77 Crimson Calamity Unplugged

Festivals and autograph signing had begun to pale on Crimson Calamity, a Brazilian head-job with highly experimental wetROMs and a compulsive liar, Crimson could remember the first upgrade, having dumped her core memory (she read later it was impossible to re-install with original file structure intact, oops) she had boosted her colour sensitivity, strictly a wetware upgrade, nothing much to it, colours seemed primary, rich, extravagant, with a squeeze of a finger she could see in ways her parents had never imagined were possible, let alone have allowed if they had found out.

By 24, Crimson was as patched as an old tire, a ceaseless stream of home cooked sense implants, she could taste colours with her fingers and see music with her tongue, There was no end to the many combinations she could explore, it had to come crashing down eventually.

One morning, it did, she awoke in total darkness, her Eyesoft(TM) had fatally crashed, causing her to stumble for the panic button on her dresser, it had failed many times only this time, the hard reset commanded by the panic button refused to activate and she was left stumbling and bumping into furniture until she made it to the doorway and knocked at her neighbour's.

With a little help (luckily, it was Sunday and he was home) she discovered the problem, her WetWare processor had permanently failed and since the warranty had long since expired she was left with no option but to disconnect it from the visual cortex entirely. Her neighbour used his 8-pin hardline to connect her to his diagnostic program and suddenly, for the first time in over a decade, Crimson Calamity saw without enhancement, and it was fascinating.

She had forgotten the fine texture of shadows on wood floors, the grain of igneous stone on the windowsill, the frosting of dust on unwashed windows, the myriad of greys and browns on a single patch of wall. Her Eyesoft(TM) lost these subtleties in exchange for colour not possible in the ordinary world, for how long had she felt it was the ordinary world which suffered as a result?

"Wow,"

"What?" she said.

"I don't know if I've ever seen you breathe like that"

She noticed her breathing, deep and even, touch was touch, sight was sight, a forgotten feeling; was it relief?

"Yeah, well, it's been awhile."

"I can connect you with a new chip, your old one's toast" holding up the diagnostic printout.

"Alright, thanks."

It took time, so much detail in the world was overwhelming, the ultimate resolution.

She lost the contact info on the way home to bed; to slip into scalding cold sheets and shiver in the rush of old new sensations.

78 Medea Rez (William Gibson Homage)

The lone child of aging mega-rock star Rez (frontman for Lo/Rez) and Rei Toei, an Idoru (synthetic personality), Medea Rez grew up unlike any child the world had yet conceived. She was capable of mathematical computation which exceeded her designers yet she felt awkward in crowds and smiled shyly for reporters; she dreamt in cyberspace without a hardline or a NetCloud yet became easily confused when giving class presentations in primary school; she experienced fits of adolescent rage and misery like everyone yet recorded full sense/net copies which quickly became sim/stim hits that garnered accolades from critics and fans alike.She was an enfant terrible, a cause celebre, a brat and a buddha, a singularity and a multiplicity.

She wonderered if her mother, cloned around the world and the power behind the family fortune, had not secretly generated her as a youthful copy of herself. Her father, Rez, inescapably aging, would soon go full-synth; she'd heard that was supposed to change people. Until then, she decided she could count on him to offer an alternative perspective on herself. Above all, she was deeply selfish and self-interested, this was not her fault. Since she was unique (for now) her designers (parents) had programmed certain complexes that would leverage maximum data from her life experience for future models; With effectively infinite recursive-thought neural networks and the capacity to model up to 26 different personalities at once, she still couldn't always manage to get through a social engagement without wounding individuals with her razor edged insight although she felt sorry afterwards and did apologize.

Her cyberspace handle/nick was MeaCulpa.

Her parents looked forward to her dating years like Europe looked forward to the great plague of 2012.

Set the count to zero otherwise do nothing

Untitleable

79 The end of the week

It wasn't going to be an ordinary dreary day deadly doomed and dastardly. the Spring full frontal had driven even the crows indoors with their recent treasures and clumsy bickerings. Full-on felicitously, Buck Milligan drew his unscabbarded mettle cross the back and the forty so thus cleared the bushes of their nights' tenancy.

