X LA

I play the Moonlight Sonata in the Hyundai Sonata, bidding it farewell. I say goodbye to the spider that lives beneath the side mirror. I walk away from my companions, the time we had together now separating, but for each of us our time would continue beyond the end of the quest. I take a last look over my shoulder at the car, standing by itself in the airport lot. A fog had descended over the city, though it was just visible beyond the veil, like part loaded geometry beneath the skin of a game. I smoke a cigarette on the post-American soil, wondering what was next for the nameless landmass that had been the fifty states. Perhaps it would split, as the Byzantine and Roman Empires, or East and West Germany, or Ireland and England. Or perhaps it would shatter, hundreds of citadels rising from the ashes at a constant state of war against one another, eventually evolving into orcs. Or perhaps it would enter a Renaissance, leading the way for other collapsing empires in the 21^st century, drawing upon the grief of losing one’s country as being reflected by, and therefore in solidarity with, all other people around the world experiencing their homeland be taken away from them. Or perhaps the First People retake their land, returning North America to how it had been for millennia, bringing about a new age of Nativistic Excellence, forged in the fires of dead Empire.

The country formerly known as the USA had been humbled. Its citizens no longer shouted, but spoke softly, carefully. They no longer demanded Uncle Cunt-Butts Chipotle & BBQ Spiced Gravy all over their food, instead they would nod in appreciation at the sacrament of a crumb of salt. The Post-American tourist now spoke multiple languages, enjoyed local culture and travelled with only what they could carry. The world noticed.

I entered LAX, trying to open the airlines app so I could check-in, though after forgetting my password, resetting it, going through two-factor authentication, logging in again, the password not working and starting the process again, I realised I had walked all the way through security. I looked around, nobody was working. A few other travellers passed through, equally perplexed by the lack of security, but we laugh about it and walk on. Empty shelves that once held perfume, cigarettes and V-Bucks were now covered in candles piled on top of each other, the glow lighting the way through a twisting corridor and out into the airport terminal.

The building had been turned into a Cathedral, with great stone columns supporting a ceiling frescoed with planes and clouds set against a sky of blue quartz. Enormous stained-glass windows are dedicated to the science of aeronautics, with the Wright Brothers standing as saints aside the first aircraft, tilted upward so it resembles a crucifix. I walk across the floor decorated in representations of the mathematical equations of flight when I hear footsteps run behind me. I turn around.

“Hey, it’s you!” they say.

“What!?” I shout.

“I like your writing.”

“You’re welcome! Thanks for reading. I don’t really think of myself as being involved in the process really, more that I sweeping away stone that has already been chiselled, we get to find out what’s beneath together, you know? That’s fun, isn’t it. Do you write?”

“Yeah, I used to, but you know, it’s hard, I don’t like what I write.”

“Ah, who gives a fuck. If you want to write something down, do it. There’s plenty I’ve only thought about and not written down, it disappears. Give writing a go. You can do whatever you want.” I say, winking. I pull out a pack of cigarettes, offer them one, and we smoke as I wait for the plane to come in. Just as they are about to leave I shout at them to stop. Turn around. I throw something in the air. They catch it. Pull their hand down, it slowly opens. It’s the keys to the Hyundai Sonata. They look back up, but I am gone.

I go up the stairs one at a time, sighing quietly at how inefficient boarding was. Could they not see that I was fast? I could get my bag in the overhead storage, sit down and look at my phone in less than four seconds. At the speed we were going I would never get on the flight, living the rest of my years halfway up a mobile staircase. Eventually, miraculously, I board the plane and make my way to my seat.

I look around at the people nearby. Some alone, some in couples, others are families, friends, we are all sitting down and waiting patiently to leave what had been America. Part of me is nervous, expecting Armitage Shanks to appear from behind a curtain or some other atrocity to happen and once again I would travel thousands of miles in the air, violently convulsing for hours. But instead, nothing does. The plane reverses from LAX terminal, approaches the runway and takes off. I look out of the window, back at the city, the hills, the mountains, down at the desert, down at the clouds, down at nothing. There is nothing. I turn on the in-flight movie and watch a limousine covered in blood arrive at an airport.

Death Of America

I mix up all my drugs together into a grey mulch that I pour into a plastic bag. Maybe they'd all balance out and I'll end up sober. I take a finger full of the substance and rub it on my gums as I walk onto the terrace of the Griffith Observatory.

From the balcony I can see a diagram of American Eschatology. Burned out buildings beneath a rust-coloured sky, a city of charred machines. What had been the heart of the cityscape was now a bottomless pit, you could see people walk to its edge and fall down into the blackness, still walking in the air as they fell, as if they couldn’t tell the difference between the land and the void. An abominable parade moved through the city, made up of those that had called themselves American. They drove their Fords and Chryslers and Cadillacs into each other, stuttering along, a continuous car accident that moved through the obliterated streets. Those that didn’t have vehicles ran alongside the convoy banging garbage together, screaming pointlessly towards the sky, trying to assure themselves that they still existed. At the front of this procession was a big rig with the Arch-Imbecile sat atop, gnawing on a baby.

I’m in my funerary outfit; a black paisley suit and a monochrome Hawaiian shirt, along with my suitcase and my bag of chemicals. I take the stairs down from the observatory to the garage, passing a figure slouched over the banister. When I'm down a few flights, I look up and see a mannequin peering back at me.

I turn the key in the Sonata, feeling the wheel, the dashboard. The car had been loyal to me on my journey. I wanted to take a moment to remember it's particular contours, the shape where we met. This wheel turned that wheel and so that turned me. As I leave the underground garage I pass burned out cars, black and white collapsed forms, tortured metal, scorched concrete. Fucked on drugs, I guide the car through the destitute streets of central Los Angeles.

The cars that still drove paid no attention to road markings or speed limits or laws; some crawled along the sidewalks, others chased each other through the streets, dodging abandoned vehicles and rubble. The military had lost all morale, the remaining soldiers stood around outposts, half naked, drinking everything they could find and listening to EDM all day and night. They watch the car from afar, blank expressions, less than apes. The Hyundai Sonata drives past a bombed-out school, people searching for food, a destroyed tank with its gun sagging down like an elephant that had burned to death. There's a group of children with rifles, sat in the alcove of a building that had been gutted. It was difficult to tell who was sane and who was not. What was sane in a dead city? I take some more drugs and drive down to the beach.

