I’m going to go ahead and apologize for the lack of updates this blog will surely see due to this game coming out in three hours:
Month: March 2013
Radiolab: "Sleep" (The Tetris effect)
Radiolab is my favorite show on NPR. It alone is a solid reason why any politician who wants to defund public broadcasting must never be taken seriously is a fucking moron. In the latest episode of the incredibly entertaining and informative show, the investigators find the most important piece of science literature on dreams in the last forty years focuses on the Tetris effect, the phenomenon in which gamers see Tetris pieces in their sleep. A researcher found that 60% of his test group dreamed about Tetris after playing it for prolonged periods of time.
My friend and I played several hours of Civilization 5 last Saturday and both of us had dreams about the game. My girlfriend admits to experiencing the Tetris effect when she played a lot of Bejeweled. I’ve gotten it from Minecraft and paintball among other things.
The Last Circus, the (not-so) big 3-0, and the brilliance of Lucifer’s Hammer
It would be an event on the same sort of scale as the impact that drove the dinosaurs extinct 65m years ago. If it really is that big, and if the comet were to hit the side of Mars facing Earth (it seems that it might do, but it might also hit the far side), then the blast could well be visible to the naked eye, even in daylight.
The Frighteners is uneven, but worth a watch
One of the reasons I like science fiction so much is I like rules. No, not rules like “don’t swim an hour after eating” or “no running.” The rules I like are more along the lines of “light is the speed limit of the universe” or “Don’t feed them after midnight or get them wet.” Any kid knows Dracula shouldn’t walk around in the daytime unless, of course, he slopped on a higher number SPF. When Asimov invented The Three Laws of Robotics it didn’t restrict his work as one might expect, but set him apart from the rest of the SF writers of that era in a major way. Restraint’s a good thing. You need it in addition to a healthy imagination. Crafting a story should be more like playing chess as opposed to Connect Four.
The problem with ghosts is they have no rules. Silver bullets don’t work and they don’t have a brain to destroy. Did you ever see the 1999 version of The Haunting? Ghosts could do absolutely anything or nothing at all, depending on what the writers needed at any given moment. Man, I hate shit like that. The same problems infect The Frighteners, too, but thankfully they’re fewer and farther between.
The first time I saw The Frighteners I was twelve or thirteen and I absolutely hated it. I’m still trying to figure out why ghosts fall through walls when they try to lean on them, but can walk on horizontal surfaces (at least if it’s on the first floor of a building) and ride in car trunks. And why can some ghosts smack Michael J. Fox around while others get stuck in doors? While we’re at it, why the hell is one of the dead sidekicks cursed to wear 1970s clothes forever while R. Lee Ermey’s ghost can change his clothes just by thinking about it? Speaking of Ermey’s character, I don’t know if I disliked it more when his early scene seemed like an unnecessary (and not very funny) cameo or when the plot curved back around to reveal it was a setup to an ultimately pointless twist.
Let’s get one thing straight: I love Peter Jackson’s work. I really do. I’m not knocking the director and, to be sure, I’m barely even knocking the movie because it’s actually pretty solid in terms of structure and sometimes—okay, rarely—it plays like a bizarre version of Ghostbusters. I was somewhat invested until the tiresome climax which seems to go on for half an hour. And let’s face it, the jokes in the movie feel more like afterthoughts. I have a feeling someone with money on the line called it too dark and hastily told a script doctor to “make it funnier.” As a comedy it just doesn’t work. Having an elderly ghost screw a mummy is a pretty dumb gag, far below the credibility of the guy who made Heavenly Creatures, especially when the ghost is initially turned on by the bone structure in an x-ray.
Oh, and as a horror picture it doesn’t work either.
If you must know the plot, let me rattle it off as quickly as possible. Michael J. Fox is a former architect who had a car crash in which his wife died. The traumatic event apparently gave him the ability to see ghosts (just go with it). His only friends in the world are three ghosts who he uses to terrorize people who recently lost a loved one. You know, this guy just seems like an asshole when I put it in words because then the mourning people typically pay him a few hundred bucks to rid their homes of the evil spirits.
