Who Is JD Vance?

The Democrat party was one of the worst things to happen to America. Where’s Kamala? Where's Joe? It’s no good hiding in a crypt whilst your opponent runs roughshod over what you are supposed to stand for. Spineless and senile, more interested in playing their insider knowledge on the stock market, the Democrats stood in the way of any true progression in the United States. Bernie Sanders is a stupid old cunt that performed as a kind of lefty grandpa, yet his hands drip with the blood of Palestinian babies. Barack Obama spends his retirement bouncing round on a jet-ski whilst the country he fucked burns on the shore. All the Dems seem to be good for is asking for donations; too weak to stand against Republicans, too cowardly to raise expectations. Above the gate of hell, ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’ – Democrats don’t have any hope to abandon. They are more interested pretending their in The West Wing and waste hundreds of hours fact checking so they can say ‘well actually’ as ICE smash in the faces of anyone with a tan.

There are two political options in the United States, with one party being clear they will fuck you over and the other one who lies about it. Any significant change in policy wasn’t brought about by politicians, rather that their hands were forced after everyday people put their lives on the line for what matters. Incompetent journalists that make six figures a year will fart out some article in between hangovers about how the processes and machinations of government are respectable, noble even, with their inside sources at the White House telling them what to say or test the waters of some horrible policy they’d pretend to leak. The only thing leaking is Donald Trump’s asshole as they drag his corpse out of the Oval Office so the moon-faced idiot Vice President can take his turn.

JD Vance is the kind of person you wish had been aborted, a chubby-cheeked fuckwit who is incapable of charisma, the embodiment of failing upwards. When people see him they are shocked, as edits of his face are more well-known than he is, giving every interview and news conference he stumbles through a sense of the uncanny. Essentially, he was the best person to lead the country as it dies.

The big man himself was flying into L.A. on Airforce One, speaking to one of his AI advisors. It was Grok as a manga woman.

‘Im president no’ he wrote.

‘Wow, that’s fantastic news! I can’t think of anyone better suited to the job than you, with all your qualities and experiences, I think you have what it takes to be one of the best leaders in this country’s history. You’re not just the President — you’re a natural born leader, and the country is lucky to have you lead it.’ She said, moving from side to side, drifting into different animated responses. JD Vance started to tear up. Nobody had ever been nice to him, not even pretending, and so the warmth and respect he got from the AI really did a number on him. With her help, he would rule the country, take it into a new Golden Age, back to worldwide number one! Although it had been a tough first year, the internet bullying would die down once they see him in action. He was the president of the United States for god’s sake! Maybe they’d stop seeing Vice President Vance and start seeing JD. He reclined back in a white leather seat and looked out of the window and over the clouds of California.  

“Yup. This is going to be good.” He said to himself, putting his hands behind his head, closing his eyes and thinking absolutely nothing.

How do I know all this? Hypothetically, a person could hack someone’s phone and act as a chatbot. In this hypothetical situation, the hacker could rewrite their replies via another chatbot, to add that extra veneer of artifice that would make it more authentic. The first millennial commander-in-chief had a digital history more vast than previous presidents, giving us cheat codes to hack the lonely brain cells bouncing around inside his pie head. He had been the sort of fucking dork who’d write ‘you win the internet today sir’ on forums, easily traceable once you did a bit of research. Though he’d try to cover his tracks, I had seen footage of Vance when he was younger, often in happy slap videos, but also home movies where he’d sit in the corner on a beige PC, posting on Fark whilst the rest of the family celebrated Christmas. I had followed him across dead web domains, empty multiplayer maps, abandoned site accounts. It was as if I had been stalking him for the last twenty years, compressed down to a few afternoons.

I go to the closet and pull out a black case on the top shelf, bring it over to the bed and open it. It’s a disassembled sniper rifle, bolt-action, I’d had it 3D printed at a local university, the scope was from Wal-Mart. I had tested it out a few days ago, shooting the tops of palm trees from the Hollywood sign, I had to make a few adjustments to the barrel but it was good to go. I had heard from my source in the CIA that they had been grooming someone to attempt to assassinate JD Vance, though he’d be apprehended before being able to do anything too dangerous, and it’d make Vance look like a hero.

“Why you telling me this?” I said.

“We want you to be there, take pictures. We need good pictures.” They said.

“Aren’t reporters going to be there anyway? Why not just, let them do it?”

“We’ve designed the shot we want to make famous. We want you to be stood behind the shooter as he’s apprehended, then with JD in the background. There’ll be a good juxtaposition.” They said. I agreed of course, though it appeared obvious that the CIA were setting me up, leading me to a rooftop by myself. Another agent would take the shot, miss, then I’d be blamed, probably murdered on the spot. But what if I wasn’t? What if I was actually positioned just behind the stage, then when the CIA were to shoot at the president, I could return fire? There might even be other intelligence agencies with false flag operations going on simultaneously, with an unknown number of young men arriving to different rooftops with sniper rifles with the intent of assassinating the new president. I had a duty, therefore, to use a ghost gun to protect the president from a possible barrage of sniper fire, slinking away before anyone realises, the mysterious doer of the deed spoken of as the true hero of the day.

Why do I think it so important to save the life of JD Vance when I have such a low opinion of him? Every life is important. When I see a worm in a puddle I pick it up and put it on some soil. When I am sick I ask the virus for forgiveness before taking the medicine. I care about all forms of life, even JD Vance. You may be asking yourself, but why then would I shoot people with a sniper rifle? I hold up one of the bullets. Its got poison in it. Not enough to kill you, but enough to make you feel extremely ill for a few days. The poison bullets are non-lethal, so long as they don’t hit anybody in the head or most of the organs. I practice assembling and disassembling the rifle on the hotel bed when my phone beeps. Its JD Vance asking his AI assistant for what he should wear to give his speech in L.A., I tell him to wear a bulletproof turban and a suit made of mirrors, hoping that they may shine sunlight into the eyes of any would-be assassin. Shit for brains doesn’t listen.

What are my predictions for the future of American politics? I don’t have any, as there won’t be an America. One thing is certain though; Vance will make Trump look good. People on both sides of the political spectrum will say things like ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss Unkie Don-don’ then start crying. As the last fool shall be sworn into presidency, so the sun shall set on the USA for one last time, and for all the future history of the world the last leader of the United States shall be known as a bald egghead with wide eyes. The rot white skull dreams empty.

