From: schellj@nyu.edu (jonathan schell)
Subject: Filter dreams, story, big
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 1995 00:09:01 -0500

Heres a little story ive been working on on and off for a month or two.
Tell me what you thiink, advice is far more then welcome,  if you want to
mail me mail me at God_Eater@tunanet.com

enjoy
We are the Future, The Future is now, assimilate or evolve.


 he woke to the sound of the tank filters.  the ripple and bubble of the
water had become a backdrop to his thoughts. the filters all thrumming
along in unison giving oxygen to the Fish.  The digital clock on the wall
flicked in greenish blue liquid crystal eight twelve.  He had been living
with monte for a couple of months now, It was a pretty cool set up, monte
wasn't a bad guy either.  He unzipped the sleeping bag and got up. He had
this monstrous morning got to piss hard on and his stomach kind of ached.
he looked up and down the hall to make sure montes, wife wasn't around
doing her early ass morning cleaning and grabbed a key to the door,
hustling down to the communal john at the end of the hall. he hated
walking in here barefoot, the floor was always kind of cold and wet and he
always thought he was stepping in piss. the floor was tiled white but it
had turned kind of grey, not that it wasn't hand scrubbed fiercely early
every morning it was just kind of old. the walls were painted elementary
school boys bathroom blue and it always smelled like pine and ammonia from
mrs chins fervent scrubbings.  he finished pissing and splashed his face
with water from the sink.  He flushed the toilet checked for mrs chin in
the halls so as not to be caught running about in his underpants, and
scurried back to the fish. he located his jeans and began to dress pulling
on the t-shirt monte had given him with the words welcome to new york
emblazoned across the front in bold red raised iron-on letters over a
faded drawing of the twin towers.  He saw that Mrs. chin had left his
breakfast on a stool by the spawning trays full of the newest lot of fish
eggs.  It was another one of montes jimmy dean great start micro meals, he
bought them in these huge boxes because a friend of his had acquired a
truckload of them. they were pretty tasty and they stayed warm while the
plastic was still on, the only thing that he got tired of was eating the
same thing every morning.  after a month and a half of freeze dried
scrambled eggs with a side of bacon some tater tots and a micro biscuit,
he could eat the meal in his sleep. All nicely segregated, like food
prison. or youth prison, those weren't happy days.  He remembers it all
with the painful clarity of white light and filthy memories.  The warden
had had a taste for blonde nine year old boys, he'd learned to put up with
it after the first month or so.  The shady hills youth farm, more like
youth prison, concentration camp, sweat shop agriculture.  The partitions
in his tray never ceased to remind him of the morning walk across the
catwalks to the dining room, aka the trough, all the cubicles, hush don't
say the word cells, had no rooves, made us easier to keep an eye on and
saved on electricity, so when you walked along the elevated cat walk it
was like looking down on a beehive, except all the cells would be empty,
everyone was on the walk marching towards the trough. The whole place had
been lit by a geodesic dome, it not only provided light but heat as well,
it had a tendency to leak though and in the summer it was like living
under a magnifying glass, in your little cubicle, like an ant under some
fat suburban kids magnifier.  It was miserable.
 The biscuit was tasty and he always ate that first and for the first
couple of days here with monte, he wouldn't eat the tater tots or the eggs
because they tasted kinda like the styrofoam they came in and he thought
maybe they were absorbing some of it and that it might block up his bowels
or something.  he didn't like the taste, but after a while he was just too
hungry,  ate it, didn't get sick.  he got used to the styrofoam taste
after a spell and he didn't really mind it any more than he minded
anything else. he just washed it down with some of the orange juice that
she always left.  It came in a can and she always had it wrapped in a
little wet napkin so it could still be cold when he woke up and with a
glass next to it all on a red plastic tray with the word "FASMEAL" inlaid
into it. a smiling little round faced cartoon  chinese girl smiled up at
him in bas relief, red plastic, throughout his meal.  He had asked Monte
about it and he had just shrugged.  It was funny because even though it
was only freeze dried eggs and canned orange juice she always had it just
so and it really looked nice.  There were so few nice touches in his life
like that that when he had first seen it he had hesitated to touch it.  He
got to take everything else for granted but he always appreciated the care
she took in his breakfasts.  Life is funny like that.
