Anything happens. Life is mostly 4.5% and occasionally 4.9% with the rare 6% when it’s done right. Things are different now days and I realize that ‘things’ once said have always been different. But these twiddle things whatever they are, are truly different these days.  The past is not that long ago. The present for those of us living in the here and now look back not in anger but with a gift set of frozen impressions.

            It’s not technology. It’s not lifespan. It’s not the gentrification of our DNA strata. It’s easier to get a grip on banality without truly understanding that that’s what we are, banal but a fucking lah-di-dah sense of joy. Like warm piss in your pants.

            I never knew my father. That’s not entirely the truth because I knew of him. He was well known around hard liquor centres. Throughout my youthblood he was always getting fixed up and fixed down. He’s dead now. Couldn’t afford any kind life extension but was sane enough to harvest his major organs for my mother to get us through. She then met an off-social syndicalist who earned enough boedel to take her with him when his topside work nomination ended. That was last I ever saw of her. Though, she left me some of dad’s organ harvest venum. That withered quickly.

            The summons from the gaffer came unexpectedly as I assumed dad’s problems went with him. I was thought to contact my mother but she was in so deep now that the inserted comclavislinks have run dry. And what could she have done? Probably handed over her squid meds and a couple of organs. Still, the gaffer was not the type who needed someone else’s biotic feed. If he did it was because he enjoyed the pain he caused? Fortunately for others and me the promises of a so-called biotic feed for all ran out of steam when progressivism was out sourced and then triple contracted to off-social guerrilla syndicalist. Meaning, what can the gaffer do to me? I have nothing left to give.

            The gaffer, AKA Octothorpe known to everyone living in Susatab is somewhat of an extravagant personality. I only know him and briefly at that because my father in the initial stages of Octothorpe rise to grace from the scab satellite cities surrounding Susatab. When I mean briefly I mean my father merely by a freak occurrence whereby my dad allowed Octothorpe to sit in his cube during a temporal violation hunt. My dad, the fuck up that he was couldn’t handle the gaffs gifts and his private tutorial steerage towards a higher living utility in Susatab. Before long dad was out of his depth and in and out of hard liquor centres getting repatched and de-blooded and sucking up the boedel. Dad paid in full.

            Octothorpe’s home and base of business was on level 1500 of the self-built, designed and named Octothorpe Cresset. His view looked out over what was left of the southern water bowl. Not that the southern water bowl was nothing it just wasn’t as imposing and as majestic as the past. I’ve checked out the visuals from before the time that is now. It’s still fucking majestic.

            The security inside the lobby was the usual mix of gruff muscle heads and cool suited dweebs communicating between their oversized neuron heads and wrist implants. All the time itching to blast a few low livers. I was scanned passing through the glass water panels that allowed only those with secure data history to move without injury. It’s a nerve-wracking experience because you actually feel yourself literally having your biodata screened from the inside out. Yet, Octothorpe it seems requires an overdone inspection mainly due to the flash flues that come and go. He doesn’t have to concern himself with street dwellers and satellite city existence. Nevertheless having the power and control over the entire city has at some time fucked with his sense of direction. The man is not what one could call socialised. At each security pod the biodata screening was less and less intrusive but the quantity of muscle heads grew exponentially. These last one’s were not purely human they kind of slipped the blood-bio barrier and appeared more beastly like. Nice suits though.

            At the terminal port my eyeballs were given a blow-by-blow scraping for any sign of street DNA debris. Like the last port of call before the rats pour onto the shore. I was gently shoved into the port and strapped in. One of the less than human muscle heads sat opposite with a blast scrounger pointed at my guts. I was going to mention how ridiculous that after all the bio data screens I still had to be subjected to a sudden embolic disappearance. There was no point. This system had been framed and structured around a dogma where there were no questions. Now I had to admire the genius of that. Nonetheless It was fucking terrifying.

            The terminal port blasted upwards. My bones and skin grew tight and there was a slight feeling that I would explode. The muscle head exposed to generations of terminal velocity appeared unfazed. Though, that could simply be a trick of personality. I closed my eyes because the flashing white shards of organic light were causing my brain to infarct. Technology had brought some great changes and quickly but the human body as it has been demonstrated from previous techno-jumps cannot keep up with the dynamics of the unreal. The terminal port was one of those powerful modes that just stopped short of killing the user. Taking a solar floater is smoother and safer but for the gaffer it’s to fucking slow.

