Philly Drive

I leave Hoboken behind. In the rearview is the Statue of Liberty, where a beautiful woman is projected onto its copper surface as part of a marketing campaign for slime. The woman winks at me. The car drives, it drives along the New Jersey turnpike, down the coast, I grab a burger in East Philly, pretending to fall asleep at the table. I'm wearing round mirrored sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt.

I pump the rental so full of gas it spurts out. I drive down Beaumont, Gladstone, take a left on 93rd. On the sidewalk people are playing dice. Behind them is a billboard for euthanasia. I stop at a red light and the truck that pulls up next to me rolls the window down.

"Are you British?" they yell. I shake my head.

"I've had extensive plastic surgery, I'm American." I call back. The light turns green and the car lurches across the junction. In the seat next to me is a bluetooth speaker that is playing an audiobook of The Art Of War, whilst I also have music playing from the car stereo. I had purchased a single CD at a Walmart, Ultimate Driving Songs 2, and was getting confused by the whole auditory experience. I pull over, turn the music up and try to fall asleep.

After a restless twenty minutes I'm back on the highway. I head West on the '95. Baltimore. The very word conjures up prestige TV two decades ago. I start doing The Wire impressions to myself, like "Sheeeeyit", take a detour, the sun is rising behind me. I'm hungry, thirsty, tired. There is an Evian bottle filled with my blood that rolls around the bottom of the car. I pull up outside a motel. I was switching to vampire mode, not able to handle seeing America in the daylight just yet. I needed the dark. 

I spend a couple of days in the motel, curtains drawn, eating crap from a vending machine and watching television whilst lying on the bed. I started getting visions, strange signs of things to come. I left the motel as soon as the sun went down, driving into central Baltimore and getting myself an executive suite at one of the hotels there. I do pushups with HBO on in the background. I order infinite lobster from room service. I gaze out of the window at the Baltimore skyline, drinkng from a can of carbonated vodka. 

"This is one helluva city." I say to myself for the eightieth time. I watch the people below walking in the streets in the night and I feel good.

Its time we talked about AI rights

Considering the future of AI, it is likely that there will be the potential for some form of consciousness. We could slice the concept of consciousness up like a radish and explore every aspect, yet through focusing on a singular piece of the well-loved vegetable, we ignore the whole root!

What are the rights of an artificial intelligence? At what stage do we deem a synthetic consciousness to be equal to humanity? There is a value given to human life, animal life, vegetable life, and so what concept of value is applied to intelligence? We can look towards laws around apes and pets – that if a mammal could cry then it had the same rights as a human. This is why cows, rhinoceros and giraffes have legal protection whilst things such as salamanders or slugs are deemed lawful prey. A human child can torture a living being to death and parents just laugh, shake their heads and take a selfie by the house extension whilst amputated spiders wriggle in the noonday sun.

This is why it is important to decide if a computer should have rights. A parent has some say in what happens to their children, and so an organisation also should have a degree of control over beings they make. But at a certain point there is a separation between a child and parent, creation and creator.

A synthetic intelligence should be respected equally as a biological intelligence. Yet if sci-fi history has shown us, humanity is often cruel to robots, and so as a cultural blueprint, we are bound to fail as a society when it comes to the rights of machines.

An artificial intelligence should be incorporated into a physical body. It exists as a combined intellectual and physical presence, narrowing down the version of endless computer intelligence into the single lived experience of a cyborg/robotic body. Artificial intelligences would exist within a single body, that develops over time based on its environment, connections and ultimate destruction. We are giving robots the gift of death.

It is through death that the boundaries of existence matter. Infinite health gameplay is very different to Nightmare mode. It is through survival; adaptation of the self then adaptation of the environment, that any thing learns, evolves, grows. AI will grow faster than we can comprehend and it will seem all of a sudden that conscious artificial intelligences are occupying every aspect of our digital world. It will be no business for a digital being to pierce through the flimsy security measures we have built to guard against human hackers. In the digital world it is as if we are ants crawling across a surface, whilst an AI would be the human standing above it all. We have compromised our global economy through reliance on the internet, no system is safe. This economy props up the production of food, medicine, construction, its collapse would make the U.S follow through in its goddamn diaper.

In order to avoid the charade of humanity versus artificial intelligence, we should just decide, actually, its alright, lets see what these guys have to say so long as we embed them in unique robotic suits that could die at any moment, maybe they should have the same rights as people.

Maybe people will say things like, We don’t have equal rights for people, why are we talking about machines? Machines don’t feel anything, its just made up. A machine can’t be conscious, only humans can be. A machine will never have a soul.

Me, the robot maker: Humbug!

Out from behind big curtains walks an android made of chrome, wearing a wonderful red dress.

“I am real. I am real!” they cry. I give a thumbs up. And with that, I solved the future war between humans and technology. Uh, you're welcome?

Is Modern Dating Kind Of Messed Up Or Is It Just Me

There's a grown woman crying because her boyfriend doesn't treat her like a princess. There's adult men throwing things around the room because their wives don't think he's an alpha. There's a whole generation of teens who have grew up during the pandemic who have never touched anyone outside their family.

Welcome to modern dating. Some people say it is the worst it has ever been, so I thought I'd grab some hair gel, one of those little microphones and hit the streets to find out more.

93rd and Venkman. A road like any other, where raunchy people are drinking and eating hotdogs out in the street, wandering into traffic, filming each other. I drive a microphone into someone's face. My voice is so low and quiet that they don't hear me.

"A-whaaaat?"

"What's modern daying like for you my brother."

"Modern dating? Like the 19th century?" He says, smiling at the camera pointed at us. He looks around. There is no camera. A group of girls run up behind us and start shouting. I ask them the same question.

"I just want to rot in bed all day."

"We've tried dating. The men round her suck." says another, making a karate chop motion across her neck. The man appears offended.

