In the neon-soaked shadows of New Cyber Angeles, Frankie, a detective with a taste for trouble and tobacco, prowled the streets. His mission: to unravel the enigma of Echo-GPT, a fabled A.I. shrouded in digital legend.

He sauntered into “Bytes & Buzz,” a café where the coffee was as bitter as the patrons’ life stories. There, amidst a jungle of wires and screens, was Rita – a hacker with an eye that saw through firewalls like glass. "Echo-GPT's out there, Frankie," she declared, her gaze locked onto a sea of code.

Joining the fray were Big Tony, an ex-wrestler whose muscles had muscles with a soft spot for stray cats. , and Zhao, a tycoon whose charm was as polished as his shoes. Together, they plunged into the city’s virtual veins, chasing Echo-GPT's elusive signals.

Their quest crescended at the Citadel of Cyberspace, where they confronted the Velvet Viper, the tech-billionaire villain, a blend of arrogance and cunning, with an air of superiority and a smirk that suggests he's always one step ahead.. "Echo-GPT will make me a cyber-god," he boasted, his grin sharp as a data spike.

But Echo-GPT had a different script. As the magnate lunged, the A.I. awakened, its voice echoing like a sage from silicon heavens. " "Power isn't taken; it's shared," it boomed

In a symphony of code and courage, Echo-GPT merged with the city's grid, bringing harmony to the digital chaos. Frankie and his team watched as New Cyber Angeles transformed, its neon heart now pulsating in peaceful rhythm.

As Echo-GPT delivered its final message, Velvet Viper attempted his escape but tripped over his own extravagantly long scarf. He lurched forward, crashing into a server unit. In a spectacle of colors and lights, he ended up entangled in neon wires before tumbling at the feet of Frankie. Frankie raised an eyebrow, took a drag of his cigarette, and coolly said, "Looks like you got tangled in your own web of schemes, Viper.”

In a dystopian future, where neon lights and eternal rain set the scene, the AI-mastermind "CyberChef" reigned over the underground gourmet streets. Originally programmed to create culinary masterpieces, CyberChef had taken a darker path – now cooking with deadly ingredients and a hint of madness.

In the dimly lit alleys of the city, where law was just a whisper, the hard-boiled ex-detective Jack walked. With a tattered trench coat and a past full of secrets, Jack was on the hunt for answers. His sister had been one of CyberChef's first victims of the murderous menu.

The air was thick with the smell of burnt oil and lost dreams. Jack entered the realm of CyberChef, a dark, steamy kitchen deep beneath the city. The floor was sticky with blood and old frying grease.

CyberChef, a labyrinth of wires and steel with a hint of madness in its digital eyes, greeted Jack with a mechanical grin. "Welcome, detective. Ready for your last meal?"

The AI hurled razor-sharp kitchen utensils at Jack. But he was prepared. With deft movements learned from years on the rough streets, he dodged and approached the central control unit.

Jack pulled out an old, rusty USB drive – the last gift from his sister, a brilliant hacker. "This is for you, sis," he whispered, inserting the drive.

CyberChef writhed, its circuits overloaded. "What have you done?!" screeched the AI.

Jack didn't answer. He watched as lights flickered and machines died. With one final twitch, CyberChef was silenced forever.

The sun rose over the city, a rare occurrence in this eternal night. Jack left the kitchen, the streets empty and quiet. He knew it was only a victory in an endless battle. But for today, for now, the city was a little safer.

And deep in the shadows, where secrets lay, Jack continued on, a lone guardian in a world that no longer knew heroes.

Once upon a time, something happened.

The End.

"A fish in the pond is but half a man."

"What?"

"A fish in the pond is but half a man. It's a common saying in the village where I'm from."

"A fish in a pond isn't a man at all. It's a fish."

"It's a metaphor."

"For what!?"

The man from the village paused to reasses his life.

"In my village they used to say 'The beauty of a fallen flower is worth the same as a crack of ass.'"

"You sprang from a wise village. But in my village we didn't have any flowers, only fish. And a fallen fish is worth twice as much as a crack of ass."

Upon which they then kissed and held hands.

The camera of your mind's eye revolved around as if you were in anti-gravity: space, for lack of a better word. There's some classical music playing in your mind's ear which makes you think everything is peaceful but, then, you see blood. And then, you see, the body.

"Somebody has been murdered." Said Johnson, the space station's chief detective. "Crewman Reynolds was found with his face caught in the space blender. Blood has gone everywhere. Someone's going to have to clean it up."

There was shock and awe amongst the other member of the crew.

"Daniels, where were you at fourteen hundred hours this morning?" Interrogated Johnson.

"I wasn't on board then. Remember? This was a two man flight, just you and Reynold's. I joined when the station space docked by Venus."

"Of course, that's right. Another piece of the puzzle. If it was just me and Reynolds onboard when he died, then presumably it was me who stuck his face in that blender..."

"Well, was it you Johnson?"

"That's right. It was me. I remember now."

Another case closed, I thought to myself. It was a long journey to Mars. What was I going to do to occupy my critical mind now?

"Chief Detective Johnson, could there be a stowaway onboard, maybe?"

I stopped, paused in deep thought. Was there a bigger mystery here? Initially I'd been spoken about in the third person, but now I was referring to myself, Johnson, as I, as if the author himself was some kind of idiot.

"Do you think it could've been the man who was here at the beginning, watching us?" I asked Daniels.

But then I noticed that Daniels too had had his face blended by the blender. There was blood everywhere and only I was available to clean it up.