            The flickering ceased and I was jolted to a sudden jaw biting halt. The pod opened and there of course was another muscle head. My travel companion slightly gestured with the scrounge blaster for me to get out. I obliged. I was searched again, scanned again and data processed. It was like a full proof security system that was trying to full proof itself but with the knowledge that it recognised the double or perhaps triple data scanning process was fallible. I thought everything was corrupt or fallible. Still, nothing thus far had allowed me to deduce that I could slip a fast one past the gaffer.

            The interior was dark with subdued lighting. I was reminded of a bunker but with velvet walls and ancient algae music. I trailed the muscle head. It had relaxed the tough fucker demeanour. I was now in the belly of the beast with an uncertain destination. My thoughts ping ponged in and around the object of my summons. Dad dead. Mum somewhere submerged in the off-social and me with nothing to offer nothing owing. Though, it couldn’t be good. This fucker had no reason to know me. I was nothing. A crawling speck from where he was high in his glass and ivory fucking tower. In the 1% left that it was going to be a positive experience there was the realization that I had never ever been a member of any 1% club.

The darkened hallway narrowed until we came to an orange squish malus, essentially a security door that one passes through if the biodata has been implanted. I had read about these doors but never seen one. Mainly because other than the prime mover who proposed the concept the squish malus was a financial disruptive but the gaffer had the wherewithal. I went through.

            The sudden slowing of my temporal axiom was truly an incredible experience. It was as of I was suspended in an active beehive. The sense of connectedness was so acute that my blood cooled and soothed and replaced my bio given senses with a synthetic otherness, which left me bodiless. When I exited on the other side I truly felt that fifty years had past. The muscle head was not behind me. The room was large with a ceiling at least two hundred feet and silent light pouring from everywhere without a fixed point. No furniture. The hall echoed as I walked. I made a guess that the far wall was possibly a long walk in the sun. It was cool. I felt that I was being watched and of course I was. Someone behind some screen was tapping away at their behavioural extensor trying to figure out my next move. I picked my nose. I heard a crashing altissimo of creaks, cranks and heaving movement. From above I could see an entire world coming down on me. There was no space to hide. I stood looking up hypnotised by the sheer augustness of my impending doom. The falling shadows and dripping shards of colourful light had me steady on my feet. Nothing could have prepared me for this. For whatever reason I was delivered to die this was well worth the effort. It was not concern for my life cut short but for the trouble that had been taken to make sure that not only was a squashed out of existence but that it was done in style. I stood still with a powerful inner reason not to cry out. There was nothing I could do and it was such a grand gesture of joyful mockery that it even felt traitorous to flee or to plead. I figured as the light, colours and mass of function and form falling upon me that dad had somehow from his unclaimed corpse caused this. It was an amusing end to a not so life. I never felt better so I closed my eyes.

When I opened my eyes I was standing where I last stood before the sky fell in. However, the empty room was furnished. It was almost as if the room had fallen in around me.

            Octothorpe said, ‘Ah Mr. Hash-Tag thanks for coming.’

            I looked up and saw Octothorpe coming down with no strings attached. He circled above me and then sped off towards the end of the room and landed. I walked towards him. His flying flamenco suit deflated by the time I reached the yellow no go zone. I stood waiting for him to be pressed and groomed by an assortment of annoying buzzing robotic mellifera that worked like clockwork from head to toe. He shooed them away and shook his hand. A bigger buzzing mellifera brought a silver tray stacked with two goblets and a carafe.

            Octothorpe said, ‘Wine Mr. Hash-Tag?’

            I said, ‘Thank you.’

            Octothorpe said, ‘You like?’ He addressed the air with a swoop of his hand indicating to me, at least I think, that it was the room not the wine he was asking about.

            I said, ‘Truly magnificent.’

            He said, ‘Thank you I was inspired by myself.’

            I said, ‘It’s truly one of a kind.’

            He said, ‘Yes I suppose it is.’

