Features • Spring 2026 - Fear
Gezi
Once again, a newborn cried for the first time. The bald scream carried her voice through crowds in a chestnut-smelling street, rousing the cats from their curbside sleep. The sound stretched farther on to the trees of Taksim as they shuddered with an intensity foreign to them. The cats knew of what was coming before us. They found Spirit in a corner of İstiklal, licked and nursed her. They were the ones who would tell her about the name of the street, about how long before it meant independence, it meant dismissal and rebellion. They told her, as she cried, that she was rebelling even now when she did not know the word for it. They were the ones who decided that the time was right and carried the newborn to a nearby park. The cats, from atop the branches of Gezi, all silent in their knowing, wanted to show Spirit the trees.
Poetry • Spring 2026 - Fear
There’s something to be said about those little birds inside the eggs, with the sticky baby down and bones melted tender. This morning, you call me soup-for-brains and I imagine a boy’s guts cupped inside the feathered belly on my plate—another boy pressed open like a drum, a membrane. I drink the brine from a jar of Koon Chun plums for breakfast. Practice, I say, and you call me Pussy for the first time all week. They say it doesn’t taste like anything. Just the salt of the duck and the blood-tang of marrow. But I forgot you’re tutoring Leah Wong at her place today, so I turn and face your black-feathered buzzcut. No time for a game behind the school with the Chus’ half-popped basketball, which yesterday I poked till it dimpled and likened it to one of her mom’s big fake ones, and you hit me. For a split-second I thought I saw your eyes turn milky and your spine go baby-bent, but I pulled up your T-shirt and you were still hairless as a girl, your skin opaque. So it’s dinnertime and Mom isn’t home yet and all I have is the chick in my egg. He’s just boiled awake, beak parting to call me Dumbass. Soft. My fingers turn to yellow protein in calcium dust, prying you into this wet, scalding kitchen. Walls gum-pink and beating; I take you where heat reigns.
Features • Spring 2026 - Fear
By no means is this a famous story. It takes place in Huntsville, Utah, a small town of under six-hundred residents, located in Ogden Valley on Pineview Reservoir. Surrounded by three ski resorts (Snowbasin, Powder Mountain, and Nordic Valley) there is no shortage of idyllic views, nor a shortage of seasoned skiers wishing to park amongst these idyllic views. This is observed by the abundance of Parking by Permit Only signs that prohibit parking west of 7300 E Street, made possible by the Huntsville Town Ordinance on April 19th, 2018.
Fiction • Spring 2026 - Fear
Big John stood near me with the electric blue above us, screaming out with its shine for everyone to drink it. Lines of neon stretched and twisted into a beauty of advertising brilliance. We were drinking it and the bottles were sweating and it made me feel good for the first time all day.
The fresh online pieces we experiment with outside of our print cycle. Formerly known as Blog.
From the Archives
Features • Summer 2015
By now, the Islamic State’s (IS) deft command of media is well recognized. The group, previously known as ISIS or ISILI, began receiving widespread attention for its publicity campaign in the summer of 2014. In June, the group established the al-Hayat Media Center, a production agency aimed at reaching Western audiences. Shortly thereafter, the new center released its first video titled, “There Is No Life Without Jihad.”1 The video is a thirteen minute plus production featuring three Western jihadists who urge devout Muslims worldwide to join and fight for the Islamic State. The video is long, somewhat overproduced, and absolutely gorgeous. Since then, the Islamic State has released countless texts, videos, and images that display increasing technical and strategic proficiency in what some have termed, “The Jihadi War of Ideas.”2
Two weeks later, the group proclaimed itself a caliphate, revealing the strategic timing in the foundation of al-Hayat. The Islamic State seeks exactly what its name purports: to establish and expand the caliphate. In order to demonstrate legitimacy as such, the Islamic State requires an extensive media plan to project an image of stability, strength, and active expansion, or “offensive jihad,”3 and the establishment of a new media center points to the Islamic State’s intimate understanding of this. The content of major IS media productions explicitly constructs this image by portraying a high-powered military force that is in active conflict with its enemies, and this more aggressive content is complemented by depictions of social and political stability, economic prosperity, and just governance. Less explicitly, but perhaps more importantly, control of and proficiency in media production and dissemination is itself coded as synonymous with power.
This focused attention on the role of mass media by an extremist group is not new. The Islamic State shared deep ties with al-Qaeda, beginning as a localized branch once known as “al-Qaeda in Iraq.”4 As such, its recognition of the power of media is informed deeply by al-Qaeda’s own emphasis on mass media, both distributed by Western sources and generated internally. However, the glossy, highly produced graphics and videos published by the Islamic State indicate that its understanding of media has expanded and diverged from its foundations. Moreover, the immense quantity and direct-to-viewer distribution model indicates that this is an altogether new phenomenon in extremist media and even the field of propaganda. This is not the single take, 4:3 aspect ratio, al-Qaeda video of the early 2000’s. This is not even its Inspire magazine of the early 2010’s. This is a top-down industry of production with a comprehensive strategy, realized vision, and unified message: we are here, we are strong, and we are coming for you. This is Islamic State Media.
I: “Don’t hear about us. Hear from from us.”5?
*Development & Distribution Models*
Since July of 2014, the Islamic State has released hundreds of videos,II innumerable images, and a multilingual digital magazine, issued monthly.6 Beginning in 2013, it has even published an annual report, al-Naba, broadcasting statistics of the group’s activities and successes, complete with an attractive and useful at-a-glance infographic.7 Though the open distribution of this material creates an impression of transparency, reliable information detailing the internal workings of the Islamic State—much less its media production—is difficult to find. The group is not exactly keen on broadcasting its military or governmental structures, nor is it about to lift the veil on its prolific media operation. Consequently, little is definitively known about the group’s media production infrastructure. But by piecing together content released by the Islamic State, the unknown aspects of its production and distribution models can be conjectured.
The Islamic State claims three major media centers. Each is separately branded with its own logo, but it is unclear exactly how the responsibilities of each differ. It is entirely possible that the branding exists to create an illusion of a more expansive media network than is actually in place. A progenitor of the Islamic State established the al-Furqan Institute for Media Production late in 2006. Al-Furqan has released videos in both English and Arabic and is most infamous for the recent “Jihadi John” decapitation videos of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, American aid worker Peter Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto. It is also responsible, at least in part, for the “Lend Me Your Ears,” series, featuring captured British war photographer, John Cantlie. The I’tisaam Media Foundation was established in 2013, and it is considered to be the principal media center.8 It is responsible for producing the IS annual reports, a Twitter app, and much of the Arabic-language content; however, in the months leading up to establishment of al-Ha- yat, it published English-language content as well.9 The al-Hayat Media Center was established in June of 2014, and of the three, it has received the most attention by far. This is because it creates the most English-language material of any of the branches, is explicitly aimed at Westerners, and publishes some of the most intensely branded content. Al-Hayat is responsible for the monthly magazine, Dabiq, the later Cantlie videos, and a feature-length film, titled Flames of War.
It is likely, though unconfirmed, that the three media centers are somewhat centralized. Access to the internet does not appear to be particularly obstructed, so there would be little need to decentralize, and a primary hub might benefit from economies of scale including the cost of infrastructure and the opportunity to share expertise. In addition, the presence of both a central aesthetic and cohesive message, as well as an apparent ability to pass on projects, suggest that the centers cooperate closely. At the very least, these details indicate strong central roles akin to artistic and creative directors. Decentralized media offices spread throughout IS wilayats, or governorates, also publish content on a daily basis in support of a broader media campaign. This media is generally far less involved or polished but simply dwarfs the three major media centers in terms of discrete quantity. The majority of high-level production, however, originates from the three media centers, which can effectively be assumed to be one centralized agency.
