South of Maya - Sixth Chapter

VI

 

“Only after we are awake do we know we have dreamed. Finally there comes a great awakening, and then we know life is a great dream.”

Tchuang Tzu, co-founder of Taoism

 

 

       A long chain of pods, select your destination on a touchscreen map, lights in the floor direct you to your seat toward the front of the chain. 

       Pull down an adjustable screen and scan the weather report (Weather service has scheduled a light rain tonight, ending promptly at 8:45 AM tomorrow morning) as the modular train whirls away into a long tube whose walls flash past for long minutes before the centipede splits apart, your group of pods entering a tunnel to the left, another detaching from the back and flashing off to the right.  After many of these branches, your individual pod detaches from a diminished chain and emerges up out of the ground into...

       The area surrounding the Western edge of the city resembled, to the unfamiliar eye, a tangled cluster of vines built to the scale of giants.  Sinuous transparent “trunks” became micro-arteries of the tube network, so this pod and others streamed up and down like quicksilver sap.  Above, the trunk environment unfolded into thousands of silvery “leaves,” each an individual residence, each catching sunlight to power its internal electronics. 

       The ground below and between these trunks sorted into a myriad of brilliant gardens interspersed with fountains and ponds and recreational fields marked off in triangles and rectangles and circles, with small groups of people engaging in confusing competitions that were familiar to Mann’s host brain.

       As the pod entered the trunk and became an elevator to his residence, Mann wondered with amusement if the overlords “above” might want to harvest the ideas for new sports.  Then, abruptly, a round door unfolded in the side of his pod, and he found himself standing on a carpet facing a room that stretched out forever, across a wide meadow toward a spectacular mountain scene, with a waterfall cascading off the upper slopes into a river which appeared to flow across his feet and through the wall behind him.  It took him long moments to realize that the far wall and floor were a video screen.

       Searching his host’s mind for guidance, Mann raised his hand and the screen instantly became a news report, which consisted of dire warnings of imminent global conflict, the latest diplomatic reports and military movements, a report on weapons research whose advancements might frighten the Other Side into submission.  His host mind seemed to be programmed to dismiss the warning with weary cynicism, so it was an effort for Mann’s tired awareness to force his ears to focus on the words, and ponder their implications. 

       He raised his hand again, and the wall became a path deep into a dense tropical forest.  Another gesture, and the floor opened up and swallowed a reclining couch and several chairs, while other parts of the floor delivered an unfolding table with chairs around it, and several couches facing a large coffee table.  Another gesture, and luxurious sleeping cots folded out of the walls.

       Mann let his feet guide him to a bathroom dominated by a hot waterfall cascading into a steaming pond large enough to accommodate a bull elephant, then to an exercise room with mirrored walls, filled with mysterious isotonic gadgetry that he intended to explore later.  Through a door, he entered a library cum cinema cum sound chamber with streaming access to holographic movies, musical performances and a direct connection to the literary resources of the planet.

       Mann, hungry, began searching for the kitchen, which turned out to be a small nook that was strangely missing anything resembling a stove or refrigerator.  The memories of his host mind led him, instead, to what appeared to be a soda fountain dispenser built into the wall, next to a small shelf of glasses.  A screen displayed a bewildering list of what appeared to be ingredients that he could include in his drink, he touched a few buttons and filled a glass with a blended mixture of the nutrients that a human body requires, whose recipe and flavoring could be adjusted using a touchscreen above it.

       The “meal” tasted like a thick beer, which Mann downed quickly, alleviating his hunger but not his appetite.

       Then, more curious this time, he touched the screen experimentally, making adjustments, following instincts.  This time, the fountain produced a mixture not unlike a red wine which compared favorably with some of the better wines Mann enjoyed on his German and Japanese postings, with a smooth finish.

       He carried the glass out to the retractable balcony, gazed down at the sporting activities below, and considered the possibility that the next 40 years might be bearable after all.

 

 

 

 

VII

 

“The Implicate Order of the universe has been recorded in the complex movement of electromagnetic fields… and in principle enfolds the entire universe of space and time in each region… The totality of the movement of enfoldment and unfoldment may go immensely beyond what has revealed itself to our observations. We call this totality by the name holomovement.” 

Nobel Laureate David Bohm

 

 

       Mann had no idea what he was looking for.  And he was becoming impatient with himself.

       As he pushed and jostled his way into the city crowd at the base of the towers, Mann experimented with his mental muscles.  He reached out with his mind and touched what he thought might be the interface, feeling its slippery surface carefully, trying to determine how best to send a message into (through?) it. 

       Holding the mental contact, he tried to leap up twenty feet in the air to touch the bottom of a bubble transportation vehicle as it whizzed by.  But the simulation applied the force of gravity to his simulated body with the same impartial rigor as everyone else’s. 

       He willed a sandwich in his hand, but nothing appeared.  He and everything around him were forced to obey the internally consistent laws of physics that had been built into this reality by the gods above, who copied the handiwork of their own inscrutable deity. 

       He was irrevocably here, in this world in a box.

       And no contact from Gandhi and Washington, wherever they were.

       The cityscape beyond the edge of the ramp reminded him more and more of Dubai in its pretension to be the first city of the future, and there was something of Mumbai, or perhaps Calcutta, in the visible disparity between the gleaming towers and the older structures huddling at their feet.

       He leaned harder on the interface, mentally framing his request, remembering Westerly’s warning.  Where could he find a connection with whoever was living below the surface in this large city?  Who would give him an unfiltered view of what was really going on?

       He felt almost as if he was getting his request through when his concentration was interrupted, annoyingly, by a voice. 

       “Hey, fella.  You look lost,” the voice said.  Mann looked around sharply, but nobody in the crowd seemed to be giving him their attention.  He took a step down the ramp. 

       “I’m talking to you.  You have a name, don’t you?”

       Mann whirled around, peering suspiciously into the faces of the people around him.  An emaciated dog with white-gold fur stood near his feet, looking up at him with its tail twitching.  Mann bent down and patted the dog’s head and then turned away.

       “That’s it?  Touch and go, as they say?  Come on; I thought we had a connection here.”

       Mann turned back around.  The dog was still there. 

       The dog opened its mouth.

       “You seem like a nice guy,” the dog said to him.  “You have a good smell.  I could see the two of us together.”

       Mann stared at the animal for a long second. 

       “You can talk?” he said finally.

       “That’s not a problem for you, is it?  I could be quiet, if you wanted.  I’m pretty good at being quiet.  In fact, just yesterday, I think it was, I--”

       “How are you doing that?” 

       The dog wagged its tail.

       None of the people walking by seemed to notice this astonishing conversation.  After a moment, the dog motioned with its head that they move closer to the railing.

