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.