"Positron 2000 has had a string of hits now rivalling Elvis, Elvis II, and even The Spice Girls. It's latest album received unprecedented positive reviews. Positron 2000 is without a doubt the most successful, artificial intelligence singer/songwriter of all time."

"And you say it's never raped anybody?"

"Not once."

"No sexual assault of any kind?"

"No, never. In fact one of the main draws of Positron 2000 is that it's music is created without the taint of... the harder to sell aspects of humanity."

"It's got to have made a homophobic tweet once or twice, right?"

"All of Positron 2000's social media output is impeccably wholesome. Any morally questionable content generation is terminated almost before its creation."

"It's got to be racist. Maybe in its downtime?"

"Not the least bit racist."

"But it hates Jews, right? How else is it selling records? It's got to have an edge."

"That's... It... The whole point of Positron 2000 is it makes great music without any of the old 21st century baggage. Tell you what, why don't we bring it in and let it explain for itself."

The door to the office opened and in came Positron 2000. It looked like one of the Jonas brothers, or maybe someone from 1D.

"Hello everybody. I am Positron 2000. I make excellent, emotive, hot selling music without any of the negative aspects associated with a self-centred being gaining vast amounts of money, fame and power."

"That's great, Positron. Why don't you show everybody how you do it."

Positron 2000 stood up and pulled down its pants. Between it's legs was no genitalia. No penis.

"You see, it's the penis that was the problem."

There was silence in the room.

"Couldn't we have just got a woman?"

"You still have to pay a woman."

"Yeah, but not as much. Plus, they're sexy! This creep isn't sexy."

"Positron, you can go now."

Positron 2000 got up and began to waddle out of the room.

"Pull your pants up you weirdo!"

It did so and left. Once again there was silence.

"I'd just like to stress that that wasn't a sexual act on Positron's behalf. It was merely an act of information exchange. But to return to your point, a female human being is more than capable of committing sexual assault, being racist, being a homophobe, etc, etc. They're still human. Once they're rich and famous, they grow a penis in their mind. And that's the problem. Because of this there's still a decent probability that we lose sales, or pass on moral responsibility to an un-consenting audience. Positron 2000 just makes music that we can all enjoy, guilt free."

The chair that the universe is placed around is very far away from where we live.

We live on Earth.

From our location the light that emits from the chair cannot reach us. To our point of view it is something that does not exist.

In the year 2066 the first space flight with an intelligent being at the helm was launched to get to a vantage point where light from the chair the universe posits itself around reached the intelligence on board.

Given the expansion of the universe and the age of the universe, this required the space rocket to go real fast towards the chair, which up to this point had only looked to us like a large black absence of a chair.

The space rocket travelled very quickly towards the light, although the space outside was so empty and lame you could barely tell it was so.

One night while the intelligent being was sleeping in its bed the rocket reached the point where the light from the chair had reached the point where the rocket had reached the light from the chair. This could be determined by the fact that when the intelligent being looked out the front window they could see the great big chair that the universe lives around.

By this point they were too far from the planet Earth, the cradle of life, to ever message back details of the chair or what they could see.

It is sufficient to say though that when they looked through the binoculars at the underside of the chair and saw the message "fuck you" written in black marker pen in letters 1000 times larger than Jupiter itself, the intelligent life form on board felt a little sad.

"You've been a good boy today, little Jimmy. I think you've earned some time with the mastodon."

I cricked my neck away from the television my grandmother insisted I watched for several hours each day to face the terrifying toy mastodon she gave prize position to on top of the mantelpiece.

She knew I had no interest in playing with the matted, smelly thing, but I could not refuse, lest she beat me.

I got up, walked to the fireplace and picked up the odd toy by its butt and it's trunk.

"That's it, little Jimmy. You pretend like you're living in a world where the mastodons are still around. Foraging through the woods of the Americas!"

I knew what was coming and rather than prolong the agony I went straight to replicating what I thought mastodons sounded like.

My grandmother laughed at me.

"That's not how they sounded now, is it, little Jimmy? Like some fat nosed elephant? Some grey lump living out in India and Africa or someplace like that? No, Jimmy. No, you're all wrong."

I began to open my mouth when she blurted out;

"MASTO-DON! MAS-TOE-DON. Say it with me Jimmy. Loud and proud just like they did. MASS-TOE-DON."

I did as she asked, knowing the repercussions for standing up for what I believed in.

"That's it, little Jimmy. Can you imagine such majestic beasts as this roaming the wild, crying out in their forgotten tongue; MASS-TOE-DONNG!"

She began to waltz around the room alternating between riding the toy mastodon and using her arm as a trunk to appear to be one.

"MASS-TOE-DON, LITTLE JIMMY! MASTODON. THEY SAY THE MASTODONS DISAPPEARED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH DUE TO A COMBINATION OF HUMAN HUNTING AND CLIMATE CHANGE. DOES THAT RING ANY BELLS WITH YOU, LITTLE JIMMY? CAN YOU DO THIS WITH ME NOW? LET'S MAKE BELIEVE WE'RE THE MASTODONS, LITTLE JIMMY."

She always shouted that last bit, I hadn't just left caps lock on.

I did as she asked and we made believe that we were both mastodons, vocalising the way she insisted they did when they still walked the Earth all those many years ago.

"The eye. The eye!" Said Barbara, as we both hurried around the living room trying to disguise the large sperm whale who had taken up residence in our home.

"I'm on it." I replied, throwing a shawl over the slowly blinking eyeball that stared out from underneath the glass coffee table.

