The Day of the Rope.mp3

00:00:01 Hello Devin Stack here and thank you to everyone who's already purchased a copy of the day of the rope.
00:00:06 And for those of you who have not, or for those of you who are waiting for the audiobook version which will be coming out fairly soon, it's just going to take a while, cause I have to record the entire thing and upload it and go through the whole same shenanigans.
00:00:20 That I had to with this, the paperback and the Kindle version.
00:00:25 What I'm going to do is I'm going to read the the free chapter that's available.
00:00:31 For the Kindle version that if you were to go to the Kindle store or whatever, it'll let you download this as a sample.
00:00:37 So I'm just going to read it out loud.
00:00:39 And hopefully you like it.
00:00:42 I was doing.
00:00:43 This as a as a live stream, but apparently there's still a problem with me doing live streams on YouTube for some reason, so I've decided to do this instead.
00:00:53 I apologize, I wanted to do this as a live stream, but it is what it is.
00:01:01 Here we go.
00:01:02 And actually this.
00:01:02 Is probably going to be better anyway because if I.
00:01:04 Screw up.
00:01:07 I can edit it and I probably will.
00:01:09 So here we go.
00:01:11 The day of the rope.
00:01:13 By Devon Stack authors note.
00:01:17 The first thing I'd like to say is thank you for purchasing my book.
00:01:20 I spent countless sleepless nights writing it.
00:01:23 I hope you find it thought provoking and unique.
00:01:26 I would also like to say that this is a.
00:01:28 Work of fiction.
00:01:30 This is not.
00:01:31 A prediction of the future, or even a fantasy of the present.
00:01:35 It's a story, and any connection to real world events, places or people.
00:01:41 Are all just coincidences and nothing more.
00:01:45 Enjoy Devon stack.
00:01:48 Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
00:01:55 John F Kennedy.
00:01:58 Chapter one.
00:02:00 Laughter escaped Ethan's lips, but it was cut short immediately.
00:02:04 He hadn't expected to laugh like that, not out loud.
00:02:07 Not at all.
00:02:09 The hysterical edge he had detected in his unexpected outburst reignited his paranoia.
00:02:15 He glanced around, scanning the faces of everyone inside the metro car with him.
00:02:19 Had they noticed?
00:02:21 Nobody seemed to be aware that he even existed.
00:02:24 Ethan was very familiar with this.
00:02:27 He'd been commuting in and.
00:02:28 Out of the city on the Red line for years and had never had a conversation with anyone that he could remember.
00:02:35 There were only those occasionally awkward moments when some urine stained lunatic would try to solicit money from him, or lost tourists would ask for directions to the various monuments.
00:02:46 A new and increasingly common phenomenon was the sudden appearance of large groups of pushy black teenagers that abruptly performed half baked performance art pieces that were supposedly about racism.
00:02:58 The teens would.
00:02:59 Loudly shout platitudes about bigotry and bias as the train moved between the metro stop.
00:03:05 These performances always ended with mildly threatening requests for donations from their captive audience.
00:03:11 If nobody took the bait, the teens often got aggressive with whichever white passengers looked easiest to intimidate.
00:03:18 The teens would point their phones at their victim, call them a racist and shout nonsense about white privilege and to the mark invariably either fled the train or paid the teens off to avoid confrontation.
00:03:30 Many of these passengers were government employees or contractors, and the last thing they wanted was to play a starring role as the evil white racist in the next viral outrage video.
00:03:41 Ethan avoided these situations the same way most people did.
00:03:45 He simply avoided eye contact.
00:03:46 At all costs.
00:03:48 Even if it meant pretending to be intensely interested in the bits of left behind garbage and filth on the floor in the seats of the metro car.
00:03:57 He felt bad for the tourists, who were intimidated into handing over their cash most of the time these were patriotic, retired folks who had spent most of their lives getting fleeced by the ruling class that operated out of the city above.
00:04:09 Now here they were, spending some of their savings to see their nation's capital seen but not really seen.
00:04:17 It angered Ethan to know that if Norman Rockwell were alive today, he'd be forced to paint an elderly war veteran wearing a foreign made we the people T-shirt purchased from a gift shop from someone who didn't speak English, getting shaken down by these illiterate delinquents in a graffiti covered underground train.
00:04:35 All of the tourists had gone now.
00:04:38 Most of the cars inhabitants had their noses and their phones.
00:04:42 Some were tapping and sliding their fingers across their screens as the rest of their body swayed rhythmically in unison to the thumping and squealing sounds coming from the wheels of the car below as it bounced and scraped against the track beneath them.
