Blatant Lies

  The kids are perched all around on stools and chairs while some of them use flat rectangles of plastic to sweep up the shattered mess of the prep table. Most of them are standing around the refrigeration unit in the back. I pull myself inside, completely ignored, and grasp at rolling capsules trying to get one in my hand. My clumsy fist sends them scattering like roaches. Sobbing fills my ears and pulls at my attention. Most of these kids are crying. My fascination is pulled from the vibes by that sound, something even more delicious and real, so I crawl on hand and knee to the edge of a ring they’ve formed around the refrigerators. On the ground I see Rudy and Colebin lying face up with their chests perforated and throats cut, their blood a thick gloss creeping across the dirty tile. On their wide open faces is an expression of strange sublimity, as if death was a pleasant surprise ending to a long tiresome tale. The children aren’t weeping for them. The boy with the glass ting-ting sits atop a stool with a sombre expression looking down upon another body. It’s a girl, aged perhaps five or six, reassembled. Two other girls have finished putting the dismembered pieces of her back together into the shape of a body. Her head has been cut open and her brain crudely dissected, dug around in by the pushers. Slits and holes mark her body where they’d excised her lymphs and glands.

  We’re joined by the rest of the children  who have returned from routing the lower floors of the hospital out into the street. They wipe their ting-ting off on rags and come to join mourning. The children plunge now into deep and choked weeping. This chorus of angry sorrow is guttural, phlegmatic and unmistakably adult; worlds beyond the characteristic infant’s sharp cry for love and feeding, care and affection. The boy barks something difficult to hear in the midst of the crying and Rudy and Colebin are stripped of their garments, which are quickly cut to ribbons and handed around as cloths to wipe away the tears of the mass. The boy begins to cry and I’m overcome by a wave of shame and sadness. My eyes leak and I begin to sob too, caught within the pathos of this ruined girl, this little person-to-be torn into ingredients and stuffed into a cold box. I’m still crying when I realize that the boy is standing in front of me, awestruck. Now the room is a chorus of sniffles and honking as the kids blow the remains of their mourning into their rags. The boy crouches in front of me with his eyes open wide. Now I realize that my blanket been pulled off of my head as I crawled the distance. I don’t know what he sees, who he sees, but his face is determined and his eyes are filled with fire. And in that moment I feel the connection, a tug in the blood, as the fog of context withdrawal melts and I’m overcome with the certainty that this kid is my baby brother.

“Ghost!” he shouts triumphantly. The room claps and shouts with him, all  throaty and wild repetitions of “Ghost! Ghost! Ghost!”

 My trial went smoothly. I was there, apparently, just vibed out. A playback shows me clearly zonked and smiling calmly in a MedCorps pod while the proceedings transpired over my head. Accountability deemed my direct participation unnecessary due to the relative disproportion of my infograph contextual weight versus the overwhelming amount of various types of evidence they discovered once I was officially taken into custody. [a statement of personal defence] I am played back on the FEEDScript record [would only serve to humiliate all involved]. FEED-verified visual, FEED-verified hormono-olfactory, FEED-verified contact and context-placement with every message I sent pinging my location downtown with a time stamp, FEED-verified eyewitness account signed by many including PORTER.COLE and the front door watch at PYRE. All in all enough weight to balance Pluto on a scale. Proof laid out, the EdCo randomly-selected jury declared me guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. The whole process took less calculations than it’d take for me to carry out a conversation about the weather. Now, HOOVER.B explains to me, I’m facing mandatory MedCorps enrollment and Illuminatherapy to help me discover why I’m so maliciously self-destructive. The therapy is more mandatory than the MedCorps enlistment: post-sentencing Q&A in front of EdCo could potentially reduce my MedCorps service. Illuminatherapy must continue until I find out why I did what I did, and in the process help MedCorps study the life pathway from child of the Limits to violent secessionist.

