The lure of the Monorail is so enticing that some of us wish to transcend mere ridership and become one with Monorailularity. Such was the case this morning on the Blue Train track of the Seattle Monorail, as reported in the Seattle P.I.:

Seattle's monorail was temporarily shut down Monday after a man was seen walking, and at times lying, on the track near Westlake Center, police reported.

Police negotiators were called to the scene. The man first was reported walking on the tracks about 10 a.m., police spokeswoman Renee Witt. And at about 10:19 a.m., the man apparently surrendered to police and firefighters who walked onto the rails to negotiate with him.

Witnesses said the man, who is deaf, took off chasing the train as it left Westlake Center. Police were able to coax him back to Westlake Center by negotiating him through sign language.

The man was unhurt, but transported to Harborview Medical Center for evaluation.

According to local television station King 5, it was "not immediately clear why the man jumped onto the tracks." Well, perhaps it was not clear to the banal minds of the MSM -- the Monorail Sabotaging Media, who were instrumental in the downfall of the Seattle Monorail Project through their treasonous campaign of disinformation against the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority -- but to those of us with the clarity of vision and basic Humanity to understand our species' Monorail Destiny, the man's motive was heart-achingly clear: he wanted to be a monorail train.

Much like when Primitive Man first looked up at the birds and wished that he too had wings, Sophisticated Man -- that is to say, Monorail Man (Homo unilongurius) -- now looks monorailward in longing. A desire for pure monorailism, unfettered by the locomotive limitations of the primordial meat-sticks that we call our limbs, is the defining dream of those who have obtained Monorail Consciousness; a dream to not just move with the Monorail -- seated passively, however luxurious the ride may be -- but to move as the Monorail, to be fully engaged in the motive will of monorailular movement. It is, in short, a dream to become the Monorail Train itself.

Often, I too dream of being a monorail train: to glide along that singular rail in the same whooshing efficiency; to know intimately the feeling of pulling into the loving embrace of a monorail station; to experience wholly the singularity of purpose, the surety of direction, that the Monorail embodies. I know that I am not alone in these yearnings; if you are capable of honest self-evaluation, you will gladly admit to them too. This desire is so powerful, so primal, that it even manifests in some subsentient species:

Man seems almost hopelessly imperfect when measured against the sublime perfection of the Monorail. It is therefore no wonder that we should strive against all reason to attain even the smallest modicum of that perfection, however beyond our reach it may seem. This is, ultimately, the true nature of the Monorail: it beckons us to go beyond our assumed limits, and then to go even further, and after that, yet further still! The Monorail takes us along a never-ending, never-diverting track forever accelerating toward transcension; our next stop: Eternity. Could God Himself be Monorailular? I think this is a Truth without serious objection. How else does one explain the truism: to lie naked on a monorail track is to experience a touch of the Divine?

So, I say to the unnamed man who today walked where monorail trains glide and laid down there dreaming of taking his place among them: Keep the dream alive! (Just please don't interrupt the monorail service again. I depend on it for all my travel.)

Speaking of menacing pods, the Monorailists have a new scheme to get us all traveling on dangerous monorails -- the Podcar:

The Podcar: teetering over your home town soon?

It's a "podcar," also called "personal rapid transit" -- a system of vehicles that provide on-demand, private, nonstop travel. These vehicles can carry people or light freight. They ride on small, overhead guideways -- like a monorail or people mover -- above existing roads, and are powered entirely by electricity. Picture the car as an elevated, driverless taxi. It's under computer control, so there would be no accidents, thereby saving lives and lowering insurance costs.

Podcars operate on demand, waiting at off-line stations; they can be summoned if one is not available when you arrive at the station. Each vehicle can hold four people, yet the system can be cost-effective even with a single rider for each trip.

Benefits that monorail podcars have over traditional monorail trains are that when one bursts into flames, only four people will be roasted alive, and you won't be able to fit a frightened elephant inside one. Also, when they stall (and they will), you can get out and push.