       “Okay, I’m a little bit confused,” Mann said, stepping off the rampway.  “Can all dogs talk here?”

       The dog sat down and stared at Mann’s face curiously with its head turned first to one side, then the other.  The body language was eloquent: What planet were you born on?

       “You’ve been genetically modified,” Mann said, more to himself than the dog, rummaging through the unfamiliar and poorly-organized memories in this brain he had inherited.  “Pet owners of the future will desperately want to communicate with their pets,” he added.  “A huge market; the first real commercial use of genetic modification.  I should probably collect how this is done.”

       He looked back at the dog speculatively, his mind still troubled by the... by the apparent realness of this universe in a box.

       “Can you remember yesterday?” Mann asked the dog.

       “Yes,” the dog answered promptly. 

       “What do you remember?”

       “I remember that I was hungry.”

       Shaking his head, Mann stepped back on the walkway, which carried him toward and finally into a broad glass-enclosed hallway with floor-to-ceiling screens on either wall.  Whenever someone passed, a large panel on the wall would light up with a hopeful computerized image of an attractive woman who would ask what the pedestrian wanted to purchase.  Somewhere ahead, his host mind recognized a transportation hub.

       “So what’s your name?”

       Mann looked around, startled, and saw that the dog was matching his step.

       “You don’t give up, do you?”

       “That’s a very strange name.  Ha, did you think that was funny?  I can be amazingly entertaining whenever you need cheering up.  Aren’t you going to ask me my name?” the dog asked after a moment.

       As he looked down at the dog, an unfamiliar emotion intruded on--clouded the clarity of�"Mann’s thoughts.  He wondered where the dog slept at night, and then pushed the thought away impatiently.  What could be less relevant?

       “Okay,” Mann said, turning right and following a downslope.  “Tell me your name, and then I have to go.  I’m--kind of busy right now.”

       “What would you like my name to be?  It could be anything you want.  I can answer to anything that pleases you.”

       “How about Bowser?”

       “That would be unnecessarily cruel.”

       “Jack?”

       The dog fell silent.  “Kind of exotic,” it said after a moment.  “But I could work with that.”

       “Maybe you should tell me your real name.  And then--”

       “I know.  And then you have to go.”  The dog lowered its head.  “Haven’t you even thought of taking me home with you?  Am I that awful?”

       Mann stopped.  The feeling rising up in his chest was so strong that it felt like his thoughts were drowning in it.  He took a long breath and allowed himself to experience the sensation more fully, familiarizing himself with the enemy before he crushed it back down into his breast.

       There was a word for it.  It was called empathy.  A strong emotion that sat heavily in his chest.  He had no time for it now.

       He looked down at the dog again.

       “Let me guess; you’ve been homeless and wandering the streets since you were born.” Mann said, his voice more gentle than he intended.

       The dog swallowed, swallowed again and looked up hopefully.  “I could be yours,” it said earnestly, making eye contact and holding Mann’s gaze with its brown eyes.  “Just say the word.  Excuse me for saying so, but you look to me like the loneliest person I ever saw.  I could be just what you need.  Plus I know my way around.  You look to me like you haven’t a clue where you’re going.”

       Mann reached down and touched the place behind dog’s ears, and the dog moved into the touch, turning it into a caress.  Mann kept his hand on the dog’s head, scratching behind the ear, and the dog closed its eyes appreciatively. 

       The feeling was stronger, and Mann realized that the interface was contributing to it somehow.  It was telling him something.  What?  This was exactly the opposite of what Mann intended.  What was happening to him?

       “Hey, what about us?” a rough voice called out from behind them.

       Mann whirled, already chastising himself for being so unaware of his surroundings.  A dozen dogs had materialized behind him, representing every possible shape, size and color combination--thin faces and thick jowly ones, tiny and huge, dark, mottled, spotted--the pack faced him with visible hostility in every body posture, the smallest ones looking the most ferocious and ready to attack.

       “Hey, come on; give a dog a break,” the dog called out in a whiny voice from Mann’s side.  “He’s mine.  I saw him first.”

       “Yeah?” one of the dogs--bulky as a St. Bernard, with the face of a wolf and a curly tail--answered with a visible sneer.  It slowly stepped forward with surprising grace, and the dog at Mann’s side cowered.  “What if I decide he’s mine?  Or maybe he’s nothing but food.”

       “You can’t have him.  Please don’t screw this up.  Please--I like him.  I think we could be good together.”

       “I think maybe, for the first time in your punk life, you should shut the hell up.  You’re in enough trouble already.”

       “For doing what?  Finding a home?  Isn’t that what we all want?”

       The lead dog snarled, and his teeth glittered in the sunlight through the glass roof.  It took a step forward.  “Right now, the only thing I want to do--”

       “He’s right,” Mann interrupted.  “I’m his.”

       “You stay out of this,” the lead pack dog said without looking up.

       It took another step forward, and looked up with evident surprise when Mann moved over to block its path.  Instantly the pack of dogs stiffened. 

       “Well, aren’t we the brave one,” the dog said, regarding Mann languidly with visible contempt.  “Or are you saying you’d rather die than take this stupid mongrel home with you?”

       “I’m saying,” Mann said calmly, “that you should go away and leave the two of us alone.  Both of us,” he emphasized.

       The dog snarled again, and their eyes locked for a long second as Mann’s simulated brain ran quickly through a rainbow spectrum of emotions, from delicious, unfamiliar, giddy levels of fear that he filed away for future analysis, to a nervous uncertainty about the capabilities of this poorly toned body he inhabited, to a rush of physical knowledge that seemed to flow into his muscles and veins through the interface, a rapid download of decades of the most advanced martial arts training his home world had to offer, settling with growing certainty into a body that was hardly more than a skeleton.

       The last emotion in the long sequential journey, the place where his mind ultimately rested, was total confidence and a clear mind.

       The other dogs would attack as a distraction, while the lead dog, the only truly dangerous one, would go for the kill.  Therefore, Mann needed to kill the lead dog immediately, before the others had a chance to join the attack.  There would be a bit of damage to his body, but his mind had already discounted the physical price he would pay before the other dogs ran off.  At a glance, Mann recognized a dozen ways that this dog could be killed with his bare hands.  Then his mind moved on to the rest of the mob, which of the animals he would disable first and which he would dispatch at his leisure if they persisted in the attack.

       But--and here again, this unfamiliar emotion that had no place in the cold calculus of the situation at hand--he felt a gentle regret at the idea that he would have to be the one to end this unhappy creature’s life.

       He shook it off and stepped forward, close enough that his next step would be an attack.

       Suddenly the dog behind him called out: “Don’t kill him!”

       Mann and the lead dog both stopped.

       “Which one of us are you talking to?” the lead dog asked after a moment.

