A Warm and Modern Day
A Short Story by Chantel Ness
PART 1
Martine descended from the Order of Society with enough money to get us into the most luxurious sort of trouble. And enough status to ensure all of that trouble remained temporary. So long as she had a partner in crime to validate her misbehaviour, she didn’t mind cleaning me up. In fact, I think she praised herself for the charity.
I actually don’t care one way or the other. I’ll take the clothes and the trips and the slaps on the wrist. We broke every law in every country and looked good doing it. What else to do but laugh in the face of this stupid fucking world.
Decades ago, Martine’s parents met at a UFO meta-conference. Of course its all a stupid joke, some tongue-in-cheek kitsch. It’s been like forever since they’ve proven there aren’t any aliens. Her mom was cosplaying as an Intergalactic Slut. On one of her trips into space, she was “introduced to hundreds of her half-alien-half-human babies''. Martine’s dad ate it up. Romantic interludes aside, money sure can pay for some strange kinks. He flew her out to his home in the Republic of North Dallas where they’ve owned the cocktail scene ever since.
The unseasonably-hot summer we met, Martine’s brother wrecked at least two SkyCars and impregnated an Energy Minister’s daughter. Apparently none of it registered with their parents. I know if they were sober, my presence in their home would be extremely confusing if not embarrassing. Their particular blend of lubricity and narcissism worked to my favour.
I’m going to skip over the scenes of how I found myself mixed in with Martine’s crowd. All you need to know is I was lying out on the coast, recovering from a hangover and bad karma. I asked if she was famous and she grinned so wide as to flaunt her perfect teeth.
Three days later we were on Otto Sullivan’s private island. The King of Pleasure-Tech. The main structure’s curved glass window formed a panoramic view of the ocean and surrounding tropical forest. The reflecting pool and shrubbery added warmth to the ultramodern setting, accented by a domed ceiling. I was impressed how realistically the palms had been rendered.
We had been instructed to join the group on the veranda for some light refreshments. I had never seen such an opulent table scape. The smartest looking boys were hanging out by the insect bar, gorging on mod daeng eggs and broths made from silkworm powder. I was doing the low-cal thing so mostly grazed near the jellyfish chips, letting them melt onto my tongue, salt drifting over my palette. I admit I was eavesdropping. Martine’s appetite as usual was set on destruction. I could hear her flirtatious laugh lilting across the terrace. Before I set eyes on her, I hear Mar beckoning me “Fisher! Come! I want you to talk to an old friend of mine”. Martine is propped up on a chaise like a bizarro version of the Odalisque Woman, flanked by a harem of glistening male bodies.
***
Léon and I were not friends at the beginning of the summer. I mean, I liked him. People in denial are just a sad reminder of our dark secrets. We all have them, but I thought his were extra-noticeable.
Léon's attempts to convince others (and above all himself) that there was no strange inflection on his sexuality, took on strange expressions. He introduced us to his girlfriend who, by the way, he only hung out with twice. I remember her as a prickly society bitch who stood in a corner all evening because her new red pleather pants were so tight that she couldn’t sit down.
But then one day he realised what everyone already knew. As the somewhat naïve romantic he was, he tripped as a newly hatched fool into the gay scene. Just to find that life and above all the love for a gay man is not always such a fucking hit. Léon’s first introduction to The Club Life was also his first date, and to say the least, it was traumatic. Gays can smell the baby scent from an insecure newcomer the second they enter the door and then the hunt begins. After Léon was left by his date, he ended up in the company of two seemingly ordinary middle-aged men who wanted Léon to take up the space left over in their double bed. He did not have time to say no until someone hissed in his ear with moist breath: “Do not follow them, they always do that. Bring me home instead.”
***
I always wanted to see movies of my dreams. I guess this high-class summer is as close as I’ll get now that Cinérêve folded. Of course nobody blinked when they limited users to three dreams a month while doubling the subscription fee. I guess the nail in the coffin was all the bullshit Regulatory Agency investigations fucking with their Series B funding. Well that, and those wrongful-death lawsuits.
No matter, this summer my life is a movie. Months passed mostly as blurs of Nouns: sculpted bodies, idyllic locations, objects d’art. Then this one stand-out night in August. It was the kind of night on the kind of Drug that made you fall madly and unaccountably in love with everyone. Even yourself.
By mid-July we started hearing whispers of a new Drug in the Palisades. At first, only a select few at select parties had it. The Chosen Ones. It was touring the yacht circuit from Costa Smeralda to Antibes. My friend Joey down at the Arts Omphalos told me some kids he knew were getting it. This sultry August night, he pulled out some foil holding eight tablets, we each swallowed two.
A few years ago Joey really made a splash after he organised his first Art Conference. It had the Mixers, the All-Access Keychips, the VIP Aero Lounges, the Break-Out Sessions. It had everything except actual Art.