 [what if i say no] is my question. Well, HOOVER.B explains, your current status is of negligable cost to Civic. They’re willing to allow you to remain in custody, in whatever introspection paradigm of your choosing, until a medical contractor puts up a sufficient bid on your corporeal body for fully licensed use. Then it’s our of the hands of MedCorps. [if you refuse your sentence there’s a fair chance you’ll wind up as essentially software / currently you’re the property of Union Civic as of the moment of your sentencing / i wouldn’t wait too long to decide]. Another question is [who exactly have they sentenced?] HOOVER.B seems confused, so I clarify with [who precisely has been sentenced / me or Swayze]. HOOVER.B responds that Swayze received the sentence. [but the rights to Swayze are public / i released them before i was taken in / i no longer have claims on Swayze]. This gives HOOVER.B a moment of pause. I sit back in my comfortable chair and plan my next step while he runs over the question in BriefCounselor. [sorry but that’s not possible] is his response [your physical body has been legally associated with a permanency clause adjunct to the handle “Swayze” / sentencing eliminates any chance of reassignment even in special interest cases]. He doesn’t get it, so I have to re-explain it to him in simpler terms [i’m not seeking reassignment / i’m revoking my association to Swayze]. He shakes his head [can’t be done / you’ve got to have a handle]. [no] I explain [i am revoking my rights to a handle]. This confuses him even further, and he has to take an even longer pause to review the proceedings in this case. [but then you’ll be expelled from custody and any future treatment] he says [Illuminatherapy and MedCorps training and TYPE reassignment won’t happen]. I [nod] at him [that’s what i’m saying / since Swayze is public you either need to sentence me and every single other user of the license] I stop there. I let him finish my script, which he does seamlessly [or have you released from the FEED ToS / however the ToS only allows a post-signature rejection on justifiable grounds according to EdCo’s Human Rights licensing / which can only apply to Swayze and Swayze is exempt due to the severity of his crime]. Counter-argument [but i’m not Swayze / Swayze and his infograph are legally public property which allows me the right to refuse association with him / the physical body housing the brain you’re speaking with is allowed his human rights as the FEED Human Rights licensing applies to non-Civic citizens as justification for FEED interventionism in outmile conflict / so you either tell MedCorps to stop saving babies from molotovs or you let me go].

 The question hangs in the air, I can feel it stirring in his brains as it stirs in mind: did my physical body blow up PYRE? Did my mind, my autonomous brain, do the job? According to FEED, neither did. According to FEED and the basis for its entire aggregate system, Swayze blew up PYRE. Swayze, his collected infograph, his own personal zeitgeist, blew up PYRE. I watch HOOVER.B’s fat fingers rub his round merry chin and consider that without Swayze I have no name. Without Swayze, I am a body in space. HOOVER.B gives me EdCo visual access and I watch as the issue goes before them. As they bat the question around of whether or not to release me I smile inwardly at the fact they can’t name me. Swayze was I and I was Swayze, now I’m nothing and have no name and no placement. EdCo unanimously agrees that my claim to separation from Swayze is allowed, meaning that if I choose to release myself from any association with him they’ll expel me from MedCorps custody. I see that same confusion that overwhelmed HOOVER.B flood EdCo, the sudden self-awareness that someone has consciously rejected their right to life, and that they unanimously agree that rejection of FEED is equal to death of the self. The vote comes to a close saying that yes, I am allowed to not be Swayze. Yes, I am allowed to never again be a citizen of Union Civic. Yes, my physical body may be dumped out on the street. I am allowed to be a non-factor. I am allowed to lower myself into the oubliette.

 [all right] HOOVER.B [sighs] [just sign here and you can see yourself out]

 In order to proceed, I have to purchase my own surgery. This is because the FEED ToS indicates that a citizen of Union Civic can’t be forced to accept a TYPE conversion without agreeing to accept the surgery voluntarily. This is just one example of how the FEED criminal rehabilitation system works: nothing that happens to a criminal, short of detainment, is done without their approval. This ensures that the criminal decides their own course of rehab. The options set before you are given as a result of your infograph, already organically tailored to your needs, and you may choose among them or you may abstain. My infograph has me cited as the number one enemy of the state, so my only volunteer option is surgical reassignment preceding enlistment in MedCorps and mandatory therapy sessions.