            The wine floated over. I took it from the mellifera and watched it buzz away up into the deep recesses of the roof. The wine was insanely delicious. My blood buzzed with electricity and a renewed sense of youth. Octothorpe swilled and guzzled his. He threw the goblet behind him and it was caught buy an unseen mellifera and carted off. When I swallowed and finished my wine I hesitated not knowing if my goblet would be caught. But I saw in his eyes a permission slip. I threw it and just before it bounced off the ground a mellifera swooped down and carried it away.

            He said, ‘You’ve been here before you know.’

            I said, ‘I have?’

            ‘Yes but you were a kid, well an infant really.’

            I was astonished my mother had never mentioned my visit to Octothorpe’s inner sanctum. A Volta Icon evolved in between us. I could feel my parents and myself. The space seemed different but essentially it was where I was right now. The Volta simmered out and Octothorpe was grinning. Perhaps my father had more to do with this man than I imagined. I couldn’t ask him any questions before he was ready to talk. I valued my life short as it may be, still, I couldn’t fuck with Octothorpe. The man was nasty and pretty much loose with the brain drains. The antithesis of nothing.

            He said, ‘Now they are both gone.’

            I didn’t know how to respond to a blunt observation, ‘Yes gone.’

            ‘I liked your dad.’

            ‘I knew you had helped us.’

            ‘But BraceTag was a loser and a dangerous one at that.’

            ‘He was unknown to me.’

            ‘Who knows anyone or anything for that matter?’

             I said, ‘I’m not kissing your arse but you seem to have some ideas.’

            He said, ‘All this you mean? This is all transference who knows where this crap will end up.’

            I said, ‘Nice crap if you’ve got it.’

            ‘You’re lot like your father.’

            ‘For some that’s a compliment.’

            ‘Don’t fester on his bad name. He was okay. Once.’

A Muscle Head came holding a number of trays.

            Octothorpe said, ‘Lunch?’

We moved across to a dining table that fluidly rose from the floor. The table was made of ancient wood but it was transparent, sort of. I figured it was a mash of free-floating temporalis molecules and a Hadron Package Image Cruncher. I was being forced to be impressed. Still, Octothorpe had enough technology at street level that even the city controllers pretended they were running things. I wasn’t scared as much as curious.

            ‘He asked, ‘How long before your Susatab authorization runs dry’ He spoke casually as he served up a plate of moisturised frill sharks. They squirmed around the inside of the plate prevented from sliding over by the electric current imbedded in the lip. I watched as he took his farrier fork and cooked the sharks alive. I followed suit and slurped up the soggy remains.

            I said, ‘According to a Control Central comclavis I am running beneath the yellow.’

            ‘So you’re fucked?’

            ‘Depends.’

            ‘You ever been to a scab satellite city?’

            ‘I was born in one.’

            ‘And I got you here before you were steamed out there.’ He pointed with his elbow in a direction that I assumed to be where I was born.

            ‘I’ll be okay. I do have some contact and there’s always the last of dad’s organ harvest exchange.’

            ‘That’s true. And I figure out there you could be pretty much set up that.’

            I said, ‘So perhaps I’m not as bad off as you think?’

            He said, ‘Look boy, you have no fucking idea what’s out there.’

            ‘I really don’t give a fuck what you think I know. You’re not going out there are you.’

            ‘I could blast it all if I felt like it.’

            ‘Perhaps you’ll be doing us a favour.’

He then served a steaming hive of impacted cyphochilus wrapped in seared pink skin clouds. Delicious.

            ‘You like?’

            ‘Ecstatic.’

            ‘It’s good to be the king.’ He laughed. And I laughed because it was a great example of well-timed active communication. Also, it was amusing.

            ‘Would you like to be a prince with the detritus of the litus at your beck and call?’

            ‘I am the litus.’ I said.

            ‘From humble beginnings princes and kings will grow.’ He outstretched his long powerful arms, which awaken my need for inclusion in the sophistication.

            He was about to start talking when a muscle head rolled in and whispered into his hairy ear. Octothorpe’s face grew red and slightly purple. He coughed and snapped his fingers. A mellifera buzzed in and flew into his mouth and after a few seconds it exited and like the others was enveloped by the shadows above us. His face reorganised itself. I knew that Octothorpe had been around for an undetermined temporal unix stamp. The city controllers had no way of even identifying his DNA wrap sheet even if they wanted to. They didn’t because they couldn’t and if they did they would be reauthorised as a scab city satellite infiltrator.

