Cómic IA: ## Narrative: The last thing I remember was a sweet smell of the sakura orchards and a vision of something more. A world full of beauty and balance and a women. Who shone like a pink moon, beautifully integrated into the moment. As I reached for her hand the vision began to crumble “Rikyu” she screams. <This is my first dream in years. It wasn’t just advertisements. How did it get there> I woke up with a shout, her name on the tip of my tongue, and a massive headache. A nostalgic sense of longing filtred through my body and the smell of the sakura lingered before the world hit me hard. I feel bodies on either side of me. My head is throbbing. My mouth tastes like I just licked the skin of a plantain. My reality starts to find it’s footing in the recesses of my mind. I am not from an idealic world full of joy and presenece. I am from the land of the scroll. My scream wakes nema up. The Body on my left. She left her mic on because the sound of hearing me sleep makes her feel like she’s not alone. Rando, the body to my right that we picked up last night doesn’t seem to wake up to my scream. Nema and I have been partying together for the last few nights. Generally a good time, but I can feel the need for more creeping in. Last night we brought home this rando and were able to get off natty, but by the end of the second session we both blasted porn on our iSight just to finish. The novelty barely lasts these days. **<Insert interaction between Nema and I that creates familiarity and might be able to show versus tell on the line above.>** I look over to the rando. Surprised that she hasn’t reacted, maybe her mic is off, but it is rare to not set your droids homing beacon on when staying at people’s places you’ve never met. “Nema, do you remember her name?” Nema: Oh yeah it’s. Hmm. Damn I actually don’t remember anything about her. I nudge her. She doesn’t move. I worry that her droids battery has died, generally there is an auto homing beacon before the distance away exceeds the battery life to reach it. I reach down and try to do a hard reset. Her mouth shoots open as if it were violently screaming. Out of her pops an old timey projector. “What the fuck my dick was in that last night.” From the projector a grainy film starts to play in the style of EPCOT’s City of the Future…promoting the The Floating World. Nema, “What is going on over there.” Her eyes are still closed. Rikyu, “Nothing. Just some old The Floating World propaganda coming out of the rando’s droids mouth.” Nema, “Let me see. I love that old timey shit.” It takes Nema a bit to get back in her suit and up and running. Eventually she sits up on her elbow and looks over me to see the hologram above the rando. “What if life were easy as Ube Pie! Pleasure at the touch of a button. Never leave your couch. Never have to work again. Never have to try again.” <I want this to start off as if it is doing the epcot style pitch, but slowly it degrades into something more sinister. The person speaking looks more and more evil. It sounds less like an oldtimey advert and more like an evil command. “Own nothing and you will be happy” kind of shit. “Humanity used to have to strive to be better, we were divided by race, wealth, intelligence, The Floating World solved this. There is only equality. We are equal. As the droid begins this last sentence the hologram starts to corrupt it glitches to imagery of orgies, drug overdoses, suicide, sadness loneliness and it creschendos with an imagery of a young girl being removed from her parents in The Floating World. It would appear she was born illegally. Nema and I sit and stare at a total loss for words. “…the fuck was that. I need some coffee, a stim, a beer, and some soma. My circuits are blown out. Fuck I think we might have gone too far.” It is hard to remember the last day we had any amount of sobriety. What is the point. Nema, “Did that just happen. It’s giving me weird ass vibes. Get that shit out of here.” ***<Getting Ready Scene Never leaving the bed. Pressing buttons for flavored Goo or having our droids do things.>*** Eventually Nema and I agree to send our droids home. We still can’t figure out the rando. When Nema’s droid walks out the door the Rando becomes alert and in the most fucked up way screams “Rikyu, come home” in the same voice that was in my dream last night. I whirl around and the droid is lifeless again, except an address has appeared on the screen. It is in a part of town I haven’t been since I was kid. It might be one of the last places I spent time outside. I was just about to receieve my first droid at 13 and I would never have to go outside again. That was a weird place. ***<Something weird happened there. I bumped into what looked like a beggar. Those don’t exist anymore. and he said my name. He said he was my uncle. That was fucking crazy because parents hadn’t existed for multiple generations. Everyone knew that was no longer a thing.