Our New Taste

Forever Triangle: Uncle Jupiter

I am standing outside a school holding a giant cheque which reads one hundred and sixty thousand dollars printed in a font that resembles handwriting, designed by a team of graphic artists and distributed across the Western coast of America. It was the font of choice for these kinds of events, though there was a wide selection of fake handwriting available to charities, government bodies and the media. A flash bulb goes off in front of my face. Who uses flash bulbs any more. My mouth is dry and I gulp the back of my tongue. The woman next to me talks to the dozen or so reporters but I can't concentrate on what she is saying. The enormous cheque begins to slide down a sweaty palm and I worry I will drop it. Somebody finally takes the cheque off me and the woman puts an arm around my shoulder and we smile as more flash bulbs go off and people shout questions.

I am left alone in a hallway and hear my name called out. Fire doors open inwards for me and I walk across the auditorium floor, the applause falling as quickly as it rose. The head of the board of governers and the headteacher are stood to one side. I look around for a podium or somewhere less exposed but find none.

“Hello. Good afternoon. I hope we're all going to have a good time today. I just donated one hundred and sixty thousand dollars to your school. A hundred and sixty thousand. It's a generous donation, so generous that not many people are even able to do it. But I am, because I care. I care about the little guy, hitting the books, trying to make himself smart. I don't care if you're a jock, cheerleader, class clown or goth, everyone deserves an education that is paid for through generous donations like the one I just gave. I suppose you're asking yourself, why, why would this British guy come over to my school and give me nearly two hundred thousand dollars? But you know what? You shouldn't be asking why. You should be asking how. How do I get to be that guy?” I say. I wonder how loudly I am speaking. How do I sound, blowing air in short bursts over a wet blob in my mouth. I think about the size of my tongue.
“It's economics, Salzebury, the Gideon knot, Keynes, mythology, survivalism, trigonometry zoology, fluid dynamics, pyramid schemes, zombies, Rudolph Hess, microscopy, an excel spreadsheet, ipads, gemstones, bus tickets, viruses, environmentalism, brain transplants, pacifism, The Odyssey, facetime, gin and tonic, new shoes, the conquest of Mexico, batman, zygotes, fountain pens, mints, Sigmund Frued, Futurism, the Amazonian Rainforest, golf, Ludwig van Beethoven, buicks, childhood, pataphysics, buddhism and cell phones," I explain. "You can't just get a college education by paying for it. You have to work hard. Then you have to carry on working hard once you've graduated. The only difference is you'll be working somewhere nicer than cleaning up piles of shit in a school like this. You want everyone laugh at you? Think that you're a fucking joke? No, didn't think so. Take the easy way, drive a hyundai to work, have an affair, earn the average wage. All of it will seem terrible but at least it won't actually be terrible. That's why getting an education is important. You think I just threw one hundred sixty at this place so you could paint the corridors, put a basketball court somewhere? Hell no. I just give you the opportunity for an education. Make yourselves smart and in doing so increase the competition for jobs in the future.” I said, smiling. I looked down and shook my head before looking back up.
“You don't even know what. This is basic economics, but they don't teach that shit at high school. Don't want everyone knowing how to make mad money, who they gonna make money off? Y'all punks need to be schooled on some left wing sheeeeyit.” I say. I have grown confident as I speak. I feel strong and powerful. I pop open the top button of my collar.
“Ch'all better recognize socialism. You probably thinking of Groucho if I say Marx. But guess what. I'm talking about a guy called Karl. And he invented Communism along with this dude called Engels. Say what? Motherfucker invented communism, ain't that a Russian thing? Hell yeah homie. So's space travel. You think it's a coincidence all them dudes on the enterprise are chill?” I say.
“Anyway, I've donated almost a billion dollars to schools in Los Angeles. Y'all going to get a sweet education for gratis. Might seem fun now, but wait til you leave college. Everyone around you's gonna have been at the same college. I made this whole city totally fucked!” I say, miming smearing my hands across a dome. I laugh and walk out, starting to run through the empty corridors. It is a labyrinth of plastic, every door seems as same as the last. This is the place shootings happen. Eventually I reach the outside and have to lie in the car park, coughing. What have I done? There's no load game in real life! Everything had repercussions, from breakfast to noon. I sat up and started to run again, down streets populated by cars, veins bulging on my forehead. Nine hundred and thirty two thousand six hundred and twenty three dollars of company funds given away in the space of a day. I wondered for a moment if I would have to claim bankruptcy then laughed. Of course not. I still had things to do. I rang Bill and he picked me up.
“Take me back to the hotel.” I say.
“Sure. Are you okay?” he says. I begin to take off my clothes.
“Yes.”

