nyarl@'z qyss:
chapter 1
Lit up on faerie, street
wand'rin'. wide open pained burning eating sin. Beautify the uglitude qlenching
smile. my leather lace metal rubber & facepaint armour. Inch-thiq black
& yellow diagonal down from right to left up from left to right face qlenching
smile. Seeing unsavorily unqumftrably far in behind streeted eyes (even the
mirrorshaded & gasmasqt). No hiding from faeried eyes. i see, transmute
& qry, thanqful my paint iz tearproof. My boots smear grime & qrush
syringes that rainsliqt refleqt the neon. my medicine stiq rattles with rusted
qogz, greasy featherz & fray'd wires az i, wavering, lean on it &
inhale the puke of publiq hate & shit love out my wildwired eyes, hating
too, loving the hate. Keep love alive in wildwired eyes of gone faeried
child, i. Barely see the glare of streetlight & headlights for all the
radiant anger, hatred, fear & despair, spastiq siq thrillz of lust for
flesh & blood. Whoa wus this? A li'l innocent bliss?
sneaker'd feet stick out of an alleymouth: looq up them legz a li'l girl on a
hippeeflip sittin' on a baqpaq & propt 'gainst a graffitied dumpster.
Former cyberprep by the shoes. Gone street. Blissdoubt & who q'n blame?
Not i. I qrouch down sly grinning in her face. I sqare her with my evil goth
mutant vibe: big boots/blaq leather trench/white lace blouse a-tatter &
bloody/industrialtribal jewelry & flatblaq supermop o'er my
striped-4-danger face, but she dissipates this with a smile to reciprocate
& pretty up her masqara-smear'd face.
"Wutcha doin'?"
sez i.
"Trippin' hard."she
bug-eye & smile still.
"Walk wi'me?" i
query.
"'kay."
I lurch us both up, pulling
her by hand. She has her bag az i resume my beat. "you named?" i asq.
"Bitch." this
with sweet smile.
"Zag." i shake
her still-held paw & figure i'm four years her elder @ my ripe old age of
seventeen.
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Ennui borders. thru is too
good for 'is own good. Danced like a quark thru portalless walls of
black ICE & instal'd invisible doors in the back of everything. Poised for
anonymous takeout. no comfort for true in the edge's lux-lap. predation
everthreats. perpetual motion is a must. Walk, feed & water the meat, too.
Ball & chain.
Maybe not forever, though.
That'd be the mythical big score. Crossover. so he hunts for the netghosts cuz
there's nuthin' else. An' even if one is found (& recognized), could it
teach the way over?
Weblore sez there're haqrz
who've done it - encoded & made the move. Pure cyberspatial entity:
conscious disembodiment. spontaneous-waking AIs are born there, but for a
flesher , how to know your identity will make the jump? or if it even can?
Thru is turning to the net
mystics & fringe cultists: astral projection theory, transdimensional
tripsters, etc.
Cyberspace can't be beat.
...& yet...
...security on the net is
simply (a state or idea of) pure fantasy, cuz even if yer the best, y'won't
know ya bin bested till it's too late. The only way to even hope for a
guaranteed private exchange is offline.
So, online connections
made, thru must embark on adventures in meatspace: qlubland in the city of
night...
Afterglow aftermath makes
the street slip'ry...
“Dey minds is s'ghetti. Be
a fork!"... ..."I wanna motor on my castle."...
..."...bless all sentient beings in the infinite..."...(graff on the
wall : peace B w/ U, noxys fluen, a collage of big-eyed sad faces beautiful
& cartoony)///two skyboard punx chased by a skybike cop bust through the
cloud formations awaft from sidewalk grates & gridloct wheeelerz crowding
the asphalt below. A loudsharp lopsided beat shudders the qlub &
handdrummerz meld with it their organic flux & let junq precussionists
& street din endlessly cross-percolate. All this physica nearly humming
with the fractalic mathematic underscript it writes & is defined by.
Throatsore of this varicolour glowing smogscape that scandalizeth too the eye
& nose.
Transit from traffic to
traffic: indoors again; from smog to amphetapheromusk thickening air as much.