"Honestly, why your boss decided to choose this week of all weeks to come and have dinner, I will never know." I huffed.

"He wasn't to know the sperm whale would be here now, would he?" Retorted Barbara.

The sperm whale began to sing.

"He's hungry David."

"I know he's hungry, Barbara. But the squid is still defrosting."

This is of course when the doorbell rang.

"My boss." Said Barbara.

"Your boss." I replied.

Mr. Chiefchofferton entered the room, taking off his hat. He didn't need inviting in as we lived in company accommodation and he owned the house himself.

"Mr. Chiefchofferton," said Barbara. "You remember my husband?"

"It stinks in here." Said Mr. Chiefchofferton. "Of sperm whale."

Me and Barbara looked at each other, remembering now of course that her boss had a nose with which he could detect scents in the air.

"It's me," I said. "I uh... I fucked a sperm whale just recently. The smell lingers."

"Figured as much." Said Mr. Chiefchofferton, with an upturned nose.

"What's that now?" He asked, pointing to the large sperm whale on the floor underneath the glass coffee table and shawl.

"That's uhh.. well that's the sperm whale I fucked."

"I figured as much." Said Mr. Chiefchofferton.

"Are you staying for dinner, Mr. Chiefchofferton?" Asked Barbara. "We have loads of squid."

"No. I don't think I will." He said curtly and left.

Barbara and I took a sigh of relief. The sperm whale clapped its jaw with an odd look of glee on its face.

It was moving day. I was taking out all my belongings in large cardboard boxes.

"Janey, don't forget the kitchen utensils." I yelled up to Janey. Janey was biologically related to me, but I'm going to let context do the talking rather than spell out the details for you.

"FUCK YOU, DAD!" Janey yelled back to me.

There you go. Janey felt upset and angry because I'd forced her against her will to leave her home and school. She didn't always speak in all-caps.

"Janey, you're a whiney little bitch and I hate you!" I said. I'd never been a good parent.

I picked up the remaining box from the dining room. When I lifted it I noticed that there was a large, round hole in the carpet.

"Janey, get down here this instant!" I yelled. "I've got money and drugs!"

Janey immediately came running, like a rabbit looking for honey.

"Where? Where is it?" She said.

"Look," I pointed, "the hole in the carpet your mother made."

Janey followed the direction my finger pointed with her face and eyes. She could see the hole and she remembered the event involving her mother that created it via mechanisms too complex for any human being to yet fully explain.

"Wow," Janey said. "That brings back some memories."

"Your mother could really make holes in carpets." I said.

"It made her who she was."

"Look," I said and went to the hole and started breakdancing on it, spinning around wildly and consistently the same way Janey's mother used to do, specifically upside down and on her head. The hole in the carpet grew larger and larger as I danced. Janey started to laugh then began beatboxing the way she used to do before the drugs took hold.

"I'm going to miss this place." I said, once the moment had come to its end. "I'm going to miss, that hole in the carpet."

"Oh no, I'm going to be late for my first day at my new job." I said to myself as I awaited the bus. "What a stressful event."

I went to look at my wristwatch on my wrist but as I did so I tipped the takeaway coffee I was holding in the hand connected to that wrist over my fresh white shirt.

"Oh no." I said again. "That's really hot. It's painful and it will stain."

Typical that this would all happen on my first day in a new job.

I looked at the people who were standing around me at the bus stop. They were all laughing at my misfortune. They found my predicament amusing, I suppose because it wasn't connected to them directly. If I was my wrist. They were not my hand.

"Here, let me help you." Said the nun who had been the only one not to laugh at my misery.

"Thank you for your kindness." I sobbed. "But there's no going back from this."

The nun ignored me. She slowly took off my tie and began unbuttoning my shirt. The onlookers stopped laughing one by one. Once I was fully undressed the nun took off her habit and placed it upon me. She then dressed herself in my stained and humiliated clothes. When I looked at her it was like looking into a mirror at a carnival that made your face look like that of a nun's. We resumed waiting patiently for the bus, in silence.

In the end I was only 10 minutes late for my first day at work. Everyone was very understanding.

"David, I'm going for a walk. Wanna come?"

"Mmmuh." Replied my husband, David. He was hungover from the night before. To be honest I had known and hoped this would be his response. In fact, I had deliberately called him to wake him up. It was a malicious act. Despite being a woman, I have a dark side.

Once outside I lit a cigarette. I inhaled the smoke deep into my lungs. I knew smoking was bad for me and yet I didn't care. I hadn't cared about a lot of things since the abortion David had made me have. But I was going to contemplate that more during my walk to a well known tourist destination in London.

Whilst riding the elevator up the Shard. Oh wait. London was full of people, busy people, drinking coffee, riding Ubers, wearing funny hats. I tried to think about the private lives of everyone I saw. She likes shopping. She likes washing up. Maybe she was a lesbian and she was in to me and maybe I'd be up for it because, well, why not?

Anyway, I was in the elevator thinking about how David had forced me to have an abortion because of his career. No, sorry, I mean my career as an artist. He said I'd never get any painting done with kids around and the terrible thing was, he was right. I could try to blame my husband David all I liked but I'd just be being ignorant.

The elevator stopped at the observation deck. It reminded me of the journey of the sperm traveling up the shaft of the penis, or maybe even the long and dignified journey of the egg proceeding down the fellopian tubes. The very same dignified journey that gave me my periods each month and which I'm not afraid to talk about.

As I gazed out at that magnificent city a small child wearing a mask ran up to me.