 So, I abstain. For seventeen cycles I’ve abstained. Each cycle lasts for a certain number of calculations, optimized for each individual within the system for real decision making. During these cycles you remain in custody, where I currently reside. I’m taking a walk right now. The best place for me to consider my options seemed like the beach along the primordial sea, some (year BC). Cracks in the earth hiss steam, the sun is a distinct shade of dull amber and if I didn’t have olfactory turned off I’d be introduced to a variety of early-earth smells. Thick waves lurch across the rocks, smother my toes and recede. I’m naked but I can still put my hands in my pockets. I bend down, stick my hand into the water and feel its strange warmth. Back the wave goes out to sea, leaving my hand covered in a thick goop. There’s nothing on land to speak of: hills, rocks, bumps and crests hissing and glowing with tinsel stains. No birds in the sky, no fish in the sea. It’s very lonely but I seem to want to feel lonesome. A tingling sensation in the back of my head tells me that the cycle is ending and I’m going to have to make a decision. A very long time is spent on the shore: 142010032013 implied milliseconds, perceived by me as “a very long time” during which I reject any attempt to move my criminal case forwards. Like a living memory I understand that my corporeal body rests in MedCorps custody and only has for perhaps a few solar hours.

She steps aside and cracks him across the temple with a chunk of cinder, knocking him to the ground. She proceeds to kneel on top of him and slam the thing across his face over and over again until the rest of them catch up, drag her off and hold her with her arms behind her back. A searchlight blasts across the road and I can feel the incapacitance vibes from here. Everyone slackens up and there’s an audio announcement to “PLEASE WAIT FOR UNION POLICE ASSISTANCE.” Vibes hold everyone captive. From where I’m lying it’s like they’ve all decided they’re not mad at her any more. Everyone’s just lying on the ground. In the harsh white light I can see their bellies rising and falling slowly. A Unipo carrier is there in a couple of minutes. Police hop out, as the vibes let up they help the party people to their feet and separate everyone up into groups of five for each officer. There’s talking, scripting: Unipo procedure. Everyone gives their statement, they run it by Accountability for review and make a judgement call. A few moments later they’ve separated Delay from the group and they’re leading the partygoers back to their mile, spare the guy Delay hammered with the rock. Delay gets searched, presumably for weapons and the missing pseudo. They script. Smashed Face looks like hell, unrecognizable with blood and ripped skin. They let Smashed Face go and sit with Delay for a few more minutes. She starts crying, sobbing. They comfort her with vibes, fixing her sadness right up, and she looks grateful. The police depart and the drones disperse. Within minutes she’s got me by the collar and is pulling me out of the mess.

“What the fuck was that?” I ask, but she claps her hand over my mouth and we’re back on the forced march. She won’t let us rest until we’re out of the mile. We settle for a rooftop to lie down. She checks the building first, making sure there’s no signs of habitation. I’m barely awake, only curiosity is keeping me up. “They didn’t search the mile for me,” I mutter. Her response is “They found you.” I don’t remember anything after that except for an image: Delay puffing on her nicotine inhaler and wiping specks of blood off of her face. The next thing we both know we’re roused in the middle of the night by the earth shaking. Recyclers on the move. Delay spots their safety lights a half-mile away through her binoculars. They’re fully operational and headed south.

 ”We need to make a decision,” she says as she puts her hands inside of my shirt to thaw them out, “You need to make a decision.” Where do I want to do? Images flit past in my mind’s eye projected across the stinging lockdown on my eyes: a desert of dry sand, a jungle overflowing with primate life, an ocean where I’m diving off of a rock so hot it burns my feet enough to give me the courage to leap into the air and perform an impressive series of flips before landing within the lovely warm water where I’m confronted with a mermaid. She says to me, “Don’t fall asleep” and then jams a purple-ringed sea-snake in my face which bites me and I jerk awake realizing that Delay has been slapping me on the cheek. “Buhhf” is the noise I make. “Dumbfuck,” she says and dribbles more water in my mouth from the rag, “Tell me where we’re going.” I shake my head back and forth when I’m done, then say “To the doctor.” Yes, but then where? “I don’t know,” I say, “I don’t know. You tell me where, for fuck’s sake.” That’s not how it works. I’m the one, I’m the guy. She’s not going anywhere. I think I’m starting to understand now: Delay doesn’t have anywhere to go. She’s where she wants to be. I’m the one who needs to point myself in a direction and say “That way. Over there. That.”