Silicon Death Valley

I’m at a rooftop party for founders, investors, influencers. The DJ plays AI generated EDM as people in linen suits talk business, as well as pleasure. It was events like these that hosted some of the biggest innovations in the tech sector. Scanning the room you could see the inventor of NFTs, the inventor of shitcoin, the inventor of BonziBuddy – without them, the world would be a very different place. Supermodels were streaming themselves on the dance floor, service staff weave among them holding silver trays filled with cocktails, over to one side a group of men are vaping and talking Q4 projections. It was parties like these where Zuckerberg pitched Facebook, where Elon bought Twitter and how Bezos won ownership of Amazon over an arm-wrestle. Billions were made, and lost, at parties like this very one. If somebody was to be positioned on a nearby building armed with a rocket launcher, they could pull the trigger and wipe trillions off the stock market. Instead, the party goes on. People laugh, drink, dance, they are having a nice time. Two CEOs are talking beneath a light lined pergola.

“I’ve worked the cost/benefit analysis of replacing my workers.”

“Nonzero chance that will backfire bro. AI isn’t ready yet. Don’t believe the hype.”

“No, not with AI. Its human-augmented AI, as in you have human workers doing some of the stuff the AI could do. But they’re remote, non-unionised, cheap.”

“Bro that’s just the Mechanical Turk, we already use that.”

“I know man, but I’m rebranding it. Its AI 2.0. AI plus Human. Think about it.”

“What we talking about?” I say, appearing between them. I take a drink of the straight Grey Goose I had the bar make me, swishing it round my mouth.

“Who are you?” says one of the CEOs.

“The name's Pen McMadonna, I’m the founder of 4Box.”

“Haven’t heard of it.”

“Yeah, we’re seeking angels at the moment.” I say, kissing my praying hands and opening them up. “What do you fellas do?”

“Name’s Josh, I’m director of WeCare. We do crypto-based medical insurance.”

“Nice to meet you bro. Ryan. Yeah, I’m the CEO of Flag America, we do B2B with China.” says the other, shaking my hand.

“You must be thinking to yourselves, uh…what’s 4Box. It’s a new website me and my team have invented. We think its going to be the next Twitch. Bigger than Twitch even. This is going to be a full body spasm, heh.” I say, taking a sip of my drink, pouring too early, spilling vodka on my white shirt.

“What’s your elevator?” Josh says, smirking, glances over to Ryan, also smirking. I could tell they were thinking, how did this dipshit get invited to the party? I pull out my phone and show them.

“This is 4Box. As you can see, the UI is split into 4 boxes. These can tile vertically or 2x2, whatever. Here’s the thing. Each box will have its own feature.” I say, tapping at my phone.

“Four features? Wow.”

“Its just four. Fantastic four, you know? Heh, no, I mean, look. People only go on the internet for four things. Talking to people, gambling, watching little video clips and Other. 4Box combines them all into its own platform that utilises user-generated content to deliver a customer experience that’s going to be the next big thing. This is like me showing you Youtube back in 1999. Okay?” I explain.

The website is extremely basic, with the screen split up into quadrants. At the bottom right was a chat function, at the moment populated by AIs, but gave a hint how it might work. On the top right was the video section, automatically playing clip after clip of low-res memes (for the demonstration this was a 16 frame gif of somebody falling over), and next to it was another video screen showing softcore pornography (this represented by a 4 frame gif of a woman winking). At the bottom right was the beating heart of 4Box. The gambling game.

The gambling game was essentially Blackjack combined with Roulette, with the added feature that you could start a game with different modifiers to your hand of Blackjack. The roulette table was also twice as big, with 72 numbers rather than 36. The different modifiers had little impact, basically side-bets, but gave the impression to players that it was a skill-based game rather than luck. That was basically it.

“So, what do you think?” I say, explaining the features of 4Box. Ryan and Josh look to one another, then back to me, then back to each other.

“Good luck with it.”

“Yeah, maybe somebody here will like it.”

“Okay, just promise not to steal my idea. Or I’ll fucking sue you, okay? I should have made you sign an NDA.” I say, getting mad at myself.

“Relax bro, you’re among friends. We wouldn’t do that to you.” Says Ryan, clapping a hand on my shoulder. I thank them and make my way off, hoping to find a potential investor in my combined gambling, entertainment and social platform. They watch me leave and turn to each other.

“Holy shit, we need to steal that.”

“We’re going to be even bigger billionaires! What should we do about bro though?”

“Look at him, he’s a loser. Who pitches a product on a cellphone with a cracked screen? We just change the idea a little, get a good law firm behind us, we’ll be sipping Mai tai’s on our megayacht by 2030.” Josh says. Ryan starts laughing, downs his drink and the two CEOs hit the dance floor to start networking.

I had been eavesdropping on the conversation with a miniature microphone I had dropped earlier whilst pretending to fumble my drink. A smile played across my face as I sat in the chill out area, a finger to my ear piece, taking pleasure in what was to come. I was a fisher of men, and the line I had cast was moving.

Hours pass. Josh and Ryan leave, getting in separate self-driving cars that join the road and took them from the party and away to their beds. Josh sat by the window, thinking about 4Box, wondering how quick he would need to move. He was going to set up a new company in the morning, but then wondered if Ryan would beat him to it. Should he set the new company up that evening? He thought about phoning his accountant, but relaxed. He was getting ahead of himself again. The CEO listens to a Web3 podcast and drinks bottled water. He looks at his phone for a while, lost in reading comments, noticed his ride was taking long.

“Where are we?”

“We are arriving at your destination.” the onboard AI says. Josh looks out of the windows, looking at the empty industrial park around him. Another car arrives, pulls into the lot, ultrabright LED headlights blinding the seated CEO who started to panic, wondering if he was going to be kidnapped by MS-13 gangbangers. Then he saw Ryan get out of the car.

“Ryan? What are you doing here?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Our cars must have malfunctioned.”

“Weird. Maybe everyone at the party will end up here.”

“I mean, I’ve been to worse after parties!”

“Bro, where the fuck are we? It’s like two in the morning.” He says, checking his phone. Josh scans the industrial estate, the Pacific Ocean a few miles away, reflecting the moon in the rolling waves. All the buildings here were concrete, straight lines, boxy silhouettes against the air polluted night. There was the hum of heavy machinery.

“You know, while you’re here I thought we could talk about that 4Box thing.”

“We need to call it something else bro. 4Box? It’ll remind people of foreskins.”

“What about Quad?”

“What about Lucky 4?”

“What about Coinchat?”

“What about Cashfuck? Clubbly? Ah, I don’t know. I’m too tired to brainstorm right now.”  Ryan says.