In terms of the process of production, some network of photographers must be in place, based on the geographic reach covered by the images and videos. There are even occasional and accidental appearances of differently outfitted cameramen in some IS videos, suggesting that they might be purposefully deployed. The exact roles and organization of these photographers is unknown, but the abundance of combat footage, particularly in the film Flames of War, suggests high levels of coordination in the field. The equipment and software used is also near or approaching the industry standard, at least in the independent film world. That the videos are in high-definition 1080p is overemphasized as an indicator; most mobile phones produced today will shoot in 1080p. What is actually indicative is the evident use of interchangeable lenses, stabilization rigs, and particularly, ultra slow-motion cameras. The Islamic State’s command of photography, however, is far overhyped. It is certainly proficient in production, but it is not at the level of, “something you’d see on ESPN,” as one expert commented.10 Angles are sometimes clumsy, footage is often over-exposed, and color correction is atrocious, though improving. To overstate technical mastery is somewhat of a distraction from the larger picture: the Islamic State has assembled an industrially sized production network that can nimbly turn around astounding amounts of content at a moderate to high level of production.
After the media is gathered from the field, the process of post-production is much the same as anywhere. Media is edited, exported, and finally, distributed—the easy part. The Islamic State’s method of distribution is basically Twitter.11 The production center uploads new content to one of several free hosting platforms, including YouTube.com, Archive.org, VK.com, or an old-fashioned web forum of al-Qaeda’s day. Several members of a logistics team on the ground in Iraq or Syria then begin posting the download link to Twitter, and their job is to keep the link circulating even as their accounts are actively shut down.12 It is then up to IS fanboys13 to download the video and spread the link, and there is no shortage of accounts to do so. One study estimates that up to 90,000 Twitter accounts are in support of the Islamic State.14 Of course, not all of these accounts are actively re-posting links, but it only takes a handful to a few dozen to garner considerable attention. From there, the media is picked up by more conventional outlets, and it more or less spread itself.
Except that it has never been done before, this model does not appear particularly sophisticated because at its root, it is not. To its credit, the Islamic State is still among the first to harness new media, and it is also strategically gaming it. The I’tisaam Media Foundation released a now dismantled Arabic only Android app that, once downloaded, automatically posted tweets from the Islamic State through the user’s personal Twitter account.15 Translated from Arabic as “The Dawn of Glad Tidings,” it not only guaranteed an almost constant social media presence, but it also posted at wide enough intervals to narrowly avoid Twitter’s spam detection algorithms.16 Furthermore, the Islamic State strategically controls the rate at which content is posted such that each major release can have its own time in the spotlight. One Twitter fanboy even complained to the Islamic State when there were too many big and small releases in a single day. @ ShamiWitness tweets: “#IS needs to restrict the content ,duration and frequency of video released by its Wilayat media offices.” The logistics team will also “hijack” temporally relevant hashtags to reach an even broader audience.17 For instance, the group tagged some of their tweets #WorldCup during soccer games, infamously placing the image of decapitated head in front of soccer fans worldwide with the text, “This is our football, it’s made of skin.”18
This is a distinctly new enterprise in publicity that is entirely up-to-the-minute, the scope of which was previously simply unattainable. Never before has digital camera technology been good enough and inexpensive enough to implement the Islamic State’s vast network of eyes on the ground. Never before has the internet been fast enough nor cloud storage cheap enough to produce and distribute high quality content at such a breakneck pace. And never before has there been a generation as widely saturated and practiced in image creation. The Islamic State has capitalized on each of these developments to create an unprecedented, direct-to-viewer publicity model. In combination with its willful prioritization of mass media to spread a unified message, the Islamic State has created a network that is not only unprecedented in scope, but also requires a new theoretical model altogether.
II. A New Management of Savagery?
*Theories of Propaganda & Mass Communication*
The Islamic State’s media strategy originates with al-Qaeda as much as the group itself. Osama Bin Laden himself emphasized the revolutionary power of mass media, writing in a letter to Emir Al-Momineen: “It is obvious that the media war in this century is one of the strongest methods; in fact, its ratio may reach 90% of the total preparation for the battles.”19 It is also apparent that al-Qaeda has had a considered model in place as early as 2004. Al-Qaeda draws heavily upon the writings of Abu Bakr Naji, the pen name for a jihadist scholar, and principally upon his work, The Management of Savagery. The web-released book is just short of a manifesto produced specifically to provide al-Qaeda and jihadists around the world a theoretical model, with practical applications, for waging jihad. The book describes a complete strategy in service of re-establishing a caliphate, but it foregrounds the role of mass media as a tool utilized by superpowers and jihadists alike. As proposed, the media strategy outlines a three-prong approach: to win support among Muslims, to project an image of amplified power, and to disrupt what Naji refers to as the Western “media halo,”III which is the projection of an image of not just overwhelming, but total power.?
The impact of this document on IS media strategy is acknowledged by analysts,IV and its influence is quite visible in the content itself. The Islamic State actively seeks to recruit, to amplify an image of power, and to tarnish the image of the Western world as invincible.V However, al-Qaeda promotes attacks directly on the West in hopes of dismantling apostate regimes propped up by Western governments; whereas, the Islamic State seeks to actively establish and expand the caliphate.21 This fundamental difference means that the Islamic State needs to demonstrate legitimacy beyond an inflated image of strength, and this necessity results in a dramatically evolved strategy within the framework outlined by The Management of Savagery. In contrast, al-Qaeda’s approach to media stays closer to the theoretical text, and as a result, is fairly passive. Strategies rely largely on controlling what information the established media infrastructure can access. Manipulating media depictions in this way, though light in terms of resources, is difficult and unreliable at best. And Naji’s only explicit tactic is exaggerating the use of force, like using more militants and explosives than necessary for any given operation. For a decentralized and often disparate organization like al-Qaeda, that’s okay—the fire of jihad can always burn within each member of the network. But for the Islamic State, there are tangible parameters of statehood that must be fulfilled. Without them, it is nothing, and no one is coming to the rescue. The Islamic State projects legitimacy both by broadcasting the supposed actualization of its state to the world and by controlling an extensive media network previously only associated with universally recognized, highly powerful entities.
To date, the Islamic State counts over 20,000 foreign fighters among its ranks, several thousand of whom are known to be Westerners,22 but the degree to which IS propaganda has had an impact on these statistics is unknown. The Islamic State’s call to arms reaches beyond the scope of propaganda when some Muslims believe that, “to die without pledging allegiance is to die jahil (ignorant) and therefore to die a ‘death of disbelief.’”23 Additionally, recent writing has speculated that film propaganda is essentially ineffective at substantively influencing public opinion24 and at best, can only reinforce already held opinions.25 However, this perspective does not account for the rise of new media and digital landscapes.26 In a field that is rapidly evolving, the sparse discourse that exists is left lacking a model to account for it. Contemporary writing often only documents these changes, failing to propose substantive frameworks for analysis. Even strong theoretical essays frequently make this kind of comment: “This well-wrought argument simply does not hold water in the age of digital video and new-media propaganda. The flow of information is incalculably faster today, and viewers are far more sophisticated.”27 These things are true but hardly even point in a new direction, much less travel in it. In order to move forward, IS media must be considered as “open,” postmodern texts28 and analyzed with the most recent modern mass communication models.
Twentieth-century propaganda models typically focus on medium and message crafting, assuming a high degree of control over distribution. This concept, of sending the right message to the right audience, is increasingly obsolete since it is now impossible to perfectly implement, given nearly universal access to information technology.VI Rather, the current assumption must be that any given message can spread anywhere, even though it might not. Under this condition, Sean Heuston, Professor of English Literature at The Citadel, suggests that, “propaganda film has changed from work to text in a process first described by Roland Barthes more than thirty years ago in his essays, ‘The Death of the Author,’ and ‘From Work to Text.’”30 Barthes might have chafed at the idea of a work definitively “changing” to a text, but Heuston’s point is compelling. The inability to control the audience necessitates an abandonment of the false presumption that a message can be communicated in perfect fidelity.31 The literature on mass communication strategy seems to be shifting in this direction as well: “a meaning cannot simply be transferred, like a letter mailed from point A to point B. Instead, listeners create meanings from messages based on factors like autobiography, history, local context, culture, language/symbol systems, power relations, and immediate personal needs.”32 State departments worldwide have largely failed to embrace this paradigm shift, preferring a “message influence model” shaped largely on a 1950’s understanding of the telephone.33 The Islamic State, on the other hand, has embraced the concept of propaganda as Barthesian text intuitively if not explicitly.