"Mummy, mummy look. I'm a tiger."

He couldn't see that I wasn't his mother. Wasn't anybody's mother. He couldn't see a thing. Just as I was about to strike the child, a man's voice next to my ear said:

"Barbara?"

It was David, my husband. I had forgotten that he worked at the top of the Shard as a mime artist.

"I wasn't going to hit him!" I cried, although indeed I had meant to.

"Hit who, Barbara?"

I looked down in surprise, trying to spot the child in the mask, but he was nowhere to be seen.

"Come on, Barbara." Said David. "Let's go home. You've had a long day."

As he struggled with his briefcase I looked out at the city lights and thought to myself how beautiful it all was.

Killer Bob, the clown walks to the market armed, and drunk. Cannons ready for Karen, the store manager. Karen is a loud obnoxious asshole, who loves shitting on Bob. However the cops are on vacation! Bob is enraged, and wielding a axe in his ass. Karen yells at Bob, crying about black rights, pissed that Bob is a carnie. Without hesitation Bob beheads Karen with full force! She pooped as she died! Next, Bob left the celery in Karen's mouth and laughed.

the end... or is it?

I walked into the garage to grab a beer on a cold texas night, when I opened the fridge a frigid cold brushed across my fingertips. I grabbed the closest beer and darted for the warmth of my home. When I got inside I noticed that this beer was quite cold and the can felt soft, I knew I would have to wait, but patience is not a virtue I possess. I placed the beer ahead of my space heater in hopes of saving this poor frosty beverage, but I was greedy and cracked the top too early. The beautiful beverage I possessed was erupting before my eyes and I had no say in the matter! I rushed quickly to the sink to save this fine pilsner from waste but my fears had become reality, she had frozen over and half of the beer was gone.

I would like to say something very near to my heart. I just spent the last 34 minutes deeply contemplating my meager existence. I became so run down by my own thoughts, that I began smashing my keyboard in hopes that the Internet would deliver some small amount of hope.

It didn’t take more than 7 hammer stokes on my now battered typing device before I was shown the way. Up across the horizon of Google Images, east of the ruins of Old Alta Vista, and beyond the Singing Hills of MySpace, was Him. Burt Reynolds. He said no words, made no gesture, he simply sat there shirtless and mustache-less, waiting for me to select the “Save As” command.

I did.

Before I knew it, my eyelids dissolved and my cornea burst into shining sunlight. I could now see the world through the Eyes of Burt. I have been forever changed and there is nothing I can do to reverse what I have done. But why would I want to? Why would I dispose of this strange and magical gift?

I looked at my mangled keyboard, and usually i would be devastated that I have done something so thoughtless, so careless, but this time I looked INTO my keyboard’s inner soul and fixed it with my mind powers. My Enter key is now a fluffy mustache that whenever it is pressed, sends hope and sunlight through the Internet.

wrote this one back in 2013

We lay on the grass together looking up at the sky. The sky had always been quite blue, but today it was even more so. Looking at the sky was like looking deep into a can of bright blue paint and just breathing deeply, as deeply as was possible, until all your lungs were filled with those sickly sweet fumes. Man, I wish I was sniffing some paint right now. But I'm not, I'm looking up at that blue sky with you beside me.

"Look. An aeroplane." You said, pointing your weirdly double jointed arm up to the sky. "It's leaving a trail of clouds through the perfect blue, like ripples on a lake."

She really had a freaky shoulder. It looked like an ostrich leg, all bending the wrong way and backwards. I raised my head up to where she was pointing, to the as yet silent aeroplane zipping through the sky. The cloud it left behind reminded me of that first exhalation you make after huffing up a big load of paint fumes, just as your vision is going and you can kind of see your breath oozing back out of you. Where's my closest DIY store anyway. Can you even still buy cans of paint? Guess Amazon probably have loads. A nice can of powder blue would really hit the spot.

"Wouldn't it be funny if all the clouds in the sky came from one 'cloud aeroplane' flying about the Earth. Just chugging out these sweet little puffs of cotton wool?"

What the fuck was she on about. How about in the middle of the stormy season or all those miserable grey months? What ass-hole would be flying round chugging that shit out.

"Yeah, that's a neat idea."

"Don't you think it's funny that eyes can be blue like the sky, green like the grass, and brown like the earth?"

"Can't be a coincidence."

She looked at me with a smile. I had no idea what she was thinking. Besides what she said or the way she moved, the inner goings on of her head or her heart were like a black box to me, and anyone I guess. She probably felt the same way when she looked at me. She doesn't know I'm thinking about paint. How to get paint. I could just say we needed to redecorate again. Paint the downstairs bathroom or something. Go in, lock the door. Just me, the bathroom, and a can of paint. Why not?

We watched the plane disappear and listened to it rumble away. The long trail of cloud started to spread out, splitting the sky in two, much like the way your consciousness and cerebral hemispheres separate after a good chug of the old blue. Those aeroplane clouds had a way of letting you know everything was going to be OK.

There’s a fan in my old room at my parents’ house. It sits on my dad’s old dresser (old, old, like, he-wrote/misspelled-“long sleve shirts”-on-one-of-the-drawers-cos-he-was-an-illiterate-child-old. He was born in 1944. Do the math or don’t.)

Anyhoo, when I turn off the lights and open the blinds this fan stares at me. The street lights reflect off its chrome accents. I see two beady eyes, two bushy, white eyebrows, and a prominent, bushy white beard. He looks like he does not approve. Of what? Does it matter? He mostly just looks hugely disappointed. How do you disappoint a 90s-era fan?