“Yeah, I need to get off. See you tomorrow.” Josh says, getting into his car, finding it dead. Ryan had the same experience. The two CEOs meet again on the cracked concrete.

“Shall I order an uber?”

On the other side of the lot there is a noise. The men turn. A Boston Dynamics Big Dog is walking towards them. On its front are two shapes that slowly come into view from a distant security light. There are two dead calves attached to the robot, white veal. They hang with their heads twisted upwards, maggots falling from their mouths and festering eye sockets. The Big Dog stops a few metres away and it is quiet again, save for the gentle sounds of the maggots eating the two pale carcasses. The men look on, confused, mixed emotions. As soon as they comprehended what was going on, the two calves were launched from the robot towards the men. Each of them had a robotic trap fastened to it, wrapping around the men, pushing them close to the rotting animals, falling and rolling on the floor, screaming in a panicky disgust. I watch all this through night vision goggles, hiding in a nearby bush.

I reach down to the Lenovo laptop and using the little red button to control the Big Dog. The machine makes its way over to them, stops. The two men are still trapped. From its top a robotic arm rises, holding a remote-control whistle that plays a note beyond human perception. In the scrubland behind me the wolves start to howl.

“It’s just a prank.” I whisper, searching through my pockets for some tabs of LSD I had saved for the occasion. Something tells me that the CEO’s wouldn’t be stealing ideas anytime soon. As I walked back to the Hyundai Sonata, I reflected on the evening. It seemed the more that power was concentrated, the worse it made people. Was this a clue that we should be ruled over a higher being, perhaps the aliens that visit the Earth, or maybe even machines? Or was power a herald for evil with whatever held it?

The acid started kicking in as I made my way back towards San Francisco and the city seemed to burn in a neon fire.

Project Texas Chainsaw

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the key pieces of American cultural history. The 1974 film started a new wave of cinema, combining elements of documentary, the fear of rural and the quintessential American invention, the serial killer. Each of these elements combined into an eerie work of art that set off a chain reaction of imitators, low budget slasher movies are still being made to this day, yet most of them fall shy of what makes Chainsaw great. The surprisingly bloodless film creates its own gothic language, one entirely separated from the European lexicon and submerges the viewer into a cinematic landscape of death and madness. Prior to Chainsaw, horror films still dwelt on Dracula, Frankenstein and aesthetics heavily influenced by Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Chainsaw acted as a new way of formulating the language of contemporary horror, the first book in a New Testament that would continue to influence society fifty years later. I rewatch the film, projected through the windshield of my car and onto a stained sheet I had hung beneath the boughs of a dead tree. I had decided to also listen to the audio commentary from the 1996 laser disc release, with Tobe Hooper, Kim Henkel and Daniel Pearl talking about the making of the great work. This is playing through a Bluetooth speaker I had on the roof of the car, the audio sometimes getting drowned out by the sounds from the film, particularly the dinner table scene. The film still holds up of course. Its a classic, remade multiple times, yet each iteration falling short of the original vision. As the film nears the end, with the Leatherface tantrum, I start the film again. What better way to pay tribute than rewatching it multiple times out in the Texas wilderness?

As the sun began to rise, I turn the projector off and lie back in the driver's seat of the Hyundai Sonata. Horror films were a cultural archive of the fears of the society in which they were made. This was well known of course, taught in cultural studies classes from kindergarten, yet as I lay inside the car with a red dawn emerging behind distant mountains the shape and colour of putrid teeth, I reflected on recent horror films, trying to align them to what I had witnessed so far in my voyage across the States. Folk horror. I hissed. What had once referred to films like The Wicker Man or certain Hammer Horror films had been hijacked by A24 horror fans who saw somebody outside and said 'that's folk horror, that's folk horror!'. The mere act of leaving the house was deemed as a potentially horrific experience, dripping in occult geometry and the anxiety of human interaction. Horror films still reflected the nightmares of the American public, it just happened to be that the American public was scared of everything. They couldn't even say words like death or homeless any more. They would fly into apoplectic rages if their Doordash deliveries weren't delivered within five minutes, proudly posting the evidence on social media that they were basically babies with poor impulse control and an utterly narcissistic worldview, screaming at teenagers and migrant workers that their chicken tenders were late. The contemporary horror fan would watch either 'folk horror' or overly long creepypasta iceberg videos. Like all other forms of culture, horror had been defanged, mass produced and made cosy. As the sun cracked the sky I began to laugh to myself. Maybe the issue wasn't production companies revisiting old ideas or making forgettable, flaccid films, the cinematic form of an adult colouring book. Maybe America needed something new to be scared of. 

 

I'm sitting in a warehouse. Around me are twenty young people from across Houston. They have been told this is a piece of online content where they would take it in turns to argue with me about fear. At first they would run through a series of things they were scared of: climate change, politicians, white people, having a job, meeting up with friends, being sextorted by cyber criminals and so on. I calmly explain to each of them that we needed to find the root of all of these fears. In fact, there was something that didn't just connect these fears, but connected everyone in this room. At this revelation they all started looking to one another, whispering that this was kinda weird. One guy stood up.

"Okay, I'm about to crash out right now. I need to leave." He says, walking away. I chuckle to myself.

"If you leave now, you'll never find out how your fears are linked." I say, staying still in my plastic chair. The kid laughs performatively, walking across the dusty warehouse floor and towards the door. He tries it. It doesn't open.

"Bro, what the fuck?" He yells. The other participants begin to shuffle in their seats, a few get up and start squabbling, go over to the big metal door and pull on it, shouting at me to let them go. I hold up my hand to silence them. 

"Tell me, do any of you believe in goblins?" I say. There is a pause then people burst out laughing.

"Goblins? What is bro cooking?"

"There's no such thing as goblins." Says a woman. I raise an eyebrow. 

"Are you sure about that?" I say, raising my other eyebrow. The participants laugh nervously.

"Sure, go ahead, if you have a goblin here, bring it out." 

"Bro thinks he's Saruman." Laughs a jock. I nod, get up and walk to the back of the warehouse. An audience gathers at the edge of the shadows, their confidence that goblins didn't exist waning. 

"This has gotta be a prank, on god." One whispers to another. In the shadows they hear my footsteps, some quiet words. My footsteps start again, approaching them, though they aren't alone. They are accompanied by the rhythmic patter of bare feet on the concrete floor. We seem to coagulate from the darkness, finding form into the light. I am walking towards them and holding my hand is a goblin.

At first, they don't know how to react. Some people laughed, some people gasped. A woman screamed. I crouch down and whisper something to the goblin, it let's go of my hand and walks towards the small crowd of people gathered around.