 So I think about my options and where I’m at now, shiver in our tent of meager heat, and see what I can see in my mind: Middle-Atlantic-Mile. There’s the common room where we have dinner and shoot the shit, where you find Yeezy or Beebs with some girl flopped over them once or twice a month just dead blasted didn’t even make it to their rooms. Up in my room where I haven’t thrown the trash out in weeks. There’s the docking bay with full suite for my app with account status backup, private offweb storage and the full Visual Style display. That’s where the rest of me exists: all of my ArchiveFD logs, my personal aesthetics data, my Dock runtime storage and naturally my spare app. I could get myself back if I go home to Middle-Atlantic. Delay and I can work it, get my digital ass wiped clean and get me back to FEED. All I need to do is get this piece of shit body back up and walking, patched up and home. So I wait for her to settle back in next to me, get our arms around each other and warming back up to say “Home.” She asks “Where’s home?” and I say “Middle-Atlantic.” There’s a moment where we linger in this embrace before I feel her grip around me slacken. “It’s exactly what we need,” I whisper, “My full suite is there. Get in home, let the boys know I’m safe and get my shit back online. Sling some favors for Dock privileges and rework my whole shit. Get ourselves then up and out of Middle-Atlantic and to a new mile further out.” Get myself on, get the Dock behind me, find out who pegged me for a sucker with that bomb, crew up, get revenge. It’s the next step, but for some reason Delay isn’t holding me close any more. She’s hugging herself instead and I can hear her sniffling. At first I think she’s cold so I try to reach out to give her some heat. I don’t get far because my body can’t manage it, and she’s not cold anyway. She’s crying.

MARRIED TO DOWNTOWN: A SITUATION COMEDY FOR THE CIVIC FAMILY HOUSEHOLD.

Starring Swayze as the Civic Husband, Delay as the Civic Wife, Timba as the Family Friend and Bieber as the Multifaceted Teenager.

[Setting is a cutaway of a very typical Civic median income family household downtown. One entire floor of their building is occupied by three people, each of them using a segment of the floor as their living space. Each person has their own sleeping room, entertainment room, beauty & sanitation room and leisure room. These segments area all connected by a Communal Room with four chairs and a table surface that extends out from the wall. This entire effect is abstracted into three rectangular chunks of scenery which are Context-Surface coded by area to indicate which room each individual moves through. The barriers between walls are essentially negligible as everyone has immediate audiovisual access to every other room in the household except for the B&S and Leisure Rooms. Every inch of the household is layered in Context-Surface with full reactive integration.]

[Scene opens with Swayze sitting in a lounging device in his entertainment room trying to describe something]

[SWAYZE: It’s female, it knows me, it’s bigger than my head yet smaller than my large toe at heart. It seeks me.]

[VISIONQUEST responds by introducing a foetus-shaped ball floating in the air before him, which continually spills its many-coloured contents from out of a subducting hole like waves across its surface before returning to a pinpoint singularity hovering above its tiny head. As he watches its shape changes in various ways: it grows in size, becomes the shape of a teenage girl and then elongates into something resembling a crossbreed of a lizard and an old woman. Its back is longer than its fingernails which are longer than the lengths of its legs. It reaches out to him, stretching its scratching claws along the walls as it blends with the ceiling, floors and walls to become larger than he. Its color is an electric blue and it moves to encircle him on all sides, belly opening like a three-lipped maw to enclose him within her torso. He cries out, slams his fist down on the lounging device and the room floods with tropical light and color. He is now in a rainforest where lemurs leap from tree to tree, shaking their ringed tails and devouring sweet fruits. Swayze claps a hand over his chest and exhales deeply with relief.]

[SWAYZE: They better not bill me for that!]

[laughter]

[DELAY, speaking on audio only from the B&S room: Dear! Are you okay?]

[SWAYZE: Well dear, let me just say that’s the last time I face my inner demons before dinnertime!]

[DELAY: I told you not to face your inner demons before dinnertime!]

[SWAYZE: You also told me that your fertility drugs helped with your digestion! Now I’m getting Oedipal visions and giving birth to myself!]

[laughter]

[DELAY: Swayze!]

[SWAYZE: What can I say? I’m a postmodern man!]

[laughter]

[SWAYZE: Dear, what’s taking you so long? We’ve got company tonight!]

[DELAY: I’m just putting on my face, dear.]

[SWAYZE: Which one? Barbara or Yolandi?]

[laughter]

[DELAY exits the B&S room with a black bag over her head holding two tabula each showing a Type face]

[DELAY: Well?]