>*** I decide to have my droid bring it to that address when I return from Nema’s. I need to get to streaming. My droid is on autopilot so I login to the droid games and I start placing bets. I login to my bank account to see how much UBC I qualified for yesterday. I am hit with an ad for the cheapest gas station horny goat weed possible. Fuck, the retinal scanned must have picked up that I was too faded to pay attention to the ads. You can always tell if you got paid more while you are logging in based on the quality of the product of the advertiser. The governments send the data to conglomerate bots before we receieve our payment so they are always one step ahead. I watch the ad. As a penance to the ad gods and my dick last night. I purchase the a single dose of the horny goat weed to be added to my transport tube. I get in my bank account and it is sparse. It looks like I won’t be able to stream my bets today. It’s a consumption day. That is as well as I am incredibly hungover. I begin to sort through the content to see if there is anything of interest, but per usual in a world of infinite options, there is nothing to choose. I have the ai model auto select and choose the max amount of screens it thinks I can handle based on my hrv, body temperature, and glucose. Three screens pop up. FUCK ME. On a decent day I can handle 10. It’s gonna take me a few days to get out of this cycle. I drink my monster energy. And lock in. They test you at random to make sure you are paying attention. If you get something wrong it hurts your UBC for the day. I start to notice an increasing number of food and sustenance ads. The ai must realize my blood sugar is flatlining. In 15 minutes to an hour it will be non-stop images and smells of food within my budget. The early guys start with deals. As I wait longer the price goes up. It hurts more to have discipline. I started skipping meals a few months ago. The AI hates me for it, but I like being able to save up for something really delicious. It has started to learn my game though so I need to throw it off from time time. Today seems a good a day as any. I select the cheapest shake. Artificially full of calories, corn syrup, and cock. It’s a hot honey chicken and fries shake delivered directly to my bedside. I go down to 1 screen while I eat. Some bullshit streamer going all in with a months earnings on a Droidara. The lull in my attention creates just enough space for me to realize it has been over an hour and my droid isn’t back. It usually takes 10 minutes or so for it to return from Nema’s place. I ping it’s location and it isn’t showing up. It has it’s last known location but it says it is dead. “What the fuck. I was at 42% before I left this morning.” I zone in on it’s last location before it died. It is the completely wrong direction from my place. “Damn it Nema, where did you send my droid.” My heart drops as I hone in on the location. My droid is at the exact address that was, I look away from the screens for a few seconds to confirm, is flashing. I get pinged for looking away. I lock back in to the screen. Utterly shocked and not sure what to do. I am so distracted I miss the quiz. I don’t even answer the question. I sit in defeat. I lost over half of the ubc I made in the last hour. The penalties for not consuming are incredibly high. I call Nema. She declines immediately. I call again and send an “SOS answer the phone GD” text. She calls back in 10 minutes. “What Yu? Idk about you but it only gave me two screens this morning. I can’t afford to be down 1 right now.” “Where did you send my droid?” “What?” “My droid. Where did you send it? It never made it back to my place, it isn’t responding and it’s battery died in the Crescent.” Nema looks off screen. “My droid made it back. I didn’t do anything I swear. About 30 minutes after our call it stood up and walked away. I assume you called it home. I found it odd that you took so long to send it back. I figured you were just playing with the rando that was left behind. “Bullshit. Who did you sell it to?” I generally wouldn’t trust Nema. Not anything against her personally, but you don’t trust anyone these days. I moved to call the droid police, this could help make up for my low bank account, and then I remembered. I never called the droid home. I checked my logs. I never called it home. I was so distracted by this other bot, I didn’t think twice about it. “Oh shit. My bad. I never called it home. Who summoned my droid?” “Yeah you should be sorry you fu…wait what? You didn’t call it? The security software for these droids is supposed to be impenetrable. No one has hacked a droid since I was 8 years old.” “Who the fuck could have hacked my droid?” I hear a knock at the door. “What the… Nema someone just knocked on my door” No one knocks on doors anymore. Droids that are allowed to enter have already been verified via an encrypted key. No one else can go in or out of the building. No one is accidentally anywhere. No one leaves their house. “Wow… Rikyu. What kind of shit are you in. None of this has happened in decades.” “Idk, but I think it has something to do