#1 PSI/Net
The Book Cage: Episode 102 - PSI/Net
The second in the "Books Written Black Sci-Fi Actors Who Worked on Star-titled projects," it's Billy Dee Williams' (and Rob MacGregor's) PSI/Net. A book featuring psychic warfare, the CIA, Native American mysticism, drugs, and white supremacist militias. And that's just the first two chapters. Watch as Billy Dee Williams steps on every conceivable landmine this Friday, 5pm eastern.
Special thanks to @Fatamatician: The Curator for sending me this book for incarceration.
Hooooo boy
Glad I could provide
Coming up on the top of the hour, it's PSI/Net by Billy Dee Williams. No preview, so instead enjoy some effusive praise.
Setting the bar pretty high with all those quotes
Apparently one of Billy Dee's children is named "Dee." And another is named "Hanako Anne"
At least he has a theme going.
PSYCHIC NET! LET'S GOOOOOO!
Glorious start
Time to begin the process
HERE
WE
GO
on a run, because I've been a big lazy boy all day following 40 hours of consciousness
It's like BloodNet but without an RPG attached.
back soon? Back soon. Catch me up.
Thursday begins with white water rafting
Hi, @gellaho ! Hi, @Premium Apeshine FlippantSausage ! Hi and bye and then hi when you get back, @Brendan !
I sense a killing spree in Sam's future
We meet our main character angrily leading a corporate retreat
PSI/Net!
Action packed corporate bickering!
This is so Trent
Thrill as the main character fantasizes about deliberately crashing a raft into jagged rocks.
Interesting word choices from Billy Dee
Witness as the lead character regrets his life choices!
this was the '90s? It was a period of flux.
Me, I call people whatever they want to be called no matter how often it changes, except that one weird guy on my run last summer who shouted at me to call him a racial slur.
Man living in a thing you pulled behind a truck is like one step up from just being a dude in a tent in a park, I wasnt expecting it to get this sad this quick.
Anyway, time to go for a jog like the CANCELED that I am.
Art falls out again, but Trent gets distracted by some Native American hallucinations
Art is dragged away screaming by a sasquatch while Trent looks at some people who aren't thrilled to see him
Only took 6 pages to get to the weirdness
Nobody in the 90s could resists psychic visions of Native Americans.
We don't need to keep a bingo card of stereotypes, do we?
Oh crap no I forgot it's Friday. I have a chapter to proofread and dinner to make. RELEASE ME, SIREN.
It was in every single show I ever watched.
Hi, @Pumpkin Spice Mordred 🎃 !
Nevermind that though, marvel as a middle aged man struggles with his weight!
Hot damn now I'm hungry
I'm getting kent montana deja vu and I don't like it
Hi, @Ferroday Plays Both Sides !
I dont know why I expected like thrilling psychic combat or something.
Well, luckily this isn't supposed to be funny
The male menopause thing
The sleep and bathroom stuff is also part of aging, you coward
Embrace your mortality
Gordon better live a secret double life of thrilling psychic combat or be about to get got by psychic assassins or something.
Chapter better end with him smeared all over the floor, wall and ceiling like in Akira
The well-paying job of "futurist"
The only people not concerned with coming events are the Fonz
When someone refers to themselves as a futurist and mentions their military service record you could absolutely have saved time by shortening it to "asshole"
He expects this speech to change the nation
that page had so much "future" in it that the word is losing meaning
If that story gets a laugh, that crowd will laugh at anything
That's how you know it's a great speech
A better question would be "What good is thinking about the future if nobody does anything about the things that might happen?" or "Who let you in here?"
Saying "who needs the future?" should put you on suicide watch
Alright, so time to set up some whiplash. Look at this paragraph and try to imagine what the next sentence might be
"Let's focus on the past to build a future we desire" or something
Flawless segue
Lol
Damn, so close
I was going to say something about using space lasers to decrease the surplus population, I was way off.
"Let's eat the Swedes" was my next guess
Remote viewers
He has a lot of faith in military secrets being allowed to broadcast without oversight
I hope you appreciate deliberate vaguery
Oh sweet, I love me some MKUltra gibberish.
You are in for a treat
But, before that, Maxwell gets a fun prank
Hell yeah, treats.
General Eugene Levy!
lol "billfold" is one of those words like "davenport" that I use to identify someone born in a specific time period.
General George Wiley
Doctor General George Wiley, roboticist.
Do you think he's the bad guy?
"General, can I please have my rice pilaf and kielbasa on texas toast?"
Has a real feud with Doctor Reverend Colonel James Light.
I mean, it might be a little too subtle
How can Billy and Rob really spell out that he's evil?
Maybe he's wanted for being based as hell?
Ah, here we go
Nope.
He's a Steven Seagal villain
Wow that is.......a complicated rap sheet.
Still not as deadly as the Rythm Nation
Now to be fair, the only thing I think he's done wrong is sexual battery.
Killing militia members is Americas favorite pastime and should be encouraged.