[SWAYZE: Well what?]

[DELAY: Barbara or Yolandi?]

[laughter]

[SWAYZE: Which one is hotter?]

[DELAY: That’s what I’m asking you!]

[laughter]

[SWAYZE: No, I’m asking you which one is more *stylish* right now.]

[Timba, wearing a pink and yellow hoodie with patterns resembling those of a Dashiki, appears behind both of them with Context-Surface splitting his body into one half in Swayze’s room and the other half in Delay’s room. He has a gold incisor, gem-crusted eyelids and his hair resembles the stitching pattern on a softball]

[TIMBA: Did somebody say “stylish?”]

[cheers and hooting]

[SWAYZE: (looking at his outfit with disgust) You look like you were dressed by a plague riot!]

[laughter]

[TIMBA: You should know: you designed it!]

[laughter as Swayze shrugs]

[SWAYZE: Postmodern man.]

[laughter]

[DELAY: Barbara or Yolandi, Timba?]

[TIMBA: Definitely the Yolandi, Delay/Baby. (The words are stereo-mixed so that the left hears “Delay” and the right hears “Baby”]

[Each half of Timba is behaving differently. The half of Context-Surface in Swayze’s room displays him standing with his hands in his pockets directly facing Swayze, looking over his shoulder to address Delay when she speaks. On Delay’s side he has moved close to her, touching her hair and kissing her neck. She responds cooperatively as if he is in the room with her. The audio is composite-spliced to allow each ear to hear what he is saying to each person in each room, with subheader text scrolling across Context-Surface to allow the viewer to read both halves as they’re delivered]

[TIMBA: I’m on my way over once I finish up these last few game protocols./I thought you said he was spending the night with PORTER.COLE and the boys.]

[SWAYZE: Don’t take too long or dinner will get cold!]

[In the Communal Room one can see a pot of boiling hot soup appear on the table. Its dynamic popularity on FEED is ticking down by two decimals every second.]

[laughter]

[DELAY: He decided to stay home tonight for VISIONQUEST because he’s been getting Oedipal. I had to tell him you were coming over or he’d be suspicious!]

[SWAYZE: Delay? Are you talking to yourself again?]

[Delay standing beside Delay is introduced to Swayze’s room. She stands beside herself, apparently having a conversation, while Swayze’s Timba gives them both an eyebrow wiggle that Swayze doesn’t notice and then winks at the camera.]

[laughter]

[DELAY: Yes dear, I’m just asking myself which face makes me look less surgical.]

[SWAYZE: It’s all surgical, honey!]

[laughter]

[TIMBA: Can’t you get rid of him for an hour? You’ve only got a day left until your fertility check and I want to not make a baby with you more than I want functional universal health care for the former nation’s suffering masses.]

[crowd wolf-whistles and hollars suggestively as he takes her by the waist and they kiss passionately]

[DELAY: I know! I’ll get my son to distract him with one of those silly social games!]

[SWAYZE: How much longer, honey?]

[DELAY: Give me just two generations and a rebuilding effort, dear!]

[laughter as Swayze shakes his head and looks at the camera helplessly]

[Bieber is in his room swatting at large glowing flies. Each fly changes colours every time he swats at it from red to orange down through yellow and green to blue and then purple. Each color shift causes the insect’s movements to become slower and less erratic. The walls are a red curtain which is slowly lowering. When he finally claps one between his hands, a blue, the room’s walls “lift” a tinly little bit more to reveal something behind them. Unfortunately, Bieber is too slow and clumsy to swat any fly moving faster than a blue. In the time it takes for him to clap one, the lift he’s received from the previous has been negated.]

[DELAY: Honey, you father wants to talk to you about that game you were playing yesterday!]

[BIEBER: Sorry mom! Doing my workout!]

[laughter]

[DELAY: Honey, you can work out while you’re doing your studies!]

[BIEBER: But I’m not in the Aesthetics mobvec!]

[laughter as Delay crosses her arms and gives him “the look.” Her facial expression remains the same but text overhead displays “THE LOOK” with big red arrows pointing at it. Bieber sighs.]

[BIEBER: Fine, I’ll lose these five pounds the normal way.]

[Bieber calls the MedCorps building]

[DOCTOR: Hi again! Need another Angstiotomy?]