In addition to Jackson I’m also a fan of Jeffery “I gave him life!” Combs, but here he’s more like a Jim Carrey impersonator, not to mention his character is a rip-off of Major Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In that movie there’s a gag in which you think he’s going to torture Marion, but it turns out his would-be instrument of pain is just a portable coat hanger. In this movie the character reaches into his jacket and instead of the expected gun he pulls out an inflatable donut. Yes, hilarious.
That’s it. I have nothing else bad to say about this film. I mean, other than the sound effects of the squirt gun. I’m not sure what was going on in that scene, but—you know what? That’s it. All my complaints are out of the way. Well, okay, except for the fact Michael J. Fox drives like a maniac despite the fact he killed his own wife in a car accident. But anyway, I’ll bite my tongue if I remember anymore complaints from here on out.
You should know this movie looks amazing. Seriously amazing. If you’re not watching it on a projector or an LED screen, you’re likely missing out. The best shots are in the opening reel, but the breathtaking views are peppered throughout. Then there are the special effects which had to have been a nightmare for the filmmakers, but they pay off. Wikipedia says:
The visual effects were created by Jackson’s Weta Digital, which had only been in existence for three years. This, plus the fact that The Frighteners required more digital effects shots than almost any movie made up until that time, resulted in the eighteen-month period for effects work by Weta Digital being largely stressed.
Also worth noting is Trini Alvarado who doesn’t have much to do as the leading lady, but damn it, she should be in a lot more movies. She’s just one of those people you like to look at. Fox, on the other hand, does what he does very well, but he’s not right for this picture, which was his last leading role. As for Jake Busey… well, what the hell can you say about Jake Busey? He’s another one of those people you like to look at and while I didn’t buy his character, it was interesting to see him paired with a brunette Dee Wallace.
Piers Morgan: "I can’t believe I have Penn Jillette defending my church."
While Penn & Teller’s Bullshit was a great show as long as you were already part of the choir they were preaching to (and you took their more libertarian episodes with a grain of salt), Jillette’s public appearances elsewhere are becoming considerably less cringe-inducing to watch. Level-headed debate may do nothing positive for ratings, but it’s what all sides of any argument needs to make an actual point.
I don’t know. I find this video noteworthy simply because I’m so sick of negativity and arrogance in the main stream media. I think we need less people like Bill Maher (who’s far from being an actual skeptic, but seems to claim the title anyway) and Richard Dawkins (too arrogant), and more nice guys like the new and improved Penn, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye.
Video courtesy of the following tweet:
Absolutely stunning: Atheist @pennjillette intelligently defending Catholicism from Piers Morgan’s ignorance ow.ly/it0HU
— Aleteia(@AleteiaEN) March 6, 2013
For better or for worse, you’ve never seen a movie like this (Dreamcatcher review)
Dreamcatcher is a fascinating film from first to finish. I’ll give it that. As terrible as it is, it deserves some sort of praise. Check this out: I’ve seen the fucking thing twice. I haven’t even seen Gone with the Wind twice. When you take the director of The Big Chill, the writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and adapt a book by one of the hottest writers of the twentieth century, you don’t expect to have a bad time.
Lawrence Kasdan said the film damaged his career. Directing a Hollywood film must be one of the most stressful jobs in the industrialized world. All it takes is a single hiccup to turn a hot director into a director nobody wants to take a chance on. On top of that, these guys have to deal with assholes like me who talk shit about their hard work. The fact is they can’t change that, and neither can I for that matter. These things need to be discussed—that’s just integral to the creative arts. If there’s no risk of harsh criticism, what’s the point?
And man, I hate being negative. That doesn’t change the fact that Dreamcatcher is one of the worst horror films ever made, but also one of the most expensive. It’s the Cleopatra of horror films. Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m glad they made Dreamcatcher. The best art is always teetering on the edge of failure. You just can’t make a classic film unless it takes huge risks. Dreamcatcher is one of the movies that fell over the line, but where else can you see what is essentially a big budget splatterpunk novel on film? And let it be known I usually have nothing but praise for the guys who made it. Usually. These are some of the best actors alive and yet some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen.
