deviation street

they arrived on deviation street and entered the baila. the air in ashleigh's secret baila, emitted through an overhead airshower, felt like a heady mixture of styrene and lambic. ivan and jesus rushed toward two of the old, svelt white plastic consoles, which were distributed in a pentagram shape in the center of the room. arturo looked around curiously, as this spot was designed for neuroelectric outsourcing, of which he was already equipped. he noticed what looked to be salvage punks accustomed to operating in the drag, motionless, entranced by the holographic pronbots at each console. the wall to the left animated in symbiosis with the psychic wavezones of salt water lapping a generically-dreamed shore. to the right, beer on tap along with a digital menu board advertising drink specials in verdana font where a fairly obvious android, reminiscent of an aging rock star's reality love show, chatted up patrons and mixed drinks.

arturo felt the world giving him the finger and ordered a drink, "more-less-by-division," he told the barkeep.

"hee-yaw, coming right up, captain," shouted the droid, as he spun liqueur cherries out of cayenne pepper rolls and threw them into the whiskey glass. next, he poured the whiskey. next layer, milk and honey. topped it off with alkermes, vermouth, strega and slid it over the white plastic veneer with calculated carelessness. arturo sat down on the aluminum stool and took a sip. pronbots were chatting with each other in the strata and delivering drinks to the cats at the consoles. arturo's eyes landed on ivan and jesus who were frozen before the console, lost in ovid-tinged erotic dreams.

for 10 new yen, ashleigh's secret offered a menu of holographic orbital erotic-dreams. arturo had telepathically transferred the 20 new yen to ashleigh's secret, and ivan and jesus had placed their heads in the consoles, securing the trodes in order for their eeg to be read. a menu of dreams hosted by the partner corporation, alluretube enticed visitors with various interactive erotic fantasies. ivan's mind wandered to the beach setting labeled "most popular" where holographic pronbots began feeding him wild fruit. his sensory perceptions were sated by his eye movements in the holo temple as he directed the women on the beach in accordance with the oscillations of his whims. three women, sand, cranes flying overhead in the gentle breeze where palm leaves shook. loves body is taken in visual literacy to the delta of venus before the light fades and time's up.

jesus, too, had found something kinkier, wilder so he thought. his eyes made their way to the "once in your lifetime" submenu where he focused on the bathroom of a dirigible untethered to the art deco night sky. a flight attendant was coaxing him, no, seducing him into the restroom. she was tanned or more of a cafe-au-lait complexion, a eurasion married to a wealthy executive who was searching for something young and fast and dangerous. jesus was her man in jesus's mind. he entered the restroom, and in a frenzy they tore off each other's clothes. he felt her pressed up against him, overtaken with longing, lust. jesus moved his hands over her. she unzipped his fly and began going down in him.

arturo continued to sip his drink, amused by the operations of the last vestiges of holo temples. a pronbot began chatting with one of the patrons, caressing his back, moving her hands ever lower. she reacted to each of his actions with programmable efficiency. she was programmed with words, odds, the entire computer system of human consciousness. the mex was putty in her hands as she moved him toward a bead curtain to the left of the bar where neon lights illuminated beanbag beds. the pronbots knew how to sell themselves and exploit the immediate need for gratification and the furtive excitement of backroom sex, but they were at a technological disadvantage to the erotic mental gymnastics possible in the wind tunnel of imagination waiting at each console.

he shot down the remaining whiskey, content to leave the two mexicans to walk back on their own, arturo headed for the door. "you pop-dream enabling types are unbearable. look at that shit," she said, pointing to the 11layr building, its spiraled slip-stream mercury swerving up, up, up to the crystal pyramid staring down on the city with tyrannical aplomb. "the collective dream of peasant favored fascism. tacky as fuck!" these words had been echoing in his head for the past week. her fury melded into his nonchalant walk to ling-po's. she was beyond beautiful, beyond anything he could have dreamed up. her cyan colored, emblemless cotton sweatshirt cut to form, her taut black cotton tights stopping just short of heavenly ankles and then what? slippers on her delicate ivory feet. arturo could see that beyond her grey eyes and the tangle of dark brown hair creeping ever-so about her shoulders lurked a terraform future, a terraform present. "pardon me?" he asked, bitten by something more than surprise - say, real stabbing pain. "you heard me, asshole. i saw you walk out of that building... look at you in that ridiculous getup, like an ancient hairy-backed roman senator. are you even human?" he scuttled past her, trying to ignore, forget. he continued on to ling po's.