When Buck was again awake, he rose calmly and concentrated on a simple order of daily morning rituals, the morning news, light exercise then a coffee, shower and shave, a little work on his kitchen table. Dreams and their gaudiness were enjoyable, so long as they remained below the covers, it didn't do to have his pleasure at a rich dark hot cup of morning coffee penetrated by monkey chatter from an alien ocean; the coffee was instant and Buck was not a coffinista; it didn't trouble him, everyone has a snobbery, Buck was no exception, only coffee wasn't it; when it came to coffee, Buck was a grand egalitarian, refusing neither instant nor espresso, 1, 3, 7 or 13 millibars were not important, Bialleti and Mr. Bunn were both his friends. Coffee sweet, black or creamy, fit every mood, suited every occassion.

It didn't do to have it interrupted.

My name is Buck, my nickname is Buck. It's now the weekend and I'm sitting in a quiet corner at the back of the darkest, smallest coffee place in the city. I'm sitting with new friends, the conversation turns to family and history. Moe works the desk across from mine, he's just told me he was named after his Grandfather.

My parents called me Buck after my Grandfather too. He was old a long time before he died. I was told I knew my great-grandfather when I was a baby. I've forgotten him now. I haven't forgotten my Grandfather. He owned two WW I era motorcycles, bought new, sold before I was old enough to ride them. One day he had a minor accident with a car and put them up for sale the very next day.

Moe feels a drink coming on, I agree, we excuse ourselves from the rest, I wish Susan and Janice a good night, wave to Mickey and Frank and Betty at the bar and Moe and I go gently into that good night.

Years later, I would remember the hanging icicles by the broken air conditioner working madly to cool the already cold night air, bothering to tell someone seemed a waste of time, the stars winked naughty love poetry and Moe was drinking smoke and breathing single malt by the time we hid behind the dumpsters while the beat officers did their rounds.

Tumbling down the stairs to our maddest basement Jazz bar, The Angry Diamond, where an unaccompanied Pianst was hammering the keys to ecstasy beyond pain and his tip jar was spilling and the stink of girls and spunk and sawdust ate the walls and Moe and I lost sight of each other and while the music rapped our minds we paid no notice to anything else. The lights dimmed further and the pianist made it so furious the music ate the colour and shape of the world and I felt it assume total command, the magic in the music was the music in me; only there was no me.

A totality.

Waking up. where was I? Afraid to open my eyes yet, under my breath, I shaped the words again in my mind and on my lips; where was I? It didn't feel like my bed, there was somebody beside me, I felt certain. My body ached, hangovers always began with the body, eyelids were allowed to open, a ceiling fan which certainly wasn't mine spun lazy circles on the ceiling, I looked beside me, expecting Moe.

It wasn't Moe, it was the Pianist from last night, someone had shot a neat hole straight through his forehead then turned his lifeless eyes to face me on the bed.

I shuddered, no point looking for the pistol with my fingerprints left, no doubt, under the bed.

Had my cell phone been taken? Yes of course it had, I realized I would have to get out of bed, climbing over the foot of the bed and hopping as far as I could away from it, taking the least likely path the crooks could have taken hoping some uncontaminated evidence remained. No telephones had been left in what was now obviously some mungy hotel room. I draped the door handle with toilet paper (thankfully there was some) and having checked the peephole, I eased it open and stood with only my head around the frame and hollered. "Police, hey, somebody call the cops."

A cleaner heard me and I convinced him to call the Police before he heard my story. Now it was a matter of standing in the doorway and having my P.I. investigator number ready. Since the crooks had taken my wallet, I'd have to rely on memory for the 9 digit code.

I sighed. What a weekend.

80 Jesus never learned about B8A

"Blessed are the meek"

Before he could learn B8A he said he had to learn Alpha. His teachers could not persuade him, they imagine he learned Alpha on the cross?

There was a long time in the between place, grey but not grey, neither distance nor closeness, up and down were missing, awareness with neither self nor object.

When the world was built it was already millions of years old, time flowed in all directions, as far back as necessary, as far forward as necessary, necessary to complete the plan, and there was a plan, time enough for everyone, that was the plan.

