PARANOIA

Sacha Feinman's feature article in the latest GOOD Magazine, "Blacker-than-black market," presents the most perfect imaginable description of an INFRARED Market in Alpha Complex, with the minor qualification that the market in question is, in fact, in Paraguay:

The downtown market is dense and compact, a maze of concrete spanning a five-block-by-five-block square. Despite its size, the market is extraordinary for its diversity. There’s the upscale Monalisa shopping mall, where the nouveau riche stock up on authentic Montblanc pens and Bulgari jewelry, alongside sidewalk kiosks offering pirated copies of Die Hard 4.0 in bulk and where San Francisco 49ers fans can buy shoddily sewn “Startar” jackets. Thanks to the fact that Paraguay has lower import tariffs than either of its neighbors, Ciudad del Este essentially functions as a massive outdoor duty-free shop—a destination for anyone looking for a bargain.

At the markets, business is international. Everything comes from somewhere else, stopping in Ciudad del Este for a brief respite on card tables and in malls before being packed into the luggage of tourists and smugglers who flock here by the hundreds daily, stocking up on My Little Pony dolls, PlayStations, bootleg DVDs, brass knuckles, and, of course, machine guns. This can make it a dangerous place. Even the city’s police admit that Ciudad del Este has become a haven for criminals.

I know -- you harbor lingering doubts that an incredibly illegal Alpha Complex black market, secured from Internal Security only by diligent secret society action and hefty bribes, would actually sell My Little Pony dolls. To see what the IR Markets do sell --

• weapons like Psionic Detonators, Nuclear Slugthrower Rounds, Toilet Firebombs, and (brrr!) the Chainsaw Gun;


• blackmail material to use on high-clearance citizens (what could go wrong?);


• illicit services like Mutant Power Training, NuIdentity, the online game AlphaRage, Alibis-R-Us, and Treason Scene Cleanup;


• medications such as ClotAlot, Meme Paste, and the first drug for bots, FORTRANce;


• and miscellaneous oddities like CyberNeck, the Speak-with-Head Perfused Brain Reactivator and 'Squishy' the Faciomimetic Bio-blob

-- please consult the 96-page equipment book STUFF 2: The Gray Subnets. Everything knowable about the Alpha Complex black market is in there, along with over 100 all-new thingies to dazzle the criminal-minded Troubleshooter. And what other kind is there?

Published last fall, STUFF 2 is one of the best books we turned out at the Traitor Recycling Studio, and I'm dismayed it has received little attention to date. In the near future I'll do what I can to rectify the situation.

(Via BoingBoing.)

Labels: IRmarket, Stuff2