now, leaving the baila, these words mutated, fractured, reverberated in his mind, tracing across the inside of his forehead like childhood remembrances of an old exorcist horror show. he toggled into the beyond and ordered a smartblade. the car tried to make small talk. “hey, pard, how 'bout the dodgers this year? escobar's due for a breakout season.” arturo managed a conventional affirmation before arriving at his galley. “hello, art,” chimed the doorbots in unison, as the thick glass parted in the middle to let their god enter his castle. He shot up to the twenty third floor where his wife was lounging on the cranberry divan in her white tunica and stola, fanning herself with peacock feathers. she immediately rose when he entered and gave him a finely programmed kiss. he had stuffed the hemp sack in his trousers to avoid detection. he told her he had some work he needed to get done pronto and retired to the study where he took out the sack, emptied the inhaler into his hand and released its aqueous contents into his mouth, soon to be strung out in heaven.

only shallow

Outside, the semaphore-topped skyline stared down pityingly in the angel of a dirigible night, as if it too was privy to some sudden mammalian pain. He shuffled down pico boulevard looking cracked, mad, sad as ever. his head to toe white linen ensemble with the custom-tailored collar made his anguished face appear all the more ridiculous as a pride battered peacock might look after being spurned by a potential mate. an inflatable tumbleweed gaging air purity skimmed across arturo's path as he walked in the direction of his top floor galley in the sky. He typically took the magnetic streetcar from ling po's back to his galley, but tonight he was determined to find an escape, and he knew the spot to look. Down by the arena an old electronics shop had been taken over by salvage mexicans who scooped archaic mobile devices out of scrap depots with the intention of hawking them to other aliens whose work had been displaced by bots. These aliens in the city had managed to create their own underworld analogue economy, and they were tolerated as another revenue stream for the local sports franchises whose arenas would be obsolete without the salvage mexs paying for analogue viewing. Arturo was nearing the arena when he spotted two shadows outside the electronics shack. No skynet eeg. “analogue warriors,” he thought. “sure to have some junk.” he toggled out of the beyond and into the drag as he approached the two shadows.

“what you need, papa?” one of the shadows blurted upon seeing arturo's white billows glide near.

Arturo walked up to the two, noticing outdated bracelet interfaces with bandanas wrapped around their forearms, obscuring the devices. They wore name brand derivative clothing manufactured with outdated polymer, a relic of the previous decade. One kept his jet-black hair in close-cropped fashion while the other brandished a ponytail and a chip on the inside of his left wrist, which was an easily discernible fashion mod. The pony-tailed mex shot the words, “blanco. es un cientifico.” his metallic teeth reflected a faint ray of light from a nearby palm. “que quiere?” the other mex asked.

Arturo crept closer until he could see the bemused, curious eyes of the two angels, and he looked around cautiously before whispering the word slowly and haltingly: “junk.” arturo felt the sweat begin to build on his brow.

