And then I’m walking through a ward of rollmatoids who are so gooed-out that they can’t even stand, and they’re all, like, playing games and hooked up to gooDrips, and when I exit the infirmary and step into the commons, there’s a protest going down, the crowd chanting about the Younder recall, and this one protestor is twisting so dervishly that she almost hits me in the head with a sign that says “Screw corporatocracy!” And I hide my username so nobody knows I’m a Vonn.
I finally make my way through the crowd and mount the line. It hisses. A voice on the overhead speaker says, “in the likely event of an active shooter, don’t forget to stream your gaze.” I find a seat. Across from me I see the same kicks that X bought, the ones with the wings on the back, so naturally I think it’s X sitting across from me, and I stand up and start walking to the other side of the line but then I see that it’s not X, it’s just some rando wearing the same kicks, so I walk back to my seat, but before I can sit down, this bum who’s been asking for coin slams into me, and his blur flashes, and he grabs me by the arm, and his hand swipes against my chest, and he kind of growls, and next thing I know he keeps moving down the line, begging for coin, so I return to my seat and look around, and that’s when I realize that half the people on the line are wearing the kicks with the wings, and that’s when the olden time lightbulb clicks, and I swipe to my gaze of the shooting the night before, and sure enough, there the shooter is, sweeping around the crowd, zap zap zap with the blaster, and I see it, the skinBanner with the kicks, and I swipe to an article about the shooting, find the shooter’s name at the bottom, jordyJ 73, and I realize that the wings make two Js, and that’s when it all comes together, the flash sale and all that, and I'm, like, whoa, the hellaCoin I was getting from my gaze was kickback from all the jordyJ sales from my viral gaze, and so even though I don’t want to, I find myself tapping on jordyJ’s skinBanner right at the exact moment he blasts his own brains out, and that’s when I find myself in a jordyJ shop in front of a bunch of jordyKicks, and I impulsively swipe on a red pair, find that the sale is no longer running, buy the kicks anyway, and sit there as the line hums through the tunnel, watching the kicks overlay my feet, and for the rest of the ride I feel like everyone else, almost like I’m wrapped in cotton wool balls or something, and it’s not until a Middle Manager flickers on and arrests the bum for coinHandling that I’m knocked out of my trance.
What is this I’m feeling? Anger? A sense of injustice? I can’t say. And, in fact, I’m too distracted to suss out my feelings because I’m looking around for other hidden Middle Managers who have unGlassed or aren’t wearing sensors, but of course the conundrum is that the Middle Managers are unGlassed and unSensored precisely so you can’t see them, and these motherfuckers are damn good at dodging you IRL, so you never know they’re there until they sensor and glass, but by then it’s too late, not that I know from experience, because I’ve always been very well-behaved, very loyal to the policies and procedures of The Within, at least before I swallowed that device, and maybe that’s why I’m so paranoid all of a sudden about unGlassed Middle Managers, because who knows, they might be watching me, maybe even the guy who nabbed the bum was meant to be watching me when he saw the coinHandler and couldn’t help himself, because of course begging for coin is hellaIllegal, given that bums are hellaVibeKills.
My stream starts dinging. I click on the notification. vidSuggestions. I glass the titles: “How I Got Rich Investing in doseMoon,” “Top 5 Ways to Get hellaThrowbackCoin,” “derrick9 coinHacks,” “The Quickest Way to Make hellaCoin Without a Single Skill or Talent,” “contentMachinists Can Make sixFigureCoin by Adding This One Sentence to Their Resume,” etc., etc. I love how apropos the stream is. The way it takes in all your glassedData and churns out the best content for any given moment. Like, there I am, maybe about to feel bad for that bum, when lo and behold, I’m reminded of how easy it is to get rich in The Within, and I'm, like, yeah, why be a vibeKill when you can just ape in to some crypto or get real good at derrick9 or post engaging viral content for throwbackCoin or get an entry-level position as a contentMachinist and work your way up the corporate ladder.
I save all the vidSuggestions for later.
I glance across at the bloke wearing the jordy J sneakers. I was so distracted by his shoes earlier to realize that he’s a Vonn. Vonn 93, to be exact. It’s always surreal, seeing a fellow Vonn, the way that certain features are shared across affiliates. We all have the same hooked nose, the same broad shoulders, the same steely eyes. I think about saying hi to Vonn 93, but the Vonns have never had a particularly close bond. That might be because our CEO never fostered any real comaderie. I mean, we never had company retreats or anything like that. Which is understandable, given how busy and productive our CEO is. I mean, he can’t be an innovative visionary and a loving CEO at the same time. There are only so many hours in the day. Twenty-six, to be exact. (There used to be twenty-four hours, but Mr. Vonn Senior, when creating The Within, had the brilliant idea to add a thirteenth hour, one after noon, one following midnight, all so that we could have two more hours of productivity to get our work done.) Still, a part of me wishes that I had the same bond with my fellow affliates as some sponsors do. I’ve found, through observation, that it’s the smaller companies, the ones that generate less revenue, which produce the closest bonds among its affliates. I don’t know why that is. But I do know that I’ve always been much closer to X, for instance, than any of the Vonns that I might happen to run into IRL or on dNet.
