{"id":6164,"date":"2020-07-08T22:05:14","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T22:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/?p=6164"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:40","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:40","slug":"digital-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/digital-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>\npre::first-letter { float: none !important; font-size: 100% !important; padding: none !important; font-family: \"Palatino Linotype\", \"Book Antiqua\", Palatino, serif; }\n<\/style>\n<p><em>Post-modern play about future technologies<br \/>\nconflicting with human moral imperatives.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Should I be rid of my R.I.D.? Like eyeless Oedipus,<br \/>\ngo testicleless?<br \/>\n    &#8212; Johnny, in deep dreamtime blackout<\/p>\n<p>JOHNNY DEMONIC<\/p>\n<p> FUTURE HUMANS:<br \/>\n TAKEHASHI<br \/>\n JOHNNY<br \/>\n ALDO<br \/>\n JIRIKI<br \/>\n XCETERA<br \/>\n JESUS<br \/>\n TECHNICIAN ONE<br \/>\n GREGG GLORY<\/p>\n<p><!--\n<a name=\"_Contents\"><\/a>\n\n\n<h2>Contents<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n<a href=\"#_SceneOne\">SCENE ONE<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#_SceneTwo\">SCENE TWO<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#_SceneThree\">SCENE THREE<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#_SceneFour\">SCENE FOUR<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#_SceneFive\">SCENE FIVE<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#_SceneSix\">SCENE SIX<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#_SceneSeven\">SCENE SEVEN<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#_SceneEight\">SCENE EIGHT<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#_SceneNine\">SCENE NINE<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#_SceneTen\">SCENE TEN<\/a>\r\n-->\r\n<\/pre>\n\n<a name=\"_SceneOne\"><\/a>\n\n<h2>SCENE ONE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n\r\n[Johnny, strapped upright, optical wires spouting from his\r\nforehead, is getting uploaded with illegally obtained data. He is\r\nmasked, with a mirrory sunglass type set-up obscuring his eyes; we\r\ncan see his mouth as he talks, the wires, at forehead level, his\r\nhair, but nothing else; he is gowned from the neck down, his figure\r\ninvisible under the surgical green cloth.]\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nMy harassing dreams are meaningless.\r\nStray formulae, hit-and-miss bits snipping\r\nmy sniping synapses to a rhumba beat\r\nof ones and zeroes. No holy trinity\r\nzings in to save me, beating seraphic wings.\r\nMy world is base-2 grounded. My skull's amorphous;\r\nits contents, even in snore-storage,\r\nbleat and repeat more pay-worthy information\r\nthan any other ten-thousand humans CAN carry,\r\nburdened by the kludgey input of pubic ed.\r\nI, however, am access-inhibited.\r\nA closed Coney Island of iridescent graphics\r\nand save-the-world synthetic cure-alls\r\ncirculates in my limitless skull, but I\r\ncan't touch it, can't initiate the flip-switch\r\nthat spills the light to some dark outside, anyplace\r\nmy frowning face inhabits, that my tongue triangulates.\r\nI'll never know what I know; know-it-all\r\nknowledge landmine, with my tongue unplugged.\r\nBut I can carry it, whisk it from here\r\nto elsewhere. I can; its in there.\r\nIncessantly at dreamtime, my miming mind\r\ngets ultravivid vid-bits of wacked static.\r\nImages. Gross sub-subconscious stuff, weird feels\r\nspastic up and down my electric skin,\r\nor weird-wired sequences of neon numbers\r\nand zapping sounds. But meaningless, all of it,\r\nmeaningless, meaningless, all quite meaningless.\r\nI would hazard that I'm disastered, at a loss,\r\nbut I've no way to calculate that fact.\r\nI used to dream all the time, regular stuff,\r\nlollygag days stealing crack from the local hook-up....\r\nHe was too trashed on his own white stash\r\nto notice, half the time. A cyan-dilated\r\nHeaven-high in his fixed-open eyes. I'd sell it,\r\nget a corndog and six Mars bars, beat it back\r\nto the old-time asphalt shingles on the roof\r\nof my uncle's rain-ruinous bodega, splay out,\r\nsoak in the sunshine long afternoons,\r\ndoing nothing, sleeping and belching.\r\nAt least, those were my dreams, if they were mine,\r\nif that's my childhood I dream and remember;\r\nif not, well it's still pretty pleasant, and who cares\r\nnowadays about a stasis-source for self anyway?\r\nI'm whatever I make myself up as; that's a fact.\r\nA fiction. Whatever. All that real\/unreal talk\r\njust gives me whiplash. Leave that for\r\nthe saliva merchants running the country.\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY's mask flips up, lightwires start to flash off and on as if\r\nwinding down their operations. He has silver eyes, utterly opaque.]\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nChrome eyes. Edged metal moistened by living eyelid,\r\ndelicate lashes moving over a silverfield. First thing\r\npeople notice about me. No pupil, no targeting\r\ncenter for other eyes to eye. Where is the person\r\nif you can't see how they see you, spy you out\r\ninto existence? My R.I.D. Retinal Input Device.\r\nLet's me do my courier service work, aboveboard\r\nor below; legit jobbing pays OK,\r\nbut when I can, I'll smuggle the odd gigabyte.\r\nNot a customs service in the world\r\ncan decrypt the human brain; any kind of scan\r\nthey've got to buzz me with, I come up\r\nnormal pigflesh; my eyes scan out a standard\r\nblind-eyes cure. You know, modern medicine.\r\nNo abnormalities flood up to their peeping screens.\r\nHey, they never could read your thoughts,\r\nnow could they?\r\n\r\n[Lightwires fall from his forehead.]\r\n\r\n TECHNICIAN ONE\r\nDownload sequencing complete.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nLightwires slip out of my head like ejaculated\r\nneon spaghetti, dangling dark at the slick ends\r\nof motor arm that disappear into recessed wall sockets,\r\nlight into black, like always, even in those\r\ncold Nordic sagas. Lightwires up the compression\r\nalgorithm geometrically, folding infospace\r\nas distinctly and compactly as my emerald cerebrum.\r\nMaybe it crowds out a few faces from my past\r\nin the process, but, then, maybe I don't mind that\r\nso much. It's an information economy, as they say,\r\nand nobody'll pay shit for personal mem. Would you?\r\nAll this stuff they've got here, sparkling and dark\r\nin this wild Hong Kong lab, very fine, very hifi.\r\nA technician applies carefully and fast\r\na ring of band-aids around the top of my head,\r\nwhere the lightwires exited, giving me a sticky\r\nand dead red crown of thorns, automatic\r\nantibacterial sinking into the incisions, as he\r\nnudges me out of this sooped-up dentist's chair.\r\n\r\nTECHNICIAN ONE\r\nBonnie banzai, rocketman. Good fucking luck.\r\nTalk to Aldo before you bolt, though. This isn't\r\nthe usual zip and run, Johnny-san.\r\n\r\n[TECHNICIAN ONE offers JOHNNY a disingenuous glance of\r\nmock-condolence, then grins, his teeth a high-decibel purple, a new\r\ncraze on the vids.]\r\n\r\nTECHNICIAN ONE\r\nBye bye. I'm going virtual before the Yakuza\r\nsnap the plastic on this little secret set-up\r\nand spike my hard drive. So, don't you try\r\nto contact me in any way. I won't be in touch,\r\nso don't you be in touch. OK Johnny-san?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nBefore you wipe: I just want to make sure;\r\nhalf the pay charge is in my account.\r\n\r\nTECHNICIAN ONE\r\n[Tosses what looks like a credit card to Johnny.]\r\nSure, Johnny-san. No problemo, lobo. Grand\r\nCaymen account, locked on your vid and voiceprint.\r\nWould've used a retinal lock too, but\r\nyou've got those crazy eyes.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nYeah. Drives the girls wild.\r\n\r\nTECHNICIAN ONE\r\n[Hits a button, a plane ticket to L.A. prints out, he hands it to\r\nJOHNNY.]\r\nHere's the plane ticket to your destination.\r\nFastest ram-scoop out of this piss-hole; you leave\r\nin one hour. Talk to Aldo.\r\n\r\n[ALDO comes over; he has been wandering around the set, helping\r\nwith small clean-up chores, disassembling the illegal set-up.]\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nLet's get scarce. That boy's going to be harder to detect\r\nthan a rat's fart in a thunderstorm. These insert jerks\r\nlike to pry open your skull, give it a lightwire fry,\r\ndump their hump of illicit gigabyte, and then scram.\r\nVery anti-human, like you're just one more output device.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nWhich, I guess, I am.\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nHell of a way to make a living.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nMan, my head is aching. What'd these geeks do to me?\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nLike narrow-eyes said, this ain't the usual zip and run.\r\nYou've been arced. Its a chaotic compression pattern,\r\nrunning a Mandelbrot sequence encoded into heavily\r\ndrugged synapses so that the pattern is decay resistant.\r\nThe chem-net they installed infiltrates in micron-doses\r\nyour slumbering baby's brain with a dreamless wash\r\nof thought preservatives, pickled like a dino-fetus\r\nin some up-to-date modern form of rheumy amber,\r\nkeeping the natural chaotic decay of that hot archived info\r\nto a cool blue minimum. Even so, some decay's inevitable,\r\nthat's the law of the world, every night our organized self\r\nunfolds from neat daytime to the wildness of dreams,\r\neach morning the face in the mirror's a stranger,\r\nrandomer and randomer until it wakes up dead.