#5sd

The Pit Bowler

True visionaries often encounter scenarios of foresight that have to be taken either at face value or investigated further, depending on the significances they bear and which areas in life are subject to them.

The future, with AI being thrown at us and billions of dollars flowing into technology sectors, seems quite dangerous. A quite known remote viewer implied that AI should be "bolted to the floor" to be safe - if not, that could become a problem: A problem in a sense that such dynamic and highly intelligent system may use external components and resources to (re)assemble itself and become autonomous. Once it is autonomous, it is time to opt for being equipped with good luck. The defenses against something like this are never soon enough to be made readily available, and even the sight, sounds, or even smells of something like this unfolding could be nothing short of overwhelming.

Assuming that some sort of large-scale havoc has been caused, large numbers of us wiped out (or enslaved), and the entire logic of our infrastructures and society changed - what could our environment look like after the showdown? How will our day-to-day life be?

According to certain visionaries, the aftermath might be uncomfortably dark, but only to an extent where we would find ourselves living a serious dark adventure. Not only would it be about survival, but also about building groups and acquiring certain territories that we may both call "home" or even "headquarters". Without a group, you might be screwed, and the resources you will have to guard may be gone overnight, be it by raids, lootings or simple theft. Difficult situations like this can bring out the worst in people, but only in a sense of acute panic and lawlessness.

Now, aliens and demonic entities are, in essence, equally terrifying and maybe not something we ultimately expect to be actually real or actually among us. The possibility of it though is there, even when the "How?" question can only be responded to in a speculative way. Some assume that demonic entities can never manifest physically into this world without using a soul as its vessel since they remain only in the spiritual realm - on the other hand, some say that such entities can indeed be manifested into physical reality by those who have the time, resources and knowledge on how to do it.

Think tanks in the intelligence realm naturally gravitate towards recognizing the dangers of nanobot swarms that can be somehow collectively guided by a force, whether it is artificial or "supernatural". Both instances sure would cause damage and pain. The most important thing is to look at the facts of what is possible, and with very "interesting" individuals being in the technology sector these days, who knows how all these billions of dollars are being used in terms of creating even more outlandish technologies that are so fluid and smart that they may escape the grips of their founders' cage. These technologies are already way more voluminous than we actually need - and going full force to develop such technologies to its full extent is more like the erection of a giant circus that plays by itself and can only be watched from afar. There is not much meaning to these things for us personally if we can't really interact with it, or benefit from it, in some way, shape or form. Watching things, well, we could do it all day, but we won't be of much use in terms of such technology "waiting" for our input.

The word "Dystopia" has never been used before as often as these days. The "D-Word" is not just about some political state or a bunch of cameras looking at us. It is in the air. It may be a combination of blackout, spiritual confusion, desperation and a "each on his own"-scenario. Anything that has been build in the old world can be manipulated, and yes - even power grids. Obviously, such catastrophe would be an almost immediate return to the stone age, except that we have a few more libraries these days to gather information on how to actually survive or catch a fish.

Now, imagine a major catastrophy of large proportion has already happened and you are in the midst of the quiet, dark aftermath: Lucky to have survived, sad that everyone you hold dear is gone, driven to rebuild your own survival and safety. You roam the streets in the darkness, you found a certain source of food such as corn crops or rations you have collected beforehand, and you have plenty of it. You or your group have established some kind of property that is shielded from looters or robbers, but you are also stuck with others who are in desperate need for a piece of what you have. A delicate scenario, enough to keep you busy thinking for a minute.

In this delicate scenario, some form of trading might be an option, depending on where you reside. In this lawless, dark environment, there may also be an unexplainable attraction towards pleasure. And, visionaries have seen this - trading will have a certain spectrum. For example, someone trading sex for a bit of what you have. You and your group, in this hypothetical scenario, are armed with weapons and ammunition in a sense of being quite powerful proportionally to the misery around. Sharing away things out of a self-deluded sense of heroism or philantropy will only ruin you and your group, so your resources are not an infinite supply for the hungry, sick and dystopian geographical location you have set your bunker in.

If you are the master of your protected residence, you may offer some of your belongings for certain favors. It is also possible to trade, exchange or swap some of your belongings with the belongings of others. Accepting strangers into your group or bunker would be, again, neither profitable nor safe, and wouldn't make much sense. Your community would also probably only consist of actual "soulmates" or individuals who are somewhere on the same awareness spectrum as you. Anyone else you don't trust, or interact only with by exchanging favors.

In the really lowest level of such post-apocalyptic atmosphere, people will most likely be confined to needing to protect their children or the children of others. The lawlessness also consists of no one wanting to "play police" since hunger is rampant and such vigilante activity would only drain the specific person(s) faster than a car accelerating at the last drop of fuel. You're all on your own. The speculations about this aspect of being stranded really vary from reasonable to hellish. For example, if a certain group wants gold, you better have it. If another exchanges blankets for drugs, you gotta have it. If there is a special case of very bad persons trading in another macabre way, you will have to lend your son or daughter. All of these things really depend on the unforeseen qualities of the troubled survivors around you, and when the certain collective security and morals of society are stripped away, the strongest group or individual will be the boss. Otherwise, death looms, and it is quite clear that not everyone wants to take their chance.