Beat hostilely louder. Sweat air athrob & bodies awrithe (in speeding light
patterns twice as gyrant) claustrophobicizing the dancefloor even more than the
streetz. To the bar. Tender wears a quadhawk, fullbody fishnet & a kilt,
flashes his abalone teeth when it comes Thru's turn: triple bourbon triple
espresso, please. A quarter cee. Cheaper'n cover in this place. See the spasmic
throng; breakers, divers, hovboarders seshin' the transparent plexibowl ahang
from ceiling mounts... ... the superimposed epileptic lightshow; hear mc's
freestyle in cytoi, dj scratches, the angular rhythm; feel the sticky heat...
Thru seeks the naked hippies smoking hash on picnic blankets on a dais lining
one wall: the resident mystics. Askin'roun' f'r Feather.
Turns out t'be this wiry
dude brewin' magic mushroom tea on a hotplate plugged into the same port where
a UV light is as he sits next to a girl painting herself in flourescing paint.
Feather grins, wearing only little circular coloured shades, hemp jewelry &
waist-length dreadz, hash fumes drifting out a cobber he is biting. Thru lays
bare his heart.
"The oh, oh, en : Ordo
Oryx Niger : Order of the Black Goat. If anyone c'n getcha in there, man, 's
them."
Wut makes them so
special?
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Feather's talkin' t' this
weird dude, but i like 'im (th' dude)...he has a certain...purity... ...a
certain naïveté that iz attraqtive in its
innocence. Synchro enough, Feath looqz right @ & points me out to weirdude.
I inqline my head in acknowledgement & lo! over he qumz.
He iz truly shy &
that's so refreshingly cute. 'M i 'onn' babysit two puppies in one
night? He tries to looq @ home but his fish-outta-waterness reeqs.
"You're Zag?"
yelling politely @ but not into my ear.
I nod, the faerie in my
veins not letting me refrain from grinning.
"My name's Thru. Featther there sez you can connect me with
the O.O.N. Zatrue?" He looks so
doubtful-hopeful i nearly laugh.
" 'S right."
Bitch iz gone all
qoy-bashful now that feather's boy here faces us. My index digit ball'd &
held by my thumb, with my remaining three fingerz i qall along with the inverse
o' the universal "q'mere" signal as we move toward a certain unmarked
& nigh-imperceptible door. Through this inqonspicuous portal we three go
"backstage", not just of the qlub, but into the baqstayj of the
world, where the children of the qorridors dwell...
This's my home , where -
sacred az i take it & blessingly az i meet it - the outside world iz left
behind. Y'see, the whole world haz this baqstayjing - places where none iz
meant to reside or work or to recreate save some qustodianz assigned to
maintain some of it, & they only to work there. qonsider the maintenance tunnel mazeworks
that riddles the body of the city, behind & beneath & within its
qountless structures, designed striqtly for & of utility, but not
uninhabited.
Az the cyberprep elite of
the world auto-insulated in the air-qonditioned qatatcombz of their qorporate
arqologies, so too the far end of the social speqtrum moved deeper into the
superstruqture of urbanity - into the sewerwayz & subbasementz movng by
stairwellz & freight elz, to rooftopz & sewertroughz.
True severe deathheadz only
wander the streetz & subsist in shelterz & soup qitchenz but the sharp
are hip to - & move to & from - this inside world. If all o'
this invisible-to-the-surface-world realm were indeed officially maintained
& secured, 'twould be a far different thing, but az iz, whole sprawling
dungeonsqapes span bloqz, forgotten or forsaken. Even the routes & roomz
that are officially maintained & secured are often jokingly easy to
infiltrate. Where the pitoniq roots & bowellous ani of the city meet the
living rock iz a strange & lively border. (infiltrant narqz are not unheard
of , but their species iz rare & endangered indeed, not least quzutha
daylong faerielit security samurai who lurk in the shadowz on the threshold of
deep baqstayj, sqanning the brainwaves...[but i know a narq who nobody else
seemz to've deteqted. She qonfided in me in a weaq moment. Some might qall me
treasonous in my silence...]...we pass one o' tha samurai without preceiving it
- even i only know it's there quzutha location.)