Podcars are a poor mimicry of the superior Inteli-Tube pneumatic transportation system* and were designed to confuse the car-obsessed public into building more dangerous monorails. But the sinister ambitions of the Monorailists don't stop with preying on automobilophiles, they also want to replace bicycles with a monorailular version! Will the monorail madness never end?

* The ITPTS was developed by Lyle Zapato & ZPi Laboratories.

Monorailists have always claimed that their beloved technology is merely a panacea for public transportation needs, regardless of the constant spontaneous combustions and elephant suicides. Well, now the real agenda of the Monorailists has been revealed: Total Information Awareness through a Monorailular Panopticon!

THE MONORAILS ARE WATCHING!

Linceus GmbH is promoting technology that it calls "Sensors in Motion", which consists of an unmanned monorail drone armed with sensors and "countermeasures" designed to zip through cities at 50mph along an omni-present network of monorail tracks to keep citizens surveilled and in line:

Drive Technology

Linceus implements a "state-of-the-art" high-speed and all-weather application of contactless magnetic drive technology. This technology developed by SEW guarantees durability for many years of minimal maintenance.

The Linceus system comprises high-velocity mobile sensors and active measure packages driven along slim aluminum monorails. The advanced "contactless" technology used for the induced magnetic motorization system is unique and most reliable.

The induced magnetic motorization system of Linceus ensures high reliability and silent "frictionless" operation. It carries the required sensor and countermeasure payload

Command and Control Center

The Linceus system comprises an open architecture command & control software that enables full control and remote event management of an unlimited number of riders and payloads. It can also be integrated with higher-level command & control systems.

The system's command and control software enables the user to pre-program the rider's surveillance pattern as well as to auto-track detected moving targets. The system features shunting tracks for rapid launching of riders to sensitive areas.

Linceus is an open system that can be integrated with any C&C of the customer. Integration with other sensors, such as radar, EO, UAV, etc., is also possible. The system can handle GIS, video analysis and GPS. It offers the flexibility of tailor-made controlling of as many riders as required and different modes of operation.

According to Wired's Danger Room, the revealed countermeasures include "dazzling spotlights, high-decibel acoustics and other nonlethal means of warning the unwitting" as well as optional laser pointers and laser rangefinders. This last option will make it possible to use the system to "paint" subversives for liquidation from afar via smart-missiles:

While optimized for independent operations, the robotic patrols also work in support of ground patrols and anti-infiltration squads. And in cases of extreme threats to sensitive border areas or high-value installations, the system can be linked into external sensors and ground-, sea- or air-based shooters.

While they won't admit it, I think it's safe to assume that system's countermeasures includes an on-board psychotron, allowing it to not only observe, but to obligate behavior. Also, the choice of aluminum rails is no coincidence, as these will act as circumambient psychotronic deflector surfaces to better target mind-control transmissions at unbeanied citizens hiding in the city's nooks and crannies.

Much like with the Monorailists' work on the Puppy Mover and Monorail Cat, the sinister nature of these monorail spies is being memetically hidden using "cuteness". Who could possibly fear a drone that looks like a cartoonish smiling head riding on a cartoonish caterpillar? (Note how the drone bears an uncanny resemblance to "beloved" fast-food executive "Jack", whose smiling head can be seen on millions of car antennas. As every paranoid knows, those "antenna balls" are really RFID markers designed to help identify consumers who haven't yet bought into Jack in the Box, Inc's pro-Corporatist propaganda. Obviously Linceus GmbH has licensed JBX's memetic engineering technology to induce the same sort of voluntary compliance as exhibited by those who willingly place the markers on their cars.)

Monorail spies: winding their way through your neighborhood soon.

Linceus' first evaluation system will be deployed at the Ben-Gurion-Airport in Tel Aviv. Eventually all major cities will be completely enthreaded with monorail surveillance. Move to the wilderness before it's too late!