       “My new master, you idiot.  Listen, he’s not really a bad dog; he doesn’t deserve to die like this.  Yeah, if you’re starving and he’s merely hungry, he’ll take your last bit of food without any thought or concern, and if you’re cold and you find a warm place, and he finds you, he’ll kick you out, and if you�"”

       “Can’t you shut up already?” lead dog demanded, sitting back with a visible shrug of indignation. 

       “He’s not as much of a monster as everybody thinks he is, most of the time, anyway, or at least I�"”

       “Maybe you really ought to stop talking,” Mann added.  The confrontation had passed.  The other dogs relaxed.

       “I’m his,” Mann said again, his voice more gentle than he intended.  “You all can go now.”

       The lead dog continued to stare into Mann’s eyes.  A dog’s survival depended on its ability to accurately evaluate the capabilities of any potential opponent.  Size and strength could always be misleading, so the dominant instinct, evolved over evolutionary millennia, was to assess the potential opponent’s confidence level.  What did IT know about this prospective confrontation that the dog did not?

       The dog opened its mouth to say something, but Mann shook his head imperceptibly, holding the other’s eyes with his own.

       Abruptly, the dog turned away.  “You can keep this loser,” he called over his shoulder.  “What?” he said as the other dogs stared at him.  “Come on.  We’re wasting our time here.”

       As Mann watched them walk down the ramp, he was aware of applause rippling through the circuits of the Synchronicity.  He watched the dogs vanish into an opening he suspected a human would have trouble fitting through, and with an effort, he cleared his mind, stilling the babble of many minds so he could consciously direct the rest of the download.  He would need every one of his skills in this new place.

       “Whoah,” the dog was saying at his side.  “You owe me big-time for that perfect bluff.  I mean, I just saved your life there, and I’m still amazed that he bought it.  Seriously; you could have been eaten alive.”

       “It’s pretty tough out here on the street, isn’t it?” Mann said, reaching down to touch the dog’s head.  He felt that same deep twinge almost exactly at his center of gravity. 

       The dog looked up and met his eyes for a long searching moment.

       “You have no idea,” the dog said.

 

�"�"�"�"�"-

 

       “So when do you think we should eat dinner?” the dog asked. 

       “You’ve eaten four times already, and we’ve been together less than two hours.”

       “Those were snacks.  I’m talking about a real meal.”

       Mann looked around.  He was trying to identify street level among all the different layers of the different buildings.  Finally he realized that there WAS no street level, per se, in this place called Aurora, and let his feet guide him, walking like a tourist.

       “We’ll go to my place in a while,” Mann said.  “I want to explore a little first.”

       “What do you want to see?  I know this town inside out.  You want a nice alley to pee in, where there’s a thick sediment of garbage?  You want to know where the tastiest rats live?  I probably know every garbage bin in town; I could give you a tour.”

       Mann stopped at the open entrance of what appeared to be an art gallery.  The walls were covered with strange, disturbing pictures of geometric designs shattering spontaneously into chaos.  Inside, he saw smooth stone sculptures of bodies half melted and screaming in silent agony.  Above him, on the giant cyberscreen overlooking the street, news commentators talked unemotionally about the threat of war, but none of the pedestrians seemed to notice.

       Always before he had started with a briefing, a basic understanding of the people and culture.  Here, he would have to build all that himself, and he didn’t have a clear idea where to start.

       “Tell me about the people in this city,” he said.

       “What about them?  As far as I can tell, they just walk around giving off the scent of fear.  They pretend not to notice me.  They throw away a lot of good stuff just because it has a few maggots crawling around on it.  I think--”

       “Tell me about the fear,” Mann said.

       “We dogs have a lot of names for what you call by one word,” the dog said.  “There’s the fear where you pee all over the sidewalk and you think you’re about to die.  There’s fear that comes when you think that something you really want or need is being taken away from you.  You can smell a different fear when you walk up to a stranger and she thinks you’re going to bite her.  There’s fear of the unknown, like when you stand at the doorway of a very dark building and you hear something scuttling around and your imagination starts to play tricks on you.  And then there’s a vague dread that lives in the back of your soul.  That’s what we smell on the humans wherever we go.

       “For how long?”

       The dog dropped its head, the equivalent of a shrug.  “As long as I’ve been alive.  It’s just a background smell to the city, so familiar that nobody talks about it.”

       The screen overhead showed a hand-laser weapon that was being tested by the military.  Mann watched it thoughtfully.  It was an example of the technology he was expected to bring back to his world.  At the same instant, his mind wondered how he might penetrate whatever wall of secrecy the military had thrown up around its various inventions, and whether it would be a good idea to introduce such a thing to his world’s catalogue of brilliant ways to exterminate other people.

       “I need to get to a place where strangers talk to each other,” he said to the dog.  “Where do people go to have fun?”

       “You mean like sporting events where they smash into each other like idiots?  Or the quieter kind of fun where they drink until they’re too stupid to notice how unhappy they are?”

       “Music,” Mann said after a moment.  “When they open the door, and you hear music come out.”

       “There’s too many of those to count.”

       “Someplace where there are a lot of them.  Within walking distance.”

       The dog immediately led him onto the walkway, and after a few minutes, they were moving back down again. “I’m not sure what goes on in this place,” he warned his master.  “They never let me inside.”

       “I think I’ll know it when I see it.”

       As the dog led him off the ramp into a wide space between buildings, Mann allowed his mind to reach once again into the interface, testing it like an unfamiliar muscle.  Then, slowly, gaining strength, he exerted his will, tried to formulate what he needed even if he wasn’t sure himself what it was.

       Nothing.  Nothing again.  Then, suddenly, he felt something give, painfully, deep in his psyche, a pulled muscle in his mind. 

       His eyes swam, and then he realized that he was looking up at a garish hologram extending into the sky above a low, squat building so nondescript that in his world it could have been a bowling alley.  The hologram, the equivalent of a neon sign in his world, was a shimmering silvery image of a man and a woman dancing in a way that would make a grandmother blush, with glittery images of drinks and bottles bouncing around like the little balls in a sing-a-long. 

       A dance club?  A bar? 

       A place where conversation was expected, where strangers met on equal terms.

       Perfect.

       Silently projecting his gratitude to the interface, he stepped toward the entrance. 

       “Wait here,” he told the dog.

       “How long?”

       “I have no idea.”

       “Good enough for me,” the dog said quickly.  “I’ll check out those guys who are waving at you.”

       “Who?”

       “Hey.”

       “What?”  Mann turned, squinted, and finally turned his face toward the darkness of a crevasse between buildings, where a hand gestured toward him.  He shook his head and took a step toward the club.

       “Hey, I’m trying to help you here.”

       In spite of himself, Mann stopped.  “Help me how?”

       “You’ll never in a million years get into the Misanthropolis looking like you do now.”