00:04:56 None acknowledged his presence.
00:04:58 The hypnotic blur of brick and concrete just outside the doll windows took no notice of him either.
00:05:03 It did, however, remind him to pay attention to the next stop.
00:05:07 Was he out of the city yet?
00:05:10 It seemed like just.
00:05:11 Moments ago that adrenaline had been splashing through his veins, he had been pushing and shoving his way into the metro car alongside the others like suit, clad tie wearing salmon.
00:05:21 He had been acutely aware of everyone around him.
00:05:24 Now, it seemed his brain chemistry was struggling to return to normal.
00:05:28 The adrenaline had run its course and had turned sour in his blood.
00:05:33 He suddenly found it difficult to keep his balance as the metro car.
00:05:36 Bobbed up and.
00:05:37 Down his grip on the stainless steel hand railing made his arm seem stiff and corpse like.
00:05:43 His knuckles were white as bone.
00:05:46 The rest of his body.
00:05:47 Swayed on reaction to the cars movement.
00:05:49 Not unlike A rag doll attempting to look dignified.
00:05:52 There was no reason for him to remain standing like.
00:05:55 This the car was.
00:05:56 No longer packed full of the odd mixture of aspiring beep Staters and welfare recipients.
00:06:01 The trail mix of people that had occupied the car when he had first fought his way through the automatic doors and boarded the train at the Chinatown station had thinned out significantly.
00:06:11 Nearly all of the sociopaths and rule suits had exited at Dupont Circle.
00:06:16 They had filed out like well behaved robots, never looking up.
00:06:20 From their phones.
00:06:21 Everyone else had all but evacuated too.
00:06:24 The few people that remained were staring intently at their government issued devices, playing mindless freemium games and listening to music so loud with their earbuds.
00:06:33 It could be heard clearly over the blaring sounds of the track.
00:06:38 Coming through the.
00:06:40 He knew several seats were now available if he wanted to sit by himself.
00:06:44 Instead of sitting, he maintained his death grip on the metal hand rail, the rail that he had been clinging to for how long had it been?
00:06:54 It strangely felt as if he'd always been in this car in this position and at the same time it felt.
00:06:59 As though he had only just arrived.
00:07:02 Both feelings aroused an anxiety about his inevitable departure from this sanctuary.
00:07:07 Being inside the metro car was like being inside a machine capable of freezing him in time.
00:07:13 He knew once he walked through those automatic doors and through the turnstiles that the world would once again resume at normal speed.
00:07:21 He realized that he was rapidly.
00:07:23 Approaching the end of the line.
00:07:26 Soon he would have to face this new reality that he had chosen for himself.
00:07:32 Tonight's work was almost done.
00:07:34 Had it really been that simple?
00:07:37 There were only.
00:07:38 A few things left for him to do, but for the most part it seemed that his.
00:07:41 Plan had worked.
00:07:43 There was just the simple matter of finding a.
00:07:45 Cab without the help of his phone.
00:07:48 He wasn't completely sure.
00:07:49 Cab still accepted cash.
00:07:52 They had to, right?
00:07:54 And electronic bell crackled from the antiquated PA speaker system above Ethan's head, followed by a voice grunting twin brook doors opening on the right.
00:08:04 The sloppy, unconcerned tone of the engineers voice reminded him of the morbidly obese TSA agent that had felt him up earlier in the week with her disgustingly fat fingers.
00:08:13 Fat greasy fingers stuffed inside of light blue rubber gloves that were much too small for her bulging hands.
00:08:21 Why had she seemed so smug?
00:08:23 It was if she was savoring this tiny sliver of power she perceived having over him.
00:08:29 At the same time, there was a carelessness about her conduct that would have been comforting.
00:08:33 Had he been an actual terrorist, which of course he wasn't, not then.
00:08:40 Is that what he was now?
00:08:42 His mind wandered from the repugnant TSA agent to an apathetic cashier that had checked him out of the grocery store the day before.
00:08:50 Checked him out without saying a word she had just glared at him expectantly after carelessly tossing his items into the plastic bags that she then heaved unceremoniously.
00:09:00 Under the counter.
00:09:01 The bags he had to pay extra for thanks to some leftist hysteria about plastic bags hysteria that he didn't quite understand.
00:09:10 He had stopped trying to understand.
00:09:12 In me.
00:09:14 They see no real threat.
00:09:15 He had thought.
00:09:17 I'm simply the pinata.
00:09:19 They'd lower from the tree.
00:09:21 They lower me down from the tree to keep these animals from climbing it.