Back in 2005, I reported that monorailists were threatening to weave nanomonorails into our clothing. At the time these nanomonorails were constructed using nanobiotechnology adapted from Black Helicopter research. The Monorailists used ATP and kinesin, two biological molecules found in our cells, thus making a nanomonorail that was a sort of human/nanomonorail chimera -- a "manomonorail", if you will.

Nanomonorail stalled in middle of track -- just like a real monorail!

Now Monorailsts in Spain -- presumably following some sort of disagreement with the Black Helicopter nano­bio­tech­nicians -- have devised a new form of non-biological nano­monorail technology which they claim has the theoretical ability to move 100 million times faster than those using biological motor proteins.

Both the rail and the shuttle of their nanomonorail are built from carbon nanotubes, the car sliding over the rail like a sleeve. Movement comes from thermomechanical action instead of through a perversion of biology:

They attached each end of the nanotube track, about 300 nanometres long, to metal platforms, so that the tube stretched between them through empty space. Then they fixed a flake of gold to the shuttle tube, which was intended to hold molecular cargo.

When the researchers passed an electrical current through the bridging nanotube, which acts like a 'wire' connecting the metal plates, they found that some shuttle tubes moved towards the nearest plate. Others simply revolved at a fixed location.

"At first we thought it was the electrons that were moving the nanotube," says Bachtold. But the direction of motion didn't depend on the direction of the current.

Instead, the researchers concluded that the current was simply heating up the device, and that this was what was moving the shuttle. This mechanism "came as a surprise", says Bachtold.

Because heat is conducted out of the nanotube by the metal plates, the system is hottest in the middle and cooler at the ends. This means that the thermal shaking of the track tube is strongest in the middle -- which makes the sleeve tube move towards whichever end is nearer. It is a little like shaking the free end of a rope tied to a tree, with a hoop threaded onto the rope. The waves in the rope will usher the hoop towards the tree.

Fortunately for those dreading the day when nanomonorails bind the entire biosphere into a fine, homogeneous gray mesh, there's a major problem the Monorailists need to work out: their shuttle gets hot enough to destroy any cargo on board. Not surprising considering the same problem is too-often exhibited by macromonorails.

Seattleite Goodspaceguy Nelson is a politician with a very forward-looking agenda: he wants humanity to colonize orbital space. Besides being his passion, orbital colonization was the major platform plank in his unsuccessful 2006 bid for US Senate.

Now that Goodspaceguy is running for King County Council, he has apparently had to put aside that big dream for the time being (there's only so much a Councilman can do in the arena of space colonization, after all,) and is instead focusing on removing restrictions on building height so the people of King County can live in "beautiful, high density communities filled with sky homes" -- slyly encouraging citizens to take baby steps into orbital space.

Intrigued by his bold vision of an orbital future, I wondered what he thought of that other ostensibly futuristic vision that has gripped the region since 1910: the monorail. While monorail fever has become somewhat dormant as of late, there's always the threat that it may flare up again (figuratively and literally) and as a Councilman he may have to address the monorail issue.

I emailed him and the other two contenders for the District No. 8 race to see what are their official positions on monorails. John Potter (R) and Dow Constantine (whom Nelson is running against in the Democratic primary) never bothered to respond, not even with a form letter.

However, Goodspaceguy not only responded, he responded with a fragment-of-fiction, titled "Life in the Colony: Space Sonja and Monorails". Set in the Boeing Blue District of the orbiting space colony at the dawn of orbital colonization, it comprises a Socratic dialog between himself, as a newly elected colony councilor, and Sonja, a "state approved, professional tease" who does performances imitating the spirit of Cher:

To prove that she had been reading, Sonja asked, "When our Boeing orbiting space colony becomes really, really large, do you think that our descendants ... of both we, the current space colonists, and of the new colonists still to be sent up by Boeing and Microsoft and the other space companies of King County ... I mean, do you think they will build space monorails or will they continue to float and glide themselves and their equipment through the zero gravity of space, as we do now?"