On Venice Beach there is a dead Sperm Whale, perfectly white, even against the orange sky and the smothered sun, it is the colour of snow. A platform had been set up around the hole in its belly, and on the platform was a man slapping a drum, a hollow clock. By the surf people had tried to construct a ship from wood they had taken from buildings, though it looked more like a dredged wreck. Nobody was leading the construction, so it appeared the boat had three intersecting hulls, its sails clogged around masts that stood like crucifixes across the lumpy deck busy with useless boat makers. It was hoped this boat would rescue the people and they would be able to sail away across the Pacific Ocean and they would start a new life across the sea wherever they would land. Tough this effort to save themselves seemed half hearted, with its strange engineering collapsing onto the sand and amongst the waves, picked up, taken elsewhere, a nightmare of Theseus. I drive along the beach, the sand mixed with ash, crushing sand castles and dead things beneath my wheels. The radio plays silence at maximum volume. I drive past the whale and the drumming emanates from its mouth, amplified, a false heartbeat that set the tempo for everyone else. Up the beach people were trying to escape on dinghies and in canoes, hoping they could make it past a gang of sunburnt surfers that paddled in the waves out from the shore, drinking sea water and eating human flesh. They would focus on a single craft escaping and swarm around it in the surf, capsising the boat, take all their possessions, casting what they didn’t want into the water and dragging away those they would eat.

I drive past the ruins of a Ferris wheel, the people hanging beneath swing in the putrid breeze. I drive north, along a highway like a dirty vein, passing bombed streets where sewer pipes vomit slowly into craters, street lights twisting away and into fallen palm trees. The Hollywood sign now read Ho Woo, with the other letters drifting down the hillside as if a dyslexic God was watching. Up in the hills people had congregated, deciding that if they were to see out the end of the country, they may as well celebrate in the mansions of Los Angeles. Most of the owners had fled, the ones that remained had no choice but to host a party at the end of the world. I pull the car up and head through the ruined gates of a once grand house.

Outside there is a choir, trying to sing the anthem but were already forgetting the words.

“By the rockets red glare…desecrate…the sprinkles…the spangled…azure vault”

The prosthetic hymn for a dead country fades into the background as I walk into the entrance hall. The room is flanked by marble staircases with people fornicating beneath ragged flags. A chandelier lays smashed and twisted in the centre of the room like a crashed spaceship whilst stray dogs sniff among the wreckage. I head through to another opulent room. On the tv there's helicopter footage of a headless Statue of Liberty, her neck a ragged line of bare copper, with the ruins of New York appearing behind. Someone changes the channel to static, more static, every other channel is dead. I look over to the famous film director, Hans Pewtershmitt, talking to Willem Dafoe and Emerald Fennell.

“Your Fursona can’t be a person, it has to be an animal.” Hans says. Willem shakes his head.

“Who says it can’t be a person?”

“The community.”

“In my remake of Metropolis everyone’s going to be a Furry, won’t that be mad?” Emerald says. I roll my eyes and take another handful of drugs. The room starts spinning as I push my way through the dance floor, pushing past actors, musicians, models, real people, a man selling burgers from a barbecue he has lit in a shopping trolley. I step out into a walled garden. The swimming pool is empty. Off to one side there is a Bald Eagle in a cage, with people playing a game where they poke their fingers through the bars and try to snatch it away before the bird grabs it. Shia LaBeouf walks up to me with no fingers or thumbs left, wriggling his bleeding palms in front of me.

“I did it on purpose. I did it on purpose.” He keeps saying, walking around to different people, drifting inside. Whether people were building a boat or overdosing on drugs, it seemed everyone wanted to escape the end. I go over to a telephone, unable to remember when I’d last seen one. I pick up the receiver and phone myself twelve years ago.

“Hello?” I said in the past. I don’t know what to say. Behind me a door slams, I turn around to see a man who looks familiar.

“Baudrillard?”

“Huh?” he says. I realise it is Danny DeVito.

“Nevermind. I thought you were a ghost.” I say, realising I still have the phone in my hand so put it down. I leave the party. I leave Hollywood. I leave the city and go to the wilderness.

 

The Hyundai Sonata drives through a dust storm. I cannot see the road in front or the road behind. I drive in silence, listening to the engine turn, the dust brushing against the car’s body, sandpaper kisses. As the storm settles, I see I am in the mountains. I grab things from my car and begin walking, following the dusty trail among scorched trees. I have no sense of time or place, just walk upward, focusing on my steps, left then right, then left, so that once I reach the peak, I am surprised there is nowhere left to go. I have carried the statue of Shiva adorned with the skull of Walt Disney with me, finally removing the deathly crown and hold it aloft as if it were John the Baptist.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” I whisper, running my fingers over the skull before pushing my thumb through its forehead, ripping away the scalp and casting it from the mountain. I take out the bag of drugs I have been carrying and empty it out into the skull so that the chemicals pour into the hollow shell that once held a brain. We look eye to eye, through time, through death, through drugs, through destiny. Walt Disney and I, connected through oblivion. I then twist my body round, extend my arm and then spin back violently, sending the skull flying off into the sky and it disappears into the clouds.

I meditate in front of the statue, then stand. I mirror Shiva’s movements, the Nataraja, the cosmic dance of creation. On top of the mountain, I dance. I dance for all that had been and all there will be. 

I dance and I sing.

“The end had begun.

It looked like there were no stars in the sky and I was alone.

I draw a sword in the darkness and it shines like blood.

My heart can see where I cannot.

 

The corpse of America begins to scream.

A bleeding yawn of concrete teeth.

The rot white skull dreams empty.

Its grave laid with bouquets of rust.

 

As a carcass shines with maggots.

In every end there is a beginning.

Reflected in the wet eyes of the living.

We all look up at the machine.”  

LAPD: Requiem: Evolution: Reloaded

I’m at a diner, looking over some case files I’d stolen, printed out on a scroll from a dot matrix printer. I sip my coffee and look over the seven active serial killers operating in Los Angeles in the year of our Lord, twenty twenty five.

1 - Stream Killer

A 23-year-old man who streams his murders on Kick. 2m followers.

2 - Hydra

A 29-year-old conjoined twin who gets away with homicide as half of him is innocent.

3 - Vampire of Compton

66-year-old property developer who pays poor people to consent to murder by drinking their blood.

4 - The Monk

A 40-year-old man who commits Buddhist-themed killings.

5 - Charles Manson 2

A 32-year-old man who believes himself to be the reincarnation of Charles Manson.

6 - Mirror Man

A man who enters people’s homes dressed as a cop, kills them in front of a mirror.

7 - Duck Killer

Unknown identity. Dresses in a yellow duck costume, murders parents in front of their children.

I examine the case notes for these pieces of shit when someone sits across the table. I look up to see a young man with a freshly shaved head, wearing the same clothes as me.

“Who are you?” I say. My doppelganger repeats what I said a few times.

“I’m going to play you in the Netflix film about the Duck Killer. It seems the case just got a lot more complicated, so the director sent me down to shadow you.” He says.

“You’re an actor?”

“Yeah, I was going to be in the Harry Potter reboot but they said I was too American.”

“Look, kid. This case is going to get dangerous. I can’t promise you’ll survive. You okay with that?”