  after finishing his meal he chucked out the styrofoam tray with the
prisonesque cubicles, and orange juice can and left the tray and napkin
for mrs. Chin on the stool where she always left it, he folded the napkin
up and put it with the rest.
     the light was filtering into the room through the safety glass window
getting caught in the microthin filaments reinforcing the glass. This was
one of the few times when they were visible, when the sun shone through in
the mornings.  He loved the small infusion of natural light he got through
that window, there wasn't a light in the room because all the wiring was
going to support the tanks and maintain the Fish.  At all other times the
room was lit by the light of the tanks. the light always had an odd
quality to it.  it would ripple as the filters constantly spilled the
water back into the tanks.  The ceiling was fairly low and the walls were
covered in hundreds of glass cubicles about six inches square all
connected to a massive system of filters and aerators, They were fed by a
network of tubes that ran along side the filter and the air. It was like
living in some kind of sub terranean grotto, it got into his dreams, made
him dream about mermaids and waterfalls and shit like that. He poured the
food into a funnel at the top of the rack and pushed a button, the
machine, the size of his radio, mixed the food with water and sent it down
the tubes in approximately equal portions.  The food bills were huge but
monte bought food by the box, it smelt like hell and monte let him keep it
in the empty broom closet in the hall because he was the super and he had
the key. He loved to sit and watch the fish swim with their flowing fins
waving behind them.  He had known a kid named fighting fish when he had
been working in the red light district, before he'd met monte.  He'd been
siamese, some kids were making fun of him and it just sort of stuck.  He
wondered where they got the name Siamese fighter he wondered where Siam
was, he didn't wonder for very long.
     Monte was out in the hall banging on the door.  He opened the door
and came in "good Morning. Enjoy Breakfast?"
"Delicious, what we hafta do today"
"the Eggs should be hatching and we need to weed out the newest lot.
how're all the old warriors doing?" the old warriors were what he called
his champions the oldest of the old warriors was some 7 odd months old and
almost past his prime he was due to lose his next I was almost sure but
monte didn't seem to think so and had him set for a match against this
zaibatsumans prize fighter, he had a hundred thousand riding on it so he
must have been pretty sure. He said if he won this next match and didn't
get too badly fucked up he would just put him out to pasture in the big
mating tank.
"which tank do you want to do the weeding out in?"
"what have we got empty?"
"there's two thirty gallons an a ten ready to go?"
"How many in this lot?"
"A bunch 30 or forty Id say"
"Well go with the ten"
He always approached this with mixed feelings he looked forward to it
because it was definitely exciting and it interested him to see how it was
going to turn out.  But the death of the fish always got to him, it just
struck him as a waste, but this was how Monte did it and so that was how
it was done.
