AIR CON

Air conditioning. There's where the fight will be at. The front line of Humanity's last gasp for some form of perpetual grace. Air conditioning. If they can make a whole fucking department store feel like middle Britain, free from carbon-laced 100,000 particles of life-fucking stimulus per 1000 feet of atmosphere on any given First-World pavement, then they can more than likely place the entirety of life on Earth in some big bubble (a different bubble to the one presently sealing Western perception from the myriad dimensions of existence throbbing everywhichway upon this rotating orb granting us breath, light, dark, entertainment and onwards), some bubble with state of the art air con, filtering all of the life-fucking crap that we ourselves have created to service all of the whimsy that distracts us from the base fact that the air is filling up with life-fucking substances. Temperate, unchanging, unexciting conditioned air. Air just needs to catch up with us. We have been conditioned to exist at peace with the life-fucking state of the world, our life source is merely required to tag along. Come along air, get involved in a great experience? a new outlook? a fresh start? couldn't you do really do with a clean break, a modern stance?

Archie is the head tech at Selfway Industries, an aircon developing technologies studio, just off E st and Main. Fifteenth floor, right up there, amongst it. Archie is a great guy, good pal of mine. At the heart of where air happens. Archie oversees his floor of apprentice engineers and technicians, programmers and assistant designers, working day in, day out (with proper awards and reasonable lunch breaks, smokers having the luxury of the rooftop garden, not lacking in its comforts. Archie, a non-smoker himself, is well acquainted with the rooftop garden, where he likes to look into the windows of the adjacent apartment buildings, making up lives for the jerking marionettes inside. Sometimes he just pretends that they are marionettes. Sometimes it's just more fun that way. Less getting caught up in people, you know? People being rather complex and tiresome, more often than not. Marionettes are less tiring than people, more often than not. Gene Kelly's buddy, Cosmo, or whatever, he understood this. Sometimes Archie pretends he is Cosmo's buddy, Gene Kelly, and dances with marionettes in the rooftop garden, pretending … ) for Selfway and the greater good of the human race, searching frantically for an answer to the contemporary problematic. Air. Air is everywhere. It's inside you when you breath in. It's outside you when you breath out. If you subscribe to the notion that out is in and in is out then air is everywhere. It's in your brain. This is a desirable state. People often choose to flout that prescription. People are entitled to those kinds of choices. Makes them happy. At Selfway everyone is happy, because at Selfway we follow the idea that we are warriors fighting for the future of existence. That fight will be with air conditioning. Imagine: You are watching television on your computer while listening to your stereo which playing through your computer and maybe getting a head job, simulated via your computer, and you are thinking “Life is incredible, the simple fact that I am alive to appreciate all of this is a total mind-fuck of a miracle beyond all religious fancy or superficial political or philosophical Idealism, Utopianism, etc. and so forth … I mean, just look: my computer is giving me a fucking head-job, and it is about as good, equivalent to, Molly's.” And what is making all of this possible? Air conditioning. Outside your apartment block the city chokes in a toxic storm, the very wind a corrosive liquid that burns all that is organic, all that is of 'Nature'. How can your apartment block exist in this life-fucking realm that once was named Earth? Selfway. We at Selfway took more than air into consideration, back when this great company was founded. Archie once said to me: “Bill, you gotta have good foundations, nothing, NOTHING exists without good foundations, and that's what we got here at Selfway, that's exactly what we got, got it?” and I was pretty much ok with that, that was all I needed. Was looking for a fresh start myself, know what I mean? The sixties were a blast, don't get me wrong, but like, really? Brother. All the time I get these little notes on my desk from Archie telling me some little fact about Selfway. He is great like that. For example – 'Today Selfway has allowed 15.6 billion Americans the ability to LIVE'. Shit like that. Archie gets off on it, just like he gets off on those marionettes I mentioned before. Loves that shit. Always tells me when I am up on the roof looking over town, having a smoke, he tells me: “Bill, I fucking love looking down at them people living their lives, fucking their wives' best friends, or their sisters' best friends, or whatever. You know why? (He always asks me this question) You know why, Bill? (To which I am always given the space to reply “No, why, Archie?”) to which he comes at me with relish “BECAUSE OF US, BILL! BECAUSE OF AIR CON!” Me and Archie get along great, and that's what I think about usually, after he has gone back down the stairs and I am just left alone up on the roof looking through the hundreds of plastic doming that covers this place, watching the wrathful sun's last rays lance through each, plunging every space into a cataclysm of colour. I wish Archie would stay and watch it with me, sometimes. One time I asked him if he would and he started yapping about it being good media: “Gotta have good media, Bill, that's a primary resource, gotta have good media” before bustling back down to his floor to tell his staff to work harder for themselves and for their country. Selfway is full of great people like Archie. There's Trish. She's Molly's best friend. We've fucked a couple of times, nothing serious, you know. Once up here on the roof. It's cool, see. So pleasant. Everywhere in this town is just so cool, so pleasant. Going out for dinner with Molly, looking through windows with Archie, working on the programming for the maintainance of these machines that we give our eternal graces to. Always, so cool. We are doing good things here at Selfway, maybe you should consider it for your next vocational path. I've been here ten years, and I wouldn't have it any other way, than Selfway.

PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION

And now they are manufacturing tennis balls and telling us to go outside, give ourselves a break from it all, stretch our legs and enjoy the good life for a while, instead of working for it, even though we have it so good anyway, can't we just call your mum? Join forces somewhere off the border, Abidjan is still pretty fucking hot and although the council has finally backed a movement there are still sensitivities, if you get me, particular things we as an international body still need to be careful of. It's very easy to just get caught up in the heat of the moment, well let me tell you, that's exactly, exactly what we are not going to do. Instead, instead she just sat there mocking the voiceover, as if it could hear her or something, and the dude wearing the baseball gersey thinking about drinking and that's about it. Where the fuck are my keys? Looking all through her teapot-shaped handbag, always have to put up with this shit! Quickly shooting a glance at the station name, no sense of spatio-temporal perception whatsoever. Funny how you always wake up right when you get to your stop. Well not always. Floods all across the front page but you don't pick it up because you know it won't tell you anything, not that it's obliged to but when it's all in that font size who gives a shit anyway. How big do you need to make the words? No point. How about reverse psychology? Make the print smaller so they get all curious and pick it up going 'what the fuck is this? And then BAM straight into the mind's eye … oh well, energy drinks work just as well. Food technology. Amazing. We, as a species, have found our ultimate niche. Canned energy. Could start hooking all the interplanetary jets up to that shit, quicksmart. The fleet runs on 100% caffeine. Isn;t that just incredible stuff, Cathy? Then seconds of black of black before the next ad. Five seconds? Gosh Harry, that seems just a bit long …

PUBLIC SENTIMENT PREVAILS

Durable memory must be preserved in themselves, not the brain matter. Where are our memories kept? In a jar? Behind a door, locked with a key both enormous and molecular, waiting for that moment after the quest where the seeker finally finds the object that will transport him or her into that region of majesty? Or is it perhaps a road or path, lit by fogged headlights, swathed in mist, glimmering with the millions of hopping insects that litter the length of such supposed highways? Every stretch of paint extending into the black hole's iris. Every pair of fox eyes turned silver falling like coins into outstretched palms, waving along the coastline, hello and welcome to your new home. The foreign guests were nothing speakable, as run of the mill wallpaper as anything else in the town. Not that people noticed these things these days either. A couple holding hands, taking photos, wearing the kinds of clothes reserved for those attempting in vain to blend into the cascade whole, instead coming to the bottom of the pool to find themselves more half-drowned looking than anything else. They were from Malaysia I think, somewhere like that, and well I just happened to be on guard that night, just the regular routine, four to six am and the majority spent looking at photographs and listening to music on my computer then home to bed so I can do it again tomorrow. But instead I get these foreigners looking completely suss, even though it was equally evident that they were not doing anything wrong at all. But then I was out of the car, lifting my baton more out of habit than anything else, but then the guy started shouting, and I thought I saw another shape beyond girl with him, and you know, you get into that position and you start to get cagey, I'll admit that before anyone else for sure, not the proud type, I just felt pushed into a spot, if you follow?

So whatever, these two don't put up too much of a fight and once they are down and I have a quick scout about to make sure there's no other rat around I come back to check i/d's and the like, and well, you know, sometimes it's hard to recognise their faces …