00:09:26 I'm the sacrificial lamb, the sedative.
00:09:29 I'm the pacifying feast that has been prepared for these.
00:09:35 Maybe that's when he decided that he'd be the first one.
00:09:39 The first land to grow claws and fangs and feast upon those who had bred him for the sacrifice living in DC had given him a front row seat to the decadence and decay.
00:09:49 The nauseatingly seductive atmosphere of the city.
00:09:52 The city that made the promise to its wretched inhabitants that if you just played along and thank the Masters for your miserable table scraps, then maybe, just maybe, one day the masters might find you deserving of a seat at the table.
00:10:08 Then, if you were lucky, you might be permitted to gorge yourself on the minuscule portion of the ill gotten bread.
00:10:16 Wasn't that what he had been doing?
00:10:19 And during all the hubris and the rot in the hopes that someday he would have his turn?
00:10:25 The steady process of degrading himself in every way imaginable had been the formaldehyde that had preserved the remains of his ambitions.
00:10:34 He had coveted the pleasures that were advertised.
00:10:37 In real time.
00:10:38 On the social media feeds of his superiors.
00:10:41 In this delirium, somewhere in the endless line of compromises.
00:10:46 He had had enough.
00:10:48 That was when he.
00:10:49 Had discovered the list at first the.
00:10:52 List had seemed.
00:10:53 Like the deranged fantasy of some crypto anarchist.
00:10:56 And maybe it was.
00:10:58 After all, this was technically the 1st.
00:11:01 Real beta test.
00:11:03 There was no guarantee that any of this was rooted in reality, but.
00:11:06 That was OK.
00:11:08 He had made his peace with the very real possibility that this was all just an elaborate hoax.
00:11:13 He wasn't doing this for the money anyway.
00:11:16 It was worth the risk.
00:11:17 Someone had to be first.
00:11:19 The hardest part had been overcoming his obedience to the programming that had been carefully stitched into his brain.
00:11:25 The hypocritical codes of conduct that had been imprinted on the minds of those of a specie who, like him, were born into the lower classes.
00:11:33 Which is to say, every class that wasn't the ruling class, this was the programming that included all sorts of unquestionable concepts, like the idea of the decisions concerning who lived and who died could only be made by those who had been born into the ruling class.
00:11:52 Whether it was a decision to kill a single citizen or hundreds of thousands or even millions, this power was reserved exclusively for the ruling class.
00:12:04 Never mind that the upper levels of the hierarchy consisted of the worst humanity had to offer.
00:12:09 It was they, and they alone who possessed the authority to determine the fate of everyone else, and everyone else seemed inexplicably satisfied with this arrangement.
00:12:20 Ethan rejected this.
00:12:22 He also rejected the fairy tale known as the American Dream, The Mirage.
00:12:27 There was nothing more than the carrot forever dangling just out of reach.
00:12:32 This appropriately named Dream had to be recognized for what?
00:12:36 It really was.
00:12:38 It was an unattainable prize that held.
00:12:40 The ambitions and the attention of the citizens cap.
00:12:45 A dream that prevented people from seeing where they.
00:12:48 Were really headed.
00:12:49 And who they really served.
00:12:51 It was the cruel comfort of a violent parent promising an abused child that the beatings would stop as soon.
00:12:58 As they learned how to behave.
00:13:01 The classic American rags to riches tale that was promoted throughout the culture, the pot of gold at the end of the American rainbow was complete fiction.
00:13:11 Sure, there had been a few exceptions.
00:13:13 They would always be outliers and statistical anomaly.
00:13:17 However, for all he knew, even these rare instances might not be as organic as they seemed for as long as Ethan had been alive.
00:13:25 The White House had been occupied exclusively by millionaires and billionaires, and it wasn't, as their members of Congress were working class salt.
00:13:33 Of the earth types.
00:13:34 They in no way resembled the men described in the story books read in government.
00:13:40 The banking system was just a sophisticated system of slavery that was marketed so well that everyone was fighting to the death to become the noble alpha slave.
00:13:51 It was so obvious to Ethan now.
00:13:54 He sometimes wondered if the system had been subverted at some point in the.
00:13:57 Past or if it had always been a lie.
00:14:00 But it didn't really.
00:14:01 Better what mattered now was he knew he was being exploited by people who had not earned and did not deserve their positions.
00:14:10 Positions that were held together by imaginary frameworks.
00:14:14 These were intangible structures that consisted of self appointed royal bloodlines, oligarchs, and banking dynasties.
00:14:22 Nearly every decision these sociopaths made was to secure their position of power within the architecture they had created and eliminate any possibility of competition.