\r\nLaw of the world. That's why, on the other end,\r\nwhen they catch you back to earth, my Johnny-san,\r\nthey've got a complexity adaptor rigged up somewhere.\r\nI don't know where. Your contact knows where, and I'm sure\r\nthey'll tell you then, or take you blindfold to their nest.\r\nThat adaptor sees the pattern inherent\r\nin chaotic decay trends, reads between the lines,\r\nand forms a self-solving extraction-equation\r\non the spot. Very complicated stuff. They'd need\r\nsome mondo big machines, hombre, to do what your three pounds\r\nof swiss cheese is doing. But let me warn you,\r\nyou've ONLY got twenty-four, count 'em, twenty-four\r\nhours to get that gelled-in sequence out of your primate skull.\r\nOtherwise, well....\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nOtherwise, what?\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nIf you don't get decoded in that magic twenty-four,\r\nthat single day, well, then, then....\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nThen....\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nUncoiling random lines of information will begin\r\nto unleash themselves inside your head, synaptic leakage occurs,\r\nand all of that archived information will start\r\nto decompress. That much information would require\r\nan aircraft carrier of brain tissue to exist\r\nin an unarchived state; all that information unfolding\r\nin a space the size of a small loaf of Italian bread.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nBut what's that really mean? What would happen to me?\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nMaybe you can't blink; some part of an equation\r\nflares out and takes over the blink synapse in your head.\r\nCan't blink, nothing much, right? So what, right?\r\nCan't blink, your eyes dry up, get little itty bitty\r\ndust motes in them, collapse back into your skull\r\nirretrievably infected. Can't blink, you're blind inside\r\na couple of hours. Eventually more and more\r\nof the compressed data will snake out\r\ninto the surrounding tissue, filling it up\r\nwith information that's different from what's there now\r\n... your memories, what your name is, what planet you're on.\r\nAnd it would progress geometrically, unfolding, unfolding,\r\neach fold unfolding another flower to unfold;\r\nafter a few minutes, your life would disappear\r\nin a clashing hash of indecipherable statics.\r\nIt's like Alzheimer's, except that instead of emptying out\r\nyour mind to some sun-blitzed Bhudda's zero-sum,\r\nits kicking into hydrocephalic overdrive,\r\nfilling it with thin physics-ribbons of stuff\r\nthese techie-sans get hard-ons just thinking about.\r\nEventually, you just forget how to breathe,\r\nyou lay down somewhere, or are kept catatonically erect\r\nby some wrong-wired misfire, but not breathing, forgetting breath.\r\nWouldn't even think to call out to your Mommy;\r\nshe wouldn't exist for you. Then you die.\r\nTotal information degrade. Nobody'd even want your head, then.\r\nThe Company's logo hardwired on your medulla oblongata.\r\nIrreversible wet-crash, Johnny-san.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nCan't I just keep micro-dosing this brain-freeze drug?\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nYou could, but its kind of like curari; works by\r\nparalyzing the synaptic messengers into a hardwired state.\r\nIf it didn't kill you outright, or convince your heart\r\nto stop for a beat too long, I guess It'd eventually\r\njust hardwire everything in your head pretty much\r\nthe way it is now. No new information processing could go on.\r\nYou'd be Atari Pong, stuck in an eternal Now state.\r\nMight be some people's idea of Nirvana, but its not mine.\r\nSame blip going back and forth between the same, two switches.\r\nWhatever your last thought was before the curari\r\nslammed it in its pasted place, that's what you'd be thinking\r\nforever. If you were pissing, you'd be on permanent drain.\r\nThis stuff's poison to both human and rat anatomies.\r\nIt poisons you, but not fatally, not for, let's say, a week.\r\nOf course, nobody's been on a micron filtration drip\r\nof pure taxtaxinol for a week.... But you could be the first one.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nI don't think I want to find out.\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nI didn't think so.\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY presses a small hypodermic gun to his neck with the ease of\r\na practiced move. A small hiss escapes from the gun.]\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nStim.\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nA real vim and vigor lifter. Give you a real\r\nadrenaline sheen. Noticeable to the right eyes.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nOr the wrong ones.\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nThat slick shit'll jump you up higher than the Kwannon Towers.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nI've got a feeling this is going to be an extended duty 24 in\r\nrealtime.\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nHey, if you can't hack reality, you've got some real bottom line\r\nconsiderations.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nYeah, well, reality's what you make of it, they say.\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nTest everything. Don't let anyone slip one doped chip past you.\r\nFastest way in the world to get fucked, Johnny. Ain't even gonna\r\nhave time to cap it with a condom. Test everything. One slip, and,\r\nman, your cherry's gone.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nThanks for the advice. What's your angle on all this, anyway?\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nBorn right here on the mainland.\r\nUpright walking, jive talking, mother fuckin' chinaman,\r\nJack. Won't never take that back. A real\r\nHong Kong-born, majong-playing ace of spades.\r\nSlipperiest citizenship in the world, and don't think\r\nthat ain't useful. Never been anywhere else--\r\nand I don't need to go either. Whole world\r\nplugs into Hong Kong, if they've got anything\r\nto trade, that is. And everybody's got something\r\nthey'll give up for something else-- as long as\r\nthat something else is something they ain't never had.\r\nThey say dreams are priceless. I seen that price\r\nget fixed every day out on the street.\r\nOnly problem is, sometimes\r\nthat price is more than you've got to pay.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nWhy's this information so important to the Tigris Company anyway?\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nI don't know. Maybe they've got a serious case of tech-envy.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nVery serious.\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nHey, it's not my job to know. I'm just supposed\r\nto help get the info from one black box to the next.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nYeah. Except that this black box has got ears.\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nLike I said: helluva way to make a living.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nUse my lauded head to ferry other people's genius.\r\nWhy not? Lotta first class plane ride everywhere.\r\nGood money. It's easy. Get where you're going,\r\nthey dump you out, leave you high and dry, the way I like it.\r\nPlenty of little free shrimp on those plane rides too.\r\nUse your head, I heard that all my life. Well, what else\r\nam I going to do with it anyway, right?\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nAll these gleaming things. They don't mean that much to me.\r\nRegular food and a sweet woman, that's my gig. Hell,\r\nI still read the paper. Print it out. Old-fashioned,\r\nhard copy format. Put my feet up. That sort of thing.\r\nPretty dull, huh? But you, Johnny, this stuff's\r\njust a part of who you are, like a high-impact\r\nceramic skeleton, an indelible skull\r\nlike the ace racers hov-jet with. Another gleaming thing,\r\nthose racing shells fighting the 500 mark.\r\nYou, Johnny, you're inside the shine. It ain't\r\ngonna catch you. You're lucky. You're inside.\r\nAll these gleaming things. I live with 'em;\r\nI live near 'em. But you-- you got them in\r\nyour bone and brain. They're in you, and you're\r\nin them, Johnny. You're inside the shine.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nWhy didn't you ever plug in, Aldo? The money's easy.\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nDo I look crazy? This head's gonna stay just the way\r\nMrs. Howard squeezed it out of herself. Call me\r\nold-fashioned, but there's still a place for the un-\r\nenhanced flat-Jacks like me out on the street.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nI hope there always will be.\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nYou ain't just laughing out your ass, digital boy.\r\nNow just unplug before the Tigris Company's\r\nYakuza swat-team us with their late-night\r\nJohn Belushi impression.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nSamurai roadkill. You leaving?\r\n\r\n ALDO\r\nNo. I'll stay here. Like I've done all of my life.\r\nBesides, these guys obviously need some help cleaning up.\r\nStill gotta wipe your own ass, even if you use mylar substrate,\r\nright? Now pretend you're a photon and wave.\r\nG'bye. G'bye.\r\n\r\n[Exit JOHNNY.]\r\n\r\nBALLET SEQUENCE\r\n[A troop of Yakuza enter, elegantly dressed. All strip to\r\nbeautifully tattooed waists, including women. Except Jiriki. Yakuza\r\nkill everyone in the room, including ALDO, destroying machinery.