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drowning rave
dael drowns until his lungs breathe in the technology rich ocean.
he struggles as a colony of microbacteria line his throat and extract oxygen from the water.
blocks of sound suspend him in the liquid.
music moves through his chest.
he gags.
treble and bass coil in his stomach and compete for tactical advantage.
dense sheets of sound pump from an array of speakers floating overhead.
his eyes clear.
shafts of light erupt as a hidden technology removes all salts and impurities from the ocean environment.
several hundred people hang in the mix of water and sound.
the rave takes advantage of him for the next several hours.
dael wakes.
sand crusts his lips.
silicon deposits line his throat.
he sits under the broken steel skins of a beached oil tanker.
he recalls crawling ashore but not consciously choosing this point of shelter.
he realizes last night's rave was a sentient entity determined to pump dirt and dust into his lungs.
the day is wide angled.
his awareness reorients when he recalls the rave and its particulars of bass and sound.
the mass of the party was a mesh of non-particular sexuality.
he was merely a transmission node in the attitude network of young women and men.
he also remembers someone handing him a small set of aerosol cans designed like _CO2_ gun cartridges.
for the moment his emotions collapse into fear of displacement.
he recalls the crush of hormones and near-twenty-year-old kids.
a few moments smashed against a blond girl and being scratched by individual salt grains.
he realizes the party took place somewhere under the water's surface.
dael shakes his head.
he glances at the men and women who dismantle the oil tanker.
shadows collect near him as he settles further under the wrecked ship pieces.
his skin feels like corkboard.
the shipbreakers stop in unison.
hands to face, they just sniff cans of chemicals and forget everything for a few minutes.
it's a delicacy for the them to whiff american aerosols.
one of the shipbreakers itches at a blue dye covering his body.
the fingernail scratch activates cleansing microbes and other chemicals inherent in the blue film.
dael smirks at one of the simple-ai dismantler drones working in symbiotic fashion with the men.
the boxy orange robots never pause.
dael watches the slow breakdown of the tanker's shell.
the ship looks like a massive dissection study on the gray beach.
its black husk seems to ripple under the men's blow torch and cutting fires.
he runs a hand through his dye job hair.
he really doesn't care.
he just wants to remove his hangover.
he disagrees with the generic proportion of his body.
he's not as physically defined as the men scattered across the landscape.
he sighs.
dael fumbles for the cartridge he was given last night.
he takes in his own aerosol cocktail.
a few seconds.
all colors decrease in saturation.
he almost sees in black and white.
the cocktail trades color for enhanced perception of detail.
several shipbreakers move from their rest spot and re-strap climbing equipment to their bodies.
all but the explosives technician return to work.
the young man scratches at the bacteria-laced dye on his skin.
he looks to the stereo speaker casings and other rave debris lying about the beach.
glossy flyers.
disposable phones.
easily replaceable turntables.
he looks to dael then fiddles with one of the breaker drones.
did he see the fragmented youth at last night's rave?
he sulks in the ship's lowest doorway.
his eyes on dael.
the technician abandons the drone.
the robot device lowers, waiting.
he decides he won't be needed for a while and scratches more.
he ignores the other breakers and moves towards dael.
the day's heat isn't bad once the explosive's handler and dael are completely in the shadow of the tanker.
dael looks at the guy's face.
he's hispanic.
he's not from bangladesh like shipbreakers are supposed to be.
nor does he have neatly patterned face stubble like dael.
the two young men look to one another as if they were preparing to insert sensitive nuclear warheads into each other's body.
the shipbreaker rubs an antibacterial enzyme over his arms and fingers.
the two guys shake hands.
afterwards they cue each other for specific sub-genre references.
techno.
jungle.
experimental.
nothing.
dael sees the name of the tanker, an american word, tattooed on the shipbreaker's arm.
the one name is just an entry added to a list of hundreds of ships the guy has broken.
or the list could be men or women he's taken apart.
he's using me, the shipbreaker thinks, it's a type of currency or information exchange.
