Cosmopolitan (Vol. XLIII)

An original copy of the summer 1907 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, previously in archive at UC-Berkeley. The magazine itself is mundane and nondescript; its ontological significance lies with the meme embedded in its contents, specifically, the fantasy-horror poem “A Wine of Wizardry” written by George Sterling in 1903 and 1904. Patricia Hearst stumbled upon the magazine one day while doing research for her art history degree. Upon reading Sterling’s poem, she became infected with a meme, “Fancy,” which impelled her to attempt to reassemble the old Bohemians and “liberate” History-A.

Subsequent investigation by URIEL revealed that Sterling became obsessed with restoring History-Bohemia. William Randolph Hearst allowed Sterling to publish the “A Wine of Wizardry” in Cosmopolitan while Ambrose Bierce indulgently (if a bit ham-handedly) encouraged everyone to read it. When that didn’t work, Sterling went into self-imposed exile at Carmel-by-the-Sea, where he tried to recreate Bohemia in miniature. All that ends up happening is a few pagan orgies and the death of a young Nora May French. Sterling died at the Club in 1926; it's clear he knew the Masters of the Club had supplanted him and Jack London, but still thought he could live in Bohemia there somehow.

The poem itself contains two distinct memetic packages. The first is embedded in the rhythm, meter, and fanciful imagery of the poem. "Come away," it seems to say, "Come away to a world that does not exist. Fly away with Fancy by your side." The verbs of motion that Sterling imparts upon Fancy's journey—"wings in sudden dalliance her flight," "hastens she," "...flies to a violet headland," "Fancy still is fugitive, and turns..."—make it clear that this first level of memetics is a clarion call for the world to follow Fancy and return to the way it once was, a desperate cry on the part of Sterling, a plea to the readers of Cosmopolitan and the Chronicle to believe again, to rebirth the timeline Sterling had been kicked out of. And the deployment of the first meme itself, well, the source code (at Power 5 or 6) appears to be again 100% Bierce's—it's got that same sort of curdled ironic sickness as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa": "alas, but it was all a dream"—but the mood and the vibe of the verse is all Sterling's.

The second memetic package is obvious: it's a blood-filled tick, a parasitic leech living off of this poem's belief energy. It's the Red Kings’ work, all the way. And it is quite simple: viral in the sense it's like a primitive life form that seeks only to reproduce and find purchase in a vulnerable, disturbed, fantasy-prone mind. That's important here: an ordinary reader wouldn't necessarily pick up on this memeplex. They'd have to be already inclined towards Sterling's poetry and its vibe; the Red memetics are built out of Sterling's poetic DNA.

In evaluating the poem, Archie noted high concentrations of Anunnaki memetic quanta around the five occurrences of "blood" and the instances of "venom," "poison," in all that obscene fuming and frothing. They seemed to say, "Kill. Shed blood. Revel in it. Use the quick poison. Kill others, then yourselves." It's a Power 7 or 8 meme, which means it's the šedu who would have inserted this kind of a direct command as a piggyback on human-contrived culture.

But here's the really interesting bit. It's not as if there was a šedu sitting on George Sterling's shoulder, putting this Red viral content into the poem. It's as if the Anunnaki memetics are embedded in Sterling's memories of the old timeline themselves. Inseparable, ineluctable. The place Sterling wanted to return to was tainted, and he never even consciously knew. For the next 20 years, his friends poisoned themselves, trying to get back to Bohemia, ending with Sterling's ignominious end at the hands of Lady Cyanide at the guest room in the Bohemian Club in 1926, all in vain.