\r\nOne data screen remains active. As destruction goes on all about,\r\nJiriki goes to the screen, inserts a small datapad, and types\r\nrapidly. A kitten is killed, the left-behind pet of some\r\ntechnician. After everyone is dead, Jiriki looks up from the\r\ndata-display with a smile.]\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nL. A.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"noprint\"><a href=\"#top\">Contents<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\n<a name=\"_SceneTwo\"><\/a>\n\n<h2> SCENE TWO<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nMy vision splays and jags. Hyped on hypnotic\r\ndisplays day after day, I echo its electronic rush\r\nand hiss to fulfillment, but feel a lingering emptiness.\r\nClick on a dithered executive, ash suit, conned and conning\r\nconservative attire, tired and still aspiring--\r\nto what skyscrapered height, I don't know!\r\nMy Zen discipline isn't winning against this\r\ninfo-loaded argosy a subsidized rice-farmer's son\r\nhunched rice-ball bunched into as a sound career alt.\r\n  [TAKEHASHI swings a beautiful samurai sword, beaten 500 times.]\r\nStainless steel, diamond-dusted edge. This jaded blade\r\ncuts nothing that knows not that it is a blade.\r\nOut of what air-blasted, time-lined avatar vat came you,\r\nmy thin insistence on tradition and razor-meaning\r\npressed swishing into the plastic circuit board\r\nof my quantum solid-state and existential existence?\r\nThis filtered air riffs against me, nearly frictionless.\r\n\r\n SECRETARY\r\nSir, I apologize wide-eyed, but...\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\n...Jiriki has arrived.\r\n\r\n SECRETARY\r\nHai! [Clicks off.]\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nA good Yakuza makes his enemies work for him,\r\nslaved to his live and deciding PC.\r\nThis causes the enemy the greatest humiliation,\r\nand is useful to the slave-owner.\r\n\r\n[Enter JIRIKI.]\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nReport to me on the disposition of the data.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nAll of the smuggler's team have been executed.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nThey were traitors to their company. No flag,\r\nno combine, no country even of the wallet.\r\nThey have no honor. There are of no concern to us,\r\nalive or dead. We are the warring Yakuza.\r\nReport to me on the disposition of the data.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nThey had stolen the information to sell to another firm.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nYou are not telling me anything I do not already know!\r\nWe lost the illicit bid for the illegal information\r\nto a darker contender, and your team was to put that right\r\nand get us the goods, honto-pronto! You are insolent,\r\nas when you trained under me, Jiriki.\r\nDo not let your film-noire arrogance betray you\r\nas it has betrayed these slaughtered smugglers.\r\nArrogance has a narrow gravity-well; its multi-dimensional\r\nslopes are error-prone honed to a slippery slickness\r\nand may not allow any devious slant of light an exit.\r\nBeware. I assume that you do not want to be\r\ntripped and tipped into the same lamb's fate\r\nthey have met with.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nThe data was wiped from their equipment.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nWord on the street is that the traitors\r\nwiped the Zony mainframe before they began this charade\r\nthat has led to their deaths.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nIf this is true, Zony will no longer be a viable\r\ncompetitor on the international market for anything,\r\nexcept, perhaps, baby food.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nUndoubtedly they are wailing like babies now,\r\nsurreally angry, and willing to crap on and slap\r\nat anything and anyone that is between them\r\nand their still-warm bottle of dada data\r\nbefore their powdered milk of resources evaporates.\r\nDo you have any intelligence confirming\r\nthe mainframe wipedown?\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nNo. I apologize, Takehashi-san. I have failed.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nNevertheless, Zony will still undoubtedly be\r\nquite anxious to recover their data.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nHai.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nWe must see that this does not happen. Our sources\r\nhappened onto their data heist by accident. A lucky coincidence,\r\nallowing us to sabotage the saboteurs. By this killing\r\nwe may have already shown our hand to our enemies;\r\nZony will know that they are not alone in their quest\r\nfor the stolen data. We must trust to speed and ruthless\r\nefficiency. Tigris demands that there be no failure\r\nin this regard.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nIt is doubtful that Zony has even heard\r\nof the execution of their traitors yet.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nDon't be ridiculous. We must simply hope\r\nthat our own handprints are no too clearly distinguishable\r\nin the flooded blood of the Hong Kong debacle.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nAll clean-kill procedures were followed.\r\n\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nAnd the data, the data was already gone....\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nHai, Takehashi-san. I regret we were not on-site\r\nquickly enough to prevent their strip-destruction\r\nof the courier-insertion copy.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nAnd the courier himself has escaped.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nRegretfully.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nThere are only a sticky-handed handful of conglomerates\r\nthat could profit by receipt of such data.\r\nBut which sinning one is the courier headed for?\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nThere was no mold of a clue remaining on-site.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nRegretful that there is no one left alive to tell us.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nIt is best to leave no witnesses.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nSecrecy is of vital importance.\r\nZony is a serious competitor.\r\nI believe you will remember the last time.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nYes. My brother will not come back to life.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nIt was... regretful... what happened to your brother.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nYes. Our information was faulty.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nThere was no way to know that.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nHai! Yakuza-san.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nHai! Yakuza! [Pause.]\r\nA Zony vendetta is to be feared and avoided.\r\nIf they do not come to understand that we, Tigris,\r\nare involved, then they cannot retaliate until\r\nit is too late. Once we have the data, and word hits\r\nthe market that Zony's mainframe is merely\r\nan empty shell, their stock will plummet, and they\r\nwill cease to be a viable threat. To anyone.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nI was able to discover where the courier was headed.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nTell me.\r\n\r\n[JIRIKI pauses.]\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nImmediately!\r\n\r\n JIRIKI  [Shrugs.]\r\nLos Angeles.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nYou must go there at once, without your team.\r\nWe cannot risk broadcasting our presence.\r\nTake the next flight. Immediately.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nI already have.\r\n\r\n[The next thing we see is JIRIKI taking off her VR goggles; we\r\nrealize that she was holo-conferencing with TAKEHASHI the entire\r\ntime.]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"noprint\"><a href=\"#top\">Contents<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\n<a name=\"_SceneThree\"><\/a>\n\n<h2>SCENE THREE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n\r\n[JIRIKI is revealed removing her vid goggles aboard a transpacific\r\nflight.]\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nMy highflying banzai eye skips the scudding\r\npacific effortless-- what a beautiful rueful day!\r\nTakehashi's all frantic-splenetic at our catastrophe.\r\nMy failure to nab with carbon-based hands\r\nwhat precise, silicon plans demand. Like Hitler diminished\r\nto his third-tier Third Reich and subconscious bunker,\r\nTakehashi sees his Pacific Rim's Tojo-Axis red\r\nall over the watery map, arrowing out the victory track\r\npast burning men still smouldering in their bombed-out Panzers.\r\nHis hyped holographic highrise of Yakuza supremacy\r\nwill vanish beneath his florsheim's one night\r\nin a bit-instant, every at-attention one twisted round to zeroes\r\nall unable to give purchase to his slick, stamping heel.\r\nTakehashi's ghost of willfulness courses through his black\r\nenraged eye, a collapsing star of small-mindedness\r\nbending every rearing ray to its quicksand sinkhole\r\nlike VanGogh's one, sultry, sunken raven\r\npunching through the blazing wheatfields at Ardennes.\r\nAsian Ahab with a wooden heart to my\r\nstep-at-fetch-it Starbuck, we spit our spatting,\r\nsnapping histrionics on a tilting deck of pressed circuits,\r\nthemselves star-stuff like the rest of us, waiting\r\na rapid hint of free electrons to surge and shine.