            He stood up and said, ‘I want you to see this HashTag.’

            I pushed my chair out and wiped my face thinking that what I was about to watch was something awful to do with me. I had a bad feeling about it and wanted to get out. Knowing full well that I was practically trapped in his venus- fly-trap. A Muscle Head brought in a half biobot. Half his head was a mass of tangled wires and glittering phosphorate bang bugs. He was certainly a single job self nurtured and evolved. Down on the street they had been taking over sections of the cubes and moving out the litus merchandise. There was reason enough to suspect that biobots were harbouring ideas of a free cube livespace at the cost of the pent up harmony that most of us litus agreed on. Albeit a silent social contract.

            The biobot was dragged by the Muscle Head to Octothorpe. I thought that Octothorpe should really stamp numbers on the Muscle Heads because it was impossible to tell them apart.

            Octothorpe said, ‘You been fucking with my cubes?’

            The biobot said nothing. He looked feebly into Octothorpe’s large stone filled face. I saw a sudden change in Octothorpe’s demeanour. Almost as if he had been turned to a new station. Instead of the daggers he assumed a conciliatory position. The biobot as well as the Muscle Head picked this up but remained in a state of fear expectation. Octothorpe motioned Muscle Head out. For a billionth of a second it was as if Muscle Head felt cheated out of his usual back breaker task. Still, he followed directions well and dropped the biobot.

            Octothorpe said, ‘Eat with us.’ He waved his royal hand and a swarm of mellifera buzzed into view brining an assortment of synthetic fluids and crackers of soft boron. The biobot sat down next to me. We exchanged looks and fateful acceptance. Like me the biobot had expected a sudden death. The Muscle Head usually pulled out the humming atom core whilst the biobot was aware enough due to reserve core life to feel himself die or switch off depending on one’s outlook. The current dogma span of learning and the collective intelligentsia had abandoned any and all forms of superstitious doctrine, philosophies or ideas centred on thinking beyond the now. Yet, paradoxically this idea in itself was a philosophy and in previous temporal unix stamps there had existed personalities whose entire biological span was spent dissecting ideas and thoughts. From sources unknown or unidentified it appears that an individual bio-personality managed to crack the hard core of human centrelines. However, it appears he was disposed of by the common city controllers of that time. This information of course comes from sketchy and non-determined erudition icons. The name this thing went by was Zetchee and even now the debate as to the nature of Zetchee’s bio distinction in unknown. For some he was the very first of the biobots. This is the line I have tried to follow.

            Octothorpe said, ‘Eat, drink, absorb.’

            The biobot did so and in a ravenous manner that one would think it was unable to nourish down on the street.

            Octothorpe looked at me, ‘Let’s see what we have next HashTag.’

He uncurled a long polyelectrolyte tube and scarped off its tattec insides lines of rough moulin rouge myofibrils. They were a mouth carnival of taste and sensation. Octothorpe was perhaps lavishing upon me a last meal of sorts.

He turned smiling and sniggering to the biobot sucking on a black fluid whilst munching on diamond borons clumps and looking peevish to settle the fact that when end time comes he wants to go out with a full rapid whirring central core.

Octothorpe asked, ‘So what’s your name chum.’

The biobot stopped all absorption took what I assumed to be a burp of sorts and said, ‘My feature identity is Arobase.’

Octothorpe said, ‘And are you, Arobase a self designer?’

Arobase said, ‘Once I like dead corpse human then come to light as this biobot I am Arobase.’

Octothorpe asked, ‘No identity on maker.’

Arobase said, ‘It seems creator offer harvest organ then it corpse too like me before I come Arobase.’

‘That’s incredible. So someone, your maker gives you access to organ harvest data base and then you created and maker dead?’