Islamic State media can be understood in this way partially because the group’s legitimacy is deeply dependent on broadcasting an image of uncompromising ideology. There is no room for substantively different messages. There are often differences in its construction and presentation of media, indicating that it is designed with divergent audiences in mind,34 but to stray too far from the group’s core ideology would catastrophically undermine IS legitimacy. And regardless, the Islamic State is by no means sheepish in proclaiming its divine right to rule; the group distributes as widely as possible, apparently unafraid of what unsympathetic audiences might make of it. In utter scorn of an obsessive control of distribution, the Islamic State’s media, “featur[es] the very kind of content that Western politicians and diplomats have hoped [would] dissuade people’s attraction to the group.”35 Instead, the Islamic State has attracted thousands of foreign supporters. The content is deeply manipulated to portray a consistent ideology, and this consistency allows for a strategy of maximized distribution with the anticipation of multiple interpretations.
Furthermore, it is evident that the Islamic State actively avoids including an Author in its media, such that the question of intention cannot even be properly asked.VII In “The Death of the Author,” Barthes explains that: “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing.”36 By removing this presence, the Islamic State creates media that is only text. In the infamous decapitation videos, “Jihadi John’s” face is not concealed to protect his identity. It was only a matter of time before British or U.S. intelligence agencies identified him, as he sports a British accent, obvious even after an applied audio distortion effect. His face is concealed to prevent an association with one man, a “final sig-ified.” The video establishes him as a symbol—an open-ended signifier. Similarly, when depicting an image of an individual IS fighter, Dabiq magazine often obscures his face. A startling exception to this is when the IS fighter has died in battle.37 Then, the face is shown plainly, and it signifies, rather definitely, a martyr. The use of John Cantlie as a reporter is the primary departure from this consistency. He has appeared in multiple videos and is listed as the writer of several articles in Dabiq. His visible inclusion provides each text an Author, and it is perhaps the most identifiable misstep of the IS media campaign so far. Portraying Cantlie raises doubt as to his intentions and sincerity in an attempt to ascertain the text’s meaning. This doubt is manifested by a Cantlie article in Dabiq, fending off accusations that, “the videos are scripted, and that perhaps [he has] no choice in the content.”38 Regardless of how persuasive, Cantlie’s very presence will always allow for the designation of text as work, ultimately casting doubts on his sincerity and the narrative. However, it is a departure that closes off only a tiny portion of an otherwise overwhelming open narrative, which effectively gives viewers the chance to see whatever they want to see.
III. Looking Good
*Aesthetics*
In all of the coverage of Islamic State media, aesthetics has received the least attention by far. The discourse advanced by popular Western media and scholars alike has been limited to superficial “look” and “wow” narratives. They progress little further because just below the surface, these narratives are built on a pretension of surprise that “they” could do “that.” The Islamic State has indeed done “that,” creating media within an ostensibly Western visual language with the stylistic sensibilities of contemporary new media. This should be far from astonishing. Due to its reach, the Western visual language can no longer be claimed as Western at all but universal. It is only still perceived as Western because it was developed in the West, and the overwhelming majority of media creators continue to be wealthy Western entities. But the rest of the world has learned and fully inherited a common visual language, whether it likes it or not. To properly “encode” an image so that it can be read, or “decoded,” globally, it is not only the best option, but necessarily the only one.39 The reason that a phenomenon like IS media has never been seen before is twofold. The first is simply that the technology of image creation and distribution necessary for the Islamic State’s high level of production is only now widely available. The second is that only a miniscule number of people worldwide are literate image writers. Nearly everyone can and is taught to read images—advertisements depend on it after all—but few are versed in the process of image writing. IS media is a phenomenon of exceptionally literate image readers putting forth the concerted effort to write for the first time, but with little practical guide as to how. And the aesthetics of IS media are deeply influenced by its creators’ high literacy of image reading but apparently still-developing literacy of image writing.
The majority of Islamic State media emulates contemporary, in-the-field documentary conventions, the most identifiable being the use of multi-camera, multi-angle setups for any given scene. This means that an IS production often runs multiple cameras simultaneously to capture an event. The angles are then cut together such that there is an unbroken temporal thread documented from different vantage points, a convention distinctively characteristic of documentary. Though including multiple angles is more expensive and time-intensive, the practice persists because documentaries purport to capture authentic events, meaning there are no opportunities for retakes. Logistically, it ensures that at any given time, at least one of the shots is serviceable. This practice is also used in interviews, so human errors can be edited out, and the narrative can be simplified or manipulated. To supplement the documentary aesthetic, IS productions also employ conventions like a slightly shaky camera and roving reports. These practices are certainly used for some of the same practical reasons that any other production might, but they are also often used unnecessarily. The Islamic State can be seen mimicking the aesthetic with little regard to motivation in order to lend an extra layer of authenticity to its media.
Despite the popular narrative of the Islamic State as extraordinarily skillful in media creation,40 as well as its largely competent emulation of documentary aesthetics, other unmotivated choices within the visual language reveal highly literate amateurism. Examples can be identified in just about every IS video. The decapitation videos, for instance, are shot primarily in a two-camera setup, with an occasional third that appears to have been shot at a later time. In the first shot, the camera is angled straight on, and the prisoner and executioner speak into the camera, the prisoner kneeling next to the defiant envoy of the Islamic State. The second shot is at a forty-five degree angle to the subjects and is used for cutaways. Both the high degree of image curation41 and the the direct address of the camera indicates that the video favors performance over authenticity. With this in mind, the inclusion of a second angle does not make sense exactly. The cuts between the two angles are also unmotivated since it is quite clear that many of them are just switching within the same take. Moreover, cuts to the second angle actually detract from the power of previously constructed symbols in the establishing shot, though admittedly, not that much.
IS media also displays amateurism in frequent breaks from the 180 degree rule. This rule is universal across all types of realistic, representational audiovisual production. Given two subjects in conversation, it mandates that all angles originate from one side of the two subjects, drawing an imaginary line between them. The camera can be placed on either side of that line, but once determined, the camera and all subsequent cameras used in the production must remain on the established side. If the rule is broken, it can be an extremely disorienting experience for the viewer. Imagining the camera as a fixed spectator of the conversation, that spectator can turn her head to view nearly 180 degrees of the conversation, but she cannot travel to the other side of the subjects. When there is only one speaking subject, the rule is softer but still applies with an unpictured or imagined interlocutor. IS media breaks this rule with abandon, placing the camera on either side of most conversations at typically equivalent angles. This occurs in countless videos but most clearly in “Uncovering an Enemy Within.” It is likely unintentional, but the consistency in departure, combined with the sheer quantity of videos, results in the development of a new aesthetic aspect to the Islamic State’s visual language. The assumption of an unpictured interlocutor is at its core stagey and artificial, and the break is not particularly disorienting simply because there is only one subject—it is just not that confusing. The movement from one side to another prevents the audience from projecting another interlocutor, creating an intensity of focus on the subject. Consistent departure from the rule justifies the choice and develops an intensified aesthetic, notably devoid of a composed, behind-the-scenes Author.