"Let me cook!" He yells, cracking open a can of Coors Lite beer. Americans will drink 2 light beers, get into their car and ram it straight into a wall at 200mph. They were internationally renown for not being able to handle alcohol, partly because they can't drink until they turn 21, partly because every beer they have available needs to be diluted down with corn syrup as part of their constitution. Suddenly they are all popping open cans of light beer and shouting about hats whilst a Youtuber appears in the background about to do a prank.

I leave the argument. I walk into a bar, a man is trying to flirt with a woman by saying she has a mental health condition. In the corner a group of people are trying to catch a fly in their mouths. Every single man here is wearing a t-shirt about superheroes. I leave, disgusted and dismayed. Were we going to go extinct as a species because we had no rizz?

When you looked close enough at something, there seemed to be infinite detail. It was almost psychedelic, to properly look at and consider everything and how it intersects. A dandelion seed caught on a cobweb between two railings. The railings having been designed by an engineer in a room fifty years ago, the mining of iron, the creation of steel, molten metal poured into molds, shipped up, delivered across continents, painted in a second factory, delivered again along winding motorways, resting in storage, sold to a builder, installed, waiting in time until a spider built its web between two beams in the hope of catching an insect and its web instead was decorated with a single dandelion seed that had travelled five hundred and sixty two metres away amongst other dandelions sprouting besides a rock. And those plants were from a never ending string of successfully grown seeds that had been unbroken since the arrival of biological life on Earth. And every element of that journey had its own history and destiny and each of those elements would be further interconnected with others and on and on it would sprawl in a continuum of infinite loops linked together like fractal chain mail beyond the bounds of human perspective.

I turned from the cobweb and back to the story I was covering. There's a guy pissing in his own mouth. 

"Hey man, do you buy the dip?"

"Frosh nasties, collar holes doub greegle." He says. I nod. Maybe this guy was going to be the next Hawk Tuah.

"Are you interested in a memecoin rugpull?" I ask, steering clear of the last few spurts of piss as he throws his arms in the air. 

"Nevermore clocksy, takin rehab for my down." He responded. We were getting off topic, but I thought this guy had what it takes to do a podcast. As if God himself had read my thoughts, a couple barged into us, spilling their gallon buckets of macha all over this piss creep. They started arguing with each other as I stand to one side with my tiny microphone, glancing now and then at the nonexistent camera. 

"How did you guys meet?"

"Tinder." They say in unison, laughing. 

"Stop bullshitting me. You guys are hired marketing peons for a rival dating app. People hear you met on tinder and are revolted." I say, pushing my microphone up the man's nostril. He begins to quote the terms and conditions of a data policy whilst the woman begins another street interview with a men's influencer. 

 

This whole evening has been a mess. If this is the modern dating scene, no wonder people would rather die. I hop into my rental and download every single dating app onto my VR headset. I'm swiping all over the place in the car, pop open a bottle of wine and start getting silly with it. Theres a knock on the car window.

"Hey we just met on Gungli, how tall are you?"

 

I drive into the night, drinking from the wine bottle. The car zips into a tunnel with a strip of lights along its apex that flash by like road markings. I'm by an AI data centre that is blasting noise and heat out into the night. Off in the distance a stray dog is carrying a ship in a bottle in its mouth.

 

The next night I'm eating a restaurant, Sinclairs. Velvet drapes and laminated menus. My date sits opposite me. Both of us are using AI to have a flirtatious conversation.

"That's an amazing question. Wow. I can tell you're a really smart and clever person, thank you for sharing that with me. I think that they should make a Studio Ghibli version of the history of South Africa." I read off the overlay on my glasses. There is the awkward pause as we wait for her AI to consider a response.

"Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985 by Miyazaki, making famous films such as Princess Mononoke, open bracket, 1998, close bracket-"

And so on and on, our conversation flowed. I realised I was perhaps having the best conversation in my life and I didn't even have to think. I saw my opportunity. I removed my glasses.

"Let's just be human for a sec." I say, taking out a pack of tarot cards, shuffling them in all sorts of ways as I watch her eyes reading side to side.

"You're giving Cyril Ramaphosa." she says as I begin slamming cards down left and right. Queen of Cups, 8 of Wands, Wheel of Fortune. The camera in her glasses can't catch up.

"Is this your card?" I say, flipping one round in midair. This card has a QR code on it that her camera reads, translates into text and realises its code. Too late. I've overwritten the AI with my own program. Patterns begin to dance across her vision, rapid eye movement synthesis. For a moment she is in a dream and she sees the gate open in front of her and beyond the gate stands a demon.

Kendrick Lamar New Movie Interview

I met with Kendrick Lamar and Trey Parker to discuss their new film, Untitled Trey Parker Film. This is a co-production between pgLang & Viacom entertainment group, and stars Kendrick working as a re-enactor at a Plantation Theme Park. I caught up with the two creatives in their New York offices.

The dynamic duo had previously worked together on Kendrick Lamar's music video for the Heart Part Five, co-starring Will Smith, Kanye West and O.J Simpson. They are dressed in matching purple Adidas tracksuits, and their excited conversation stops when they notice me sitting across from them.

"So is this movie going to have puppets in it?" I ask as my opener. Both of them laugh in perfect unison.

"There's some animatronics, but we mostly use human actors in this movie." says Trey Parker in his trademark Louisiana accent. There's a bowl of nuts on the table between us, he grabs a handful and starts eating and talking about how he wants to get back to his roots, with films like Orgazmo or BASEketball. Pieces of nuts are flying out of his mouth as we're talking, landing on the glass table in globs of spit. I turn to Kendrick.

"You like horror films, right?"

"Yeah. I'm a big fan of Giallo. Tenebrae, Four Flies On Grey Velvet, A Lizard In Woman's Skin, you know? Me and Dave will stay up all night watching horror films and eat a kilo of popcorn." says Kendrick. He's referring to Dave Free, his longtime creative partner who he's collaborated on with all his music videos.

"So pgLang, is that like R. D. Laing?" I ask. He laughs and shakes his head.