As awareness expanded, time operated as a universal editor, throwing causes in any direction necessary to support the new imaginings; the world was flat until it was round, the Gods walked until they retreated to the heavens then to scripture, finally to eternity.

From time to time there were those who learned things, ways and means, unfortunately those ways and means are not only unteachable, they are highly dangerous.

For one who knows only the one, there is one; then the universe flows.

For one who knows B8A, this one knows the one and one more...and so arises the multiverse

The B8A exists; the heavens, the hells, the longed-for lands belong to it.

The B8A is the diamond and the cross

The B8A is the warm beating chaos at the heart of order and the order underpinning the chaos

The B8A is not the beginning, that is Alpha, nor is it the beginning of the end, that is Omega.

Be aware:

The B8A is the beginning of the rest.

81 Let there be sandwiches

Sandwiches were laid out in a long row for the guests all along the breakfast bar on a succession of cutting boards purchased over several years from all over the world. The selection process was left up to the host but the game itself they had played many times together. When the guests arrived they were cautioned to chew carefully because inside one of the sandwiches was a hard baked bean and whoever got the bean would be the killer for the game tonight.

As the guests arrived and took their sandwiches and began wandering all over the house, spilling crumbs everywhere, they chewed their sandwiches slowly and soon, one of them had found the bean and as per the rules, began a conversation with the other guests, casually slipping in the codeword they had agreed upon, guests who heard the word (and were thus officially dead) retired to the den in the basement and waited with cocktails for the game to end.

When there were only two guests left it was clear who the killer was. He led the way down to the den and everyone wished him a happy birthday.

For the rest of their lives they never forgot the look on his face, he'd never told anyone his birthday, he'd never had a surprise birthday party. He was so happy he felt his heart would burst.

And so, he died.

81 Making things up and tearing things down

Honestly, what kind of a guy is Johnny? What kind of a guy lives like that? I mean, he's so ordinary I think he's been in my class for 3 years now. It took me that long to remember his name! I might still have it wrong! HOW forgettable! The guy has no distinguishing features; average height, average looks, average hair, average clothes, average average average all the way down! I wonder how he does it? The teachers in school marked him absent a whole semester last year and Johnny and his parents had to show them Johnny's class notes to prove he'd been there; how average can you get? It's only because we've shared a class for three years in a row that I remember there even exists a person by the name of Johnny Houdini...

I wonder what he'll be when he grows up?

82 The forever goodbye

Running through the woods grew tiresome, so Jack walked. He at once noticed the ground beneath his shoes, the air in his lungs, the sweat on his back. It seemed as though his body returned to him the moment he stopped running; running he felt he wore another body, a lighter body, a body that touched the world lightly.

Water flowed and he heard it, choosing to abandon his plans he walked off the running path and went down to the source of the sound. He sat down, among discarded plastic and broken bottles, along the banks of a swiftly flowing stream. He ignored the garbage and shifted himself once to get something out from under him, picking up the source of his discomfort, he drew his thumb along the edge of a rusted bottlecap and tossed it behind him.

He sat there long enough for his sweat to cool, his breathing to slow. closing his eyes he recognized the sound must have been the same since the stream had been born, it was only his vision that kept him aware of the garbage, in one sense, the garbage disappeared when he closed his eyes, but the stream remained.

He felt his mind beginning to drift until he concentrated on the sound of the stream, whenever he was successful, there were times when he also vanished, and the stream was all he knew, all he had ever known. Simply all.

Ultimately, he stood up to go, Jack felt if he stayed longer he would never leave, however far away he went. It was difficult to express his feelings in words so he left them uninterpreted.

Sunday was never over, only Monday always arrived.

83 The Chattering

I will not be here again. -Why Wei Wu Wei Laughed (pseudonymous)

There was once a boy of uncertain years and a very definite age. Games happened around him with great frequency. The boy was empty. Still, the words flowed: a hurly without a burly, a hocus without a pocus, a song without a staff, a mirror without an image, a noise without a source, an embrace without a body, a thought without a mind, a country without a territory, a substance without a surface, an absence without a presence, a lost without a found, a device without a driver.