"Go fetch the newest lot would you"
He went over to the table and fetched the box filled with  individual
bowls each one containing  a young siamese fighting fish, brought it over
and rested it on the table beside the ten gallon tank, monte approached
with a pack of chinese cigarettes  packing them by banging them against
the palm of his hand. he pulled one from  the pack placed it between his
lips and lit it with an electric butane lighter he carried.  It was shaped
to look like a gun, one of those little ones, he'd seen em on tv before he
thought they looked kind of dumb but he liked the lighter. When you
cranked it all the way up you could shoot a jet of flame some eight inches
long, Monte said that used too much gas. He took out the first bowl the
fish inside was a beauty swimming restlessly in circles he was a deep navy
blue with a yellowish underbelly he was of medium size but he looked
quick.  he poured him into the tank the water was all temperature
controlled on one system so if there was a temperature distance it
wouldn't be enough to send him into shock.  He tumbled into the tank in a
cloud of bubbles righted himself and began exploring the tank still
circling.  The next fish hit the water his crimson scales visible through
the cloud, the blue knew he was there as the red broke out of the bubbles
they met and it began, the fish became two blurs of color their instincts
so grossly amped up by years of breeding that they were born for this
moment. They were in a ecstatic killing frenzy whirling about in the
center of the tank at dizzying speeds striking and recoiling streamers of
blood arcing out and bursting into clouds as one of the fish tore into the
other, the blue was trying now to break from the frenzied swarm of scales
and blood the red had become. The blue had minor wounds all about him and
his dorsal fin was torn and ragged the red was leaving a deep crimson
streamer of blood as he swam he was bleeding hard from a gash in his side,
he began to float to the surface and the blue spying the exposed lighter
scales of his underbelly arced in for the kill throwing caution to the
wind, in his full fury now, but as soon as he drew close the red in a
surprising burst of speed shot down and forward as the blue unable to curb
his charge broke the surface he leapt an inch out of the water and by the
time he hit the water the red was on him and had torn his belly open.  the
blue knowing he was fatally wounded tried desperately to escape but the
red was on him and was tearing him to pieces. by the time the blood had
cleared up the red had reduced him to a carcass.  He took up the net and
scooped the red up and plunked him onto a tray coated in about an inch of
water. monte was pulling on his rubber gloves he looked excited.  He
grabbed up his mini surgical kit and pulled over his stool.  He pulled his
coarse greasy black hair back into a ponytail and rubberbanded it.
   " Shit man did you see that? they're getting smarter,  none of the last
generation could've donw some shit like that!  did You Fucking SEE that!?
he made like he was dead just to bring him back in, that blue didn't stand
a chance"
The drugs in the water tray had put the fish to sleep already.
"Will he live?"
"He better fucking live I'm taking this mother over to the Hard Dragon as
soon as his ass heals up."
   "You think he can take that blue they have?"
"Hell yes he can, all That blue has is size. That's all that Hard Dragon
cat breeds for is size and strength, this guy here he's brains man he's
got that hard dragon blues number."
He set the surgical implements on the table one by one. he lays down a
laser scalpel, it cut and cauterized at the same time minimizing blood
loss even in the water. It was a little tricky to use in water because you
didn't want to boil the water and you always had to allow for a degree of
refraction. monte had been using it for a couple years and he knew what he
was doing, or at least looked that way.  the rest was some magnifiers,
micro thin needles, for pinning down flaps of skin and such, and several
microneedle syringes for any injections that might be necessary. the final
thing that was a part of the kit which came in these things that looked
like half of a plastic drinking straw with the paper on.  These things
gave him the creeps, they were another of Montes "acquisitions" and they
were probably real expensive.  They were these genetically engineered worm
things grown in some biotech lab down in Mexico, they were an ugly pinkish
brown, like whoever made them tried to get it to match black or white
peoples skins but the end it didn't match either, and long and thin they
looked kind of like a centipede but they had instead of legs, on either
side a little thorn thing and you laid them over a cut pulled the flaps
together and kind of gave its end a little squeeze and it closed on the
wound they were strong as all hell but they could flex and bend without
reopening the wound, they closed it up so tight so as it was waterproof.
This is what monte was doing to the fishes side and he had just closed it
up. The fish  was breathing and monte was now visibly relaxed he pulled
out his pack and lit another cigarette he exhaled in a huge bluish grey
cloud and watched it drift up through the sun light mingling with the dust
particles that swirled about visible in the sunbeam and slowly luxuriously
dissipated.  The clock read nine oh two.

   Through the filthy van window the neon sign of the hard dragon cafe was
a multicolored blur.  He was nervous, his stomach coiling and writhing in
knots of anxiety.  A snake, tail in mouth.  The van shuddered into motion,
releasing a noxious cloud of ozone eating gas molecules.  They rolled
around the back to a loading dock, there was a fellow in a tight red tee
shirt a hard dragon employee, tito.  He was slumped over in a plastic
chair trying his best to look uninterested, as they rolled up, and failing
miserably.  He stood up and sauntered over to montes driver side window.
leaning on the frame he asked.