While this new aspect could be designated as accidental, the Islamic State’s use of glitch imagery is situated purposefully within conventions of the language. The glitch literally indicates some sort of disruption, either benign, like a glitch on a television or a streaming video, or violent and purposeful, like the hijacking of a channel of communication. Either way, something unexpected disrupts the intent of the viewer and distributor. Prior to the Islamic State’s rapid rise on the ground and in the consciousness of Western media, the glitch came to be associated with the violent disruption of terrorism. There are countless instances of this phenomenon in Western media post 9/11, from the promotional aesthetic of the television series 24, to the Mandarin’s “lesson for America” in Iron Man 3. In turn, this association has transformed into an idea of the glitch as originating from something morally “bad.” The Islamic State would have been a prime target for this sort of representation in Western media, but instead, it has appropriated the glitch as its own. The decapitation videos all begin and end with an effect that imitates a glitching television, accompanied by a distorted buzz. This signifies a broad sense of disruption, and the videos actively denote themselves as such. They also open with clips of foreign, Western leaders taking a stance against the Islamic State before proceeding to the prelude of the execution. The clips of the leaders also contain a glitch effect while the segment of the prisoner and executioner is crystal clear. In juxtaposition, these visual effects simultaneously signify Western leaders as morally “bad” or even “evil” while disassociating the glitch from terrorist organizations. In effect, the Islamic State has aesthetically appropriated and somewhat redefined a signifier that has often denoted terror- ists, against the West.
IS media stands in stark relief of what has come to be expected of terrorist organizations. Low-fidelity images have come to be expected of extremists and non-Western entities alike. Perhaps arising from a capitalist ideology, distrust of low-fidelity or even just poorly designed media is common in the West. Low fidelity images are evidently also anathema to the Islamic State, and it overcompensates by employing sometimes beautiful, often overproduced graphic design. This includes simple 2D animation, more complex 3D modeling, and compositing, or the use of multiple layers to achieve a dynamic, glossy look. Examples are endless in IS media; even a subtitle could be considered basic compositing. Dabiq benefits greatly from composites, partially because it is easier to work with still images, and when done correctly, the technique is often unnoticeable. The composites in Dabiq include upwards of half a dozen individual images resolved into one highly dynamic whole. The composites are far more noticeable in IS videos because they are typically composed of text and simple geometric patterns animated and overlaid on the video. These effects attempt to imitate the aesthetic of contemporary new media but as before, without much concern for motivation. The overuse is not all that uncommon or noticeable, however, except in creating the impression. Though many pieces of IS media are overproduced, this level of production aggressively contradicts the idea of the low fidelity of non-Western, terrorist media. The Islamic State relies on its media receiving attention and that media projecting legitimacy. This overproduction achieves both ends by drawing attention to the now broken stereotype of terrorists as lo-fi and demonstrating legitimacy by actively creating and manipulating aesthetic sensibilities, an unmistakable signifier of affluence and power.
***
The prevalent Western media reaction of being surprised and impressed with Islamic State media is a natural one. What the Islamic State achieves with mass media is a new phenomenon in propaganda, distribution, and even production itself. Though the model for media production and distribution has been evolving particularly rapidly for the past decade, IS media represents a massive disruption and paradigm shift, not in any one sense, but taken as a whole. However, rehashing a discourse of “wow” without progressing it any further is irresponsible and morally lazy at best, if not bankrupt—not because that discourse is fueling the propaganda machine and not because that is precisely what “they want.” It may very well be fueling the propaganda machine insofar as any awareness of the Islamic State fuels the propaganda machine. Individuals who might be receptive will likely seek it out to some degree anyway. It is morally treacherous if the credit given to the Islamic State comes from a pretentious place, and based on popular journalism on IS media, it almost certainly does. Under the guise of credit, this traditional discourse propagates the idea of the enemy as not only powerless to write media, but also as savage, barbaric, and unable to even engage in aesthetic conversation, much less control it.
Plenty of the Islamic State’s activity can be identified as universally heinous,VIII but heinous activity does not necessarily make a barbarian. The creators of IS media are real people with high degrees of visual literacy and aesthetic and design sensibility. The forceful realization of this fact is one source of the shock. For millennia, nations have been able to get away with characterizing their enemies as evil and barbaric, but the ever expanding accessibility to the infrastructure of image manipulation and mass communication is finally dismantling this strategy for good. But the other, deeper shock, which can shake to the very core, is the depiction of horrifying, nonfiction content in an arguably beautiful and explicitly aesthetic object. If this is not apparent from the gut-wrenching anxiety that accompanies the viewing of a real execution in high definition, then it can be viewed in the countless forums that comb through IS media, attempting to find the tiniest shred of evidence that the more horrific content is “faked.” The forum lurkers are so convinced that it must actually be fictional. It simply cannot be real. Because—good things are supposed to be made by good people. Well, not anymore.
I. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. In June of 2014, the group, which has gone through many self-styled identities, rebranded to simply the “Islamic State” at the establishment of the caliphate.
II. The majority of which can be found at Aaron Y. Zelin’s blog, “jihadology.net”
III. He goes on to explain the efficacy of the media halo as all-encompassing because, “people are subservient to it not only through fear, but also through love because it spreads freedom, justice, equality among humanity, and various other slogans.”
IV. “In addition to their own experience, the Islamic State’s leaders are eclectically drawing on extensive Arabic literature on global jihad- ist theory of guerrilla war, politics and governance, such as the writings of Abu Bakr Naji and Abu Mus’ab al-Suri.”20?
V. The Islamic State’s approach to countering the Western media halo is significantly different from that prescribed in The Management of Savagery. While Naji recommends exhaustion and confrontation of the enemy, the Islamic State achieves similar ends through direct violence to Western citizens and a narrative of IS perseverance in the face of airstrikes, rendering the image of the West impotent. Refer to “Inside Halab,” narrated by John Cantlie.
VI The best example of modern propaganda might be the Bush administration’s use of “free speech zones,” which controlled where dissenters could protest in the President’s public appearances. By placing these out of view of the cameras, the images propagated by the media depict the full consent of the American people and the uncontested power of the President.29
VII This, in turn, could help explain the sparsity of information regarding its media production model.
VIII Even among diehard Islamic State Twitter fanboys, there appears to be a degree of disapproval at some of the Islamic State’s action, especially regarding reports of rape.
1. Olivia Becker, “ISIS Has a Really Slick and Sophisticated Media Department,” Vice News, July 12, 2014, https://news.vice. com/article/isis-has-a-really-slick-and-sophisticated-media-de- partment.
2. Steven Corman & Jill Schiefelbein, “Communication and Media Strategy in the Jihadi War of Ideas” (Report #0601 to the Consortium for Strategic Communication, Arizona State Uni- versity, April 20, 2006).
3. Graeme Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants,” The Atlantic, March, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis- really-wants/384980/.
4. Gina Ligon et al., “The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant: Branding, Leadership Culture and Lethal Attraction” (Report to the Office of university Programs, Science and Technology Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, START, University of Maryland, November, 2014).
5. Michael Weiss & Hassan Hassan, Isis: Inside the Army of Terror (New York: Regan Arts, 2015), Chapter 11.
6. “The Islamic State’s (ISIS, ISIL) Magazine,” The Clarion Project, September 10, 2014, http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq.
7. Alex Bilger, “ISIS Annual Reports Reveal a Metrics-Driven Military Command,” Institute for the Study of War, May 22, 2014, http://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISWBackgrounder\_ISIS\_Annual\_Reports\_0.pdf.
8. Azmat Khan, “What ISIL’s English-language propaganda tells us about its goals,” Al Jazeera, June 20, 2014, http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2014/6/19/how-isil-is-remakingitsbrandontheinternet.html.
9. Ibid.
10. Sam Biddle, “How ISIS Makes Its Blood Sausage,” Gawker, February 6, 2015, http://gawker.com/how-isis-makes-its-blood-sausage-1683769387.
11. Ibid. 12. Ibid.
13. Michael Weiss & Hassan Hassan, Isis: Inside the Army of Terror, Chapter 11.
14. J.M. Berger & Jonathon Morgan, “The ISIS Twitter Census” The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, No. 20, (March 2015): 9.