You might want to read that a little more carefully
The leading of a white separatist group isn't really okay
Hey, look, Billy will help. Let him really spell it out
I guess I read "Murder charges in the death of men involved in milita" as "Did murder them"
I saw Billy Dee Williams, I'm in.
Hi, @LyraV !
We're meeting the cartoonishly evil bad guy!
Then, a bizarrely complementary section about the racist rapist
"Looking swole, Grand Wizard"
Anyway, back to Trent
hahaha
The framing makes it sound like he's parked right next to the boy scouts and is just day drinking while they go about their business
Ahhh, I miss Grandpa.
Would explain the visions of Native Americans he was having earlier.
Trent thinks back to how good it felt to try and kill Art. Only momentarily, of course, before he thinks back to the one time an old Native American man walked up to him and gave him vague advice
lol
Always ask the river if your outfit looks alright.
why does every paragraph read like someone's paraphrasing an Alex Jones rant
Instructions unclear, got my dick stuck in some river rock.
You could try and guess what happens when he asks the river
Does it throw a fish at him?
Not quite
A lightning bolt gives him a phone number
Ghost mermaid
That makes sense, right?
Oh shit. Woodsy the Owl is worthy of the power of Thor!
Oh god, no. Never call a number you got from a lightning bolt, thats how you end up fucked by a swan.
Well, not quite a phone number of course
A few minutes later, another lightning bolt with the area code
But a phone number in the vein of 1-900-HOTDOG
Reminds me of the time a lightning bolt sent me a message:
867-5309
You got it!
Rivers might never lie but they sure as fuck are cryptic to the point of uselessness.
This lightning bolt reminds him of the time he got struck by lightning
Its why I use turtle shells for all my divination needs.
Oh no, the lightning came back to finish the job!
You getting an idea of how weird this book is, yet?
Sweet.
Yeah. If I'm reading it right, BDW threw every passing neat idea he had onto the page and called it a novel
We're in for a full on mystical journey y'all.
Gonna open the doors of perception.
Oh, and that earlier lightning strike gave him psychic powers
I hope we're in for at least two or three more mystical native americans
so far this appears to be a bunch of people remembering cool shit, hallucinating racist stereotypes, and winning shower arguments with a fake audience
Also, hi, @Rachel, Godhead Aspect !
Billy thought he'd just throw his psychic origins in willy nilly
"This lightning strike reminds me of that time I got struck by lightning and got psychic powers. Crazy, right? Anyway...
Hello darling!
Cool, did he meet George Clooney and kill a goat with his mind powers?
like a Family Guy sketch but more racist
"You think yourself above humanity, Wiley, because you gave yourself psychic powers. But my powers were bestowed by the gods themselves!"
Nut brown skin
The same Navajo man wanders into his room.
"Lightning is filled with deceit."
Then he leaves again.
Oh, right, my secret life of six digit numbers
seriously, this is like you strung together every new age idea you half-remembered into a single semi-coherent plotline
Every time he encountered math, he considered using his knowledge of flight. He was an odd man.
Bud if you didnt stop Bobby Aimes' heart with your mind powers you are wasting your thoughts.
any crystals yet?
they'll show up at some point
And LSD.
Holding out hope for a Psi-Man twist
Now a bunch of details without explanation
Oh, is that what "protocol" means? Thank you
it doesn't count as world-building if you haven't given us a foundation to build on
And now random pillars speak to him
Cool, cool, I love hearing in minute but yet vague detail how someone activates their most boring psychic abilities.
He sank into The Zone, this is a thing that needs explanation
Nobody has ever used that phrase before
And yes, remote viewing is one of the most boring psychic abilities you can have, dont @ me.
Now let's speed run Trent's backstory
Every clairvoyant is a voyeur, don't @ me
It's right there in the name!
For additional fun, imagine he isnt using an outdated term for pre-settler colonial inhabitants of the Americas and is referring to people from Inda.
That actually is very funny
He's getting his instructions from a dude named Sandeep from New Delhi.
There's voy-ing going on all over the place
They love Kokopelli
Which is a detail I skipped over earlier
It's his psychic tech support hotline
honestly given the mystification behind a lot of religious shit in India it'd be about on par with the mystification of native american tribal beliefs
I kind of assumed Kokopelli would crop up, it was a Thing amongst the boring new age housewives of the 90s.
This seems like a great spy program. I'm sure learning this in the context of his wife isn't going to be relevant
we get it trent, you're a method actor
He thought the drug dealers were so cool he wanted to act like them
Man imagine being so bad at marriage you cant even keep a partner when you can read minds and can be psychically empathic.
Get a load of Billy Day Lewis over here
Oh, right, that time he got possessed by Saddam
....Trent, are you actually psychic or are you suffering under paranoid schizophrenia
He can read minds but he still can't understand women
I kind of miss Saddam Hussein. Putin just isnt as funny a dude.