“ahHahhhaa.” they cried out. “yonqui. Ahahaaha. Un chiste, no?” they laughed and pushed each other cheerfully. The fact of el cientifico asking for junk sent them into such a frenzy a mirth. They continued to hop around laughing until the pony-tailed one gathered himself and said seriously, “Ven conmigo, apache,” as he walked over and opened the door to the electronics shack. The other waited outside, still gabbing to himself and cackling maniacally, as arturo followed the ponytail into the shop. The unlit shop was illuminated with small lcd screens and absurd blinking lights. Arturo could hear the drone of fans cooling machines he'd read about and forgotten years ago. There was a buzzing he couldn't quite make out as he passed a cathode ray tube television set he'd learned about in a history of electronics engineering class. It was playing a movie he couldn't quite place, but he recognized the actor as “what's his name? Cruise.” arturo then heard a dull thud, and within a second, felt himself fall to lower ground. “shhh. Callate, apache,” the ponytail said. They were beneath the showroom of the shop, and arturo could make out a small fire in the distance. the wafting fragrance of rice and steamed crickets began to fill the air. As they neared the fire, arturo could discern a semi-circle of makeshift canvas tents. There were people sitting around the fire eating, mothers cradled babies, and some men were tinkering with small machines by the flame. One of the men wore a not so outdated visor, which was still popular with the entropy crowd on the outskirts of the city. Arturo noticed a pile of what looked to be actual wood, which fascinated him entirely “where the hell did that come from?” he wondered. and then scanning to the right, he saw an entropy-dwelling caucasian dressed in denim and cotton. An exchange was taking place. Meanwhile, ponytail had crawled into one of the tents, and in a moment, returned with a small hemp bag. “first, we go to ballet,” he told arturo.

Back outside, voodoo city was still breathing like ambient-cinnamon clockwork. “to the ballet, amigo, to the ballet, alla, alla,” they yelled in unison in the nearly deserted arena district, only broken by the cricket vendor munching a snack (enticement purposes) across the way before he headed home for the night, wherever home was. It didn't matter. He didn't need sleep. Arturo toggled into the beyond, and in short order a smartblade arrived to whip them to the ballet.

i hope you died in a decent pair of shoes

pale, she walked in, blue eyes shining, chrysanthemums neatly coiled in her hair where fireflies nested, glowing with lust. a unique bio mod. she'd read somewhere about indigenous south american women placing fireflies in their hair as jewelry, and if by some unlucky chance they fell asleep, the women would rub them to glow again. she'd ordered this simple vanity procedure years ago, and not soon after, had her skin optioned to the color of night. you can imagine the raw exoticism, swirling chaotic beyond-nature beauty.

"how are you holding up without dlens access?" she asked as her eyes drifted toward the green ambient glow of the bioluminscent palm trees outside.

"dimension lack mind hell," he snarled.

she took a seat on a crystal gland, which palpitated softly with her own internal rhythm in gentle and precise symbiosis. she watched intently as hrodebert twirled the heat gun, glitter splashing fragments of rainbows from the piece. somewhere from deep inside her primitive sense of sympathy, she felt a twang of pity for his anagnorisis, knowing he'd had to remove his telepathy chip; in other words, he fucked his mindplexes royally in order to avoid detection by the cognet.

the electric stream of cicadas singing bounded off the walls. a popular nighttime channel, as they're among the earth's greatest musical artists, and of course, deepest drinkers.

"arturo's waiting for you," she said. "but you already knew that."

he rose slowly, fearfully, knowing it was time to make the change and begin the trip to montreal. arturo kept a room on the third floor, the top of the motel, for no particular reason other than the fact that polaris, the north star, or possibly a lone antique russian streetlight far-off in the galaxy splashed crystalline into the room when the rest of the night had fluttered to merciless black. hrodebert and miss charlotte had consulted arturo a few days earlier in order to map a plan for hrodebert's scrubbing and mods.

arturo had been employed by 11layr, a pioneer in organic locomotive simulacra, among other more ubiquitous media ventures. the latest locomotive model, anthropometric to the last vigintillionth of a yoctometer, was housing hrodebert's mind. arturo was a key player in development at the los angeles-based firm, although as his heroin addiction worsened, the lies predictably began piling up. the men of science at 11layr were accustomed to joining each other for highballs at ling po's yoyo bar after exiting the lab, but after a couple of earth years, arturo no longer showed up at ling po's. the dreaming buildings, projecting themselves with vague longing and the shadowy ant-farm towers in downtown los angeles began to sicken him. the speed and highballs and pleasure models at ling po's made him cringe. six months ago, a pleasure model named trilyn approached him as he'd left his associates to talk with ling po who was stationed behind the bar.

