Entry by Robbert Moore. This entry needs artwork!

My name is Dexter Jared Peterson. I am 26 years old and I live in New York City. In the last seven years I have lived as 11,577 different people.

It’s black….a big black room, no lights, no windows, nothing, a small bed, or i think it is. looking around I’m not sure where i am this time, kinda feels empty. after calling out to find someone for i swear, like 20 minutes straight i gave up, I’m in a big empty black room.

After about three hours or maybe longer its hard to tell how much time i spent alone in that big black room a door opened up somewhere in front of me there was finally a voice, “Sargent its time you got released but there is a catch” at this point i try to respond my throat hurts trying to, I need something to drink.

“The price is your joining the imperial army, your gonna be a marine again, but this time were going to have you on a tight leash after the terrinus incident” of course there’s always a catch the date is the year 52 thousand in the year of the emperor inceridous (what ever that means) the time 15:00 after two hours of my release and 100 pages of paperwork at least, i was put in this HUGE set of armour.

This is too unreal this computer was telling me everything as they weld me. there’s a war, with a massive alien but scary thing is, its our own fault,i found out they were small innocent little creatures, but they had a huge resistance to pain, so the government (which ever was present at that time) decided to modify them, and use them as soldiers, thing is they were all to willing.

they attacked us instead of the enemy, and in the end started a full world take over, eventually bio modifying (what ever that means) all our ships, turning them into things they could use, taking over our worlds one, by one, by one. i later found out they developed the armour, so the enemy, couldn’t assimilate me into there ranks, scary thing about it is……im there first test subject. so after about maybe twenty minutes in the training grounds i find out i already know all the weaponry and i know the suit….this guy came up with the idea, hes gotta be crazy, they put me in the barracks and after my first day a voice chimes in my head, like it was there all along

“the plan worked, i cant believe it worked…..” the voice…. i know that voice i mumble her name” Alexandria, what happened?” she laughs” you cant remember can you, alot to remember i guess, we planned it all the attack on terrinus, you going to jail, and the acquiring of the prototype marine armour, now you play along for a little while, and don’t get killed, well need you when we can get those tools to get you out, or at least scan it, then well be able to take down the imperium, AND stop the dammed shifters, from taking anymore of our home” a click she was gone…..who is she this time i wonder, as i drift off to sleep

This is another post about Spotify, believe it or not, and why James Bond has made me afraid to use it.

As we all know, the famous British secret agent is a crafty one. He’s entertaining to watch, worth every penny I’ve paid to Netflix to see him. In fact, the entire James Bond catalogue appearing on Netflix Instant Watch is what prompted me to sign up for the service in the first place. (If it hadn’t, the entire Star Trek TNG series would have.) So now I get to watch Mr. Bond do battle with evil masterminds, Grace Jones, and the governor from those pirate movies, all while skillfully avoiding death, imprisonment, and chlamydia. I’ll be entertained for months.

Except I won’t. Secret agents are trained to disappear, remember? The rights holder for the James Bond franchise pulled the entire library out of Netflix Instant Watch shortly after I signed up. As a token of their remorse for my disappointment, they promptly raised their prices to make up for it. But I’ve still got my Star Trek, right? Right? Well, as of this posting I still do, anyway.

Compound Mr. Bond’s untimely disappearance with the concerns raised by James Allworth of the Harvard Business Review. The main concern I share with Mr. Allworth is one of habits: We don’t tend to watch the same movie over and over again (unless we’re really, really high), but we will listen to the same album repeatedly. What happens if the cost to keep listening suddenly jumps? Or what if that album disappears entirely?

Maybe 007 stole it for his Lotus in-car turntable. He’s probably got one, you know.

Either way, the conclusion I’m rapidly approaching is that Spotify, like Pandora, is best used as a way to discover new music, that’s all. And again, Pandora is a much better system for discovery since you really don’t have to do any work to be exposed to new music you’re likely to enjoy. The robots pick the playlist and there’s no illusion of “owning” or even renting the music; it’s just like radio with no DJ and your own personal program director.

So I’ll be here with no James Bond. At least, not until I can afford the full DVD collection or whomever’s pulling the strings decides to let me enjoy what I paid for. Again.

Entry by Sarah Lander. This entry needs artwork!