       “Why not?”

       “Yeah, why not?” the dog echoed.

       “If you don’t believe me, try.  But you won’t get a second chance.”

       Mann stopped and assessed the scene at the doorway.  Two crude-looking muscular guards were turning away two-thirds of the people who approached the door, seemingly at random, not unkindly.  The others were nodded inside with hardly a glance. 

       Once, in what the locals still called Ossi even though it had been 40 years since the unification, he had been trailing a young man who sold very sophisticated explosives on the black market.  The young man had walked into a converted industrial plant-turned-nightclub known as Berghain, but when Mann tried to follow, the people at the door had denied him entrance.  He never found out why.

       He looked back at the alley.

       “Is it safe for me to go in there and talk to these two?”

       “If I’m with you,” the dog said.  “I can smell fear on them.”

       “What would you do if they tried to kill me?”

       “Bite their testicles off,” the dog replied readily.

       “What can you do for me?” Mann said to the alley.

       “We understand the code.  We can get you inside.”

       “How much?”

       “Fifty.”

       “Fifty??”

       “Trust me, once you get inside, you’ll realize it’s worth it.  There’s people who’ve been trying for years.”

       Mann tested the interface.  He felt drawn to the club, although there was no clear revelation telling him why.  Warily, he approached the dark space between buildings.  Two indistinct shadows looked him up and down.

       “What do you think?” one of them said.

       “Those eyes,” the other said.  “They talk to me.  They say: police official, guardian of the public order.  The way he stands: paramilitary.  The clothes say he’s a voyeur sent by the Synchronicity for their vicarious pleasure.  And then there’s the dog.”

       “What about the dog?” the dog demanded indignantly.

       “Maybe you should stay out of this,” Mann said warningly.

       “I could stay out of it, sure.  See?  Not a word out of me.  Until you say the word, I’ll just shut up and--”

       “I think we can help him.”

       “I disagree.”

       “What the hell are you talking about?” Mann blurted out in exasperation.

       “We guarantee success; otherwise you get your money back,” one of the shadows explained.  “We’re trying to decide if there’s any hope for you.”

       “First thing you do is take off that robe,” the other shadow said.  He pulled off his own shirt.  “Put this on.  No, don’t tuck it in--for god’s sake.  Are you sure about him?”

       “What about his pants?”

       “That’s not the problem.  Here--”

       The first shadow stepped forward, and suddenly Mann felt a terrific explosion across the side of his face.  The next instant, he was holding both shadows by their necks, examining them coldly as they gasped for air.  His face stung, and he could feel the bruise forming along his cheekbone.  A trickle of blood ran down the side of his mouth.

       The dog growled.

       “It’s--the--only thing--” the first shadow, who Mann could see clearly for the first time, was gasping.  He released his grip a bit, disturbed by the weakness of his hands.

       “He was helping you,” the other one, shorter, with stringy blond hair nearly to his waist, was forcing out through his constricted throat.

       “How is hitting me in the face going to help me?”

       “Yeah.  How is--”

       “I’ll handle this, if you don’t mind.”

       “He’s going to handle this.  Answer my master, or I’ll have your testicles for dessert.”

       “I just took that--straight shine--off of you--is all.  It was all I could think of.”

       Mann released them and turned away.

       “Wait--”

       “What?  You want to hit me again?”

       “I want you to rub some of the blood on your sleeve.  When you walk up to the door, whatever you do, don’t make eye contact with the guards.  Whatever they ask you, tell them it doesn’t matter to you, because you’re going to die tomorrow anyway.”

       “I’m going to what?”

       “He’s going to what?”

       “I told you to stay out of this.”

       “If you’re going to die, I want to know about it.”

       “It’s just what he’s going to say.  He isn’t going to actually do it.  Why am I talking to this dog?”

       “Say it like you believe it,” the shorter one said.  “Tell them this is the last day of your life.  If you can say it like you believe it, then you’ve got half a chance.”

       Mann gave them both a long appraising look, and turned to go.

       “Didn’t you forget something?”

       Without turning, Mann pulled most of the money out of his pocket and dropped it on the ground. 

       “Stay here,” he said to the dog.  “Don’t bite anybody,” he added as an afterthought.  He walked up to the guards at the doorway, who were politely, even kindly, telling a young couple that it didn’t look like they were going to get inside tonight.  They said the same thing to a group of men who were next in line.  Mann walked around the line, but the doormen turned away, ignoring Mann completely.

       “What about me?” Mann said after a moment.

       Both of the guards turned.  They looked him up and down like dueling X-ray scanners.  Their eyes lingered on the expanding dark bruise on his face.

       “Beat it,” one of them said.

       Mann shrugged.  “I’m going to die tomorrow anyway,” he said.  He turned back to the street.

       “Hold on.”

       “For what.”

       “This is your lucky day.”  With a slight bow, one of the guards stepped aside.  “Your last day should be a lucky one.  Right?”

       Mann shrugged.

       “It’s customary to say thank you.”

       Mann shrugged again, and pushed his way through several layers of hanging strips of dark fabric, like Arjuna entering the Khandava Vana.

       He had no idea what to expect, and therefore had no expectations, but even so he was shocked by the mind-shattering chaos that surrounded him the instant he cleared the fabric door.  The roar of the music, a pulsing beat that found its way directly into your muscles, driving the urge to dance, a purely utilitarian dance beat without melody or--

       It took a long moment before Mann’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and swirling chaos, but finally he was able to make out the fact that he was in the middle of a crowd of barely-dressed men and women writhing in what seemed like a parallel dimension made up of flash and glitter as music pounded the air from everywhere at once.  He realized that all the light in the room was coming from the clothing of the women, which glittered over their breasts and loins and covered little else. 

       He pushed timidly out to the edge as couples of all genders performed simulated sexual activities imperfectly visible in the intermittent pulsing.  With an effort and a test of his balance, Mann was able to seat himself at an empty table with partially-emptied glasses all over it. 

       His face throbbed.  He touched the expanding bruise lightly with his finger, realizing that it was nothing more than a figment created by the internal logic of the simulation.  But the insistent pain felt real, solid, strong on his face, and it grounded him in this immaterial place and time.  With the pain came a heightened awareness of his surroundings that helped convince his mind of his physical self in a way that somehow felt deeply satisfying�"and, on balance, when the net impact of the pain was subtracted from the satisfying sense of being, the result was more positive than negative. 

       Was this the recipe for masochism?  When a certain degree of physical pain was linked in one’s mind with a greater degree of emotional pleasure?

       The music throbbed and pulsed, pure rhythm.  It was, he decided, a more insistent relative to the techno music he had heard in clubs in his own reality.  Purely functional, every instrument functioning like a drum, pounding out a rhythm that somehow passed directly through and beyond his higher consciousness, tapping into and awakening rhythms in the musculature in the most direct possible way, like a drug injected into his body, bypassing his digestion system.