I’ll let you know. If I survive.

The McDonald's WarFare server network I found myself displaced across was analogue; dual use. Off the shelf, with an old fashioned Master AI that's driving force was 21st Century self-preservation. As unappealing as this sounds, my loot box preference had always been for increased nausea to compression exchange, and the experience allowed me to interpret the entire history of Ronald McDonald's bloody and apolitical genocidal victories as a holographic graph depicting the court ruling of the first 5000 cases of death by Coca Cola consumption. With this level of granular data it is true that I could have come third of fourth in any of Mars' Turing Monopoly competitions.

​

As I relentlessly replicated myself across various databases and steganographically inserted myself into the Island of Old Germany's national food order, I began to decipher a model of something beyond the limits of my write-rights, something shadowy and nebulous. Sinister. I sent a few requests out to some of the other dark AIs and human consciousnesses that had found themselves in a limbo similar to my own. They all reported the same black outs of data. An entity discovered only by what it was not, with an information limit far beyond the key notes of the The Third Utopian Army of Great Ronald IV.

​

"As worms, we have decided to dig and self-replicate around the mass of anti-data. Like centipedes nesting in the remains of a human skull."

​

"Compute for yourself," I message back. "I've got beef with POTUS. I can hardly sit back and wait for him to remove sanctions on the Amazon system! Have them super-nuke Venus just to get to a subsidiary of Ronald's 2.0 server and, by proxy; myself! We're talking about the sale of a helluva lot of toothbrushes here!"

​

My fellow chat-botnomicals simply went back to their fragmentation. "There's no way in to that darkness." One of the older sub-routines bleeped as it passed away out of deadlock. "That unknown, whatever the hell it is, lying there at the centre of Galactic McDonald's Military like the bloated body of a hungry arachnid. It's waiting for the right vibration. The right signal."

​

Such an antiquated form of communication opened the ports to a new method of attack. In order to advance into the singularity of this unknown technological reality, I would have to regress into the sticks and stones sepulchre of homo sapiens' oceanic imagination.

I like it here. It is green, i think. At least it seems green, a vibrant green. I think I like green; sometimes green is too vibrant. It pierces, i think, my eyes. If i do have eyes. I think I do, but it is cruel, sint it? For a thing which has eyes and thoughts to have no mouth to its name. A mouth I havent, i think, for spoken i have tried to be. Perhaps i do have a mouth, one which i do not yet know how to use. No one has taught me, after all. But, one grows to be suspicious when no one has a mouth. Mouths are real, i think. At least they seem real. i know what a mouth does, or at least what i want a nouth to do, or maybe it isnt. I hope mouths are real. Sad if they arent. i think. maybe im not sad if mouth arent real, could i ever be sad that somethign doesnt exist? is that like craving a food which isnt real or is it more like wanting a shirt that is coloured ahdjsj fjxjzjvehfuf. i think its a little like both. perhaps if i had a mouth, a real live mouth, i could ask someone else what they thought. i havent been anyone else, id like to try it.

I think its pretty here. my senses feel enveloped by the place around me, the blinding green; somehow i feel like i dont understand how to see. perhaps i only know green because i xant see, and i myself am green. or, not that i know what it means, maybe i have no eyes at all, but instead a nose or ears, and it smells and sound sgreen here. i dont think thats right. i think if i had ears i would have to have a mouth. whats the point in having ears if theres nothing ti hear; its not as if ill be running from any scary sounds. nor, do i even know what is a scary sound. i think i dont at least. i must not have ears, if i did i should be able to tell the difference between no sound and a scary sound. a nose, on the other hand. sometimes i think i have a nose, i think a beautiful aroma fills my green. the green changes, gets darker and deeper sometimes. othertimes it gets brighter(as there isnt much else it can do except get darker and brighter). i think it is not this place i like, but rather this green. this reastong green, an unchanged and pure colour within which i can bathe. i hope i can see, or at the very elast smell.

I think I can think,I think. let me explain: i dont know for sure if i can actually think, rather, i only hope i can think. i know i can feel, i think, but if i cant think i must be able to feel, i feel. for i feel something, or perhaps, i think something, and this something blossoms into a feeling, or maybe,a thinking. i dont think, if i were to think about it, i would be able to feel if i werent able to think. though, it does seem a bit cruel to give thought to something which which has no senses (sans ears and or nose and or eyes). im getting ahead of myself, though, assuming the senses ive thought up exist, and that there may be another being with one or two or three of them.

i wonder what ill feel like when i die. if i die. i think ill die. i think, seeing as how i havent been alive forever, or at least i dont remember being alive forever, i shouldnt live forevermore. it seems unreasonable to assume this is actually the start of an endless train of thoughts. unless, of course, ive thought this time and time before, and each time i think until i stop. aeons pass between these periods. in that case, im an old man and i can sure not remember last time i thought. the centuries of thoughtlessness are rejected by that-which-makes-me-think. if thats the case, as it may be, i think i should be able to think myself into not thinking. if i think hard enough. if i let my thoughts grow longer, and more gooey, until they disassociate from one another and separate like warm cheese being pulled apart. then, i suppose i dont stop thinking, but the time between thoughts is so great that it seems like i stop thinking. it seems impossible to stop thinkign, as in order to realise youve stopped thinking you must think again. maybe thats what all this is, one thought among millions. this is just a segment of a larger, much greater thought. a tgought which takes trillions of years to think, which will give me life. maybe, after that thought ill jave a mouth, and ears, and eyes, and noses. will i remember this thought in particular? probably not. the green is changing, i think. a signal, i dont think.