they talk for a few minutes.
they act more like mechanics toying with a glass engine until dael breaks into basic internet jargon.
they share .jpg upload protocols.
trade web environment patches.
the technician demonstrates a few novel search engine routines in the sand.
finally dael shows the guy how to do basic hacking within the borders of the united states.
the elaboration of encryption.
the overly complex shelling of most web-sites.
one of the shipbreakers call to the technician.
the transaction ends.
sand seems to clog the two men's movements.
neither can decide how to break out of the economics of their shared language.
dael walks off.
c:\ immense building embracing fur coat
cichli sinks into the information field of his fur coat.
he can't remember the coat's brand name or where it was originally grown.
besides he's modified it beyond its original technical specifications.
the fur's information gathering core grips the ambient signals around him.
the silver lined coat seems to pull the taller buildings of the city close to his face.
it's as if the windows of every store front, business and home crowd around his body.
he can touch the tops of buildings.
he's a private gene pool boxed in by titans.
cichli passes into a commercial free signal zone and opens one of the thin disposable cell phones in his pocket.
crackle on the cell phone; useless, cichli throws it to the ground.
he heads for a generic phone booth and calms himself despite the fear he has of being crushed by a car in one of the small iron spaces.
this particular elaborate ritual of using non-private communication appliances allows cichli the luxury of anonymous caller i.d.
he usually doesn't give anyone his phone number.
it's only that he tries too hard to remove himself from everywhere.
at other times he realizes his participation in society's flow can't be helped.
cichli's hair reorients.
the substance that remakes his hair into a chipped black glass becomes restless in the warmth of the booth.
a few more finger punches on the phone keypad.
cichli wants to talk real-time to his vinyl statistics contact.
waiting for the phone to pick up he removes one of the thin laptop computers from his inner coat pocket.
he starts typing while he waits.
a few entries describing this part of downtown.
he webcams a face.
two more keystrokes and cichli enters into his primary interface environment.
his fur coat's information field slowly gathers data from the laptop.
the symbiotic nature of the coat and laptop create a portable map-space.
a 3 dimensional model detailing the surrounding city blocks erupts inside the booth.
the holographic microenvironment evolves from wire-frame blocks into real-time satellite image extrapolations.
the city crowds cichli in the small booth.
still no answer from his statistician.
his boredom flourishes and the shopping bug takes hold.
the city itself doesn't care.
he heads for the highest probability center of his contact's life.
cichli enters the back of a hotel and moves to a room where a gang of djs sit and party.
a few cigarettes pass around.
a reasonably invisible kid spins a versus set of techstep and breakbeat records on an ultrathin turntable.
thick sweeps of warfare class bass inhabit the room while two girls break-dance on flat cardboard boxes.
muted tvs line the floor.
two kids fight over the price of a _PAN SONIC_ record collection.
a few others trade vinyl like drug dealers.
cichli waits around.
this is his statistician's local habitat.
he checks his spiky eyebrows in the mirror wall that spans the room.
he wants to add some mass to his thin nose or somehow enforce a bulkier representation of himself.
he's shorter than most people.
otherwise he just wants to get his record collection examined, priced, estimated.
or get a probability printout on where to dj next.
cichli sinks into the room walls.
people move about like neon lines.
his statistician never shows.
cichli stares at the floor.
his pants are too tight.
he has no one to be candid with.
he wants to go clubbing or discuss the short period of mechanism sampling in electronic music.
maybe just find someone to fool around with.
two guys go thermal over a electric wall socket.
the fight bores cichli and he collapses his turntable setup into a thin silver lock-case backpack.
as he moves, hair from his fur coat gathers on the wall like magnetic shavings.
the case goes on his back and slightly off center with its heavy _AUTECHRE_ record sleeves.
he glances in the mirrored wall and ponders the style and cut of his coat.
how it hugs him just short of his belt like a _REBECCHI_ fashion product.
he checks his environment and deletes himself from the scene in the room.
the shopping bug takes full affect.
>> end excerpt <<
