The Rest of the Day

14Dec09

Ashtray

Ashtray woke in somebody else’s apartment with the gig still rushing through her head.  The night’s hedonism faded into a stranger’s fetid breath on an unfamiliar pillow, Warhol’s fifteen minutes stretched beyond usefulness.  She’d left a blue scalp print on the unfamiliar pillow too, her hair in share mode for days every time she dyed it.  She rubbed toothpaste over her teeth and water over her face and hair in the bathroom and dressed quickly.  A gesture towards chivalry, she sat next to the stranger on the strange bed to say, “Um, thanks … gotta go … do stuff … see you around,” as the stranger nodded and looked relieved.

Rain on a hangover is a good thing and Ash didn’t bother ducking for cover on her way home through early Saturday streets.  New tunes meandering through her mind, she made her way back to her own space.  A womb with no view, the apartment was tiny, messy and Ash flung a bait ball of clothes off her couch and took occupancy.  ::beatsn0w:: still pumping with reactions to their gig and then mail from Skin – that woman never stopped weaving.  She mailed back a lazy guitar track she’d recorded who knows when, it’d probably fit into the new mashup.  She wondered who the hell Skin was in love with and why she bothered.

Jacking in to cyberspace, she joined throngs of other wired third worlders at an online work clearing house, where data poured in, to be processed by people willing to wrestle it for a few cents a time.  No office hours and no benefits beyond the fact that payment was instant and could be converted equally fast into stuff you needed offline.  An hour translating really bad English into some fucker’s marketing spin for the acne cure to replace urine as some community’s acne cure and Ash flipped out again to trade her credits for supplies at the 7-11 on the corner.  Coffee, chips, cigarettes – the essentials.  She’d have to put in some more work time as soon as the hangover faded, she was on zero credits yet again.

Sometimes she wished she knew who she was working for out there, but since their anonymity and hers was pretty much assured, it was probably a good deal you never knew more than one online persona, the rep in charge of farming out the work and processing your pay.  It was how the band made their livings and avoided the rat race – all except Skin who, offbeat to the last, worked five days a week in a comic shop.  Hard copy comics too, not even interactive, but actual paper bleeding ink – some retro fad Ash could never get her head around.

Her gut reassuringly full of junk food and coffee, Ash went foetal on the couch and launched into a self-indulgent smoker’s snore.

Dragon

Dragon screamed into her computer for a while and then fired the resulting layer off to Skin.  Star had stormed out of the apartment yet again, probably back to her freaking ex, thought Dragon bitterly.  What was it with dykes and exes?  Why the hell could they never let go?  You comforted and caressed your girlfriend through the detritus of her previous relationships and as soon as the memory blurred a little, they were fast friends again and probably in league against you.  Why am I so fucking paranoid, thought Dragon, still bitter.

She jacked in and spent uninterrupted hours killing avatars in District 12.3, a popular and completely nihilistic game.  Finally, a level 34 bard called Splinter killed her and with a flash of “game over!” Dragon was back in her lounge, fingers tingling over her keyboard.

The apartment was oozing emptiness; the kind you only get when someone leaves you and sure enough, Star had left.  Dragon punched in and checked her messaging and mail accounts – nothing.  Not a fucking word.  Wandering through the rooms wondering whether to grieve, muttering her mantra, “I am hurting / I am her thing!” it took Dragon until the afternoon to notice the postit note on her fridge.

it’s ova. srsly. kthxbye.

The bitch had used Dragon’s own line on her, something she’d made up with Star way back when, when they were perfect for each other and filing away exes like garbage, laughing in the safety of their own shared bliss.

She respawned in District 12.3 and avoided battle, making her way instead to the Dogstar bar.  Her clan was planning a raid and Dragon wove spells for them, but declined the invitation to mission, she just wasn’t feeling very kamikaze anymore.

Boi Soldier

Ash didn’t seem to be available online or via her wristfeed, Boi guessed the smurf was probably still fucking or sleeping.

user:*ashtray_girl* is currently in read-only mode

She disembowelled an old Zippo and used the wheel to make a whiny drone to add to Skin’s new mashup.  It sounded pretty good, she thought; Skin always rocked when she was yearning and keening.  No point contacting Dragon, she’d be all loved-up with Star; Boi messaged Skin instead.

soldier boi: sudden urge to hang offline, u up for getting lost or something?
skin: yeh sure, let’s get coffee and paint or whatever

Urban ennui was one of Boi’s very favourite things and she hit the grey and rainy streets with a certain amount of subdued cheerfulness.  Skin joined her and they hunched into their jackets and set off towards the docks.  Skin photographed the decaying, lifesized sculptures down there from time to time, documenting their decline, wondering if it was some kind of metaphor or just one of those things.

The graff kids had been at them again and pink triangles bled in the rain on each of the figures’ breasts – poster paint, had to be.  Soon enough it would be Christmas and some wag would add Santa hats or whatever.  She’d seen a screencast where somebody had asked the artist, Scar Ragnarra, what she thought of her art being “defaced” and Scar had just laughed and said that it didn’t belong to her anymore and she thought it was pretty cool that anyone bothered to interact with it at all.  Rumour had it that Scar had been able to buy a house with profits from her art, before art went thoroughly democratic or disposable – however you wanted to define that whole scene.  Now she was a sellout surrendermonkey, living in some burb satellite of the city.

There was an old factory nearby that a bunch of people had taken over a decade before and turned into a game-farm – nothing to do with any four legged wildlife either, just banks of computers and jockeys at them, writing and running the online worlds that everyone bought into these days.  Boi thought Dragon would move online permanently one day if Star would just agree to it.

“Let’s pull into Komikoff quick,” said Skin, “must be close to payday.”  Boi stared at the racks of comics in their tidy little plastic folders while Skin went off to get her money.  Then she stared uncomprehendingly at Skin while she forked over a substantial portion of her pay for an issue of something called “Tank Girl.”  “Feminist like you, I’m surprised you’re not screaming for it to be Tank Woman,” she remarked and Skin cut her a fiercely deadly look.  Boi held up a hand, “OK, OK, I know … seminal and empowering blah blah just spare me.”  Skin glared at her Blundstones for a while, then said, “Food?”

Filed under: Cyburbia - Generation Whatever Bedtime Stories   |  4 Comments
Tags: ashtray, boi soldier, cyberpunk, cyberspace, district 12.3, dragon, jack in, komikoff, scar, skin, tank girl