Goodspaceguy's position is that monorails are not cost-effective: "To be profitable, monorails require a huge number of people who use them regularly and around the clock ... The government transit systems turn out to be real money losers. The tax payers end up paying for the loss." Instead, as I mentioned above, he proposes high density communities and "24 hour, never-stop, go-go cities" that would get rid of rush hours. As to monorails in the orbital colonies (which I asked him about) he downplays them (and presumably other forms of transit) and suggests that colonists should get exercise by walking in "gravity corridors" to compensate for all their time floating weightlessly.

At the end he includes a poem which sums up his position on monorails nicely:

Monorails, Like Sonja, Can Be Fun!

by Goodspaceguy

Bodaciously beautiful call girls
Are expensively fun like monorails,
But Sonja finds that many would-be riders
Are without sufficient money pails!

The would-be-riders ask, "Oh, who will
Pay for our fun and frenzied riding times?"
Look to the sleeping tax payers. Their pockets
Are filled with dollars and dimes."

Some taxpayers shout, "Please, please stop.
Our dollars and dimes will not be enough!
Let us avoid frenzied transit monorails,
Paying for transit trips will be too tough."

Let us build more homes up in our sky,
And continue to walk under our Sun.
We want sky homes near our work, but we agree
That monorails, like Sonja, would be fun!

Bodaciously beautiful call girls
Are expensively fun like monorails,
But Sonja finds that many would-be riders
Are without sufficient money pails!

(While he may get flack from some for the subject matter, the correspondence of monorails to prostitutes is not undocumented.)

Given his sensible position on monorails (and the rude non-response of his opponents,) we here at ZPi are proud to endorse Goodspaceguy Nelson for King County Council to the people of District 8. I look forward to the day when the mile-high and monorail-free condos of Cascadia are serenaded from orbit with Cher's "Believe."

UPDATE (2006-08-26): Sad to report that Goodspaceguy Nelson lost the Democratic primary to water-taxi proponent Dow Constantine, 8.89% to 90.84%. Just more proof of the inordinate sway that the powerful Water Taxi Lobby holds over the primaries. Remember King Countyites, you can still write-in Goodspaceguy in the general election.

Last year I wrote an open letter to Iranian president and doctor of Transport Engineering Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, urging him to abandon the fruitless, non-monorail-related direction he was taking his nation and to return to his roots as a monorail engineer and advocate for Monorailism: "Expand the Tehran Monorail," I challenged him, "engage the Monorailist Revolution!"

Today, Tehran responded to my letter -- and what a bold response it is!

Dr. Ahmadinejad has begun the process to build a maglev monorail line between the capital of Tehran and the holy city of Mashhad, home of the shrine to Imam Ali Reza (PBUH). Much like with the planned Hajj monorail in Saudi Arabia, the line's secondary purpose -- after that most primary of all purposes: the Elevationment of Mankind -- will be the transportation of pilgrims. Upwards of 15 million faithful visitors a year from around the Shiah world will be exposed to the singular perfection of monorail transportation and will take back with them a new found Faith in Humanity's shared Monorailular Future.

When built (and I have every confidence that Dr. Ahmadinejad's pro-monorail administration will see this through) the 800 kilometer track will be the longest maglev monorail line in the world; a gleaming beam stretching through the cultural heart of Iran, humming with potential -- both human and electric; a technological marvel that will usher in a Renaissance of Monorail Culture!

The monorail will be built by German maglev experts Transrapid with the initial feasibility study being handled by engineering firm Regierungsbaumeister Schlegel GmbH.

MORE BREAKING NEWS: This wondrous development in the spread of maglev monorail technology comes on the heels of disturbing reports out of China. Claims were being made in the media that the planned Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev monorail, also to be built by Transrapid, was canceled following protests from those fearful of radiation from the magnetized track. It now turns out that these reports were false and that both government officials in Shanghai and Transrapid were unaware of any halt to the plans.