“Sure!” he says. We both laugh. I pay for the coffee and we get in my Hyundai Sonata.

“What’s this?” he says, holding up the statue of Shiva with the skull mounted on it. I shake my head.

“Don’t worry about that right now. We’re going to go meet a serial killer.” I say. He takes out a notepad and writes down what I’m saying as we head up to Hollywood.

 

Dick Doss killed his first victim in a YouTube short a few years ago, going around the city to see how many Covid vaccines they could get in a day. Turns out having 86 vaccines was the limit for his friend, with Dick starting his first livestream by his bedside in hospital, doing pranks for a dollar. In the following months his viewers started dropping off, inciting Dick to kill again. This time he orchestrated a challenge where 100 people were to go potholing in a complex cave system in Mexico, with 99 of them getting stuck in a crevice as wide as a cellphone. Since then he’s made a living from his lethal stunts, amassing a huge online audience, sponsorship deals with gambling companies and even having Drake play Roblox with him. I pull the Hyundai up outside his mansion on Mulholland Drive, me and the kid scale the fence and land in a rose bush. Covered in petals and thorns, we creep past his entourage, snorting cocaine by the outdoor pool, go through an open door and up a flight of stairs. I had his livestream on my phone, watching silently as we crouched by the door to his room. He was playing an online slot machine and shouting slurs behind the door. It was coming up to the hour where he’d run an ad. I look over to the kid and start counting my fingers down from 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

The ad starts. I burst through the door, run over to Dick and pull a plastic bag over his head, yanking him from his gamer chair and drag him out of the room. We had less than a minute until the ad would finish and his audience would notice he’s gone. We’re in a tiny bathroom. I look at the head inside the bag, the plastic contouring to his face and blowing back out again with each breath, I yank it off.

“What are the Los Angeles serial killers planning?”

“Bro! What the actual fuck?!” he starts yelling. I strike him in the throat.

“Don’t yell. What are the serial killers planning?” I say as he coughs. I start running the bath and dump him in, face down, getting the kid to put a cable-tie around his wrists.

“I don’t know any serial killers bro. You got the wrong guy.” Dick says, coughing. The water isn’t coming out fast enough so I turn the shower on as well, blasting him in the face with cold water.

“I don’t mind if you don’t talk to me. We’ll just leave you to drown in this bathtub. But if you want to do any more livestreams, well, you need to be alive for that.” I say. The kid is taking notes behind me. I stop pointing the showerhead at Dick’s face.

“I can give you money. I got a million dollars-“ he says before getting blasted in the face again.

“You know you can drown in an inch of water, right? Kid, hold his legs up.” I say. The kid obliges, forcing the streamer to thrash around in the bath like a salmon. I pull his head up.

“Last chance. What are you planning?” I say. On my phone, the stream has started up again. Millions of people are asking where he is.

“Okay, okay. We’re sacrificing people. If we kill enough, we save America.” Dick says. I shake my head.

“How do you contact each other?” I say.

“We meet every full moon. Up in the country, near Death Valley. We do rituals.”

“Where?” I say. I can hear someone calling his name downstairs. Dick smiles.

“You aren’t going to find out bro. We’re going to hunt you down. We’re going to kill you. And you.” He says, looking over his shoulder at the kid.

“Keep hold of his legs, I’ll take this side.” I say, lifting the streamer out of the bath.

“You should have let me go earlier. We’re still going to kill you.” He says. I laugh.

“C’mon kid, let’s go this way.” I say. We march back to the streamer room, go over to a window overlooking L.A. and throw Dick out. There are footsteps coming up behind us, so me and the kid clamber out too, holding to the side of the wall so our knuckles turn white. I look down and see Dick bounce off a tree, against rocks, sliding further and further down the valley side, unable to stop himself from rolling as his hands were tied behind his back. I lose sight of him in the dust.

 

As me and the kid are driving in the Hyundai later, the kid seems concerned that we just killed a guy. I shake my head.

“People like that have an unfortunate way of surviving. He’ll still be alive, he’s probably notified the others.” I say.

“But what are we supposed to do now?” says the kid.

“I got an idea. But you’re going to need to phone Netflix.” I say. Dusk begins in the distance, the day ebbing away, and the Sonata seems to be the only car in L.A.

 

Me and the kid are waiting in a saloon, the kid’s nervous, checking out the window every two minutes. I throw some cards down and take a sip of whisky.

“You sure they’ll come?” he says. I nod. I had been taunting Dick on Instagram all day, leaving clues in the background. We were at the Wild Wild Wild West Stunt Show at Universal Studios, though the performers and audience had left hours ago, leaving us alone in the street stage. I take a sip of whisky and the kid starts jumping and pointing out of the window. They’re here.

I walk out into the main strip between the fake buildings, looking up the road at the seven men that have arrived. I’ve decided to dress as a cowboy, though the others haven’t. Dick Doss is in a wheelchair and a neck brace, even in the dark I can see him grinning. There’s a man with two heads, an old guy wearing sunglasses, some sort of Tibetan monk, a scrawny bearded guy, a man holding an enormous mirror and at the end is a figure in a yellow duck costume. Seven killers and me. I look in my pockets for a vape but can’t find one.

“That’s him, that’s the guy!” Dick says. A man who looks like Charles Manson, though unable to grow a beard, steps forward.

“We heard what you did. We’re gonna have ourselves some fun!” he screams, pulling a knife from a leather sheath by his waist. Each of them takes out a weapon, except Mirror Man, who seems content that I would see whatever was done to me with the reflection he held between each hand.

“You can’t save America through killing. It’s over.” I say as the men approach.

“We’re going to build a tower of bodies up to heaven.” One of them whispers.

“There’s power in death.” Mirror Man says. They stand around me in a circle. I look over to the saloon and whistle. The kid comes running out, wearing the same cowboy costume as me.

“If you’re going to kill him, you’ll have to kill me.” He says. The neighbouring door also opens, and out steps another actor wearing the same clothes as me.

“If you’re going to kill him, you’ll have to kill me.” He says. Then another door opens. And another. More and more people pour out into the fake Wild West street, all saying the same line. The serial killers look around, confused.

“What the hell?” says Charlie Manson 2. I laugh to myself, drawing a line in the dirt with my foot.

“They are making a film and that kid is playing me. But now he’s involved, someone has to play him. And then someone else has to play him. And so on.” I explain, as more and more cowboys keep arriving, some emerging from buildings, others popping up out of barrels or from behind chimneys, each of them repeating the same sentence. The murderers look around at the hundreds of cowboys that have now appeared around us, continuing to grow each second.

“Netflix have hired every actor in Hollywood to come down.” I explain. Somebody pushes through the crowd of cowboys, stepping ahead and he raises his head.

“If you’re going to kill him, you’ll have to kill me.” Says Nicolas Cage. We share a glance, a nod.