Seriously, have you ever seen Morgan Freeman so… terrible?
I finished reading Stephen King’s novel the same day I watched Dreamcatcher. While most of us complain about all the stuff a movie adaptation left out, this time my mind is boggled by the amount of stuff they left in. In some places they even added stuff. In the book you don’t see all four of the main characters interacting nearly as much as they do in the unnecessary scene towards the beginning of the movie. There the characters discuss, ironically, movie cliches. I have a feeling there’s a reason you don’t see the characters together as adults much in the book, but I can’t quite put my finger on why King chose to write it this way. The movie seems to confirm that whatever King’s reason was, it was a good reason.
Instead of adapting the book into a screenplay, William Goldman just reduces entire chapters to one-minute (or less) scenes. This makes for one of the most jumbled paces I’ve ever seen. It’s all choppy. Nothing seems to flow. Without flow, you can’t have any expectation of true terror. But even though they crammed too much into it, there are places where they left too much out. My favorite scenes in the book were flashbacks to the mentally challenged kid who the main characters befriend when they’re children. I liked the children. I liked the mother of the mentally challenged boy. Yet, even in the book it seems like a retread of familiar King material and he’s done it better in the past. Still, I wish the movie had focused more on that.
Then there’s the memory warehouse. This part is hard to explain, but I’ll do my best. See, the filmmakers wanted a way to show what was going on in one character’s mind when he was possessed by an unforgivably typical movie alien. So they invented a method of loci gimmick where the camera can visualize his mind as an actual place. The character can even gaze out the window of his memory warehouse and see himself. Which kind of doesn’t make any sense. Actually, when they first introduce the memory warehouse (to the tune of Roy Orbison’s Blue Bayou) I liked that aside a lot. Initially, anyway. Like so many other scenes in the overproduced film, it brushes brilliance just before it overstays its welcome.
There’s also the lack of restraint Stephen King is known for, which doesn’t translate well to the screen. The book is very much about cracking his brain open like an egg and spilling the contents across the page. In other words he lets his imagination run wild. Going back to what I said about risk-taking, this is sometimes a good thing. I haven’t read much more than a third of his bibliography, but even the book is one of King’s weaker efforts so I wonder what drew the filmmakers to it. Perhaps it was the fact most of his other stuff has already been made into movies? I get the feeling the book was so sub-par for King, even the made-for-TV producers who tend to get a hold of his work passed on this one.
If any one thing sums up how stupid this movie is, let it be the scene in the bathroom. I don’t care how much you set up a character’s eccentricities, I will never believe that even the most addicted of crackheads would have made the same mistake for a fix that one character makes for a fucking toothpick of all things. And we all know it’s going to happen, too—a slow-motion shot erases any doubt of that. So where’s the suspense in knowing what’s going to happen?
As terrible as the movie is, I can’t recommend you don’t watch it. I wasn’t being facetious when I said it’s fascinating. And no, it’s not funny-terrible like the movies the MST3K guys rip on, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t unintentionally funny moments. How ’bout the part when a character is skiing very slowly and falls down for no apparent reason whatsoever? Or when Morgan Freeman’s character, Colonel Curtis, sincerely tells Tom Sizemore, “Okay, you just drove over the Curtis line!” I think my favorite part is when one character answers a pistol like a phone and talks to his friend via telepathy. That’s funny.
And now, a word about the ending: What the fuck was that? One gets the feeling that, in typical Hollywood fashion, the filmmakers decided the book’s ending was unfilmable. What they come up with, however, turns out to be even less filmable. And yet they filmed it anyway.
Then: cue credits abruptly. No time for explanations.
Cypher: A Cyberpunk Text Adventure
I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with text adventures. I love them so much I even began to program one when I (briefly) learned how to code a little bit in Python. Alternatively, I hate them so much that, to this day, I think I’ve only completed one and it was a very, very short one. So what was I thinking when I bought Cypher, a modern cyberpunk text adventure that costs $15?
