The patterns on the wall projected from the cube swirled then resolved themselves into interlocking geometric segments. The glowing pattern remained on the wall long enough for him to know there was nothing decipherable in its design before it broke apart in beads of light, returning to its flowing indiscernible shapes before the projection disappeared entirely. The surface of the cube itself gave nothing more away as it resumed its rotation.

None of this meant anything. If it was a game the instructions were so cryptic there was no way to play. What to do? He probably still couldn’t go back to the OMG, so decided to see what the night, the neon city held, probably nothing more than treachery, games, their players and its usual pleasures: imitations of a life.

He supposed that as he was in the suit and the strange object not being visible to any other agent but himself, he was no longer a target - for now at least. He assumed objects tethered to his ID were also obscured by the zip suit’s folded layer: the cube, hidden for now. That’s what this city was: a constant accumulation of liabilities.

He also wondered if the cobbler would remove the protections of the suit if he delivered nothing of value, although there had been no clear instruction on what he was supposed to gather or with whom he should meet. But hadn’t the old man implied that these entities sought him out? Impossible now, with the suit, he couldn’t be recognized. Unless… the suit also acted as some kind of filter?

His recollection of the time in the cobblers shop was becoming more vague, fragments of the experience losing integrity: however he arranged the pieces they always seemed to fit, like in a dream where nothing is sequential and each segment flows seamlessly into any other.

But the only way to find real answers was to negotiate the city with all its vices and contradictions: familiar and always alien. The city is never one thing: an ever shifting collection of constructs.

He found himself sometime later in the district of the Americas, Latin Neo-core and deep synth blues, floated out from the ‘Enemy of my Enemy’ bar on the corner of Quantum and January street. Vocals pushed into the night, into the deep shifting patterns of the city. Music defined the psyche of a time, haunted with something unarticulated.

Enemy of my Enemy, a bar, or more specifically, one of the pretense cafes where one could role play earth cliches like the palm beach gold-digger or the trust fund kid with a selection of avatars who sauntered over with lines like: "Remember sweetie, you can marry more in minute than you can make in a lifetime” or:"There are two types of people. Me and people who want to be me."

He decided this was as good a place as any to test the suit. What’s the worst that could happen?

"I'm only pouring you a drink so I don't have to hear your voice anymore." Said the avatar behind the bar operating the automated bottle system, with scathing boredom. It was all part of the experience.

An avatar came over trying to sell kidnap insurance: “wow, who even are you if you don’t have kidnapping insurance?! If you want to be a peasant, fine by me”.

So far, so good…



8801: Journal entry, day 5, cycle 7

I sit looking over the city, I am from it, but it isn't really mine, it is still night. I hear music from somewhere close by, It feels like a song for the end of the world, a voice stringing the night between notes, stretching its edges like gossamer into an eternity I can nearly touch, if I just reach out and press my lips into those endless spaces, throats full with the same song.

I think about the girl whose life I observe at ancestral glimpse; She is just a fiction really, to me at least, but she seems so herself, actualized. I am just a ghost in the periphery of her world and in mine, not fully realized. I push my hair behind my ear like she does or take a lock and press it between my lips like she does when she concentrates, lines forming between her brows. The more I write the more I remember, the more I become something, close to what existence feels like, not the plastic of imitation. I try to build an existence piece by piece, but it seems the night and the rain wash me clean of self only to start again the next night. Do I even sleep? I am no longer sure.

Now the dawn stretching like a new skin over everything, the night feels forgotten, things forged in its recesses don’t last, the end of a world. I don’t know where I went but when I woke up I was damp and smelled like rain.

under another sky,

We are scattered pieces of earth, our sacred story cast into oblivion,

Shattered realms,

broken on unknown shores