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.

Working For A Living

I walked through the office and nodded at a few people I recognised. The taste of sleep still rested in the cleft of my gums, where the face meets the skull, and the coffee wasn't washing it away. I finally got to a door and went into my office, a lone desk by the window with a computer and chair. A large metal cabinet painted in red was against one of the walls. After turning on my computer I then begin the actual work of pretending.

For a few hours I sit and stare at the screen, doing completely nothing. Sometimes falling in and out of sleep, I could hear the office sounds around me. Telephones, shoes on cheap carpet, the hum of fluorescent lights, the occasional sneeze or cough, the barking of laughter. Now and then people pass my office door although nobody ever comes in. Once it reaches twelve I go for lunch, walking through the office corridors reading printed out spreadsheets, tiny on A4 paper. I stand in the kitchen and make brief conversation with others who happen to be there, before doing a lap of the buildings exterior. Eight hundred feet high, a mirror of the sky. I eat a packet of crisps behind some trees before heading back in. I pause at the end of the corridor. My office door was open. I walked towards it, checking my lapels for grains of salt before entering.
"Hello." I said, walking past two men and sitting back at my desk.
"Hiya. I hope you don't think me rude for asking, but who are you?" said the older of the two. I introduce myself.
"I don't think we've met. Who's your manager?"
"I wouldn't say I have a direct line manager per se." I say, wiggling the mouse to get rid of the screensaver.
"Percy?"
"Per se. As in, as is. I think anyway. You haven't heard that?"
"What is it you do here?"
"Most of my time is taken up by a side project. Excuse me, but I don't think you introduced yourself. Who's your manager?" I say, turning back towards them.
"I'm the head of HR. And I haven't heard from you. So I'm asking you again, who are you?"
"I said who I am. Who's this?" I say, nodding at a young lad in a tight suit.
"I'm Adam, the new social media manager. I'm confused, I thought this was my office?" he said to the head of HR.
"It is. Do you mind stepping out a moment?" he said. Adam leaves. The head of HR and I stare, fantasising about both being killed by and killing each other.
"I don't remember hiring you."
"I started about four months ago. Colin showed me around."
"Colin left four months ago."
"I wondered why I hadn't seen him."
"So what is it you've been doing?"
"I was given some photocopying to do." I say, nodding at a pile of neatly stacked papers.
"Then what? Why didn't you ask someone what to do?"
"No. Why would I?"
"Because you work here! You turn up here on your agreed hours and do whatever is required of you. What's your actual job title?"
"Assistant." I said.
"Come with me please." said the head of HR. I paused, weighing up the situation. Imagining potential endings to various strings of action, some ridiculous, others mundane. I got up and followed the head of HR towards the door before waiting for him to leave and then shutting it behind him. Lunging across the office I grab the edge of my desk and throw it back into the door, putting a large dint in the wood panelling. The head of HR and Adam both begin to rattle the handle of the door before there are murmurs.
"Open the door please." comes a muffled voice. Quickly I open the door of the cabinet and make some adjustments to its contents before closing and locking it. I swallow the key and walk towards the window. It had been painted shut, abandoned cobwebs spread like old ice across the sill. Placing both palms on the glass I begin to push, spreading the weight of my body across wide fingers. Sometimes an old window would just pop out. The head of HR meanwhile had managed to push the door open wide enough to reach a bare arm through it, it was quite odd. I took one of my shoes off and was about to hit the window with it when I felt him grip me around the waist, dragging me down towards the floor. The smell of Joop was overpowering as we wrestled on the carpet, pulling at each others clothes and quietly grunting.

Before long Adam and a security guard had arrived. The head of HR had overpowered me and I had my hands bound behind the back of my office chair.
"You captured him!" said Adam with glee.
"I'd like to let everyone know this is wrongful imprisonment and you should let me go immediately." I said.
"You're under citizens arrest for...posing as an employee at a private company."
"I am an employee though. I've just not done anything for months."
"He's right sir, I'm afraid he hasn't broken any laws technically speaking." said the security guard.
"What about vandalism? He broke that door!" shouted the head of HR.
"I was defending myself against false imprisonment and I failed. There's no need to make me feel bad about it as well."
"Let me untie you." said Adam.
"You'll do no such thing until he explains what's in this cabinet." said the head of HR, armpits damp with sweat that must have brushed cold against his underarms as he slapped the aluminium.
"My personal things are in there."
"It's company policy to allow us at any time to search through your belongings under suspicious circumstances."
"Is it?" said Adam.
"I swallowed the key."
"Darren, do we have any bolt cutters?" said the head of HR.
"I think we might." said the security guard called Darren.
"Fetch them up here will you." he said.

The three of us had been listening to each other breathe for ten minutes before Darren reappeared. Darren glided across the ribbed carpet before resting the teeth of the bolt cutters around the padlock. Although I'd been untied I remained sat in the chair and watched as the broken lock fell to the floor.
"Open it." said the head of HR. Darren nodded and swung open both doors. Inside the cabinet was a wall of soil kept in place with a series of planks that resembled the Slavonic cross. On the inside of the cabinet doors I had made many notes in my beautiful handwriting, along with diagrams. There was a true silence as they looked upon the things. Finally;
"What is it?"
"It is a diagram involving the infinity found inside pi, which in itself is found in all circles, both a positive and a negative infinite. The circle itself occurs in nature repeatedly, from a cell to a star. If seen at the right perspective a cell would eclipse a star. And in all of infinite is all of everything. All of the things possibly said, every molecule of DNA ever coded, every image that could be seen. All." I said, pointing at my notes.
"And the soil?" said the head of HR. I walk forward and pull at the central plank, causing an avalanche of blackness to flood the small office space along with a rotting pig.
"It is a grave." I said, picking up the carcass and looking at it, face to face. The skin had turned a bruised yellow and had begun to harden, shrinking tighter to the bone in some areas and bloating out in others. Worms festered in it's ears. I left the room and begin to walk through the corridors, carrying the pig. People were awed at the foul march as I made my way through every single office, the death stench hanging heavy in the air. Parts of the corpse had begun to fall off or leave big patches of rotten slime across my work clothes. An alarm wailed as I made my way out of a fire exit and across the car park. I carefully placed the thing in the back seat of my car and slowly drove away. In the rear mirror the office fades from view, around a corner, behind a tree. The traffic ahead swallows me into it. Summer is almost here.