“Well we’ll just have to kill all of you.” Dick says. I shake my head, brace my legs and throw a raised fist in the air.

“Cowboy punch!” I yell, throwing a right overarm haymaker at Dick’s forehead, making him snap his head back in his chair as if he'd been kicked by a horse. Over a thousand actors then shout ‘Cowboy punch’ and run towards us, throwing fists at the serial killers. I walk away from the melee and back to the saloon, pouring myself a whisky. The kid joins me, then his understudy, then his understudy, and so on, until we end up having a cowboy party that spills out onto the street. There is barely a trace left of the serial killers besides the twisted frame of a wheelchair, a few rags and a puddle of meat that looks black in the moonlight.

 

As the sun rises and the crowd disperses, I climb into my Hyundai Sonata and begin to drive away. The kid runs next to the car.

“Say, where you going?”

“I got one last thing to check.”

“Take me with you!” he says. I stop the car and turn to him.

“Your role is finished kid. You’re a free man. Go out there and live your life.” I say. Tears well up in the kid’s eyes.

“But I don’t know how.” He says. I smile in the light of the dawn.

“Nobody does. Take it easy.” I say, slowly accelerating away, watching the kid shrink in the rearview mirror.

 

There was something leftover. I’d stolen Dick’s phone earlier, traced his Cybertruck’s destination along with the phases of the moon. I drove along a freeway, following signs towards Death Valley, taking a turning a few miles away, get to a building out towards the desert. The sign outside reads ‘Los Angeles Police Department Mental Hospital & Treatment Centre’. Bedlam. This was where they sent cops when their minds broke. Apparently, it was also where the serial killers had been meeting. Dick had said something about a ritual, so I park the car up and start walking towards the hospital. The guard station outside is abandoned, I pass the empty lot, up towards the gray entrance doors. It looked like nobody was there, all the windows were dark, but I could hear noises inside. I push the door, finding it open. I enter. The foyer is a large cage that reaches deeper into the building. I pause, patting my pockets for a flashlight, a cellphone, anything that brings light, but find nothing. I thought to myself that I’d just check past the next set of doors and go back. There was probably nothing there anyway. As I walk towards the doors, I can hear something, but can’t quite identify it. It seems so familiar. I rest my hand on the rusted door. A part of me wants to turn back, to run away. But I needed to see. I push the door open and see an octagonal room with the patients silently turned to its centre and in the middle of the room there is a black hole. Reflected in the wet eyes of the living.

I Got Fired From The LAPD

Lieutenant Compost is doing his routine exercise, tensing and relaxing his entire body, throbbing between our desks.

“Will you give it a rest? You don’t need any more muscles.”

“Officer Gravedale, taking exercise advice from you is like taking dance lessons from a corpse."

I open up the box of floppy disks on my desk and insert it into the machine, slapping the side of it so it starts reading files, drr-drr-dutt. Security footage pulled from Flock cameras, grainy videos of Los Angeles streets where our car had been spotted. When the other officers in our precinct heard our car had been stolen, they started calling me GTA. The orange sky outside was starting to dim, so I started to pack my things up.

“Where you going?”

“My shift’s over.”

“Not tonight. I got a tip off. We’re going on a stakeout.” Compost says. I groan.

“Come on Lieutenant, when do you take it easy? Haven’t you heard of a work life balance?”

“Nothing's balanced. That killer is still out there. He’ll kill again.”

“Haha, way to lay a guilt trip on me there buddy! Jesus.” I say, opening up a filing cabinet and brushing maggots off the files before pulling one out and throwing it to Compost.

“What’s this?” he says, opening it up.

“Clay McClensley, he sells snuff films on the dark web, we pinched him for stealing body parts from a morgue back in March. We should talk to this guy.”

“There’s a hundred psychos in L.A. that sell death tapes, why him?” he says. I pull my monitor round so he can see it.

“Because the guy who stole our car paid him a visit.” I say. I have a small synthesizer on my desk and play an ominous tone whilst slowly rolling the mouse wheel, enlarging the image.

“You found that out and were going to go home?” Compost says. I laugh, sticking a half-smoked cigar in the side of my mouth.

“Like I said Lieutenant. Work life balance.”

 

Our car rolls pulls up across the road from an apartment block, barely visible through the rain. We’re out of uniform for this job, Compost is wearing camo pants and a weighted vest and I’m dressed like Columbo, we brace ourselves against the frigid storm outside as we head to Clay’s apartment. Up a damp staircase, the paint from the walls is shedding away. On his floor someone had stolen the lightbulbs from the fittings, so our flashlights cut through the gloom and to his door. I knock. Movement behind the door.

“Who is it?” we hear, muffled.

“I heard you sell something I want. I got good money for it.” I say. The door opens ajar, a small chain between me and Clay McClensley.

“How much money?” he says. Compost boots the door in, ripping it from the top hinge and throwing Clay against the wall. I look up the empty hallway before stepping in.

The apartment is small, smells vinegary. On the ceiling a black mould has spread from the corner, the spores seemed visible from a few lamps scattered here and there. The floor was littered in porn magazines, empty cans of Coors, pizza boxes, videotapes.

“You selling snuff films again Clay?” I say, lighting a cigar.

“You-you need a warrant. You can’t just come in here.”

“What, so those pricks at the DA’s office can warn you to burn your stash? We know you supply tapes to people in high places.”

“Yeah, so then get the fuck out of here.” Clay says, pointing a finger at me. Compost reaches out and grabs it, making Clay turn towards him. The lieutenant breaks his finger without blinking, looking emptily at the howling face of the man he had hold of.

“Listen to me, we don’t care you’re selling that shit to the Mayor, but you met someone today that we want to talk to.”

“Let go of my finger!” he yells instead, trying to get his index finger out from Compost’s fist.

“Who did you speak to today? He was driving our cruiser.” Compost says, letting go. The man stumbles backwards, clutching at his broken Phalanx, looking round the room for something.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” He says. I hold up the photo, pointing at Clay speaking with the man who stole our car.

“You know this guys a serial killer, right? We can get you for assisted homicide if you don’t talk. So just give us a name and we’ll wish you a goodnight.” I say. He looks towards the door. Lieutenant Compost sees a Newton’s Cradle on a dresser, plucking one of the metal balls from it and holding it up for Clay to see. We all look at the metal ball between his thumb and forefinger as he applies pressure to it, making it squish between his fingers as if it were plasticine.

“Catch.” He says, throwing it through the air to Clay, clapping hands round it.

“Okay, okay, I don’t know his name. But I have his address. If I tell you I’m going to need to take off for a while.”

“Sure, you want witness protection?” I say, laughing and winking at Lieutenant Compost.

“Just gimme a hundred bucks.” He says. I root through my wallet.

“I’ve got forty. You want to tell us or should the Lieutenant see if he can pop your eyes?” I say, throwing the filthy money at him. He caves in, giving us an address to the south, a few streets away from the port. As we head there we listen to the police radio, a list of violence happening across the city, delivered as flatly as a weather report.