with this random bot. The address that my droid was last pinged at is at the same address that the rando put on their screen after you left.” “Who is at the door?” The door. I totally forgot about the door. “ What do I do about that?” “Go look?” I get out of my cyberchair and walk over to the door. I go to open it, but it is locked. Fuck I realize that I haven’t done this in so long. I forgot to unlock the door. I get the door open. There is no one there. I look down the hall. LED lights so bright it looks like an empty white void. Nothing to either side. Hmmm… today is weird as fuck. I go to close the door and as I do I look down and see a package. It is a black box with “The Floating World.” Logo on top. I pick it up and go to open it. On the front of the box are the words, “Everyone is watching, No one remembers, is this even real?” What the fuck does that mean? I open the box. a thin note sits upon black wrapping paper. To Rikyu, “We have your droid. You have ours. Meet us at xxxx and we can swap. Come alone. Come ready. Wear this.” and under the note wrapped in black paper is a heavy cotton t-shirt. I recognize it at once with the logo “The Floating World” the disgusting promise of an effortless land, this is the shirt that everyone got when they moved into the The Floating World. It is the uniform of the society, only this one is different. There are numbers above the words on the left and right side. They look like coordinates, or addresses, or a code of some sort. On the left is 210.138.184.59 and on the right is 162.89.0.47. I have never seen a version of this shirt that has been edited. If I remember correctly that is illegal. I pick it up and flip it around. The moment I flip the shirt it comes to life. In cyberblue the image of a temple slashes pixelized streaks flashing into existence and then fading away. The words “Everyone is watching, No one remembers, is this even real” flash as the temple disappears and they fade just as fast. I turn the shirt back over to the front and the coded numbers are gone. “That was weird…” I say under my breath. Looking at the numbers I realize I have seen these before. They are old school internet protocol addresses, from a time when people cared about privacy. They only show the general location of the user, not like today’s Neo-IP addresses that can tell if you moved your rig to another room. I pop into my rig and put in the first address in an old IP address locator. “210.138.184.59” I say to the AI It zooms out of The Floating World, into a land called Texas, then the United States, still searching it zooms east. I see all of these land masses I have never heard of. Europe, China, and finally it focuses on a small chain of islands labeled, Japan and finally we land somewhere in the western part of Tokyo. Tokyo… I feel like some of the video games I play talk about Tokyo. “Tell me about Tokyo.” “Tokyo was the capital of Japan. Japan is an island chain that fell into turmoil after a massive population collapse. The island chain is now uninhabited.” “Was there A Floating World city in Japan? Why are do I have an IP address?” “The Floating World is a one of a kind city of the Future built for your pleasure.” The AI responds, but it’s tone has shifted. If it were human I would think it went from actively responding to reading lines from a script. “Is there any association with The Floating World and Tokyo or Japan?” “Yes, there was an art movement in a city called Edo in Japan called Ukiyo-e - Pictures from the Floating World.” “Where is Edo?” “Edo was a city that lasted from 1603 to 1868 and was located in Modern Day Tokyo.” “God Damn these fucking robots. So literal and so frustrating.” So the first IP Address is in Tokyo. What about the second? “Look up 162.89.0.47.” It zooms out of Tokyo and follows the exact path back that we just went in reverse. As we pass China, Europe, Texas, Austin I start to get the chills. I know it before I see it. The IP address is located in the same general location as the address that my droid is being held hostage. I sit there silently. “what….” “warning! warning!” The rig starts freaking out. I am missing questions again. Another penilization. I missed the last two. I am down to one screen for the rest of the day. I exit. There is no point now and I need to figure out what is going on. I can’t consume. I don’t have my droid. I am at my end. The only option I see is to go find my stupid droid and see what all of this is about. I don’t remember the last time I went outside. It must have been a decade or more. I throw on the shirt they gave me. This all feels so fucking scary. My heart is racing. I don’t want to do it. I just want to lay in my rig and watch other people watching droids doing shit. I go to turn back and I hear the voice from my dream…”rikyu!” I turn around. No one is there. Something about that voice pushes me onward. I step through the open door. I don’t close the door (no one steals anymore. no one goes outside and no one really owns anything.) I feel the comfort and safety of the room sucking me back in, but I fight it. I don’t look back. My back foot steps out and through the portal. I am outside.