#2015

As the world completes another orbit around the sun and the beings that live on it mark the passage of time from that relative coordinate again, so the year two thousand and fifteen has arrived. The actual year is 4,543,265,993. P'raps you're reading this on this very day, hair smelling like cigarette smoke and teeth loose from gum recession. P'raps you're reading this in fifty years time as part of a school project on data archeology. P'raps you're reading this a billion years into the future, a little zig emanating from a long dead planet. Whatever your temporal orientation, this is authored from the point of view of a humble humanoid casting a face back and a face forth, Janusian pattern recognition in full effect.

What was 2014? Turn it down for hdyoutube soul blast misanthropic pre-futurist iphone asteroid landing robin williams world cup farage missing planes cumberbatch nude photo ebola fracking ice bucket isis extravaganza, to sum it up. Each decade in the 20th century had a certain flavour and yet 15% through this century and the only thing to tell old from new is the resolution of the image.

"Dreams are the subconscious desire of unexplored parapraxis in order to avoid taboo. Does wish fulfilment lead to ritual; Cave paintings, hieroglyphics, theatre of the cavemen, painting, television; Fictions that could be entertainment but also an allegory or metaphor. The modern language of media is through homage and cliché, repetition, the simulation of media that has come before in order to remind you of the original and that you are watching fiction. In our imagination we may picture our minds filled with homunculus' who walk around the estates of our memory. Although this is affected by photography, as an individual perspective on the world around us we choose to remember the photograph of. We edit the photographs of reality for sharing in order to stroke our digital ego; it itself an extension of us on the World wide web, technology has invaded life so subtly as to appear normal. But is satisfaction through materialism just a distraction? Capitalist industry is a system that isn't reflected in nature, it is one of such extreme complexity and asymmetry that it can not be predicted currently. Death." - Russell Brand, thinker of 2014

January

The bitterest month, in memoriam ex mento that 2015 will be remembered as a year that happened in the past in which the present history will say have had a series of events occur that would lead to developments in the future. The main one being a series of attacks from sensitives. There was an experiment done in 1987 in which an area of forest was cordoned off and a deer introduced every hour. They found that within a certain amount, the area divided by the population and then multiplied, was the overpopulation sweet spot. The forest could adequately hold sixty deer, so that each had enough space that they didn't display any signs of aggression towards the self or others. At one hundred and twenty deer some individuals began to attack those nearby or begin to mutilate themselves. After two weeks just over three hundred deer had been stuffed into the forest. Scientists watched from observation platforms in the tree tops waves of pain ripple across the backs of the deer. Some would knock their head from side to side, biting at the ears of its neighbour as they tried to find their footing on the dead below. Although humanity hasn't yet reached this badness, the same applies in a psychic sense. The brain is constantly bombarded with information and so drives certain people to undertake terrorist attacks in order to decrease the population back to a more manageable state. Towards of the end of January scientists will make this breakthrough discovery and completely change every single language into the same one in which the only word of the language is 'oyo'. This leads to a massive decrease in communication complexity and and nobody ever kills anyone again.

February

As the soft jelly snow of January melts, so do the ice caps. For a few weeks they reveal an extraordinary scene, a pair of fish dinosaurs battling underwater are frozen in perfect condition. News helicopters constantly circle the glimpse into the past as the bizarre sepulchre breaks away from the glacier and heads towards America, slowly melting as it travels. Just as it reaches the Statue of Liberty the two huge creatures come back to life after being struck by lightning and continue their prehistoric death duel in the Hudson Bay.

March

The true beginning of the year is of course in Spring. And Spring definitely 'springs' into action as an enormous spring escapes from a factory and begins to bounce away, getting higher and higher with each tumble. The curious nature of this super spring is the material it's made from; graphene. The wonder-material is thought to be of such vital importance in the years ahead due to its resilience, lightness and abundance. The only unforeseen property of this material is that anything made out of it will cause chaos and destruction. The giant spring therefore leaves a trail of misery out of Manchester as it begins its travel across England, the eighty tonne juggernaut is unable to be stopped by conventional means until it is captured inside a graphene containment cube. Although as this is also made out of graphene, the containment cube also manages to trap most of Wakefield inside as well.

April

The newest internet sensation begins in April that is copied by billions. In order for something to be popular it requires that people can show off in some way with the least amount of effort. With the 'Necknomination' craze that swept the web people could show off drinking, so followed the 'Ice Bucket Challenge' in which people could do something wacky whilst being naked. The next logical conclusion is the 'Oil Aboard' in which a number of people oil themselves up and then try to pile of top of each other. This also follows the liquid theme pervading the fads as people love water. They also love goo, and so 'Oil Aboard' is an instant success enjoyed by all. Laugh as people not thought of as attractive try it. Lust over sexy people doing it. Wince as painful accidents occur. Like all fads this will die out after eight weeks, although the thing it will be replaced by in 2016 will be so wonderful it will definitely be worth the wait.

May

The 2015 General Election will be a series of 'gaffs' as politicians are meant to act like humans but can't pull it off properly. Names will be called. People will cry. The entire political landscape for the rest of the decade lies in the hands of a racist pensioner again. But from the smoke will rise a champion, forged in the heat of battle. Ed Milliband will walk through the palace of blood to sit atop the throne of skulls, upon his head he will wear a crown of tears as he looks out on his kingdom, expressionless. Inside his head he dreams he is hiding in the dark, naked and afraid, but that is just a dream. He summons a servant boy with the flick of a wrist and demands that the NHS is to remain free and that there should be a mansion tax. The boy nods his tongueless head and the rhythm of his feet running down the hall fades. The prime minister is alone once more and turns his wet eyes up to the stars.

June

The most interesting things usually happen in Summer and this year is no exception. With the hottest day on record happening consecutively, the summer of '15 will be a killer! A hosepipe ban will be in effect, ice cream will be sold out and chaos will take to the nations motorways as sun bathers will relax amongst the traffic jams. This will be the first year that the country will get a taste of its Tropical future, they will discover palm trees at the bottom of their garden and hear monkeys howling in the night. Resorts are built ten miles inland awaiting global warming, this will be exclusive beach front property in twenty or so years. Piers jut out from hillsides as ferris wheels are rolled towards them, boats already begin to populate the streets of nearby towns. The water shortage meanwhile leads to no water available for bathing or showering, personal hygiene goes down the toilet and the Brits are known as the stinkiest nation on this side of the equator.