My name is Dexter Jared Peterson. I am 26 years old and I live in New York City. In the last seven years I have lived as 11,577 different people.

I’ve been in wars before, been shot at more times than I care to remember and even nearly been hanged twice, but none of this compares to the terror I felt when I awoke today. It is still possible to see tendrils of smoke rising from Camulodunum in the dawn mist and I think I can even make out what’s left of the temple from here.

The Romans who came too late to relieve what they considered their capital in these lands are mostly dead. The rest fled along with their cowardly commander after we routed them on the field. Whether the stench on the morning breeze comes from the city smouldering on the horizon, or the huge army gradually waking around me is impossible to say.

That army took Camulodunum apart one piece at a time, destroying every building in its path and murdering everyone they came across. Impaled on spikes, hung or merely burnt within their own homes, whatever form of death was closest at hand was employed. Even the crucifixes were put to good use. Men. Women. Children. None were taken prisoner. All died even though not all of them were Roman. What kind of monster slaughters even their own people without mercy?

Apparently me. Or at least the person whose life I just jumped into. It seems I lead this army. My mind is filled with thoughts so alien it scares me. The thought of ethnic cleansing is bad enough, but the fact it comes from the mind of a woman is the bit I find truly disturbing. The idea that a woman could take such pleasure from the suffering of others is something that never crossed my mind before. I worry that I will get driven insane by the thoughts of this savage beauty (or at least completely forget my own identity) before I can leave this life.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” doesn’t even come close to describing this intelligent woman hell-bent on revenge. I honestly have no words to convey the true horror of what is going through my- her -head. I also never thought it was possible to be this afraid, and certainly not of a woman. I have no idea how long I am going to be in this body or how I might escape it, but I don’t think I will find peace until I can get out of here.

I wish I could find Alexandria, but this army and its retinue is nearly a hundred thousand strong already so it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. You see, it’s not just the horror of the situation I’m in that scares me, but also the realities of the body I’m in.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that this is also the first time I’ve been a female and that’s a change which frightens me on its own merit.

I’m hoping Alexandria can help me understand it. More people are arriving this morning to join the army now that the victory news is spreading. It looks like we’ll need to head to Londinium and plunder its trade riches in order to keep them fed. And raze that city as well, so the Roman disease it promotes cannot survive there. With that knowledge, the obvious conclusion is that it must be time for me to make a proper effort at getting up so we can get moving.

As I brush my long tawny hair out of the way so I can refasten my torc, I know that Boudica will not rest until every trace of Roman influence is completely eradicated from the land and she can rule freely as Queen of the Iceni once more. It seems that I am going to witness events through her eyes, and not just her memories, whether I like it or not. I can only pray I have the stomach to survive the experience, but I’m not sure I will ever be able to truly understand or come to terms with the idea of genocide on the scale she is planning.

Entry by Max Goof. This entry needs artwork!

Exactly when this reality began, I am not sure.

I know that in other states of existence there was a period called sleep. There appears to be nothing like that in this state. It’s almost like going from a state of inactivity to that of activity, in which state I am now. I know that I will eventually return to a state of inactivity, but when that will occur I do not know. It has been known to occur in a very short period of time, or to be delayed for very long periods as well. I do know that I have not always been who I am now, and I am fairly certain I will not remain as I am now.

Now that I am fairly certain that I have confused most of you, let me confuse you further.

What you are reading is not an actual journal, per se. It is a chemical trail I leave behind as I move. I am hoping someone can pick up on it, and know what to do with it, to make it available to whomever it is that I feel needs to read this. I do have a body, per se, as I have had in other states of existence. Although all sensory data comes in from all over the surface of it–light, sound, touch, smell/taste, thought.

Yes, thought. Even as I write this down, chemically, those around me sense what I am thinking. It is a point of consteration to them, as the thoughts are so far out of the ordinary for them, that they are quite agitated. I think that this situation might be similar to suddenly finding a good friend ranting and raving about all of the monsters he sees around him. Only more so.

They are so used to sharing thoughts here, that original thought is perceived as madness to the extreme, and quickly remedied. Oh yes, my body. One could describe it as being similar to a slug, but without the eyestalks. Like a worm, but without the segments. Movement is similar to both. Just describing these things which are so common to the experience of those around me is cause for consternation, much like one would be concerned with the mental state of someone who describes what it is like to breathe. Only more so.