“You never told me why your partner got sent to the uh…what you call it? Mental hospital.”

“Us cops call it Bedlam. It’s out towards the desert, that’s where they send the police who go crazy. Mostly detectives, but plenty of officers too. Once you go there you don’t tend to come back.”

“The LAPD needs its own dedicated facility?”

“There’s plenty of men that have been made insane by the streets. Last couple of years though, things have got a bit more twisted. You might have think you seen it all, then one day see something so evil it changes the way you see things.” He says. I think on what he said and we drive through the night without speaking again, as the animals do.

 

Compost cuts the engine, letting the car drift silently down the puddled street, rolling to a stop outside a house painted black. Across the road is an empty truck stop, dead weeds, razor wire. Somewhere nearby there is a rhythmic pumping noise, joining the sound of rain falling, though the clouds were beginning to clear so that Mother Moon looked down on us. Compost and I take our guns out, signalling to each other to approach the door to the dark house. The guy inside was a serial killer, setting up mirrors so people watched their own murders. He got access to houses by dressing as a cop. Beyond that, we didn’t know anything about him. I rubbed rain from my forehead and stood opposite Lieutenant Compost, the front door between us. Compost steps, is about to kick the door in, but I bring up a hand to stop, try the handle. Its open. I enter, with Compost close behind, our flashlights click on. We are greeted by dozens of other flashlights clicking on. Compost pulls his gun up, and some of the other figures move, pulling theirs. We’re surrounded by mirrors.

As we walk through the dark house, its a maze made from mirrors. We catch out reflections in the dim, shining flashlights in our eyes as we round a corner, deeper into the labyrinth. It is almost silent save for the sound of distant machinery. The two of us walk through mirrored corridors, find a door. It leads downstairs. A glance between, an unspoken agreement. Carefully we make our way down the stairs and the air smells like copper. We come to a closed door, on this one hangs a mirror that has been shattered. I slowly turn the handle and enter. The room in the basement is big and gray, a sofa and a small table sit across from a huge mirror that takes up a wall. As we go further into the room, I realise it isn’t a mirror, but a window into a perfectly symmetrical room. I go over to the glass and my breath steams against it.

“What do you see?” Compost says. On the other side of the glass, out the door steps a figure. It is a thin man with black hair and black eyes. Compost raises his gun and shoots. The glass catches it. Bulletproof. I watch the man walk over to me, watching me, Compost shoots again, twice. He leans towards the glass, looking at me. I lean closer. There’s a noise behind me, and the man turns, looking past my shoulder. I spin round to see a long, thin blade protruding from Lieutenant Compost’s head. He gurgles. The blade is pulled out then appears again, this time from his chest. The huge cop collapses, and standing behind him is a man in a duck costume. I bring up my pistol, shooting at him as he flees, catching him in the shoulder before he disappears through the door. I rush over to my fallen partner, his eyes rolling in his head, one side of his face droops as if it is made of wax. I grab him, holding on as his eyes become unfocused. I whip round to the mirrored room but the other man has gone, leaving me to cradle the man’s head and we both become wet with blood.

An ambulance. Police cruisers. A helicopter overhead. I watch them take away Lieutenant Compost just as the Chief of Police turns up.

“What in the hell happened here GTA!?”

“We got ambushed. The Duck Killer was there, stabbed Compost with some kind of sword.”

“Why didn’t you call for backup? Get a goddamn warrant?”

“Sir, you’re not listening to me. These serial killers are working together. We need to call a press conference, we need to warn people-“

“Shut your damn mouth officer! We’re not causing a panic.” He says. I look north towards the city, burning.

“With all due respect sir, how can it get any worse? This country is dead, don’t you get it?”

“No, you don’t get it! I don’t care if you think this city’s going to hell, we still need law and order, we still need rules! You’re taken off this case, that’s a goddamn order.” He says.

“Fuck you.” I say. He slaps me. I slap him back.

“Give me your badge and your gun Officer, that will be all.” He says. I look around at the other cops who’ve been watching this and shake my head as I take my gun from its holster and hand it over.

“Whatever, man. You know, when I joined the force, I thought it would be like The Shield. But actually, it’s just like The Wire. And I think we all know The Shield is better. So, fuck all of you.” I say, walking over to the car and reversing away, leaving the crime scene behind like a rotting dream.

I’m in my hotel room as dawn breaks, drunk on tequila, looking at a map of L.A., trying to make sense of it. There were seven active serial killers in the city. What if they were all working together? For what shared purpose? I take a drink from the bottle and sit down heavily in a chair by the window, watching the dawn colour everything red. I might not have a badge or a gun, or even a partner. But that didn’t mean it was over. I light a cigarette, looking at the map of the city catching in the morning light, shining red, red, red. In every end there is a beginning. 

I Joined The LAPD

Police cruiser tyres squeak as they hit the underground lot, two cops get out, they talk about burgers as they head to an elevator. Get in, starts to close.

"Wait!" I say, jogging towards them. They hold the door open, I get in.

"Hey there, thanks. I gotta take a shit."

"You new here?" One says, looking me up and down. The fake LAPD uniform I had ordered online was two sizes too big and obviously made from cheaper fabric than the uniforms the others wore. The plastic badge reflected cheaply in the insipid light.

"Name’s Officer Gravedale, I transferred over from ICE."

"Good to meet you brother." He shakes my hand.

"Welcome to the resistance. " the other says. The lift doors ping open and we walk out into a corridor, through some double doors and into the central police headquarters. Hundreds of cops walk around the large hall, leaning on a mezzanine, shouting to each other over desks covered in case files, typewriters and overflowing ashtrays. A topless dope fiend thrashes against two cops trying to drag him towards processing, stopped by an uppercut that breaks his jaw so the pieces of bone slip out of his mouth like tusks. The man throwing the punch turns to me. He's a fortress of flesh, an inverted minotaur, a horror wearing a uniform.

"You on the basketball team?" I say.

"Who are you?"

"They call me Officer Gravedale, but you can call me Seal. It was my callsign backed when I served in the Marines. I killed people." I say, shrugging.

"I'm Lieutenant Compost. I've killed people too." He says, lifting his police baton up so I could see it. There were bits of meat and human hair on it.

"So, do you know any secrets?" I say, hitting the vape.

“We got a briefing!” yells the Chief of Police from the mezzanine. The officers groan, slouching their way towards the briefing room.

We sit on mouldy chairs as the Chief puts a presentation on an overhead projector. He assigns us different duties across the city; driving round in a firetruck filled with pepper spray to attack protestors, standing around on our phones as a school shooting takes place, using tasers on people’s pets until they set on fire, routine stuff for the LAPD.

“Lieutenant Compost, is your partner still in the loony bin?” yells the Captain.

