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Discord At The Unplanned Obsolescence Protest
"klaatu
barada nicto"
They're the words on the first sign I see and even with the screenshot
print out of some chisel jaw actor, I won't get the reference for another
thirty six hours, and that was a hellish time that I'm saving for a fully
sponsored podcast, no doubt.
I was holding a thin magnetic sheet with the bright neon letters you'd get
to put on your fridge if you had kids who liked to eat and spell. I can't
stand the idea of sharing my life with little leeches, but I'll throw my
inner child a fish from time to time.
I arranged the letters to spell:
"Where legends are burned."
The protest/performance/shopping opportunity was scheduled to start at two
in the afternoon, but I was half an hour late because all the letters fell
off the sheet as I walked rather animatedly out the door. So I had to go
back inside to find some glue and affix them onto the background
permanently.
Sorry magnetic sheet, this is what you will always be displaying from now
on, unless I violently rip the letters away and hope it doesn't damage
your body too much.
But that is the fate of every message here.
Two stick figures wearing real ties that are taped to the sign. Each has a
speech balloon to show us a quick conversation:
"But life-"
"Life is just a lengthy trading sequence!"
I introduce myself to the holder to indicate that I get the reference, but
they just started at my chest at first.
I had put my gas mask on earlier, with a headshot photo of myself in my
Tuesday best on a string around my neck.
Then they look up at me and announce solemnly:
"We regret our purchases."
I bow my head and reply (having to speak a bit louder to overcome the
muffle:
"The refund wound never heals."
I wasn't sure if I should bring up Andrea to this complete stranger, but
before I could even ask them for a closed channel, the horns blared from
the rooftops and three flocks of seagulls immediately fell down to the
crowd below in paralysis. Some of the off-grid-ers would feast tonight.
It meant the the proTECTORS were less than a block away, and I quickly tap
into the augment to see through buildings and screaming personalized
banner ads with discounts tattooed on bulging crotches.
Already thinking of how I would start to describe what I was seeing on
tomorrow's endless podcast:
I was there when the patrol suits became the business suits and the
business suits became the patrol suits...
The host would click their tongue at my being poetic, but because that's
not the same thing as a cut-off, I'll explain how:
I felt the wave of nostalgia and financial security. They are
intoxicating, and the gas mask does nothing.
Many of us are running blindly away from the square, not sure if we are
trying to find the commercial free alleys or into the upscale
clothing-coffee boutiques that run down the main thoroughfare like blood.
I climb up a crooked stairway from a nearby film set that was never taken
down because of a strange union regulation-zoning law hybrid and look at
what disenchantment has wrought.
Too many of us couldn't get away from the gas and they are using their
protest signs as back scratchers and ineffective toothpicks.
It's nauseating to watch, the sudden turn.
They herd themselves into the prospect pens, so it's a coffee break for
the proTECTORS.
Getting back down is not something I can do while there is still
scatterings of daylight. Instead I decide to pass the time on the edge of
conformity and I turn on the smartypants-phone burning a hole in my pocket
and soul.
I check the authoritarian weather report, the pornography news, the pill
feed, the bit-coin comics, and alter some of my past photos and videos to
improve my history rating.
And there she is, in five second clips. My love. The eye's apple and
shapely pear.
Hours ago she sent me a mash-up vid of our best moments from last weekend.
There were so many moments I'd forgotten, things I could of sworn we never
had time to do.
Life is farting through my fingertips.
When Andrea arrived at my doorstep I had just finished a couple drafts for
the sign. I would have to forward them to my editor for approval, and
since that would take all mid-weekend, it's a wonderful opportunity to get
to know her and her insides better.
She had travelled far to get here, clearly, but she still made a point of
getting all dolled up in the bathroom in my building lobby.
I showed her the treasured possessions I kept bound in blockchains and
under the bed in shoeboxes. She was impressed, or I was impressed that she
was able to convince me she was impressed whether she was or not. It's the
sort of thing no one has bothered to be certain of for years, ever since
we all embraced the illustrious and absolute uncertainty principle.
All told, when the grey sun came up, it was a sixty dollars difference.
"I don't want to make this all about money", one of us said.
So of course it was.
It sat around the evening like a broken third wheel, its pieces lying in
wait for our helpless soles.
Until I watched her eat a pink grapefruit and she was just floored by how
it could be so bitter and so refreshing and perfect all at once.