       A tall woman with a voluptuous physique, wearing what appeared to be a flashing G-string and a series of feathers across her enormous breasts, danced over and touched her lips with her finger.  He stared at her blankly.  After a moment, she danced off with a disapproving backward glance.

       As Mann watched the dance floor, his eyes began to sort out the chaos.  The scene also told him where the long evolution of civilized music was going, back all the way around the bend to its pre-civilized origins.  Music was always fundamentally an accessory to dance, and dance was always fundamentally an accessory to the libido.  Whenever music�"or, he supposed, also dance�"strayed too far from facilitating the libido, and tried to assert its independence, it lost its fundamental relevance and much of its power, a dissociation of musical sensibilities…

       Mann closed his eyes and quieted the aimless babble, not for the first time cursing this undisciplined mind he had inherited as the pulse and rhythm came to a climax.  The lighting in the room shuddered with simulated orgasm, and he felt a small answering shudder in his own body.

       When Mann opened his eyes, a couple was disengaging themselves from the crowd.  With an empty mind, he watched them tumble with visible weariness into chairs at his table.

       The man, raven black hair cascading around his shoulders, topped with a hat like a fez adorned with feathers, gave Mann an appraising look, his mouth contorted as if all the muscles in his face were fighting to conceal an enormous smile.  The effect was to project a smug superiority that somehow invited intimacy.  The old talent clicked in: Mann was looking at a man whose life was devoted to making women happy in the short-term, and ultimately, inevitably, perhaps unknowingly inflicting a great deal of pain in the longer run.

       Why do I take an instant dislike to him?  Mann asked himself.  Because it saves time. 

       The other’s cynical eyes met and held his own, and Mann realized that the other thought he was establishing a knowing male bond between them.  He felt instantly protective toward the women this man had been dancing with.

       “Oh my god, what happened to you?” the woman was saying, her eyes staring at Mann’s face.  “Forbes, look at this!”  She touched the darkening spot on his cheek, and Mann instantly, at the first contact with the finger, experienced a sharp lurch in his belly and a tug along the interface.  He looked up into dark eyes that seemed incapable of deception, crinkled now in concern, and then expanded the view to a face whose mouth might have been a touch too wide, the cheekbones a touch too high and prominent, a forehead a bit too high, framed by a cascade of thick hair that bordered between silver and yellow, showering down her bare shoulders.  Somehow it all came together and made her beautiful, right down to the mouth, which naturally fell into a wry expression that suggested irony.

       His animus was aware of the small flashing beads that appeared to be painted over her breasts and loins, but his gaze returned involuntarily to her eyes.  They seemed to be out of focus, as if they were looking through instead of at everything including--

       Forbes glanced over and shrugged.  “He’ll be all right,” he said.

       “Should we do something?”

       “Absolutely. We should continue drinking.”

       Mann abruptly realized that he and the woman had been staring at each other.  Before he looked away, he noticed an expression of surprise that the woman instantly tried to conceal.  “It doesn’t hurt very much,” Mann said lamely, his tongue suddenly feeling thick and uncoordinated in his mouth.  “I mean, if that’s what you’re asking.”

       “There’s nothing quite like a threesome,” the man called Forbes commented, lifting one of the many drinks at the table.  “Unless it’s a foursome.  Or a fivesome, now that I think of it.  Or a--”

       “We get the point,” the woman said.

       “Is there a point?  I was wondering if there were any limits.  Certainly not on my end.”

       Mann started to get up out of his chair, but the woman touched his arm with a forbidding gesture. 

       “It’s all right; you don’t have to leave,” she said.  “This party is just getting started.”

       The next song swelled up and made the air tremble, and the bodies, seen more clearly now that his eyes were adjusted to the gloom that seemed to close hard on the sparks of light, began writhing in ways that were far more than suggestive.  Mann glanced back at the woman and then looked down.  In addition to the throbbing on his face, he felt a peculiar twinge at his center of gravity, different from what he experienced with the dog.  He made a mental note to check out the medical facilities in this reality.

       “Yes, thank you for not asking, I really DID look in the mirror on the way out the door,” the woman said, her low voice somehow foregrounded over the music.  “And I really DID think with a sense of dismay bordering on self-loathing that I was doing nothing more than packaging myself up for display, and I really WAS tagging myself at fire sale prices.”  She took a long drink from one of the glasses, seemingly selected at random.  “Which,” she added, “is another way of saying that I fit right into this place.”

       “You look great,” Mann said.

       “I mean, what is a dance club anyway, but a place where the women adorn themselves in the most eye-grabbing package they can put on without blushing, and they spend most of their life searching for exactly the very edge of that fine line, so that they can market themselves effectively and find out what the men will buy.  It’s fundamentally more honest that we do away with all the pretense and just get right down to it, don’t you agree?”

       “It strips the whole scene of needless hypocrisy.”  Forbes raised his drink in agreement.  “Why pretend that anything romantic is going on here?”

       “I wasn’t talking to you.”

       “Then I certainly wasn’t answering you.”

       “It’s this damned war,” she said, sitting back.  “When everybody’s time frame is shortened down below some invisible tipping point, suddenly the women are forced to start thinking like men.  I think that’s fundamentally the definition of decadence, when the women think like men, and the checks and balances aren’t there anymore.  Don’t you agree?” she said suddenly, turning to Mann.

       “It’s the absence of hope,” Forbes interrupted before Mann could say anything.  “There’s a red line, and when the needle indicating the average level of hope for the future--the temperature of hope in the human stew, so to speak--crosses below that red line, then it’s all downhill and decadence.” 

       He raised his glass.  “Thank god for it.  Or our politicians, who seem to think they’re the same thing.”

       “I want to hear what he thinks,” the woman insisted.

       Mann realized abruptly that he had been looking back and forth at the two of them with his mouth open, and shut it abruptly.  “I think I need a drink,” he said.

       “Excellent idea,” the woman said, finishing one glass and picking up another.  “The drinks are a big part of it.  They reduce your better judgment just enough that you’re more likely to risk entering into a bad transaction, and they dull the buyer’s and seller’s remorse and at the same time provide a convenient excuse when all your friends ask you what the hell you were thinking.  That’s a lot of accomplishment in one little glass.  Or two, or three, or a dozen.”

       She held up the second glass in front of Mann’s face.  “Here’s to the long, slow erosion of common sense and judgment and hope on the way to mass oblivion.”

       “Extremely well said.”  Forbes held up his glass, and they both finished their drinks in a gulp.  When they looked back at each other, the woman laughed while the man’s face contorted even more in the effort of seeming superior to the idea of laughing.