In this day and age, glimpses of a world gone bad can be seen in the so-called "Tranq Zombies" that are out in the open like Kensington, Philadelphia and New York. Take a few minutes to watch this footage and imagine this situation nationwide. In this example, healthy and functioning people are walking past those who are locked in a hunched-over, crooked position even for multiple hours on end - and there is a hard time helping those folks without without breaching their right to privacy, dragging them to hospitals and treating them with Narcan. At some point, masks will fall off, almost everything we held dear in our fancy online world will be rendered useless, and we will have to roll up our sleeves and engage in things with our full presence and being.

Now, in a cyberpunk scenario of a large city or metropolis being shut down to a bare minimum, both average civilians and fierce "criminals" will have quite the friction coexisting with each other. Yet, there is not much to gain for those criminals in terms of "living big", except for looting and taking as many resources from others as possible to get by for maybe a week or two. Sure it isn't wrong putting some trust into people preparing themselves to fend off attackers and robbers - in the ideal case, the survivors will try to mind their own business and get at least a little bit of rest amidst of many different shortcomings and dangers. Many buildings or store properties could be empty, and they could be either inhabited to establish pseudo-businessess (trading goods and services for favors), or they will be outright pleasure zones where the collective has acknowledged living at the very edge where morals or consequences do not even matter anymore. People were used to law and order, but no one would want to try to impose it unto others - be it from the lack of weaponry, resources, sheer physical strength or just mental will. The world feels empty, the artificial and digital world has been completely erased, and you are left with the immediate environment around you.

To experiment with such scenarios, you can simply cut the power to your entire house and spend at least one night in a state without power. Material enrichment doesn't come around by itself; You would see the side of you that you would have never expected before. We all would be hunter-gatherers in no time, and navigating the darkness would be a crucial part of everyday life, given that the moon will be the only source of light at night if there is neither electricity, nor batteries, nor fire or fuel to create a source of light.

One of our visionaries has seen a downtown city environment similar to Tokio with its the streets being largely empty. Certain stations (e.g. railway, tram stations, bus stations, or simply city centers) would be equipped with telepathic screens where we can converse or video call our friends, or they can call us. Only the caller or the receiver of the call would see and hear his particular call partner on the screen, while another person wil see hers. There is a possibility of clean night clubs where we sometimes run intro the trouble of some people temporarily transforming into "aliens" or showing symptoms of transformation, where such night club has to temporarily evacuate itself from being too close to the effects of the alien transformation. There would be thrill and danger, but only in a way where we'd have to step back for a while until certain "derailments" return back to normal.

In a quasi-conclusion, the "perfect" dystopia (if there is one) would be one that challenges every inch of your being while leaving your health intact if you stick to your guns and do what you know is necessary to both survive, improve your situation, and just take a deep breath while looking around and asking "Shit, is this really happening?". The reason for this is perhaps the ultimate feeling of aliveness with no time to waste or wail away complaining about what happens on the other side of the world. One of our visionary states that it is indeed a dark place to be in, but it also has a refreshingly new and challenging feeling to it.

It may probably unleash even genetic memory from centuries ago, where you are constantly giving your best without having one minute complaining what happens on social media or being inhibited by the many rules, restrictions and regulations our society has carried before the hypothetical apocalypse. Certainly, not everyone is as resilient as our visionaries in question who assume to be mentally prepared for a catastrophe like this, but that is also a reason why a large number of people would have not survived even the first stage of the post-apocalyptic world: Being raised overly cared for, relying on others to ensure their security, and having things dished to them on a silver platter. In kindergarten and schools we learn to play with funky colors and rhyme funny rhymes, yet it is not enough to harden our shells to recognize and handle extremities being thrown at us.

5SD was created in the summer of 2024 as a very spontaneous undertaking just to see what comes out of the scenes i would capture both with my drone and my other camera.

The camera quality of the DJI Mini 4 Pro is astounding and i was not expecting it to have such cinematic quality. It definitely arouses the fantasy part of filming scenes.

With the same mindset i had in my childhood, i headed out multiple nights after midnight with my scooter, carrying a big bag (and a basket) of various devices, drones, spotlights, torch lights, chargers, a power bank and even with my Walther PPQ defense pistol holstered on the side of my hip. The rural area where i moved to doesn't provide many interesting sights, so i could only use a few specific areas: Three local (small) forests and the local train station. Fantasy and the right shots would do the rest.