This is what I was thinking: I already own practically every game imaginable on Steam. I needed something new, something different, and something utterly mind-bending in terms of complexity. I know, I know: all of the older gamers gripe about how easy games are today, but I’m about to, too. I recently replayed System Shock 2 and wondered exactly why games are so stupidly easy these days. Even its spiritual successor, Bioshock, was considerably simplified. Simplified means, in a nutshell, less freedom.
And that’s boring. I’ll take getting stuck for several minutes, even an hour, as opposed to the usual gameplay that seems to mimic the tutorial stage from start to finish. And button prompts: WHY?!
So of course Cypher’s promise that you can do anything you want appealed to me the way tabletop RPGs appeal to the people lucky enough to have friends willing to play them. I gladly paid $15 for the promise of a video game experience like no other. I don’t regret spending that money, either, even though the game’s far more complicated than I expected. And I do mean complicated. Like, you have no idea how complicated it is.
Here’s the deal: you’re a data smuggler who lives in a rundown building in the corporation-city NeoSushi. I don’t understand why it’s called NeoSushi, but there it is—deal with it. As far as evoking the feeling of cyberpunk I can think of no other video games that compete. Yes, it comes perilously close to the world of stereotypes, but damn it, as far as video games there really is nothing as perfectly cyberpunk as this.
Which leads me to the first “problem.” This is a game with a very specific audience in mind. Chances are you’re not that audience. I’m barely even that audience even though there have been entire months I have eaten, slept, and breathed cyberpunk fiction.
Before I go any further I want to tell you about all the things I liked: it looks great. This game is sleek and the artwork is fantastic. I love the “feelies” (advertisements and brochures from the game universe that you can print out for added flavor) and the overall feel is great. When you’re not struggling with how to phrase something you want to do, the game really is hyper-immersive. Even so, it’s hard to flat-out recommend it because most people would have no desire to play it. (No, this isn’t a “I’m better than you” argument. If this game had come along just a few months earlier, I probably wouldn’t have been in the mood for it either.)
What this game needs is a firewall for potential players. I’m here to provide you one. If, at any time, you answer “no” to the following questions, just go ahead and close this tab and go play System Shock 2 instead. This may sound harsh to the game itself, but damn it, I really want the people who would “get” this game to try it. I also want the people who won’t get this game (that’s pretty much everybody) to save their money so they don’t give it a bad review.
Cypher firewall:
1. Do you like to read… a lot?
2. Do you like cyberpunk worlds, a la Blade Runner and Johnny Mnemonic?
3. Do you have a mother lode of patience?
4. Can you deal with the fact the developers’ native language isn’t English and this will make for a few grammatical errors and typos?
5. Can you deal with the fact that the text parser is extremely unapologetic at times? For example, I got stuck for several minutes because I couldn’t figure out the exact phrase for getting through a window. Then I found myself stuck hanging from a hover car for several more minutes.
If you answered “yes” to all of these questions then you should probably check out Cypher. I enjoyed it a lot. It really is unique and not just because it’s a modern day text adventure. But damn, it really is insanely hard.
I’m warning you.
Read my short story Fusion
Fusion was originally published in Interstellar Fiction in August of 2012. The magazine’s editors just informed me the exclusivity agreement expired so it’s time to give it a second home on the web (with some very minor, but much needed edits). You can print it out or convert it to the ebook format of your choice. It’s all free and legal, pal.
The story is about a rock star who kills himself, but lives on in cyberpunkish fashion. Naughty words such as “cock” and “nards” lurk ahead.
Read it here and let me know what you think!
Fusion [Short Story]
Fusion
by Grant Gougler
Originally published in Interstellar Fiction, August 2012
We were staying at the Lisboa Casino in New Macao. Despite the sweeping lights and augmented reality, which filled the air around the resort like a laser light show, it appeared to be the offspring of a slum and a skyscraper. I’d gone to bed earlier than the rest of the band and for once I didn’t wake up to find my hand soaking in a bowl of warm water.
