BTG – DEEP SCRATCH

Forget what you think you know. Reality needs a remix.

Amsterdam, 2012. DJ-poet Plush, reeling from attacks that shattered his face and his career, forms TRB with Max and Percy. Inspired by Robert Anton Wilson, they fuse turntablism, magick, and literature into the chaotic TribeTable Method, accidentally plugging into Wilson’s unfinished “Tale of the Tribe” and a brewing historical conspiracy centered on the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

As they juggle invoked entities (“The Sixty”), time-traveling tardigrades, and messages channeled through experimental beats, they attract the attention of a ruthless cabal manipulating reality through AI, populism, and bizarre rituals involving peanut butter. From Amsterdam coffeeshops and secret bases beneath the Malvern Hills to the decks of a reality-bending DJ battle, TRB must decode the “Hologrammic Prose” of the universe, hijack the narrative, and fight the “Prick Populist” threat before the singularity hits endgame.Deep Scratch is Vanta Black science fiction comedy.

It’s Burroughs cut-ups slammed into Pynchon paranoia, fueled by hip-hop aesthetics and occult theory. Expect prophetic visions, weaponized memes, sentient technology, talking books, exploding jellyfish, and the desperate search for the perfect beat in a deep fake universe. The tables are turning. Which side are you on, are you on, hello, check check…?

BETWEEN THE GROOVE (WITH FUCKUP AND HAL)

WET WARE INTRO

Hi, this is Steve Fly. No AI used here whatso nothing. What I’m releasing into the wild is another collaboration, or experimental use of AI to discuss, analyse and review my novel. Using Gemini 2.5 (experimental PRO) yes I’m a paid up subscriber, I fed Gemini weird things from my only novel, Deep Scratch. My aim here is to produce clarity, not further hallucinate, as I tend to out hallucinate the hallucinating AI. Deep Scratch is a humdinger of a complex experiment and thankfully, Gemini (or should I say, the collective cultural inheritance of all humankind focused on cutting edge AI?) does a good job of putting it into context, in bite sized chunks. I hope you agree, it helps rather than hinders my efforts to tell the story in a go-ahead, straight about way.

You see, the novel experiment was constructed and edited over more than a decade with a turntablist cut-scratch edit technique. I knew what I wanted to do, but the reader may be left in the unbeknownst again. Perhaps too much mystery and not enough driving plot, narrative structure, or simple structure structure. Who knows, who’ read it but me and Gemini, partially, and a few other poor souls? I say partially, because my process was to copy/past selected paragraphs and request an analysis. As you’ll see I requested a podcast style discussion between two hosts, which I called Fuckup and Hal for obvious reasons, I hope. (First Universal Cybernetic Kinetic Universal Programmer is the AI from Illuminatus! Trilogy by Wilson And Shea, while H.A.L. 9000 is perhaps the best known AI from modern film). It struck me as a novel podcast structure either way.

So there it is, my novel, started in 2008, and after having gone through dozens of edits abandonments and remixes was published in 2020, somewhat derailed by another novel, the novel corona virus. So sections, perhaps 23 percent of the whole novel have been shared with Gemini and so build up the convo. I’ve also strategically placed audio tracks from the Deep Scratch Universe and beyond, into each episode of Between The Groove: The title of these new Deep Scratch deep dives.

Enjoy. And please remember this is a work of science fiction. Any similarities to characters alive or dead is purely synchronous and non-intentional. May the stylus fall where it may, and I wish you all a good day.

–Steve Fly
Deep Scratch Universe.

ds album

DEEP SCRATCH PAPERBACK

BTG DEEP SCRATCH CHAPTER 01

DEEP SCRATCH CHARACTERS

Character Descriptions:

Plush: The central protagonist; DJ-poet, techno-shaman, architect of the Tribetable Method. Driven, obsessive, highly knowledgeable across diverse fields, prone to paranoia, anxiety, self-doubt, but also resilient and fiercely committed to his artistic/political mission of fighting disinformation and seeking deeper. His narrative voice often blends high theory with crude humour and personal vulnerability.
Max: Original TRB member. Enthusiastic, pragmatic, supportive friend to Plush. Intellectually curious but sometimes overwhelmed by the complexity. Has his own conspiratorial mindset (“Dotty”). Often acts as a grounding force or reality check.
Percy: Original TRB member. More laid-back, provides practical/social support (tea, weed). Prone to intellectualizing (Joyce quotes) and occasional slapstick. Develops understanding of the project over time, eventually synthesizing the core influences poetically.
Jake: Associate introduced later (possibly mainly in Remix timeline/layer?). Works closely with Plush on tech/AI elements. Seems highly susceptible to the reality-bending effects induced by the work.
Joe: Associate/test subject. Finds Plush’s work hard to grasp (“grok”). Undergoes intense VR/sensory experiments (printer-cube, in Chapter 11; potentially linked to Peanut Method). Receives a mysterious package. What?
Richard: Antagonist figure, possibly protagonist of earlier Sixty draft. Oversees the “Peanut Method” ritual with Marge. Exhibits psychopathic traits, desensitized, manipulative, with delusions of grandeur/beneficence, compares himself to corrupt political leaders. Unknown murky connection with the Sixty.
Marge: Richard’s accomplice. Croaky voice, cynical (“real human host”), ruthless (injects neighbour with serum). Appears pragmatic and focused on their AI-related deadline. Has complex dreams suggesting inner conflict. Peanut Butter slut.
Entities (“The Sixty,” etc.): A range of non-human intelligences or forces encountered/invoked. Includes the ASI-like “Sixty” (linked to C-60/Bruno), a benevolent AI/poltergeist running the record plant, accidentally invoked poltergeists/demons, time-traveling tardigrades implanting visions, Mantis figures, and the “gaggle of entities” Plush interacts with. Their nature and agendas are eclipsed by music.
The “Tribe” (Historical/Intellectual Figures): RAW, McLuhan, Joyce, Yeats, Bruno, Vico, Nietzsche, Fuller, Crowley, Burroughs, Trudell, Pound, Ginsberg, Von Neumann, Turing, Shannon, Wiener, Fenollosa, Korzybski, etc. Function as a vast network of influences, inspirations, and symbolic figures appearing in references and surreal vignettes, forming the backbone of the “Tale of the Tribe” Plush seeks to map.

INTERCONNECTED OR HYPERCONNECTED?

TRB (Plush, Max, Percy) form the core protagonist unit, driven by Plush’s vision and methods, supported by Max’s pragmatism and Percy’s facilitating presence. Jake and Joe are associates pulled into the increasingly intense and dangerous experiments. Richard, Marge, and Dr Briq represent the antagonistic forces applying similar reality-bending principles for control/sinister ends, linked to larger political/corporate conspiracies (the Cabal). The Entities are wild cards interacting with both sides.

The historical/intellectual “Tribe” provides the philosophical and methodological toolkit TRB uses to navigate and potentially reshape (the language of) reality. The narrative constantly blends these elements through Plush’s subjective experience, channeled texts, surreal cuts, and detailed exposition of the methods.