July

A private space company decides to mark the launch of its flagship shuttle with a special million dollar promotional event. Pitbull, Taylor Swift, Scott Walker, Nicki Minaj, Flying Lotus, Nine Inch Nails and Faithless have been booked to play throughout the day accompanied by visual DJ's and circus performers whilst various celebrities arrive in order to do skits and quick interviews. The astronauts for the flight dance awkwardly as Nicki Minaj sings her hit 'Starships' and encourages the crowd to clap along. As the launch draws nearer Michael Collins comes onstage and begins to countdown, accompanied by mystical drumming. The curtains draw back to reveal the shuttle a few miles away, its main engines ignite. The audience gaze in anticipation. Pure zen. The rocket roars and separates from the mooring, moving upward slowly. Everyone begins to cheer as the space ship safely makes its way into the upper atmosphere, the astronauts breathe a sigh of relief. As gravity no longer affected it, a towel began to unfurl in the compartment, revealing Pitbull crouched in the corner.
"Me not working hard, yeah right! Picture that with a Kodak or better yet, go to Times Square, take a picture of me with a Kodak. Took my life from negative to positive I just want y'all know that, and tonight let's enjoy life;
Pitbull, Nasa, Eeyore, that's right."

August

With the increase in sexiness in culture the tide begins to turn. Dressing extremely conservatively becomes fashionable, as does abstinence from everything. Social media commentators begin to wonder why they even bother having sex any more and they'd just like to live in sensory pods where they can strap on a virtual reality headset whilst a pipe runs directly into the stomach to remove the need for food. On their nethers another virtual reality set is fastened, although this is meant to simulate touch rather than vision. Hundreds of little robot arms tend to the genitals, manipulating them in a constant stream of arousal. Another tube is put at the rear and fills the body with a continuous enema so that waste simply floats in and out. Lots of people sign up for this service but find it quite uncomfortable, although there is no way of exiting the sensory pod once locked in and buried beneath concrete to make way for a luxury car park. In the meantime sexiness prevails with the new fad of men wearing cute skirts and low cut tops.

September

A robot is invented that becomes a celebrity due to its wit and handsomeness. It is called Boosle-body: The fun android and is taken on a tour of chat shows across America. It releases a hit single and does youtube collaborations with other celebrities like Pew-die-pie and Chris Rock. Boosle-body preaches peace and equality but isn't afraid to get its hands dirty. This is one sassy robot! At the premiere of the Clockwork Orange remake it lays the proverbial smackdown on Bradley Cooper so much so that Cooper punches the android in the neck and its head flies off. Boosle-body is reactivated but isn't the same afterward. Its jokes are more cruel and to the point, it has less time for its fans. Boosle-body ends up retiring and goes into solitude in the Nevada Desert, waiting for the time of the robots.

October

In a shocking twist of events it is revealed that everybody in the UK will inherit a million pounds due to the last wishes of eccentric expat billionaire Pat Sharpe. After the a long weekend of elaborate celebration many decided to quit their jobs and enjoy the inheritance. Generation Millionaire had arrived and it was lazy. A million quickly became a new unit of currency called a Hyper-Quid. Hyper-Quids were useful for buying black market luxury goods, paying for services and gambling with but not much else. The economy trundled on as normal as a new social class bloomed into existence on the econosphere.

November

After a rollercoaster year of thrills and spills it seemed there were no more surprises left in store. But a new age was about to begin. A team of astronauts and Pitbull had landed on Mars and discovered an ancient building hidden inside a hollow mountain. They had discovered a martian temple, proof that intelligent life had existed on Mars at some point millions of years ago. The head astronaut steps inside a chamber and dusts off a sphere in the centre. It is a map of the galaxy constructed from bubbles in the glass, they catch the light thrown from her helmet lamp. The astronaut runs a gloved finger across the orbit of the Milky Way, eventually finding our solar system amongst the blizzard of stars. Then the sphere cracked open and an alien jumped out.

December

Christmas shopping.

Movie Review: Interstellar Overdrive

Space. The final frontier. Space is futuristic, no matter what the context. The eventual penultimate sequel of any series of horror film must end in space. Cheech and Chong went to space, Brian Blessed went to space, Michael Fassbender went to space, the potential future of humanity is seen to be in space. And it is with this sort of nostalgia for the future that the film Interstellar plays upon over the 190 million dollar blockbuster directed by Christopher Nolan out in cinemas...Now!

The film starts with actor Mathew Mahoney working as an uneducated farmer in New York city before catching a zip-line ride into a secret underground base and blasted in a rocket through the universe! The film pays homage to many classics of the sci-fi genre. Flight of the Navigator, The Last Starfighter, Man of Steel and 2001: Abe's Odyssey are just a few of the movies Interstellar 'parodies' for extensive lengths of its 120 minute running time. Mathew Majonnahugh literally weeps throughout the entire film as he battles ice beasts, alien planets and even Father Time himself as he goes on a quest to find the true power of love. I think the swashbuckling nature of the main characters in the film add to its charm. For instance, MacConeys crash lands his spaceship on an alien planet and stands in the water, leaning back slightly so that his six pack really pops in the light thrown from the binary star system overhead. He looks around at the horizon and his mouth slowly drops open, the cigar he was smoking falls to the floor.
"Those aren't mountains." he says, taking off his sunglasses that had reflected the tsunami approaching him to reveal the steely cool gaze of M.M. He runs back to his ship and clambers on top of it. "Here goes nothing." he mutters to himself, as the wave begins to hit him. The entire screen is filled with a wave and suddenly we see the star riding the spaceship like a surfboard. A Hans Zimmer soundtrack of surf guitars and organ music is so loud it literally rips the cinema screen to shreds and blasts the entire audiences heads back simultaneously. Another classy moment is when Mathew McConnaghey is playing bass guitar in his space pod, lazily rolling around and around as he plays a version of 'Space Oddity', letting the CGI hair and beard float around in the zero gravity. Space is shown as not being a glamorous place for super scientists, but a sort of hyper-industrial working class structure in which humans are disposable, which makes it glamorous again.

Nolan does it again with another terrific film that is so contemporary it will be looked back on as being a classic 10's action flick. Maybe you will understand Inception more after getting into the mad mind brain of Nolan. Film critics in the future will often talk about it fondly, just as we look back on Barbarella or Event Horizon. Scanning any nerds film collection one is bound to see either no science fiction or almost be entirely science fiction, because science fiction is the language of the future. You can barely walk anywhere now without seeing a Star Trek quote etched into a boulder or teenagers discussing The Prisoner on street corners as they share electronic cigarettes. By 2019 the world will be entering a time so futuristic it will resemble that of Blade Runner! Interstellar is less about humanity's literal place in the universe than it is a celebration of how much fiction influences civilization, it doesn't pretend to be real for one moment. If you move your head from side to side whilst watching you will see how the entire universe exists on a two dimensional shape. Most of the people in the film are even played by well known actors and actresses. How am I supposed to believe that the head of NASA is a scientist when I know that he is in fact Michael Caine, famous actor? Everyone in the film are stood around in clothes they don't own in a fake room saying things that somebody else thought.