\r\nMy brother, if you can hear me from your lacquered level\r\nof purging purgatory even now, burn knowing\r\nthat I will not be caught saluting that jerk\r\nwhen his personal, vortexing apocalypse appears\r\nreeling him to the crushing no-space of a quasar\r\nby the torqued tongue-instrument of his own\r\nfreshly pressed tie.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"noprint\"><a href=\"#top\">Contents<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\n<a name=\"_SceneFour\"><\/a>\n\n<h2>SCENE FOUR<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n\r\n[JIRIKI sits at a bar with her back to the audience. We do not\r\nrecognize her until JOHNNY talks to her and JIRIKI turns around.\r\nJOHNNY does not realize that this isn't his legitimate contact, but\r\nwe do.]\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nA charming establishment.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nYes. I come here often; its in the neighborhood.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nReally? I've never been.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nWell, then, welcome, Mr....\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nOedipus. Rex Oedipus.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nMr. Oedipus.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nDo you have the other half of the payment?\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\n[Holding up paycard.] In this account. Do you have the data?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nIts staring at you.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nAh. Yes. The so-called wild eyes.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nYou are very beautiful.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nAn irrelevant comment, Mr. Oedipus.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nI've had one sweat of a day.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nIt is very pleasant to meet you as well;\r\nI never knew someone who'd hollow out their skull\r\nfor a few dollars, or a plain yen-infestation\r\nof their bank account. It seems a dirty thing;\r\na soul perverted to pay a bill. But I guess\r\nsome people are in paradise if they can sell\r\none kidney to keep the other one slummed in beer.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nYeah, well. Its real nice to meet you too.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nTell me,-- do you mind if I call you Mr. O?--\r\nTell me, Mr. O, what's it like to sleep with a girl,\r\ndo her, to fool your body into its measured, rhythmed\r\ndick-tick of boy-joy and juice expenditure\r\nand not know if that woman sleeping next to you,\r\na swollen lust-bunny and tired angel, was your\r\nfucked mother or reamed-out sister? What does it feel like?\r\nI have a squat, powerful curiosity.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nWhat the fuck is your game? You some kind of\r\nmag-lev perv, getting off by being so repellent?\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nHey, whatever shoots your goose. Right, Mr. Oedipussy?\r\n[Pause.] Tell me, have you ever hunted?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nI don't really have the downtime. And, besides,\r\nthe preserves are smaller than God's Providence these days;\r\nten snapping Nikons to every twitching bush.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nThe killing attracts me. In parts of China you can still\r\nbuy out a bushido-style lancing safari. Very black market,\r\nbut the officials are as corrupt as cancer out there.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nI've heard that they don't even have eye-in-the-terminal\r\nbigbrother technology in the ditches there yet.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nSome places in China are still very primitive.\r\nOccasionally you run pell-mell across an entire village\r\nthat still believes in Mao's little Red Book.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nThe bioluminescent tatoo artist in this neighborhood is very good,\r\nI hear.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nYes. Fine work.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nHe once did a bird-of-paradise on a sumo wrestler's\r\nkicking midriff, with mating display air sacs\r\nthat could fool to wooing another bird-of-paradise.\r\nOr so I hear.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nI have seen it in photographs.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nThey say that the wrestler keeled over at Mickey-Ds,\r\ntrying to keep up his wrestling weight, and they\r\ncut the neon-suave tatoo out of him there and then.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nYes. Its true.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nThey say its on display at the MOMA now.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nIndeed it is.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nSay, if you're from this neighborhood, you must know Aldo. Grew up\r\naround here somewhere. Been in the business forever.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nOh sure. Aldo. Great guy.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nHey, I've got a splitting headache. Do you mind....\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nGo ahead. Don't take any aspirin, though. It'll throw the micron\r\nreadings off.\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY gets up and heads towards the bathroom.]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nSpired and alive on my freemarket highwire,\r\nI perform fearless feats against the cold quartz clock.\r\nZipped from a split-screen meeting with holographic\r\nTakehashi, I rocked my supersonic ass across the Pacific\r\ndoublequick. Speed Racer erasing this distance.\r\nAll the Hong Kong flights had their outbound relays delayed\r\nby my chortling cohorts at HK International Airway;\r\nthe skyglide had some fractil gravel flipped\r\nbeneath its sweet, silver, sweptback wings-- cha-ching!\r\nAnd now I'm here, and in the clear to zero-out\r\nmy Rex's rich head to a lopped-off nullity.\r\nWhen he gets back from his piss and patented\r\nhead-tread massage-o-matic in the bathroom-- vvvvipp!\r\nI'll bowling-bag back the crimson lump of data\r\nto my restless master pacing his eterna-wear carpeting\r\nback to pressboard. Ha ha. Life's easy, sinuous, and free.\r\nEverything is possible with the right backer.\r\n\r\n[In the bathroom.]\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nShit. I've gotta get out of here. That's not my contact.\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY presses at the edge of the sealed window; it gives.]\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nTest everything.\r\n\r\n[A minute later, JIRIKI comes into the bathroom, dashes out the\r\nwindow.]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"noprint\"><a href=\"#top\">Contents<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\n<a name=\"_SceneFive\"><\/a>\n\n<h2>SCENE FIVE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n\r\n[Interior of vidiphone. JOHNNY has just escaped JIRIKI using a\r\nhologram. He punches in, using a phonecard lifted from someone\r\nalong the way so its untraceable. Calls his X-girl. She's in a\r\nrockband, but very sheik hi-exec type. Has serious Madonna-class\r\nnegotiation skills.]\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nLean adrenaline shifts into me, giving Stim-shakes\r\nto my wimpy limbs. Fetal-curled in my plastic cocochannel-scented\r\nand probably soon to become tomb-- too soon tombed,\r\nI punch for who, sweet Lord!, who to be my last treasured gasp\r\nof the realistic-fantastic? I had thought my 24 hours\r\nmore blatantly impastoed than this fate's twisty titty-twist.\r\nI need my gaping grave's immeasurable reveries\r\nto be more fly-thick with incident before I'll\r\nrefuse to whinny and kick the presswood coffinlid\r\nback into outer space, like that 2-3-5 proportion propulsed\r\nicon-object in Odyssey 2001, hon. I've fobbed\r\nthis soggy callcard from a alley-plunked drunk,\r\nsome Stim-junkie swilled into unconscious bliss\r\nin a cobalt drool pool two zagged blocks back.\r\nThat Yakuza semen-storage device gave chase, and I accepted.\r\nA mistake. [Puts card in machine.] Who do I know in L.A.?\r\nMemory, memory, work, work; this screen's empty as a lily,\r\npale blank, waiting for my shivering fingers to remember\r\nsome name. C'mon, guys, type! Here, I'll help you:\r\nhere's a mnemonic code I heard in the first grade.\r\n[Sing-songs:] abcdefg-hijklmnop.....qrstu...vw...xy and z.\r\n[Pause.] X, y, and z. XYZ. X! X! X-cetera!\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY types, an instant later we hear:]\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nYou've rocked it in the socket and locked onto the X-girl. Have a\r\nsip of saki and state your business or you're not getting on the\r\nguestlist.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nUh, hello, Xcetera?\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nGlistening.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nUm.... Do you remember me?\r\n\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nNot yet. [She looks at info offscreen, reads.] Howard Chicichigano?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nUh no, this is Johnny. I'm sure they're radaring the net for me.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nJohnny! Well, I do remember you. How've you been? Are you in\r\nwow-town? Why'd you call me?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nI'm not really sure. I remembered your name. Kinda flamed out at\r\nme.