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## Narrative: The last thing I remember was a sweet smell of the sakura orchards and a vision of something more. A world full of beauty and balance and a women. Who shone like a pink moon, beautifully integrated into the moment. As I reached for her hand the vision began to crumble “Rikyu” she screams. <This is my first dream in years. It wasn’t just advertisements. How did it get there> I woke up with a shout, her name on the tip of my tongue, and a massive headache. A nostalgic sense of longing filtred through my body and the smell of the sakura lingered before the world hit me hard. I feel bodies on either side of me. My head is throbbing. My mouth tastes like I just licked the skin of a plantain. My reality starts to find it’s footing in the recesses of my mind. I am not from an idealic world full of joy and presenece. I am from the land of the scroll. My scream wakes nema up. The Body on my left. She left her mic on because the sound of hearing me sleep makes her feel like she’s not alone. Rando, the body to my right that we picked up last night doesn’t seem to wake up to my scream. Nema and I have been partying together for the last few nights. Generally a good time, but I can feel the need for more creeping in. Last night we brought home this rando and were able to get off natty, but by the end of the second session we both blasted porn on our iSight just to finish. The novelty barely lasts these days. **<Insert interaction between Nema and I that creates familiarity and might be able to show versus tell on the line above.>** I look over to the rando. Surprised that she hasn’t reacted, maybe her mic is off, but it is rare to not set your droids homing beacon on when staying at people’s places you’ve never met. “Nema, do you remember her name?” Nema: Oh yeah it’s. Hmm. Damn I actually don’t remember anything about her. I nudge her. She doesn’t move. I worry that her droids battery has died, generally there is an auto homing beacon before the distance away exceeds the battery life to reach it. I reach down and try to do a hard reset. Her mouth shoots open as if it were violently screaming. Out of her pops an old timey projector. “What the fuck my dick was in that last night.” From the projector a grainy film starts to play in the style of EPCOT’s City of the Future…promoting the The Floating World. Nema, “What is going on over there.” Her eyes are still closed. Rikyu, “Nothing. Just some old The Floating World propaganda coming out of the rando’s droids mouth.” Nema, “Let me see. I love that old timey shit.” It takes Nema a bit to get back in her suit and up and running. Eventually she sits up on her elbow and looks over me to see the hologram above the rando. “What if life were easy as Ube Pie! Pleasure at the touch of a button. Never leave your couch. Never have to work again. Never have to try again.” <I want this to start off as if it is doing the epcot style pitch, but slowly it degrades into something more sinister. The person speaking looks more and more evil. It sounds less like an oldtimey advert and more like an evil command. “Own nothing and you will be happy” kind of shit. “Humanity used to have to strive to be better, we were divided by race, wealth, intelligence, The Floating World solved this. There is only equality. We are equal. As the droid begins this last sentence the hologram starts to corrupt it glitches to imagery of orgies, drug overdoses, suicide, sadness loneliness and it creschendos with an imagery of a young girl being removed from her parents in The Floating World. It would appear she was born illegally. Nema and I sit and stare at a total loss for words. “…the fuck was that. I need some coffee, a stim, a beer, and some soma. My circuits are blown out. Fuck I think we might have gone too far.” It is hard to remember the last day we had any amount of sobriety. What is the point. Nema, “Did that just happen. It’s giving me weird ass vibes. Get that shit out of here.” ***<Getting Ready Scene Never leaving the bed. Pressing buttons for flavored Goo or having our droids do things.>*** Eventually Nema and I agree to send our droids home. We still can’t figure out the rando. When Nema’s droid walks out the door the Rando becomes alert and in the most fucked up way screams “Rikyu, come home” in the same voice that was in my dream last night. I whirl around and the droid is lifeless again, except an address has appeared on the screen. It is in a part of town I haven’t been since I was kid. It might be one of the last places I spent time outside. I was just about to receieve my first droid at 13 and I would never have to go outside again. That was a weird place. ***<Something weird happened there. I bumped into what looked like a beggar. Those don’t exist anymore. and he said my name. He said he was my uncle. That was fucking crazy because parents hadn’t existed for multiple generations. Everyone knew that was no longer a thing.