"So how you wann do this man?" he drawled out the words thickly accented
hoodlese barrio poverty livin style.
"Same as always boy, get off the door"
he jumped back as if being called boy by old chinks wasn't his style but
he was going to take it just this time.  Monte trudged around the back and
jerked the door open.
"Nervous boy?"
"nope"
"bullshit, gimme a hand."
they slid the metal cooler out slowly on the tracks that were nailed to
the floor.  He jumped down out of the back and took an end.  They placed
it on the loading dock real gentle and hopped up.  This wasn't about to
get jostled or shook, inside was montes prize fighter and the new one and
their life support systems, temperature maintenance, food and the like.
It was a glorified bullet proof portable fish bowl and it weighed about a
hundred fifty pounds.  Tito opened the door with a nice fat ring of keys
on his belt and they lugged the case into the hard dragons kitchen.  The
smells always made him a little queasy, he didn't figure it was natural to
serve tex mex and chinese out the same kitchen.  Monte loved it, barbecued
dumplings and general tsos spare ribs bein personal favorites.  Through
the kitchen you came to a little corridor, on one end was the door marked
employees only in the restaurant next to the bathroom and on the other end
was a blank door with a picture of a gold fish scotch taped to it.  They
made towards the door with the fish on it with tito in the lead he held
the door for them and they made their entrance.  This was the back room of
the hard dragon, formerly the fridge where all the rib sides and dead
animals were stored when the place did a big food business now it was a
retrofitted casino for the lower class of high rollers.  It was poorly lit
and the air was so dense with smoke that he got a head rush from the
nicotine whenevcer he came in.  He didn't care for the place but lord
knows it was exciting.  Sitting up on a raised chopping block was center
stage, the main event.  A lone tank two foot by four with a ratty hanging
lamp above it which cast ripples on the floor and chopping block, filtered
through the water mostly lighting the room.  Standing nervously by was a
young japanese dude, he was sweating a little and looked real tense, he
kept sipping from his empty drink as he stared at the silver case.  Monte
was grinning, confident, they laid the tank down on a nearby table.  The
table was outside of the rippling pool of light that surrounded the tank
and as monte lifted the lid the tanks inner lighting illuminated his face,
throwing a ripple into his deep set wrinkles.  Monte popped a rubber band
around his shaggy black hair and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves from
within the case.  He looked in on the new fish, the prodigy, circling
restlessly, the traces of aggression pheromones monte added to the water
were making him restless.  Monte removed the steel tube from the side of
the case and slid open the hatch, it was opened automatically at the start
of the fight by a CO2 cartridge, this also negated any advantages of
surprise with a cloud of bubbles. The fight was usually over in moments
and even the shortest delay meant a severe disadvantage so the whole thing
linked into the powerbook with all the tank controls, it was all
synchronised and recorded.  He slid a cartridge into the tube and lowered
it into the tank, the fish swam in as this was where it was accustomed to
being fed and waited.  The food was obviously not forthcoming, monte slid
the hatch shut carefully taking great pains to avoid fins or tail and
sealed it.  He lifted it out of the tank holding it upright and walked toe
to toe over to the main tank, meanwhile the young zaibatsuman was doing
the same.  The cylinders were connected to the tanks sprawling nervous
system of wiring.  It was all linked together, the four minicams redording
and feeding the fight to the monitors through the laptop and sychronising
the life support and atmosphere control of the tank, the laptop was
purring as it waited for the gigs of high res uncompressed video to be
pumped through.  Tito sidled up to the machine and began the calibration
of all the monitors. In each corner of the room, where the walls met the
ceiling a sony jumbotron popped to life displaying the tank from a
different angle.  Once he had the minicams in focus he began circulating
the water from the tubes into the tank and adjusting the two fish to the
minute temperature differences, if the difference was much the fish could
go into shock and the fight would be voided.  This also let the fish get a
smell of the pheromones being released into the tank by each of them.  He
calibrated the hatches checking the connections, making sure that the
timers were synchronized and the releases would be simultaneous.