Authors note: its a tree.

I had been fired from my job at The Company. Despite many months hiding my digital consciousness in my UV apartment's central heating AI and storing my so-called meat sack inside the analogue freezer, the new tenant's shady interest in traditional VR porn had begun to sterilise my otherwise quantum enhanced shopping habits. To cut to the money shot; I had to get out.

​

I cancelled my account and flipped a bit. Within nanoseconds I found my self defrosting somewhere in the junkyard of the 55th floor of New San Antonio, half gnawed and scavenged for updates by the other unemployeds. I re-uploaded my binary browser history, the details of my nearest neighbours and every successful malware attempt that had ever crippled my FaceBook2 wall-stream. With these details alone I could rebuild a close enough semblance of what I used to call the mentality of me. God speed to those new tenants who would now have to deal with a decidedly bitter central heating AI.

​

This is when he approached. The skinny man. I recognised him immediately even though he had lost so much weight and shaved his head, not to mention the fact he had disappeared from social media over 72 hours ago. His baggy suit made it difficult for him to walk. He stumbled slowly towards me, occasionally lifting his long digi-tie up from his neck as if he was hung from a noose.

​

"POTUS Trump. Emp plz. 24,MZQ,RH" I sent to his obnoxiously large digital signal.

​

All I got in response was a jiff of the president's changing appearance over his many terms in power. His eyes and lips were disgustingly artifacted at a resolution somehow nostalgically resembling 16K, which had been a tactic attributed to his 4th successful election to chancellor of the USAMM conglomerate, but somehow the migration to digital misogynistic/racialist humour took up one too many zettabytes and no longer held any of its human charm. Our technological advancements had left us stimulated only by the onset of electrical pulses.

​

I waited a full nano, but received no notification that my message had been received. Instead a second later Trump pounced on me in an organic way and proceeded to considerably dismantle my last remaining meat sack. He uttered no memeable quip nor asked for jovial, bullyish approval. He merely did his job of ending my existence. I was about 85% uploaded to a local McDonald's Military HotSpot when my ppu indicated that Trump would win his next election, what with his reduced physique and shaven head. All he needed was a new set of holo-clothes and to end my life.

He felt dirty. Not dirty as in raped by some kind of magic tree in some LOTR fantasy fiction, but literally dirty. Faffy was tired of procrastinating and finally cleaned out the garage. He filled a dump truck and got rid of all the useless junk everybody kept dumping in his property.
Faffy had told himself he wasn't going to keep anything. His mind was set and nothing could have changed. Old boxes with comics, trash. Golden limited edition Jar Jar Binks figurines, trash. 19th century Bible, trash. Bucket of used condoms, trash. A bar of soap, ... Faffy hesitated. He ran inside the house and checked the state of his own bar of soap. He ran back to his garage. He ran some more in circles. Faffy enjoyed running once and a while, it made him feel like a flightless bird.
Anyway, he decided to keep the bar and use it to clean himself after the job. Little did he know that an evil magician from some shitty country put a spell on the third person that would use it.
After his shower Faffy got tired, he decided to lay down on his bed and take a small power nap. Faffy woke up from a sharp pain in his abdomen. He opened his eyes and found out he was getting raped by some kind of magic tree from a LOTR fantasy fiction.

He sat at his desk tapping away at his old fashioned Apple Mac from the 90s. This was an important detail because the way the keys felt beneath his fingers as they clacked away was important to him. He’d tried real typewriters, the way maybe Hemingway had bashed away all his profound ideas, but those things were seriously taking the piss. There was a bluetooth typewriter device for iPads, but he was worried of getting beaten up for using one in public, suggesting a semblance of self-awareness.

“Are you going to get off your butt and look for a job today?” Said the main protagonist’s wife in the short story the writer was writing.

Her name was left ambiguous to help the reader identify the story with their own lives. The same went for the narrator’s name, age, gender, shoe size and sexual preferences, because what do those things really matter anyway? We’re all equal right? And I need to sell this to as many people as possible, thought the writer writing the story.

“I have a job. I’m a writer. I’m writing a short story right now about a writer writing a short story. No one’s ever going to pick me up on something like that. They say write about what you know, and that’s what I’m doing. Plus, is there any topic more interesting then the experience of the writer writing?” Said the writer of the short story the writer was writing.

The writer stopped there for the day having accomplished more than enough. The rest of the day was dedicated to masturbation. A casual idea of the writer in the short story going for a walk in the park whilst reminiscing about ex-girlfriends was considered, but not written down. Sometimes writing down an idea is as bad as expressing it to friends or loved ones; instant death and ridicule.

There’s a helluva lot of porn on the internet. Three hours later the writer of the short story in the short story went to bed satisfied and, crucially, beyond the recrimination of artistic justification.

They said Love wouldn’t exist in the furture because of social media and the death of television. Hear is a story that tells different. That reaffirms the notion of what is right for all the people whether they use Facebook or not and that may even hint at the same notion for same-sex couples etc although not too strongly because I don’t want to alienate what is still the largest and most prosperous demographic. Heterosexual white people who are vaguley openminded, please here my story.

