Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set)

by Harmon Cooper

  TWENTY-THREE∞

  Anna and Rinchi sat in the back of a stretch-aeros with Antimeria and Sauria, whom you might remember as the guy with the Burger King crown. The two Humandroid escorts sat across from the men, necking with each other. A warm-up of sorts. Sauria had his eyes closed, taking a video call over iNet from someone he kept referring to as Gyatson.

  Anna and Rinchi continued to make out as Sauria’s conversation grew louder.

  “I don’t know what his name was, but it’s been a week and no one has been able to locate him,” Sauria huffed. “It can’t be that hard. I don’t care if he’s using a chip-masker! The man choked me. He choked me! Me! How hard is it to find this motherfucker? The club is covered with cameras … I don’t care if his images were blurry. Have MercSecure cross-scan the people who paid the door charge that night. Wait a damn minute – why am I doing your work for you if you can do it yourself? If you can’t handle this, I’ll contact Lorem and we’ll get a better representative on the case. Maybe we should get Keva.”

  Rinchi started kissing Anna’s neck, slowly peeling off her bra. She flicked her tongue downward until she had her nipple in her mouth.

  “If you guys can’t find him by the end of the night … I swear shit is going to hit the fan. Yeah, I know it’s a dated term, but I’m serious. Find out who he is and make sure … ”

  “I think I know who he is,” Rinchi said, softly pushing Anna’s breast away.

  Sauria opened his eyes. “What?”

  “Yeshi canceled joining us tonight so she could go out with this guy. His name is Meme … ”

  “Meme? Meme what?”

  “I don’t know his last name.”

  “And he’s the one who … ” Sauria looked from Rinchi to Antimeria.

  “How do you know?” Antimeria asked her.

  “She left with him the night of the incident. She ran off with him. Black guy, strong, aggressive, right? He strangled you and then he bailed with her. I have it on video you know.”

  “That’s right … ” Antimeria said. “You girls film everything. I should have put in an order to have your ocular feed checked that night!”

  “Can you locate them right now?” Sauria asked.

  “If Yeshi is online, I can find her. However, if she is completely logged off, it’ll be difficult. She does that from time to time.”

  “So wait, the guy Yeshi is with right now is also the guy that choked Sauria?” Anna asked Rinchi. Anna draped her hands across her breasts and smiled over at the two men. “This is getting interesting.”

  A call came in over iNet. “Dr. T?” Rinchi asked.

  _∞_

  “That fucktard!” Tyro shouted, covering his nose with a bar towel.

  “So much blood … ” Hannah had led her husband out of the club. She was woozy from the pollutes, walking with a slight tilt. “Come on honey, let’s go somewhere else and get you cleaned up.”

  “I’ve had enough! I’m getting on iNet. I need to speak with Rinchi right now. I don’t care if she is with him!”

  “What’s that going to do?” Hannah asked. A semi-nude man wearing a turban and a Who’s your Baghdaddy? t-shirt strolled into the club with two women on either arm.

  “I don’t know. Good, she’s online!”

  He quickly placed the call.

  “Dr. T?” Rinchi asked.

  “Rinchi!” Every time he blinked, he could see Rinchi’s image splash across his eyelids. It was a preprogrammed image, which was important for anonymity. “Why the hell are you with Meme!?”

  “Honey, don’t curse at your clients,” Hannah said.

  “What do you mean?” Rinchi asked.

  “My co-worker Meme. That stupid son-of-a-bi—”

  “What are you talking about Dr. T?” Rinchi asked.

  “Don’t lie to me, Rinchi! You’re with him right now! At POLLUTION CLUB 512. He just … he just assaulted me!”

  A security guard stepped up. ‘sir, ma’am. This hallway is a no standing zone.”

  “No standing zone?” Hannah asked with a pollute-laced grin. “What the hell does that even mean?”

  The security guard yawned. “By ordinance of the FCG, no citizens can loiter within fifteen feet of a pollution club entrance or a no loitering sign.” He pointed at a sign that had a silhouette of a man with his arms behind his back and red X superimposed over it. “Sorry, it’s the law.”