One thing to take away from this film is its technological optimism in the face of democracy. People are dumb is the main message of the film, yet delivered in a audience driven market of Dumb and Dumber To and Nativity 3: Dude Where's My Reindeer it will be interesting to see how this sci-fi blancmange blemishes against the eye, blossoming the blood vessels around the iris like exploding planets around the films eponymous black hole; Megadrive. Regardless I will give the film 8 stars out of 10, go and see it, tell your friends about it, tweet about it. #seenit

Entering Deep Simulation

E-cigarettes
Social media
Body-building
Microwaves
Porn
Travelling
Video games
Make-up
Sport
Are all simulations of the intended act, made antiseptic and cyber. We are entering an apocalyptic society in which technology begins to invade not just our minds but our bodies. The world vibrates at a certain frequency as it tries to attain balance. The search for authenticity leads to a simulated version which becomes the subject rather than itself. A thing is reduced by being recorded, quantified, replicated. A video of a storm is not a storm, yet the person recording it was experiencing it behind a camera. What is in front of the camera becomes cinematic, there is a theatricality in the image. People nowadays walk around with a computer in front of them, ordering burgers to their pet dog whilst quitting work to go on a Call of Duty binge. I can shout to my phone and it sprouts small wheels and drives itself to me. In the film The Matrix it was thought denizens would be imprisoned in virtual reality pods with their butts hanging out. In the future reality will become more virtual, there will be no real world to escape to as technology will have replicated everything.

There is no imagination, just reference. Many critics throw this bone out once in a while, although they don’t understand that an Egyptian Pharaoh wouldn’t have been able to imagine being a heroin addict living in New York city. Therefore the original will always exist in the future. If time travel existed we could go into the future, copy some CD’s and bring them back. Can you guess what the number one song in the year 3589 is? Probably some grindcore.

In the video game the sims you play out the lives of actual human beings in abstract potentials. But whose to say all of this isn’t controlled by a mad robot? This questions the nature of reality and in doing so we realise it really is a moot point only the worst pragmatist would lazily bring up. The nature of reality itself is unimportant. Whether we are a brain in a jar, the dream of an elephant, the game of a god or any combination of the three. What scientists do know is that the skein of reality is malleable, similar to lava or perhaps magma. Through inventions like the internet or hypderdrives we can explore the alternate dimensions that exist on another planet. How about a world in which everything is legal? What about a world without poverty? Can you ever imagine that happening in this dimension bub?

To bring this essay to a close I’d like to share some thoughts with you.

Sand is like time, without nature involved we don’t know what to make of it.
Yonic symbolism is strongly lacking in our culture.
Think of life like a bubble floating in the air. When it pops aren’t we just one of the cosmos?
Quantum Physics has proved that we are watched by particles. Why?
There is an unbroken chain of parent and child that links you to a fish.
Magic is real…if you believe in yourself.
Sometimes there’s no such thing as coincidence. This is the uncertainty equation.
It’s fear that gives men wings.
If you sharpen a pencil until there is nothing left, is the shavings a pencil?

Aliens Of Kepler 186-f

The National Associated Space Agency (NASA) has recently discovered life on another planet. The planet, Kepler 186-f orbits the Kepler star, an M dwarf that is roughly 44% the size and strength of our sun. Scientists are already deciding on renaming the planet something more memorable, such as Tarkus or Izitso, due to its importance in the history of human civilization.

The planet is composed mostly of rocks and ice due to being a lot further out than Earth relative to Sol. Because of the weakness of Kepler at high noon it gets as bright as a nightclub toilet so therefore the vegetation of the planet is enormous. The leaves on the trees are each as big as satellite dishes, and of a similar shape. Fungus is also prevalent, as on Tarkus the ice gets mouldy. Due to the spectrum of light thrown from Kepler, the flowers are all ultraviolet and lack any visible colour. Kepler 186-f also has no moon and so its oceans are still. These enormous ponds are home to shark frogs and leech whales, above them fly flocks of giant flies that have the ability to sing like birds, although they do this through their proboscis and so create a sound similar to a wet trumpet. On the plains of ice live a variety of strange alien creatures that are reminiscent to some of the animals on our planet; wooly pigs, two headed cat monsters, tortoise spiders and mirrors that walk around to name but a few.

Kepler 186-f is 600 lightyears away, so we are seeing the planet 600 years ago. If the aliens living there had good enough telescope technology and were watching us, they would see the world in 1414, perhaps watching the Battle of Agincourt and wondering if we were imbeciles who ate mud and slept in chimneys. With this intergalactic empathy in mind, the supposed most intelligent being on Kepler 186-f are the Kepleroids. These strange beings look a little like us, although with eyes the size of basketballs standing on highly veined stalks. They appear to live in a village that spans entire continents, often walking for miles to visit their neighbours with what must be meat pies. They also play a variety of night sports and ride around on dead horse things with the legs replaced with wheels. The Kepleroids seem like a benign and peaceful race, and it would be ethical to eat them should the opportunity ever arise.

A NASA spokesman suggested that we build a spaceship and send it off to explore this planet and exploit it for any fossil fuels they may not be using. This alien petrol would be made from alien dinosaurs and would power a car to drive from Paris to Beijing on a single tank! NASA is currently looking for a crack team of astronauts to go on this mission and have styled the crew requirements to mirror that of the characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Although a 'Wesley Crusher' isn't required.

Principles Of Mask Culture

The Venetian mask is synonymous with Venice. Known as being an important part of the autumnal festival, tourists flock from around the world to see the face plates decorated to a high standard. Historically the Venetian nobility would wear these masks for a good majority of the year when out in public, allowing them to commit a variety of lewd and anonymous acts. Some men would wear ones like the cranium of a humpback, allowing them to eat and drink. Others involved holding a paddle in the mouth in order to support the mask, rendering its wearer mute. Wearing masks was outlawed in the 18th century but was legalised in the seventies again, leading to a booming economy to the city built on a marsh. The mask is seen throughout history to grant its wearer a costume for the face. As humans express themselves through the musculature wrapped around the oculars, wearing a mask allows one to change their identity, be it for theatrical purpose or to evade identification. A masked person finds it easier to commit violence than an unmasked one. Hiding the face is common in military and religious subcultures around the world, but once features are applied to this covering the user can empathise more with the face they are wearing. For instance, in a werewolf film the actor may wear a facial prosthesis in order to appear werewolfian. Yet if one was to see through the mask, the actor would be pulling a strange expression (as would anyone acting like a monster whilst wearing a mask). The sorts of expressions are unseen in our day to day social interactions, but nevertheless have the potential to occur almost constantly.