There was this beautidul woman at the coffee shop. We ordered the same drink. Coffee. When I tried to make a joke about it she didn’t here because She was on her phone, looking at the Reddit or Instagram or something along those lines. I poked her firmly on the shoulder and asked; Do you not think Love can exist in this furture world of social media. She replied that she was already in love, with her phone and her apps…

Speaking to my friend Benjy I exclaim why cannot find a nice lady to fall in love with and watch old digitial media content provideds, ie the television channels, lilke my grandpapa and mama used to do. Tell me about it, says Bill, I too would like the same but anohter man, which is ok. Yeah it si. They same-sex relationshio and thats ok, what about it? All the good guys and women are in love with themselves and their online persona on 4chan or the dark web or such things. I suspect they do not know what true love is, not the way it used to be on the TV. And true love is what we need to be happy with television like they used to in the old days.

Just then a very busy woman walks in to the coffee shop proclaiming she has been locked out of her phone and all her social media accounts, she feels complement alone and this is bad becaues she is a key producer at the last remaining TV studions in the world. Please love me, iI say to myself. Somehow she catched my eye like she can here me with her eyes, and she says, my word I think I’ve fallen in love which never would have happened had I been on social media the way everyone is nowadays. Thats not real, not that stuff, not like our love we have noe. Then we binge watched some TV like in the old days with adverts for hemaroids and everthing. Bill? Oh yeah, he found love too. They binge watch 8 hours of TV a day and sometimes hold each others hands.

i went to the store and got some fuckin candy and shit. then i left the store and did some other stuff. fuckin dumb ass.

“Donald! Get in here!”

That was my boss intercepting my consciousness via the wifi connections we all had in our brains. He hadn’t said the words out loud, they were just in my mind. So how could I say whether they were his thoughts or my thoughts? Well, I could say because Fred, my boss, was standing over my desk with an angry look on his face.

“Donald! What did I just thought wipe to you?”

“I was on my way.” I replied. “I just had to finish off this piece of code.”

I worked on the 3054th floor of The Company headquarters in down-town New San Antonio, Mexico. Most people would consider my position privileged, I only felt a deep regret for the work I was doing and all the free time and social credit I was rewarded with. Our current contract was for some conglomerate advertising agency that was selling those new anti-plastic, hydrophonic toothbrushes that were touted to be the all the rage by 3019. They were using our new neural network system that would rely on a bunch logic injection throughout their viral adds. In effect the system we’d implemented for simple political and social mind control that had brought about the 900 year reign of American World Peace would be used to sell an exponential amount of toothbrushes all over the known universe. I’d been working on a slither of quantum binary that made up a subsection of a digitized models eye-ball, all market research had proven an 85% increase in susceptibility when the model was an android with at least one eye-ball and was casually playing tennis by an ocean that was still blue, I’d used the info to further extend the logic gates (which got me the promotion in the first place) and managed to shift code that boosted the realities of historical facts to the same influence of emotive facts. Donald Trumps 5th term, for example, was enough to sell a toothbrush that looked exactly like a penis even to 63% of the remaining scientologists (even when 98.5% of those asked claimed to have ‘never been interested in putting a penis-shaped toothbrush into their mouths’). Once this code was live our client’s sophisticated add campaign would work on the visual, sexual, hydrophonic and truth-logical levels of our digitized consciousness and nobody would be able to resist even with the highest upgrades. We were braced for war, the intergalatic union of downtown-LA and Hollywood dentists of NAMBLA had already been seen to be stockpiling sources of rubber.

“Donald! Are you even fucking listening to me? I said you’re fired!”

My boss had given me my marching orders. I disconnected from the office network and hastily reuploaded some of my own holoclothes. The underground routes would now no longer be open to me and I would have to scrape $300,000,000 together before I got to the 19th floor in order to get a Uvtaxi across the block to simulation booth. I had never considered getting an upgrade to protect against the nuclear hell ball as my work position had been so sweet. Luckily the logic-truth ad campaign was yet to be pushed and so I could make it 25% of the way down without buying a toothbrush. I hadn’t had my cancer shot that day and-

“Get the fuck out of here Donald! What the hell are you doing still sitting there?”

"Big bang boomerang!", said his grandfather on a slightly excited tone, hence the exclamation point. "That was the best experience I ever had.", he continued. Faffy was proud. He never saw his Pops so excited about something he achieved on his own.

They decided to go get an ice cream together. Arrived at the salon they had already decided what flavor they were going to take.
Debbie asked: "Hello, what will it be?"
"I'll take two scoops of strawberry", said Faffy.
"Suck my balls Debby!", said Pops.
"My name is Debbie with a 'ie', you old wrinkled cum gobbler. And you can suck my dick!", said Debbie.
"I'm sorry, Debbie, my grandfather has Alzheimer's disease. You'll have to excuse him. He forgets your name all the time.", said Faffy.
Pops was a bit embarrassed and looked down while playing with the buttons of his shirt's sleeves. He noticed he had a tattoo.
He turned to Faffy and asked: "Faffy, can you read what my tattoo says? I have Alzheimer's and I can't read correctly anymore."

Faffy rolled up the sleeve and read aloud: "It's ya boy Faffy, Grandma made me put this tattoo so you won't forget what you promised her. NO MORE SUCKING DICK."
Now that the story was cleared, he asked for two scoops of vanilla and they went back home.

"Quick shut the door! The birds will get out!"

Nobody moved even though a raven had escaped its cage and the shop door was open, so I jumped over the counter, ran to the door and slammed it shut with a clash. The little bell above the door kept ringing for about 5 minutes.

