of freedom and life that will lead us to destruction. In short, we live in precarious times.

Dear MetaFilter, Today I found my new favorite horror author. Seriously this person is fucking great.
posted by 3urypteris at 11:23 PM on April 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Um, sorry, I missed the mod note above. Lengthy quotes nonetheless, I really appreciate this person's skills in building completely fucking insane narratives just sensical enough to be horrifying, and then posting them all over reddit in such subreddits as "mildlyinteresting," "funny," and "todayilearned." And then going and making an artist's note describing why they're what they're doing that could be plausibly genuine or equally plausibly just a deeper level of reality-warping terror.
posted by 3urypteris at 11:59 PM on April 26, 2016

And ( so far ) the length of each post has been perfect. This is some good art here...
posted by mikelieman at 12:28 AM on April 27, 2016

The James Taylor name-drop is perfection itself. Reminds me of HST's commentary on Leary
posted by mikelieman at 12:45 AM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

And somewhere, in the middle of a vast expanse of national park forest, a lone staircase gently weeps.
posted by valkane at 2:09 AM on April 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

After reading that for 15 minutes, I felt like I was on LSD trip. A bad one!

Too creepy! But I bookmarked it. When I'm feeling better/in a better state of mind, I'm going to try to read the whole thing.
posted by james33 at 3:35 AM on April 27, 2016

This is genious, giving Me cstross and mamatas weirdness vibes right there in The mythos of hpl.
posted by xcasex at 5:13 AM on April 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, two new posts published today with even More ludicrous stories :o
posted by xcasex at 5:13 AM on April 27, 2016

This is really good reading, it reminds me a little of Borges Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.
posted by boilermonster at 9:09 AM on April 27, 2016

The subreddit has been made private and now displays this message:

r/9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9

An interface has opened to /r/SandersForPresident.... let us begin anew.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:44 AM on April 27, 2016

the vegetable part of "Wanna Be Startin' Something" wtf lol
posted by STFUDonnie at 10:04 AM on April 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

The subreddit has been made private and now displays this message:

Now it says

A portal has opened to /r/The_Donald .... embrace the change.

"This flesh interface is yooge. Just the best flesh interface you could imagine. The biggest metal cylinder, and many many segmentations."
posted by Rock Steady at 10:15 AM on April 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's not directly obvious from the user page, so I'd like to highlight a post made to /r/ cripplingalcoholism: Ah! The Simple Nemesis.

The influence of Dick is clearer in this context.
posted by bonehead at 10:23 AM on April 27, 2016

Now the r/9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9 landing page just says

thisubreddithasbeencloseddonotmessagehtemoderators
posted by Itaxpica at 11:29 AM on April 27, 2016

Here you go neonrev, the Korean in English (via Google translate).

" The devil came here ."
" The soldiers had built a gate. As a child of command."
" The devil took Jesus to go into the mountains to show his glory, and all the kingdoms of the earth . If you said, I will give it all to you fall down and worship me ."
posted by popaopee at 12:49 PM on April 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh man, this rules. Thanks for posting it! This is some top-notch net horror. I'm getting a real Junji Ito vibe, and not just because of the obvious similarities to The Enigma of Amigara Fault. He's taking a really surreal, flat-out nonsensical set of concepts and placing them into a real world context, selling the subjective horror of it so well that the reader glosses over the total dream logic of it all.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 3:24 PM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

The subreddit now links to this with the words The End. Anyone know what that is?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:30 PM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

For the lazy: that link leads to a morse code sequence, which translates to a binary sequence which itself translates to:

the horse's eye (yellow sand) is leaving everyone nervously contemplating eating dark mother eggs

I know no more
posted by andycyca at 7:12 PM on April 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Just watched an Australian video on that Mamasite for some kind of Heinz Ketchup Pockets they market to babys in Australia and now Im really really scared Greg
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:38 PM on April 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

the horse's eye (yellow sand) is leaving everyone nervously contemplating eating dark mother eggs

T H E Y S I L E N C E D M E
posted by Earl the Polliwog at 7:47 PM on April 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

I am poor at puzzles Greg Nog. But I do sense a bit of a riddle going on here too

But a right click view page source on that youtube page for Mamamia refers to the odd phrase "not-nirvana-dogfood".

Curious enough to be somewhat unique, brief search of that heads to this reddit page.
that refers to a Reddit user 0_0mg
both of which seem to have the same sense of alice's rabbit hole type stuff as horses9 eyes and etc
as I say, poor at puzzles, cant really make much sense of it beyond that
posted by Plutocratte at 7:58 PM on April 27, 2016

OMG Adult Swim has hacked reality
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:20 PM on April 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Translation of the Greek in the newest comment:

"Great Babylon, the mother of prostitutes and the abominations of the earth."
"The beast you saw was, and CDR Estin, and Future anavainein"

The second is most likely incorrect, but I can't get Google to parse it better.
posted by quadrilaterals at 5:58 AM on April 28, 2016

"anavainein"

Sounds Finnish. I am finished here.
posted by Oyéah at 9:15 AM on April 28, 2016

Otherwise it is muddle speak for No Wine no!
posted by Oyéah at 9:15 AM on April 28, 2016

Great Babylon , the mother of prostitutes and the abominations of the earth.

Roughly translates to Yo Momma!
posted by Oyéah at 9:19 AM on April 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

But a right click view page source on that youtube page for Mamamia refers to the odd phrase "not-nirvana-dogfood".