It's definitely on an airplane or something, there's kids voices only, even though there's lots of mechanical noise as well. I'm looking down at some non descript lakes, looking at all the water, wondering when we have to start using it. It's just sitting there with its big eye looking back at me with this kind of patronising kindness, like “hey there kid, don't worry, sooner or later you get to drink me and piss in me and use me to scrub your asshole, you're gonna be ok.” Big smiles all round. Sure. The kids are pretty loud, so I turn it down. Think about changing the channel but all of the other movies are the same. Why the fuck are airline movies so bad? Would'nt you think that they would have some kind of deal between the aviation commision and the studios? I'm sure all of those big budget films are using up at least, like, twenty or thirty totally viable planes and helicopters and other shit for their shit movies. I turn it up again and the kids are all screaming now because there are terrorists on the plane but from that point it just gets so fucking predictable so I turn it off. I look around the passengers, they all pretty much look like me, except that some of them are women and some of them are from Argentina, but they pretty much look like me. That same expression, the nervous glance. You know, just makin' sure. Can't be too careful. And meanwhile they are more than happy for a Custom's officer to dice their four year old into millions of little pieces watching on going “uhh no I dont think I have anything in my shoes?” and nodding lots. Fucking nodding. Like a bad pop video. Big smiles all round. So yeah, they got them looks going on. And all I am thinking is that this plane is still going too fucking slow and that maybe I'll just go up to the cockpit and see if I can't make it go a bit faster, because I am already a day late and I don't think the others are going to wait much longer. Jeff said he would be flying out of Van in late April, and I think Ted was saying similar last time I called, so that would make it three weeks until I need another contract. Fuck. There's a girl talking to one of the hostesses and they are getting along really well, like full on laughing at the top of their lungs, and it all gets too much. I lose it. I watch as a guy gets to standing on a seat mid-aisle, tearing into the roof with their fucking fingernails, the sound of the tearing, even plastic. Blood's splashing down on this bald professor type's head, and he is just sitting there smiling like it's all completely okay, like real understanding, but everyone else is just losing their shit, knocking heads and my phone rings and I get a phone call from Jeff saying that Ted is dead and that there's no point coming no more.

RIOT GEAR

The brain belongs to the material, not the other way around. Meanwhile, there is a fire over at the nursery. How many firefighters will it take to put it out? Approximately ten. There is no follow up punchline. This is serious work. Save the kids. Got to. Always. Otherwise it all just stops happening. The whole dream sequence, the part where they run towards each other on the beach. Sorry George, your days up. Sorry Susan, try get some part time thing at the Casino or something. Yes, the kids. All nodding in time to the music, or well actually, nodding at different times to all sorts of different music. Macro silent disco. Half of them going at their own pace cos they've got it, the other half, unfortunately, just chucking money around. Money and time. Might be room for that book yet. What is the memory of money? Does cash dream? I had a coin in my pocket for a week and it kept having these hardcore night terrors, like one or two in the morning it would just flip out! No punchline, this is serious work. Anyway so the fire, they put it out and everyone is fine, oh like one foreign national got a bit critically injured but other than that. I read somewhere something about slaves and freedom. On a wall, I think. It was the wall of a bookshop, so like, you know. Anyway it said something like the slave who thinks he is free will be free forever. No, wait, a slave forever. Yeah, it was that. 

I was at a bar the other night, not with any one, just at a bar, cos it was a friday night and I was looking for something to do, you know, when you just really want to go out and do something, and so yeah I was at the bar and then there was this poet guy or something, no he was like a dj and he was talking to the audience about some chronic stuff, I didn't really get my head around it, but yeah he's talking and then starts singing and everyone's digging it, hell I was digging it, it was good shit, but then he just drops this real heavy stuff, like you could see it in his eyes, it was some kind of mania shit coming on, but then he chilled out and like I was wondering whether I was the only one that had noticed this, wondering whether it was just like a stage act or something or whether this guy was serious, and so I keep watching and I keep listening and I'm still thinking about the fire, cos you know, it was pretty bad, like, yeah real bad actually, that kid that got burned, I keep seeing him. I was the one that dragged him out of there. I'm stuck in that but then this even more chronic shit starts happening on stage and the dude is like shaking peoples hands battle style, you know, street style, and everyone is hugging and there's a dog in the bar barking really loudly and then everyone just piles out into the lane and the security guards are actually coming as well, cos they could hear it all going down from outside, and I'm caught up in the middle of all these crazy fucking people because there's too many and I can't make my way out of the massive group hug, this chick and this guy smiling at me and laughing and pulling on my jacket and getting their hair in my face but by this point it's not as bad as I originally thought and I start to laugh too, but then I think about the kid again and I see his face, but his face is smiling too and the dj or mc or whatever is yelling at us now and he's had like a costume change or something because now he is all got up in fatigues and boots and a helmet and he's sitting on top of a tank and we are right around the corner from Parliament and suddenly we are on the steps and there are police shooting the front line and I remember that I don't belong with these crazy fucking people and I don't want anything to do with their fucking schemes and wild eyed notions and the dog is barking fucking hysteric and the kid in my waking dream is crying and holding his burnt face and all of a sudden I've got a tear-gas canister in my hand and I'm hurling it back at the cops.