Dancing In Blood

A crystal interface is embedded into the plastic molded counter. Tablet computers secretly read your fingerprints and transmit them to large police organisations. I select the options and look at the rotating wire-frame humanoid begin to morph.
"It uses sixth generation DDR-RAM in a java environment, vintage-fitted to deliver an optimal end user experience." says Boff. I nod, face lit from below in a shade of blue. I look up at the OHP screen and see my creation come to life, Gene Roddenberry takes off his clothes and begins to slow bang Liza Minelli.
"What kind of algorithms are you running here?" I ask.
"A basic MySql hack modded onto Marionette. It's what Pixar uses."
"But..the chip set for this app must need...gigaquads" I say, turning away from the screen momentarily.
"Not so. It uses white space and a simple gaussian noise recombination. It's streaming data from the cloud auto-authed through a 16x DVD drive." he says. I turn back to the tablet and smear my fingers. Gene Roddenberry is replaced with Channing Tatum.
"I think I've seen enough." I say. We walk back outside and stand by the kidney bean shaped pool.
"There's still some bugs I need to grind out, but I think we'll be ready to go live Q3 2014."
"What gave you the inspiration?"
"Well, I started off wanting to make a really in depth cataloging system for porn. I'd spend hours watching clips, taking notes. I wanted to do it mostly for myself, I had quite specific tastes, but I thought it could be used by others. A truly in-depth search engine for any pornographic image or video ever recorded." he says, smoking an electronic cigarette. I look out towards the Hollywood hills.
"Then what happened?"
"Well, I checked the analytics of the search engine, looked to see what people were looking for and try and direct my analysis more towards trends. Turned out a lot of people were looking for actors I'd never heard the names of. Wasn't until I cross-referenced this with Facebook and made an infograph I worked out most people were searching for porn stars that had some kind of resemblance to someone they knew, consciously or not." he said. I shivered lightly.
"Creepy."
"I know. This data alone could predict porn, fashion, taste, style, whatever, it was like a weather report. I then thought of what to do next. Why not take the people out of the porn, make it more eco-friendly, more now? So I set about working on CGI porno where people could specify what exactly they'd want to see. That was the first prototype of that thing in there."
"Sure, makes sense. Make porn more family friendly by taking out the exploitation."
"Turns out equal rights are making a big resurgence, and people hate porn. But they also love porn. CGI porn makes it so anyone can watch it without feeling guilty."
"So what made you have it so you could change peoples faces?"
"Evolution. Why not watch Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon take turns on some robot? Even better, why not import some photos from your phone and watch your friends have sex?"
"Well...I dunno."
"Think about it. You could watch yourself having sex with anyone...without using your imagination!"
"Sounds like the future to me." I say, spitting into the pool.
"Hi-Def CGI dicks of any size fitting in any hole of any one. It's a cybersex future cumming at your screens!" he says, throwing his arms up in the air and laughing, his testicles vibrating like electric eggs. I kick them off before leaping from the balcony and running for a car.

The high speed chase begins in West L.A. and takes me bouncing over small humps in the road as I'm chased by jeeps. I swerve between traffic as an Asian man pops out of a sunroof and begins to shoot an Uzi. I do a hand-brake turn and the car scrapes through an alley at ninety miles per hour. I drive off a bridge and into the aquaduct, tyres spinning across the dry concrete. One of the jeeps hits a shopping trolley that gets caught under one of it's wheels. There is the sound of an engine revving down and I slowly turn around. Silently the jeep flips into the air, flips over twice and then hits a concrete barricade. As the metal and meat crash together loudly time and sound return to normal. I look in my rear view mirror momentarily and jam the car into a higher gear, taking a plywood ramp up out of the aquaduct, flying over a small house and back down onto the street. The other jeep hits the top of a palm tree and explodes. I drift around a corner, slam the brake on and manage to parallel park it between two other cars. As I get out the door falls off. A homeless man who has been watching the whole thing then looks down at the empty bottle of whiskey in a brown bag and raises his eyebrows.

