Chapter Text
Overture
Where I am, where he goes—it makes no difference. All that matters is getting him the very best treatment and security—the latter being where you come in. Will he wake up? And if so, when? I have absolutely no idea. But as long as his heart is beating, he will keep fighting, so please, watch over him. […] No one will find him—and if they try, I will deal with them. The information must be suppressed. […] Though I wish it weren’t so, this will probably be the last time you and I speak. So: you won’t say no, will you?
—Zero to Ocelot, March 1975
Snake will be brought back into this world, however long it takes. Understood? The only reason we’re having this conversation is because you still have a role to play. […] When Snake wakes up—and he will—he’ll need your help again. So when he does, I promise you’ll be the first to know. The code phrase will be “V HAS COME TO.” I’ll then mobilize all the necessary parties. Think of it as an overture to a prologue. Until then, do what you like. Just be ready when the time comes. But you don’t need me to tell you that, do you?
—Zero to Miller, March 1975
Said This: ‘Do you mind the morning
I met your love with scorning?
As the worst of the Venom left my lips,
I thought “If, despite this lie, he strips
The mask from my soul with a kiss—I crawl
His slave,—soul, body and all!”’
— Robert Browning, “Adam, Lilith, and Eve,” 1883
Prologue
I BLESS THE RAINS…
It’s not that the story ends in ’84. This story no more ends in ’84 than it starts in ’76. But something of it is over by ’84, whether the story goes on or not. Something’s ceased. Something has died, and has not only died but suffered a sea-change—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent. Really this story—in the broadest strokes—starts way farther back than we’ve got the time or patience to recount here. And it’s still going: it’s always burning since the world’s been turning, if you will. This is just a little piece of something colossal: the alpha and the omega, the Saviour Machine, the white whale, The Immanent Will, the Spinner of the Years striking again and again long past his own natural lifespan; these are the days of miracle and wonder even, and of one grand hooded phantom, a shroud of total information control blanketing humanity in its abyssal darkness until the end of time and history; and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, will you? Well—all of that AI madness doesn’t start for a while yet, at least not in the mainstream. The Internet is still a series of tubes, or at least it is as far as the majority of people in this story are concerned. We’ve all seen Ocelot’s R&D score.
But it’s easy to pinpoint the moment where this story—I mean this very story, the intimate welding of Miller’s later history—starts, which is August of ’76. Because in August of ’76, Kaz Miller has just gotten back from Harare, or Salisbury as it was known back then, and it’s poetic, isn’t it, that this story starts and ends in Africa, down in which we are blessing the rains; but when this story starts that song won’t be coming out for another six years, just as Kaz herself won’t be coming out for another—well it depends on who you ask, but at least another four years or so. Because this story starts back when Kaz was still convinced she was a man and was still going by Kaz, none of that Benedict crap yet; and you might be saying, where did a name like Benedict even come from, anyway? To say nothing of McDonnell, which we won’t be addressing here. Because in reality, Miller still goes by Kazuhira to a select few people, and I am not fucking around when I say that if I told you which people I would have to kill you; because this is the story of, I believe, lasers in the jungle somewhere, and staccato signals of constant information, and a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires and—well. You’ll see. Besides, Paul Simon won’t release Graceland until Kaz turns (ugh) forty—but really, putting aside the Philosopher pissing contest that cost New York City 300 million dollars, this is the story of how it came to be called Diamond Dogs.
Obviously Kaz named it that, as anyone probably could have guessed. It has less to do with the concept album than you might think, though, although rumor has it Kaz really liked that one, especially Sweet Thing, for reasons that may become clearer later. But wait, wait. Can’t tell you why right now. Right now it’s August, 1976, and it’s a smuggler’s moon in Miami, and the high rises downtown are glittering like a distant constellation that’s dying in the corner of the sky. But don’t cry, baby, don’t cry, come on, it’s two twin halves of one august event, and it’s August, and you can call Kaz Ishmael because no briny white whale or piled-high glacier can stop his whiskey on the rocks from melting; and Thomas Hardy himself can’t hold a candle to the hard-on Kaz is sporting and not even bothering to hide, not that his hot pants hide anything generally. Because in August, 1976, Kaz has not even begun to consider the prospect of regular estradiol injections, and also is, like the stilly couched iceberg of Thomas Hardy, coked up beyond all recognition or comprehension, and that always gets him hard as fuck, and can you imagine if he had been called Dick Hardy? Or Dick Harry. That was one of Zero’s favorites, wasn’t it? Tom, Dick, and Harry. A long time ago now, but a little while after August of ’76, Ocelot had told Kaz that Zero’d made everyone sit down and watch that movie at one of the Patriots’ dinner parties. Yeah, they all used to do that back then. (Zero never hosted Kaz at a dinner party.) God, but Dick Hardy could probably give even Hot Coldman a run for his money. You know that his name wasn’t really Hot Coldman, right? They just changed it later, before the whole Peace Walker ordeal went public. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, how much more they changed; how much of what you think you know of the story you’ve heard is really how it all went down. Who’s to say any of what you’re reading right now is real, either? Who’s to say Kaz is even in Miami in August of ’76? That there’s a locked safe somewhere in the suburbs of Salisbury that will irrevocably alter the course of Kaz’s life, that anyone can take an honest-to-god Saturday-Night-Fever-style leap off the Verrazano Bridge and survive, that Zero really likes to have his balls stepped on during sex? And really, who’s to say that Kaz Miller acts out a desperate and exaggerated performance of machismo to the entire world, to the point where, by August of ‘76, his performance has become borderline second nature? Who’s to say, who’s to say?
But forget it, forget it for now. Now it’s 1976, August, and the twain will be converging any minute now—any minute now. But just keep this in mind until the end: it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you, so don’t cry, baby. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.