The line stops. Vonn 93 stands. I switch on my username. Vonn 93 glances at me as he heads to the door. He nods, not smiling. He passes by without a word. A stranger among strangers.
I get off at the next stop, walk through the corridor, vibing with all the lights and the muzak, and press my hand against my persy door. The door slides open. I step inside. The room is still set to morning, even though technically it’s late afternoon. I proactively switch the room to night. The sunlight turns to moonlight. The ceiling fills with stars and clouds. The back wall extends into a row of sliding glass doors which lead onto a balcony which overlooks the ocean. The view is sponsored by Calm®. To my left is a big open space with a crackling fireplace sponsored by cozyCabin®. I sit on the edge of my bed. I plug into dNet. Immediately I’m propositioned by a sexSimul with huge breasts. I read the reviews. 3.8 Stars. I look at the price. Then I remember that I spent the bulk of my coin on the jordyJKicks. My weekly allowance won’t hit until tomorrow morning, and since I spent so much coin this weekend buying drinks and goo for all my colleagues, even the extra kickback I got for my stream of the active shooter probably won’t be enough to cover a sexSimul. I check my funds. I barely have enough for a gooTaco and a fastSleeper. Oh well. I’m not much in the mood for simulSex right now. My email dings. I look. Twenty-five unreads. I look at the latest. It’s from Yide. She’s asking if I want to come to her place. My stomach flutters. Why is she asking me over? She’s never done that before. Does she have a crush on me? No way, I think. Yide could have any guy at beeHive. Why would she want anything to do with a lowly contentMachinist like myself? I check the sliding cost of line tickets to Yide’s department and realize that prices have balooned. My stomach drops. I’m several stable coins short. I look at the time. Four p.m. That gives me plenty of time to gather coin, so I message her back and tell her that I’ll be there around seven. Then I think. But the thinking doesn’t go so well, because all I can think about is Claudette, and how something about her made me feel different, almost raw, and then my thoughts meander toward the hooded figure, the way his face looked familiar, and I close my eyes and try to conjure the face, the gaunt wrinkles rising in my imagination, but I shrug off the odd sense of deja-vu and, with the last of my funds, order Younder’s latest upper, a pill called safeUp®, which is supposed to be non-addictive and actually really good for you, and so a few seconds later the pill comes shooting up my tube, whizzing with a pneumatic hiss, and I walk across the room and open the plastic door and reach inside and swallow the pill without any liquid, just using my saliva to lubricate the descent, and then I stand there, in my persy, all alone, waiting for the boost.
And when the boost comes it’s totally insane. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. My teeth start chattering. My thoughts race in all different directions. My heart pounds. The phrase medical marvel rings in my head, and while I think the phrase is a thought, I soon realize that it’s being uttered by a voice on my back wall, which has changed from an oceanview sponsored, in part, by Calm®, to a commercial for safeUp®, sponsored by Younder, and my head buzzes as I watch myself sitting at a table with my colleagues, all of us laughing, and then there’s footage of me having sex with some rando sexSimul, and the whole time the soft woman voice keeps talking about how non-addictive safeUp® is and how good it is for your gut health, and then, as the footage cuts back to me and my colleagues laughing around a table, there’s the standard disclaimer about death and suicide, and the woman says my name, Vonn, saying, we hope you have a safe journey, Vonn, and then the commercial switches back to the oceanview and I’m left there standing in my room, like totally bouncing off the fucking walls, my heart practically in my throat, and I'm, like, alright, Vonn, think, and my jaw tightens, and I know I’m smiling, but I don’t know what I’m smiling about, and some music starts playing from somewhere, a song called “Roll With Me” by Cheddar Onion Soup, and my head starts bobbing uncontrollably, and I'm, like, think, think, and that’s when my email dings, and I look at the email, and it’s from some pharmy called Reez, and they’re advertising a BOGO for a new drug called Jaz, which is supposed to cure PSFDG, a rare form of inefficiency, which of course I have according to the quiz I took the night before, and I start reading the stats, things like, it’s estimated that 1 in 3 males suffer from PSFDG, and I'm, like, whoa, that’s a lot, thank Efficiency I’m not alone, and then the email starts asking some very pertinent questions, like, Do you have a hard time concentrating? Do you find your thoughts meandering, especially after taking a drug like safeUp®? Do you ever find yourself fantasizing about suicide and/or active shooting? Then Jaz might be right for you.