Arobase said, ‘Seems so.’ He slurped another black and popped a cluster of copper borons. I heard him crunching away as Octothorpe thought deeply and probably extravagantly in that he could not believe a human would offer harvest organs to a biobot, well at that time a biobot to be. Octothorpe understood that biobots were unable to lie in that human trait, however the little fuckers had taken the art of deceit and made it a science. Arobase’s presence and the face-to-face experience had perhaps shaken Octothorpe’s weltanschauung to the core. He had exterminated enough biobots for the rights of others and the city controllers but he never took the time out to know them as things. It bothered him and his usual decision was to strike out and pulverise the annoyance into oblivion. The longer he sat there the more he listened to the awkward communication system in front of him. The biobot was oblivious to Octothorpe’s gaze as he had realized that even this short respite from darkness annihilation was worth taking the time out to enjoy the ecstasy of the sensory overload. Perhaps it was planting seed bombs but I was confident that Octothorpe had taken care to screen it.

Octothorpe wiggled a finger or two and a mass of worker mellifera swarmed out of the ceiling. They hovered around Octothorpe as he made his request clear. All at once the mellifera circled Arobase who demonstrated no sense of concern continued to munch and suck on the sustenance freely provided.

I watched as the mellifera cleaned and probed inside and outside the biobot’s head and frame. Slowly its dull metallic ceramic dome glistened as it street muck was peeled away and digested and recycled by the worker mellifera who transported working parts back and forth between the biobot and their workshops hidden away up in the ceiling. The biobot became aware of its growth after the final mellifera had entered the humming atom core and gave it what I suppose was a re-biobot boot. For a second the light went out and suddenly Arobase was more than the cheap chaucer that was dragged before Octothorpe minutes before.

Octothorpe said, ‘How do you feel?’

It said, “Exceptional clarity. More than what I was even before I was biobot.’

Octothorpe, ‘So you’re working for me.’

Arobase, ‘It appears to be so as my harvest donor had motioned my emotive base to respond towards offerings of upgrades.’

Octothorpe looked gleefully at me, ‘Let’s drink to that.’

I smiled but only because I knew I had to smile. This was a single event in my experience. Never before had I seen a biobot given such a workings. The dwelling space of Octothorpe’s personality had provided for this biobot for the first time a temporal unix stamp that when the city controllers discovered they would perhaps have some power and influence over the litus to destroy Octothorpe. I thought this highly unlikely but if one read the scripts of Zetchee, ‘Scanning the blackness the darkly blackness scans your eyeful.’

I sat without comment as comment could kill. The biobot had morphed in minutes from sub grade to near enough litus capacity and I suspected a fuller deeper thinker before me. This thing Octothorpe has in store for us and if I were to follow the temporal unix stamp it was by chance. Again, it is better not to think against the logic of power. Illness follows intrusion and even though my bravado existed when I was first here with this crackerjack of a man it has been sucked dry. I fear for something not yet revealed.

The biobot said to Octothorpe, ‘The human thinks to much.’

We ate. It absorbed. Octothorpe presented me with an array of disfigured dysfunctional gastronomically delights. Fetid harp bread, ionized button feeders, crushed smeared carbon capybaras and more of the same. I took an offer of a smidge injection to prevent vomiting. I was used to eating a highly nutritious but basic diet of poppy beads notified by city controllers as our ‘gift of the one second meal.’ Perhaps change was coming.

            Afterwards we satisfied our bellies with nicotine shots and wine from the one scab outer rim satellite city Octothorpe allowed exports from, TrickyDickeyPercentage. It’s nicotine and sulphuric juices provided an element of joy for the rest of us. Being that it renders lives shorter, such as my father’s, was beside the point, it encouraged a fog of bliss. I don’t feel at all deceived we all know about it but we do it. What else are we going to do? Octothorpe’s sulphuric juices were primo and it wasn’t long before we were sharing an ancient communal greeting whereby the terms, ‘Good shit,’ and the highly disputed greeting of  ‘heavy shit man’ that were traded between these people. It was a culture of customary currency. It bred, we have been told a union of like-minded collectives that for a brief history led to an enlightening period of innovation. Though the available scripts are fairy elusive and shadowy with knowledge. Suffice to say we relaxed in an air of convivial society. Briefly.

            Everything was cleared and Octothorpe assumed his former self. We followed his example. The biobot was becoming more of a nuisance as his intelligence and status grew in the room. I was waiting for him to slip up so that Octothorpe would have to twist him into line. Still, it played the game well.

            The biobot said, ‘The human continues to see me as ‘it’.’