15. J.M. Berger, “How ISIS Games Twitter,” The Atlantic, June 16, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/ isis-iraq-twitter-social-media-strategy/372856/.
16. Ibid.
17. Paul Fucito, “Al-Qaeda’s Media Strategies,” (George Washington University, 2006).
18. Jay Caspian Kang, “ISIS’s Call of Duty,” The New Yorker, September 18, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/isis-video-game.
19. Steven Corman & Jill Schiefelbein, “Communication and Media Strategy,” 3.
20. Michael Ryan, “What Islamic State’s New Magazine Tells Us...,” The Jamestown Foundation, August 1, 2014, http:// www.jamestown.org/programs/tm/single/?tx\_ttnews%5Btt\_ news%5D=42702#.VVFIadpVhBc.
21. Aaron Y. Zelin, “The Islamic State’s Model,” The Washington Post, January 28, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/ wp/2015/01/28/the-islamic-states-model/.
22. “Brits abroad: UK citizens abroad joining the Islamic State Group,” Channel 4 News, April 20, 2015, http://www.channel4.com/news/brits-abroad-uk-citizens-jour- neying-into-the-islamic-state.
23. Graeme Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants,” The Atlantic.
24. Sean Heuston, “Weapons of Mass Instruction: Terrorism, Propaganda Film, Politics, and Us,” Studies in Popular Culture, Vol. 27, No. 3, 2005: 59.
25. Nicholas Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality? (New York: Cassell, 1999), 239-240.
26. Sean Heuston, “Weapons of Mass Instruction,” 60. 27. Ibid, 61.?28. Ibid, 60.?29. Ibid, 66-67.
30. Ibid, 60.
31. Steven Corman, Angela Trethewey, & H.L. Goodall, Jr., “A New Communication Model for the 21st Century: From Simplistic Influence to Pragmatic Complexity,” in Weapons of Mass Persuasion (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2008), 152-154.
32. Ibid, 156. 33. Ibid, 152.
34. Scott Shane & Ben Hubbard, “ISIS Displaying a Deft Command of Varied Media,” New York Times, August 30, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/world/middleeast/isis-dis- playing-a-deft-command-of-varied-media.html?\_r=0.
35. Michael Weiss & Hassan Hassan, Isis: Inside the Army of Terror, Chapter 11.
36. Roland Barthes, “Death of the Author,” in Image-Music-Text, ed. Stephen Heath (Great Britain: Fontana Press, 1977), 147.
37. “Allah’s Messenger,” Dabiq, Issue 2, 18-19.
38. John Cantlie, “The Real Story Behind My Videos,” Dabiq, Issue 4, 52.
39. Steven Corman, Angela Trethewey, & H.L. Goodall, Jr., “A New Communication Model for the 21st Century,” 152-154.
40. Sam Biddle, “How ISIS Makes Its Blood Sausage,” Gawker.
41. Marshall Sella, “How ISIS Went Viral,” Medium - Matter, October 19, 2014, https://medium.com/matter/the-making-of-the-worlds-most-ef- fective-terrorist-brand-92620f91bc9d.
Features • Fall 2024 - Land
Poetry • Winter 2020 - Feast
smooth doorknob face - and chest full of time bombs - spot of ultimate explosion far
but miraculously not - beyond my amateur reach - am i the shortbread - or the not shortbread
of the binary - you made in your sleep - strange strange cookie - what does efficiency
have to do with - your mouth like something - made to be plucked - if i could bake anything
into this melting feeling - it would be air - one sure handful - of yeast //
// this is the future - last saturday
couldn’t portend - last tuesday stuck pins in - last nightmare broke into - less like day than
matins - song - you sing in your waking - but sleeping you rupture - my only - i move toward your
meteor shower - of language - like big mouths for bits - of popcorn - that old party trick
my poor reflex - rejects - the saving grace of palms //
// i like you unwaxed - i like you illegible - can’t
see the bus - but hear it arriving - footsteps outside the door - heavy as fingers - children
climbing a trunk - slim leaves yellow - your dark tangling hair - piles of autumn colors
trembling - ready to burst - can you imagine - back against the grass - red and orange and red
and yellow butterflies - god did that - folded secrets - out of air - darling? your ears - close
enough to toss a new coin in - watch it go down
around - around - around - did you ever do that - at the zoo?
Poetry • Winter 2019 - Double
The philosophers say there are words
that do things, make themselves
real in the world,
so that when you said
I promise,
you had to have meant it
and when together you said I do
the bond was real in every sense.
Those are the examples, but there are others
like when I said I’m queer
it did something – not to you
(tho I guess a little bit to you)
but to my world and my body
and when you first taught me the word
woman
man
that did something too.
I think these words are the closest real thing
to prayer. To toss a stone across
the frozen pond and see if it smash
open or skip with grace and stop.
But my voice will not hold my body.
And I don’t know if I can speak transition
or swallow it.
Tell me, can I say
I am?
Fiction • Winter 2010 - Bestiary
Marcy finished picking up after the dogs and tied the plastic grocery bag with two simple knots. The three greyhounds barked when they saw she was done because they wanted treats.
“Hush dogs,” she said. She crossed the yard and opened the side gate that led to the front of the house—and the two late Thursday afternoon trashcans that would be emptied on Friday morning garbage day. She swung the gate behind her as she usually did and proceeded forward across St. Augustine grass of the front yard.
When she did so the purebred, silvery dogs raised their heads like chickens around a cock. They were waiting for the click of the gate. This was the sign to stay put, though the opposite had been true during their racing days. The starting cages would snap open, and nothing would have been better than to finally sink their teeth into the fake white rabbit that was always just out of reach. Men would have bad days because of them, and some lucky men would name their own kids after their winning bets. Now, standing around in the yard with ears pinned back, the dogs can’t quite remember how the track and rabbit would, without fail, be replaced by wire cages and rough human hands, but they remember other things.
Before they could really understand what they heard, they were running—the three of them— streaking across the yard. There had been no click, and the first dog to hit the gate and force it open yelped. Marcy hadn’t even reached the trashcans when they ran past. In all her years of rescuing dogs, she had never once yelled after the ones who got out. They would come back.
Blocks away, an old man was trimming stray branches off of a tree in his front yard. The look in his eyes was that of a meticulous man, but his dry, cracked hands made him clumsy. His white undershirt was a good fit, and the wrinkled dimples of his forehead overflowed their narrow banks with sweat. The sunlight coming through the branches and leaves made it look like he was underwater. Occasionally he would stop his work and look toward his house, perhaps in anticipation that his wife might bring him some water or lemonade.
Across the street, a boy passed by his living room window and saw the old man cutting the trees. He doesn’t know the man’s name, but he doesn’t remember many people’s names. His mother says that he should be starting high school now, but the high school said no, so now he doesn’t go to school “for the time being,” his mother said. His own name is Peter, and it helps him understand the man cutting trees better if he imagines his name is Peter too.
Moving away from the window, Peter picked up a pen from his mother’s desk and went into the kitchen to draw on the newspaper at the kitchen table. He would add details to the pictures. Not mustaches and missing teeth, but instead birds and other people, standing in the background. His principal once told his mother that he was troubled, but Peter hardly ever got in trouble. His hands got dark with newsprint, and Peter started thinking about the other Peter, who could still be heard rummaging in the yard.
When he was younger, Peter would play in his front yard or in the street, and once, the old man came and talked to him. The old man reminded Peter of a horse riding character from a movie, and his voice was like a bassoon. He didn’t introduce himself as is the way of most old gentlemen, but his name is, in fact, not Peter, but Sergei. Sergei asked Peter questions he didn’t understand about his father, and then he said he was sorry. Peter was still thinking about the Western he had seen and finally asked Sergei what he knew about horses.
Instead of answering the question directly, Sergei began telling a story, as is the way of most old men. He said that when his parents first arrived in America with him when he was very young, they had had a very rough time. His father had been a skilled taxidermist, which Sergei explained is when you stuff an animal, and Peter nodded in understanding.