>*** I decide to have my droid bring it to that address when I return from Nema’s. I need to get to streaming. My droid is on autopilot so I login to the droid games and I start placing bets. I login to my bank account to see how much UBC I qualified for yesterday. I am hit with an ad for the cheapest gas station horny goat weed possible. Fuck, the retinal scanned must have picked up that I was too faded to pay attention to the ads. You can always tell if you got paid more while you are logging in based on the quality of the product of the advertiser. The governments send the data to conglomerate bots before we receieve our payment so they are always one step ahead. I watch the ad. As a penance to the ad gods and my dick last night. I purchase the a single dose of the horny goat weed to be added to my transport tube. I get in my bank account and it is sparse. It looks like I won’t be able to stream my bets today. It’s a consumption day. That is as well as I am incredibly hungover. I begin to sort through the content to see if there is anything of interest, but per usual in a world of infinite options, there is nothing to choose. I have the ai model auto select and choose the max amount of screens it thinks I can handle based on my hrv, body temperature, and glucose. Three screens pop up. FUCK ME. On a decent day I can handle 10. It’s gonna take me a few days to get out of this cycle. I drink my monster energy. And lock in. They test you at random to make sure you are paying attention. If you get something wrong it hurts your UBC for the day. I start to notice an increasing number of food and sustenance ads. The ai must realize my blood sugar is flatlining. In 15 minutes to an hour it will be non-stop images and smells of food within my budget. The early guys start with deals. As I wait longer the price goes up. It hurts more to have discipline. I started skipping meals a few months ago. The AI hates me for it, but I like being able to save up for something really delicious. It has started to learn my game though so I need to throw it off from time time. Today seems a good a day as any. I select the cheapest shake. Artificially full of calories, corn syrup, and cock. It’s a hot honey chicken and fries shake delivered directly to my bedside. I go down to 1 screen while I eat. Some bullshit streamer going all in with a months earnings on a Droidara. The lull in my attention creates just enough space for me to realize it has been over an hour and my droid isn’t back. It usually takes 10 minutes or so for it to return from Nema’s place. I ping it’s location and it isn’t showing up. It has it’s last known location but it says it is dead. “What the fuck. I was at 42% before I left this morning.” I zone in on it’s last location before it died. It is the completely wrong direction from my place. “Damn it Nema, where did you send my droid.” My heart drops as I hone in on the location. My droid is at the exact address that was, I look away from the screens for a few seconds to confirm, is flashing. I get pinged for looking away. I lock back in to the screen. Utterly shocked and not sure what to do. I am so distracted I miss the quiz. I don’t even answer the question. I sit in defeat. I lost over half of the ubc I made in the last hour. The penalties for not consuming are incredibly high. I call Nema. She declines immediately. I call again and send an “SOS answer the phone GD” text. She calls back in 10 minutes. “What Yu? Idk about you but it only gave me two screens this morning. I can’t afford to be down 1 right now.” “Where did you send my droid?” “What?” “My droid. Where did you send it? It never made it back to my place, it isn’t responding and it’s battery died in the Crescent.” Nema looks off screen. “My droid made it back. I didn’t do anything I swear. About 30 minutes after our call it stood up and walked away. I assume you called it home. I found it odd that you took so long to send it back. I figured you were just playing with the rando that was left behind. “Bullshit. Who did you sell it to?” I generally wouldn’t trust Nema. Not anything against her personally, but you don’t trust anyone these days. I moved to call the droid police, this could help make up for my low bank account, and then I remembered. I never called the droid home. I checked my logs. I never called it home. I was so distracted by this other bot, I didn’t think twice about it. “Oh shit. My bad. I never called it home. Who summoned my droid?” “Yeah you should be sorry you fu…wait what? You didn’t call it? The security software for these droids is supposed to be impenetrable. No one has hacked a droid since I was 8 years old.” “Who the fuck could have hacked my droid?” I hear a knock at the door. “What the… Nema someone just knocked on my door” No one knocks on doors anymore. Droids that are allowed to enter have already been verified via an encrypted key. No one else can go in or out of the