            Octothorpe said, ‘HashTag this is Arobase, Arobase this is HashTag.’

            Introduced to a biobot, as an equal was a frightening new leap of Octothorpe’s influence and power. This changed everything. But of course it changed nothing. Octothorpe had his steel skittish hands inside the system’s dead heart.

            I said, ‘Apologies, please to make your acquaintance Arobase.’

            The biobot looked at me with its one true eye and flickered its fuzzy light eye. I sensed hatred, one of a free loading assassin. Like life unfolding from the mundane to the extremes of the banal I had no idea where this was going. It was extremely difficult to make headway with so much confusion circling above my mind. The effort it took to sit still and not leap up and run was painful. There was no escape. I was committed to Octothorpe’s mad bad fucking ideas. If according to the scripts that brains existed that were damaged or numbed by organic influences then Octothorpe must have the numbest damaged brain of them all. Again, my instinct laughed at this ridiculous idea of a sick brain. The city controllers had agreed once the thinking was shut up that all brains were equal but some brains were greyer than others. The imbedded state of our brain’s capacity was seared deep into us at birth then followed up by years of sucking and breathing the good gas. The paradox now for me was that I was experiencing a thinking avalanche since I had been inside Octothorpe’s compound in the sky. The dichotomy between what I was prior to this meeting, I mean even using the word dichotomy I know I never knew that word existed let alone understood its meaning in a linguistic context. Linguistic context? What was wrong with me? Perhaps I was in the process of being recalled? I have felt this from others down in the street. Or did I only now think I felt this then and not simply fooling myself to thinking that I had felt feelings like this previously.

            I awoke to my former self. I tasted lithium in my mouth. Perhaps I had a seizure? I was tempted to ask the biobot but I realized that he was no longer an inferior. Not that we lived in an opposing inferior superior community. According to the City Controllers we were exactly the same but different from that same sameness. It’s difficult to navigate yourself in this maze. Octothorpe seemed to be frozen. His eyes bulging and face blue black. A med. mellifera swooped holus-bolus and exited once treatment had been initialised. I smiled as if nothing happened. Nothing had. Octothorpe had access to his biolog and framed his body freezes to match his temporal unix stamp. It allows him infinite time and unlimited possibilities. At heart I could not really accept his pedantic influence over his determination of the singularity when it came to manipulating the temporal unix stamp. We all had come and we all went.  

            Octothorpe said, ‘Now why are you here HashTag?’

            I had not a clue so maintained a silence. Octothorpe appeared a little distracted.

            He said, ‘Are you at all curious?’

            I said, ‘I am.’

            He said, ‘Good.’

            I said, Good.’

            It (Arobase) said, ‘Goodsplatbox.’

Octothorpe said, ‘First I have to reintroduce you to your DNA.’

 A Muscle Head walked in behind a hovering sink tank. It was covered by a flickering vid-digital drape. Octothorpe had a flair for the dramatic and expected everyone else to play their part. The floating sink tank stopped. The Muscle Head was motioned away. When the digital drape vanished the sink tank was murky with floating silty scabs and shards of loose tissue. It was difficult to make out what Octothorpe was demonstrating. Slowly the muck gave way to a shape then some depth of detail until it was clear that an emaciated former corpse hung now barely alive in the suspended third-rate carbon and magnesium nutrient bath.

We are made of star-stuff.


Our bodies are made of star-stuff.


There are pieces of star within us all.

(C.S) (Ancient superstition)

Octothorpe looked at me in anticipation of realization. There was none forthcoming. Arobase walked over and looked at the diagnostics followed by a close scrutiny of the specimen followed by another diagnostic scan. He glanced at Octothorpe and then gave me what amounted to a chuckle which biobots were unable to perform.

Octothorpe said, ‘You recognise him?’ He looked me in the eye.

I said, ‘No, should I?

Octothorpe, ‘The fucking fickleness of youth.’

I said, ‘I see nothing but a mouldy corpse kept adrift in a third rate sink tank.’

‘I agree the nutrient bath is of a sub standard condition. However, the material inside was itself substandard.’

“Why am I looking at this?’

“This is your father.’

“No. If I could have leaped from the tower I would have.’

I looked at the corpse and in detail I could make out the man as father. His skin was transparent and other than this existence he was dead to me. His eyes opened.