Meanwhile, the bets were being laid.  Monte and his competitor were
standing by the table off to the side placing the bets in front of the
witnesses and agreeing to it.  100,000 cash, up front winner take all.
Lui, the owner of the dragon had agreed to hold the cash in the safe in
the base of the chopping block, it was set for a time release in exactly
five minutes after the lock key was punched.  The two briefcases were slid
into the safe and the door left open.  Tito gave lui a nod and he called
the denizens of the back room to attention.  People stopped their
negotiations in the shadowed booths and looked up at the monitors.
"Gentlemen, gentle men! The fight is about to begin and all side bets are
to be placed now with tito. Tito began his rounds of the booths with an
old fashioned low tech note pad in his hand taking bets and cash from the
people gathered.  The Tension in the room was palpable, booths flared in
orange butane light as cigarettes lit up around the place.  There was a
low guttural murmur picking up, the walls were soundproofed but when a
fight ended the kitchen new.  He slid up beside Monte,
"lot of money"
"yeah"
Lui Chimed:
"All bets should be in, the release is in thirty seconds"
a little digital countdown appeared superimposed over each monitor.
Everything was silent now, the clocked beeped 25 seconds, the smoke in the
room was at an all time high it was getting a little hard to breathe.  The
clock hit 20 and he watched a bead of sweat run off montes brow, he was
oblivious eyes fixed on the tank.  Fifteen passed then ten, tito hit the
lock key on his laptop and the pins slid into place with an oily metallic
click. the room was holding their breath, tito was grinning madly.  No one
heard the clock beep zero as the two hatches whammed open simultaneously
with a thumping sound of a gas explosion under water accompanied by a
cloud of silvery carbon dioxide bubbles.  Tito was transfixed viewing the
action in a multiple of windows simultaneously in real time on his laptop.
Montes red burst from the bubbles, charging already homing in on the
zaibatsumans purple and they were locked in the serpentine dance of life
and death combat, before the bubbles had even had a chance to clear montes
red was bleeding, the crowd of the room was shouting now at the top of
their lungs.  The red began to float and the shouts turned to dismaying
howls as people saw their thousands being sucked down the tubes into the
neon economy of the red light district.  The red was nearing the surface
and the room fell silent as the purple wound in circling down ready to
strike in at the exposed light underbelly, he was transfixed knowing what
was to happen next, the purple struck up and shot at the montes red, the
prodigy, and then the miracle happened all over again, he with a flick of
the tail righted himself and sidestepped, the purple made a repeat
performance of the previous events and shot out of the water almost a full
inch, by the time he reentered, the cloud of bubbles had become a cloud of
blood and he was twitching to the bottom innards leaving silky trails of
crimson as he sunk.  The crowd was silent for an awe struck moment and
then half the rooms occupants began whooping in disbelief, joy and
relief.  Monte was just grinning like some kind of proud father who just
had a son, it was a sight to see. Reality slid into place.  He quickly ran
to the table popped open the brief case surgical kit and transplanted the
fish from the tank to the operating tray.  The fish had sustained less
damage then before and was closed up easily, unconscious within minutes.
There was a crowd around monte, you could almost see the condensation on
the back of his neck from their nervous breath.  Monte pushed back the
chair, leaned back on two legs and rummaged out a crumpled cigarette.  He
lit it and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke in the faces of his onlookers, At
this point he could afford to take his sweet time.  First things first he
collected his money and counted it, all there, by this point the poor
fellow who had lost had melted into the shadows.  A small crowd had
reformed around tito as he replayed the movies editing out feedback and
compiling the best views.  Monte collected a copy of the MPEGs from each
camera on a zip cartridge and had a drink.  He bellied up to the bar next
to him, and ordered a can beer.
" yewre too yung to drink boah!" he said in a mock southern accent, maybe
poking fun at his less then sophisticated roots out in the trailer
national park in jersey.