  “ … Yes I’m bleeding. My face is covered in blood! Meme hit me like eight times … ”

  “We’re loitering?” Hannah asked.

  “Why are you with Meme!? Tell me, Dammit!” Tyro screamed again. By this time, Rinchi had already hung up on him.

  The security guard sighed. “Loitering, as defined by the FCG, includes iNet usage in restricted areas, standing for more than two minutes in any marked location, or … ”

  “Okay, okay. We get it,” Hannah said with a grunt. “Come on Ty, let’s move.”

  TWENTY-FOUR∞

  Nelly entered a small pollution bar near POLLUTION CLUB 512. She sat down at a two person table in the far corner, under a replica of a famous painting by a twenty-first century artist simply known as Royce.

  In the painting, a ninth generation iPhone is fucking a Google Android phone doggy-style. A Samsung Galaxy 9 is videotaping the whole shebang. The icons on both phones are spraying off their bodies and exploding into tiny cum-shaped blemishes made from stippled paint. Patent laws burn on the windowsill behind the bed. The perspective is from the front of the bed, with the Google Android phone looking up at the viewer in anguish. The original painting was recently stolen from the Louvre by terrorists wearing twentieth century gas masks. It was Royce’s best known piece.

  Nelly admired the piece for a moment. These days, artists had everything at their disposal to cut, form, copy, paste, modify or 3-D print their vision. Anyone could be an artist now. It was almost to the point where if you could think it, you could build it in real life via 3-D printing. There were also a ton of services that painted whatever it was you saw in your head. So you could create the vision, and some hapless painter in Honduras would paint it for you. They’d even sign your name if you paid extra. By the 2070s, the digitization of everything practically destroyed the original definition of artist. At the same type, it built a new definition entirely. Now artists were those who could manipulate digital realities. The new Andy Warhols were less Campbell’s soup and more binary predators.

  Nelly logged into iNet to see if Carloza was online. The login process was quick. After the eyes were closed for more than a few seconds, a screen popped up with a login button. The button was programmed to disappear after five seconds, returning the user to their normal eyelid state.

  Buried in the pointer finger of a large majority of humans was a subcutaneous nano-sensor. Slight movements of the pointer finger could be used to navigate the Internet on a person’s eyelids. The finger movement needed was quite subtle, requiring only a small flick. Sometimes people used their finger on the surface of their jeans or a table. It also worked in midair.

  The texting and typing function on iNet was performed solely by the user’s mind. A person thought the words they wanted to say and the words instantly appear on the screen on the insides of their eyelids.

  For video chatting, a prerecorded image was used or, if either of the users was in a 333G location (which constituted almost every surface of the civilized world), the video from the nearest camera would be transmitted to the other user’s eyelids. One of the benefits of the Watch Our Own People Act (WOOPA) of 2036, was the surplus of cameras in any given location. With so many cameras around – from the inside of aeros to every room in a user’s home – video chatting had taken precedence to phone usage. The recent advent of prediction filming even allowed for video cameras to mirror half an image, allowing the camera to compensate for bad angles.

  After looking at a few pictures of lolcats wearing Halloween costumes, Nelly began typing Carloza a message over iNet.

  Nel
ly: Where are you? We need to discuss a re-up on the Bhut.

  Hearing some commotion, she opened her eyes and watched as a black man stumbled into the bar holding tightly to a thin woman wearing all white. She paid little attention to him and closed her eyes to see if Carloza had responded.

  “On now,” he said in Spanish. His gnarled face appeared on her eyelids. The text screen remained below his image, in case she needed to tell him something in private.

  “What would you like to order?” the waitress asked.

  Nelly opened her eyes. “Actually, I’m meeting a friend … ”

  “Well, we have a one purchase minimum to sit in the bar,” the waitress informed her. She was a fat woman with pigtails and freckles. She crossed her arms, which lifted her blimpy breasts like a push-up bra. She seemed to be chewing at something.