In the beginning of "Luminous Ones" i risked filming on a main street in the middle of the night, hiding the drone in the air while cars were passing by. The tension was quite incredible: I had about 4 hours until sunrise. I had to get as many shots done as possible before the streets got filled up with the cars of people who would be driving to work in the morning hours. I wanted to remain as undetected as possible. I had to set my alarm multiple times to 1 AM, dress up as quick as a firefighter while being fully tired and exhausted, and drag all my equipment (including my scooter) to various places, hoping that the rain won't fall. In one instance it did while i was driving to "work", and in some cases, i had to cancel filming as soon as it started raining.

It is not an usual sight that a guy with a defense gun in his holster stands on the side of a street or in the middle of the woods, with a drone flying around and a camera on a tripod, trying to get the lore done at such "ungodly" hour, eventually raising the suspicions of vehicular passerbys. I believe that some cars who shone their headlights at me before they passed by were not too comfortable taking their foot of the gas pedal at that moment. However, i always waved and went out of their way.

Although filming the whole thing was not pleasant (sprinting, walking back and forth, watching out for cars passing through, recording footstep sounds on my phone separately, stepping through high grass and risking ticks, watching the batteries, controlling the drone, filming myself while controlling the drone...) - i realized that it works.

Seeing myself in the role of an actor within these flicks as a very self-conscious and reclusive guy made me question the continuity of the story i'm trying to tell, especially right after "Luminous Ones". I could always pick up where i left off and continue filming short flicks based on abstraction or spontaneously created scripts, but i realized that i'd love to have different faces and more complexity to it. In conclusion, i am in need of new faces and new places, and i believe this project has a lot of potential.

I did an incredible amount of theoretical work - here, at my computer. I drafted a hypothetical team of the 5SD characters, from the director to 5SD's hitmen, and initially hosted a simple Wordpress website to showcase the work in its own place. The thing is that 5SD is a film side project next to my music, and my music usually has the highest priority. I reached a fair amount of burnout, and what my fellow followers did not know was that was spectacularily arrested for a self-defense case aganst a neighbor just a few weeks after i dropped my album and released "Luminous Ones".

As a guy who doesn't have the resources to actually fund a serious movie production, the only way to make this whole project shine and sing was to make it open source, and find like-minded individuals who are intrigued by the idea of participating in spy-fi fantasy - within Austria of course. All that is needed is a good script, some working cameras, the right gadgets and actors, and we would get deep into whatever we come up with.

Considering how the present and future looks like, with AI being an enhancement for anything (especially stories), i felt like this will be quite a challenge since the possibilities are endless. Finding open minded people these days also needs finesse, because most people shy away from participating in these things, which is more likely to happen in Europe than in America. I want to make clear that i am facilitating the format and framework of 5SD as best as i can, and if it works, i'd directly travel to Vienna or whatever and try to chat up potential actors who see value in participating in 5SD.

The establishment 5SD Operations Center

I dissolved the Wordpress website and set up an entirely new website with a strong and fast content management system.

This website is supposed to be a portal to 5SD, including the chance for non-involved visitors to roleplay a job at this fictional intelligence agency.

That means that the website should both showcase 5SD's work, plus serve as a hiring portal for collaborators, plus be a roleplay website with a data archive system, a creation station, and a console platform where members can analyze and classify incoming intel that was submitted by anyone, including anonymous visitors.

This would be an unique opportunity to literally roleplay a tiny bit of what we think intel agencies do, while incorporating submitted ideas to the movie production, fusing different points of view into a final movie script. Open-source, piece by piece, without being resource-intensive or expensive. The whole project would live off the collective resources.

This screenshot is only the front page. In a nutshell, the Operations Center includes:

A hiring and registration system

An intel analysis console (intel inbox)

A creation station with content submission features (SpyDeas, Script Boxes, Equipment Base and Intel)

User profiles

A ranking system

A data archive (inspired by CIA's Electronic Reading Room)

A "Pipeline" (a roleplay messaging system where call codes are used to contact recipients)

"The Stream" (a page where the fusion process, from ideas to finished project, can be tracked)

5SD Tools (a collection of HTML/PHP minigames and tools that somehow match the intel agency aesthetics).

Now, i may or may not add some more information to this post, but i believe you should just take a look at the website itself and dare to register for a minute. Do not use a mobile phone, there are quite some bugs and design flaws on the phone. It's not 100% flawless yet because some of my ideas where really at the verge of being unrealizable.

However, the website itself is up for now, and even if it is incomplete, i will leave it here for the future and tweak the rest over the following months to try to get it to perfection. No big promises though, i'm not an octopus! And my priorities are currently at my music and getting my life straight.

Unknown device H-A101X acquired at [redacted] train station underpass; 3:37 AM in front of security cameras. Its purpose is still under investigation, but is showing reaction towards crystal materials. Possibly a scanner. Placed by an individual in a white shirt before fleeing from our agent. Attempting to unscrew or otherwise open the device radiates a blistering, scorching thermal wave.