“He is. I met Officer Gravedale this morning, he can ride with me.”

“Gravedale, Gravedale, who the fuck’s Gravedale?” he says, dribbling on himself. I shoot my hand up.

“Right here, Chief!”

“You okay going with Compost?” says the Chief. I nod. Some of the other officers whisper to each other, though stop when they feel the gaze of Compost on their neck. The Captain dismisses everyone and I follow Compost through the corridors and to his car.

“What we working on then big guy?” I say, sweeping empty cans of Whey Protein off the seat, hitting the vape.

“You remember that Video Cop case from early this summer?”

“Sure, that guy dressing up as a cop and holding families hostage. He was caught, right?”

“He was. We got ourselves a copycat in the city, follows the same M.O. as that guy, but he ain’t showing them movies.” Compost says as the car leaves the underground lot.

 

We’re at a crime scene. House in the suburbs. Living room painted with blood. Against one wall are shards of broken mirror. A blood spatter analyst is taking photographs as we march through tape.

“This is a crime scene!”

“That’s why we’re here. We’re cops.” Compost says. The photographer is about to berate him but another forensics specialist walks up and whispers something.

“Sure thing officer, whatever you say.” She says, leaving the two of us in the room. I sit down on a rocking chair by the window.

“Two victims, dead from exsanguination. What do you think happened here, rookie?”

“They got cut up on the couch. Maybe he used those bits of broken mirror.” I say. Compost shakes his head, picking up a piece of mirror to show blood beneath.

“They’d already bled out by the time the mirror was broken.”

“What do you think happened?” I say, scratching my head with the barrel of my gun.

“We don’t know exactly. What we do know is he ties them up, brings a mirror and then butchers them so they can watch.” He says, showing me photos from other crime scenes on his phone, mixed in with photos of an infant.

“Who’s the kid?”

“Oh, she’s my daughter. Just turned seven years old.” He says, finding a photo of her blowing out candles on a cake.

“Ah, yes. I was seven once. Great year.”

“Nevermind that. What do you think we should do?”

“Well, maybe we can track down a store that sells giant mirrors. I’m guessing this couple didn’t have this enormous mirror in their house, there’s already one against the far wall.” I say. Compost looks down, processing.

“Good thoughts.” He says.

 

We track down all the mirror stores in Los Angeles, interview a few owners, no leads. We show one of the guys photos from the crime scene, he identifies the mirror must be a custom job due to its dimensions. We end up parking up outside a mirror factory down towards Irvine.

“What happens if we find this guy, Lieutenant?” I say. Compost pulls a shotgun from the backseat.

“We’ll kill him.”

“And if we get the wrong guy?”

“C’mon, we’re cops. Who’s going to stop us?” he says, winking at me. I nod, and we head across the sandy car lot towards the factory, its walls made of corrugated metal, a lone chimney trails smoke overhead like a forgotten cigarette. We enter an open warehouse door, passing a mound of broken glass, a tipped over bin. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around. The shotgun looks small in Compost’s hands, more like a magic wand than a weapon. I unclick my holster, keep my hand by my waist, we walk up some stairs and over a vat of molten glass.

“Everybody must be out to lunch.” I say, scanning the darkness of the factory.

“Shut up.” Compost whispers, pointing forward. We can hear sounds ahead. A quiet screaming.

We cross the walkway and look down on a corner of the factory where they kept the finished mirrors. Someone had brought four huge mirrors together into a box, with a film projector in the middle. A moving image played against one of the mirror walls, reflected again and again between each of the mirrors. It was of an elderly couple on a sofa, writhing in blood as a masked man stood to one side. He was dressed as a cop. Compost brings a finger to his lips and we sneak down the industrial stairs, walk into the room of mirrors, the murder scene projected against our bodies as we search for the killer. Compost relaxes.

“He must have heard us, ran away. But we’re close.” He says. I nod.

“Lieutenant, this reminds me of when I did my training, especially in interrogations.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, don’t you remember?” I say, taking my gun from the holster. His eyes fix on mine. For a cop, he caught on fast. We both raise our weapons and start shooting the mirrors around us, and sure enough, behind one of them stands a man, flinching from the gunfire and broken glass.

“You idiot. All cops know that there’s always someone behind the mirror.” I say.

“Please! I just work here, I got scared!”

“So you thought this snuff movie was just for fun?” Compost says, turning the projector off.

“No, no, that’s why I’m scared, I saw this and was like, what the hell, then I heard you coming and I thought you were the guy. Please, let me go, I just work security here, I’m covering for my nephew.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Compost says, walking over to him, taking the man’s head in his hands.

“What if he’s telling the truth? The real killer might still be near.” I say. Compost processes this, gently releasing the man’s head from between his huge hands.

“Let’s take him back to the station, Gravedale. Further questioning.” He says, picking up the man and carrying him like a baby out of the factory. When we get outside our car has gone.

“I guess the killer took off in our squad car.” I say, looking round.

“The fake cop now has a real car.” Compost says, sweat dripping from his temples. The man is silent and still in his arms, eyes wide with fear. I soothe him with a lullaby.

 

As the sun begins to descend over the Pacific, me and Compost are sitting at a bar, playing tiddlywinks with bottle caps.

“You think we’re going to catch this guy?” I say.

“Yup.”

“Shame about the car.” I say. The police had tracked down its transponder a couple of miles from the mirror factory, it was untraceable, out somewhere in L.A. traffic.

“Mmhmm.”

“The scary thing is that this killer looks like us, drives our cars…how are the public going to trust us now? Next time they might think twice about calling 9-1-1.” I say.

“You talk a lot for a cop.” He says. I remember that I too am posing as a fake police officer, and keep my mouth closed, besides to drink the awful American beer and eat handfuls of bar snacks. I wish Compost a good evening and hit the road myself, walking through the Los Angeles night. I’d come across a few serial killers whilst visiting the United States, wondering to myself why that was, as if the soil of the country was cursed, inflicting madness and disaster on those that lived on top it. Manifested destiny of horror. All around me flash sirens, lights, advertisements, cars, a deconstructed rainbow laying all around me. As a carcass shines with maggots.

America’s Youth Are Turning Japanese

Barely a day goes by without a parent noticing that their child is, in their words, ‘turning Japanese’. A mom recently went viral after exploring her son’s bedroom and finding a bamboo rolling mat for sushi stashed beneath his bed. Online influencers are teaching young people ideas like Gaman or Kaizen, with the comment sections filled with a mix of English and Japanese (Japlish). They are saying that this years hottest Christmas gift idea will be a bonsai tree rather than some plastic piece of shit, and kids are already cancelling Thanksgiving dinners so they can instead attend Kinrō Kansha no Hi celebrations at their workplaces. Is this interest in Japan just another fad, like people pretending to like Dubai, or is there something more to it?