“He could make no money doing this in the cities, though, so he answered a letter from his older brother, telling him we would join him in his new home in Kentucky. He lived in a small town outside of Louisville, Kentucky, and he worked in the only ambulance. My father was able to start stuffing the animals that the hunters wanted as trophies, and we were soon able to live in our own small house, and my mother worked in a restaurant.”
His uncle had always told his father that they should all go see a horse race in Louisville. Sergei’s father would sit amongst stuffed ducks and cardinals and think about the horses gliding over the mud and all of the rich men cheering their favorites. Sergei’s father had never gambled outside of poker games with friends, but the thought of hugging a horse with a collar or roses lifted him beyond the musty seclusion of bird feathers. He began setting aside money for his first bet.
“Then one day, my father took my mother and I to Louisville for a horse race. He asked us to dress in our church clothes, and he wore a fancy tie he had made for himself out of the colorful feathers of ducks. In the car, we passed horse farms that went on forever, and I could see the horses playing games and asking their owners for food along the fences.”
The track was exactly how Sergei’s father had envisioned it, and he kept his hand in his pocket, feeling the greasy dollars and lint inside. Sergei watched as his father placed a $50 bet on a horse called “Sea Wolf,” and when his father finished, he turned and winked at his son. Because they couldn’t afford seats in the grandstand, they stood along the fourth turn railing.
“When the race started, Sea Wolf was in the middle of the pack, and we were all yelling. The leader started slowing down though, and Sea Wolf took the lead! My father’s voice broke when he screamed with excitement, and our horse sprinted toward our turn, leaving the others in his dust. My father was watching his $50 become $500, and my mother couldn’t contain herself.”
Sea Wolf started making the fourth turn, and as Sergei clutched the white railing, something began to happen. Sea Wolf’s leg buckled in the mud, snapping her femur. The jockey was thrown as the horse fell and lay motionless and unconscious. The other horses just barely avoided the two as they flew toward the finish line. The horse made horrible sounds as it lay there in the mud, looking wildly around in pain.
“The horse looked at me, and I yelled at it to keep running. It was sad, but I didn’t understand. Three men came out and restrained the horse while a fourth inspected Sea Wolf’s leg. With his back still turned to us and the grandstand, he brought out a needle. The horse kept screaming, and then that was it, and it was silent.”
Sergei’s father lost his bet, and a man in a nice suit and hat made fun of his tie as they exited through the turnstiles. The story made Peter upset, but he didn’t say so, and he began playing again as a sign for Sergei to return to his yard.
Peter kept scribbling in the newspaper, only stopping momentarily to drink a glass of orange juice. His mother called, and he explained to her what he was doing. She said she would pick up dinner on her way home.
Sergei opened his garage door and brought a trashcan out to the curb for trash pick up. His white shirt somehow seemed even whiter now as it soaked through and sparkled with sweat. Very few cars were on the road. Sergei started working in the flowerbed nearest the front door. He wasn’t wearing gloves for this, and as he pulled dollar weeds from the flowers, black soil would get stuck in the cracks in his hands.
From the kitchen table, Peter first heard dogs barking and then the shouts of a man and then something closer to screams. He went again to the living room window. Sergei lay on his back in his yard, and the three greyhounds were sinking their teeth into him and scratching at him with their paws. Peter could see some of Sergei’s blood on his white undershirt, and it scared him. Peter thought about the other Peter being attacked by the dogs, he thought about Kentucky, and he remembered what his mother had always told him about being a gentleman.
Peter walked out of his front door, and he crossed his yard. As he crossed the street, the largest kitchen knife his mother owned reflected the sunlight like a playground slide. Without hesitation and with the methodical movements of a livestock farmer, Peter brought the knife into the dog nearest himself, and he thought of butter. The dog reeled on Peter with its jaws but too slowly. Sergei was so badly torn that he wasn’t fighting as much anymore. Peter moved to the second dog with equally passionless movements. A butcher might have had more misgivings than Peter. The third dog, now without the advantage of his pack, lifted his blood-filled jowls and growled. Peter stepped over Sergei and lifted the knife. This time, though, it was the dog that was quicker, and it ran back down the sidewalk in the direction it had come from.
Peter turned from Sergei and the two dead dogs, and he started walking back toward his house with the dripping knife at his side. A crowd of neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk, and they quickly rushed to Sergei after letting Peter pass. Peter cleaned his mother’s knife off, and sat back down at the kitchen table. He wished his father was there, but he quickly forgot about everything as he returned to the newspaper.
Marcy opened her front door. It was a prospective adoptee, who was there to see her greyhounds. Marcy was about to explain that her dogs had just gotten out and hadn’t come back yet, the third dog wandered up the sidewalk to her front porch. It smelled the other woman before nuzzling against Marcy’s outstretched hands. Marcy sighed and said, “Yes, of course, these are great family pets.” The dog had already licked its jowls clean on the walk home.
Fiction • Fall 2019
Late in their resignation, the ones who are driven rarely sleep. Eventually, it is said, the long hushed noise of the road lulls them into a kind of perpetually half-awake state, where translucent dreams arrive and depart as something in between thought and phenomenon. Even on the precarious turns of a mountain road, where the edge of the car is almost flush with the edge of the cliff; even on the long straightaways of eastern Montana, where you can still encounter gas stations by the long asphalt straightaways; even in the gridded clog of the streets in southern Detroit, you can find these half-dreaming passengers, head against the window, looking but no longer seeing, moving but no longer traveling, breathing but no longer speaking. The NIH, in fact, nowadays classifies this as an addiction. I don’t remember the name they gave it. Nobody really uses it. I think we’d all prefer to believe that the ones who are driven aren’t sick or diseased or crazy or anything like that—just trying to get somewhere, but haven’t figured out where that somewhere is yet. I asked a friend of mine the other day: How are they different than any one of us? And then he said, Listen to yourself. Enough. Enough of that. This friend is tired of me talking and asking about these cases. Obsession is the word he uses. You’ve been obsessed with these cases ever since your mother passed, he tells me. It’s just an interest, I tell him back. She was interested in all this too. And I want tell him, Let me alone, fuck off, but I know that’s just my angry streak. He’d helped out a lot with her, especially toward the end.
I heard of one pair of teenage boys who left to be driven together. They had met each other in high school, I was told, in geography class. But they were in the East Texas where this kind of thing is still looked down upon, even still. Apparently, the second boy’s mother caught them together in the basement one day when she came home early. It’s said that there was no real fighting, but the second boy could tell that something had severed in the house. His mother didn’t speak to him for three days; when she did, the fury in her voice was businesslike, controlled. Five nights after the garage incident, the boys decided they would leave, but for how long, they didn’t know. In the middle of the night, they removed the two front seats in the car, squeezed in a small mattress diagonally, and loaded up the canned food and energy bars they had bought earlier that day after school with the first boy’s parents’ credit card. They plugged in Denver, CO to the console. No specific address. A few days after they left, the parents appeared on television, and they said, The only thing we know is that they’re headed to Denver. They’ve turned off location tracking. Please look out for a dark green Tsukuba. We need your help, anybody. Please. Dylan, Ari, if you’re hearing this, please, please come home. We miss you. We love you. Please, come home. Before that, the night they left, when they were trying to sleep, pressed together on the floor of the car, Dylan whispered, Ari, Ari, do you hear that? Ari stirred. What? Ari, do you hear that? What are you talking about? But the car began to slow and exited the highway. Nothing, said Dylan. The car eased into a charging station. They got out to stretch. Did you sleep? asked Dylan. Cicadas swelled; the city was hours behind. No, said Ari. Not really. Dylan turned to Ari. God, Ari. What are we doing? he asked. Ari didn’t answer. Instead, he said, I love you, and Dylan said, I love you, too, and took his hand. A clear bing came from the car, and they got back in, and the door slid back into place with a snug click. They kept going for many days. They blew through Denver. They didn’t turn around until they reached Calgary. By the end, they weren’t speaking — just looking out of opposite windows, quiet and breathing low, more than tired, that first hushed thrill of unbridled privacy having long given way to the resigned trance of the unspooling road. They had forgotten that they had programmed home as their destination until they pulled into the driveway, when the second boy’s mother opened the front door and ran to the car and started knocking frantically on the window. Other parents weren’t so lucky — something similar happened again only a few months later, but the kids never came back. Their car ran out of power somewhere near Death Valley during a snowstorm, and they starved to death half a continent from home.