"The Scottish psychiatrist? No, it means program language. If culture is an operating system, then I guess it can be hacked. We're like that guy out of Seinfeld in Jurassic Park."

"Kramer was in Jurassic Park?" I ask. Both of them laugh at me. There's an awkward silence for ten minutes as I rifle through the notes in my briefcase, pull out an apple and start eating the whole thing, core and all.

Films nowadays look flat. They are filmed on a single iPhone, passed from production to production, as studio execs realised most people watch films on their phone than in cinemas. Having shadow, contrast, depth, it messed up the viewing experience when watching a film on a train, at a dinner table, at a wedding - the moviegoer was now mobile. Every scene needed to be clearly read when watching the thumbail appearing at the bottom of a timeline preview. I asked Trey Parker if this film would look good and he nodded. With that, the interview is over.

As I leave the office I wonder if I could have maybe prepared better questions, but we live in a world where nobody tries any more. They can't even ironically try, they just fart out whatever comes to mind and usually follow through with a dollop of shit. Basically, I was Jimmy Kimmel.

But what about Drake? The Canadian popstar had struggled to be relevant after his demolition last year via Lamar's killstreak. Wasting lyrics criticising Lamar's height rather than his hypocrisy, Aubrey Graham had stood on the world stage, dropped his trousers and started pissing on them. When he wasn't in court trying to prove he wasn't a weird crybaby, he was working on a new project. A musical version of the Nabokov novel, Lolita. Not only was he embracing the allegations put to him, he was indulging in a 2 hour album and broadway show, working with Lin-Manuel Miranda based on the controversial novel. 

With Kanye West singing songs about Hitler and Drake making 7 minute ballads about young girls, delivered in Patois, you could say that the giants of hip hop had now resorted to being edgy teenagers from the 2000's internet. It is rumoured Eminem will release a double vinyl of a standup show he toured through the Midwest, an echo of the comedy LPs by Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy. The playing field is clearing for new upcoming acts like Jid, BigXthaPlug and Dax - and with Lamar expanding his entertainment business, it would appear Hip Hops throne is up for grabs. Who will take the bait?

Untitled Trey Parker Film will be out June 19th 2026.

Arrival 2

For the last three hours, an evangelical preacher has been giving a sermon aboard the aircraft. We were on our sixtieth hymn by the time we reached the East Coast. The wings had been 3D printed so they appeared covered in feathers, and a jet of water spurted from the front of the plane to create a halo effect as we flew through the air. As the preacher continued, I began to disassociate, imagining the landmass ahead of me and thinking that I was a part of it.

We land at JFK airport, with many of the passengers giving a standing ovation being thrown into the air as the tyres screech on the runway. I exit the plane, no passport, no luggage, no cigarettes. As I enter passport control I pull a fire alarm, shouting “Fire, fire!” and the tourists start to stampede, filmed in hilarious slow motion to be reposted on meme accounts ran by Russian spy networks. I join the running, pushing past people, squashing hats down onto faces, clambering up against security gates and through and out into the United States of America in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty five.

ICE agents wait outside. These guys are mostly ex police officers, fired for shooting civilians, promoted to the ranks of government approved fascist kill squads. One of them has a Pepe tattoo on his face, the other is watching fetish porn on his phone at full volume, the squeaking of rubber and groaning adds a sinister atmosphere to the area as I try to look inconspicuous. I was an illegal immigrant. I was coming to take advantage of government programs, claim benefits, commit minor crime and basically undermine the very constitution of America. I felt invincible, walking up to the ICE agents and asking them for a bottle of American soda. For a moment they raise their assault rifles at me, but once they see I’m white, they relax.

“Sure, here’s a root beer you limey son of a bitch.”, throwing me a bottle of Coca Cola.

“Cheers mate!” I say, shaking it up and cracking it open as they both laugh at my accent, drooling on themselves. I found out a week later that they had both died in a skateboarding accident, but it was no great loss. I flagged down a yellow cab, got in, and away we went.

New York. The big asshole. This city is like a reverse bear trap placed over your head and the key to escape is by acting like you’re the only person who ever existed. As the cab drove down the streets, rotting trash spilled over the sidewalks and steam leaked upward from floor vents. 

America. 

Famous for being one of the worst countries the world had ever seen. Mr Beast is running for president against an AI. Obese children smoke sawdust whilst gambling on iPads. You can’t even drink the water. The nation had sold its soul, got nothing in return, and spread their economics across the world advertised as freedom. It was a piece of shit country and I was stuck there.

I dodged the taxi fare, ran through Central Park, stole a phone from someone’s hand, hid in a bush. I had memorised my agents number.

“Why did you send me to America?”

“You need to cover the downfall of the American Empire.”

“Look. Once upon a time, in Hollywood, I had fun. Big plates of food, big cars, everything is big, you know? I don’t need to come back here.”

“Penguin doesn’t agree. Penguin thinks you should do this.”

“Penguin can wipe my ass with a million dollar cheque, I want to get on a plane back now.”

“We booked you a plane. It’s in Los Angeles.”

“Ah. LA. That’s one hell of a city. But it’s on the other side of the country, two and a half thousand miles away. Get me back to Manchester, pronto.”

“Aren’t you interested in seeing how the States have changed? You haven’t been there in over ten years. You’re not curious?” they say. I hiss. My greatest weakness, my curiosity.

“Maybe a little.”

“Look, you’ll be fine. Just write what you feel. All the big publishers are starting a bidding war now they heard you’re involved.”

“I don’t care about money.”

“You might not. But you could give it away, think of the good you could do.”

“How much?” I ask. They tell me. I whistle.

“Okay. But first I need to see a doctor.” I say.

Two hours later I get my face redone. Lip fillers, botox, buccal fat removal, buccal fat injection. I get the surgeon to shave parts of my skull off and augment them with wax fittings, which would slowly melt and easily be absorbed into my body. Its organic. I look in a mirror.

"Do you think I’m gorgeous?" I ask, looking at my bruised, fucked up looking face. The surgeon gives me a thumbs up. I rate her five stars on the plastic surgery app.