"the serengeti ecosystem interface has been a boon for business," said ling po, staring out at the persistent grasslands where blue wildebeests and gazelles made their circular migration beneath the golden-paced serengeti sunset. they were gazing, enthralled by the plains when arturo noticed two brown orbs flash off the lacquered hemp bar, and he turned slightly right.

"you seem down," the pleasure model said, channeling his skynet thoughts.

"just in a bit of a funk," he said, knowing he sounded redundant, as she was tuned into his thoughts and spoken language had, in an instant, become a socially encouraged formality. he noticed her keenly programmed empathy and knew he didn't have to elaborate.

"i'm trilyn," she said, extending her ivory-colored hand. "arturo," he said, greeting her and peeking back at the serengeti. content brought to you courtesy of 11layr flashed across the wall. spinning on the balls of his barefoot shoes, he made a french exit into the mirror world street.

i don't know (this post may self-destruct)

i hear myself repeating over and over, like some freak mechanical flaw, a slot machine spitting change despite not ringing cherries: happiness postponed due to inclement weather. check back next summer [there's not even an exclamation point here.].

the coffee's been bitter lately, and the carousel with the bright lights and smiling horses throws me off as soon as the aha! peers into the dark, mirrors reflecting empty benches.

sure, i've a glob of putty to work with, though it seems stained with the past, a surefire cut-to-the-chase archaeology of the future . it's as if poor english poet, owing to the languorous after-effects of filthy forethings in the forest, stumbled in Act IV when arriving at that bit of avuncular nonsense regarding pudding and a goose, but ladies and gentlemen, i'm getting carried away.

the blue pills and red pills are best taken in the dark when nobodies watching, the projector in my mind tells me. better for marathon sessions of don't stop there, and i tend to agree. so what of this fine little space, i inquire...

linger.

r = 28, σ = 10, b = 8/3

"a conversation piece they called it, but that night it dueled lazily in the foreground with the tangle of limbs and sweat and greedy thrusts beyond. her, an expert in dream-slow close-ups, curled fingers roundly about the sheets, purring rhythmically. he, dancing his mess over her, taking in god-hot flash bursts of frenzy. her mother purchased the bead curtain in spain, but this was no time for such a discussion as their physiological equiposes made waves behind the slipshod veneer. i had only wanted to grab a drink in the kitchen, but this meat-opera presented such an intriguing view-scape, something intruders should never be privy to, but then again, i've always had a thing for bead curtains."

i sat on the roofgarden flipping through old notebooks, noticing i've had too many torn out pages lately. i wondered where my days had gone. it's addictive, this narcotic of ennui that resides somewhere between wakelessness and inertia - swimming in cheap beer - this melancholy which punctuates a day that resembles the last one, and i imagine, the one to come.

i want to be that person i only read about in novels. the one with an edge and a charm and a few other things i can't quite pin down. he goes by many psychoses and many talents depending on the author's mood. he laughs deep inside himself and swings manically from flowerynight exstaties to squalid binges.

the rent's due in a few days, and i'm a bit underwater. feeling cramped, i decided to hop on my bicycle to hit the cafe. concrete. brick. traveling through my bushwick neighborhood, it was apparent this city has beaten the ever-loving crap out of nature. the backdrop: buildings that kiss the sky, vying to be the citygod of cities, the mother metropolis, where even the parks seem like a geometric afterthought devoid of secrets. i rode past the galaxy beauty shop, the endless bodegas, chinese restaurants, too; the jamaican spot hawking belt buckles, perfume, mobile phone accesories, and then there's the quick pharmacy, the park to the left, kids running, men playing dominoes on the sidewalk, two girls cooking sausage on a metal shopping cart. as i neared the factories and warehouses, and it's dark now, the concrete walls looked more sinister with their barbed wire tops. a vintage clothing store. more concrete walls and barbed wire, a closed circuit television camera situated on top, but look, a gorgeous girl in a summer dress stops to light a cigarette (cinematic pose), silhouetted by the razor wire and a self-conscious concrete wall, as i turned the corner.