       Then Forbes stood up and adjusted his hat carefully.  “And now, my dear, I will say good night,” he said, kissing her gently on the forehead.  “You seem to be in good company here.”  His eyes took on a predatory gleam as he surveyed the dance floor, and then, quite suddenly, he was in the middle of it.

       The woman watched him for a long second, and then shook her head as if to clear it.

       “I didn’t mean to�"” Mann said.

       She waved his words away.  “It has nothing to do with you.  I talked him into taking me here, and he was beginning to realize that I might not be the sure thing he was expecting.”

       “For what it’s worth, it looked to me like you’re worth a thousand of him.”

       “I think you might have been hit too hard in the head,” she responded.  “Inside of an hour, he’ll walk into one of the dark rooms with the hottest trixie at the top of this little food chain, and that will lead to a domino effect all over the floor, as whoever he dislodges dislodges somebody else and claims the next attractive partner, and so on down the line.”

       “Is it really that fluid out there?”

       “At the end of the world, there is nothing left but opportunism and the moment,” she said, regarding the empty bottom of her glass with visible regret. 

       “And decadence.”

       “Let’s not forget that.”

       “And hope?”

       “That we can forget.  Everybody has given up.”

       “Not you.”  Man made it a statement rather than a question.

       The woman’s head whipped around.  “What do you know about me?”  Her tone was not as harsh as the words.  They sounded like a genuine question, rather than a challenge.

       “I know that you came here against your better judgment, and you hope against your better judgment that the world is going to survive, and you’re realizing the more you drink that it isn’t wise to question your better judgment, and you’re wondering why the drinks are making you more sensible instead of less,” Mann said absently, looking around.  “You strike me,” he said, his eyes on the dance floor, “as a person with extremely good instincts and judgment who is trying to obliterate all of them in the space of a couple of hours, and you’re finding it to be much harder than you expected.  You strike me as a person who doesn’t belong in this place, but you’re not going to admit it to yourself, much less to me or anybody else.” 

       When there was no reply, he looked back, and their eyes locked again.  “And you’ve always relied on your better judgment, so this is all a new experience for you,” Mann concluded, talking directly to her.  “That,” he said, turning away, “is what I know about you.”

       “Oh…”  The woman had been staring at him throughout his assessment, her dark eyes expanding until now it looked like they were about to explode.  Then, with a visible effort she turned away and rummaged around the table, looking for a glass with the remnants of something in the bottom. 

       “Is that what you do for a living?” she asked over her shoulder.

       “What.”

       “Read minds.”

       “They’ve actually tested me for that.  Apparently I don’t have the skill.”

       “Then what if I told you that everything you said was completely s**t.”

       Mann shrugged.  “People lie to me all the time.  Why shouldn’t you?”

       “I--that is, I just want somebody to give me a reason to feel the hope that I can’t help feeling.  Is that too much to ask?”

       Mann shrugged again.  “You feel what you feel.  Why should anybody else have anything to do with it?”

       “So why can’t I be like everybody else?” she said, shifting her chair so that their shoulders touched.  She looked up into his face petulantly, but still with the irony touching her lips.  “What’s wrong with me?”

       “You’re too smart to believe what everybody else believes, and somehow too dumb to know that,” Mann said.  “It’s an interesting combination.”

       At that, she smiled and relaxed her head into his shoulder.

       “I’m starting to like you,” she said.  “I like you enough to trust you enough to let you buy me a drink.”

       “Which way is the bar?”

       Gloria raised her hand, and a silver box on wheels scooted across the floor, threading through the dancers with surprising agility.  After a moment’s hesitation, Mann put his hand on the screen, and in a second, the screen flashed approval.  Gloria touched the screen once, and then again.  Instantly, a round container dropped down onto a small internal platform, and filled itself with a greenish drink that Mann’s host’s mind told him was highly alcoholic and sweet, with a strong narcotic mixed into it.

       “That’s pretty aggressive,” he commented as she put the drink to her lips.

       “It’s perfect for--how did you say it?  Obliterating my better instincts.”

       He punched a milder drink for himself, put it to his lips and took a slow sip.

       “So what about you,” Gloria said, turning her attention to the drink, then back to him.  “Who are you?  What do you do?”

       “Until a few hours ago, I was a Synch.”

       “Really.  What’s it like?”

       “Very distracting.  But there’s an odd sense of belonging.”

       “What made you leave?”

       “I’m not sure you CAN leave.  Let’s just say I had a transformative experience.”

       “So how do you know so much about me?” she said in a quiet voice.  “That’s really what I want to know.”

       “In my old job, I had to know about people pretty quickly.  It was kind of a life or death thing, although I never really thought about it that way.”

       “And you quit that job?”

       “Yes.”

       “Why?”

       Mann sighed.  “I didn’t like the people I was working for, and I didn’t like the people I was working against,” he said.  “I didn’t see how what I was doing was making things any better.”

       “What about your new job?”

       “I’m not altogether sure what I’m going to do with myself now,” Mann admitted.  “I thought maybe coming in here would make things clearer.”

       The woman finished her drink in a long gulp, put the glass definitively on the table and held out her hand.  “I’m Gloria,” she said.  “As in: Glorious Gloria, which is what I’m calling myself this evening.  Who are you?”

       He decided to keep his name from up top.  “Marcus Mann,” he said.

       “Well Marcus Mann, it’s customary for a gentleman to buy a lady a drink in this place.”

       “I just bought you one.”

       “It looks like the glass is empty to me.”

       “Let me ask you a question first.  I’m new to this city.”

       “Fire away.  As long as it gets me closer to that next drink.”

       “What I’m trying to figure out how to ask,” he said, watching the lithe bodies of the dancers flashing in the darkness, “is, does all this seem real to you?”

       “In what way?”

       “Are we really alive, or is everybody here just going through the motions played out by some kind of cosmic script?”

       “This is pretty deep for small talk,” Gloria said.  “But I’ll play along.  Sure, sometimes I feel like I’m dreamwalking and can’t wake up.  Haven’t you ever felt that way?”

       He thought about it, about the events in his own life in the reality outside the computer.  “I guess I have,” Mann admitted.

       “When you get down to it, who do you know who is really alive, and what is the dream and what is the reality?” she persisted.

       “I’m trying to figure out how real it feels to be here, in this place, in this time,” Mann said.  “That’s actually closer to the reason why I walked inside.”

       “I have to say, you came to an awfully strange place to find reality,” Gloria commented, watching the flashing lights and swirling colors reflect off of bare flesh.  “In fact, I’m guessing that this is your first time here.”

       He nodded.

       “Me too.  I figured I might as well have sex while I can,” she said.  “It would be a terrible thing for the world to end, and me having been celibate in the last days, don’t you think?”