[laughter]

[BIEBER: I need to lose five pounds.]

[DOCTOR: Aaaaand?]

[Bieber puts his hands on his hips and scowls at the doctor]

[BIEBER: And nothing! Get off my back, doc!]

[The doctor just smirks]

[BIEBER: (defeated) Fine, and an Angstiotomy.]

[laughter]

[DELAY: (talking to Swayze as herself and the other Delay climbs underneath the sheets of her bed with Timba) Honey! Bieber wanted to talk to you!]

[SWAYZE: No no, not again. It’s your turn to check his sperm count.]

[laughter]

[DELAY: Not about that! Just talk to him dear, while I sort out my (she giggles) physiology.]

[Swayze relocates from his leisure room through the Communal Room to Bieber’s liesure room while the mound of blankets in Delay’s Sleeping Room writhes and murmurs]

[SWAYZE: Hey champ! Lose any more money on finding a girlfriend?]

[laughter]

[BIEBER: I have a girlfriend dad!]

[SWAYZE: Oh right, I forgot about your estrogen injection!]

[laughter as Bieber rolls his eyes]

[SWAYZE: So what’ve you been doing on Civic Editorial lately?]

[BIEBER: Postmodern Man, dad!]

[SWAYZE: But son, that’s me! Last time I checked, pederasty was still illegal.]

[laughter and groans]

[BIEBER: No dad, it’s what’s hot today! Here, I’ll show you.]

[Bieber logs into the Civic Editorial networking centre. A hubbub of information spills into the room as the universal communications forum becomes the room. Bieber moves through the various mediums of communications and discussion towards InsideJob, an open-topic discussion medium. He enters a discussion as several handles are debating a race between nervous signals within the body and the speed of the electromagnetic wave through standard fiber optics. The debate is centered around a handle named JULI****ER who has posed the question of the distance necessary for an electromagnetic wave to travel in order for there to be a significant or insignificant delay between how fast the eyes send signals to the brain. The question was if data could be transmitted rapidly enough to “dodge” between the interval of light hitting the retinal nerve and the brain recognizing what is being viewed. The discussion has already taken a poor turn: two handles claiming to be Neuroscience Specialists have stated that the question is improperly posed. Several others state that this delay is already used in a fully integrated FEED environment to allow two individuals in the same place to see different states of Context-Surface if properly conditioned to adjust their recognition delay using drugs, light-bending filters or eye-wear  And Bieber, along with several others, have begun posting the propagation speed of an extinct species of bottom feeding fish claiming it to be the standard modern human nervous system communications time with sluggishness due to constant vibe saturation. As the argument explodes in several different directions Bieber begins posting “The confused fate of the Postmodern Man!” to much laughter all around. This is followed by visual diagrams of the nervous system laid out like the Union Civic tram system, with all of the major brain/body connective paths coincidentally matching the problematic routes between the northwest miles where refugee influx and the propaganda war against the guerrilla nation has caused maintenance and expansion efforts to suffer due to construction drone vandalism and hostility towards police and MedCorps psych outreach specialists.]

[BIEBER: Postmodern Man! Ha ha! They’re getting so upset!]

[Swayze watches this unfold with a blank expression.]

[SWAZYE: I don’t understand.]

[BIEBER: What do you mean dad? Look, he’s going to fall for it again!]

[Bieber introduces to the discussion the left-field Theory of Human Evolutionary Rapidity via Technological Reliance, providing evidence of its growing acceptance among popular Expansionist figures by using SixDegree to “flex” proof of the interdependence of key phrases with in the theory’s primary thesis and archived Expansionist discussions of human progress generation by generation. This makes the theory appear to be the most popular theory currently en vogue with the Biochem and Neuroscience Specialty sector. Following up, Bieber states that the theory clearly shows a causal relationship between the increased complexity of telecommunications technology and a 12% increase in developmental volatility between generations exposed to this increasingly interconnected web of information exchange vectors. When another member of the room attempts to counter this by calling the theory into question, Bieber slams him with the same catchphrase]

[BIEBER: Fate of the Postmodern Man!]

[extended laughter]

[SWAYZE: Can you explain this to me?]