They seem to be taking far more notice now, simultaneously avoiding me, and crowding about me, like sharks would circle their prey, a thought that causes them even more aggitation, since they have no experience with sharks. Even now I can feel their thoughts congeal. As they meld together in a defense against the foreign thoughts I feel I have to use to describe this existence.

They press down upon me. Yes, that is what it is. Almost a mental assault. Intent on stamping out the foreign, almost crazy mental state they find in me. I fear that this existence will be ending soon. It seems I am unfamiliar with the group thought here, seeing as I am far more individualisting in my thought patterns than they have ever experienced before. A xenophobia has set it, that is melding them into group thought to expell and exterminate this foreign thought that has intruded upon their world.

Yes, this body is being forced into inactivity. All thought is being suppressed. I fear I do not have much longer to relate this w

At long last, Spotify has launched here in the United States! My initial instinct is that it’s a technological one-two punch: Discover an artist on Pandora Radio, go listen to the full album on Spotify. Let’s see what happens every time you listen to a track on Spotify…

If 10,000 people buy a track from iTunes, I can pay off my credit cards and keep making music. If 10,000 people listen to a track on Spotify, I earn $13 and change; I can almost buy dinner at Chili’s.

Shit. Please, folks, buy an album if you like what you hear.

Entry by Adam Hoek. This entry needs artwork!

This entry, is a little different from my normal entries… Its different because I didn’t get to write down what happened in my latest ‘flash’ or ‘life’ before the one I’m in now. So what I am writing is strictly from memory here…

It all started out with a flash of light and a rumble unlike I’ve ever encountered in previous lives. I had that feeling that you get when you fall out of the top bunk whilst still asleep but before you hit the ground. A strange weightlessness, which seems fun, until you realize you are about to get really hurt. When I was young, that sequence of emotions would happen really fast. But in this life, it stretched out longer.

It turns out that there are far more emotions between fun and fear of death than one would expect. Where was I? Well, to tell you the truth, in the beginning I had no idea. It was just a mess of white and blue flashing by, I was quite confused to be perfectly honest.

As It turns out, I had become a droplet of water. I think the life started at the crack of a lightning bolt. Somehow, I was conscious. Maybe it had something to do with the lightning, maybe all water is sentient! I really don’t know. But one thing for sure, is that free falling is the most delightful and terrifying experiences I can imagine.

Seeing the ground rush towards you is the scary part. I was hoping I would transfer to another life before I hit the ground and as I got closer I became more and more afraid. Hitting the ground was quite an experience. I broke up into smaller droplets and for a short moment I was aware of being in multiple places at once. Eventually It all went black as I seeped into the earth.

This is where it gets really crazy though. I became the sea. What I once was, must have somehow gathered into the ocean. It makes sense, that’s what happens to most water at some point anyway. All I can say, is that there really isn’t any way to describe being the ocean. Feeling every part of land beneath you, feeling every fish, every boat and even feeling the vibrations of sound coming from whales and dolphins. Amazing.

Either that really happened, or someone slipped me something in this life that I’m in now, I’m off to investigate.

Entry by Goldeen Ogawa. This entry needs artwork!

My name is Dexter Jared Peterson. I am 26 years old and live in New York City. In the last seven years I have lived as 11,577 people.

The room was so white it was almost blinding. The floor was white tile, the walls were white wash. The ceiling was one solid bank of diffuse white lights. Even my clothes were white, though they were spattered with something dark blue and sticky.

“I said, can you give me the numbers of that reading, Peterson?”

There was a man in the room with me. I had not seen him at once because he was also wearing white and blended into the background. Now I looked, and saw him walk behind a rack of soothing gray computers. He was glaring at me, but only out of impatience. We were colleagues then, not enemies. Good. I looked down at my hands, hoping they held whatever was producing the reading this man wanted the numbers from.