He poised himself beside the car, arms crossed against his body, one hand holding the wrist of the other. I noticed the unmistakable bulge of a pistol in the flank of his tuxedo. That’s how I knew it wasn’t just a group of high school kids trying to go to prom in style. So I stopped and rubber-necked with a growing group of pedestrians.
I’m not sure what it is about the careless way celebrities get out of vehicles, but the first thing I noticed about Sandra Savvy was her panties: she wasn’t wearing any. Then I noticed she was staring at me.
The stream of tourists on the sidewalk congested around us as she approached me. I looked around to make absolutely certain it was me she was looking at.
It was.
“Hi,” I said. In the span of that short syllable I actually heard my voice crack.
Absolutely not. I was ready to pack my things right then, leave my friends and family behind, and live as her slave whether it entailed sex or not. Look, I’ve seen celebrities before—you could barely throw a rock without hitting one in New Macao—but this was Sandra Savvy.
Then she removed her thumb from my forehead and showed it to me. It was smudged with ink.
“Someone,” she said, “drew a cock on your forehead.”
My shoulders slumped and I frantically rubbed my palm against my forehead. “Did I get it?”
“I can still see the nards.”
Nards! I hadn’t heard that word since middle school! It was so wonderful hearing it again, from a beautiful woman, no less—a pop star whose record sales made my band look like a karaoke act. I never had a crush on a celebrity until then. Meanwhile, the crowd of onlookers were demanding pictures and autographs, but all that shit seemed to melt away.
“What’s your name?” she asked with a crooked but oh-so devilishly cute smile. She had to raise her voice above the commotion. So did I.
“Max!” I shouted and aimed an ear in her direction.
“So why did you have a penis on your forehead, Max?” she asked, aiming her ear at me, then. Our conversation continued in this manner, like some kind of long lost communication protocol.
“My band mates always play a prank on the first person who passes out!”
“You’re in a band?”
“Yeah! We’re playing the Lisboa for the rest of the week!”
“Huh! Maybe I’ll check it out!”
“Really?”
She smiled at me. “See ya around, Max!”
Her bodyguard ushered her into a fancy restaurant which was crammed between The Oriental and yet another demolition site. I lost sight of her in the bright lights of high society.
After finishing our last set at the Lisboa, me and the band had a drink at the bar on the hundredth floor. David and Tonya were still making fun of me, sure that my encounter with the pop star was a fabrication. As I reached for my rum and coke, a hand intercepted my wrist.
“This one’s on me,” said the owner of the hand. His voice was as severe as his grip. “Would you mind joining Ms. Savvy in the VIP room?”
My eyes followed the arm upwards and I instantly recognized the cornrow wire-net. It was Sandra’s bodyguard.
“Oh, hey,” I said, and I swallowed nervously. “Um yeah, sure.”
David and Tonya glanced at each other and absolutely lost it. They still thought I was somehow making it all up.
Sandra’s guard carried my drink to the VIP area. It was shrouded by fiberoptics, which were draped from a suspended grid. It was like a club within the club.
Most of the guests looked as if they had been born to walk red carpets. And there I was, wearing a pearl-snap shirt and cut-off khakis. I suddenly felt self-conscious of the tiny bald patch where my neural transceiver had been implanted. It was like the twenty-first century’s version of a chicken pox scar.
Sandra waved me over to join her group of friends near a wrap-around couch. One of her friends was a ghost. See, rich people don’t die anymore. They just go digital so they can continue to lurk among us and, you know, ensure living people don’t become as rich as them.
“Max!” Sandra said, kissing me on each cheek. “I’m so glad you could join us!”
“Sorry I’m not exactly dressed for the occasion.”
“Nonsense,” the ghost said in a posh accent. “You’re in a band. Only insufferable business types like myself are expected to play dress-up.”
“Not that getting dressed takes much time for you,” Sandra teased.