I stand on stage with a punk band I had joined early in the week. I go up to the microphone.
"We are The Shit Wolves and we hate you!" I shout, hitting the strings of my guitar. The crowd starts to pogo as I shout into the microphone and the band plays around me.
"Come on join my frozen anarchy,
She said la la la
The police put you in jail
So they can fuck you
Ooh ooh
Oh oh woah-ho, ho!
Frozen anarchy across the states!
Frozen death blows across the states!
Oh, oh, oi, oi, whoa-woo awoo woah!" I sing.
Half an hour later we are backstage drinking warm beer. The band talk about whether it was punk to promote yourself using the internet.
"I still think we should send those cassettes to the radio station, with fuck you written on them." says the bassist, laughing at his own joke.
"We should go to Palestine and play to the soldiers fighting over there. It's like we're saying to Obama, we're a punk band playing in a war zone. You got a problem with it?" says the drummer.
"Well, I got my girlfriend to make the next poster anyway." says the keyboardist.
"Again? I thought we agreed to use that picture of that man who shot himself?"
"She already had 'em printed up man. They're pretty sweet."
"Yeah but that picture is fucking horrible." laughs the bassist. I take out a glass pipe and stuff it full of crystal meth.
"Boys...how about we make a Vine?" I say, lighting up.

I Am The CEO

I cruised over the rocky outcrop with a cigarette pinched between my teeth, it was a recessed type of filter used by machine gun artists in the second world war. The All Terrain Vehicle came to a purring stop as I parked on the mountain side, looking at the city through my field goggles. I had been in Los Angeles a long time. And I hadn't learned nothing. Don't get a McJob, be a Steve Jobs. I had integrated myself into a large non-profit company and worked it from the inside out, sabotaging my co-workers, setting up chains of events so that they would find themselves destroyed. I was the puppet master. I was the Royal Tenenbaum. I was CEO, earning eighty thousand dollars a year just to go wine and dine chumps in order to secure investment. I sat across from gorgons eating expensive salad and drinking white wine. Success? I'd made the American Dream a reality. I was a semi-state fictional character starring in my own film before being made into life. Was this box office blockbuster going to bombasticate the socio-cultural landscape of Los Angeles? I was in the mouth of the world, my whispers being projected across multiple wi-fi dimensions directly into high definition big detail corporate monosynths. I lowered the binocs and dialled my assistant on my cell phone.
“Organise a board meeting, stat.” I whisper through cut teeth.

The limousine slinks it's way through the streets of Hollywood with me in the back, reclining on Swedish leather. Deep warbling world music swells in the speakers around me as a single tear coagulates on my bottom eye lid and captures the reflection of the street lights as they zip overhead.
“It's all so...beautiful.”
The limousine pulls up to a traffic light. I look over into the car next to me and see a young couple. The one driving looks like Danzig. His girlfriend looks over to me then says something to her partner. They both laugh. I turn back to watching the stop light and put my hands on the wheel. I rev the engine. The couple return the challenge. We are both revving our engines, the pitch of the valves increasing as explosions rapidly accelerate. The light goes green. I slam the stick shift of my ATV into Drive and begin flying down the length of the limousine. The racer next to me flies past, I can see his expression of concentration increase through the flicking windows. I hear a horn ahead of me and look up. The seven forty express train coming from Pasadena is on a collision course with me and the driver next to me. And he's slowly catching up. I flick the stick shift into it's race gear setting and begin to pull away. The train's horn toots again just as the front of the limousine smashes through the barrier across the tracks. I look over once more at the couple. He is frantic, eyes bulging, heads pressed against the wind shield. She looks over at me and winks. I push the ATV to it's limit and with a jump narrowly escape along with the rest of the limo. The other car meanwhile isn't so lucky. It's passengers are ejected two hundred feet in the air whilst the car is crushed beneath American railroad legacy. I come to a skidding stop just before the driver's compartment. A little window opens.
“Any problems boss?”
“Guess they had a train to catch.” I say to Bill.