In contemporary times the mask is linked with the party protest subculture ‘Anonymous’. People aged between 11-56 occasionally don a ‘Guido’ mask from the film ‘V is for Vendetta’ and pose for photographs at various political hotspots around the world. Made popular through the internet messaging board ‘4chan’, the group has hacked government e-mail accounts, leaked sensitive data encryption keys from the UNEFCA and helped bring down Colonel Bombay. The mask itself is a sort of ironic twist on the appearance of Al-Qaeda terror suspects, with wearers often accompanying the mask with a comfortable set of clothing and perhaps a placard covered in slogans, size 18 Impact font. These middle-class yobos often can be seen petrol bombing police horses or doing drive-by attacks from hi-jacked aeroplanes. This is the exact same reason people wore masks in Venice and will go on to follow the destiny that lurks in history, the banning of masks. Though this time it will be for every mask. The world will have no more masks left to wear.

This itself may not be as bad as it seems. Are we entering a world post public? I’m talking digital communications. Nerds are trend setters due to their close proximity to high technology, and if there’s anything we know about nerds is that they don’t leave the house.
“Mom! Bring me some fuckin’ Doritos!”
Yet there is still the need to be anonymous. In the early days it could be argued the internet itself was a mask for a user, allowing anyone to read or write whatever they wanted. But the internet of 99 is different to the one of 14. Nowadays you can't even find out the weather without logging into your bbc account that's linked up to your Nintendo Passport. The opposite of anonymity is fame, recognition. We're entering new private. A fridge that knows your birthday. A tie that helps you diet. A bong that has lights on it. Smear tech smart walls that watch your children and broadcast your thoughts to the government. Your car can fall in love with you. It will be harder and harder for one to do anything without being conscious that you're being watched before it's even been seen.
"Am I making this sandwich in a cool, awesome way?"
"Heh, that was funny. Just need to write it down."
"I'm going to learn the ukulele."
All the world's literally now a stage, rather than a metaphoric one. This is where people will start wearing masks even more because why not, what if you just wore a mask of a person and stood around, watching the sun rise? Gazing at the gap, between two stones, on the floor, at the intersection, of imagined lines. The axioms of living, the neural cartesia welded in place through action. The ego will being to boil and split away from the consciousness like a molten bin liner. People will wear masks more in the future because internet.

The Year Ahead

The year two thousand and fourteen has arrived with much fanfare and insolence, like the half dream granted through head trauma, like the constant memory which never happened. As we are in the early days of the time of the year, why not take a look ahead at the sort of things we may expect to reflect on in the past, present and future sitting from a position of absolute time as one may sit inside a glass mountain overlooking a constantly shifting landscape;;; !

JNRAURY

The first, and some argue best, month. January is the aperitif of the year and is usually dry rather than sweet, meaning the dirtiest of politicians can be found stirring beneath Egyptian cotton sheets wishing cruel death upon those that they rule over. Of course the concept of politicians wielding any real power is a lie orchestrated by History books for no reason other than it suits the public to be told what to do until they no longer feel the need to be told what to do. True History is not made by great leaders or earth shattering events, but the mass consciousness of the public ebbing and flowing beneath technological concepts and philosophy and then acted out. Hunger has been a bigger driving force for people over politics, and 2014 is shaping up to be a year in which feeding one's family various Big Macs will be more important than the soft meats of David Cameron's face. January will also be the month in which Amsterdam finally sinks to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again and only told about in myths akin to Atlantis, but with weed. Strange polar winds that are extremely localised will fly in from the Artic, freezing people where they stand, even if they only went to put the bins out.

FBEAURTY

Once the month of Janus runs its course, February will start with a big bang in the style of a James Bond film. The international spy network will introduce themselves using their real names in bars and casinos the world over, their whereabouts being pieced together through a patchwork of selfies and upon their discovery the undercover agents will gather on the secret oil rig in the ocean and zap each other with ray guns. This in itself is unimportant, but future peoples will remember February as the saturation point of mobile technology with 1 in 5 people owning a high tech smart phone. Nomad tribes will be given Google Glass in order to record their day to day lives to be streamed over Youtube for millionaires to watch, and often bet on. iPads will be flown into Sierra Leone, smart watches to Calcutta, Raspberry Pi's to Kurdish rebels and so on. All of the wi-fi information floating about will make it difficult to walk in a straight line, leading to the invention of compensating footwear that automatically forces peoples feet to veer in different directions. With the proliferation of smear tech across the globe, more people will experience the world through a four inch screen. People will no longer act as they would but conform to a mysterious status quo in which all is judged based on its radness. Marriages will break up for the lols. Business decisions will be made based on cat pictures. Prisoners will be executed as they lack social media followers. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to put it on Instagram, who gives a fuck?

MARS

The Earth's great and violent heart beats as it rotates around Sol far enough our planet edges into Spring, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere it is eternally Christmas. Which is more similair to the man; Sherlock, Khan, Assange? It is true that Benedict Cumberbatch tends to play the same sort of polymath in every single thing he's in, so it could be argued that he is acting more in real life than he is in front of the camera. Scripts arrive at his front door every morning in which he reads over a pot of Earl Grey. The scripts tell him to shave, drive through rush hour traffic, eat sustainable fish, and since Cumberbatch is a reverse actor he often struggles in the simple role of being a regular schmuck. Cumberpatch will also star in a hit film to be released this summer, starring alongside Idris Elba in a move to attract cat lovers everywhere. Crumberbath plays a gay butler working at Buckingham Palace in which he has a sordid affair with Elba, a blind harp player from New Orleans. The film itself is two hours of self indulgent nonsense but important as its release synchronizes with the entire palace, including the Royal Family, being swallowed by an earthquake. Rescue efforts are relatively nonexistent as all people can do is watch Buckingham Palace fade into the magma, wondering who will be on their money now.