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nOught to flame after that game we played last time we got together.\r\nWho's looking for you? And who's Howard Chicichigano anyway?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nI lifted that card. And, I'm not sure who's after me.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nYou always were sorta absent-minded. Absent mind, but what a grind!\r\nHey, Johnny, are you OK? You look a little shivery, out-of-focus,\r\nyou know?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nSlightly unmanageable Stim-adrenaline overcharge. Muscleclature's\r\nhaving trouble stabilizing in just three dimensions.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nOh, baby. You need to relax. Is that vidphone VR capable?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nYeah, it seems to be. But what....\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nI was sure it would be. Well, I was thinking, y'know, for old\r\ntimes' sake....\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nJesus H., what makes you so horny, Xcetera?\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nC'mon! It's not like you ever call.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nNo, really, I don't have time for this.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nDo you want my help or not?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nI need your help....\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nInto the pressure sheath then. I don't want to miss one wiggle of\r\nthat x-tra cute bod of yours.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nXcetera!\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nVelcro-up and initiate, toyboy.\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY reluctantly slips into a superthin mylar sheath that will\r\ngive sensation feedback to the wearer. To us, it looks like he is\r\nin a martian sleeping bag.]\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\n[Licking her lips.] Virt time! I hope you don't mind if I make you\r\nan American Gladiator.\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY's sheath is still. XCETERA begins horny monologue;\r\neventually his mylar sleeping bag begins to wiggle.]\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nThere it is, sinner, beneath an open, mesmerized sky\r\nanti-aliased electric blue: Our white, sweet, antique,\r\nchrome-loaded chevy Impala, baby, locked on automatic pilot.\r\nI used to honk the obtruding horn whenever\r\nour motions got too close in bliss during our\r\nerotic rovings-- two self-willed adolescents yearning\r\nto breed free! Remember its triple, Italianate accent?\r\nReep reep reeppii! Push back the leather strap---\r\nthere, there, no, there! Oh Johnny, jiggle over\r\nand give us a kiss. [Pause.] Your hot tongue's the last\r\nword in virtual thrill; my teeth must ai carumba!\r\nfor another shove and jangle just like that.\r\nI thought a honed, rainbowed Nevada skyline\r\nwould smack of just the right, apocalyptic bliss.\r\nSee, the green, flora-chlorafilled cacti are all\r\nerect... ripe! Spikes as sopped as tugged jugulars\r\nagainst a radiant, pristine me. Lick\r\nthe tender effigy you see clean of sweat.\r\nMy smiles abandon fashion and curl into self-fulfilling\r\nfractals now. Oh Johnny. Your wildly styled eyes\r\nare x-raying a cinematic me to glory. Lord,\r\nif your insisting gospels had half his\r\ninsinuating touch, I'd snake my way to mass\r\non bleeding knees to get your blood and body\r\nin my mouth. Johnny, I'm transparent-ecstatic\r\nbeneath your advancing glance. Is there something\r\nin this rush of fluids that has a spine?\r\nYou make me see myself rolled back to one\r\nprimeval ache. It must be love! Double-gloved\r\nand lightwired, as we seem to be,\r\neach compelling touch is rough-rouged or cozened\r\nby the hot electronic mist this interface\r\nimposes; I know that what's boning me\r\nto this unreal glow is real-feel real, dear.\r\nCan't you feel it too, my Johnny?\r\nThat dactylic riff, the idyllic lick I apply\r\nin alarming lures to your swiftly constructed skin?\r\nLurid under the instant thunderstorm, and plowing\r\n90 down the road, the rains, the rains, are hissing\r\nlovish appellations as we reach our applauding finish.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nThat almost did finish me.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nConfess: you never could resist my wishes, dishy.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nAhh, phew. [Stepping out of sleeping bag.] Now, about that minor\r\nassistance I was asking about. Can you safehouse me? I'm going to\r\nrequire some major in-tech support.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nNo can do, babearoo.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nBut Xcetera!\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nSorry, joyguy, we're just two halves of a double\r\nhelix that pass and kiss in the gene pool. Look,\r\nI've got to go on tour in exactly 39 and 1\/2 minutes.\r\nAll the Pacific Rim wants a twist at Xcetera.\r\nCan I help it if I'm the most popular girl in highschool?\r\nAnd this time, I didn't have to blow all the jocks\r\nto get there. I'm not going to flummox\r\nmy own success for any brain-fry cadet, I don't care\r\nhow annoyingly vulnerable he is. [Pause; no response from JOHNNY.]\r\nHey, Johnny, you look seriously cruised.\r\nYou should check in somewhere, chicano amano.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nYeah, well, I guess I'll do that then. You know,\r\nyou can be a real harsh miss sometimes, Xcetera.\r\nA sinister bitch.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nSi-- and I mean sigh-- onara.\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY, drained, staggers down the street a few paces, collapses\r\nnear the bum who's callingcard he lifted, Stim-twitching in\r\nrestless dream.]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"noprint\"><a href=\"#top\">Contents<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\n<a name=\"_SceneSix\"><\/a>\n\n<h2>SCENE SIX<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n\r\n[JIRIKI has circled back to the bar in search of JOHNNY. Her\r\ncellular phone rings, bleeps. It is TAKEHASHI.]\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nJiriki.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nReport.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nTakehashi-san. Things... have not gone well.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nReport on the disposition of the data.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nThe courier is at large in L. A. But he is weak, confused.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nWhere is the data?\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nStill with the courier.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nYou have failed me, Jiriki.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nYes, Takehashi-san.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nThis is not honorable.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nHai!\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nI shall be in L. A. in three hours. Locate the courier. But do\r\nnothing until I arrive.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nHai!\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nDo not fail me as your brother did, Jiriki.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nYes, Takehashi-san.\r\n\r\n[TAKEHASHI clicks off. JIRIKI's face is underlit as he punches into\r\nthe Net to find out where JOHNNY's scurried to.]\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nBashed and abolished in Takehashi's ramping eye, I stare\r\na chastened tiger left to nose his noosing confines\r\nand drink the grateful milk his captors trickle\r\nto his imprisoned dish. Raarr!! I'll not confine\r\nmy blood-browsing to our target-flesh, but turn,\r\na battered parricide of sorts, on whatever\r\nwhite-cuffed, pleasant hand has held me\r\nto my permitted meats. My brother's lolling neck\r\nwas gnashed on monofilament barbedwire\r\nthat night we hit the chip printing installation\r\nat our paid enemy's glass-towered camp.\r\nTakehashi had rushed the singing wire blind\r\nand sent out a piercing, high-decibel trill\r\nbeseech-screeching loudly at the starred sky.\r\nI remember my dash-mastering brother's final act:\r\na silhouette against the nothing of the night,\r\nlosing an untouchable gush of blood\r\nfrom his carotid... he still held himself lightly\r\nagainst gravity and the light tripping\r\nof the metal threat alarm. I saw him die\r\nupright, trying to save us all in the spasm\r\naftermath of the foiled attack. And Takehashi\r\nsaw what I had seen. Their security satellite's\r\nrelay microwaved retaliation at our matt backs,\r\ndull in absorbent black. We raced beneath our cheap,\r\nstarlight-reflective mylars through the burning grass.\r\nI mirrored to the android submersible\r\nto pick us up like sandfleas off the shore.\r\nA mile out, through the transparent serpent\r\nof the periscope I watched my hopeless\r\nbrother's body burn high on the midnight wires\r\nlike Christ deified.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"noprint\"><a href=\"#top\">Contents<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\n<a name=\"_SceneSeven\"><\/a>\n\n<h2>SCENE SEVEN<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY's X-girl finds him unconscious on the street of his\r\nprevious scene. She administers some sort of medicine to him.]