People say oh yeah, cause they think it's a masterpiece. I actually don’t get it. I mean I think I do…no I do. I totally get it. It’s just sometimes I get nostalgic for the pre-Koonsian period of Art History. Aesthetics crushed by Wall-Street-Douchebags in favour of commerce. I know my kind of corny and sentimentalist attitude has no use, but nevertheless Joey found my musings “darling”.
This spawned for him many successful and ongoing collaborations - The Art World unfolded at his feet. He took me aside at Pessa’s vernissage to impart that “each collaborator who enters our orbit brings along a world more strange and complex than any we could hope to imagine. By listening to the subtlety of their needs, desires and ambitions, we fold their world into our own. Leaving both parties forever changed by the experience” I nodded knowingly.
Recently he’s been focusing on his “body of work”. It's more about questioning and understanding humanity - what drives us to build societies? Why this quest for a utopist lifestyle that can never really exist? Searching for perfection is such a cyclical process of failures and successes.
***
I was lying on the rooftop of the New Media Lab when I felt the Drug kick in. Léon asked if I thought a broken window was symbolic. I said not unless symbolic means broken which I think it sorta does. Martine laughed. Suddenly we were all laughing. Joey got up and punched a hole through a brittle, dried-out wooden board. My whole body felt peaceful like I was deep underwater.
After a while Martine suggested we take a drive down south - she has a hard time keeping still. What is it about this girl that needs to seek out the maximum potential for drama? She had a cousin down in Valley View who was throwing the Party To End All Parties.
We hailed a DV and bolted out across the freeways and interchanges: through the old neighbourhoods, down to the safety zone, and out past the experimental testing grounds. Finally it was just us and a pitch-black nightscape. A light hum from the DV was drowned out by the almost deafening silence. Léon paced around and opened each of the windows manually. Martine grabbed my face with both her hands and sang “The warmth of your love is like the warmth of the sun”. I was suddenly aware of the sweat on my brow being wicked away in the hot, nocturnal August air.
Joey started ranting on about our love for danger and the courage of audacity or some bullshit. He said revolt was the purest form of poetry. Léon suggested that liberty was derived more from the courage to see your life as a beautiful experiment. Each iteration or attempt or error brings on more clarity. The deeper you go, the greater chance you’ll discover something true. He asserted that only by exploring the adjacencies of his sexuality could he truly be free.
About a mile and a half from the Villa, we docked the DV. I opened my mouth to taste our new surroundings. In the stillness, we stretched out on the ground and watched space pass above us. There was so much beauty it could almost make you cry. People tend to think that we’re the same person we were five years ago. Sometimes I wonder which parts of ourselves even have the capacity to change? And how much can you change without fundamentally altering your underlying “self”? I heard once that the 30 trillion cells that make up the human body regenerate and replace themselves every seven years. The bundle of cells that make up man are ousting each other with such inconceivable rapidity and perpetual flux. The question of personal identity then becomes simply a matter accepting the loose cohesion of your personal experiences. I abruptly notice my introspection. How long have I been not talking?
A clearing appears, a bridge that leads into town. Martine leaps ahead, bounding joyfully toward the structure. She howls and yelps. Her enthusiasm is always infectious, we mimic her path. Running back and forth across the bridge we drum our hands over the bars like a xylophone. She shouts “Stop!” and we all freeze. The hum of overlapping reverberations ring out like a New-Age chamber symphony. “God appears in Sine waves.” Joey says.
Meandering wildly through the streets, the thumping bass started out like a heartbeat. Like a pulsing beacon, an auditory lighthouse calling us to shore.
We followed the crescendo to its apex. Screams of delight and excitement hit us as we rounded the corner. The scene was too much to process all at once. Every rule of Puritanical decency was thrown out the window, you should’ve seen it. Absolutely Magical. I saw my dad’s old boss from the Ministry in her vintage Chanel suit and pearls - the whole nine - crawling on her hands and knees in the gravel of the sculpture garden. She looked up at me with wide, happy eyes, all her rings and fingernails caked in red dirt. Everyone had inhaled this inebriated atmosphere and the drama was beautifully executed. The fountain was a lewd sexual scene all its own. On the roof of the garage a lone nudist gyrated for everyone and no one. Inhibition was off the menu. Everyone was in such a good mood, these bad behaviours carried virtually no stigma, no taboo. We were like toys, for the first time, reading our own directions. In any other instance you’d worry what the boards would say the next morning. But not tonight, as I said, this night was special.
We danced. I danced. I mean to point out that I never dance - that’s not the world I come from. Arms were wrapped around me like I was a tree-trunk in those old stories. Everyone’s skin sticking together. I was dying of thirst. We walked around for a while to see if anyone was selling Bottled, but gave up after not too long.