"not-nirvana-dogfood" is showing up on the page source for every youtube video I check (including just a bunch of random front page ones), and 'dogfood' is a pretty commonly used term within Google (and the tech industry at large) for an unreleased beta test feature (as in, the dogfood version of an app is a version being tested internally that will be released soon). It's almost definitely just internal Youtube stuff, not ARG related.
posted by Itaxpica at 10:11 AM on April 28, 2016

Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. The chamber was... just a nightmare. I mean, I never... I've just never seen that. It was unholy. There were faces and heads and legs all kind of fused together. The walls were just all these crawling limbs and these terrified faces and fusions of teeth and cheeks and hair and fingers coming out of knees and just... they... all those people! Were they still people? Had they ever been people? Had they been made a part of that thing?

From this comment. Yeesh. Are these maybe the missing bits of the people that were "segmented"?
posted by Rock Steady at 10:23 AM on April 28, 2016

Also, there's a new subreddit at r/9m9h9e9
posted by Itaxpica at 10:29 AM on April 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Awesome. Does anybody have a copy of the original "explanation" text? By the time I looked the sub had been closed.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:44 AM on April 28, 2016

I went looking through this, and copied out a bunch of stuff, and made connections. Like Lisa Simpson takes a wrong bus and ends up in Area 51, in one episode. The quotes in Korean were Christian. The yellow sands quote is from The Tempest. There is a lead in to Phillip K Dick, and suffering from Alcoholism and drug abuse.

Someone in Reddit identified the 9horse eyes guy as someone named Jingles. Jingles seems articulate when I read her/his comments. It is a quixotic bunch of stuff. Gotta wonder if this isn't stolen text from someone's sci-fi writing, and put out on the web as ummm, warning or even blackmail, over hacking of creative output, pre-publication.

There. I want to find a message, of course, but this is probably a method.
posted by Oyéah at 10:52 AM on April 28, 2016

The beast you saw was, and CDR Estin , and Future anavainein,Here is my brief little trudge, through connections.
Estin & Co - Strategy Consulting
www.estin.com/
Estin & Co is a strategy consulting firm which specializes in customized and fact-based analyzes for international corporations facing complex issues related to ...
‎Careers - ‎Offices - ‎People - ‎Contact
Careers - Estin
www.estin.com/career.html
Estin & Co is a small and growing firm. It offers outstanding opportunities to those who have ambition and competence. We have no limit to promotions, based on ...
Greek Concordance: ἐστιν (estin) -- 903 Occurrences - Bible Hub
biblehub.com/greek/estin_1510.htm
Bible Hub
ἐστιν (estin) — 903 Occurrences. Matthew 1:20 V-PI-3S · GRK: ἐκ πνεύματός ἐστιν ἁγίου. INT: from [the] Spirit is Holy. Matthew 1:23 V-PI-3S · GRK: Ἐμμανουήλ ...
________________________________________

Translation of the Korean
Jesus
The devil came here.
" The soldiers had built a gate. As a child of command."
" The devil took Jesus to go into the mountains to show his glory, and all the kingdoms of the earth . If you said, I will give it all to you fall down and worship me ."
The Tempest
Come unto these yellow sands,
 And then take hands.
 Curtsied when you have, and kissed
 The wild waves whist.
 Foot it featly here and there,
 And, sweet sprites, bear
 The burden. Hark, hark!

395 FERDINAND
Where should this music be? I' th' air or th' earth?
It sounds no more, and sure, it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father’s wrack,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air. Thence I have followed it,
Or it hath drawn me rather. But ’tis gone.
No, it begins again.

"Lost Our Lisa"

After accidentally taking the wrong bus, Lisa ended up at "The End of the Line" in the middle of a desert and had no idea where she was. While looking for the way home, she found a secret military base. She thought it was Area 51, but the guard told her it's actually Area 51-A.

Make America Great (Britain) again!

Is this Jingles? I reckon it might be.
Brooklyn GI also a possibility.
posted by Oyéah at 11:00 AM on April 28, 2016

There was this other thing, kind of interesting, the Estin reference, there is a piece of music by a german band Fehrnsehtiere and the tune is Estin, published on Youtube by Tainted Ronin.

Fehrnsehtiere, might mean TV Animal. The company feiyr.com publishes music etc, so there you go. The music is kind of dreamy, staticky like chocked full of all kinds of good information.

a nav a I nen.
posted by Oyéah at 11:10 AM on April 28, 2016

Johnny Wallflower: You mean the author's post to the original subreddit? It's archived on the wiki page on the new subreddit.
posted by cameleon at 11:37 AM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Anabainein

bainein infinitive of "to go" (cognate Latin venire, "to come"; Sanskrit gantum "to go"; and English "come")

ana- prefix meaning "on, up, upon, toward" (cognate Sasnkrit "anu", English "on")
posted by baconaut at 11:57 AM on April 28, 2016

Thanks, cameleon.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:38 PM on April 28, 2016

Anabainein, or, not one child or body in mutt translation.
posted by Oyéah at 12:40 PM on April 28, 2016

The reddit discussion of the author's explanation for his reasons for writing are, entirely, devoid of any previous encounter with metafiction. It's breathtaking how sincerely they believe that anything posted on reddit must be nonfiction including that a very experienced expert in schizophrenia just popped into the thread where 30 people are posting & isn't just some jerk pretending to be an abnormal psychologist for attention.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:13 PM on April 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

We worked on grafting a tape recorder to a turtle, but this was unsuccessful on several levels.

I'll be sad when this is over.
posted by STFUDonnie at 12:34 AM on April 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

IT'S IN REVELATIONS, PEOPLE

τὸ θηρίον ὃ εἶδες ἦν καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν, καὶ μέλλει ἀναβαίνειν
"The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is to ascend [from the bottomless pit]"
posted by gubo at 9:34 PM on May 1, 2016

There's a good write-up about the Interface Series at the Guardian.
posted by bstreep at 10:08 AM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

An expansion of the story written by _9Mother9Horse9Eyes/Mother Horse Eyes at Motherboard:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/flesh-interface
posted by jjwiseman at 10:31 AM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]