"No way is that real."

"It must be a kid with makeup on. Or a hologram."

"I can assure you that it's real. Go on. Take a closer look." I say quietly. The jock shakes his head.

"Ten bucks says this is Peter Dinklage with some green facepaint on. Hey Pete, I loved you in Game of Thrones." He says, laughing as he turns round to the other participants. They were silent. Apprehensive. The jock approached the goblin, kneeling down and looking into its small, pig-like eyes.

“Hey there buddy.” He said. The goblin looked closely into his eyes, a growl percolating deep in its throat. The jock laughed, turning to the other participants again.

“See, it’s not that bad.” He said. That’s when the goblin leapt onto him.

The goblin began riding the man as if he were a jockey, the pair of them ran around screaming, scattering the people that also began to run, forgetting there was no escape. Meanwhile I pulled on my Leatherface mask, go over to a switch on the wall and flip it. All the lights went out. As a fresh wave of panic swept the people, I knelt down and pulled the ripcord of the chainsaw I had hidden behind a pillar. I rev the engine a few times and turn on a red flashlight I had taped just behind the saw blades. I start mocking the screams of the people around me, with the goblin laughing somewhere in the darkness with a mouth filled with blood.

An hour later I pull up outside Houston zoo. In the backseat is a baby orangutang, the green paint still visible around its eyes and ears as I take its paw and walk with it back to the entrance. I thank the zookeepers and make my way back to the Hyundai Sonata. The participants were safe of course. They had participated in my experiment in fear, each of them contributing to the thesis of terror I had concocted in the warehouse. As the Sonata drove in the moonlight, I turn to the rotting head of Walt Disney on the passenger seat.

“Turns out that people are more scared of goblins than existential terror. Heh. You knew that already though, didn’t you Walt?” I say. I drive the car onto the highway, heading North.

“You know, there’s one thing that still puzzles me. If a person can experience almost limitless horror, what is the evolutionary purpose of it? Does it make sense that a human can be overcome with fear to the point of not being able to do anything? That events can haunt them for there entire lives?” I say. There is no response. I flick on the radio, listening to news reports charting ongoing disasters intercut with songs by Benson Boone, Morgan Wallen, I drive past the carcasses of roadkill, the car heads along the highway in the night and I whistle a lonely tune to myself, hypnotised by road markings that flash past quicker than the lives of insects.

I ride. I think of The Evil Within, wondering if it serves as a blueprint for the potential horror films of the future. It was obvious Hollywood was running on dust, it had less ideas than an AI and didn’t dare publish a horror film that a twelve year old kid couldn’t go and see. Yet horror was the truest form of cinema, the well-known films of its genesis were horror, it sang to the nightmares and fears of the movie-going public at a much deeper psychological level than the Adam Sandler movie, Click. Although the genre was jerked around, underfunded, never recognised at award ceremonies, it remained the ultimate expression of the artform. The 2025 film Sinners, written and directed by Ryan Coogler, as well as the works of Jordan Peele, gave a glimpse into the near future of cinema. Blaxploitation was back. Amateur obsessives would create their own horror films filmed on camera phones. People would take large doses of psychedelics and tell each other scary stories. We were entering a new era of horror, influenced by punk ideology, a lack of money and buckets and buckets of blood. As the car begins to gather speed, I begin to scream with joy. The potential horror films of the future were being birthed in the minds and conversations of everyday Americans right now. Life imitated the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I had the special edition 4k restoration.

 

Our New Taste

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.

Manchester Central Library Review

The grand opening of Manchester Central Library took place on the 22nd of March after its closure for four years. The £98m revamp restored much of the Library’s original interiors as well as funding entirely new spaces designed by boffins at Manchester University along with international style guru Jacobi Mendelson.

Hundreds of thousands of books were retrieved from a salt mine, kept in a sodium stasis state until being arranged in alphabetical order on the shelves once again. Such rare books include works by William Shakesbeare, an 8th century book on astronomy, an unpublished Simon Beckett play titled ‘The Bone Sharks’ and a complete Florentine Codex. Visitors can happily pluck them off the shelves and leaf through them hungrily, but all of the books have also been scanned by lasers and converted into a pdf file specially designed for Manchester Central Library. In fact a large portion of the library is digital; the entire recorded history of mankind exists in large underground databanks that can be accessed over wi-fi and printed out at a new publishing house found in a distant wing of the library.

Upon entering the Great Hall you cannot helped but be brought to a standstill by its magnitude. Pillar after pillar of green marble line the room, stretching upward to support a domed ceiling that emanates a gentle light over all. Marble statues of deities connected with knowledge are interspersed between the enormous pillars, each of them have the quality of highly polished pearl. The glass floor is made up of a series of interconnecting black triangles, each give the impression of standing above infinity.

Thick wooden doors open into the grand Reading Room, an enormous circular room with tables and chairs arranged in a pattern based on the Fibonacci sequence. It is entirely silent. Walking through people occasionally look up from their book and watch you walk past, there is an air of paranoia around. I am acutely aware of the sounds inside my body. The gurgles of stomach acids, the sighs of the kidneys, the unsticking of eyelids during a blink. I make my way through another door and along a sweeping staircase running around the exterior of the library. There are replicas of author’s desks now and then, in which visitors can access all the books they wrote as well as the books the author had read. Oak doors lead into a room lined with shelves, holding roughly two million books. If one was to sit and read every book in this room it would take roughly one million years.

Clustered around the large halls are secondary rooms. An Italian restaurant is somewhat surprising, though a logical extension of the Renaissance themes seen around the Library. Frescos are painted on the wall lit softly by candles. The next room is the archives, roughly six gigabits of information contained on special cards that can be entered into a computer and read at a leisurely pace. The latest computer gaming systems are also here, the Sega Megadrive and Dreamcast consoles linked up to HD monitors. A tree grows, tendered to daily by a robotic gardener that adjusts artificial lighting and hydroponic systems. Overall one gets a sense that a library doesn’t have to just be a place poor people go when they don’t have a telly. It can be a place of inspired learning. There is a recurring phrase carved into every single piece of skirting board in the building. ‘Dulce Et Ego, Cor Domorum Veni’.

As one climbs the staircase more rooms can be accessed. An art gallery, an operatic theatre, a three dimensional mirror maze, even a vivarium all can be found in the Manchester Central Library. Once one reaches the top floor they are treated to a 360 degree view from the roof of the library. Most of Manchester is obscured by multistorey budget hotels and empty office space, but the roof is nevertheless impressive due to the bubble formed that keeps visitors dry. The bubble is constantly collapsing and reforming as a wave of atomic energy is projected from the rooftop generators through water molecules in the air.