I think I’m hallucinating. I feel very small but I’m not too upset about it. I felt myself giving in to the mad ecstasy, and to be honest I didn’t care if it was a lie or not. At sunrise, a young stranger in rolled up jeans pulled a chair beside me and started running his fingers through my hair. I was sold. He smiled and said “I just want you to know how much I love you.” I heard a sliding glass door open behind me. I smell something burning. I ask the young man if he smells it too. When he starts to speak, a cloud of condensed breath puffs out against the escaping climate-controlled air. For a second I give in to a terrible feeling: “Oh no, it’s him that’s burning” I think to myself.
It’s Martine. She smells like campfire. She takes a moment to fix her lips, they always look so perfect.
***
Instructing me to follow her into nature, she clasps my hand. Summer air reminds me of all the feelings of love, and what it was like when we were all together. We find Joey. He’s hovering over the trembling mass that is Léon. Poor Léon was all hunched over, hand on the kidney and shit. He was properly freaking the fuck out. I couldn’t help but stifle a giggle, this felt typical. Joey said there are many factors beyond your control that aim to endanger your level of enjoyment but at the end of the day you need to stand up and find yourself a Good Place. Léon asked if we were waiting for him and I said this was just a vacation. It’s not permanent. There is a great exchange of energy when leaving the outside world and entering the inside world. Energy cannot be destroyed.
I love this light. It’s just like it should be, just a warm and modern day. Martine took her dress off and ran toward the edge of the gorge. A strand of her hair drifted in the wind and tangled in my fingers. Approaching the valley’s edge one can't help but notice the Jacaranda trees.
Did you ever think a day could be so beautiful?
PART 2
“Léon, I was born too late” Martine states coolly as if bestowing a deep revelation upon me. Honestly she got on my nerves sometimes. Looking out at Otto’s dazzling view I summoned my best-version and quickly forgave her vanity. Martine acts like she’s a National Treasure or something. She sucks up all the air and attention like she’s the last beautiful person on earth. She’s not far off. After the MEE, sorry - the Mass Extinction Event - it was pretty much just the Ministry, the Founders and us members of the Upper Statusphere. And now this random girl Fisher who Martine dragged along.
Some part of me was relieved when the MEE happened. It was becoming uncomfortable to look at. There was something so patently insane about those climate-controlled factories, the machines sleeping soundly at night and all the people burning in the slums.
The Old Neighbourhoods were a bad buzz. The half-buried huts riddled with contractible diseases dragged out across the deserts between Fairland and Murray City. Squirrels boiled up on the road, slowly simmering through the morning before combusting by late afternoon. Vacant E-Z Credits and Water Stations were rusted out and set free in the dusty midways. Très tragique.
Since the workers were gone, the piles of dead bionics and tangled wires formed embankments and new topographies. It’s unfortunate how those people inherited such bad luck down through the centuries, a curse published on their DNA. I often felt sad the workers didn’t get personalized names, only titles. I always felt like such a Léon.
I think evolution was the biggest hoax in human history. We’ve advanced the science of Good Times, I’ll give us that. But in all our righteousness, the thought that “we could be losing” never crossed our minds. It’s strange to think how we got to this point. I guess it’s too late for regrets now so why mess with the collective amnesia?
I heard Fisher used to rent out by the lower coast where her family worked (pre-acidification) but she’d never talk about it.
The thing is she never talked about any of it. Look, a kid can get it into her mind that having two lives is the answer to all her problems. I just can’t see how that’s even possible. Fair enough, these are complicated issues for a teenager loaded up on hormones and half-baked understandings of the world. I guess it’s just easier not to approach some things directly.
Ok, I hear myself and I’d like to explain how I’m not being hypocritical. My situation is not the same. I’m not in denial about my sexual orientation. I just didn’t think it was anyone’s business. I enjoy wearing the mask, it looks good on me.
***
Sometimes I’m quiet and make myself very small on purpose. I love feeling like I’m watching the world but no one is watching me back - freedom from scrutiny and escapism through anonymity. I might not be communicating myself properly… what I’m trying to say is not very easy to explain, and it’s not very easy to understand.
Take this one night back in June: I decided to let the girls tag along on my date. Before you get too excited, I should note the boy is not important. He ended up being dim and uninteresting and asked the stupidest questions.
So it’s just Martine, Fisher and I, we’re just minding our own beeswax near the bar when these guys come up to me. One has chest hair poking through a collared shirt and the other is 5 feet of unequivocal homeliness. There is a certain craziness about him that tells me he's myopic in more ways than one. I took a few polite steps back, but leaned in again when he gave me that look. I saw from his OPTech that he worked for the Defense Department. Of course, he was so that type. They did their best trying to put me on the spot but their attention made my skin crawl. Just in time, a whisper in my ear like a life preserver gave this night the promise of an alternate ending. “Take me home instead”. I did.