00:14:34 They were the divine few, always justified in their choices, no matter what the cost to people like him.
00:14:41 It was people like him.
00:14:42 The ruling class have.
00:14:43 Been working diligently against for decades, if not longer.
00:14:47 Working to strip away any remaining residual.
00:14:50 Power that might threaten.
00:14:51 Their legacy.
00:14:53 When these autocrats weren't developing new ways to devour their own countrymen, they were sending hundreds of thousands of these ignorant wretches, sometimes even millions, to their deaths.
00:15:03 Countless nobodies had died in wars, so that the elites might enrich themselves or secure their legacy.
00:15:11 Nobody ever called them murderers, no matter how high the bodies were stacked.
00:15:16 Countless men still under the spell of the American delusion had lined up for the slaughter generation after generation.
00:15:25 All of them vying for the chance to have their name carved into a War Memorial.
00:15:31 This was the closest a pinata could ever come to immortality or having a legacy.
00:15:37 It was a bitter pill to swallow, but Ethan finally understood the truth.
00:15:42 The truth that might have saved the lives of these men with engraved names had they experienced the same awaken.
00:15:49 Had these men truly believed in their final moments that murdering the enemies of the ruling class was so noble, breathing their last breath, so that there might be more oxygen remaining in the wind for these elites?
00:16:02 And their bloodlines.
00:16:04 Was it honorable for these fallen men to leave their offspring alone on this earth to fend for themselves under the rule of those who had sent them to die?
00:16:14 For their own personal gain, Ethan was appalled that this tiny minority had managed to amass so much control over the rest of the species that they had fooled so many into believing that murder sanctioned by them was no longer murder, that it only became murder when it wasn't explicitly in the interests.
00:16:36 Of their bloodlines.
00:16:39 What made their interests so damn righteous, other than their place in the hierarchy?
00:16:44 Nothing he had decided.
00:16:46 Rejecting their authority and their claim to their positions in this imaginary institution had been easy.
00:16:52 He had never ceded power to them.
00:16:55 He had never agreed to be their servant.
00:16:58 He never consented to the murders they committed in his name.
00:17:02 He rejected utterly the premise that when they kill, it is knowable and good, but for him.
00:17:09 And the people like him, it was forbidden.
00:17:11 He would not submit to this system, this system that was intangible and existed only in the abstract, and only in the minds of those who did submit and obey.
00:17:22 Having this knowledge made him ponder the methods of the ruling class of generations past the ancient ancestors of the elite that centuries ago sought to prevent people like him from gaining knowledge through reading the written word that had been a power reserved only for them.
00:17:37 And this too was a power they must guard.
00:17:41 But the veil had been lifted.
00:17:43 And now the list would do for killing.
00:17:45 What the printing press had done for literacy.
00:17:50 Perhaps I'm overstating it, he thought.
00:17:53 All the same.
00:17:55 Using the list, he would claim this forbidden power and reject this universally held delusion that murder was a weapon reserved only for them.
00:18:03 It amused him to think that despite their conspicuous efforts to promote moral relativism and degeneracy, that there were still a few commandments the ruling class needed people like him to obey.
00:18:15 He was no longer governed by these laws, written by others to control him.
00:18:19 He didn't accept the title of murderer he had merely acquired a more complex understanding of the term.
00:18:26 The same way the ruling class had when.
00:18:28 They wanted to achieve their goals.
00:18:30 By any means necessary.
00:18:34 By discarding the rules branded on the flesh of the slaves at birth, and adopting laws.
00:18:39 That govern kings.
00:18:41 He had even the playing field and become one of them.
00:18:45 Hadn't many of these so-called ordained risen to power through exploding the same loophole?
00:18:52 Wasn't that the rush of power he had experienced when he'd.
00:18:56 Treating Rove doors opener on the left, this is the end of the line.
00:19:00 The speaker above squawked and buzzed.
00:19:03 The car was empty.
00:19:03 Now he released his grip on the railing and stood unsteadily, facing the door.
00:19:09 His face was so close to the plexiglass window, his nose was almost touching it.
00:19:13 He waited in anticipation for the train to come to a stop and for the automatic doors to open.
00:19:18 For some reason, he'd always felt a rush of power when the mechanical doors opened.
00:19:24 He supposed this was a tiny taste of the drug the ruling class was addicted.
00:19:29 If something is insignificant as a motorized door bending to your will delivered a perceivable amount of dopamine into your system, then just imagine how the ruling class must feel all the.
00:19:39 Time, he thought.
00:19:41 You didn't have to imagine.