building. No one is accidentally anywhere. No one leaves their house. “Wow… Rikyu. What kind of shit are you in. None of this has happened in decades.” “Idk, but I think it has something to do with this random bot. The address that my droid was last pinged at is at the same address that the rando put on their screen after you left.” “Who is at the door?” The door. I totally forgot about the door. “ What do I do about that?” “Go look?” I get out of my cyberchair and walk over to the door. I go to open it, but it is locked. Fuck I realize that I haven’t done this in so long. I forgot to unlock the door. I get the door open. There is no one there. I look down the hall. LED lights so bright it looks like an empty white void. Nothing to either side. Hmmm… today is weird as fuck. I go to close the door and as I do I look down and see a package. It is a black box with “The Floating World.” Logo on top. I pick it up and go to open it. On the front of the box are the words, “Everyone is watching, No one remembers, is this even real?” What the fuck does that mean? I open the box. a thin note sits upon black wrapping paper. To Rikyu, “We have your droid. You have ours. Meet us at xxxx and we can swap. Come alone. Come ready. Wear this.” and under the note wrapped in black paper is a heavy cotton t-shirt. I recognize it at once with the logo “The Floating World” the disgusting promise of an effortless land, this is the shirt that everyone got when they moved into the The Floating World. It is the uniform of the society, only this one is different. There are numbers above the words on the left and right side. They look like coordinates, or addresses, or a code of some sort. On the left is 210.138.184.59 and on the right is 162.89.0.47. I have never seen a version of this shirt that has been edited. If I remember correctly that is illegal. I pick it up and flip it around. The moment I flip the shirt it comes to life. In cyberblue the image of a temple slashes pixelized streaks flashing into existence and then fading away. The words “Everyone is watching, No one remembers, is this even real” flash as the temple disappears and they fade just as fast. I turn the shirt back over to the front and the coded numbers are gone. “That was weird…” I say under my breath. Looking at the numbers I realize I have seen these before. They are old school internet protocol addresses, from a time when people cared about privacy. They only show the general location of the user, not like today’s Neo-IP addresses that can tell if you moved your rig to another room. I pop into my rig and put in the first address in an old IP address locator. “210.138.184.59” I say to the AI It zooms out of The Floating World, into a land called Texas, then the United States, still searching it zooms east. I see all of these land masses I have never heard of. Europe, China, and finally it focuses on a small chain of islands labeled, Japan and finally we land somewhere in the western part of Tokyo. Tokyo… I feel like some of the video games I play talk about Tokyo. “Tell me about Tokyo.” “Tokyo was the capital of Japan. Japan is an island chain that fell into turmoil after a massive population collapse. The island chain is now uninhabited.” “Was there A Floating World city in Japan? Why are do I have an IP address?” “The Floating World is a one of a kind city of the Future built for your pleasure.” The AI responds, but it’s tone has shifted. If it were human I would think it went from actively responding to reading lines from a script. “Is there any association with The Floating World and Tokyo or Japan?” “Yes, there was an art movement in a city called Edo in Japan called Ukiyo-e - Pictures from the Floating World.” “Where is Edo?” “Edo was a city that lasted from 1603 to 1868 and was located in Modern Day Tokyo.” “God Damn these fucking robots. So literal and so frustrating.” So the first IP Address is in Tokyo. What about the second? “Look up 162.89.0.47.” It zooms out of Tokyo and follows the exact path back that we just went in reverse. As we pass China, Europe, Texas, Austin I start to get the chills. I know it before I see it. The IP address is located in the same general location as the address that my droid is being held hostage. I sit there silently. “what….” “warning! warning!” The rig starts freaking out. I am missing questions again. Another penilization. I missed the last two. I am down to one screen for the rest of the day. I exit. There is no point now and I need to figure out what is going on. I can’t consume. I don’t have my droid. I am at my end. The only option I see is to go find my stupid droid and see what all of this is about. I don’t remember the last time I went outside. It must have been a decade or more. I throw on the shirt they gave me. This all feels so fucking scary. My heart is racing. I don’t want to do it. I just want to lay in my rig and watch other people watching droids doing shit. I go to turn back and I hear the voice from my dream…”rikyu!” I turn around. No one is there. Something about that voice pushes me onward. I step through the open door. I don’t close the door (no one steals anymore. no one goes outside and no one really owns anything.) I feel the comfort and safety of the room sucking me back in, but I fight it. I don’t look back. My back foot steps out and through the portal. I am outside.