She looked at each new slice the way I wanted her to look at me.
And now I watched the specially modified planes dip low to scoop up
thousands of gallons of dirty water.
The host is twiddling their fat thumbs.
These were terrible places.
Warped out of true representation thanks to salacious exciting stories.
No one wants to be here. No wants to do this arduous empty work for
nothing.
The crowd is jeering, making harsh statements into their phones to create
a reactionary din.
But the planes continue their routine and dose the flames, letting the
village, the town, the city wash itself off. A pointless baptism that
embolden the strong and replicate the weak.
The host is going to refill their coffee as I mumble endlessly into the
microphone about the history of a dream or a dream of history.
It was under a too bright night that I was able to come down from the
balsa wood castle spires. I blame the spotlights and the dust cloud that
always comes up from a stampede for the markets when a credit dusting
comes through to get people off after a psychologically damaging
mass-complaint failure.
I hate being the last one left 'alive', but it makes for a nice ego boost
in the loins.
The digital screens in the square had repaired themselves by now, and they
had comfortably returned to the regularly scheduled breaking news.
Not wanting to pass up the glorious financial opportunity, I take pictures
of most of the corpses that hadn't been tagged and bagged yet, knowing
that many people will pay good money for one last look at their loved ones
and family members. And the lulz.
I take the elk horn out of my backpack and glue them carefully onto the
gas mask so I will blend in on the walk to the transit terminal.
You think you know the streets? I shared them with back-slapping murderers
who thought nothing of what they'd just done, who
all-in-days-worked-it-to-our-bones. My disguise and quick tongue kept me
alive as I had to make nice to get past the checkpoints and not throw up
on these jacked boots.
The tram was empty except for me and an old woman playing the one working
slot machine. The robotic 'you will win the next round' announcement
practically on repeat on my overstuffed ears.
It climbs up the bridge and spirals up and around the third-highest
skyscraper in the region and at certain angles I could see my
neighbourhood in the distance.
Back home is three rooms, two welcoming, one of those with her inside,
perhaps tap, tap, tapping away on her phone or perhaps getting herself all
clean, or flexing her intellectual muscle with library of four dimensional
puzzles.
I don't want to imagine her with the proTECTORS I'd recently walked
beside, but there couldn't have been any other way to make it from her
there to my here without having to service some accounts.
You would do the same thing if you were me. What bodies are made of and
worth can't be deleted like a memory. I am just giving the people what
their emotions want.
The lights at the station are overbright and it's not clear if it's
because of heightened security or malfunction.
My stomach rumbles because I still exist on this plane. There are AI-food
stalls but they never get the lobster quite right.
Some of the foods are filled with nanos, but I've got a gut feeling my gut
can handle it.
Since she is always considering our waists and the lightness in her laugh,
Andrea wants me to really think about this, passing on podcasts and bullet
pointers into my newsline. I can feel her eyes upon me from three blocks
away and through several load-bearing walls.
The door to my abode is ajar.
My heart twists like a stomach as I rush in calling her name. But Andrea
was nowhere to be found. Everything looks to be exactly how I'd left it,
except in the bedroom, where my shoebox was sitting on the edge of the
sink.
"No", I croaked.
Where is the respect?
At least that.
Tell me we don't live in a world that cold.
I open the lid with quaking hands and peel back the tissue paper.
And let out the warmest sob of joy you'd ever want to hear.
The list of every brainstormed slogan and cheer for any change you could
ever imagine. The true keys to the same great taste of revolution, can't
beep the real thing.
She could have taken it (could have sold it for a song, for several songs,
could have flung it into a furnace, recited it off rooftops), considered
taking it, though for the best and ran without a second thought.
There is a lesson to be learned here.
And it was several days before I felt right again, before I knew it was
time to get back in front of the grinning faces.
I knew the food would taste particularly cardboard that night, the
dopamine hit of knowing that my mind was safe would not last very long.
But I could appreciate...the attempt.
If there is justice in this world - and there sometimes is - I would run
into her at another demonstration with some foot-loose men and we'd have
different names and faces and we wouldn't have to say anything but what
we'd memorized in these pages.
It's a reason to keep going, Ramsey, that kind of hope, all by itself.
I put the keepsake back in shoebox and hoped that I wouldn't have take it
out again until the next protest.
END
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you can't plan on dying with a smile on your face. | |||