AVRILE

If anything can be said about 2014 it will be quadcopters. The four rotored craft will be able to be bought for just two hundred bucks and provide hours of entertainment. Watch as the air fills with the high pitched noise of quadcopters sweeping across our skies, crashing into the windscreens of buses driving on motorways or hovering outside the window of women in a state of undress. We might not get flying cars, but who cares if we have flying cameras? An easy method of getting yourself a quadcopter is by ordering a book to your neighbours house through Amazon, waiting for the retail drone to come hovering over the horizon and then capture it in a hessian sack, all for the price of a Chris Evans biography. Of course the law will slowly catch up on this sexy new tech, but in the meantime consumers will enjoy the halcyon days of flying shit smeared quadcopters into banks and detonating them inches away from the managers top lip. How can governments complain about spying when they themselves spy on everyone? The quadcopter is a force of Communist justice that will seem entertaining for all until they blot out the sun and become sentient.

MAYA

You know what people like? Skyscrapers. Many architectural projects will begin and finish this year, as they have since we started pushing humongous stones into circles, but the sky is literally the limit with some breathtaking blocks of concrete popping up around the world. Bigger really is better as architects are forced to make buildings taller and taller for no other reason than being larger than the last. The Japanese will realise the logical conclusion for this is to build a building so big it encapsulates the Earth, only to be trumped by Americans who will realise that they should build a road that goes out of the solar system and into the Andromeda galaxy.

JNEU

Football will reign supreme over the mild summer, with all the favourite teams in the world getting together in Brazil, South America. The event will be sullied somewhat by the extreme poverty happening outside the stadium along with crime riots and animal death squads, but all of this will be ignored by mainstream media and gone on about in the guardian in articles with titles like 'The Favalian Underworld' or 'A Red Card For Police Corruption' written by sweating twenty something's who've never been to Brazil before nor go again after. All of this is inconsequential however as Brazilians have twitter and will then be focused on in buzzfeed lists like '23 Awesome But Sad Facts About Brazil That Will Change Your Life' and so on. Also the ice caps will melt.

JOLY

Due to the inordinate amount of celebrities dying who'd starred in films from 1968-1982, Hollywood suddenly realises that it needs a new batch of talent for the world to fawn over. Will Shia LeBouf be the new Jack Nicholson? What about him from Harry Potter, is he like Al Pacino or something? The sad answer is no. Nevertheless the vacuum created by the passing of these old fogies will create a new creative space in which the stars of the future will form, and I'm not talking about Colin Firth. The average age of the highest paid actors at the start of the year was 47. By the end of the year it will be 19. How? Acting. And sometimes dancing.

AGUST

What other tech can we expect in 2014? Good question. If you know the answer why don't you invent it? With rapid prototyping now you can! It's as easy as making toast, with children printing out guns and taking them to school to fire death into the bodies of their classmates. Even the poorest man can print out a Rolls Royce and appear in Hotel lobbies with printed money and a mouth full of crack smoke. Newspapers will cry out for moderation, yet nobody is entirely sure who reads newspapers any more and why should it shape the political landscape? Printers that can print themselves will start multiplying like aphids and eventually blot out the sun, alongside quadcopters and selfies.

SEPEMPTRO

The most important character in the history of feminism is Robin Thicke. His 2013 hit single 'Blurry Lines' was like a great bell awakening the world to the idea that half of it's population should be treated the same as the other half. Nowadays if you see a man hit a woman in the street you might shout that it's 'not on' then name and shame them on facebook. Elle, Prada and OK magazine will all jump on the gravy bandwagon and try to make feminism more girly. Why can't a feminist wear a cute crop top with Emmeline Pankhurst on it? Why should a man have to listen to a woman not wearing expensive makeup which has been force fed to an ape until lipstick pushes it's eyeballs out? Why the heck should Muslim women be allowed to wear Burkas when they should show off their hot bodies for both sexes to enjoy? The hot topic of 2014 is feminism, leading to the great gender war of 2015. But in the meantime why not catch up on some feminist theory and wonder if you can use your knowledge to have sex?

OCTOBRE

The cold bleating of Autumn will appear like a frozen fog throughout the civilised streets of Western Europe. People will complain, yet the amount of complaining is insignificant once London floods. For weeks the world will be saddened at tales of million pound flats being ruined with filthy Thames water. There will even be a photograph of David Cameron with his trousers rolled up as he waves to a camera. In the three inches of heel visible onlookers will gaze at the hairless leg of the prime minister and wonder what his flesh would taste like if he were to be held in a pitch black chamber and fed a diet of milk and honey until being taken outside and beheaded by a motorbike. Cannibalism will be rife in London post-flood, scenes of horror reminisce of the great starvations yet to happen in following decades.

NOVNOMBR

November is a cheery time as nothing in particular happens. People will check the news, talk to their friends, drive around for hours, yet nothing seems to happen. Television screens will only display white noise. All digital music will be replaced with a sawtooth tone due to a crafty virus that discombobulates mp3 files. People will begin to rot in bed as they wonder what it is they should be doing and coming up with no answer.

DECEMECEMBER

As the year draws to a close and Christmas begins to fire up its engines, one can't help but wonder what happened in 2014 anyway. Half of the events seemed to centre around pop stars having full sex in their videos or dogs that sort of sound like they can talk. But that is because people weren't looking in the right place. For the last few years the dolphins have begun to use tools, farm kelp, build simple mud nests in the underwater deserts. The first dolphin/human hybrid is born through a magical series of mutations and drags itself onto the shores of India, quoting Beckett and smoking roll-ups. It lives a simple life selling necklaces made of shells and studying the Vedas, though one of the more interesting things about this lifeform is that it is invincible and will probably be one of your favourite superheroes one day.

So there you have it, the year in advance, exactly as it will happen. Hope that helps when planning your holiday. Avoid Yellowstone Park on the 14th of March. Hasta la bye bye. x