  “Okay, well … I’m not really into pollutes at the moment, how about a drink?”

  “We don’t have many options. This is a pollution bar you know,” the waitress said.

  “Okay, Pierre’s Mt. Kilimanjaro endangered water, do you have it?”

  “We only have the thirty-two ounce bottles … ”

  “That’s fine, two glasses please. So how’s it going?” she asked Carloza, returning to her iNet conversation.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “What are you doing anyway?”

  “Meeting my friend Mimidae at a pollution bar … ”

  “And how is she?”

  “Fine. She’s going upstate this weekend to some post-Burning Man gathering.”

  “I see. So you need more?”

  “I will this weekend, but I’m telling you now – after this I’m out of the game. I need time to prepare.” Nelly placed her hands across her stomach.

  “Understandable, let me know if you want to switch or something.”

  “Yeah right … ”

  Carloza yawned.

  “Are you tired or something?”

  “A little. I mixed some of that Bhutanese with some special BurbVagCur I got from my sister’s friend. I added a yellow Yossarian R. Bachman topper.”

  “How was it?”

  “Out of body experience. Warn your people, warn them all. Seriously Nelly, do not mix the three unless you want to see what you look like from God’s perspective.”

  “God’s perspective? Is that the same as our perspective during an out of body experience?” Nelly laughed. “What about switching bodies? Where’s His perspective in all that?”

  “Well, I guess. Shit, actually … ” Carloza thought for a moment. “I really don’t know about the switching bodies part as we aren’t really switching bodies, we’re transferring data from one person’s life chip to another. But as for his normal perspective without the complication of body-switching, maybe His – assuming God is a guy and assuming He does exist which entails that He has willingly let this world crumble as much as it has – maybe His perspective is from our own eyes. Like He sees my hands when I wash them and when I cut carrots.”

  “Carrots are nutritious. What about using iNet? Does God see that?”

  “God wasn’t around when they invented the Internet. Otherwise, He would have a website.”

  “Wait … what?” Nelly almost laughed. Carloza’s reasoning was always a bit off.

  “I mean, the Internet wasn’t around when God was invented.”

  “Are you still high on pollutes?”

  “Maybe … Okay, I guess what I’m trying to say is … ” He yawned again. “Well the Internet exists now on our eyelids and devices, yes?”

  “Yes, that’s how we’re talking right now…”

  “And God exists within and without us – to quote George Harrison – or at least the last part of that statement,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The Beatles. Check the picture.” Carloza quickly transferred a picture of four men wearing strange clothing. The photo was easily over a hundred years old. Nelly didn’t recognize them.

  “DJ The Beatles?” she asked.

  “There’s a DJ named The Beatles?”

  Nelly nodded. “DJ The Beatles. His stuff is so cutting edge. It’s called Grindsmash.”

  “What a horrible thing to say, Nelly. Never mind. So the question was about God and the Internet. Does God see the Internet?”

  “Yes, that was the question,” Nelly said.

  “Well, if God sees through our eyes, and our eyes see the Internet, then He sees the Internet. If God sees us from a third party perspective, like a novelist or something – wait that gets complex because then the question if God is writing our story is raised – anyway, if He sees us from a third party perspective, then it’s safe to say He doesn’t see what we see on iNet.”

  “Okay … ”

  “So to sum it up: if God sees through our eyes, He sees what we see on iNet. If God doesn’t see through our eyes, He doesn’t see what we see on iNet.”

  Nelly asked, “Assuming He does see through our eyes, do you think He secretly surfs the Internet while we’re asleep?”

  “Ha! There’s a question, chica. I’ll have to look into that. I really can’t say for sure. I’ve never really thought about it. What do you think He looks at? Wait a minute, why would God use the Internet? He’s omnipotent. There’s nothing on the Internet that He can’t have at His disposal in a heartbeat. Porn? He doesn’t need porn – He invented it! GoogleFace? He invented the guys who invented it … or at least the guys who invented Facebook and Google and the CEOs that later merged the companies.”

  “Weather conditions? Movie times? EBAYmazon.com?”