Generally baqstayjerz 're
just too hostile to the lay authorities for the surface world to really even be
aware of it. Whatz left of the atrophiq archaism qalled the middle qlass iz
being too swiftly subdivided & either "falling through the
cracks" (most of 'em) or being absorbed into the qorporate arqology
enqlaves known to baqstayjerz az the hives (inqreasingly few of 'em, not that
itz really a more desireable fate). Hiverz are az deathhead az the streeterz in
"the cracks": gone wastoid, but holovid-fed 'stead o' drugplugg'd.
Live ones do slip & drip 'midst the hiverz & the streeterz, but
they a sizeable demographiq baqstayj.
For Thru & Bitch I'm
the bogeywoman & we've just stept through a glass darqly. Dad blame it, I
love my job.
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{Bitch:} "The night i
ran away from the arcology my mom was so drunk she didn't know anything. She's,
like, this corporate sultana with a harem of man-toy consorts from various
rungs of the company. She'd say a CEO, & ludicrous & frightening as it
is, she's CEO of her own company & technically subcontracts to the resident
co.(whom i will not advertise for by naming here); a deal entirely in the
abstract, the circumstances of which leave the corporation no less in the
position of dangling her 'company' over its jagged, gaping maw.
"For corporates like
her this jargonizing affords a sense of independent conquest.
"Yay.
"Yes, she & Larry
Nelson were passed out a quarter naked in the lounge with the holoproj tuned to
the house newsfeed, the anchor an eerily, unwittingly presiding electric
phantom over a scene that seemed to me evil & gory, though it was unbloody.
Now that effect may've been the 'shrooms, or maybe the Ecstasy, so whatever.
"It will take her a
few days @ least to notice I'm gone, & I don't know if she'll care. And
well I guess that's kind of the point, y'know? And if she does she certainly
has the dough to hire some ace dick to come sniff me out, whatever rocks I go
crawl under.
"I was interested also
as I plotted my departure, how long I would get away on her credit before she
would cut me off if @ all. A little lab work, if you will. To be honest I
anticipate a high degree of apathetic ambivalence with little to no airs of
aught else.
"I doubt if anyone
over 20 @ that arcology is really alive, being only slightly more hopeful for
those under.
"Besides, in a way I
think she may want me to get away; I
know they do hideous things there that she knows of but will not speak
on."
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Much az i prize my lungz az
smog filters for future generations even the great martyr Zag will not expose
her naked snout to the vapourz that seethe miasmal 'round the O.O.N. temple
which squatz deep, circled by a henge of chamberz where their
pharmacist-shamanz plan with unsavoury chemistries to make new drugz &
poison trespasserz...
Demonized az the faerie
qult iz, we got nuthin' on the O.O.N. Most never even hear o' them o' qourse,
but those who do usually have qome pretty far in both occult studies &
baqstayj qonnectionz, & the attendant intuition that they are among the
thingz it were better not to know of.
When baqstayj momz want to
really sqare the fuq outta the qydz, forget the hiverz, pigz & narqz, mom
goes straight for darq hintz about the O.O.N.
I never met one of 'em
(knowingly), but the whole baqstayj world knowz where to find 'em ; it's one o'
th' places instinqt wards qreatures away from by nature. I leave Bitch with
some friendz @ the faerie temple & give Thru a gasmasq like the one I
pocket. "We'll need these."
We traverse the marqets of
baqstayj, eerily like the official city above in its wayz.... ...humanz will be
humanz.
We moved toward shunned
tunnel systemz but are still amid the thinning throng when an O.O.N. qultist
appearz facing us, stinky even f'r a baqstayjer, in ragz & ragged, wildeyed
beyond faerie-wired, a starq & siqly insanity... This speqtre lungez @ Thru
& rendz the flesh of his breast with nasty & very qlawish fingernailz
& Thru slumps to the floor az if unqonscious. Unqonscious indeed: hiz body
makes with the pissing & shitting & all that good death thro stuff.
The maniaq qultist waits
for this to quiet down, watching gleefully, & then turnz to me, &
whisperz hoarsely, "Hiz goal iz achieved. Seek us not."
With that this twister
turnz & stalkz off to reabsorption in darqness.
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