## Narrative: The last thing I remember was a sweet smell of the sakura orchards and a vision of something more. A world full of beauty and balance and a women. Who shone like a pink moon, beautifully integrated into the moment. As I reached for her hand the vision began to crumble “Rikyu” she screams. <This is my first dream in years. It wasn’t just advertisements. How did it get there> I woke up with a shout, her name on the tip of my tongue, and a massive headache. A nostalgic sense of longing filtred through my body and the smell of the sakura lingered before the world hit me hard. I feel bodies on either side of me. My head is throbbing. My mouth tastes like I just licked the skin of a plantain. My reality starts to find it’s footing in the recesses of my mind. I am not from an idealic world full of joy and presenece. I am from the land of the scroll. My scream wakes nema up. The Body on my left. She left her mic on because the sound of hearing me sleep makes her feel like she’s not alone. Rando, the body to my right that we picked up last night doesn’t seem to wake up to my scream. Nema and I have been partying together for the last few nights. Generally a good time, but I can feel the need for more creeping in. Last night we brought home this rando and were able to get off natty, but by the end of the second session we both blasted porn on our iSight just to finish. The novelty barely lasts these days. **<Insert interaction between Nema and I that creates familiarity and might be able to show versus tell on the line above.>** I look over to the rando. Surprised that she hasn’t reacted, maybe her mic is off, but it is rare to not set your droids homing beacon on when staying at people’s places you’ve never met. “Nema, do you remember her name?” Nema: Oh yeah it’s. Hmm. Damn I actually don’t remember anything about her. I nudge her. She doesn’t move. I worry that her droids battery has died, generally there is an auto homing beacon before the distance away exceeds the battery life to reach it. I reach down and try to do a hard reset. Her mouth shoots open as if it were violently screaming. Out of her pops an old timey projector. “What the fuck my dick was in that last night.” From the projector a grainy film starts to play in the style of EPCOT’s City of the Future…promoting the The Floating World. Nema, “What is going on over there.” Her eyes are still closed. Rikyu, “Nothing. Just some old The Floating World propaganda coming out of the rando’s droids mouth.” Nema, “Let me see. I love that old timey shit.” It takes Nema a bit to get back in her suit and up and running. Eventually she sits up on her elbow and looks over me to see the hologram above the rando. “What if life were easy as Ube Pie! Pleasure at the touch of a button. Never leave your couch. Never have to work again. Never have to try again.” <I want this to start off as if it is doing the epcot style pitch, but slowly it degrades into something more sinister. The person speaking looks more and more evil. It sounds less like an oldtimey advert and more like an evil command. “Own nothing and you will be happy” kind of shit. “Humanity used to have to strive to be better, we were divided by race, wealth, intelligence, The Floating World solved this. There is only equality. We are equal. As the droid begins this last sentence the hologram starts to corrupt it glitches to imagery of orgies, drug overdoses, suicide, sadness loneliness and it creschendos with an imagery of a young girl being removed from her parents in The Floating World. It would appear she was born illegally. Nema and I sit and stare at a total loss for words. “…the fuck was that. I need some coffee, a stim, a beer, and some soma. My circuits are blown out. Fuck I think we might have gone too far.” It is hard to remember the last day we had any amount of sobriety. What is the point. Nema, “Did that just happen. It’s giving me weird ass vibes. Get that shit out of here.” ***<Getting Ready Scene Never leaving the bed. Pressing buttons for flavored Goo or having our droids do things.>*** Eventually Nema and I agree to send our droids home. We still can’t figure out the rando. When Nema’s droid walks out the door the Rando becomes alert and in the most fucked up way screams “Rikyu, come home” in the same voice that was in my dream last night. I whirl around and the droid is lifeless again, except an address has appeared on the screen. It is in a part of town I haven’t been since I was kid. It might be one of the last places I spent time outside. I was just about to receieve my first droid at 13 and I would never have to go outside again. That was a weird place. ***<Something weird happened there. I bumped into what looked like a beggar. Those don’t exist anymore. and he said my name. He said he was my uncle. That was fucking crazy because parents hadn’t existed for multiple generations. Everyone knew that was no longer a thing.