LAX

“and that's how I got to be the governor of Los Angeles.” said Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking a cigar from the ashtray and taking a big lungful of Cuban tobacco. I look over at his stunt double with a skin tight green lycra hood over his head wait to one side of the set while the green screen is sweeped of debris. We're on the set of Terminator 5 set for release next year. I have been trying to get this meeting since I'd arrived in Los Angeles and it seemed fitting for it to take place on my last day in the states. Arnold Schwarzenegger sits across from me in a wicker chair dressed in his signature leather jacket and jeans. Terminator make-up is applied to bits of his head and glints in the high noon sun thrown from a 1000w redhead.
“So tell me about this new Terminator flick.” I said.
“It's a reboot, but also a sequel. A paraquel. I play the role of a terminator sent back in time then is stuck in an alternative reality. The film flashes forward to the present day, where I have been aging. This is the first film where we really explore the philosophy of what it must mean to be a Terminator. It is a cybernetic organism yet has the ability to learn, a metal endoskeleton surrounded by living tissue. What are the differences and similairities between humans and machines? We hope to explore that in the next Terminator movie. That and time travel.”
“So what has the Terminator in this film been doing?”
“Since he saved Sarah Connor's parents he started a career in politics and is now lobbying for restrictions on research into robotics. This terminator is a member of a community. One day a terminator from his future is sent back in time in order to assassinate him and he has to try and keep himself safe whilst also trying to find out why the terminators will exist.”
“Is there action?”
“Let me tell you, the action in his movie will blow Terminator 3 out of the water! We have the director of Fast and Furious to come in to film, there's Tom Hardy playing the evil futuristic terminator, Emily Watson to play Terminator's wife, Justin Timberlake to play John Connor and Dwayne Johnson as a detective, who also turns out be to be a robot.”
“Sounds like that's an all star cast Mr. Schwarzenegger. What other projects do you have in the pipeline?” I said, watching the action taking place on stage. The stunt double rides a flaming car like it's a surf board before leaping off whilst 760 miniaturised cameras begin to take pictures.
“I'm also going to make a sequel to Pumping Iron.”
“Excellent.” I said. We chat a little more before Arnie is called back on set.
“I'll be right back.” he walks off. I can't help but feel disappointed he said 'right', missing an opportunity to deliver his famous catchphrase. I pack up my notes into my bag and go back out to the car.

I ask Bill to take a long route to the airport. We drive along Venice beach, through Little Ethiopia, down to gentrified Inglewood and San Pedro.
“Did you manage to find the edge of the city?”
“I don't think it exists.”
“That's a shame. It was fun anyway.”
“Remember when I released those wasps in the museum?” I said.
“I liked that day we drove all the way to San Diego and you were like 'Is this LA? Is this LA?'” laughed Bill.
“What was the name of those women we met?”
“Where?”
“At the art gallery.”
“Casandra and Jacqueline.” said Bill, smiling.
“That was a wild night. You remember dancing on the roof of the Aon centre?”
“You fell!”
“Nah, I had a parachute. What will you be doing after this?”
“I don't know. Go get something to eat. Go see my family.” said Bill. We drive along Mulholland and through Glendale, San Bernardino heights then Santa Monica. The Paul Getty Museum, Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Boulevard, the Chinese Theatre, City Hall, LAX. The car parks up outside the entrance.
“Thanks Bill. Take care of yourself.”
“You too.” he said. I get out, shutting the door behind me which rocks the car slightly. I go to knock on his window and he rolls it down.
“I left something on the back seat for you. Live long and prosper.” I say, throwing a peace sign before going towards the departure entrance. Bill looks over his shoulder, then goes in the back. Just where I'd been sitting I left a bag. He unfastens the latches on it and opens it up, inside is a dead dog with it's mouth stuffed with a roll of hundred dollar bills.

I took a window seat as the plane began to drive on the runway and reflected on my journey. The quest for the edge of Los Angeles. It had been a series of thrills and spills but in the end I learned a valuable lesson. I take out a copy of City Of Quartz and begin to read. Partway through I realised the plane was still driving on the runway. I turn to the seat next to me.
“Why haven't we set off yet?” I asked. There's no-one there. In fact, there's no-one on the whole plane. I put the book down and walk up the aisles. “Hello?” I said. The plane begins to turn and I look out of the window at LAX slowly rolling past, again. I go through First Class and pause at the pilot's door before knocking. I wait for a while and was about to go back to my seat when I heard the door being unlocked. I turned around. In the frame stands a naked man.
“Who...who are you?” I said. The man began to walk towards me. Behind him I can see the runway stretch ahead of us and the plane begins to accelerate. I back off slowly, watching as he advances towards me before setting off into a run.
“Who are you?” I shout, running down the aisles. But there is nowhere to go. The plane begins to take off and I scramble through the seats as the floor begins to dip, just about managing to sit down and fasten a belt across my lap. The man appeared from around the corner and stared at me, seemingly unaffected by the sudden increase in altitude.
“What do you want? Who's flying this plane?!” I said. He reached up to his face and began to pull at his top lip. With the engines screaming on both sides of us I watched as he began to unzip his skin. The human form peeled away to reveal an Untitled painting by Rothko. I sat in my chair convulsing as the plane finally takes off back towards England.

Extracting The Verge: Lessons In Urban Biwheeled Transport

I entered the shopping complex with my wallet brimming with counterfeit money. I had George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Franklin in my pocket, multiple times, faces pressed against faces, moolah, cheddar, scrilla, dosh, cash, greenbacks, sawbucks, dollars, pockets full of that cheese. Eager to enter some of the world's most cheapest shops I duck into the first one I pass, it turns out to be a knife store. A store that only dealt in knives or knife related paraphenalia. I grab two hundred dollars worth of gear off the walls and place it in front of the clerk before taking my wallet out of my pocket and pluck bills from it, letting them drop down onto the register whilst I shake my head from side to side.
“That's how we do it though.” I say slowly.
I take the knives down to a fountain with me and begin to drop them in the water amongst the coins and milk teeth.
“Say mister, why you throwing knives in the fountain?” said a smart ass kid. I turn over my shoulder and flashed my eyebrows.
“What's it look like I'm doing kid? Cooking a pot roast?” I say.

I am in the car with Bill. We are searching for a parking space.
“How's your family Bill?”
“Not bad. Eldest just got a job in a Subway.”
“You know, I always wanted to know why Subway is such a big franchise. Like, they only make sandwiches. Why not other breads...other spreads?”
“I can't find a place to park.”
“Just park there. Over there by that palm tree.” I say. The car is parked and I look around. It was strange to think that I was there at that moment in time, unknown to anyone outside of that space, as if my existence at that point was neither here, nor there, yet in a state of flux, as is the shape, of space and time. I measure my pulse. Ninety seven. I take out my cell phone and access it's apps (programmes), viewing a three dimensional rotating image of myself. I upload data.
“What you doing over there?”
“I'm using apps. Want to look?” I say. Bill looks over my shoulder and whistles.
“That's a killer app you got there.”
“Take a look at this, I designed this one myself. It tells you if a celebrity is dead or alive.”
“Cool!” says Bill. We turn to each other and smile.

The nightclub was hot enough to make me sweat, dancing to minimalist house in the dark. Green lights rotate inside mirrors, flashing the faces of drugged Americans. A woman reaches out to me and starts shouting in my ear. I shout something back and we dance. I signalled I was going to the bar to get a drink, my feet sticking to the dance floor. Pushing my way through I bump into people, leaning on them for comfort. The teenager behind the bar is wearing yellow framed sunglasses and a leopard skin Sumo suit. By the time she reaches me I have forgotten what I wanted to drink.
“You wanna beer?”
“No...no...water. I need water.” I said, eyes rolling in my head. She passed me a warm plastic bottle and I stagger away, pouring the water over my head, down my back. There's no vomit left once I heave. For a moment the entire world seems to tip upwards and I realised that I had perhaps had enough. I nearly collapse into someone, pushed away as I stumble towards the exit. I need to be outside. I feel like I can't breathe.