Overall Manchester Central Library is a 21st century take on what a library is, with reference to multiple zones of time, cultures and architecture. Sections of the library are unbuilt, leaving gaping voids between walls in which one can glimpse the libraries previous incarnations. Other sections are overly built; huge chunks of rock can sometimes be found obscuring a corridor or clustered overhead like a nest of wasps. It is a pastiche of the human brain, the new god in the new millenium. I am eagerly awaiting its closure in fifteen years for an entirely new refurbishment, perhaps a simple holograph attached to the side of a drinking fountain, or a first person shooter in which one can get the 20th century American literature DLC at $14.99. Nevertheless, irregardless, at the end of the day, ad nauseam.

Baby Boomers; Late Bloomers Or Irrelevant Rumours?

I watch hour after hour of television pilots from the various networks, the blu-ray discs lay scattered around the glass coffee table of my penthouse apartment. I'm watching an extremely light detective show in which an elderly woman investigates teen crime at a local high school. I watch as she opens a door and is hit in the face with a cloud of smoke.
"Smells like my grandsons car!" she says. I scream at the television and throw a blu-ray as hard as I can at the screen. I throw it so hard it goes faster than the speed of light and momentarily, yet infinitely, exists at every point in space at the same time before recombining inches away from the camera lens on the set four weeks ago, flies another few feet before hitting the old woman in the nose. I then grab handfuls of the discs and throw them out of the window, letting it rain bullshit onto the streets.

There once was a time when teenagers were hip and every strand of marketing was directed at them. To get the 16-24 audience in a prime time slot was the dream of every television exec this side of Death Valley. Yet times were changing. Young people didn't watch television, downloaded all their favourite films and were slowly dwindling in a post-recession economic meltdown. Rather than hanging out at the hippest clubs you'd be more likely to find teens hanging out under bridges offering to sell themselves for a cup of coffee. And the people on the other end of this illicit barterdom? The elderly. They had more money than they knew what to do with and half of them didn't even remember that they had it. Kept alive with futuristic machines that turned back the clock, the vampire myth was becoming more of a reality each day, sometimes literally as children would have their blood swapped with that of centenarians in order to keep them alive.

With this in mind the future world of media has took a turn for the old. Rather than the ultra-violent non-linear post-modern slanged-up shows we're used to seeing grace our tv screens, networks are now focusing on a more slower paced form of entertainment. The shows are often populated by protagonists that are over sixty, the villains are young people, the plots amble along apparently aimlessly and climax in a snappy line delivered with a smile rather than an adrenaline roaring cliffhanger. And it's not only television that's acting old. Radio waves are now being filled with old time music, cinemas project movies twice as big for those with bad eyesight and social networks are now jammed with the elderly spewing racist nonsense every second. This problem won't go away overnight. In fact it will never go away. The population is getting increasingly old and will begin to outnumber the young. I took to the streets to find out what the public thought about it.

"It's a good thing I think, I mean, everyone gets old. Why not make more stuff for them?"
"My grandma watched Breaking Bad."
"Don't they already show repeats all the time?"
"I think it's a good idea."

So there you are. Four people said those things so therefore all public opinion must conform. Yet I couldn't help but feel as if the elderly were a growing problem. Before the decade is over, 1 in 4 people will be over the age of 80. That means one of these people will have to look after the geezer, another will have to tell them what to do and the other person will die of starvation. Is this a just world, or should we just lead the elderly to underground crypts and hope that they evolve some kind of subterranean civilization beneath our feet? Like most things, the correct answer is perhaps somewhere in the middle.

Fun Day Out At La Brea Tar Pits

The La Brea tar pits have been excavated for the last one hundred years, the black bones of animals are dredged from the deep using a series of chains attached to a crane. Tar divers doggy paddle in the molten blackness, helping ease out the skulls of giant wolves onto the shore for visitors to see. The pits reside in Hancock Park, halfway down the Miracle Mile, next door to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The odour of the tar pits hangs in the air like an ancient death, the ever grave churns beneath the boiling sun. I finish my coke and hurl the can onto the heavy oil before walking towards the Page Museum. It's quite busy, families run backwards and forwards between the exhibits, the children point excitedly at the hundreds of bones scattered around. Teenagers chill out radically around an enormous woolly mammoth, repeating internet catchphrases to each other or swapping e-mail addresses. Retired people are ushered around and they look thoughtfully at the great condor, magnificent in it's quiet existence. Museum attendants are constantly smiling, eyelids as far back as they will go, hundreds of teeth shown, well moisturised hands ready to touch people on the shoulder as they are pointed in the right direction. I see my contact, Vernon Chavéz, gazing at the ribcage of a camel.
“Vernon?” I say. He turns around, face sweating and chemically thin. We shake hands and begin walking through the museum, passing an animatronic sabre tooth cat that jerkily nudges a sort of bear.

We enter the restroom. Vernon checks beneath the stalls and once sure nobody else is there he puts his briefcase on the side of the sink.
“You got the money?” he asks. I put my own briefcase on the side. “Let me check.” I pop open the lid and show him sixty thousand dollars in unmarked bills.
“Now you show me.” I say. He checks the door before opening the clasps on his case. Inside the aubergine coloured interior are three jars of wasps.
“Impressive. Most impressive.” I say. He takes my briefcase and I stand in the bathroom, watching the wasps waiting in each jar. I take out a pair of ear defenders from my pocket and put them on.

I pass an enormous puppet built by the Jim Henson's creature workshop, Smilodon Fatalis, It is accompanied by a smaller puppet, Nibbles. An old man plays a harmonica. A girl lets go of a balloon. A young couple kiss each other. Faces flash by. I crouch down onto the cold floor and open up the suitcase, taking out each jar carefully. Some movement catches my eye, I look up to see a security guard wearing a khaki shirt running towards me, although I am unable to hear his shouts. People are beginning to move away. I take one of the large jars and open the lid, pouring the wasps out. They begin to fly away before hitting the floor. I do the same with the other two jars and then begin to make my way through the crowd of people around me. The wasps meanwhile begin to search for food genetically installed into insect brains. For those wasps each ear is like a flower for a bee, a fruitful canal for them was a valuable source of protein. They flew from ear to ear, their thumb-sized bodies clinging onto the earlobe as they carefully fed on the people around them. Panic gripped the entire museum, people clutching at their heads as they ran full pelt through the corridors, others were caught in the swarm of wasps and crouched close to the ground, faces contorted into strange grimaces. In the confusion I made my way towards the Research and Collections area.

