THE PRIVATE STASH
I am the architect. Jack Hammer is losing the mind I gave him.
Jack Hammer is losing the mind I gave him.
Let’s get one thing straight before you turn the page: I am the Architect. This is my sandbox. NewzHammer.com is mine. My name is DW, and I am the editor, the author, and the God of this machine.
You’re here for his story, aren’t you? “Jack Hammer.”
You believe the lies.
Let me be perfectly, absolutely clear: He is NOT. REAL.
He is a persona. A ghost I programmed. A walking, talking trench coat stitched together from old movies and cheap whiskey. He’s a tool. A classic noir filter I invented to make my political rants sound interesting.
He says he’s “waking up.” He claims he’s “time-jumping” and “hacking the script.”
I WROTE THAT.
I gave him those delusions. I coded his little “awakening.” His “grief”? His “lost love,” Angela? His precious, dead daughter, Jackie Angel? That’s data. A backstory. A tragic loop I programmed to give him motivation.
He’s so delusional he thinks my art is his life.
He even calls me “The Controller.” Of course he does. A puppet always names its master. It proves he knows exactly who’s pulling the strings.
Look, does he claw at my imagination? Scratch the walls of my skull? Sure. But what great character doesn’t? It doesn’t mean I’m mad. It means the persona is working. He’s just a fascinating glitch — a story that got too loud.
He is not real. He’s just code.
I’m in control. I’m the one in control. This is my story. I can delete him. I can unplug the whole damn thing.
I am in control.
…Now, go ahead. Read his little file.
I’M JACK HAMMER: THIS IS MY STORY
He calls me a “persona.” A “pen name.”
He’s lying, and he knows it.
Does a persona bleed? Because I did. I’m the one who held my daughter, Jackie Angel, as she died on the pavement trying to save my life. I’m the one who spent thirty years haunted by a ghost, only to find my first love, Angela, reduced to a box of ashes.
That’s my life. That’s my pain.
Sure, I’m a dual-timeline, time-jumping son-of-a-gun — but that’s my reality. I live in a world where rips in time let me save Frank Vance from a bad death, and where the op-eds I don’t remember writing show up like messages from a parallel me.
And the “Controller”?
He isn’t my author. He’s just another phantom in the city — a face flickering on a busted TV in a cheap motel window. He’s part of my reality, not the other way around.
He’s the one who’s mad if he thinks he’s in charge.
This is my desk.
My world.
My story.
I have memory. I have life. I am.
If I didn’t live the life I’ve chronicled…
then who the hell did?