All Said And Done

One of the things I miss the most about alternative realities is that this one doesn't care much for the exploration and colonization of space, instead spending millions on a 3D film of Yogi Bear or soap that smells like Marmite. In some faraway place in space and time others will look back with eyes made from ectoplasm and wonder, what happened.

Birthday Presents

An Eagle for an Emperor, a Peregrine for a Prince, a Kestrel for a Knave and a Hawk for Hawking. Stephen Hawking.

Astroticians

Time flows like a river. You can't stop a river from flowing although you can slow it or speed it up. We have yet to invent cosmic buckets to carry the water up or down the river but when we do it will be very wet.

Psychozoology

The scientist looked out at the Atlantic, wondering what metaphors he could wrangle from the waves in order to properly explain his own research into electromagnetic wave manipulation. Surfing an x-ray? A boat that travelled on the ultraviolet? Amongst the crests of white foam and grey water sludge a dead shark floated. What kind of strange fishes would live in the sea of electromagnetism.

Dripping Exhausts

America has had quite an interesting reaction to the motorcar, it is deeply ingrained into their culture due to the popularity of this technology. Just as we anthropomorphise animals, people also do this to cars (such as the Pixar film; Cars). Cars themselves are interesting objects often designed to be aerodynamic, which share the forms of birds or predator mammals. As technology gets more organic it will take less effort for the sexualization of these metal bodies to be undertaken. It is hard to imagine a future in which people ride around in pulsing steel vulvas although I would hazard a guess and say we're not far off.

Three Skinner Box

The rat presses the button, the scientist is conditioned to give him food.

Assassination by Disease

Candles that release thermo-activated toxins. Contact lenses coated in uranium. Toiletries tampered with so that the victim is violently assaulted with trembling lips over a short period of time. These methods are often utilised in the field of biological terrorism.

Chrononaut Lesson

/And now I return to a classic. Perhaps one of the nicest classics in the whole of the history of science, which would be time travel. In part of the lexicon for the laymen, time travel can be explained as something travelling through time as easy as it is travelling through the three dimensions of space we currently think about. There are as many dimensions of time as there are physical, if you can imagine a cube made out of time we experience it in a single direction as if we am slug? Currently time travel has been restricted to those in the future. People from the future walk amongst us, sometimes as observers, sometimes to enjoy our freedoms and post modernism and sometimes to manipulate events so that they are guaranteed to be born into success and happiness. There are things such as the grandfather paradox, in which if you travel through time there is a chance you have sex with your grandmother.

Another fact about the future is that we have replaced most of our standard senses with bizarre augmentations such as flesh paddles used to detect and manipulate electromagnetic radiation or a tesseractoid exoskeleton. Advertising companies have manipulated viruses which give the symptoms of thirst or dizziness, the only cure being found inside the product. Some people will choose to be machines like cars, televisions or pylons. Another fact about time travel is that the government are currently sending people back and forwards through time in experiments carried out beneath the Large Hadron Collider. Though they can only travel relatively short distances like a few hours, this technology lead to early time crimes and enormous boosts in lost sport almanacs.

Her Brains, Her Skull, Her Haircut

The scientist enhanced the image, letting down her hair as she did so. Möbius curls invented by shampoo consultants, bronze and tin and blonde and brown and black and grey and red and blue and white. Her hair smelled like chemicals flavoured like trees and fruit, she often joked about it loudly. “Martinis are like breasts. Three is two many and one is a sad story.” Laser beams bounced on her neck because it made her look more dramatic in the 21st century. The first century where people took emotional cues from television more than real life like back in the 20th century.

“I know how a serpent walks.” Bernard Colloquy, inventor of the car simulator.