\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nHalf-alive. You've got to live with all of your skin,\r\nand everything writhing within. What do I keep telling you,\r\nJohnny? This high-mem courier gig is for encephalitics,\r\nnot my sweet thing. Oh Johnny, Oh God. You felt\r\nso nervous-alive in the Virt box. God. [JOHNNY moans, stirs.]\r\nThat's it, that's it, keep on rocking. I can't believe\r\nyour vital stats are so frayed and bad. You're boxed\r\nin with the reaper already, nearly. You're in\r\nthe knocking room, the knocking room. Wake up,\r\nJohnny. Johnny. Look who came to you.\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY wakes.]\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nWhat the hell are you doing here?\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nYou looked a little albino around the gills;\r\nso, I ran a simulation based on physio signs\r\npicked up via vid, calculated a probable\r\nknock-out radius, and here I am.\r\n....You're the only horizontal thing on the street\r\nbesides that bum who's callcard you stole.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nQuite a pair.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nWhy, thank you.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nNo, not you. Nevermind. I thought you had a flight to catch, a\r\nconcert to lullaby at in Adorationland.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nYou know, I keep telling myself: Beautiful,\r\nstop thinking with your vulva, stop thinking\r\nwith your vulva, stop thinking with your\r\nvulva. But, by the third vulva, I've forgotten\r\nall the other words in the sentence.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nAll right, all right. I'm sorry. Thank you for saving my ass, your\r\nhighness.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nYou should talk to me like that more often. I night be inclined to\r\ndo a little more than dust your sorry ass off and send you\r\nmonorailing on your way.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nI hear you, I hear you.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nIf I'm going to be involved in this,\r\nI want to know everything. You'd better come clean\r\nright now; dump your core, Johnny, or I'll\r\nhave to spacewalk out of this sorry scenario\r\nright now. I can't operate in the dark.\r\nI'm not going to end up in some Multi-User Dungeon\r\non the darqside just for you, screwball.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nAll right. Here it is. I've got less\r\nthan seven heavenly hours to eep and decompress\r\nmy utterly overly compressed brain, or I'll\r\nsplurge my neuron-trodes all over your\r\nshiny shiny boots in one big ugly way.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nYou've arced your meat hardcore.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nYeah. Something like that. And if I don't\r\nunzip and download soon....\r\n\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\n.... its a lifetime winter vay-cay in lovely Catatonia.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nSomething like that.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nYou know, I'm starting to not like you all over again.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nIt's like the first time again for me too, darling.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nAs it is, I'm going to call a friend of mine who might\r\nbe able to hack your ass out of this mess, sweetness.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nNo. Absolutely not. I don't want to involve\r\nany strangers in this. Have to keep a zip-ship\r\nencryption-strict security girdle on this\r\nor its a total no-go.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nSpeed dialing.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nXcetera....\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nConnect.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\n[Online.] Jesus Saves Refuse Unlimited.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nCan the salespitch, Jesus. This is Xcetera.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nHey, I thought I read that you were on tour.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nWell, I am scheduled to depart in 06 minutes.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nWell crack my ass, you didn't have to call to say goodbye.\r\n\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nJesus, please, don't let that moniker go to your pretty head. This\r\nis Xcetera, after all.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nWell, then, what's the deal.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nMy friend here is sick, real sick.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nPut his head up against the phone.\r\n\r\n[JOHNNY leans over, puts his head against it.]\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\n[Low, appreciative whistle.] Wow. That must hurt like a\r\nmotherfucker. What'd you do, use your head to storage a\r\nsurreptitious copy of the entire human genome?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nSomething like that.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nWow....\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nCan you download him? Jesus.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nI don't know. No. Not with anything I have here.\r\nThere's no hardware to work on in there. Its all\r\njust lapsed synapses fluxing in a steady-state,\r\ntripping the same billion handful of neurons back\r\nand forth, waiting to be read-and-released. Right?\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nRight. Aldo said something about the download device\r\ncreating a self-defining decryption algorithm.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nYes, that makes sense, given the encryption medium's\r\ninherent chaotic tenancies. But you's need something\r\nalot more sensitive than an MRI to read the initial-state\r\nsynapse status. I'm afraid there's not a damn thing\r\nthat I can do to help you.\r\n\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nShit.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nYou'd better find your contact person split-second fast\r\nand let them wedge you out to download status pronto.\r\nYou've already got some pretty serious neural degrade.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nGreat. My contact was killed.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nGo to wherever he came from then. But I can't\r\nreally help.... So, Xcetera, is your tour cancelled,\r\nor just the first concert, you diva-vixen yeowl-howler?\r\nI was kind of looking forward to catching you on MTV.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nBut I don't know what company my contact represented!\r\n[Noticing he's being ignored.] Jesus Christ!\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nI told you I can't help you. I don't have\r\nthe set-up for anything nearly that complex\r\nin biotech reach. You're fucked and hexed, rex.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nJesus, is there anyplace around that might have\r\nequipment sensitive enough to help Johnny out?\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nWell....\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nYes... yes....\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nThere might be one place. Down in the valley.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nPraise the Lord.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nAnd pass the ashes. I did some freelance consulting\r\nat this one place last spring, bringing\r\ntheir trash facilities in line with Kalifornia's\r\nnew eco-standards. I remember seeing a sign in the valley\r\nfor an experimental decryption facility....\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nOh great. And I'm going to let a garbage man root\r\naround in my junked skull?\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nWaste management is very serious business, mister.\r\nMafia's all over that catshit. You know, though,\r\nthere's only x square kilometers of habitable earth\r\nsurface, and each squealing human being\r\nin our present state of technological grace\r\nrequires y kilometers of that flatness to support them.\r\nSo, we have to minimize and manage our waste products.\r\nAnd haste makes waste, my friend.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nYeah, well, in six-plus hours you can hump me\r\ninto the human parts bin in back of the medical\r\ncenter; I'll be 100% waste then.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nIt would free up a few kilometers for alternate use.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nJesus.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nBut I see your point. I guess I'd better\r\nhack some facetime on this mission, miss.\r\nMeet me here immediamente, Xcetera.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nWe'll be there.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nStay clean and stay Green. Hate the Grid,\r\nbut love the Net. A crypto-Anarchic creed.\r\nMy personal praxis? Definitely.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"noprint\"><a href=\"#top\">Contents<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\n<a name=\"_SceneEight\"><\/a>\n\n<h2>SCENE EIGHT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n\r\n[TAKEHASHI arrives in L. A. to cut off JIRIKI's thumb.]\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nPilgrim grim in my IBM issue business suit,\r\nI stalk my subservient, Jiriki, through the trick matrix\r\nof his fuzzy deceptions, crashing from their apogee\r\nin my high, black, blind eye back to disastered earth.