“Oh, how I hated physical life’s dull routines. Meatheads never understand the accumulated consequences of your daily actions. Did you know that brushing your teeth effectively removes an entire day from your life every year? I ‘lived’ to be eighty-seven years old—” the ghost didn’t look a day over thirty-five, by the way “—which means I wasted nearly three months of my life simply brushing my teeth.” He leaned forward to shake my hand. I wouldn’t be able to feel it as I couldn’t afford the kind of neuralware that simulated physical feedback, but the illusion looked real enough. “My name’s Peter Dexsung. I trust you recognize the name.”
“And the face,” I said, unintentionally mimicking his smooth tone of voice. Still, I was better at keeping my cool in the presence of male celebrities than Sandra. Dexsung had been—still was, really—one of those music legends who had never picked up an instrument in his life. The man behind the curtain, so to say. The Phil Spector of our times. Thanks to modern technology, he would be the Phil Spector for many generations to come. “Glad to meet you.”
“Sandra wanted to stop by and check your band out. I must say I’m impressed.”
“No kidding?”
“I would very much like to work with you, Max.”
He spoke about getting my band into the studio. Then I shook his hand eagerly, grinning like an idiot. I’m not sure how much I retained during that initial meeting. It was all too much of a shock to think my big break could be so easy.
Then I spent several hours mingling with the guests—or trying to, anyway—laughing and drinking it up. The cruelest paradox, it turns out, is that people who can actually afford to drink all night don’t have to pay for drinks.
“Head swimming yet?” she asked.
“You have no idea.”
“Actually, I do. I’m going to be perfectly frank with you, Max, mostly because of my schedule and the fact that most people like me are severely lacking in the social department. I think you’re cute.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
“Wow. I mean… my mind’s blown here in so many different ways. I don’t even—”
She kissed me on the cheek, but immediately seemed apologetic. “I’m drunk, Max.”
“Me, too.”
“I don’t meet many normal people.”
“Me either.”
“Would you put your arm around me?”
I put my arm around her. I remember thinking, How can I convince David and Tonya this actually happened?
So much of what happened over the course of two years was only because of my affiliation with Sandra. I still hadn’t gotten used to seeing my face crop up repeatedly on the gossip feeds and celebrity sites. Still couldn’t believe people were lying in ambush to get vids of me and Sandra walking down the street or grabbing a bite to eat. To be honest, they really only gave a shit about Sandra. I was little more than a pop cultural aside, a name journalists mentioned just to prove they’d done their research.
There wasn’t a designated paparazzi anymore. The entire world was the papparazzi—any and everyone equipped with two eyes and a neural transceiver. I loved Sandra to death, but our relationship didn’t seem to belong to us. It belonged to everyone but us. We didn’t have ups and downs. We had trends and slumps.
The best place for me, they deigned, was the 2089 MTV Music Awards.
A few weeks after I finished the first tour, Sandra and I found some alone time in her New York City loft, high and dry above the seemingly eternal riots. We were sitting on her bed, looking out at the noticeable curve of the Earth from two hundred stories up.
“Jesus, Max. This stuff is dark.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s good, though.”
Despite the way I felt, I smiled. “Don’t fuck with me. It’s shit.”
“It’s not shit. It’s just not very palpable. Not sure you could get the trendwatchers to go for it. What do David and Tonya think?”
“They couldn’t care less as long as it means more money.”
“You have to show this to Peter. See what he thinks.”
I summoned Peter’s ghost on the holly in the living room.
“Just an idea I’m toying with,” I told him. “Some not-very-commercial stuff that got into my head and I’m not sure I can do the usual stuff until I get it out.”
Rolling Stone readers ranked it the worst album of the decade.
Soon after that I put a pistol in my mouth and blew my brains out.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You bloody shot yourself. What do you think happened, Max?”
“Why am I not dead?”
“Same reason I’m not dead: the studio thought you were too valuable not to back up.”
“You digitized me without my permission?”
“Hell, they digitized me without my knowing it, too. You really ought to read the small print, you know.”
“Why am I happy?” I asked. “What’d you do to my brain?”
Peter glanced at my heart monitor, which looked normal, I guess. “They fixed you, Max. You were sick.”