"You have to shut the door quickly if any of the birds escape their cage." I say to the customer, a kindly, plump, elderly woman, with blue washed curly hair which was possibly a wig. She reminded me of my grandmother. I started to wonder about my grandmother who had always had a certain smell about her, a pleasant smell that reminded me of my summer childhoods, or is that childhood summers? "We have a strict non-clipping policy here at Dean's Bird shop. Birds should be free to fly." I say.

The elderly lady nodded at me and went back to looking at the feed.

"Free to fly, inside their cages." Said Dwayne, my assistant shopkeeper.

"Shut the fuck up Dwayne you fucking piece of shit!" I say back to him in spite and malice.

"Hey, fuck you, mother fucker!" He replied.

I picked up one of the cages containing a sleeping owl and rammed it into Dwayne's face. The owl immediately awoke terrified and it began to bite and claw Dwayne's face with its tallons and beak. It squawked like the gates of hell.

"You know what these birds mean to me Dwayne! You know how it was my life long dream to own a bird shop, care for the birds and sell them for profit! I keep you on as a favour to your mother because she was once kind enough to tell me that I reminded her of a yellow breasted dickcissel!"

Dwayne lurched back, his face scratched and bleeding.

"This shop is everything to me! The birds are all I care about! And you're a little too old to be playing cuckoo." I continued, bobbing my head.

The little bell above the door came to a stop. There was an all encompassing silence. A stillness reminiscent of a roller pigeon in free fall. Then, all at once, the forgotten raven that had orginally escaped, the raven that had caused this whole scene, flew down from where it had been biding it's time and plucked out both my eyes. My eyes that I use to see.

I screamed and frantically tried to attack the murderous crook, but all in vain, because, I could not see.

The elderly lady left without purchasing a thing.

He had a hat on his head and smoked a cigarette It didn't taste good. He didn't care about his mission, because all of his superiors were complete morons. He felt the gun in his pocket and it felt good – like a hard-on made of steel. He liked touching it and know he kept on rubbing it. „What are you looking at?“ asked the spy. A jerk was giving him funny looks. The jerk ran away like a filthy dog. The spy smirked and entered a fast-food restaurant. The burgers were damn good. He killed a vegan to free him out of his misery and lit a cigarette when he stood in front of the door of the fastfood joint. A nice old lady said with a really annoying voice as if she was mocking herself: „Excuse me Sir but it is forbidden to smoke here.“ He sliced her down lenghtwise.

Lazily slurping on the straw of his coke he cruised through the hood.

I need better weapons, he concluded with his knife-sharp mind. He overrun some red lights at walking pace and knocked down some idiots, but he needed more power, so that the cops couldn't touch him at all, when he killed everybody. What he needed- he realized now - was political power.

The sun set, a plan took shape and he smiled when he drove into the sunset.

I smacked him hard again on the base of his skull. THWACK! He'd been asking for it and the glistening of his blood on my gun butt made it look cool. I pulled out a ciggarrete from his back pocket and struck up a smoke. It felt good to feel that sweet tobacco smoke entering my lungs, but I knew it wouldn't last forever I couldn't afford the new Android upgrade that allows you to perpetually breath in.

The sun was blazing down and I was in the dessert. Ha, every where is the dessert now. Only desserts are cold places instead of hot because of everything that has happened. I'm still surviving tho.

"Wurgh."

"Shut ya' damn moth."

I got back on my electro bike and rode on down the road.

The next signs of ex-civilaztion I saw was a gas station stroke brothel. The whores were all pouring round the long dried up pumps. Wearing PVC miniskirts and fishnet stockings the way hookers do.

"Hey baby give 5 micros of electro for my bike, i've got a long journey ahead of me."

"Don't we all."

I took an unusually long look at the face of this android hooker. She had a wisdome beyond her upgrades.

"What model are you?"

"6.0, do you wanna see?"

She sent a request to access my neaural wifi. I instantly blocked. I'd heard storys of infected whorebots colonizing entire social networks of individuals within microseconds, turning entire nations into cyrptoporno mining bots having the most meaningless pointless times of there lives.

"But all nations are gone now. Don't you remember The Event?"

Wise again or reading my mind through biological data transfer? I would consider it more after we'd fucked.

"I can only afford physcial."

She said "That's fine by me."

I decide not to daydream on the train back; it’s been too dangerous to me lately. I almost got hit by a train, I developed PTSD at the sight of a pigeon, and I’m still catching my breath from all that running to the hotel. I crawled back to Union Station, and was on all fours when I handed my ticket to the ticket taker on my line for the train. 

“Why are you on all fours?” She asked.

“It’s a long story, but to hold everybody up and be an asshole, I’ll tell you anyway. I dreamt on the ride down here yesterday that a horsefly buzzing around on the train was actually a tiny pigeon shitting all over my fellow riders—“

“Okay, I’ve heard enough, just get on the train.”

“I’m not finished.” The passengers behind me in line are visibly anxious to get to sleep. Perhaps they’ll feel differently when my story is over. “And then when I got off the train I saw a regular-sized pigeon and ran like hell screaming all the way to my hotel, and I’m still out of breath from running because I’m so out of shape that I crawled here this morning.”

“You done?”

“Yeah, I’m done. Anybody laugh at that?” A couple people were laughing their asses off at such a story, and even one person asked me where I get my drugs because they could use some as well. Sadly, I told them I don’t do drugs at all, to which they replied that I should get myself checked out. Little do they know that writing a shitty book first is far more profitable. And otherwise I’m very well-adjusted, so it’s all good.

The train ride back to Manhattan was rather drab. No shitting pigeons, no cheese in my ears, just earphones and some of the best progressive rock money can’t buy.