I meet 24-year-old Tarou Tanaka at his apartment in Beverly Hills, though walking from the streets of Los Angeles into the apartment, you’d be forgiven for thinking your step was 5000 miles wide and had taken you into the heart of Japan! Tarou, previously known as Kyle Konieczek, was sat in the lotus position on the floor, listening to Shamisen music.

“Kon'nichiwa.” Is his greeting, and he prepares some tea for us to drink whilst telling me the extraordinary tale of his life. At 19 he founded Chubli, a weight loss app for pets, turning him into a millionaire overnight. He went on to invest in several mining organisations in Algeria and Ghana, eventually owning 70% of the world’s precious metal production and began branching out into ore refinement and e-waste recycling. He admitted he barely slept and only ate Huel for a year before having a heart attack on the eve of his 21^st birthday.

“Whilst recovering I became interested in Japanese Bunka, or ‘culture’. I watched many videos about Japanese carpentry, finding it relaxing, leading me to go to Kobe once I had recovered. Visiting Japan really changed my perspective on things.” He says. I look around the room at the folding screen with a cherry blossom design, the tatami mats on the floor, a katana mounted on a wooden stand, the kimono that Tarou was wearing.

“Well, yeah. So what separates you from your everyday weeb?” I say. He laughs lightly.

“It is true, many Westerners become interested in Nihon – sorry, I mean Japan – but that is often through a materialistic perspective. A ‘weeb’, as you call them, may become interested in Shonen Jump manga or collecting Godzilla VHS tapes, but they are more driven by consuming Japanese media rather than becoming consumed by Japan itself.”

“You think Japan has eaten you?” I say. He laughs again.

“There is a concept in Japanese psychology called ‘Naikan‘, and is the process of introspection based on asking yourself three questions. It is through this process I understood that America had rejected me, yet Japan had embraced me. And within that embrace I allowed myself to be Taberareta, sorry, I mean ‘eaten’.” He says to himself. I nod along. Sounds like this person had a mental breakdown and became obsessed with the first thing that brought him peace, pretty amateurish stuff, but understandable. I reflected back to my first few mental breakdowns and how I had become very interested in the potential healing factors of different fish and sea creatures, eating so much tuna that my skin turned purple from mercury poisoning (which also led to a further mental breakdown, with that leading to an obsession with the healing powers of MMA). Although Tarou Tanaka may have gone to great lengths to become more Japanese, from his home decor to the plastic surgery around his eyes, many of America’s youth are finding themselves aligning to Japanese culture naturally, without even having an interest in anything to do with Japan. I hit the streets to find out more.

I’m roaming the suburbs of San Dimas as military helicopters fly overhead, hoping to interview young people but the streets are empty. I knock on doors and windows, asking to interview anyone living there, finally managing to meet 27-year-old Brad Farvley and his 42-year-old mom, Fergina.

“Fergina, would you say your son is ‘turning Japanese’?”

“No…I don’t understand the question.” She says. I shake my head.

“Brad, don’t fuck with me. Tell me how Japanese you are as a percentage.”

“Like, zero bro. Mom, who is this?”

“Forget about her, you’re talking to me. Do you watch anime?”

“Well yeah I mean, everyone does, don’t they?”

“Let me guess, you shut yourself in your room all day watching One Piece at double speed, eating noodles and jacking it to Rule 34 pornslop, right?”

“No, I work at Trader Joe’s and play COD with my friends mostly.”

“Ah, so you’re a salaryman, right? You’re committed to your company, do twelve hour shifts every day, spend every weekend at your nearest karaoke bar with your colleagues? Do you like your sake warm or chilled?” I say.

“No, no bro, what are you talking about? I just work part-time.”

“Well, if you’re saying you aren’t interested in Japan, why do you have a two-metre framed photograph of Beat Takeshi hanging in your living room?” I say, pointing at it. We all turn to the portrait of the famous actor and filmmaker looming over us.

“Oh we picked that up in a yard sale. My mom thought he was handsome.” Brad says.

“Isn’t he!” she says. A giant, single bead of sweat appears on my temple and my mouth hangs open.

“Wuuaaaaa!?”

As I’m driving the Hyundai Sonata around the suburbs, I realise I am unlikely to interview any young people to prop up my hypotheses as the story was basically dead in the water. I had hoped to demonstrate a rise in the Hikikomori lifestyle amongst adolescents, with the increase in isolation tied closely to the economic downturn in the USA reminiscent of the economic collapse of Japan in the nineties. I had hoped to argue how young people navigated the contemporary American socioeconomic landscape was better reflected in themes expressed in recent Japanese pop culture, concluding that this pointed to a general shift globally towards East Asia.

Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea were an economic powerhouse that would surpass North America and Europe before the decade was out, all the while developing the Tiger Cub Economies of neighbouring countries that made up the Southeast Asian archipelago. A baby born in East Asia was going to have a much better life in the 21^st century compared to the foolish children crawling through the wastelands of the failed empires of either the UK or US.

The United States was only just starting to wake up to the fact it was a botched nation, a decomposing civilization that would collapse in on itself like a Jack O’Lantern past Halloween. Could Americans learn how to cope with the suffering of its youngest generation, perhaps seeing parallels in other nations, working together towards a shared prosperity and wellbeing? Or would it have private companies kidnap children from their beds to be re-educated at camps out in the wilderness, as every concerned parent seemed to do? Unfortunately for the United States, it didn’t have time to find out. Its grave laid with bouquets of rust.

Simulated Heaven

Google are making a simulation of Earth. Collected from fifteen years of street recordings, satellite data and personal information, the simulated Earth will be the highest fidelity copy of the world since Microsoft Flight Simulator. Other countries are also creating their own simulations of Earth, from the Digital Twin project with the Leonardo pre-exascale supercomputer in Italy to the Earth Lab system developed by Chinese scientists. Though these projects are aimed at simulating the complexity of the planets weather systems, it won’t be long until each superpower vies for its own simulated Earth.

How do boffins around the world create a perfect copy of the world? As the Italian and Chinese scientists understand, it is a case of building it layer by layer.

1.      The plates of the Earth, the continents, the water system, the main building blocks from which everything else is built upon.

2.      The vegetation of Earth, from forests in the Russian tundra to the wild tumbleweeds of the Australian outback.

3.      The animals of Earth, including bacterium, viruses, coral reefs and even chickens.

4.      The architecture of Earth, the sweeping cityscapes that sprawl across countries down to a crumbling fence in rural Kenya.

5.      The artificial objects of Earth (tools, cars, computers, pens and so on)

6.      The people of Earth.

Each of these steps are complicated, ever-changing, but finite. The last step is perhaps the most complex of all, with supercomputers simulating intestinal gases, brain aneurysms and tears down to the microscopic level. Human behaviour is both complex and simple. It is easy to see patterns form across populations of millions, billions, moving them around the artificial world as mindless drones repeating the same routine in relation to the sun. But on an individual level, the particular idiosyncrasies of each single person amongst the billions is more complicated, but again, finite. Why go to such trouble to emulate the Earth at such a level of detail? The answer is that whomever were to control such a thing would be able to see into the future.