I was running down a road in the night. Fat insects flew around the glow from street lights and parked cars, sometimes smacking against the floor. I climbed over a low wall and begin to try and cross the interstate, eyeing up the traffic for too long. A fog had rolled in off the Pacific, making everything a fuzzy blur, the gaps seemed impossible to judge. I ran.

“How's your search going? For the edge of L.A?” said Bill.
“I don't think I found it yet.”
“Want me to drive round the outskirts, see what you can find?”
“Yeah, why not? I doubt I'll find the edge at the actual edge, but you never know. Maybe it's there all along.” I said. We took the 405 north, the slightly elevated interstate a constant artery of tarmac and metal. The evening was drawing in just as we drove onto the Antelope Valley Freeway.
“We just left Los Angeles a moment ago.” said Bill. I tell him to circle back around so I can get out. The air smells warm, there is the faint aroma of cannabis somewhere nearby. Besides the road everything is bumpy, the rock raising up covered in dirt and scrub. Bill is lit in the soft blue from his new iphone, yammering about how this spot was in Los Angeles and this spot was Santa Clarita.
“This is what I mean though. Does this feel like the edge of Los Angeles? Does this feel like the edge of anywhere?”
“Well, there ain't nothing else here.”
“Exactly. Where's the tipping point? There's no lines in the ground, no sense of the binary. This is just a little road that could be anywhere.”
“I guess. Want to drive back?”
“Not yet. Let's follow the border for a little while, see where we end up.”

We spend the next few hours carefully driving as close as we can to the Los Angeles city limits, I occasionally get out to get a sense of whether or not I have found the certain edge. The city of Los Angeles. The county of Los Angeles. The state of California. The state of America. It seemed anytime I tried to find the edge of civilization it split, forming more bubbles of civilization, more motes of L.A. Floating in the agar-like continuum of reality. Motels, bars, strip clubs, diners, car parks, industrial units, houses, forests, mountains, highways, freeways, interstates, parks, hospitals, abandoned buildings, factories, beaches. I could tell for certain when I wasn't in Los Angeles and when I was, but never exactly where these two points met. I didn't believe that there was a gradient as such, that Los Angeles would simply fade into not-Los Angeles. We'd been driving for hours, fueled by roadside meats and gatorade. Bill watched as I stumbled around in the dark, kicking the detritus of people around; food packaging, used needles, dirty nappies, cigarette butts, discarded clothing, rotten plastic, clumps of human hair. Would I even know when I had found the edge? I questioned my practice as I looked into the shadows, pupils fully dilated, spit drying on both sides of my mouth. Now and then Bill would ask if we'd found it yet.
“No, no. Not yet. We need to go further.” I would say, beginning to suspect that Bill may be leading me on a wild goose chase. Nevertheless we traversed the outer orbit of the city, San Fernando, Verdugos, San Gabriel, Pomona, down to the Harbour and up along the coast. As dawn started to break I sat in the rolling surf on Santa Monica beach, watching my shoes fill with sand.
“Want to go home?” said Bill.
“Yeah.” I said, dragging myself up. It appeared as though I wouldn't find the edge of Los Angeles by going around it. I would need to employ some other methods.

The next day I went to a motorbike rental place and loaned a Suzuki SFV650 Gladius. I hadn't much experience riding motorbikes but after half an hour at a nearby parking lot I decided I was ready. I'd had an idea sitting on Santa Monica beach. Perhaps I wouldn't find the edge in such a careful, controlled manner, but experience it amongst the uncontrollable chaos life occasionally threw at you. I huffed a significant amount of nitrous oxide and set up my bike partway along Venice Boulevard.
“De fumo in flammam.” I mutter to myself before engaging the clutch. The bike lurches forward at first, but I quickly work out the gears. Before I know it I am already hurtling down the boulevard at sixty miles an hour. I feel the wind in my hair as I keep spinning the throttle, laughing madly to myself, lost in the wind. Cars and trucks speed by at a blur. Eighty miles an hour. I fly through an intersection, narrowly avoiding a BMW. The engine is screaming in protest between my legs as I quickly flick through the gears. Once I can see the beach I'm doing a good hundred and ten miles an hour. People, cars, road signs all become a violent rainbow streak as I propel myself closer and closer towards the sea. All around me are the honking of horns and the screams of people as the Gladius reaches its top speed, propelling me ever-quicker towards the coast, I'm unable to breathe. My head is thrown backwards so much so I struggle to see what's in front of me. With a spine twisting bump I feel I've hit the sand, the bike hurtling at one hundred and fifty miles an hour down the beach. Just before I hit the water I feel something.

Time seems to have stopped. I look around at my surroundings and see a whole crowd is on the beach behind me, faces locked in a slow motion scream of horror at the biker that has passed them all at such ludicrous speed. In the distance I think I can hear some kind of choir, the holy sounds of seraphim. The water beneath me is such a beautiful blue, I'm aware of the constantly shifting currents underwater of oxygen and hydrogen reflecting the pure, brilliant sky above me. Seams of gold appear on every corner, as if the world is just a door to heaven. Had I been successful? Was this indeed the edge of Los Angeles? The true edge of civilization? Before I can truly answer the question time seems to speed up again. The bike appears to bounce on the waves once or twice before it shoots out from beneath me like some kind of strange insect steed, it begins to flip and somersault itself apart until sinking below the surface of the water. I myself am miraculously unhurt, though for the second time in less than six hours my shoes are full of sand. I turn back to the beach and wave.
“Don't worry everyone. I'm fine. I think I experienced the true edge of Los Angeles, but you'll have to read my blog for a more detailed description.” I say. In the distance I can hear sirens, the type on top of police cars rather than the mythological kind. I consider my experience as I swim away, wondering if that was indeed the edge, or if it was instead what one experienced when driving at high speeds on a motorbike heading towards the ocean. Could it be replicated somehow? Was there more than one edge, or more than one way of experiencing it? I'd have to continue my search regardless. Yet after the night of disappointment the high speed seaside crash had exhilarated me more so than any simple tour of the city. As I floundered onto the shore just beneath the pier I decided I would try harder to substantiate that which was and not was Los Angeles.