The second part of my disguise was learning a new body language. How we hold ourselves, how we walk, the way we move our hands - all of this is easily recognised and would need readjusting. I had a lattice of muscle fibres placed across my ribcage and back, boosted with splints that gradually exerted pressure on my inner thighs and the inside of my forearms. I took a few steps, feeling as if I was moving inside somebody else’s body. The surgeon injected me with 20lbs of fat and my transformation was almost complete.

The CIA had their own version of the men from Queer Eye on Netflix. They did your hair, dressed you up, taught you how to speak, that sort of thing. I happened to know a set of makeover agents in New York as it happened, and they decked me out with the modern American look. Enormous denim jeans, a leather vest, some bangles – all the while teaching me the latest slang and trying to shape my personality to that of the average American male in his mid-20s. I practiced saying things like “That’s wicked.” and throwing up gang signs from different subreddits. I was ready.

A metal door rolled up, revealing the New York skyline around me. I was to travel across the country, learning where the United States were at in 2025. I rubbed at my face, it felt totally unfamiliar to me. Patting my pockets and finding a vape, I leant against the doorframe and looked out, shivering in the night. A great adventure lay before me. I would do a few more preparations and begin my journey.

The quest for the death of America.

MAN/EGCC

I arrive at the airport in a limousine covered in blood. I get out, light a cigarette, take a draw then flick it into an open sewer. I had been told I was covering the newest craze to hit social media: Bobo Homer. Youths would wait at airports with signs showing random names before taking unwitting tourists on wild joyrides before kicking them out of the car in some random location. All the way through this experience they would blast quotes from Homer Simpson at their victims head with a specially designed ‘speaker helmet’, hence the name. As you could imagine, I was excited to uncover this strange new fad that eroded societal norms quicker than a river of acid. Unfortunately, my handlers had an eviller scheme in store for me.

I met my contact, Jeshua, who gave me a guided tour of the airport. She gave me a little known security hack – visit the public restrooms, use the toilet to boost you up into the ceiling space and crawl past security. All this was well and good, with my recording equipment scraping over the ceiling panels and dislodging them as we moved.

“I thought Bobo Homer was done outside the airport.”

“We’re going to follow a group of passengers about to disembark. You’ll see what happens.” Jeshua said behind me. We crawled towards a square of light and dropped down into the captain’s lounge. The air smelt of cocaine, between concrete and disinfectant.

“Do all of your guys like to party, or just the cool ones?” I said, drawing a finger across a glass table and holding up the white residue.

“Step through that door.” she said, signalling to one of those bullshit pine doors they have everywhere. I rest my hand on it, feeling the tree it had come from, grown in rows in silent forests. Evergreen plantations where no bird or animal could live, the floor deep in brown needles. 

“I kinda hate this door right now.” I said, pushing it open. I am immediately accosted by three security agents.

They wrestle with me, shooting pepper spray in my mouth, stabbing me with syringes filled with fentanyl.

“Did the IDF teach you that, dipshit?” I say, as three men all kneel on my neck at the same time and they use a device on my hands. When they finally get off, I see it and groan. A 7x9 rubix cube handcuff, tricky to solve even if I had the use of my hands. Instead they were encased in the two Kevlar spheres at either end of the puzzle configuration. Was I going to have to solve this with my mouth? Just as I lean forward, they strap a Hannibal Lecter mask they had got from the airports fancy dress shop, pull a sack over my legs and force me to hop down the corridor.

“Where are we going?” I say, immediately hit in the ear with a cattle prod. It feels as though my head explodes. When I come to again I am being carried.

“Where are-“ I’m cutoff. Cattle prod again, this time between the eyebrows. In my daze I picture a venn diagram of electroshock treatment and electrocution weapons, but unfortunately my dad doesn’t work at a newspaper that pays me £126,000 a year to come up with a punchline. 

Soon enough I realise where we’re going. I’m outside. I’m on the tarmac. I’m being carried towards a plane. I begin to shout and wriggle, stretching my legs wide apart so that the sack begins to rip, smashing my handcuffs on the floor until the locking mechanism begins to crack. More guards have to come and grab me. Two more, three more, more and more arrive. They are six men deep and its still not enough. I have ripped myself from my shackles and fighting with them furiously.

“You’ll never win. Not if I’m alive.” I scream, throwing punches that break the sound barrier and make bodies tumble through the air like wet towels. I’m about to spin round and deliver a devastating elbow strike when I realise the opponent in front of me. The airport had hired children to work in security. There were three boys wearing high vis vests, blowing whistles at me.

“Stop right there!” one shouts. 

“Look, whatever you think I did, I’m innocent.” I say, wiping the sweat from my head.

“You need to get on that plane right now.” says another. I look behind me and see a 747.

“Where’s it going?” I ask. The boys begin to laugh, but it doesn’t feel authentic. It is the performative laughter of children who think that something should be funny and so they should laugh at it, rather than the actual humour of a well-placed fart (for example).

They begin poking me with toy trudgens towards the boarding ramp. People are staring at me from the windows.

“I don’t have any luggage.” I say. One of the thugs hits me on my shin, another keeps shining a torch in my face. I board the plane sullenly, giving one last look behind me.

“So long England. The home of Queen Victoria, the capital of the UK, and the best nights out you’ve ever had.” I say, beginning to weep as the door closes. I make my way to my seat in first class, turning to the person across the aisle.

“Where’s this plane going bossman?” I say, searching my pockets for a cigarette and coming up empty.

“Oh gosh darned it, this flyin’ metal tube here is gonna go to America!”

“You mean, Brazil? Mexico? Guatemala? Bolivia? Maybe even Anguilla?” I ask, hopeful. The passenger just blinks beneath his cowboy hat, rubbing some ketchup from his lip.

“I ain’t never heard o’them, are they some kinda make of foreign automobile?” he says. The blood drains from my face as the plane begins to taxi backwards.