Because these cars require nothing from their passengers, and because passengers will often just sleep through the night while the cars take them to where they need to go all on their own, and because the cars will soundlessly ease themselves into charging stations when their battery is low, and because the early Tsukuba doors would automatically unlock as the car shifted into park to begin the charging, there was, for a time, a certain kind of larcenist who would just wait at charging stations all night to wait for those cars that no one got out of when docked. People — especially if they were drunk — would often just sleep through the charging, and so these thieves could walk up to a car, quietly open the door, and take whatever they could see while their victims slept. Before the public caught on to this, and before Tsukuba updated the OS to fix the automatic unlocking, it is said that one of these people — one person told me her name was Kendra, another told me it was Kerry — saw a dark brown Tsukuba A8, which was the most expensive model on the market at the time, pull into the station she was scoping. When nobody got out of it, she walked over to it like it was her own, and looked into the window to see a silhouette of just one person in the back seat with his head lolled back in the headrest. She opened the door as quietly as she could and quickly slid her hand into his pocket for the bulge of his wallet. Something smelled horrible. There was a laptop on the ground, and she took that too. As she retracted her hand, though, she looked up and saw that his eyes were open. She was so shocked that she froze in place. She expected him to start yelling, to grab her. But he did nothing — just stayed there, breathing slowly, looking up at the ceiling of the car. She had heard of people being so tired that they fall asleep with their eyes open; she figured that’s what was going on here. But as she reached for the door to close it, the man turned his head to her, and said, Do you know where I am? The way he said it reminded Kendra or Kerry of her father in his worst years, right there toward the end, when nothing tracked. A soft bing came from the car; it was finished charging. You’re right outside of Steamboat Springs, she told him.
She wanted to leave with the wallet and laptop or put them back. But she held onto them and stood there, and it would take her hours to understand why she did that, even with the man awake and looking at her. It struck her when another promising-looking target pulled into a charging port: he was the one to close the door, his wallet and laptop in her hands. He reached out and slid the door shut, empty-eyed, totally apathetic. At the time, she hadn’t even realized the exchange that had occurred, his tacit approval of her theft, almost like a payment for her telling him where he was. She had turned and left before she could see him drift back up onto the highway.
It’s said that the house was empty when Jade decided. The air conditioning vent in the kitchen was rattling, and Katherine’s dog was snoring on the porch in the back. The dog was a constant reminder of Katherine’s absence; she didn’t come home for Christmas, nor for Thanksgiving before that, so Jade hasn’t seen her daughter since the summer. Her husband, Jim, was on a business trip, which was a new thing for his job; some might be inclined to put quotation marks around the phrase. Perhaps it was for that reason Jade decided it was time. She went upstairs and packed a backpack — three shirts, two pairs of underwear, a toiletries kit, Nabokov’s Lolita (she read the beginning of it in college, and thought this would be a better time than ever to finish it), and a notebook with three pens. She walked out into the thick lowcountry air, got into her A3 crossover, and announced her destination to the OS.
She planned to fill up the notebook by the time she got to Seattle. There, she would buy another notebook, and another book to read, assuming she’d finished the Nabokov, and then turn around. It was just something she needed to do. “This is just something I need to do,” she wrote in her notebook, marring the clean white of the first page. She had wanted to be a writer — had wanted to since before she and Jim had gotten married. Of course, it just got easier and easier for things to get in the way, until eventually she would go days without even thinking about it. But something happened two days before: as Jim was packing for his business trip, the morning light came through the window just right and fell directly on one of his three bathing suits folded on the bed by the suitcase (even though he had told her the trip was in Scranton, PA), and the polyester smoothness of the pale blue seemed to seemed to interact with the sunlight in such a way as to transform it. This was, she felt, one of those strange, small confluences of emotion and material that had compelled her to write in college. And so, there, at that moment, she felt that old compulsion return. Moments after her husband left for the airport, it was decided. She’d write the next On the Road. Or the next South and West. The next great American road novel could be written like none of the others had been written: that is, while the author is actually on the road, driving. Or maybe, if it wasn’t a novel, she thought, it could be a magazine feature, a long-form exposé about the rumors of the people who went crazy in these cars.
She wrote steadily for the first two days. This was when she was staying in hotels at night. On the third night, though, she was behind schedule, and decided to spend the night in the car. It was when she jolted awake near midnight, rocketing through the night in the automated rush, that she first made contact with a kind of eeriness that was new to her. She had remembered doing the same thing as a child on a road trip with her mother — she had had a dream about falling or something, and jolted awake, and her mom had said, Whoa, Jaders — nightmare? She’d been driving the car. She was always the driver. But Jade, slumping in the Tsukuba, felt more alone than she felt at home when Jim was gone and the dog was outside. As she tried to understand why that was, she looked out and saw the gray horizon unfurling against the dark indigo sky, and it hit her: she was, more than she had ever been, nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Moving with no one at the wheel, the only human consciousness in the car having fallen asleep, now awake in the moving dark, something unknown taking her from one place to another, and perhaps another beyond that: she was nowhere. She switched on the light above and wrote down “NON-SPACE” in her notebook and underlined it three times.
But when the dawn invaded the cabin of the car and she opened her eyes the next morning, the noise of the tire’s traffic over the asphalt right on the line between silence and sound, she opened her notebook and looked hard at the underlined phrase, unable to remember what she meant.
There was a time before all of this ambulomiania stuff started happening, or at least before people started noticing it — a brief time when the Tsukuba A-Line was cause for celebration. It lasted about a year. The main thing was that accidents started tapering off, but generally folks that could remember the Jetsons felt like they were living in the future. My mother was one of those that remembered the Jetsons. In the final months, when it was pretty much all she could do to stay inside bed-bound and watch television, she’d even watch Tsukuba press releases. She’d turn the volume up such that I could even hear it outside the house. Maybe she felt at least some connection to the world watching these press releases — instead of her soaps or the news (fires, massacre, catastrophe), I think she felt like this was some evidence that the world may even be getting better. When I was a teenager, she had a brother who died in a car accident back out in California, where they’re from. He was drunk. Between his Chevy and a sequoia, the sequoia won. Even so, my mother loved sequoias. We don’t have them in southern Montana.
In those final months with my mother, she’d be inside for so long, so, so long, just watching television. In the kitchen window on the west side of the house you could see the Medicine Bow ridge, and every once in a while a distant light cruising up the switchbacked road up and over the top. Some nights, I would wake up in the early morning hours and just stand above the sink, watching. I’d do this until I would hear my mother stir, and then I’d go into her room, trying to breathe through my mouth, to empty the bedpan or, increasingly, to lift her out and change the sheets. By then, she could barely speak. The air in the room felt like an obscene, heavy cloud. She needed her medication every four hours — I’d drop the small colorful pills into the gape of her dark mouth that looked, in those days, like it was perpetually on the edge of a yawn.