Octothorpe said, ‘As good as new!’

I said, ‘What is the fucking good of this?’

‘Good? There is no good. It’s just fucking funny.’

‘So am I to get down on my knees and ask for his life. I couldn’t give a fuck about him.’

‘I would be surprised if you did.’

‘So what is this exhibition?’

‘Initially I had him for minor amusement. Not sure what I’ll do with him now.’

I said, ‘Just drain it.’

He said, ‘Very harsh HashTag.’

‘You really think so?’

‘No.’

‘Can he see me?

‘From what I have been told he can may hear you.’

‘How long?’

‘His body was unclaimed and I had him flushed and refreshed.’

‘Again what for?’

Octothorpe had no reason to answer the impertinent question. He did it because it was there. He did it because he could. He did it because he could do everything. He was able to do anything to anyone at anytime regardless. The thought strain frying Octothorpe’s mind was akin to a soldier ant taking sexual liberties with the queen.

Octothorpe said, ‘I am owed by him and it’s you that has to pay.’

I said, ‘Owe what? Pay what?’

‘A man who resigns the system does not resign his obligations. A debt is like DNA boy it carries on and on and on.’

‘But I’ve got nothing.’

‘You are the collateral.’

‘Watch this.’ A Volta Icon breezed between us. There before me was my father in the flesh. Flesh I could touch, flesh I could feel. The Volta Icon was in a sense a temporal unix stamp navigator. Though, the actual back and forth of time transient was not in any sense a ‘real’ temporal unix movement the experience nevertheless was tactile and in some circumstances reports digested through the City Controllers seemed to indicate that elements of the mind can stray beyond the boundaries of the temporal unix cage and be sucked inside the transient temporal plane.

Being there with my father was not the profound experience one would expect. He seemed ill at ease to see me. It was that wasted mind and body that I knew well. It was the coldness of expression and his unblinking faith in nothing. I was nothing to him and now through the murky Volta Icon feed I could feel a distinction between his lies and the repression of solid fact. This was going to be my debt of death. Superficial images of skulls circled between us. He was a cloud and in by the distance between our minds and it was clear that I did owe a carry over debt to Octothorpe. Perhaps, my father would be regenerated if this debt were to be repaid. However, the cost was to be borne by me alone. Fuck DNA.

‘Are we clear HashTag?’

I was withdrawn from the Volta Icon like a drowning dreamer. It was sudden and frightful. I was slowly putting my elements back together. The image before me was hazy and cheesy. Though my sight returned and my feelings from boyhood rang and reverberated deep within my own natural born core. It was no surprise that the experience with my father had set my mind on fire. A drone like Octothorpe was dangerous and paradoxically regardless of power and technology revelling in juvenility. He was a dangerous mind loose on the moor.

‘So how do you think?’ Said Octothorpe.

‘I think I am running on the spot by your command.’

‘Indeed you are.’

‘Am I to be resigned?’

‘No. Don’t be dramatic. You work for me now.’

‘I have not been processed for conditioned employment.’

‘Do I look concerned? Yes you will work but you will benefit.’

‘I have a grand plan and I want you to be in charge.’

‘I have no experience.’

‘It matters not.’

Octothorpe walked over to one end of the large cavernous room and switched the lights. In total darkness I imagined my resignation coming masked as a rat. The pitched black was unravelled by a light green light peeling away in circles around us. The light was fluid. I realized that I was surrounded by glass and water. I was unable to tell its true size but enough to say it was more than any intense body of water I had seen. Yet, it felt as if I was in the viewing tank and not the other way around. The water was a brilliant jade green which it moved gently in circles around Octothorpe’s universe. There was no need to imagine the engineering brilliance that had produced this tank in the sky. How and why and who were burnt out of consideration in response to the beauty that Octothorpe had created. I looked at him and it was with a revulsion against myself that I understood that there was no positive and negatives as sprouted by the imbecilic city controllers. It was only in the here and now that grandeur could be expressed beyond a point of knowledge. It cannot be left to others to help withstand the dull glories and the mindless expression of an idea. The idea is nothing until it is before you. The idea must be despised until it has been twisted and forged into a tactile point that will without hesitation poke holes in the swarm. I felt a little ill.