00:19:43 He was now one of them.
00:19:45 And he did feel that rush of power.
00:19:48 He had taken that power.
00:19:50 He had taken it.
00:19:52 From Adam ara.
00:19:54 The doors of the Metro car opened.
00:19:56 He was disappointed to note that instead of the usual micro pleasure he had felt in the past during these moments when the physical world bent to his will in this tiny but satisfying way, he felt nothing.
00:20:09 He supposed the power must be like a drug after all.
00:20:12 Perhaps the recent dosage increase had overwhelmed his system and made him numb to the.
00:20:16 Simpler pleasures like this.
00:20:18 He wondered momentarily if this phenomenon explained why the ruling class seemed to develop an appetite for the kind of extreme depravity that had led to the creation.
00:20:27 Of the list.
00:20:28 The nightmarish lust that justified the list's ruthlessness.
00:20:32 He would have to remember to manage his doses if things went well with erenburg.
00:20:38 Maybe he shouldn't rush right into the next one. Arenberg's name was one of the first names on the list, which was arranged in alphabetical order.
00:20:45 But that's not the only reason he'd chosen this name for the beta test. Anons had put together quite the dossier on Mr. Arenburg, as they had for most on the list. But Aaron Berg's bounty had reached a staggering $1.7 million in less than 24 hours.
00:21:01 The bounty had surged when he was identified as one of the men in a particularly horrifying snuff film that had surfaced on the dark.
00:21:08 Web $1.7 million in crowd sourced privacy coins made payable to anyone who took his name off the list, and there was only one way a name could be removed from the list.
00:21:21 The blockchain made sure.
00:21:22 Of that, at least, that's the idea.
00:21:25 He mused as he exited the metro station through the turnstiles.
00:21:29 This was the first real world test Ethan wouldn't know for certain until he received confirmation that the funds had been transferred to the address he provided the smart contract.
00:21:39 Until then, his only reward was the unshakable feeling that by touching one of the untouchables and by imposing his rule on them, he had become the fire.
00:21:50 That would fight their hellish fire.
00:21:53 He had rejected his assigned seating in the hierarchy and entered the space reserved for gods.
00:21:59 Too bad I can't control the weather, he thought to himself.
00:22:03 It had started raining.
00:22:04 And the only cabs you could see were working for rideshare companies that used apps that track location data just as he was about to lose hope, he spotted an old light blue Crown Victoria parked along the sidewalk near a bus stop.
00:22:17 He opened the back door.
00:22:18 To the cab, the driver.
00:22:20 Who was talking on his?
00:22:21 Cell phone looked at him in the rear view mirror.
00:22:23 He was an Arabic.
00:22:24 A man in his 40s and seemed less than enthusiastic about having a new customer, according to the license taped to the dashboard.
00:22:31 His name was Mohammed.
00:22:33 Can you take me to Silver Spring?
00:22:34 Ethan asked.
00:22:36 Silver Spring, I guess, OK?
00:22:39 Said Mohammed.
00:22:40 Ethan nodded and crawled into the back of the cab, which, because of the make and model, felt like the back of a police car.
00:22:47 Just take me downtown.
00:22:48 You know where the gym is?
00:22:50 Asked Ethan.
00:22:51 Mohammed said that he did, and they left the metro station parking lot.
00:22:56 The rain began to.
00:22:56 Pick up and the sound of the windshield wipers transitioned from rhythmic and almost soothing to a level just below frantic.
00:23:05 You take cash, right?
00:23:10 And that is chapter.
00:23:11 One of day of the rope.
00:23:12 I hope you enjoyed this reading by.
00:23:14 The author, Devin Stack.
00:23:15 You can get the book on Amazon right now.
00:23:18 The links are in.
00:23:19 The description is available both on paperback and on Kindle.
00:23:24 I'll have it available on audiobook as soon as possible.
00:23:27 It's just I have to finish recording everything and then.
00:23:29 I have to cut it up into.
00:23:31 The different files and the whatever format they want and all that, and it takes a little while.
00:23:37 Then it has to go through another approval process and just every time you do anything and change anything, it's like sometimes you have to wait 72 hours.
00:23:43 It's really annoying, but I'll I'll tweet that out and I'll post on the channel and everything.
00:23:48 Let everyone know when that's available.
00:23:50 But I still encourage you to get the.
00:23:51 Paper back and the.
00:23:54 The Kindle version, if you would in the meantime.
00:23:56 And as always, if you want to support my channel, you can go to patreon.com/black pill or you can donate to.
00:24:02 The crypto addresses below.