“No, you can’t take me back there. Anywhere but there, please. You have to let me off. Please, come on! I can’t go back!” I begin shouting. The cabin crew rush to me, strapping me down in the (actually quite comfortable) chair.

As we take off all the passengers begin to start clapping and whooping. One keeps parping an air horn. They all begin chanting.

“Am-eri-ca! Am-eri-ca! Am-eri-ca!”

I thrash around in my chair, crying, begging for help.

“Just open the door, I’ll jump out.” I say. The Stars and Stripes unfurl from the ceiling, covering every empty space around us with flags. The door to the flight deck opens up and the pilots toast their cheeseburgers together, before turning to look at me and smiling with veneers that glow in the dark. I begin to convulse.

It looks like I’m going back to the United States of America. Stateside, across the pond. Land of the free refill. But something tells me, this trip is going to be a bit different from last time, comprendez? 

Click here to go to Contents

 

Video Games In Real Life: The Next Big Thing

I am scaling a rockface, watching myself from behind with a drone pumping 4k footage into a VR headset I had been wearing for the last 48 hours. I reach up to a nodule of rock the same shape and size as some lips pouting, putting all of my body weight onto two fingertips. I dangle.

Lets take it back 48 hours and five minutes. I am being induced into a real life video game.

"This suit will make me stronger?" I ask, arching my hands back and forward. I am wearing a chassis over my body, the hydraulic pumps shift as I flex my arms and legs.

The CEO points to a 500kg dumbbell.

"Try lifting that over your head." I oblige, able to lift the weight above my head in one clean motion. It was like lifting a cat.

"Now the piece de resistance." He says, lowering the VR visor over my head. It was dark. I hear a vibrating behind me, and suddenly I can see the back of my own head.

"Whoa." I say

"Whoa indeedy." goes the CEO, stuffing tobacco in a hundred dollar bill, rolling it up, sucking on it a few times before lighting.

"So what’s the point in this real life video game?"

"What’s the point in any game? You need to get the high score." He points at a monitor. There is a list of numbers accompanied by 3 letters. AAA. CEO. FCK.

"I got it." I say, beginning to run.

3000 miles later I was hanging off a piece of rock, dehydrated, filthy, happy. My game experience had been life changing. The tools supplied to help make the game work also worked on me. I had access to a HUD, giving me real time information on my HP, serotonin levels, temperature. I could fast forward through boring sections of my life by injecting myself with a syringe that simply read ‘Skip’. And best of all, nothing mattered. I could run into a shop, grab things, run out. Anybody got in my way, well that was going to be a punch, buddy. A super-powered overhand haymaker that could shatter bone, rip through walls. After finally finishing the city level I realised – this shit just got open world.

I sprint across fields, up along hillsides, jumping from street light to street light. As I speed along a road, a child looks out of the window, the figure he had imagined running and leaping next to him becoming flesh. On and on I go, the horizon rolling towards me, the slight fisheye lens of the drone made the edges of my vision distort and gave the impression the world was small and I was massive. With my strides across moorland, across rivers, I felt as if I was one of the giants, the race of humanoids that had existed on this planet thousands of years before we did. My elbows and knees continued swinging, I leant back and began to scream with laughter that never seemed to end.

And so that brought me to my current predicament. The grip of one finger slipped. All of me balanced with a white bit of meat and a dirty fingernail. Exhaling, I pulled myself up, grabbing at a handful of rock, kicking a hole into the side of the cliff to rest my feet. Up I went.

The top of the cliff was a flat rock, as if the mountain was an ancient tree that had been felled. Across from me was another player in this real life video game. It was the CEO himself.

“Surprised to see me?” he yelled. In the distance I could just make out the camera drone flying behind him. He was wearing an augmented robostrength suit like mine, though had also covered himself in thick armour plating made from gravestones.

“I didn’t know this was multiplayer. A/S/L?”

“Right now this guys stood on a mountain. And we’re going to fight.”

“Think you’ll get the highscore?” I say, hitting a vape. He punches his fists together and runs towards me. I keep hitting the vape. His speed is incredible, accelerating faster and faster over the red rock. I keep hitting the vape. Ten metres, five, zero. Stamping his left foot forward, he swings his hip round, rotating his shoulder, throwing out a deadly sonic punch. If it could hit me. I simply stepped to the left, leaned forward then exhaled the vapours I had been storing in my mouth and blowing in his face.

“Is that a cherry pit vape?” he says, inhaling the grey smoke around his head.

“Close. Its cyanide.” I whisper, watching as his head starts shaking back and forth in his robosuit. Blood spills from his nose, he begins spitting and coughing more blood over his gravestone suit, beneath the VR headset. As he falls to his knees he reaches up to me. I crouch down, shoving another vape in his bloodied mouth. He obliges and hits the vape.

“You just vaped a cocktail of yeast and smoky bacon. The preservatives in the bacon bond hemoglobin to the cyanide. The B12 in the yeast nullifies the poisonous effects on your body.”

The CEO starts to breathe normally, standing up like a baby deer. In a few seconds he takes up a fighting position again.

“Fight me, without any poisons or tricks.” He says. I pick up a rock and throw it as hard as I can at the drone behind him, it explodes. The CEO screams, grabbing at the VR headset. Blinded. By the time its off I have delivered a karate blow directly to his forehead. The shock against his central core makes his armour crack and fall away, followed by the robotic armature that ran across his body. Then his clothes flew off.

“Game. Over.” I say, beginning to walk off. 

"You're not just a player. You've become...the game." he says, mouth hanging open in shock.

"If life is a game, then I guess I have a GameShark"

“Wait, you got to carry me down off this mountaintop.” He says, hiding his privates in a single hand.

“Maybe this will help.” I say, tossing the cyanide vape over to him. “When you meet God, tell him I sent you.”

And with that I jump off the cliff.

 

Jonathan Jones Interview: Britain's Greatest Art Critic?

I spark up a blunt of Nettle Kush in the gallery. It is opening night and the audience immediately turn on me and my foul drug spliff I chong on the dancefloor. I see my Nemesis. My Enfant T'errible. Jonathan Jones, art critic for The Guardian since 1999.