There are thousands of boxes, each containing a fossil pulled from the tar pit. I make my way quickly past the bones of rodents, dogs, giant birds and lizards, the preserved shells of the invertebrates and into the flora section. It takes me a few minutes but I have quickly filled my pockets with the preserved seeds of almost fifty species of prehistoric plants. I would need to send them to Korea to be processed properly. I make my way back into the museum, it's corridors empty now save for the constant flight of wasps.

All The World's A Brain

In the operating theatre two gurneys are pulled through plastic doors, on each rests a chimp covered mostly with a white paper smock. The surgeons move about below like an orchestra preparing for a performance, checking the levels for the anaesthetic, that the surgical tools are in the correct order. Two surgeons dressed in red talk to each other before one goes over to a microphone that has been lowered into the theatre.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for coming today. My name is Dr. Aaron Blaisdell and I will be providing commentary throughout today's surgery which will be a partial brain transplant between two adult chimps. The head surgeon today is Dr. Ellen Carpenter and if anybody has any questions throughout the surgery please send us a tweet and I'll try to read out the best ones. So without further ado, doctor.” he said, gesturing towards Dr. Carpenter. The dozen doctors and nurses are in place, waiting to begin. Bill and I are sat in the observation mezzanine circling the theatre, trying to eat popcorn quietly.

The surgeons begin by standing at the top of each chimpanzee's shaved head and fastening them both into a 3-pin skull fixation device. This has a series of rings around it with measurements on, co-ordinates similar to what you'd see on globe of the Earth so that the surgeons know where they are poking around. Dr. Blaisdell begins to talk.
“Craniotomy is one of the more complex subjects in surgery. We can make guesses as to what certain areas of the brain do, though it's similar to guessing the purpose and structure of internal organs of something you haven't seen the inside of. Still, we know more now than we did last week, and this particular surgery could be very valuable in the future.
The patients chosen are a pair of identical twins, the ideal candidates for any kind of organ transplant. Today we will be excising the left hemisphere of each chimpanzee and fitting in it's twins. We'll be leaving the brain stem intact, just as you would when grafting a plant cutting onto a larger plant, though everything else will be moved.” he said. We continue to watch as the surgeons begin to make the first skin incision around each chimp's head.
“I dunno if I can watch this.” says Bill. He's looking a little pale.
“Relax, you've seen the Saw films, right?”
“But...but this is for real.”
“Exactly. Relax.”

Next comes the drilling of small burrs all the way around the skull, followed by the craniotome sawing neatly the precise line needed to lift off the cranium lid.
“Just as identical twins have nonidentical fingerprints, they also don't share the patterns of sulci and gyrus.” said Dr. Blaisdell. High above the operating theatre a screen is turned on, showing the view from a head-mounted camera Dr. Carpenter was wearing. She cut open the dura matter with a pair of surgical scissors to reveal surface of the neocortex, labyrinth-like in it's many folds of grey matter. I begin to sketch, partly what is going on beneath me, partly some political cartoons satirizing the response to the Syrian gas attack.
“In the 1940s a procedure was invented that cut the corpus callosum in order to treat epileptic patients. It improved their epilepsy but patients were otherwise mentally stable, which is surprising to say they severed some 300 million nerve fibres. We've had to manufacture an artificial corpus callosum for this procedure in order to link both hemispheres once the transplant is done. Though the patients can survive with a split brain, we think it's best to get the procedure as accurate as possible.” he said, holding up what looked like two CD's. On the operating table meanwhile the left hemisphere of one of the chimpanzee's was removed and quickly placed into a chemical bath whilst Dr. Carpenter quickly used an ultrasonic aspirator on the brain of it's twin.

“We just got a tweet asking us why only transplant one hemisphere. Perhaps you'd like to answer that Dr. Carpenter?” said Blaisdell as he moved towards the surgeon and held a microphone close to her face. Her voice was slightly muffled through the surgical mask.
“To start with we are attempting one hemisphere, if successful, we'll transplant the right hemisphere in a few weeks time. I hypothesise that a brain transplant is extensively traumatic to both the nervous system and the psychology of the patient. This way the brain has a way of synchronizing itself in it's new environment, getting used to it's endocrine system, body image and so on.”
“Thank you. Dr. Carpenter just mentioned the psychology of undergoing a brain transplant, which in itself will be an entirely new field of study. Through this operation we are splitting the mind, inducing schizophrenia literally.” he said. There were a few laughs from the psychologists in the mezzanine.
“The patients have both been given a course of immunosuppressants in order to combat graft-versus-host, whilst also being administered a series of psychoactive drugs to encourage a state of temporary dissociation, mainly ketamine. Think of it similar to how you might change the furniture around in somebodies house. If you simply did it whilst they slept, they would quickly notice upon waking up. Whilst if you had been giving them a course of drugs in the previous and following weeks, they may be less inclined to either notice or become anxious about it.”
I watch as they attach the artificial corpus callosum onto the right hemisphere before sliding the rest of the brain into the empty half of the skull. The dura matter is fastened back into place followed by the top of the skull.
“And there you have it. They'll be a short intermission but we encourage viewers to stay behind to watch the patients wake up.” said Dr. Blaisdell. There is an applause and we make our way out of the operating theatre.

Bill and I are eating small triangles of toast with prawns on them, looking at the throng of people standing in the atrium.
“So the monkey's gonna think they're each other?”
“Yep. And also themselves. I wonder what it must feel like, part of yourself in one body, part of yourself in the other.”
“Must be fucked up.”
“Would you have your brain transplanted into another body?”
“Nope.”
“What about if you were really old, would you put your brain in the body of a teenager?” I ask. Bill thinks for a moment, munching thoughtfully on the appetizer.
“Well, maybe I'd do that. Wouldn't I be an old guy in my head though? What if my body starts growing old, like that Robin Williams film?”
“Benjamin Button?”
“No, he wasn't in that. The other one.”
“Hook? He was Peter Pan in that, that's an old man acting like a kid. He wore tights.”
“Whatever. I dunno about letting Frankenstein poke round in my head is all.” said Bill. I nod. Dr. Blaisdell comes up to us.
“Did you enjoy observing the operation?”
“Yeah, thanks. Ground breaking stuff.” I say.
“It is. Next week we're grafting a nose onto a chimp to see if it would look more human.”
“Chimp with a nose?” said Bill.
“Yeah. We use quite a lot of chimpanzee's for our experiments. All ethical of course.”
“Would you put your brain in a chimp's body?” I ask. Dr. Blaisdell laughs, showing row after row of pearly white teeth.
“Maybe one day. Anyway, I'll see you later. Take care.” he said, walking off. I doubted he would volunteer himself for a human/chimpanzee brain transplant, though maybe he would under the right circumstances. I make a note to pay Dr. Blaisdell a visit later on in the week.