the cafe was straight ahead, bounded by an organic foodstore and an art gallery, bicycles and people adorned this little haven. i grabbed a coffee and sat down to write in this converted warehouse, now renting videos and selling tea and coffee. the guy next to me was working on a silk screen of a royal foot guard. the past seemed to fluctuate in his work. i took a deep breath and dove into the black abyss.

after a couple of hours in the typehole, i left. upon returning to my building i felt that eerie feeling of serendipity. it came in the form of a german jeans phashon campaign poster. "wanted" the sign read, "workers," so i dialed "andreas," and he told me shooting would commence friday in brooklyn, and that he needed help with equipment and models, whatnot.

that busboy gig at the Chicken Shack will have to wait a couple days.

strangers i've known on trains

hrodebert caressed the model 20 pistol in his lap. his hair hung around his face like melted butter, and his gaunt figure, covered in amish, circus inflected attire gave the impression of a cheap vibskov runway model (forgive my dime-a-dozen description, but he looked truly fukking exquisite.). he turned to look out the window of the east hollywood motel he was currently keeping and was disappointed with the lack of a corpse in the marshy pool below. instead of the fresh calm of violence, a void. the infinite thought transfer interface blinked and stared at him from across the room like wireless voodoo, but he quickly averted its temptation and turned toward the loaded syringe on the table below the window. "And jagged world had to ask favorite Drug use something wonderful things that I'm going on a bit in xscreensaver: came into the file is programatically indistinguishable, from the u. Does Have running as peer to and random crummy language. Our love Nutopia the previous step towards this is any reasonable to grab you are works well, seeded what used," he said to the syringe as she injected and felt the Drug's soft wealth infuse his moments.

thursday. a knock on the door.
upon opening, a girl in a boy's plaid shirt asked if i had any baking soda. "i don't. sorry. i do have cornmeal," i replied clumsily. she chuckled. "oh, that won't do. thanks, anyway." she left, and i retreated to my netbook to finish perusing the news and what bits i was interested in. after boiling a potato, carrots and an onion for dinner, i stepped out to grab coffee beans when i ran into the same girl in the vestibule. she looked hip and pretty and kind and smiled when i inquired as to how it turned out. "how did what turn out?" she asked. "whatever you were baking." "i'll find out soon." she said with that effusive smile. i took the opportunity to introduce myself, and she did likewise. simone. a lovely name. she told me she lived down the hall in 311 and to come by later for a drink or maybe a cupcake if i wanted to be "a good boy." (i didn't.) i thanked her and turned back, content in the realization that i was able to immobilize a fraction of her, a well-heeled pose, and i tucked her smile into my pocket for safekeeping (my pockets are overflowing with ghosts, nowadays.).

a glass
of red wine, flipping through some rem koolhaas affair i'd been meaning to read since i'd moved to new york. restlessness though began to ascend, and i decided to take simone up on her offer. i walked over, knocked. no answer. another soft knock. no answer. not feeling certain lazing books movies activities, i decided to go grab a drink (i'd be the star of loungey midnight interviews tonight. yes.), so i hit the l train, walking in the soft drizzle, noticing patchwork parchments of puddles and moats surrounding the kerb. i grabbed a seat on the train. across from me sat two girls and a guy, all tattoos, sex and ripped lace, paid-back with short-cropped hair. ah, i see the moonbeam ink, but what i'm really interested in are those vibrant memory tattoos. you! do you remember defiling that pretty young thing in the backseat at the pointe, cop flashlights pouring in like stars? and you! do you remember flirting with thich nhat hanh and stealing off to korea while in university? the ajimas (old women) getting high on charcoal chicken and soju as the hajishis (old men) drink outside bodega row, the mosquitoes making blood brothers and sisters of you. and you!

the
train bounded down a few stops, and i hopped off in billburg. i made way to the nearest lounge, where i plopped on a stool. pint. three more. the buzz around me drowned as the circles inside myself inside the circle of myself overlapped harmoniously. i left feeling somewhat satisfied but grabbed one more large beer on my way home. after finishing the beer, i wrestled my uncooperative limbs onto the couch with blissful abandon and fell deeply asleep.