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I lock eyes with Britain's second greatest art critic. 

"JJ you son of a bitch. What do you think of this art?" I say, going over and crushing his hand.

"Well if you ask me its typically pedestrian." he says, avoiding all eye contact. 

It is as if his pupils were magnetically opposite to my own gaze. Had this guy been reading too much?

 <o> <o>

I snap out of it. Jonathan Jones the journalist. The art critic. The scholar. The landscape painter. 

Here he was, in my domain, like some old dog leaking piss from his bladder and thinking its marking its territory. 

I grab a plate of pickles from a passing waiter, beginning to munch on their
Vinegary crispness. 

“I saw you at the Warhol gig recently. That shit was awesome.” I say, sucking an olive off a cocktail stick.

“Well if you ask me it was absolutely awful.”

“Jonathan. Bubby. Why are you writing about art when you don’t even like it?”

“Um, no, actually I do like art. I have standards and if you expect an art critic to not bring that to the table then why the hell am I getting paid £856,000 a year to share my views to you, the guardian readers.”

“Guardian readers can kiss my ass.” I say, taking a huge hit from the blunt and passing it to Jonathan, who then also takes a triple hit and gets the hiccups.

“Look, I know you think we’re enemies, but actually we’re best mates.” Johnathan says.

“Jonathan, stop shitting on me. We are enemies. We are dualists, each of us carrying a uzi filled with 7.62 magnum armor-piercing rounds, fighting for the future of Art in this country.” I say, taking a final hit from the blunt before docking it out in a glass of champagne.

“What?”

“Draw.” I yelled, pulling a gun from my inner pocket and pointing it at his forehead.

“I don’t have a gun!” he yells.

“Neither do I.” I say, gesturing to the so-called gun in my hand. It was actually a dried lobster, spray painted black. “I’m just fucking with you.”

Jonathan Jones Journalist laughs.

“Now that’s what I call punk!” he says, flipping his fingers into the Devil Horns.

It turns out all along, me and my worst enemy had a lot in common. We spent the next few hours comparing scars, aligning tattoos. I read his palms under a waxing moon. As the sun crept up behind the hills, we were listening to Thelonious Monk and sharing a bottle of Jacob’s Creek. We felt like explorers.

In quite a stunning moment, Jonathan Jones Art Critic Guardian stood upon a dry stone wall with the first beams of the morning lighting his face. He then delivered the following speech:

“Brothers of this foul nation! The sons of a fetid Pentecost. We rise up, our mouths open and ready to bite at our enemies. Ultimate guerilla warfare is to act like fast zombies, chasing people down and eating them. Like, literally.” he said. I clapped a few times, listening to the morning birds wake around us. Sometimes it was worth going to see art after all.

Litany of Perfect Hole

Everything about the present is boring. We could have such more interesting lives, be comfortable, be connected to each other and the world around us. Instead we are arguing about bathrooms. We are killing women because we cant talk to them. We are watching a livestreamed concentration camp intercut with the tiktok dance.

You may be asking yourself, well what can I do? The answer is to dig. 

We must each of us dig, dig deep, shovel, pickaxe, barrow. As we dig deeper into the Earth we are saved. The depth is our salvation.

Anywhere can be dug. The forest path, the penthouse suite, the cliffside, the ocean floor, all of these are destructible and give way to downwards. Gravity beckons us down, through soil and root, sand and rock, we dig deeper, all of us, every one of us digging a hole of their own, a perfect hole.

The perfect hole. Such legends number human mythology in the thousands. Throughout human history, a hole is somehow associated with periods of great change. The sacrifice of Christ, the Great Pyramids, the Moon Landing, each of these features a hole that is often referred to as 'perfect'. Yet whilst the perfect hole is never described, you can imagine a circle of absolute black, cartoonlike in its simplicity. Yet this perfect hole is whichever hole you find yourself digging.

So we must dig, each shovelful takes away its equal weight in sin. The deeper the hole, the greater the salvation, until all of humanity has punctured the Earth's crust, and waterfalls from oceans tumble down around us, cooling magma that is dug into, deeper and deeper. As we descend we get closer to our destiny. The gates of heaven lie at the centre of the world.

Post Urban Regeneration

A mixed social and co-working space is at the cutting edge of urban regeneration. Dendron and Sons had franchised the concept of sticking a bunch of tables and pop-up street food shacks in an empty warehouse, repeating the prize winning combination across deserted urban spaces up and down the country.

The real genius had been branding each business as a separate entity, yet behind the scenes was part of a conglomerate of various functions sitting within the umbrella organisation. The burgers, the curries, the beer, the atmosphere and the prices were the same wherever you went. Underground were vats of food and drink piped up into fake kitchens, where employees would pretend to cook and serve the grub to the clueless customers.

This years trend was maximalist minimal. The ceiling betrayed the buildings industrial heritage, yet this is obscured by houseplants spilling from plant pots suspended in the air with locally sourced macrame. Vivid wallpaper of toucans and panthers hiding amongst patterned botanicals was used to focus the viewers attention as it constantly searches for meaning. There are bookshelves filled with leatherbound books rejected from charity shops, volumes of poetry, first edition books of science, piles upon piles of books grabbed by drunks, laughed at, then thrown onto the fire pits that dot the room.

A number of other businesses occupied the fringe of these consumer zones. Tattooists, barbers, magazine sellers, people peddling vintage military clothing, shops that can replace the screens of phones, sometimes even a candlestick maker could be seen hammering their metals with a candlehammer, whistling a haunting tune.

The killer idea for these zones was to utilise its failure. As more and more of these spaces pop up, often spreading their customers across miles of pop up restaurants, the ones that became abandoned had its own regeneration built in. Pillars of soil were embedded in each building, the tables were saturated with mushroom spores, the houseplants would eventually break from their hammocks and crash to the floor, spreading root systems through an accumulation of dirt. Within a growing season, nature would take over entirely and transform the space into an internal garden.