       “I don’t think there’s a good answer to that,” Mann said.

       “So after months of listening to my friends telling me to loosen up and live a little bit before I died, I figured, what the hell?  I finally made myself walk out the door and--you know, you seem to be almost as uncomfortable as I feel.”

       “It’s just that--you sound so real.  You sound like you have real feelings, real memories, a real personality.  I guess I wasn’t prepared for that.”

       Gloria looked back up over her shoulder and gave Mann that appraising unfocused stare.  She seemed to be looking through his skin at his internal organs. 

       “I always thought there was some kind of unwritten rule that men are never supposed to say things like that,” she said finally.  “It’s all a woman wants, is to be recognized as somebody real.”

       “I’m not sure that’s exactly what I meant.”

       “Don’t blow it; it makes you very attractive.  Do you want to dance?”

       She tossed back her hair and took his hand, already moving her body in time to the music before they reached the crowded floor.  He found that his body understood the dance, and they swirled in simulated imaginative sexual embrace, adjusting and avoiding collisions like a couple of oversexed scatbacks in the open field.  He mixed in some salsa moves he had learned on assignment in Barcelona, some swing dancing he had picked up during the many hours in Prague nightclubs.  They moved closer to the band, who, he saw, created the music by running their fingers over flashing, exotic instruments that seemed to be little more than grids with a thousand multicolored buttons. 

       Gloria’s supple belly gyrated, never moving more than an inch away from his own as they shifted and swirled back away again.  One of the musicians stepped forward and added words to the song, a kind of tribal chant behind the relentless beating pulse from the instruments.

 

       These are the days of human ants commuting

       Their daily pilgrimage, worshipping

       The god machines which fail to live and cannot die

       As toxic winds above slow-roast our sky.

       Somehow, too slow to see, daily routines

       Became bonded servitude to our machines

       The holy name of profit on our tongues

       As holy industry blows death into our lungs.

       Piss and s**t your poisons�"it’s all a game,

       And up ahead: nothing but more of the same...

 

       Lift your eyes above the scene

       Where words carved in the fabric

       Of our darkening reality, seem

       In the space behind the here and now

       To scream out the question

       Nobody dares to say out loud:

              What’s the point of it all…?

 

       “Are you happy?” Mann asked over the music.

       “It doesn’t matter if I am or not,” Gloria answered with a shrug as he pulled her close.  “Nothing matters anymore.  We have to take our pleasure while we exist�"that’s what passes for wisdom these days.”

       “I was just trying to get a sense of how you experience reality.  How does it feel, at this moment, right now?”

       “It feels like, just for once, I want to stop thinking and just merge with the rest of everybody else.  Hold me,” she said.  “I feel better when you hold me.”

 

       These are the days of political clones

       Selling their souls for campaign loans

       In perpetual auction, vote no, vote yes

       As the world free-falls into darkness...

       So slowly, we gave up political control

       Receiving nothing from the sale of our government’s soul

       Believe their lies, it’s all a game,

       And ahead there’s nothing but more of the same...

 

       Lift your eyes above the scene

       Where words carved in the fabric

       Of our darkening reality, seem

       In the space behind the here and now

       To scream out the question

       Nobody dares to say out loud:

              What’s the point of it all…?

 

       “Where do you work?” Mann asked.

       “Why do you care about something like that?”

       “Why does it bother you that I’m trying to find out what I can about you?”

       Gloria looked up at him, her eyes flashing impatience.  “All right.  Okay,” she said, flowing into the unexpected spin that he coaxed with his hand.  “I’m an engineer with four degrees that I earned in three and a half years of higher education before I successfully challenged the doctoral program, and I work in a laboratory, right now doing the worst kind of s**t work imaginable, which is creating customized RNA by reducing disulfide bonds using the stinkiest chemical imaginable, beta mercaptoethanol, which seems to adhere to my skin somewhere under the surface where the soap won’t penetrate.  More importantly, my intelligence level is probably ten times yours, so there is almost certainly no chance you and I will ever be able to relate to each other on anything more than a tawdry sexual level that might last an entire evening until our mutual interest dies down and you start to seem boring to me and I start to intimidate your fragile masculine ego.

       “How about you?” she asked brightly as Mann continued to stare at her with a blank expression.

       “I’m just trying to get the hang of the place.  And you know what?  I’ll bet you aren’t more than five times as smart as I am.”

       Gloria laughed, and seemed surprised that she had laughed, and embraced him as they swirled near the front door.  He noticed the hat with the feather passing nearby, and saw the ironic smile cross Gloria’s face for an instant as she sized up Forbes’ partner.

 

       These are the days of gathering atomic storm

       On the near horizon, death’s triumphant form

       Darkens in shadow our daily where and how

       And there’s nothing we can do to stop it now.

       As the drums rise up on both sides of the divide

       Only traitors, we are told, would turn it aside.

       Soon the flaming legions of hell will be hurled

       To walk unshod across the face of the world

       and they’ll call it war...

       Our history told entire in self-extermination

       By our own deadly fire

               of light without illumination...

 

       Lift your eyes above the scene

       Where words carved in the fabric

       Of our darkening reality, seem

       In the space behind the here and now

       To scream out the question

       Nobody dares to say out loud:

              What’s the point of it all…?

 

       “So I have to ask, why doesn’t a smart girl like you find another job?” Mann said finally.

       Gloria sighed.  “You think I haven’t tried?  Our whole operation is working day and night looking for new technologies that will give our military an advantage.  But our government contract is about to run out.”

       “Why?”

       “They’re putting all their money into this new engineering consortium, called Innovation Insights,” she sighed.  “And I don’t blame them.  All the new cool stuff is coming out of there, almost faster than you can keep track of it.  I wish I understood how they did it.”

       Mann stopped.  “What do you mean, all the cool stuff?”

       “I mean, literally every new interesting invention and breakthrough is coming from the same laboratory, with as near as we can tell no more than fifty or sixty engineers and technicians.  They must be beyond geniuses.  Why would the government fund anybody else, when they have such a reliable fountain of what they’re looking for?”

       Mann thought a moment.  And then another moment.  His eyes misted over and he offered a prayer of thanks to the interface.

       “Where can I find them?” he said, carefully keeping the urgency out of his voice.

       “Who?”

       “These Innovation Insights people.”

       Gloria favored him with a look that suggested she was reevaluating his intelligence downward.  “You might try looking up their address on the Locator System,” she said.  “But good luck getting an interview.  I tried.”

       The song ended with another shimmer of glittering simulated orgasms everywhere around them.  Gloria pulled Mann back over to the table, where others were finishing their drinks.  She dragged two chairs apart from the others and sat back, catching her breath.

       “Was that fun for you?  Dancing, I mean?”