Lol the ol' George W defense
Whenever I threaten NP with a knife I blame it on Saddam Hussein
certainly a less entertaining romance author
But, nevermind that. Time for him to wackily step on a beer can
Calloway is visited by Amanda Waller
Yeah Putin has never even once penned a book where he makes sweet love to the concept of Russia.
The real villain of this book is littering
Pillows of flesh
Chicle
Oh cool, Amanda Waller showed up.
Lol I'm sure women love to know that you're thinking about their juggs rubbing up against you every time you hug them
Psi-gang
to be fair, he alluded to her "girth" earlier, it could just be he's making fun of her weight
which also isn't great, but....I forget what point I was trying to make here
to be fair, is that better?
a lateral move at best, I think
also, psi gang? you couldn't have at least tried for a pun or something?
I mean, "brain trust" is right there, billy
I'm out of touch on my 80s slang but it's hard for me to interpret flesh pillows as anything other than large bazongas
An acronym would have been better than psi gang.
Theyre psigangnam style
"Do you remember the duplicate group of psychics?"
"Yeah?"
"Okay, forget that. Do you remember the guy who cheated the lottery?"
I'm not helping by calling them funbags or whatever other terrible slang for them but it's a bit now
this seriously reads like it's based on the supposition that everything you've heard on Coast to Coast is 100% true
Imagine that, the military would want a backup in case the dipshits who can't predict lotto numbers fail their missions.
I always trusted space ghost implicitly
I mean, it's not like they have psychic powers or something
Anyway, China
amazing how psychic powers in these stories seem to be both limitless and with weird boundaries at the same time, almost like it's a poorly formed yadda-yadda of an idea
can Chinese remote viewers only posess chinese cooks for some reason?
"Anyway, remember that nerd we used to make fun of? He gave us goo!"
Its funny, this book about guys doing psychic espionage is also supplying evidence psychic powers dont work.
In its own narrative, no less.
The Men Who Stare at Goats but dumber
Lol the psychic powers only work within your race
Except when it comes to Saddam, then all bets are off
Why are they talking about this in Calloway's driveway, anyway
did she just stop by for a clumsy exposition dump?
Saddam was apparently Earths mightiest psychic.
Just having a public chat about state secrets
So they were being drugged because this book doesn't have enough ideas yet
wait, window? weren't they outside at a camp ground?
Sounds like they're all suffering from Secondhand Saddam
Oh shit, the gubmint gave its psychic spies Havana Syndrome!
Lady you have anxiety
They're in his airstream
Sometimes I'll skip boring details like people walking into a camper
Henderson seems like someone to stay away from
I still have no idea why Boyle is here
He works well with Peralta
other than to provide backstory on a bunch of characters I doubt we're going to see
The news of them secretly being drugged probably
He's just setting the table that Remote Vision Has Consequences
Okay, so Henderson wasn't fucking the animals. But it's still pretty weird
No they're crazy because the government drugged them with secret goo during blood pressure tests
Mmmmm this is that good MKUltra shit, gimme more.
this sounds less like a bunch of psychic soldiers and more like a bunch of people with mental health issues that were egged on by a very irresponsible psychiatrist
Full Havana Syndrome, I love it.
Experience in generic profitable business
Man imagine being such a shitty psychic you have to do fucking market research for a living with your powers.
psychic corporate espionage
Also lol, there are entire companies that do this without superpowers, it's just market research
Psychics replaced by social media in a couple decades.
Fuck, scooped
Maxwell is recruiting all the crazy people, and Doc thinks it's a great idea to infiltrate and get more crazy drugs
Is this book trying to get the reader to doubt the narrative and think maybe psychics arent real and the characters are just the damaged results of various unethical government programs?
I mean I dont think that because that would be clever.
nothing that has happened had dissuaded me from "these are all mentally ill people suffering under a mass delusion"
You sonofabitch, psychic Native Americans are involved!
I'm going to continue with that assumption until someone gets Scanners'd
"Is Sandeep there in the room with you right now?"
Sure, give the mind-hole some beer
Sorry, had to step away. What I miss?
Tossing a six pack of beer into the hole is how I'm going to spend the rest of the night
We're going to get some perspective shifts that will make it clear this is all real
Metaphorical beer? Is that the kind that makes you gay?
I lose track of which brands do that.
They were secretly given drugs that made them crazy when they were psychic spies
Always a smart move with psychics
All of them. That's right, homophobic alcoholics!
GO TO STAGE TWO OF PILLAR WORLD
Are they cyclopean? How many aeons do you see?
Would you describe them as "eldritch"?
An attack on Washington, DC? Very original, Billy Dee
Calloway, getting drunk and having a vision quest and seeing DC in ruins is normal.
Billy Dee, put down Fallout 3 and focus on the book
BILOCATE TO STAGE THREE
GIF
AKASHIC RECORD: SEARCH!
Then they'd be the Men Who Stare at Scrotes
An honest-to-God "It's too complicated to explain"
And that's my time, good night everybody!
There's only one thing to do. We must jail all the children.
Classic Matt
Calloway's making this up as he goes
wait, Trent
Let's just go see the President