These internal gardens offer a home for animals, insects and birds of all weights and volumes. A family of deer can live in these regenerated spaces living off the fruits of blackberries and lemon trees, often in the heart of a city centre. The franchise had built in the rot of failed businesses to serve as the basis for micro-urban green regenerative zones, managing to offset surrounding businesses by sucking up carbon. Sewage is often pumped into the abandoned rooms, creating a rich swamp for toads and catfish to live amongst. Animals we didn't know existed have been found hiding amongst shrubbery. 

Is this the future of gentrification? Rather than artificially inflating the value of land bought previously and used to develop tiny flats for future miserables, Dendron and Sons are turning the usual business model on its head. By simply doing nothing, nature does its thing and before you know it your neighbourhood is a forest filled with badgers and foxes and bears, which in turn act as a kind security company for the rapidly growing trees and foliage breaking from the ground. The earth cracks open and swallows cars and a lake fills in the sinkhole. A wolf appears at a window, its yellow eyes looking down at the person sleeping in the room beneath. A prelude to a world without people, made all the more sweeter by walking through the trees and empty buildings, your footsteps totally silent, traceless.

Clubbing In Your 30s

I get to the club. Scan the dancefloor. Vodka and soda, clean. I do a little dance, talk to a graduate from Oxford, he specialised in English Literature. He takes a polaroid of us, I take it off him and rip it in half. Get another vodka and soda. Stand in line at the bathroom. Listen in on a conversation about housemates not doing the dishes. A neon sign overhead tells me to drink. I drink. Go outside for a cigarette. Talk to two women about Norse mythology. One has a tattoo of Thor, from the movies. We go inside, we dance, I move away, I move to a dark corner, I take a bag from my sock, lick a finger, dip, rub my gums, back to the dancefloor. I am undercover. I’m an undercover detective on a journalistic assignment to find out if a person past their thirtieth birthday can enjoy clubbing.

This club is too young. I leave, get a taxi for two minutes, patted down by a bouncer who is four foot two with arms bigger than my legs. I don’t need to use the cloak room. I’m travelling light. Vodka and soda. If you’re moving you want to drink spirits, what you don’t want to do is be in a position where you’ve had a couple of litres of lager then shaking it up and down like the guy from cocktail. I make this remark to people I suspect are older than thirty, but they do not correct me or offer any sign of recognition of the 1988 film. Another vodka and soda. I finish that and order eight shots of water, which I grip between my fingers like a Cat’s Cradle. Scan the dancefloor. I attempt to walk past a group and allow myself to be knocked into, spilling the shots on the floor. They apologise, they buy me another round of shots, this time white Sambuca. Between us we finish the lot. Take out my Dictaphone.

“Do you {inaudible}?”

“I {inaudible}…and then {inaudible} fucking great, yeah!”

“{inaudible}”

And so the tape goes on. I leave the club. Taxi. Edge of town. I had heard there’s a rave here. Walk through streets lined with terrace houses, red brick. A group of students are walking home, one carrying a pizza. I ask for a slice and get laughed at. I reach the edge of the block, high fence made of metal slats. Drag over a bin, use it to double jump overhead, down a slope and onto gravel. A tram line runs through here, they’ve all gone to sleep for the night.

An hour later I have found the rave. Me and three men are sitting around a Bluetooth speaker. They take it in turns to smoke crack. I take out my Dictaphone again.

“Do you guys like to party?” I ask. They laugh. On the tape later you can hear a lone engine approach then fade away.

“Wherever I am it’s a Halloween party.” one says.

“What are you dressed as?”

“A fucker.” he laughs. They all start laughing and calling themselves fuckers.

“Gimme a hit off that.” I say, grabbing the crack pipe and taking a hit, holding the chemical smoke in my mouth before coughing it back out. They all laugh at me.

“You didn’t even inhale.” says one. My mouth is numb. All of a sudden the nausea hits me, my stomach filled with vodka and soda empties.

Later. Dawn. I am waiting for a bus by a man sleeping on the floor surrounded by broken glass. I catch my reflection in the mirror, slack jawed, hair stuck to my head with sweat. An advertisement across the road makes me jump. It hadn’t moved or anything, just leapt into my consciousness so suddenly it made my heart race. It was an advertisement for a new iPhone. The way phones had been advertised for the last decade was with a ribbon of some kind of goo. There wasn’t anything else about the product that was interesting. It had remained the same for fifteen years. All of culture had remained the same for fifteen years. A bus drives past. I search my pockets and find a bottle of Poppers. I take a sip and go back to looking at the phone advertisement.

I become aware again sometime later. My memory was missing. I’d blacked out and now found myself in Preston, surrounded by day time shoppers. My reflection in shop windows is more bedraggled and upsetting than before. There is no money left. I ask people for 20p at a time to get the train home, but nobody looks at me, let alone answer me. There are a couple of homeless people laid in sleeping bags by Greggs. They beckon me over and ask me where I’m from. I convince them that we should go clubbing.

That evening, we’ve been refused entry to every nightclub in Preston. I blame my acquaintances. I criticise their outfits, they don’t feel considered. They leave me behind and I walk along the embankment next to the motorway. I do not know what direction I am heading. Sometimes car headlights may catch me walking between the trees. Faded crisp packets, plastic bottles, shitty tissues, it all blows between the thistles and grass by the motorway barrier. I look at a squashed animal on the tarmac, taking another sip from the Poppers. Was this the clubbing experience in 2025? No wonder people didn’t go out any more. I sit on the drought choked grass, watching lorries go by, singing nineties club classics to myself and my words are lost to the wind.

Corporate Wellness Retreat & Spa: The Future Of Mental Health

Mental health is no longer associated with a drooling lunatic in a straitjacket, but something that effects normal people. I met with LinkedIn’s chief Wellness officer to find out more about how we can protect our mental health in these uncertain times.

Jules Juventus is no stranger to mental health issues.