"Fuck you." but his heart wasn't in it, the relief after the tension was
like some kind of golden liquid in his stomach melting away the knots,
maybe it was the beer, he didn't care he was happy and relaxed.
"Cigarette?"
"yeah, thanks"
and they drank and smoked in appreciative silence as the strained noise of
the red light economy blended into a kind of vibrating hum in the
background.
"I've gotta get home to the missus, she's gonna be happy to see me for
once, the little tyrant."
"I may hang out for a while, if you can manage."
"manage?! I can manage fool, here heres a few bucks, have yourself a night
on the town and don't come back too early neither cause ill kick your
ass."
"thanks monte, good shit, ill see you in the morning"
"yeah see you, don't get your ass killed."
"ill try"
and he slid into the crowd feeling the greasy bills in his pocket, a
bounce in his step, he had a night on the town and now what the fuck was
he going to do with it...

He walked out the employees only door and stepped into the hard dragon,
unlike the back room, here smoking was illegal and subject to a thou in
fines.  He nodded to titos brother whos job it was to perpetually stand by
the bathroom and monitor the entrances and exits to and from the back
room.  He always looked bored and he was always standing, tito was the
smart one, this guy had gotten thieved had gotten thieved.  He maneuvered
his way out the plexi door and was on the street.  He looked up through
the soot blackened spires that were the towers of the red light district.
Like everything else in the city, the buildings were a subculture of their
own.  He'd gone with monte to a guy once who you had to get to by climbing
a fire escape on the west side highway.  You climbed up and hopped across
a few roofs and then climbed down a fence onto the old mag lev tracks.  A
completely failed project the mag lev lines first run had been post poned
until it had been forgotten. Not to say they were unappreciated though,
the lines provided very convenient access to a whole cluster of roofs in
the meat packing district around fourteenth street.  Within a month of the
fences being turned on the place had been so completely overrun by an army
of the cities worst crazies that after the wrecking companies had been
scared away so had the meat packing companies, leaving massive filthy
warehouses behind.  This had become one of the little pools of stagnated
insanity as the crazies flocked in and set up camp.  After a point it had
become a relatively loosely organized society with a list of rules painted
in white roller along the length of the single station on the line, the
station and the warehouse it was built on became the seat of the whole
ecology and a ruler of sorts had been set in place.  By this point,
although it was run and occupied by lunatics, it had evolved into a highly
fascistic dictator mini state.  So when they dropped into the lines they
were greeted by a massive guard on a tiny mechanized wheelchair running on
the mag lev track.  He was around 300 pounds black and wielded a nasty
looking weapon, a section of aluminum piping with a syringe full of rancid
blood rubber banded to the end, doubtlessly infected with one of the most
vicious strains of whatever particular virus was most popular on the
tracks.  He also had a tatoo across his face that looked like it had been
done with a piece of broken glass and some india ink, it said in scrawled
blocky first grade letters, "welcome to the republic of daymares and
nightdreams." as well as other arcane messages, most likely of the same
nature all over the massive folds and rolls of skin which covered him.
They'd given him a beer and he'd made them do a little dance and sing a
song as he dictated it to them.  He'd lost interest in a minute or two and
forgotten about them, his little electrically powered engine whining
bitterly as he whirred on down the tracks.  The man they'd come to see
lived in a maintenance shed on one of the adjacent roofs.  He was in the
business of carrier pigeons. He had trained pigeons that always flew to
the same spot, this tiny park in the east village. In a society where all
information was digital, privacy was very expensive and never completely
fool proof.  All airborne transmissions were easily sucked down into the
digital network of phreaks and hackers where your dirty laundry would be
available via FTP within the afternoon. digital mail was most susceptible,
a fax left records and the cellular phone channels were basically public.