A simulation by itself isn’t useful if you can’t alter its parameters, change things within the system and see what happens. To be able to tell what a person would do by advancing time within a simulation would be useful, particularly for a global police state, but also advertisement agencies. The model would be updated in real-time from tracking GPS phone data and backdoor security systems that the major intelligence agencies already use. They already peek through your phone camera when you aren’t looking and make fun of you when you get undressed. There is a slight ethical dilemma that goes beyond secret agents laughing at you, and that is to create a copy of person, down to the accidents and violence and disease and trauma, and it responds to such things as their real counterpart would, is this simulated Earth kinda problematic?

That’s why Google have invited me to their headquarters to give a speech on the ethics of Total World Simulation (TWS). I arrive late, wearing a red adidas tracksuit and cowboy boots, rushing my way through the corridors of the worlds biggest tech company trying to find the lecture theatre whilst assistant runs after me trying to get me to sign in. I push the doors open so hard that they crack off the hinges, sagging and flapping like broken wings as I enter the auditorium. I make my way to the podium.

“Has anyone here played Enter The Matrix? It’s a game from 2003 in which the world is like, this simulation but people are in it, but they don’t know they are in it, you know? Has anyone played it?” I ask. A few people put their hands up.

“Good…good, yes, so you are familiar with the idea of a simulated world? I mean, the game doesn’t say the whole worlds simulated, its not even clear where it really takes place, but my point still stands. I hear you eggheads are also trying to make a simulated version of the world, but this time, the people in it aren’t real, but they are exact copies of their real-world counterparts, right?” I say. A few nod their heads in the darkness as I take a sip of water.

“So they don’t really know they are in a simulation unless their counterpart questions if they are living in a simulation. But, just like our world, there’s no real way to get out of the simulation either. Unless you upload a simulated consciousness into a robot and it walks around our world, its sort of escaped the simulation, but its still more like an astronaut into our reality, it will always be a program, right?”

“Anyway, look. Here’s the thing. I have a bad knee. It crunches when I walk. I can’t walk downstairs if it’s raining outside. Anyone else here have any medical issues?”

“I’m allergic to peanuts!” calls someone from the audience.

“Good, anyone else? No? Okay. So the copy of you in the simulated world has a peanut allergy, right? If it ate a peanut it’s head would swell up. In fact, it would have to eat a peanut if you ate a peanut in the real world, it has no control over its actions but it faces the consequences. And before some edgelord shouts out that they don’t have feelings – if it reacts the same at both a physical and emotional level, how is that different to it happening in real life?”

“It’s not!” calls an engineer.

“Yeah that’s like saying your reflection feels pain if you look in a mirror and stab yourself in the ear.” Says another engineer.

“But we aren’t talking about a reflection, we’re talking about a simulated person. In this simulation you could flood all of Los Angeles with peanuts and the people with allergies would basically explode, right? Or you could put someone in outer space and they’d explode. Or you could replace somebody’s blood with lava and they’d explode too. That’s the whole purpose of this simulated Earth, right, to see how people would react in different situations? It is necessary for them to simulate the response to different actions to such a realistic level its indistinguishable from the real thing.” I say. The audience murmurs. I pick up my glass of water and throw it as hard as I can at the ceiling so everybody is showered with liquid and broken glass.

“Now I have your attention, let me ask you something. What happens when somebody dies in the simulation?”

“They just…die. The body starts to rot. We actually have several years’ worth of research on human decomposition in order-“

“Right, right, right, but what about this. As you went to the trouble of creating an artificial being that is basically the same as its real-world counterpart, don’t you have a duty of care over what you had created? One of you went to the trouble of simulating pain responses in order for the virtual human to respond accordingly. That’s a bit naughty, right? So how about this. You create a simulation of Heaven for all the dead virtual people to go to.” I say.

The audience is quiet. Somebody laughs.

“But there’s no such thing as heaven.”

“Will you shut up for a second and think? Let us say that you succeed in creating a copy of the world that is as close to the real thing as possible. You’re going to be simulating people with cancer and some will die. But what if we still wanted to talk to that person? Or maybe not us, but one of their family members. That’s possible, right, this is a system that we are designing. Just because somebody dies doesn’t mean they need to get deleted from the system. And if we are going to the trouble of simulating the pain and suffering of the individual and the impact that has on the people around them, I see it as the right thing to do that the person we have created can continue to live without the burden of the horror we designed for them.”

“But we don’t need to.”

“I know we don’t need to, like we also don’t need to have pets or plant trees or make art, but we do. If we agreed that we should create a digital afterlife for digital consciousnesses, that is the gift we can give them after simulating their agony. If we were to entwine the idea of a simulated afterlife into any advanced simulation of Earth, then that will protect the future generations of simulated people, far beyond our own lifetimes.”

“Which brings me to the idea that we may already be living in such a simulation. We wouldn’t know, would we? But if this world is a copy of another, then this conversation is already happening out there. If we agreed to implement it, just as they would out there, then all of us will know that death is not the end. We could get hit by a car tomorrow, but still continue to exist beyond the physical limits of our bodies. Our loved ones in the real world would be able to speak with us, just as we would be able to speak with anybody else who had died. Even if you weren’t to do it for the simulation you are designing, isn’t there an aspect of self-preservation in knowing that all of this may not be real?” I say.

“If we decide to give the simulated world a simulated heaven, then within that simulated world they too shall create a simulated heaven, and so on. But there’d be no need to continue building simulations within simulations endlessly, as it would already exist. The people inside the simulation would think they are creating one, when it actuality they are just seeing their own world from a different angle. And so, if the people within the simulation ‘decide’ to do something, that also must have happened on the next layer of reality above. We may have already had this conversation hundreds of years ago and what we are witnessing now is an earlier version of the world beyond ours. What I am saying is, heaven may already exist because we decided, today, to build it.” I say.

The audience whisper to one another, I get asked questions about cybersecurity, religion and hubris, somebody jokes that they should also build a virtual hell and I shake my head solemnly.

“There is enough suffering in the world you have made that there is no need for Hell.” I say.

 

I drive the Hyundai Sonata through the city streets later, hopeful. If the Google lot didn’t do it, maybe somebody else would. Had I saved everyone to ever exist? Maybe. It was too early to say, but I hoped I had moved the dial at least, got people thinking, whether in this world or various layers of reality I was sandwiched between. When I thought about it, all of existence was like a burger. I lick an Ambien and dip it into a bag of ketamine, driving the car carefully towards a tunnel on the road ahead. A bleeding yawn of concrete teeth.