I have a friend who told me that once his car had been in an accident when he was out east. He was in Buffalo, NY, and he’d just closed out a bar. So he’s there, waiting on his car to pick him up, trying not to sway on the curb, and he sees his car turn onto his street from the left. But then, on the right, another car turns onto the street, and accelerates, right down the middle of the road. Before he can do anything — not that he would have been able to, anyway — the two cars collide in a violent, sobering bang. He said that he hadn’t known before that you can actually taste a car accident, like if someone placed a watch battery right on your tongue like a mint. He’s stunned in the cold for a few seconds before he realizes what happened. He runs over to the other car because he knows nobody was in his, and starts calling out, Hey, hey, are you okay? Hello? The front hood of the other car is folded up; both cars are totaled. The windshield on the other car is completely blown out, but the windows are all still in the doors, shattered into cobwebs, so he can’t see in. He continues to call, but hears nothing from inside the car. He’s getting more and more worried, so he decides to punch one of the windows in. He wraps his jacket around his fist and punches. He tries to look in, but it’s dark, and he still can’t see anything. He calls again; when he listens close this time, he can hear some low wheezing. He doesn’t know what to do. He presses the crash signal button on his key fob as quickly as he could, so an ambulance and the police should be there soon. He tries to talk to whatever was wheezing, but before long it stops, and all he can hear is something dripping. When they come, they have him stand off to the side, shivering and feeling the adrenaline wrestling the alcohol in his blood. A police officer walks up to him. Strangest thing, the officer says to him. Wasn’t anybody in the car. My friend says, What do you mean? And the police officer says, There was nobody in there. In the other car. Unless they ran off. No, my friend says, I’ve been here since it happened. Nobody got out of that car. But I heard breathing in there, Officer. I swear, someone was breathing in there. The police officer sighs and looks at him. Well, yeah, he says. There was a dog in there. What? Yeah, just a dog. A dog? No people? Yep. Just the dog. Jesus Christ. Have you ever seen this before? my friend asks him. No, the officer says. Never. The ambulance leaves and a tow truck comes, with someone that was actually driving. The tow truck driver ends up giving my friend a ride home. That night, my friend will have a dream that he’s in a thirty-story office building that seemed totally empty; he’ll go from floor to floor looking for someone, anyone. When he gets to the top floor, people will be working in cubicles, all focusing. When he steps out of the elevator, though, the building will tip over and fall into the street in a splash of concrete and rebar. And while they’re all on the ground, he’ll see hundreds and hundreds of dogs ambling toward them from down the street, noses to the ground, nightmare-skinny, sniffing.
The Cheyenne Chronicle ran an article about it. The title of the article was “Safe or Strange? Driverless Cars Cause Nationwide Controversy.” Let me show you a part of it:
Last year’s thaw uncovered enough missing Tsukubas (and passengers) in such western states as Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota that the U.S. Department of Transportation has announced that they are commencing an official enquiry into driverless car industry, and especially the Tsukuba A series. The increase in disappearances has caused some in the community, especially local radio show personality Buck Weems, to wonder about foul play. When we reached out to him for comment, he said, “I think the evidence is showing that something’s going on with the computer system in the cars. I think the evidence is showing that. I don’t want to point fingers, but stuff like this doesn’t just happen. We have the documents, folks.” When pressed about these “documents,” Weems denied further comment.
“We promise that these cases have nothing to do with a bug or otherwise. We have seen too many voices in the media jumping to conclusions,” says Tsukuba spokesperson Ronald Atkins. “The data from our OS clearly show that, each time someone has gone missing, they themselves have instructed the navigation system, and the vehicles ran out of battery on the route toward the destination that the operators themselves set. Why they would set these coordinates is not a question for Tsukuba to answer.” He added: “What we do know, however, is that these instances do not come close to offsetting the decrease in car accidents.”
The American Psychological Association believes that it is a question for them to answer. Recently, the APA published a report entitled “Ambulomania: A National Crisis,” which detailed a psychological theory as to the strange phenomenon. Spokesperson Amy Halperin says, “We are inclined to call this kind of behavior addictive. As such, we believe we can treat it as an addiction. There is still much work to be done on what exactly these individuals are addicted to; however, as you can see in the report, we believe we have made significant headway on that front.” The APA diagnosis shows that the vast majority of cases involved middle upper middle individuals with a sometimes statistically significant family history of depression, anxiety, alcoholism, neurosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, bulimia, dysmorphia, affluenza, hypochondria, high blood
That’s enough. You get the idea.
I met one of them. Sort of. I was repairing a fence on the west side of my property. The divots had grown soft in the months of weather. It was time. It was just after sunrise, and I was digging a splinter out of my finger as I saw a car slow to a stop about half a mile up the road. The blue light in the center of the bumper was blinking, which meant it ran out of power before it was able to reach the nearest charging station. For a second, I was sure it was the one, so I put my shovel down and ran over to the vehicle. The road probably hadn’t been serviced since it was made, so it was cracked and uneven, and this car didn’t look like the kind that could handle this easily. The sky was smeared with the beginning of the day way off to my right; with the sunrise’s reflection, I couldn’t see into the window. I knocked and didn’t hear anything. I tried the door — it was unlocked. When it opened, I saw a mother holding her child. The mother had this blank stare fixed on the windshield ahead of her. Ma’am? I said. It took her a few seconds to turn her head to look up at me, and when she did, she had this kind of wonder in her face. Ma’am, I said, it looks like your car is out of juice. Oh, she said, coming to. Um, yes. Oh, fuck. Where am I. Where the. Am I? You’re about an hour away from Laramie, Ma’am, I said. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at the sunrise behind me and started crying. Here, Ma’am, I said, let me go grab my truck. My battery’s full. I’ll help you out, so you can at least get to Laramie. You’ll be alright, I said, if you can just get to Laramie.
She looked, actually, a little like the one I am wondering about. Besides her age and the baby. The one I am looking for would be much older and alone in the car. And these days I’m thinking it’s pretty much certain that she’d no longer be breathing.
I’ve been pretty well off since the workman’s comp claim from a couple years ago, so I bought the baseline Tsukuba model almost a year ago. Three months later, in early September, I brought my mother out to the car. For a second, I thought selfishly, so selfishly, that perhaps I should be the one to go. But I fought that impulse, and I set my mother, light enough to carry now, down in the backseat. She looked up at me. Where are we going? she managed to ask me, and then coughed. I could hear the fluid in her chest. I touched her shoulder bone, leaned into the car, turned my face to the console, and spoke to the OS, McKinleyville, California. And then, after that, Anchorage, Alaska. And I looked at my mother. Just tell it to come back when you get there. She looked at me, confused. I don’t know how to do that. I sighed and leaned back into the car. Turn back around and come back here after I reach Anchorage, I told the OS. And then, for reasons I am still trying to work out, I added, And turn off location tracking. I closed the door and watched as it started toward Medicine Bow.
She would go through the ridge, and then farther west the long rolling Ashley National Forest just before Salt Lake, and then through the wide flat impossible plains of north Nevada. I made sure to roll the front windows down so she could taste the air. After the car disappeared I went back inside to call whoever I could think of — the friend that had been helping me take care of her, the few members of extended family still alive or in touch — to tell them that she had passed. The funeral, of course, was closed-casket, which folks wondered about.
After she left, I didn’t sleep for three days. Which also means I was never really awake during that time. I thought about her on the road, mostly sleeping, probably, but watching the passing mountains saw up into the sky, letting them slip her into hypnosis.
That was six months ago. I don’t know what happened. The drive to the coast shouldn’t have taken more than two days, but there was weather after she left. Maybe she made it all the way to McKinleyville and then maybe even to Anchorage. Her medication is still by her bed. Maybe the car just slipped off the road into some snowpack. That’s the one I think about. What will happen with the thaw? Will the car, somehow, blink back on in the spring, when the snow melts and drains down into whatever valley gouges the land where she ended up? Will some metal heart beat back to life to return her body to my house? Frozen remains thawing in the automatic climate control? Tires flat from the cruel ground? Will I run to the car and break the windows, yelling, Mother, Mother, I am so sorry, Lord, I am so, so sorry? Forgive me, Christ, please?
I’ve taken to spending evenings on the porch, watching Medicine Bow, wondering.
2026