I suspect that the initial report was agitprop placed in the media by Anti-Monorail Activists -- those bitter, petty Luddites who fear Monorail excellence and despise those who strive for it. These agitators have infiltrated the Chinese Central Government and seek to use the mechanisms of intra-party politics to spread doubt about Monorailism's rightful place as Humanity's central guiding principle. And they're doing this by playing on people's irrational fear of electromagnets! What's next? Wearing tinfoil hats like a paranoid pneumatic tubeist?

Rubbish, I say! Let us not cower from electrical phantoms, boogeymen from the timid minds of those who would rather creep along the ground on wheels than soar through the sky on a cushion of energy. Now is not the time for timidity -- not now, on the cusp of Global Monorail Consciousness! If the circumambient electromagnetic fields of our bustling Monorailtopias should set our hairs to stand on end and put a tingle in our skin, then so be it! Such is the physiological state we should be in when standing in awe before the ethereal spectacle of our manifested Monorail Destiny!

The June issue of Scientific American is running an article advocating Pleistocene rewilding for North America. This would involve reintroducing to the continent the wild megafauna (or their closest living relatives) that disappeared after the arrival of humans, hopefully restoring the ecological balance of the region. (For more on these theories, see The Rewilding Institute.)

While I, for one, fully support releasing wild lions throughout the Mid West, I noticed something disturbing in the depiction of their vision for a rewilded America that makes me question the competency (or motives) of those behind this movement:

Proposed middle North America circa 2027, with enlarged detail.

That's right: they want to build monorails through their rewilded America!

Now, I'm no paleoecologist, but I'm fairly certain that monorails were not part of the natural habitat of North America 13,000 years ago. Have they considered the negative impact that introducing such a dangerous and out of place technology would have of the sustainability of this ersatz ecology?

For example, they blithely plan to mix monorails with elephants -- something that has been tried before with disastrous consequences. What happens when a large herd of elephants is existentially disturbed by the sight of anachronistic monorails and, in a deranged rush to get as far away from the menace as possible, stampedes right through the "high-tech electrified fence" supposedly keeping in check the pseudo-Pleistocene? Are Americans willing to risk the loss of, say, Topeka to total tramplement? Has any thought gone into these dangers?

But maybe there's something more sinister afoot than simple disregard for monorail dangers. Monorailists would have us believe that monorails are not only futuristic, but an integral part of our planet's history; see the robotic Jurassic Park in Dubai that will feature a historically inaccurate monorail-chasing T-rex, and the unlikely theory of our own resident monomaniac, the Monorailist, that ancient India was home to the world's first monorail (built by monkeys, no less). This tendency to revisionist history is as common among Monorailsts as their tendency to unrealistic futurism, so it would not be surprising for them to misrepresent the Pleistocene Epoch as the Age of the Woolly Monorail.

If, as I fear, the field of ecological engineering has been infiltrated by monorailistic forces bent on using Pleistocene rewilding as a cover to further brainwash the public into accepting monorails as a natural part of the environment, then I must dissuade people from supporting those pro-rewilding organizations that have not yet officially rebuked the use of monorails. (Fortunately, all Sasquatch groups involved in the reoctopusing of Cascadia's forests are staunchly anti-monorail.)

The dangers monorails pose are many: spontaneous combustion, collisions, flying debris, falling elephants, alien abductions, and now... mobs of prostitutes!

Prostitutes jump on Monorail tracks to escape cops

KUALA LUMPUR: About 20 prostitutes disrupted the Monorail service for an hour last night when they leapt from a shoplot onto the tracks to avoid arrest.

...

Assisted by Monorail staff, police and firemen took an hour to round up the prostitutes who were running on the tracks. They were nabbed and brought down via emergency stairs used by train engineers during repairs.

Of course, if Malaysia had chosen enclosed, family-friendly pneumatic tube transit they wouldn't be having this problem. City planers considering monorails: do you really want to put parents in the awkward position of having to explain to their children who all the half-naked women running ahead of the monorail train are?