\r\nHer hiroshimaed shadow is grounded now to dust.\r\nHer whiz-biz methods and black-jacketed audacity\r\nhave spent their new sheen to narrow nothingness.\r\nIts time for the farmer's boy to pluck luck\r\nback out of distress, save our sassy asses,\r\nand then mount the pure air back to longing Hong Kong,\r\nour clients, and one fat untraceable account.\r\n\r\n[Enter JIRIKI.]\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nOh Jiriki, your golden eye trapped like a whale's\r\nflotsamed to the gritty beach, stares at the wrong man\r\nfor the wanness of compassion. I will not\r\npale and weep; I will not lose\r\nhonor to gain mercy at this late date. We are not\r\nsome harikari brat-pack with wise almond eyes.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nCan't I ginger my disgrace with some saving gesture?\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nToo late. Avert your defeatist face.\r\nI am tired of looking at your eyes.\r\nYou've crash-landed in the wrong century\r\nif you want to meet the buddha face-to-face.\r\n[Strips off shirt, readies blade.]\r\nHis peace is the peace of Nirvana-hounds, while I,\r\nI only believe in howling hell herself.\r\nCan't you see the skin demons that gird my arms about?\r\nThey are not there to laugh my soul to peace.\r\nPace, pace, is for Roman tongues, not mine.\r\nI've sabered together my hatred and life-flash\r\nfrom eons of culture-trivia, and know that the choice\r\nwas mine. \"Garbage in, garbage out.\" This is all\r\nthe mantra-motor on which I will willingly rely.\r\nThumbs up, so I may like a marauding Caesar\r\nmow it down, please. [Cuts off thumb.]\r\nThank you, Jiriki. Now place the blood stub\r\nin that plastic forensic, mummifying cup\r\nover there. It will preserve it to a blue, strained\r\nstain-- a thumb lump of marble crushed\r\nand petrified in mezazoic muds. Good soldier.\r\nThere's a generic box of aspirin\r\nby the gilded Gideon on the nightstand.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"noprint\"><a href=\"#top\">Contents<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\n<a name=\"_SceneNine\"><\/a>\n\n<h2>SCENE NINE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n\r\n[Before the door of the high-tech NAVUS company in Silicon Valley.\r\nJESUS uses a video-enhanced fake head (perfect-register video\r\nimage) to trick the security system, which is totally automated,\r\nand therefore can be tricked in this way.]\r\n\r\n[JESUS pulls a mounted transparent head from a bowling bag.]\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nWhat the hell is that?\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nThe Admiral's ghost. This is the head of NAVUS;\r\nP. J. Spindt. The Admiral started NAVUS\r\non technology he smuggled out of the Navy.\r\nThe first tax break-in of many many for old\r\n\"teflon sides.\" This gimmick here's\r\na perfect register video image projected\r\ninto a transparent latex matrix. The high definition\r\nvideo is indistinguishable from the actual,\r\nsince security never uses a high-res set-up\r\nto grab their image. Too expensive. Waste of good technology.\r\nWe'll go by probably a thousand cameras\r\nbetween the front door and the lab-- every one\r\nstandard issue; I guarantee it.\r\nEven old P. J. Spindt's retinal pattern\r\nis back projected behind the pupils.\r\nAnd the fleshlike quality of the latex lets\r\nlets the security computer think that a real amigo\r\nis dawdling at the yipping gate, and not\r\nsome high-grade computer-simulation being fed in\r\nmouth-to-nipple on the in-house video line.\r\nThat's how this kind of break-in would normally\r\nbe attempted. They know that. And that means that I know\r\nthat, and that I know that they know that.\r\nSo, I'm using a throwback technology that they\r\nwon't be expecting, and aren't prepped\r\nto guard against. If the cavalry expects you\r\nto use high-res lasers, throw rocks instead.\r\nAnd, since there's no human operator in the security sys\r\nat this minimal level (since human operatives\r\ncan be bought, or their caring families\r\nheld at nazi-hostage)-- there's nobody in there\r\nto wide angle the camera and see that instead\r\nof old P. J. Spindt standing demanding\r\nthat \"these fuckers pipe me aboard,\" its just Jesus\r\nand his apostles ready to rob the grave.\r\nThis plastic baby is a failed precursor of the hologram.\r\nBut it should do what we want it to.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nPraise be to the Lord.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nAll this is really interesting. But can we\r\nget going? Pretty soon I'm going to have a headache\r\nthat makes Mt. St. Helen's look like a job\r\nfor Flintstones chewables.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nJesus, plug that silicon monkey in,\r\nand start chattering.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nAll I have to do is caress this indentation\r\nand old P. J. here goes into ectoplasmic morph.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nDo it.\r\n\r\n[JESUS touches the button.]\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nDisney!\r\n\r\n J. P. SPINDT\r\nVox identification J. P. Spindt. Request entrance.\r\n\r\n[The computer whirrs silently for a moment, the door clicks softly\r\nopen.]\r\n\r\n COMPUTER VOICE, FEMALE, PLEASANT\r\nIdentification accepted.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nOK, commandoes. Let's get the Encyclopedia Japonica\r\nout of Johnny's head here.\r\n\r\n[They go in.]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"noprint\"><a href=\"#top\">Contents<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\n<a name=\"_SceneTen\"><\/a>\n\n<h2>SCENE TEN<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<pre>\r\n\r\n[In the laboratory. JOHNNY is strapped in, as in first scene.\r\nTAKEHASHI and JIRIKI are standing there as the lights go up. JIRIKI\r\nis silent, next to TAKEHASHI.]\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nOM. AUM. Son of the one and Sony Only,\r\nI must have your head of you. Now now now.\r\nThis is the will of TIGRIS, and I mayn't be amiss.\r\nPrepare for the honor of being included\r\nin our non-delusional database, Johnny. Your head\r\nhas hacked a 21st century miracle today. It seems\r\nyou see with sweeping vision the rude suicide\r\nof the future past. History reflects grammar,\r\nyou know that. And today's grammar lesson\r\nconflates the stripped ego-I of yourself\r\ninto the near seamless industry of Us. It is\r\nnever too late to be appropriated by the debate.\r\nA detournement? Perhaps. The powers that be are only\r\nsad shadows of themselves; every grand god gets\r\nhis heaven from those who stoop to praise.\r\nNot in any other way. Jiriki and I are the realtime\r\nkneelteam forcing prayers and payment\r\nfrom the buckled-in and reluctant. Lucent enough?\r\nI know that my god needs me. Hiss blessing\r\nwill suffice my truncheoned and nodding know-node.\r\nEvery dent bleeds obedience. I gain my significance\r\nby the swiftness of my adherence. By believing that\r\nthis solemn rumor of communion occurs, it does.\r\nEach prayer completes its nattering circuit,\r\nand I am pulled bootstrapped by my own, loved.\r\nrosy and stolen prayerbeads into the heaven\r\nI invented. Your death will bequeath a mantra\r\nI will repeat in my flitting Porsche\r\nby the datalight your own buzzing bits emit.\r\nI regret that your death has gone the narrow road\r\nto become our only saving solution in this situation.\r\nBut, I must have your head. It sheds\r\nits charcoal and aesthetic side as well:\r\none man's death, and a billion billion numerals\r\nand lines of running programming will roam free.\r\nA very American phrase for this nexus\r\nof a nearly Greek necessity. But, I must have your head.\r\nFate has held her high-watt candle to your egg,\r\nand found you nearly hatching. But your data is far, far\r\ntoo valuable to go flapping into the safe,\r\nPacific sunset. No. You must hatch bursting\r\ninto our neural Net, and flap to the flip profit\r\nof the garden that makes a statue of you.\r\nYou will be in our pantheon a long time, Johnny.\r\nYour headless honor will be long upheld.\r\nA good fate for one as inherently insignificant\r\nas yourself. Other gods have played\r\ntheir flaying game with us, eons out of mind;\r\nbitter centuries that spent their thin hours\r\ndefying time only to be once again defined by its\r\nbright passage. So it is with us. So it shall be.\r\nFormulated in your brain is a pro-rated program\r\nthat has discovered a new law of physical intercon-\r\nnectedness. A law that will bring all of cyberspace\r\nunder one comprehensible rubric of imagination's fancy.\r\nThe company that owns that program will define\r\nonline reality by having a superior understanding of all\r\nevents that unfold there. Not a mere simulation,\r\nor model of a model of the universe's perverse\r\nhalves soldered whole, but the complete\r\nthing-in-itself, the face in the cybersky,\r\nrevealed. Einstein's spacetime for the inner real.\r\nRoot and website, floating point fluency\r\nand the innumerable numinous.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nGreat. Just great.\r\n\r\n TAKEHASHI\r\nBe content, not contentious. Your hissing spleen\r\ndemeans you. Did you think that you would never die?\r\nThat your morning's prayers would forever\r\ncease in noon? That noon would trundle on\r\nto night, and that dark bring back some waking\r\nfrom the heralded nightmare of your sleep?\r\nThat the circuit that you ran and ran\r\nwas supercooled, frictionless, supreme?