I’m not completely naïve. Like everyone else, I watched Sullivan’s latest Pleasure-Tech Product Launch. That doesn’t mean I was any less flattered when it approached me. We walked for some time before grabbing a room on the square. The last thing I want is to come across like some schmaltzy and unexamined moron, but something about it understood me so deeply. This gift of connection was extended from within my comfort zone. I didn’t feel the expectation to be performative in my sexuality. I always thought it would be a tragedy to spend your whole life desperately wanting to be something that you already were, all along.
Was it possible I could develop real feelings for this tech? Or if not real feelings, some newly invented form of feelings that were as yet undiscovered? The thought made me nervous. We sat on the edge of the bed staring down at the floor. At once it elucidated all the jumbled thoughts inside my brain: “An inability to process truth lies in an inability to handle the pixels of circumstance.”
***
I didn’t know Joey well. Naturally I knew of him. I wouldn’t have believed if you told me at the start of summer he would become a main character in my life. Funny how it takes just one night to become Legend. He was connected to certain people who could get things, if you know what I am talking about. It’s been a few months since the Drug started changing everything. I never wanted to think of myself as a “joiner” but considering the state of things, I was prepared at this point to release that notion. We each popped two pills from a bit of foil in Joey’s jacket pocket.
At first it came on with an intense feeling of depersonalization. As a passive and brooding introvert I didn’t realise how much I was craving this. I felt like my head was an empty balloon with strings connecting to every object and person around me.
On the DV heading to the Event, I’m listening to Fisher talk to Joey. She was telling him about a dream she screened - a surreal collage of tableaux-styled images, so rich in colour and composition. She’s lying, I thought to myself… it’s just not possible she Beta-tested Cinérêve. At this point who is the act for? I begin to feel very anxious and suspicious. It starts out like a creepy little bug in my stomach.
By the time we reached the oxidised gates of Valley View, I had a hard time controlling my pulse. It is possible to send instructions to your vital organs, breaking the mind-body barrier, or was that just a myth?
***
Between air-raid sirens you could hear a frenzied chorus of voices echoing out from the villa. My growing anxieties were soon validated. What the hell are we doing here? Literally out of the gate we saw some rich bitch clawing desperately on the ground like, man… she was really out of her mind. She was scraping and scooping up earth on top of a body in a Department uniform. Standing by the garage I heard a man muttering to himself: “I gotta eat what am I gonna do I'm just one person I gotta eat and food is important better not rock the boat I get so scared just thinking about how I'm going to explain this to my colleagues my family my friends food is important.” Just then a naked body flung itself from the rooftop.
I look to Martine, Fisher and Joey - they seem to be in some dissonant cloud of bliss. Raising my concerns, Fisher brushed me off. She said, why are you even talking about this? Have a little faith. But as she spoke, I saw two more people cross.
Once inside the villa I spent hours wiggling myself to what used to be a restroom. I’m out of breath. I knew I was going to explode if I didn’t get some oxygen. I felt like I was in one of those swan boats slowly inching toward a waterfall, I am back-pedaling as hard as I can, but making no forward progress. By the time I make my way outside I’m thrown helplessly over the edge.
I manage to let out a sweaty and weak “please” to Joey who follows me out into the hills. The atmosphere was dark and heavy with what I wanted to say. My teeth were so clenched the attempt would have been futile anyway. I think about the whole mess we’re in. Considering how we’ve behaved and trashed this world like a cheap motel room, you’d think life should mean a lot less than this.
***
Death takes time and Martine was feeling impatient. It should come as no surprise that a self-destructive girl like her would choose such a literal ending. She didn’t have minutes to spare. Stripping naked she threw herself without hesitation so gracefully into the canyon like a Degas ballerina in the dawn’s light. It was actually beautiful. Fisher followed like a lemming to the sea, straining to be eternally affiliated through death.
The Drug was promising a lot. At the moment of bodydeath, your core essence: all your memories, preferences, insecurities, desires - transferred to a new plane of existence. “Eternal Afterlife.” It could just as easily be the PharMeta bro’s final scam. Give us one last endorphin rush and usher us dissociatively into the Apocalypse. How could we ever know it works?
I sat with Joey all the way to the end. He said I was right earlier when I said life was a courageous experiment of trials and errors. It’s easy to forget that we’re all alive for the very first time. I found comfort in this. He reminded me we were lucky to have wobbled on new legs through misunderstandings and consequent revelations into this warm world, this Good Place.
As I lay my head on his lap beneath the flowering and perfectly convincing Jacaranda, I see the sky ripping apart. I see the universe. I see the fire, I see the end.