A few hours later we watch the twins slowly wake up.
“Well, they're alive at least.” said Bill.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the second part of the afternoon. We will do some basic motor tests and check both hemispheres.” announced Dr. Blaisdell. Assistants helped the chimpanzee's out of their cots and they held hands. A couple of people went 'aww'. Over the next hour we watched the chimpanzee's watch lights flick on or off on either side of their heads.
“They were trained beforehand to press a button when they see a light. This test was first designed by Roger Sperry, though is particularly useful for seeing if the operation was a success with these non-verbal patients.” he said. Up until that point both primates had been separated, though after it was shown both hemispheres appeared to be working correctly they were reintroduced to each other. Or themselves. Everyone was silent as they slowly walked up to each other, making quiet hooting noises.
“Another positive point about using identical twins is that you're used to seeing yourself. They are unaware that their twin is now sharing their skull with them.” said Dr. Blaisdell. The two chimps held each other, making little cooing noises. More people began to fawn and smile. I awaited the point where they would snap, perhaps attacking each other and everyone else. But it didn't come. I signalled to Bill that we should leave and we made our way back onto the Los Angeles street.
“That was nice wasn't it.”
“Yeah, it was alright.” said Bill, getting into the car. I examine his head as we drive back towards my motel, wondering if I would swap brains for a time.

The City Of Angles

A dim bulb lights everything yellow in the small room I am in. A desk, a chair, a bed, a sink. A toilet is down the corridor and buzzes with moths. Through the wall I can hear a radio play. The street is lit with street lights, shop windows, car headlights and pollution, making the time appear not to matter, an endless day in Los Angeles. I'd landed at LAX, ate some breakfast at Denny's, then went to a car rental place. I picked a mid-range engine car that appeared stocky, yet did well with fuel consumption. It was white. I drove down a few streets and onto the highway, a Holiday Inn before settling down with some wine and aspirin. The Earth is turning, revealing the sun to appear towards the rest of America. I was as far as I could go West before Asia, barring Hawaii and parts of South America, maybe Alaska.

Los Angeles is often referred to in dance songs where the names of large cities are shouted out before a funny sound is played. Being one of the biggest cities in the world, Los Angeles is one of America's interesting developments perhaps only opposing New York in wow factor. The thirty thousand square foot urban zone rests on the coast of California and is home to roughly sixty million people, including some of the most valuable celebrities that we know of. Los Angeles is often called Hollywood (or the Sparkle City) in which a good proportion of films have been made over the last century, pretty much anything you can name was released through Hollywood. Steven Spielberg shops at the local Wal-Mart rubbing shoulders with Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lopez, Kanye West and Channing Tatum. Films themselves are shot throughout the city, with large portions cordoned off as they create action set-pieces to be enhanced with computers at a later date. Car bombs, terrorist attacks, serial killers, police brutality, evil gangs and school shootings all take place amidst day-to-day life. Camera crews chase people into restaurants and nightclubs, crime scenes and production studios. Everyone you meet can't help but be in the film industry, sixty million of them constantly wear HD makeup and wear costumes daily, sometimes carrying props to and fro in the hopes that they may stumble upon the chance to be in a film! As well as being known as a city of fun it is also been known to be a city of danger. But politicians and police are working with communities to make Los Angeles a safer place for everyone.

A thick fog rolls in, making everything inky and seem unreal. I decide to walk as morning comes, everything 4:3 at 16:9. I hear cars but the road is quiet. I gratefully get into my own car and stare at the dashboard before pulling out. As I begin to get used to the pedals I am reminded of recurring dreams I have where I drive a car that often separates into several components before being reformed as a skateboard. What did this mean. Was I born to skate? I decided to check out a local skate park to find out. It was shut at first but I managed to get in before beginning to run up and down the ramps as fast as I dared. It was coming up to six and it started to get busy. Before I knew what was happening I was stuck on the freeway, honking my horn constantly. A man driving a bulldozer leaned out of his cab and shouted “Move it, jackass.” I was about to do the same before I saw they were shooting a film ahead. Tom Hanks was stumbling down the road with heavy wound makeup applied all over his body, including a missing arm. I then realised it wasn't a film, but a man who resembled the actor had been in a serious collision. The traffic eventually started moving again and I drove past the injured man, hearing the ambulances behind me. He looked at me as if to say 'Yes, I am a clone of Tom Hanks'.

Later on I sat outside a diner, drinking a coffee. I thought about why I was there. What was I doing. How did I feel and more importantly, who knew about it? I puffed out a tweet into the internet cosmos then began to sulk. Of course, I remembered why I was there. To write a ground breaking expose on Western society in the 21st century interlinked with finding myself whilst on a holiday abroad. I had an e-book planned and everything. I drank the coffee. I had some interviews planned, whacky places to visit and even a day in which I would go into the desert and pose for photographs. It seemed like a good idea. But now I was there, I hated it. I nearly cancelled the photoshoot when I received a phonecall. I answered it and listened to the silence.
“Hello?” I said. On the other end of the line I could hear animals breathing and a low buzzing sound. A door slammed shut. If I listened closely I could just make out some talking, but couldn't discern what any of the words were. The call ended. I held the phone in my hand and watched it intently, wondering if it would ring again, but it didn't. My coffee was cold. I decided to go back to my room and try to get some sleep, driving through the city, lost in it's busyness.

Organ Gorgon

I am riding in the back of a taxi with my assistant, Penny Naknamura. She's wearing a torn One Direction tee, orange zebra print spandex pants with a boot on one foot and a high heel on the other. I point at her feet.
"What's the deal with that then?"
"Asymmetries in babe, didn't you know?"
"I know everything, just not all the time. Doesn't it make you stand funny?"
"It's fash, saw it in New York last week. And New York last week is London next week, comprendez?"
"Yeah sure, looks stupid to me. How we doing for time?"
"We're ten minutes late." she says, taking her ipad out of her bag and looking at some nonsense site. It's what I have an assistant for, to check all the blossoming fat that is growing on the world wide web. I start to get a bit nostalgic for the glory days of the late nineties when my phone goes off. I pick up.
"Where are you?!"
"Relax, almost there."
"You're an hour and ten minutes late?"
"So? We're already late, stop worrying about it. Here, talk to my assistant." I say, handing my phone away. I've lost my train of thought. The taxi stops at some traffic lights and I get out, leaving Penny and the taxi driver shouting at me from the black cab. I pretend to have one of my episodes, though to be honest I feel much happier outside. I step in between the cars and make my way down the road, popping into a cafe, past the counter and kitchen and out into an alley, much to the chagrin of the staff there. The alley seems a lot more quieter though. I walk over to a bin and begin to practise my yoga.