[Bieber looks at his father and EmotE demonstrates his {pity}. The discussion veers into the word “geriatrophy” being tossed around, lending credence to Bieber’s populist approach to entertaining himself by taking Evolutionary Rapidity via Technological Reliance as a given. The popularity of discussing “geriatrophy” among those aged 14-24 is high. The word, an Inside<%>Job home trademark, describes how older individuals who were exposed to a relatively less complicated and streamlined FEED show, in little ways, their difficulty in adjusting to the newer platforms being developed. Grandfathers have especially enough trouble making full active use of FEED’s daily growing suite of options, instead settling into a groove of allowing FEED to dictate a passive and stimulation-digestive path for them through their years. Fathers of the new generation, however, are beginning to show signs of geriatrophy by having difficulty interpreting the FEEDScript-OPEN changes made to FEEDScript for casual conversation. Many sons on the board, Bieber included, use FEEDScript in colloquial ways that deviate wholly from spoken or written English and their fathers are unable to understand not only the sequencing but the overall “hip” context of their user-modified forms of FEEDScript which are becoming more and more commonplace. Bieber begins posting geriatrophy imagery, laughing, as Swayze watches: an old man with an overlay of his constant surgical reinforcement around the body to keep it operating efficiently with the brain stamped with the word EXEMPT.]

[SWAYZE: I need to go check and see if dinner is still hot.]

[Bieber {waves} to his dad as Swayze exits the room, past the pot of soup on the table which is still declining in popular appeal, past his wife’s room where a mountain of sheets writhes and pulses, into his Sleeping Room where he lies down on his bed and stares at the ceiling.]

[EPISODE FINISH]

  “What’s FEED saying about me?” I ask. She says “Nothing new.” I don’t see her app anywhere. “Where’s your access?” She shrugs, “Its off. I cracked the casing in the back and deactivated it. I’m not turning it on either, not yet.”

  “How will we … find our way back?” I look at her helplessly, “We’re blind without it.” Her nicotine breath comes out as a thin mist, “Find our way back where?”

  I find myself stumbling to respond.

  “Back,” I say, “Back. Wherever, anywhere.” Her question to me is, “Where do you want to go?”

  “Here, read from the top. Don’t consider signing anything until you’ve looked it over in full.”

  She looks like a kind lady. It takes her fingers several seconds to unfold a pair of spectacles.

  “I saw your advertisement. Bless channel 7, I don’t know how they’re still broadcasting.”

  “It’s a mystery. I produced the spot here in my garage on an old Toshiba camcorder. When I saw channel 7 was still running programming I delivered the tape by hand to their drop box. Turned on the TV the next day and there I was. Lucky break.”

  “How did you have the courage?” she asks, glancing out the window.

  “Well,” I lean back, “I have protection.”

  “Yes, yes of course,” she says, wringing her hands, “I’m just so worried nights that something will crawl in my window.”

  “I understand. Things have been uncertain for common folks since this … change. Don’t worry about it. I’m fully qualified by a higher authority to see you through this.”

  She nods, I nod, we’re in agreement. I gesture at the papers and she picks them up. As she reads in silence I take a turn looking out of the window. Most of the houses in this area bear the mark, while others have been completely destroyed. Fires from domestic disputes, panic, car accidents, broken gas mains, bolts of lightning, strange showers, falling debris and the like have reduced entire housing blocks to ash. Through gaps in the residential wall a glow bleeds in from the nearest open fissure. Light wavers and flows upwards from the earth dimming from phosphoric white to deep wine before blending with the night sky. Paper crinkles as I watch one, two, three stars pop like light bulbs. They flicker, burst in a flash and leave nothing but black space.

  The streets are empty. My office smells like instant coffee, dish soap and hot paper. This button-up with a faded stain on the pocket is my last clean shirt.

  “Excuse me,” with a quivering hand she adjusts her glasses and waves the stack, “Excuse me.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t understand this,” she taps the paper with the butt of a pen.

  “None of it?”

  “No,” she looks down at her fingers, “I’m sorry, but this is all new to me. I just want to make sure I have the same coverage as my husband.”

  “Well,” I lean forwards giving her my full attention, “You understand the situation you’re in, right? This, what’s happening out there, is the end. The punchline of the joke. These papers here are just part of the sorting process. You don’t need to worry about the details: I can guarantee you a secure place if you sign on page nine.”