Paper mail didnt exist anymore, it was obsolete, anything too slow and
expensive dies quickly in an information world.  Pigeon man was one of the
safer alternatives if you didn't mind some of the republics other denizens
hassling you.  It was a wonder that he did the business that he did due to
his remote location, but he always looked his happy lobotomized self and
he seemed to do ok.  It might have had to do with the fact that he did no
business in plastic or silicon or paper, barter, you brought him a meal
appropriate to the time of day as well as something for the birds and he
sent it out.  No records on paper, none in his head, pigeons couldn't
talk.  It appealed to monte, he liked to do things in odd ways.
   Strange characters in the city.  He hailed hiÄcab, one of these
electric numbers with touch screen and keyboard, satellite uplinked to a
database somewhere in sweden.  It had events, nightspots, restaurants all
that shit.  He touched the rendered icon for nightspots and the window
telescoped instantaneously onto his screen.  It was all very tame and PC,
fag joints, yuppie joints, black joints whatever. Every little subsect of
the population had a place to belong. He was looking for a little
excitement, after living the surreal life with monte he wanted to get
stink ass drunk start a fight and maybe get some skins in the bargain.  It
was ambitious but the clock on the touchscreen flickered ten oh seven and
he figured that was plenty of time.
   The cab rolled to a stop and the screen scrolled out: thank you for
riding interface transportation, 72.50 please, he peeled out a greasy
hundred and slid it into the bill acceptor, it whirred and whined,
threatening to spit it out and then chunk a chunked grudgingly, giving him
his change.  No tip required.  The door locks thunked open and he stepped
out onto the wet pavement, seemed to rain a bit more these days, it was up
to something like four days a week this point, foul acid smelling brown
stuff it was, thoroughly unpleasant.  It unnerved him, walk down the
street see all the pedestrians wearing goggles and filters bundled up in
their black acid-off rubber overcoats.  Looked like a bunch of fucking
bugs, all the cabbies wore them, the fancy ones had huds, head up displays
supposedly uplinked to a map database or some shit but a lot of the time
you could see the pink writhing flesh of pornsofts reflected in their
dilated eyes.


From: schellj@nyu.edu (jonathan schell)
Subject: next piece of filter dreams
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 1995 00:11:11 -0500

I had to chop off two pages so i could fit the damn thing in the window,
here they are


He fed a thou spot into the machine and it spat out a shiny red and yellow
credit card.  He walked into the planetarium, and found himself a seat.
This had always been his favorite attraction, it was a massive dome black
smooth darkness above, nice plush seats.   He found a nicee seat in the
middle but pretty well removed from his fellow carnival goers, once things
got going he usually liked to be alone.  People were generally settling
into their seats and quieting down.  He fished in his pocket for the card,
slotted it and relaxed into the soft firm grip of the seats restraints.
He felt the numbing spray on the back of his neck and tensed a little as
he felt the needle enter painlessly and discharge a liquid cocktail of DMT
and good old old fashion Cocaine into some artery he didnt know the name
for.  The lights faded out and the music came trickling into his skull
from tiny speakers in the seat thumping ecstatically against the bone.
The jets imbedded in the walls of the dome whooshed out a massive cloud of
steam and the show was begining.  A few blue lasers started playing
through the steam, strobing and cutting.  He felt the DMT slither up his
spine like a liquid serpent and sink its teeth into his brainstem,
discharging a dose of bright blue venom.  And he was soaring, the DMT
saturating his optic nerve any illusion of reality was blown aside like so
much match smoke.  It was surging through his eyes and out like a steady
flow of ultraviolet light pumping up into the stratosphere, Like a steady
stream of shattered images searing through his retina and down his spinal
column faster then he could register their presence the music bumping a
swirling tribal helix of beats into his skull like a broken holo projector
feed injected through a needle directly into his frontal lobe like a field
of static in his skull frying his mind.  He thoguht he might have lost
conciousness but he realised he hadnt and that the music was still going
but the lights had just gone out and he was coming down.  The cocaine was
still there like a mental subroutine, protecting him from the crashing
daze, he still could barely see like hed been staring into the sun, his
vision was clouded by the colors in the blackness of the dome.  That was
actually what annoyed him most about his little drug experiments and
excursions into the surreal, afterwards for a week or two whenever he
looked at anything  black or white it would be coated in a layer of optic
static, like sunspots except not spotty just a sort of film of sunspot
material.  Especially now, looking up into the now muffeled darkness of
the dome.  It was like the calm after a storm, he could hear the heavy
breathing of the room projected upwards by the acoustics of the dome but
no one was saying a word.  He felt the seat relax, the soft folds of the
chair loosening amd releasing him from their envelopment, his card chicked
out of the slot and he stood, swayed a touch and pocketed it, the little
digital readout read: 110.00 deducted 890.00 remaining, the time is now
eleven o clock.  he was feeling a little dazed from that, he hadnt done
DMT in almost eight months and forgotten just how savage it was.  He
figured hed slide his ass into one of the booths in the chillout arcade
and snatch himself a drink.  He walked out of the planetarium and into the
vestibule again.  His credit was still riding high and the evening was
proceeding pleasantly, nothing too exciting yet but he was working on it.