So I click on the BOGO, but then remember I spent my last coin on safeUp®, which is a hellaVibeKill, but then I remember something else, the vidSuggestions from earlier, and I'm, like, brilliant, Vonn, brilliant, can’t think for yourself, let others do it for you, so I go to my saved vids and watch the first one, “How I Got Rich Investing in doseMoon,” which is a very informative vid, but not really actionable at the moment because I don’t have coin to ape into this no-brainer investment, so I go to the next one, “derrick9 coinHacks,” and I learn all these cheat codes for the game, swipe over to derrick9, and start drilling for coin. It’s relaxing, watching the pump go up and down, up and down, in and out, in and out, and I start thinking about the simul with huge breasts, the way her eyes flickered at me, like I was the only person in the world, and I’m sitting there, pressing all the right buttons to get the derrick to go up and down, up and down, in and out, in and out, and I sink into a kind of hypnosis, watching as my coin gradually increases, and once I sense that the well is mined, I move to the next one, and then the next, remembering the tip in the vid about searching for certain rock formations, and meanwhile, as I dip my pump into the next well, I hear Withouter sounds, and I enable my laser beam and start blasting toward the sound, and then the heat map starts flashing, and I'm, like, zap, zap, die, Withouter, die, and I’m having so much fun eliminating the horde of Withouters that I don’t realize I’ve gained enough coin to buy Jaz until I have more than enough, and then I’m, like, really hoping that the BOGO deal is still good, and when I realize it is, I’m hellaRelieved, my finger twitching as I buy the pharma. It arrives in my tube almost immediately. I take the first recommended dose, watch the promo vid, and then wait to see what happens next.
My heartbeat slows. I return to The Arcade, but suddenly I have no interest in playing derrick9, so instead I look at some other games: Gatherer, Builder, activeShooter13. I get the sense I’ve been here before, which makes sense, because I’ve gone to The Arcade every day of my life practically, so I shrug off the familiar feeling, click into activeShooter13, get bored very quickly, click out, and then look at my coin. It’s not enough for a ride to Yide’s persy, but it’s enough to buy some doseMoon, which I do, draining my funds. Now all I have to do is wait. Once doseMoon inevitably 2xs, I’ll be able to afford a tic. So I wait, and to pass the time, I watch a vid of a woman eating so much goo that she vomits. Then she starts eating the vomit. It’s kind of funny. But I don’t laugh. And even though I don’t recognize the woman, I know I’ve seen the video before. I check my gravity sensor because I think I’m floating. But gravity is set to earth. That’s weird. I lay down, dizzy. I fall asleep. When I wake up, my doseMoon has gained about 2%, which should be enough to afford a ticket, but when I check prices again, I realize that line tickets have inflated by 3% in the last hour or so, so I’m still short. I look at the time. It’s almost six. Fuck. Why am I not rich yet? I start reading about doseMoon and realize that I have no idea what it does. Or how it automatically appreciates in value. The white paper is just too damn complicated. Some people, like this cadMan fella who invented doseMoon, are just way smarter than me. Oh well. I don’t have to know what doseMoon does to get rich off of it. I start plugging numbers into theDoseMoonCalc. If the value of doseMoon continues climbing by 2% every hour, I’ll be able to quit my job in a couple weeks. That’s cool.
I ping Yide. Sorry, don’t think I can make it. Maybe tomorrow night? By then I should be relatively wealthy, and Yide will never know how broke I am, so I might still have a shot at her falling in love with me.
No problem, she writes back. Just wanted to show you something.
Maybe we can vid later? I just have some work to do, I lie, implying that I have a really cool side-hustle.
Probably not, she says. It’s not something I want to show over vid. Plus, X is coming over now.
Well, that backfired quickly.
To dim the torturous image of Yide and X together, I take another Jaz.
Somethings starts to pound on my ceiling. A drill hisses. I sink into an existential terror, convinced that my sense of reality is slipping.
My roomBot dims the light, the pounding stops. The drill hisses one last time. A voice, almost certainly in my head, says something unintelligible.
I tell my roomBot to turn on the lights. I’ve always been afraid of the dark. Nyctophobia is a common side-effect of the gestation process in adTech. Since babies are constantly exposed to content, they often don’t develop a penchant for darkness.
With the lights on, I eventually fall back asleep. I dream that I’m at work, churning out content on the reg, and when I wake the next morning to my alarm, I don’t feel rested at all.
A commercial for safeUp® is playing on repeat in my head.