There was a moment where I thought I was having a flashback to my day as a sushi chef, slicing octopus tentacles. But I’d never seen an octopus with green skin. One of my hands was holding a small device like a smartphone, with a cord that ran to my second hand, which was plunged into a vat of water which was in turn filled with writhing green tentacles. I stared at them numbly. Some of them were gashed and a few were missing their tips. Out of the wounds oozed clouds of dark blue blood, mucking up the water in the tank. Now I knew where the splatters on my clothes had come from. It’s so nice to be able to start piecing together the situation.

I seemed to be holding the end of the cord with my left hand up against the main body where all the tentacles converged, and there was a steady beeping coming from the smartphone in my right hand. Squinting at its display, I tried to make out the numbers. It felt like a vice had closed around my left hand. I gave a shout of surprise, looked down, and found the thing was looking back at me. One round eye, like an orange and yellow pinwheel, was staring at me.
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Entry by Glen Lupher Jr. This entry needs artwork!

My name is Dexter Jared Peterson. I am 26 years old and I live in New York City. In the last seven years I have lived as 11,577 different people.

The sound of chanting rang in my ears as I blinked my eyes open and looked around. Six men formed a chain at the front of the mass, holding me and the collected throng back as words became clearer and clearer: “A San Fermín pedimos, por ser nuestro patrón, nos guíe en el encierro dándonos su bendición.” I remembered enough Spanish from my time on the high seas as a pirate, well, the second time as a pirate to recognize the word “encierro.”

The chants gave way as the sound of a rocket firework shot off overhead, followed by the thundering of hooves and the sound of cowbells mingling with the roar of a crowd watching from the balconies above. Another rocket shot as the police scrambled out of the way and the horde which I found myself part of started to scramble down the narrow streets. I managed to jump out of the way of a particularly mean looking black steer, and could feel the breath of another on my lower back as the ground vibrated harder beneath my feet.

Instead of the inevitable feel of horns goring me, a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to the left up against a wall. Smacking into the stone, I spun around and stumbled before falling onto my rear. Looking up for a sign of my rescuer, my eyes fell on a familiar sight – Alexandria, standing over me with a smirk on her face, “Chivalry isn’t dead, Dexter. It’s just changed hands.”

With that statement, she took off down the Mercaderes, leaving me panting against the building as an oxen trotted past, with the final rocket sounding minutes later; it was confirmation that the bulls had made their way to the stadium and to their eventual deaths. As I walked along with the remaining masses from the streets, wondering how Alexandria had managed to recognize me this time when all the other times she hadn’t, I caught wind of conversation between a well-dressed gentleman and someone whom I recognized as one of the guards who held us back until our time to run.

“Com a graça de Deus e as nossas mãos, Franco vai morrer esta noite.”

The first thing that came to my mind was, of all things, “That wasn’t Spanish. It sounded like it, but some other dialect… Portuguese?” A sidelong glance back at the men, and I disappeared into the stadium to watch the fight and figure out what I had to do before I ended up as my next incarnation. As I watched a matador slay the first oxen to raucous cheers, and an announcer read, first in Basque, and then Spanish, that Generalissimo Franco was in attendance today.

And then it hit me – Franco vai morrer. “Franco will die tonight.” Between fights, I managed to slip out of the stadium to alert a police officer to what I had heard. This being Franco’s Spain, I ran the risk of being imprisoned or worse, but I knew that history could not alter from its due course, that Franco eventually, and for all I knew, that could be 40 years from now, cedes power to Juan Carlos.

I’ve come to the conclusion that being a time-jumper brings around situations that I could only describe as Hell – I could kill guys like Franco and Hitler if I had the opportunity; but I wouldn’t dare risk the future of others for a short-term gain.

The Lives of Dexter Peterson is an album/novella/comic project scheduled for release this year. It’s all about a boy from New York City who finds himself inexplicably jumping from one life to the next, as though someone were changing the channels of his life and he’s the star of every single show. Throughout it all he keeps track of his lives in a journal that, somehow, travels with him.

Who, What, and Where is Dexter Now?

Think about it… what would you do if you were suddenly somewhere else, someone else, somewhen else. You could be a different race or even a different species. What do you see? What’s happening around you? What skills do you suddenly have or languages do you suddenly speak fluently?

Submit your own journal entries, artwork, photos, video, or even phone it in to be considered for a free copy of The Lives of Dexter Peterson, both the album and the novella! Details are at www.whoisdexterpeterson.com