News from the East: The Hajj to be Monorailized!

A study prepared by the International Transport Projects Company for a monorail system that will transport pilgrims to and from the holy sites of Mecca, Mina, Muzdalifah, and Arafat has been joyously welcomed by agencies of the Saudi Arabian government. The $1.86 billion, four-line project could be completed in a mere four years and will be able to carry nearly 800,000 pilgrims during the Hajj in the sort of dignified efficiency that only monorails can offer.

As explained by monorailologist Dr. Muhammad Naji Kurdi, a Mecca monorail system will have wider social benefits beyond easing the pilgrimage: "It will also create new job opportunities for young Saudi graduates, especially in operating monorails and manufacturing carriages and their spare parts."

With the coming of the Monorail, disaffected Saudi youth will turn away from anti-social avenues of expression to embrace the uplifting of mankind through monorailular knowledge. This will lead Saudi Arabia inexorably away from their destructive oil-based economy toward a sustainable monorail-parts-and-services-based one -- a positive transformation that we must all go through in this new century, the Century of the Monorail!

Although the current plan only encompasses transporting pilgrims between the holy sites, my contacts in the International Monorailist Community assure me that Phase Two will present a bolder vision: Once the four separate lines are connected into a single, continuous one -- complete with spiraling track around the Kaaba, switchback tracks between Safa and Marwah, and the ability to cast stones from the monorail's window as it passes by the jamarat in Mina -- and a high-speed line from Mecca to Medina is added, pilgrims will one day be able to make the Umrah and the Greater Hajj without ever disembarking the Monorail.

Some in the Muslim world may be leery of such modernity coming to this, their most holy of places. But let me allay these fears: This choice to submit to the Monorail -- if such an irrefragable inevitability can be called a choice -- is the right one for Mecca and for Islam.

There is a natural concinnity between Monotheism and Monorailism -- a shared purity of Singularity that speaks to Unity and Transnational Brotherhood. While the Monorail is the epitome of Ultramodernity, it is also a timeless invocation of Oneness, uniting the Future and the Past in a continuously looping track with a station conveniently located at Now. How fitting then that the Five Pillars of Islam should be joined by the Concrete Pillars of the Monorail. In fact, I would dare suggest that it would not be theologically unreasonable to proclaim: "There is no God but Allah, and Monorail is His public transportation!"

I say unto the people of Saudi Arabia: Welcome! Welcome into the fold of Monorailfaring Nations! While Dubai may have gotten here ahead of you by creating the first monorail in your region, your contribution to the Monorailist Cause will be no less important, as you will be poised to introduce the profound spiritually transformative power of the Monorail to pilgrims from all over the World.

So, to the minarets, you muezzin of Monorailism, and let this be your adhan: A Mecca for Monorailists! a Monorail for Mecca!

First it was a monorail built exclusively for puppies, which the Monorailists hoped would lower people's natural resistance to monorails. At the time, I noted that the canonical psychotronic enamorment memeplex involves cute kittens and wondered why the monorailists would choose the non-standard cuteness vector of puppies.

Well, now the monorailists are closing the cuteness gap with their newest propaganda ploy. I introduce to you (assuming you haven't already seen it in the memeosphere):

As with the Toyger and Hitler cats, the Monorail Cat was bred by eugenicists to resemble something it is not. In this case, a monorail train.

Most likely building on the work of the controversial Munchkin cat breeders, the Monorailists have created a cat with only vestigial legs and a ventral groove that allows it to slide on its belly fur along smooth tracks. Soon they will have a whole army of Monorail Cats with which to slide across the railings and banisters in our communities, lulling naive people into acceptance of -- and, eventually, desire for -- monorailular movement.

I just hope breeding these cats for monorail-like traits hasn't resulted in them exhibiting the same propensity for spontaneous combustion as with real monorails.

More examples of Monorail Cat propaganda images are being spread via a cat fancier site called "I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?" (and possibly at monorailcat.com, which for now only says "Coming Soon!").