\r\nYourself the white electron of that\r\nhyperborean dream? The corporation is the home\r\nof our small-m mythic identities. It will harbor\r\nall that any dim one may glow and give\r\nin the synergistic many of its waves.\r\nGeodesic sunlight will split upon its crests.\r\nLight supplied, and light divided; prismed\r\nto a startled pitch, a rainbow vibration\r\nof significance. Electrons, racing ever, there will find\r\nsome rest. \"Johnny\" is the marker of one, just one,\r\nsequence of surfing, superfluous bytes and bits.\r\nMarkers on a game the maker has forgotten\r\nhow to play. Takehashi is another marker, and hops\r\nwhere he is shoved. This is the way of the Way.\r\nAnd even your disobedience translates into\r\n\"Well, OK.\" Jiriki, your friends standing here,\r\nthe blank billions who dot the globe, all, all\r\nare markers and dot their bingo cards\r\nembryo-blind as lab mice. What number will\r\nbe called from the algorithm infected with\r\nraw chance? The hollering caller is blind,\r\nthe corporate players have put out their eyes.\r\nThey play the final game every day\r\nwith giant thumbs that manipulate human lives.\r\nPretty, pink bingo pieces that may shove back,\r\nbut still are shoved. Our corporate sponsors play\r\nthis pink bingo daily, but never win.\r\nThe game goes on. Only their ferocity to win is real,\r\nand gains its reality at our expense. Pink\r\nbingo pieces smear the cards. the game goes on.\r\n\r\n[JIRIKI, to whom TAKEHASHI has handed his ceremonial sword, beheads\r\nTAKEHASHI, with a cry:]\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nHai!\r\n\r\n[Everyone looks at each other in total astonishment.]\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nThe people I represent will perform a micron-depth vivisection of\r\nyour brain matter, scan the autopsied synapses, map them on a\r\ncomputer-generated grid, model your brain unerringly, and then\r\nextract the information we need from that model using decryption\r\nmethods already available to us.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nCan't you just yank it out of his aching head, like we were just\r\nabout to do just now?\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nThe interests I am employed to satisfy are not non-invasive\r\ncapable. This technology is too cutting edge.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nNice pun. Just let us download here. I've got a handle on it.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nAnd we'll give you whatever we extract.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nHey, I'm under contract....\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nJohnny, shut-up.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nYou don't even have the time to get him to any facility before he\r\ngoes critical. The data will be irretrievable when than happens.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nYou need him alive. I do not. I simply require his head. I hold the\r\nadvantage. I do not see where our goals overlap.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nEven dead, his steady-state will begin an irreversible decay\r\nprocess. The information he's carrying is extremely delicate, and\r\nthe cryptology more massive than anything I've ever even heard of.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nThat is a chance I will have to take.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nBut you don't have to take it. The decryption equipment is right\r\nhere.\r\n\r\n[JIRIKI pauses.]\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nWe didn't set off any intruder alarms, did you?\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nNo.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nSo nobody knows we're here....\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nBut I won't get paid!\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nJohnny. Shut. Up.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nMy company can recompense you.\r\n\r\n[Smiles all around.]\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nAll right Johnny, let's see some mercury. Open them twiggy peepers,\r\nI'm about the read your mind.\r\n\r\n[They attach eye-shielding, lightwires.]\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nJust who do you work for anyway?\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nSoma-E. A subdivision of Zony.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nThat's who the information was pirated from in the first place.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nThey outbidded my loyalty from TIGRIS-eyed Takehashi.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nPointless. This whole routine. Totally pointless.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nOne more iteration through the feedback loop.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nAldo said they'd probably be pretty anxious to retrieve their data.\r\n\r\n XCETERA\r\nI guess \"Aldo\" was right.\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\nAldo was executed when my team hit the impromptu lab where you were\r\nuploaded.\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nDid anyone else make it out of there?\r\n\r\n JIRIKI\r\n[Insulted.] I am efficient.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nCommencing download sequence. Now.\r\n\r\n[Lightwires flicker on. A moment passes.]\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nOh....\r\n\r\n[Stage lights go down, except for a spot on JOHNNY, strapped in as\r\nin the beginning.]\r\n\r\n\r\n JOHNNY\r\nWho am I? Who amI? If I knew, would I tell?\r\nI can't disclose those cancerous clues,\r\nthey eat identity alive, and, in this case,\r\nthat's mine. If I'd decide to die, this finishing minute,\r\nwho would I send packing to the chopping block?\r\nWhat soma-droning and drowning boy have I become?\r\nWas Takehashi right, have I no I in my lead sights?\r\nWhat love or inspiration lingers at these\r\ngraphited fingertips? Zoned on overloaded silicone,\r\nand trapped in one final, ecstatic Now,\r\nI'll know my ground zero when I feel it, not before.\r\nHow many times can a man divide and evade?\r\nAm I glad my face is melting as if it was never made?\r\nA formless mess puddles into mercury, and drains.\r\nI watch it slither after gravity, and laugh,\r\na fine, Stim-jimmied extroverted snort.\r\nMy moody mortality unmasks me. I stare\r\ninto its laser-licking glare and wince.\r\nWho am I, essentially, once the last mask\r\nis ripped back to skin, the final lie,\r\nthe lie of self, of something being me\r\ninstead of nothing constituting myself\r\ncomes up a blank cartridge, a recursive\r\nsyntax looping on zero.... What then, what then?\r\nWho then, then what is all of this, this thisness?\r\nWhat has all of this been? No memory to rudder\r\nmy oblivion in some self-defining and self-\r\ncreating dream stream self-fashioning; not\r\neven the lazy image of an overhead-projected\r\nstory to go by, some ultravivid vid img,\r\nsome loved blood on the TV snow. No, not\r\neven that, nothing. But still this head, this\r\nvoice, these arcite eyes, skin of antimony,\r\nsurreal interior visions and revisions,\r\nstill that, until the last moment, the cubed\r\nsolution. My question commands silences.\r\nMy pause is sempiternal, solemn.\r\nThen, when the microtape fails and fritters,\r\na thumb on its steel reel, then even\r\nthe pause pauses. [Pause.] Pulses of light pass the cave mouth.\r\nI am a sleeper asleep in his cave, in love\r\nwith flowing water, all light, the small,\r\nserried series of wet ticks that compose\r\nthe human concept of infinity. That deep repeat.\r\nI am in love with my dim cave, its shallows\r\nof lights, its deep darks, the surprising\r\ngrottoes that give a sense of unexpected\r\ndistance under my suddenly suspended feet.\r\nI pass hours the way an owl, still hungry,\r\noverlooks a vulnerable mouse at the fir's\r\ncrowded root. I know the waters pass me\r\nin the dark. I know I am space suspended,\r\na miracle bridge with no heaven or horizon\r\nto cry out unto. My eyes attract small,\r\nblind fish. They are suave and attentive.\r\nA minute passes. They turn away from me forever,\r\nsuave and diminishing. Then they are gone.\r\nI am alone. A minute passes. The waters walk away,\r\nsuavely evaporating. A minute passes.\r\nAnd the cave disintegrates. I am alone.\r\nSpace abandons me. There is no medium left\r\nfor suavity to express itself in. There is\r\na darkness so dark that I cannot see it.\r\nPulses of light pass the cave mouth.\r\nSomewhere else. I am alone.\r\n\r\n JESUS\r\nDisney!\r\n\r\n[JESUS pops a cd-rom from its reader, hands it over to JIRIKI, who\r\nexits.]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"noprint\"><a href=\"#top\">Contents<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>End<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Post-modern play about future technologies conflicting with human moral imperatives. Should I be rid of my R.I.D.? Like eyeless Oedipus, go testicleless? &#8212; Johnny, in deep dreamtime blackout JOHNNY DEMONIC FUTURE HUMANS: TAKEHASHI JOHNNY ALDO JIRIKI XCETERA JESUS TECHNICIAN ONE GREGG GLORY SCENE ONE [Johnny, strapped upright, optical wires spouting from his forehead, is getting <a href='https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/digital-boy\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1740,1757],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plays","category-digital-boy","category-1740-id","category-1757-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7359,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6164\/revisions\/7359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}