“I wanted to die.”
“Which is all the more reason to believe me when I say you were sick. Healthy people don’t very well take their own lives.”
I touched my head and didn’t find any holes. “But I’m still here… not like you. I’m still physical.“
“State of the art surgery, Max, believe you me. We used to get rockstars dope and boner pills. Now it’s brain reboots and new bodies. Wasn’t cheap, either, not by a long shot. Forget all that for now. The real question is how did the trendsetters miscalculate Fusion so badly? Christ, it’ll be decades before your career will recover from that.“
I closed my eyes and asked, “Who found me, anyway?”
“Sandra. Poor thing’s traumatized, too.”
I sighed. “Do David and Tonya know?”
“No, and listen to me, Max. No one else will know. Your death never happened. From this point forward, you’re a rehabilitated man. Don’t squander your second chance.”
“I’m not sure when I’m coming back,” Sandra told me over the phone. “Finding you the way I did… I don’t know. It got to me.”
I knew she was breaking up with me, but unwritten social conventions would probably frown with putting it so bluntly following my death and resurrection. I could hear it in her voice just the same: Max and Sandra was over. She never would come back.
This, I was somehow fine with, though. My heart didn’t so much as miss a beat. Peter Dexsung was right: they fixed me in such a way I’d never feel pain or depression again.
C’est la vie, I thought.
Our third album was right on schedule. The critics found it to be mediocre, but the masses loved it. It sold well, but not as well as the first album. This is how it went for our next five albums, with a gradual decline in returns on each one. Our sales eventually declined to the point there was no reason to do another.
David went on to work on the production side of the industry while I got fat and retired.
“Ah, shit,” I said. “Did I suicide again?”
“Figuratively,” Peter said. “The previous version of you drove your career off a fuckin’ cliff.”
I glanced down the length of my body. I was thin again. I’d later find they’d done nothing about my graying hair, but for every other part of me they’d turned back the clock a decade or so.
“Who are they?” I asked Peter, nodding at the featureless human-shapes.
Peter glanced at the avatars. “These are the trendsetters, Max. Not many humans get the honor to meet them in person.”
I nodded a greeting to the trendsetters. They returned the gesture.
“I don’t know if you’ve been following the news,” Peter said, “but Fusion is on its way to going diamond. Rolling Stone just named it the most underrated album of the century.” He shook his head and smiled. “I guess the trendsetters were right about that one, after all.”
I pulled myself to a sitting position. “So the sad album’s selling now, huh?”
I knew exactly what he meant. “You want me to kill myself again.”
Peter wouldn’t say as much in words, but the trendsetters would.
He took a step backwards and tripped over the ottoman. He fell into the cushions of his couch, but couldn’t quite rock his impressive mass up above his feet despite a lot of flailing. The sight of his fat body—my fat body—made me sick. When he realized the sirens weren’t coming, he decided to stop trying to run when he saw me draw my pistol and point it at him.
“No,” he whispered.
I took a moment look around his house. It was so bright and colorful. Like something out of a fucking catalog.
“God, your taste,” I said. “No wonder you had to retire, you fuckin’ slob.” I looked at him again. “You can’t even cry anymore, can you? You’ve got all the emotion of someone looking at a dog turd, not a loaded gun.”
“Can you at least tell me why you’re doing this?”
“No, I can’t.”
I shot him in the face, then shot him in the belly. Just as the trendsetters had instructed. Then I stuffed the body into the trash decompiler and redecorated my home with a baseball bat.
The perky blonde hostess of the show asked me why I decided to come out of retirement after all these years. I took my shades off and balanced them on my leg.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have retired in the first place. That’s what my new album’s about: the things we do that we shouldn’t do.” That was all bullshit, an answer concocted by the trendsetters. The question, by the way, had been concocted by them, too. “I’m sorry to be so vague, but I think it’s best to let people hear it for themselves.”
“So, I understand you’re going to perform something for us today?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What are you going to perform for us, Max?”
“It’s a song called ‘Sandra.’”