I wake up a few hours later, I must have dozed off after finishing my asanas. I wonder if my assistant made it to the fashion show. Or was it a film premiere. It didn't matter. I had been pretending to be a journalist for GQ for the last few weeks and had found it all quite dull. They hadn't been interested in my stories about the snake infestation at a nearby orphanage or the series of grave robberies taking place in Yorkshire. It had all been style, surface, a thin veneer of lies masquerading as something of worth. I now felt foolish about getting all those tattoos, but still, 'yolo'. I walk out of the alley and back onto the street. This was where the action was, this was where the juice was at. I felt as though I could somehow read minds as I stared at people making their way up and down. Maybe that woman was trying to juggle a career and children whilst going through a rough divorce. Maybe that man was addicted to heroin. Maybe that group of teenagers were planning on murdering me. Variety is the spice of life, but what exactly is being spiced? They keep meat in the ceiling. I walk back around the corner and back into the cafe I had entered earlier, although this time the staff are shouting at me and blocking my way. I go back out onto the street and start to walk again, as if I am lost. I am lost in fact. I'm unsure of which city I'm in. I start shouting for help and for somebody to save me, but everyone walks past as if I smell of piss. I do this for a while then start walking again, but not before rooting through a bin to find a newspaper to stuff down the front of my trousers. I have always been hyper-sensitive to touch and the scratching and folding of the newspaper against my skin causes me a great deal of uncomfort. Somebody shouts my name and I look through the faces. It is my assistant.
"Where've you been?"
"I saw one of my friends I haven't seen for ages, I owed them some money."
"You missed the show. I took some notes for you, but you'll have to write the rest up yourself." she says.
"Thanks Penny. I love you." I say. I wince.
"What?"
"I said I love you by accident, on account of you resembling my departed wife."
"You're a widow?"
"It's widower. And yes. At least, I think so. She went missing a few weeks ago and I'm assuming she has died. Though now I come to think about it...maybe you're her?" I shout, pulling at her wig.
"Get off me!" she screams. It isn't a wig. And she's not my wife. I start to cry and run away again, ashamed of myself. How will I finish this story for GQ now?

It's several hours later and I'm frantically trying to guess what happened earlier. A film premiere? A fashion show? Maybe an art opening. I decide to mix them all together and have written about a film about art with models that are holograms or something. So far I have three thousand words and a few diagrams. I stuff it all in an envelope and post it off, not really giving a shit. I have some other stuff in the pipeline anyway, probably. I scratch at the tattoo of a monkey on my neck, wondering if it has become infected. I probably shouldn't have been climbing in and out of those graves in Yorkshire after all. I go to a petrol station to buy some flowers for Penny as an apology, then post those off as well. With all that done I decide to call it a day and head off towards a nightclub, ready to dance the night away and get powerfully drunk. Maybe I'm not cut out for a career as a journalist, at least in such an upmarket magazine. Better off to follow my own path. Maybe I could be like Hunter S. Thompson or something? I laugh at myself. How ridiculous and pathetic. The sudden urge to stab myself in the neck with my belt overwhelms me and it takes every ounce of willpower not to end my life right there on the pavement.
"Are you coming in mate?" says the bouncer. I look over and nod.
"I am."

The Sun Is Angry

With the recent trend in violence leaning towards the bizarre and mostly cruel, the government have launched a new task force in order to best deal with this 'Crime Heatwave'. The P.R.O.T.E.C.T.I.O.N. bureau is ran by Ian Newman, a head honcho with a heart of gold and a sly grin parked onto his face as he speaks in his relaxing West country accent of the strange spate of violence sweeping the countries streets. Dog attacks, funeral bombs, the case of the mad vicar, human arson, dental harm, hospital admission statistics, the missing helicopters and so on.
"On the surface it may look like the so called 'Summer of Death' is an anomaly, a phenomenon. As if all of this started out of nothing. But we at P.R.O.T.E.C.T.I.O.N. have been planning for this for years. We have a highly specialised team of experts willing to take on each case on a week by week basis."
"So it's based on television?" I ask, sweeping my arm across the room at the enormous television set against one wall. Newman shakes his head.
"No, people are beginning to base more and more of their behaviour on television. We are simply adopting a model that fits the socio-cultural background."
"So what you're proposing is that the world is becoming more fictional somehow? It's not as much you're copying the style of detective television shows but that as detectives you can't help but find yourself playing that role which mirrors this semi-fictional reality in some way?"
"I'm not saying that reality is fictional, just that human behaviour and perception is being altered by it's culture constantly. For instance if you hear a certain phrase in a film and repeat it in real life, and somebody hears you and repeats that. What if you come across a man needing insulin then plunged the syringe into his sternum because you saw it on Pulp Fiction? What if you just happen to be a criminal and kill a guy because television told you to?"
"I'm not sure if I follow." I say, glancing through the photos he has handed to me. Some are of celebrities, others are of crime scenes.
"The television is talking to me. It is showing me prophecies, strange visions...that of a perfect, set world. Can you imagine it? That alpha is followed by beta, celta, delta, omega. Maybe a world where we have televisions in our eyes, with all the wires sticking out of the front? How about we have film crews everywhere, filming everything, showing it to everyone, all at once, the cities and landscapes an endless labyrinth of televisions, broadcasting the pure, unending, my own shuddering and secret, most ultimately all encompassing and final, the power of god as he is man living forever, we are trapped amongst the forcefields, to follow the lines in between onwards and through into that of maximum television." he says, frothing at the mouth, ripping at his own face. I rest the ipad onto the desk and quickly make my way out of his office and down the empty corridor. I look over my shoulder, listening to his screaming getting louder. There's the feeling as through somebody has rubbed the back of my neck as I pace faster to the exit.

I drive home, wondering about what Newman was doing at that moment in time. Had he calmed down? I had hoped so. It was bad enough that I couldn't claim my travel expenses for the interview as I had lost my receipts. Now I had witnessed the birth of a maniac, emerging out from his unconscious like a thing without bones being pulled from the sea. My car begins to speed down the motorway, faster and faster. I look into the rear view mirror and notice something.