A chaos without dischord, an order without structure.

The boy was happy for no reason at all.

Once, the boy had been unhappy, deafened by chattering.

It was ridiculous to believe how simple the solution was. Incredibly lost, one day he accidentally got out of his own way, the chattering remained as a natural phenomenon only now it wasn't granted more weight than the wind in the Autumn leaves. Noticing this. The boy ceased struggling and promptly drowned in unfiltered experience.

Such surprise! To drown!

Yet still to breathe!

84 The Lost Wenches of Mayfair Lulady

Once upon a time they dressed so fine, did the boozy jive, didn't they?

-The lost Wenches

It's a bunch of grapes, you know? The girls were invested in heavily, by parents and educators and societies and governments, all in the hope that someday they might get picked before they rotted on the vine.

Still, they became musicians.

I was assigned by my newspaper to interview the girls, on three separate occasions: once, early in their career when critical mass was still building and the first triple-platinum album was still just a melody in the head of the lead guitarist; a second time, when they had bought the mansions and thrown the most lavish parties of the post-crash planet; a third and final time with the lead guitarist when the tragedy occured.

I never saw them again after that. I didn't care to. Such a loss.

Now, looking back on their career, I can notice the changes, when they stopped living spontaneously and when they started believing their own press. They used to go into the night without any illumination, they used to make it up as they went along.

Janice Axworthy complained that the best time of her life was when she, Mayfair, Agatha and Michele had just played the local jukejoint. Making it up as they went along.

Janice missed Mayfair, she had always suspected that she wouldn't be able to take the attention, talented but shy turned out to be a toxic combination for a musician. She felt grateful they'd had a solid ten years of music but regretted that their time together would ultimately be so short. I have no idea why she called me, why she called me after so many years and why, as her choice of location for her exegesis, Janice chose an obscure cafe in an obscure city in central India named Victory, I simply woke one afternoon to a knock at the door and a FedEx courier gave me an envelope with tickets, booking confirmations, instructions, and a letter from Janice explaining enough to slake my curiosity but not enough to satisfy it.

It turned out that everything she'd written was a pack of lies. But by the time I realized that I didn't care.

The following week, I was on a plane to India.

After several transfers, I landed at a local airstrip near Victory City, a car and driver were waiting to whisk me to the cafe. It was called, with little imagination I might add, the Victory Cafe. Narrow and modern and cold. Janice had arrived ahead of me Even after all these years I recognized her, the backwards brushed hair, the wind in her eyes, the sly smile.

"Bunny Jones, I knew you'd darken my door again someday."

"Hello Janice, it's good to see you too," She liked to speak in classic movie lines, I remembered how much I'd missed that affectation, although we'd never spent much time together and I could not really call myself her friend, she had profoundly affected me with her spark and crackle; our rapport had fallen into old grooves left by others, I don't know, I guess we recognized each other somehow.

I was cautious to put much stock in it though, Janice was a monstrously charismatic person and it was highly probable she had this effect on everyone she met: made you feel interesting and smart and funny when outside her presence you were certain that you were pedantic and dull and humourless.

"So why are we meeting here?"

"She's back, Beuford, Mayfair."  I fought back an irrational anger, she'd used my actual name, she wanted me to know this was serious. I pushed the anger down.

10 years ago, Mayfair Lulady, lead guitarist and songwriter of The Lost Wenches, had chosen my apartment as her point of exit. Our interview had gone smoothly, then she had excused herself to the bathroom and quietly choked herself to death with a bathroom towel. It had derailed me in every conceivable way. I hoped Janice got on with her foolishness because I was suddenly, fiercely, near the end of my patience.

She reached across the narrow tabletop and took my hand.

"Listen, she said." I waited for her to speak.

Then I heard music, guitar music, music played improvisationally, brightly, a signature style I hadn't heard in years.

I turned around, a ten year old girl with an odd birthmark on her throat was playing Lost Wenches tunes but not as they'd been recorded, these were better, mature compositions of a lifetime musician. Her look was serious but I couldn't see her clearly.

I was crying.