  “Weather conditions? He controls the weather! Movie times? Since when does He have time for movies? EBAYmazon? God doesn’t need to buy stuff off the Internet, He can snap his fingers and shit magically appears. So no, I don’t think He uses iNet while we’re asleep. He doesn’t need to. He doesn’t need any of this because He can already do whatever He wants. Come on, He’s God for Christ’s sake. He has his own version of iNet called God’s reality.”

  “God’s reality?”

  Carloza continued. “He’s like the master of His and everyone else’s destinies. We’re His puppets! When things work out the way we want, we praise Him. ‘Thank you God for giving me this or that!’ When things don’t, we curse him. ‘I think God is out to get me,’ or my favorite, ‘Come on God, is this all You’ve got?’ But He’s a good master and lets us blame and praise Him for everything that’s why … ”

  “You’re high.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So can you get the stuff this weekend?” Nelly said. She watched as two men wearing black suits settled in at the bar. One lit a pollute cigarette.

  “With God as my witness,” Carloza chuckled, “I’ll have the stuff to you by Sunday.”

  TWENTY-FIVE∞

  “Do you want to be human?” I ask Yeshi.

  We are sitting in a smaller pollution bar, not too far from POLLUTION CLUB 512. The adrenaline from the one-sided fight has temporarily overpowered the Ukrainian pollutes Yeshi fed to me in the hotel room. Instinctively, I reach for a pollution mask hanging from a hook on the wall and start typing in LoathHunAyaTop. I glance timidly from the mask to Yeshi, who is sitting with her legs crossed on the chair across from me. She offers no sign of approval or disapproval. “So … human. Do you want to be human?” I ask.

  “Sometimes I do.” She’s playing with one of her long earrings. Her white contact lenses shine like cat eyes in the dimly lit club.

  I try to remember questions I normally ask my clients. “Ummm … so how was your day?”

  While the hallucinogenic pollutes have worn off a bit, some of the visuals are still ballooning. I quickly place the pollution mask over my face to take a couple of deep inhales of my favorite pollute. Yeshi waits for me patiently. I take the mask off, set it in my lap, relax a little.

  “It was a normal day. Worked last night, rested, painted, did yoga and met you.” She smiles.

  God she looks beautiful. Her bangs just abo
ve her bleached eyes, the single dimple on the right side of her face, her coarse black hair, her shoulders the perfect distance, her clavicle cast by the Gods, her breasts mahoosive – why can’t she be real? Why can’t she be human? Why can’t the perfect woman be real?

  “Yoga? Some of my clients do that … ” I say to her. I try to think of other questions I ask my clients. “Has there been anything … troubling you recently?”

  “Troubling?” she laughs. “You sound so scripted.”

  “Damn, you catch on quick.”

  She asks, “Who was that guy at the club anyway? Why did he call me Rinchi?” Her eyes shift to two men wearing black suits who have just entered the bar.

  “A co-worker of mine. He’s a real douche basket, always on my ass about something. He sends me at least six messages a day, stops by my office hourly to “check on me.” I can’t stand the guy. Anyway, I have no idea why he called you Rinchi. Didn’t you say your identical twin saw a therapist?”

  “Yeah, she calls him Dr. T.”

  “Dr. Tyro?” I gulp.

  “That’s him.”

  “Fucking great,” I say.

  “So you do know him.”

  Tyro. “My co-worker is Rinchi’s therapist. The irony!”

  She laughs. I smile faintly and take another inhale. The nose of the mask is in my hand so I can inhale freely without having to strap it on. Two inhalations later and I set the mask on my lap.

  “What are you thinking about?” I ask her.

  “Ah, a question you ask your clients.”

  “Oh, come on … ” I roll my eyes at her. “All right, you caught me again. But I usually phrase it as, what’s on your mind?” Do you want me to ask you questions I’d normally ask my clients? I mean if you break it down, sometimes therapy sessions are like dating without the potential sex or the shame that follows a sting-y rejection. Also, you can tell your date what you actually think, which differs from therapy.”