explanation

hrodebert and miss charlotte knocked on his door. there was a fat wash of white sound emitting from the room, as the two stood there waiting expectantly. muffled sounds, door opens. arturo greeted them looking worn out and haggard. his typically glowing white linen shirt was covered in cigarette ash, yellow stains and hung limply backwards on his narrowing shoulders. his graying beard flowered kaczynski-like about his imploding face. He ushered them in as he took a quick puff from the inhaler. “don't mind the detritus, please. i assure you ronko brought the equipment in as little as one hour ago. look,” he said, lifting the celluloid cover off the table slightly. “baby clean. But, ah, ah, take a seat first. We have much to talk about. oh, and say, 'hello' to ronko. Ronko blinked proudly in the corner of the room and as hrodebert and miss charlotte moved their gaze toward him, ronko morphed instantly into a very benign appearing human waving affably and articulating a clear, friendly 'hello.' accustomed to the consensual hallucination, hrodebert and miss charlotte each saluted in turn. they maneuvered through the strewn video cards, discarded food containers, subzero cpu coolers lying like upturned cockroaches, and sat down in two great depression era rocking chairs. Arturo tripped his way into a fraying, cantaloupe-colored lay-z-boy.

“so... you know that dr. leclercq has inquired of you recently. You're a very popular man right now.”

“what's he gotta say?” hrodebert inquired, recrossing his legs uneasily.

“just curious as to how you're faring without access to the beyond is all... how do you feel?”

“uh, i feel like i'm falling down.”

“i'm not surprised. dr. leclercq told me how you two met, but he failed, or more accurately, chose not to tell you who's hosting you. Curious that you didn't ask...”

“huh? what the fuck are you talkin' about? And like-say quick. I don't have the patience for footnotes right now, man. ”

“your mind is being hosted by black hole symphony entertainment, hrodebert. You're expected to produce, and produce quickly, some relevant piece of countercultural art. They don't care what kind (reflect widely and lively [autotelic} through the seventh art) ('the machinic assemblage of movement-images.”)... name-your-prefix punk, space opera, some detached postmodernist bullshit, something that doesn't exist yet preferably, but it must capture imaginations, and you're getting expensive, not to mention...”

“why don't they just extract his raw dreams and edit them into an art form?” miss charlotte interjected.

“well, black tried that with the film director, edvard van der hurd. They thought they'd have a cash cow to milk for dark, offbeat scandinavian film enthusiasts, but the melding of images became a bit inaccessible as technology grew. His dreams were partly influenced by context, you see, and technology...”

laughing, laughing, a hand slapping soft flesh, rapping at the door.

“ah.” arturo said, “please excuse me.”

he opened the door to a latino guy dressed as an old don johnson miami vice character with his arm around a latina who was sporting knee-high black leather boots, a black skirt, kandinsky colored blouse with slits down the sides, and an array of spiderwebs jettisoning over her black, silky hair – unbearably typical valley girl fashion. They were laughing uncontrollably. The motel was overrun with an array of recycled hollywood golden era inspired mod characters, b-movie characters, and even kitschy 1980's television suggestive fashion entertainers living in the underworld of cinematic purgatory. Some were able to get work as stand-in extras for visual entertainment pieces edited into large video overlay films (used to pique a viewer to any latent feeling, which could then be projected at chosen amplification or frequency to other sensenet users) while others were just quirky enough to outhustle hospitalitybots for nightlife gigs. The lucky ones, the real talent were scooped up by fractallife corporations like 11layr, and the actor's vocabulary of feelings would be uploaded to sensenet databases via neuralelectric drives. Billions of legitimate users could download and project any given stimulation or response in the transcend similar to massive multiplayer online role-playing games of the past. News content providers would regularly give accounts of the happy couple who met due to their affinity for throat-slashing gore-horror or the story of self-reflexive social media critics in love...

“come in, come in, sit down. Please,” arturo told the most recent arrivals. “hrodebert, miss charlotte, nelson and cristina.”

they exchanged greetings while nelson fished a hemp bag out of his pink jacket pocket and handed it to arturo.

“we'd love to stay, doc, but we've most pressing business to attend to, and besides, looks as though you all are in the middle of something.”