       “God help me, there must be an exhibitionist somewhere inside,” she said.  “All of a sudden, I’m having a ball.”

       Gloria reached over to the table and held up an empty glass meaningfully.  Mann raised his hand and the drink machine darted back to their bench and accepted his palm print.  This time Gloria punched the code for an alcoholic beverage that also contained extract from the pituitary of a tropical lizard, and settled back with a purr of contentment.  Mann watched the dancers, trying to get his head around something.  Finally he realized that the interface was still tugging insistently at his mind.  That point at his center of gravity twinged insistently at the threshold of pain, and it felt like he was out of breath, even though he was breathing normally.  Was he feeling sympathy toward this strange woman?

       “I guess I should have mentioned that for some reason that my rational mind does not quite understand, I find you terribly sexy,” Gloria was saying.  “It’s like there’s this glow about you that I’ve never seen in anybody before.”

       “I’d tell you that you’re beautiful, but you know that already,” he replied.

       “I don’t think any woman in this room is capable of believing that on her own,” Gloria said.  “Our self-image is largely composed of feedback.  So give me what you’ve got, every bit of it, as objectively as possible, as long as you feel it, ignoring the fact that if what you say is charming enough, and I have maybe two more drinks, I might find myself offering you every orifice in my body.”

       Mann winced.  “The way you look is only a small piece of it,” he said, trying to find the most objective words he could.  “For some reason, when I look in your eyes, the inter--I mean, I feel like whatever it is that controls this entire reality blots out everything else and suddenly you have my full attention, so that it seems like nothing else in the room is entirely real.  It’s very strange,” he muttered.

       Gloria closed her eyes for a long second.

       “What’s the matter?”

       “Shut up.  I’m savoring what you just said.  That was exactly, right down to the letter, precisely what every woman hopes someday she’ll hear, and I may be the only one who has ever heard it expressed so perfectly.”

       “I also think you’re a little bit weird,” he said, taking another sip of his drink.

       “Call me unusual and I’ll take it as a compliment.”

       “That’s actually a better word.”

       The next song started up.

       “Do you want to dance again?”

       “I think I’m going to have to sit this next one out,” Gloria said. 

       “Why?”

       “You’ll see.”

       The music seemed to gather itself in the air, as if recovering its breath from the frenetic pace, a slow moan rising up over the floor, a whisper of a beat behind it growing louder, and the flashing on hundreds of breasts and loins began to synchronize into a strobe.  Partners held each other more intimately, then cushions and pillows dropped from the ceiling, and dancers, two or three at a time, melted languidly to the floor. 

       “My god,” he said.  “They’re--”

       “Shhhhh.  Listen to the music.  You don’t have to watch if you don’t want to.”

 

Thunder shatters the horizon

nowhere to hide from it now

No time to think, no time to stop

breathe in the final tick of the clock

and give up with no hint of sorrow

The cruel illusion that was tomorrow.

 

Make me laugh, make me bleed,

Hurt me, love me, fill my need,

make me feel to overcome my fear

make me forget that the end is near...

I need to laugh and shed a tear,

And squeeze a lifetime into a year...

 

       Flesh, oddly hidden by the flashes of discarded clothing and the semi-darkness around them, rolled over flesh on the crowded floor, partners were exchanged at random, the music built toward a slow climax and then retreated, teasingly, as the voice crooned softly, floating somehow above the howling of the instruments.

 

Here on the bitter edge of death,

grabbing at random one last thrill

We plunge into each other’s desperate bliss

and momentarily lose sight of the abyss

At the culmination of all time,

All risk is finally stripped away

Consequence is burned alive

by the fire next door to today...

 

Make me laugh, make me bleed,

Hurt me, love me, fill my need,

make me feel to overcome my fear

make me forget that the end is near...

Come to me now, it’s time to play

And squeeze a lifetime into a day...

 

       Mann touched his face where the darkness of the bruise had finally stopped spreading.  It felt numb.  A powerful wave of sadness washed across the clinical part of his mind, and he realized all over again how alone he was in this strange place that was not really a place, and this time that was not really a time. 

He felt an enormous sympathy for the souls all around him, and without realizing it, he reached his hand out to Gloria.

       She took his hand and held it with both of hers, and the next wave of emotion was unfamiliar, strange, oddly at war with itself.  He felt at once weak in his body and strong, nearly invincible, inside where his center had been mysteriously aching.

       Their hands, together, felt more intimate than any of the increasingly urgent activities going on below them.  He felt as if the music was penetrating the bodies on the floor as much or more than they were each other; they still moved in rhythm to it, still dancing, still exchanging partners at random.

       Mann closed his eyes for a moment and held Gloria’s hand more tightly.  When he opened his eyes, she was smiling faintly, her attention still fixed on the dance that had become an orgy.

 

When hope has died, pleasure rules

living for the moment

is too long-term for fools

freed at last of expectation,

Where there is no salvation

beyond the instincts of our bodies

and the mass extinction of our rules...

 

Give what I crave the most

And I’ll do the same for you.

We touch our lives like glasses in a toast

so pleasure is our wine

and detonation is the orgasm

that will take us long before our time.

 

Make me laugh, make me bleed,

Hurt me, love me, fill my need,

make me feel to overcome my fear

make me forget that the end is near...

We’ll lose the why and embrace the how

and squeeze a lifetime into the now

       Toward the dawn of explosive pleasure we run

       plunging ourselves into the dark side of the sun...

 

       There was a general shudder across the floor, and then an odd stillness.  Finally, one or two at a time, with dazed, shiny expressions, the dancers stood up, and clothing was kicked aside.  After a moment, the next song began, and the dancing continued, awkwardly, this time with the sparkling lights rising up from patches scattered randomly around the floor.

       Mann started to withdraw his hand, but Gloria held it tightly, and she looked at him with what could only have been surprise.  Then she released him and reached for her drink.

       “Any regrets?” she asked.

       “No.”

       “Me neither.  I think it was a mistake to come here.”

       “Will you give me your address?”

       Gloria laughed.  “Marcus Mann, whoever you are, I know how these things end, and for some unknown reason I very much don’t want to go through all of that with you.  As soon as I sober up, I’ll recover the use of my brain cells, and as soon as you sober up, you’ll start asking yourself if you really want to go through a second date without understanding half the things I say.”

       “Shouldn’t I get a chance to find that out?”

       “No,” Gloria said, standing up.  “Aurora is a very large city.  The chances are about twenty five point zero eight million to one that you and I will ever see each other again.”

       Mann touched the bruise on his face as he watched her pick her way past the bodies on the dance floor toward the general gloom at the door.  He found himself admiring the way she moved, the way her hair reflected the flash of clothing, the way she rounded the corner and was out the door without a look back.

       “We’ll see about that,” he said, and slowly finished her drink.