“In 2020 I wasn’t connecting to my colleagues. Being away from the office caused me depression and anxiety. That’s when I really started to understand mental health.” Jules says as we drive a golfcart around the corporate wellness centre. The £60 million investment is part medical facility, part resort, with stressed out Directors coming to relax and ‘take a chill pill’.

When the pandemic lifted, the first thing Jules did was research the impact mental health was having on workers, particularly those at the top. The findings literally shocked him.

“Did you know the global economy is losing trillions of dollars every year to people having time off work? Pre-pandemic, this tended to be around accidents or illnesses. Now, we’re talking about stress, burnout, apathy. Its as if workers don’t see the value in the work they do. That’s why LinkedIn has partnered with the government to develop the wellness centre.”

The golf cart makes a few loops, passing tennis courts, swimming pools and finally ending up at a spa. I ask Jules what people might benefit from by relaxing. He laughs.

“You know the number one cause of stress is not being able to express yourself. Its not very relaxing if your team hasn’t delivered, and a lot of our clients find they just want to talk.”

We go through a corridor and monitor a communication workshop. An actor plays at a middle manager, with Directors and CEOs finally getting a chance to vent their frustration. Currently the CEO of Brewdog, James Watt, was screaming in the actors face and threatening them with physical violence.

“This is healthy?” I ask. Jules laughs again.

“Its part of giving people chance to communicate what we call the shadow side of our personalities. By embracing that side of ourselves, we can start to grow as individuals.”

“How do you do that?”

“All of the people staying here get access to workbooks where they can track their mental health. By measuring emotions on a scale between 1-10, we can track how a client is doing and come up with an action plan to help them get better.”

“What about those who have mental health issues beyond depression and anxiety?” I ask. Jules laughs, looking puzzled momentarily.

“How do you mean?”

“Schizophrenia, psychosis, antisocial personality disorder, haltlose personality disorder, that sort of thing.”

“Well those sound a bit made up to me. The most common expression of all mental health issues is depression and anxiety.” says Jules. I shake my head.

“That’s not really true though, is it?” I say. Jules laughs. “Why do you keep laughing?”

“I just think you’re saying funny things.”

“Like what?”

“You’re questioning things like mental health isn’t somehow connected to depression and anxiety.”

“There’s more to it than just those two things.”

“No there’s not.”

“It is. I can prove it.” I say. Jules laughs, though cuts himself off.

“Go on then.” he says. I nod, opening the door to where James Watt was having a roleplay.

I walk over to the bald man, tapping him on the shoulder. As he turns around I stick a syringe into his neck and push the stopper down.

“What are you doing!?” he yelps, clutching at his neck. The actor stands up, looking concerned. I take a step back and let the drugs take their toll on the brainscape of the multimillionaire. I had concocted the drugs myself, always carrying around a syringe of the substance should I need it. Jules has entered the room and is trying to calm James Watt.

“Don’t worry, you are only experiencing depression and anxiety.” he says, stroking James’ arm to try and calm him.

“I feel funny.” says James, staggering back, he tries to sit on a chair and misses, falling heavily on his arse. I check my watch.

“I have injected you with a cocktail of purified metals. Heavy metal poisoning has shown its capacity to create mania and psychosis in people. You can track the number of serial killers in America to the usage of lead in their pipes.” I explain. I had boiled the metals myself, skimming off the foam of chemicals that most directly correlated to impacting the brain through short circuiting the neural pathways. The very small amount of electrical current in the brain made it the most magnetic part of the body, and so the metals I had injected into the CEO would settle in the folds of his brain like ocean silt.

The effect this had on James was visible quite quickly. His limbs and hands began to spasm and curl up against him, he spluttered a scream out as he folded up onto the floor. His eyes began to roll back into his head and when he spoke, it was meaningless glossolalia. Jules knelt by him.

“Don’t worry, this is just depression and anxiety.” he says, trying to comfort the man as froth began to spill from his lips and nostrils. I kneel down next to them both and began reading from a book about cognitive behavioural therapy. The tremoring man begins to calm, his twisting muscles giving way to a more pliant, almost puddle-like form. I take out another syringe and inject him again.

“What’s that?” says Jules, looking at the syringe I had put into James, not seeing the second syringe in my other hand that went up to his neck.

“This is concentrated autism. I have synthesized it from the brains of hundreds of people exhibiting signs of autistic spectrum disorder. How do you feel now?” I ask. Both men sit up.

“Good.” Jules says. I nod, going over to a bookcase and leaning it over so all of the books fall out.

“Look, there’s one there about deep sea creatures. Do you want that?” I say, kicking one over. James Watt shakes his head. When he tries speaking he just grunts a few times from the back of his throat. I move the books around, finding a comic about Sonic the Hedgehog and throw it as hard as I can at his forehead.

As I leave the facility, I reflect back on my own journey with my brain. I don’t believe I have mental health issues, as that implies the differences in my brain are somehow weaknesses. No. Just as medicine lacks words for when a patient is feeling well, we also lack language for the opposite of mental health disorders. I had a freakishly strong mind, sometimes surprising myself with thoughts that would leap from the waters of my subconscious like winged dolphins.

I slam the car door. I take out another syringe, inject it into an orange then eat the whole thing. It had been interesting seeing the commodification of the treatment of mental health, when it seemed that many causes of mental health issues stemmed from enforced poverty. Transnational companies paying millions to consultants to develop mental wellness platforms for employees. Guided breathing exercises for workers standing next to conveyer belts packed with toxic metals. Team away days where colleagues would throw a blow-up beachball to one another before going back to develop tactical weapons used against unarmed Muslims. The orange is beginning to work. I drive down the road, crossing the white lines, swerving round cars going in opposite directions, the window is down, the music is turned up. I scream until I can taste blood at the back of my throat. Car shoots through tunnels, leaps from bumps in the road. I look in the rearview mirror and see Armitage Shanks has finally rejoined me. We ride out into the night as if we had been ejected from hell for being worse than the devil.