The limousine finally pulls up on the very bottom section of the underground car park. I enter a set of steel doors and plod wearily through the benign corridors. I enter the board room and see it's members sat around a long oak table. A fire blazes in the heath, throwing shifting shapes across the little bald men. Silently I walk to the head of the table and put my seven thousand dollar Dolce briefcase on the table.
“Gentlemen of the board. Any acknowledgements?” I say.
“What are we here for?”
“I gathered you here today...for a presentation.” I say. “Just a few weeks ago the world's entire supply of titanium was bought out. All the mines, processing plants and country stockpiles were purchased overnight.” I take out a lump of titanium from my pocket and throw it onto the table.
“Gentlemen...welcome to the titanium business.”

I ascend the spiral staircase up into the tower. Printers continually churn out stock market prices, high energy business people talk to themselves on headsets, sometimes a basketball is thrown about in order to decide who's making coffee. I stand at a cubicle in which a long haired lawyer rests his feet on the desk as he makes a yo-yo bounce up and down, speaking Portuguese into a cordless phone. He notices me and puts the phone down.
“How's it hangin, hot shot?” I say, leaning against a thin wood.
“Long, loose and full of juice padre. How was the board meeting?”
“You knew about that?”
“Anybody whose anybody heard your business deal. You've transformed a non-profit law firm into the world's one and only source for titanium.”
“Walk with me.” I say, walking off. He follows.
“So what's next?”
“How much does a kilo of titanium cost at the moment?”
“Seven hundred and sixty five dollars.”
“But how much are we selling?”
“None.”
“Exactly. By the time we finished this conversation the world will value titanium twenty bucks more than it did when we started.”
“What's the game plan though here ?”
“What do you know about titanium?”
“Well...it's strong. And it's light.”
“That it?”
“I don't mine it, I buy it.”
“It's used in the manufacture of aerospace parts, sporting goods, surgical instruments and the storage of nuclear waste. It can also be processed into a white dye used in teeth whitening. But I'm going to do something else with it.”
“What?” said the lawyer. I exit the office and stand on a balcony overlooking the Los Angeles skyline as dusk settles in, walking over to the short wall seperating myself and a sixty foot drop. The lawyer grabs hold of the door and nods.
“You're not afraid of heights are you?” I say.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You know what else titanium can do?”
“What?” he whispers, lips turning blue.
“It can turn a man invisible.” I say, taking a potion from my pocket and drinking it's contents. I watch the lawyer look directly at me in astonishment.
“Padre? Padre?” he says. I creep towards him. “Where've you gone man?” I grab him by both wrists and begin to pull him. He yells. “Stop! Stop!” I pull him towards the balcony and begin to climb over.
“See you in hell!” I scream as I pull him over the edge.

The Second Large Glass

The supermodel was dressed in a turquoise dress and matching six inch heels whilst the various photographers milled around, shouting encouragement and redirecting lights in order to best illuminate the beautiful woman. She was stood next to a eight foot high pane of glass and gently rested her body against it, where her skin met the surface it all became the same featureless, flat colour.
"Tilt!" screamed the director. Pulleys were jigged about and the top of the glass began to descend, creating an angle growing less and less steep as the seconds ticked by.
"Hoist!" he yelled. The pane of glass began to slowly ascend. The scene was set. Silence had fallen over the crew as they watched the supermodel slowly begin to slide off the glass. Cameras tracked the viscosity of her skin as a strange squeaking sound filled the room. Just as her hips reached the bottom of the glass, she flopped down, landing slightly unsteadily on her feet.
"Great job! Can we go again at a thirty seven degree angle?" said the director. She nodded, going to one side to have her make-up reapplied as a window cleaner descended from above to clean the glass.