He ambled into the arcade, "the blue room" read the holo display over the
gate, above the rotating lettering was a geisha girl with blue hair
dancing with writhing blue streams of propane flame, he watched that for a
sec, rapt untill a disinterested grunt from the guard awoke him and he
shuffeled along.  He located a nice little sit down near the end of the
aisle and slid in his card.  The magnetic lock on the door snapped open
and he stepped in, leaving his card in the jaws of the reader.  He flopped
down in the plush armchair and flicked on the video display, they had
movies, mostly trippy little pieces of renderlicious garbage and music
channels from around the globe.  He punched up one of the cheap russian
pop channels in a window and slid it aside while he scrolled down a list
of beverages, mostly smart drink techno garbage and cheap brands of poppy
beer, he selected spirits and then vodka.  Here it was, he selected an
obscure brand of expensive russian vodka in a nice little chromoly flask,
it would cost him 219.95 but he was feeling extravagant and it would most
likely last him a while.  He punched it and it reminded him of his current
balance as it processed his request.  He tapped the drink windows shut and
selected smokes, he scrolled past all the neato strains of marijuana and
hash and punched cigarettes.  It opened it up and he skipped past all the
ones with dodgy things in them coolies etc. And hit menthols, he ordered a
pack of dunhill menthol lights, thirty bucks with tax wasnt even bad.
Then came his favorite part, He looked up at the ceiling, the cubes were
open and he saw massive cloud of opium smoke drift up from the next cube.
It reminded him a little of youth prison and he didnt want to remember any
of that shit tonight.  He was watching the whooshing network of pneumatic
tubes delivering orders, every cube had a tube and it saved much time,
they were clear plastic and it had a neat effect, all you saw were the
seamless shrinkwrappeed immediately recyclable packs ziý.  His shit hit
the tube bottom with a whamp of gas and the little door opened, he took
out the little blue shrinkwrapped capsule and admired it for a second, it
was a particularly satisfying feeling to hold this perfect plastic object
and know that it was yours to violate and ruin, very empowering, it was
part oif the appeal of the blue room that and the quality of stock.  They
had a really incredible selection, you could get most anything.  He found
the little pull tab and unwrapped the hard plastic egg, stuffing the blue
shrinkwrap back into the tube, he twisted open the egg and took out the
little flask with all the trappings of class, it even came with a little
booklet in english, japanese, german, Russian and mexican telling how fine
a person you were for affording their fine product and what a fine product
it indeed was.  The cigarettes came in a green on white hard pack with
beveled edges.  The chromoly flask  was almost too cold to touch.  He
dumped the packing materials back in the shute as well as the egg.  He
took a swig of the colder then ice vodka and it burned his throat with the
exquisite flavor of expense.  He packed the cigarettes whamming them
against the video screen and lit one up.  He leaned back in the chair and
turned up the music on the tv, it was some russian oppressed looking
mongoloid rapper dropping "fot rhymes 4 the populace".  He puncehed the
time key and a sexy sounding russian personality construst told him it was
eleven ten honey baby.