>*** I decide to have my droid bring it to that address when I return from Nema’s. I need to get to streaming. My droid is on autopilot so I login to the droid games and I start placing bets. I login to my bank account to see how much UBC I qualified for yesterday. I am hit with an ad for the cheapest gas station horny goat weed possible. Fuck, the retinal scanned must have picked up that I was too faded to pay attention to the ads. You can always tell if you got paid more while you are logging in based on the quality of the product of the advertiser. The governments send the data to conglomerate bots before we receieve our payment so they are always one step ahead. I watch the ad. As a penance to the ad gods and my dick last night. I purchase the a single dose of the horny goat weed to be added to my transport tube. I get in my bank account and it is sparse. It looks like I won’t be able to stream my bets today. It’s a consumption day. That is as well as I am incredibly hungover. I begin to sort through the content to see if there is anything of interest, but per usual in a world of infinite options, there is nothing to choose. I have the ai model auto select and choose the max amount of screens it thinks I can handle based on my hrv, body temperature, and glucose. Three screens pop up. FUCK ME. On a decent day I can handle 10. It’s gonna take me a few days to get out of this cycle. I drink my monster energy. And lock in. They test you at random to make sure you are paying attention. If you get something wrong it hurts your UBC for the day. I start to notice an increasing number of food and sustenance ads. The ai must realize my blood sugar is flatlining. In 15 minutes to an hour it will be non-stop images and smells of food within my budget. The early guys start with deals. As I wait longer the price goes up. It hurts more to have discipline. I started skipping meals a few months ago. The AI hates me for it, but I like being able to save up for something really delicious. It has started to learn my game though so I need to throw it off from time time. Today seems a good a day as any. I select the cheapest shake. Artificially full of calories, corn syrup, and cock. It’s a hot honey chicken and fries shake delivered directly to my bedside. I go down to 1 screen while I eat. Some bullshit streamer going all in with a months earnings on a Droidara. The lull in my attention creates just enough space for me to realize it has been over an hour and my droid isn’t back. It usually takes 10 minutes or so for it to return from Nema’s place. I ping it’s location and it isn’t showing up. It has it’s last known location but it says it is dead. “What the fuck. I was at 42% before I left this morning.” I zone in on it’s last location before it died. It is the completely wrong direction from my place. “Damn it Nema, where did you send my droid.” My heart drops as I hone in on the location. My droid is at the exact address that was, I look away from the screens for a few seconds to confirm, is flashing. I get pinged for looking away. I lock back in to the screen. Utterly shocked and not sure what to do. I am so distracted I miss the quiz. I don’t even answer the question. I sit in defeat. I lost over half of the ubc I made in the last hour. The penalties for not consuming are incredibly high. I call Nema. She declines immediately. I call again and send an “SOS answer the phone GD” text. She calls back in 10 minutes. “What Yu? Idk about you but it only gave me two screens this morning. I can’t afford to be down 1 right now.” “Where did you send my droid?” “What?” “My droid. Where did you send it? It never made it back to my place, it isn’t responding and it’s battery died in the Crescent.” Nema looks off screen. “My droid made it back. I didn’t do anything I swear. About 30 minutes after our call it stood up and walked away. I assume you called it home. I found it odd that you took so long to send it back. I figured you were just playing with the rando that was left behind. “Bullshit. Who did you sell it to?” I generally wouldn’t trust Nema. Not anything against her personally, but you don’t trust anyone these days. I moved to call the droid police, this could help make up for my low bank account, and then I remembered. I never called the droid home. I checked my logs. I never called it home. I was so distracted by this other bot, I didn’t think twice about it. “Oh shit. My bad. I never called it home. Who summoned my droid?” “Yeah you should be sorry you fu…wait what? You didn’t call it? The security software for these droids is supposed to be impenetrable. No one has hacked a droid since I was 8 years old.” “Who the fuck could have hacked my droid?” I hear a knock at the door. “What the… Nema someone just knocked on my door” No one knocks on doors anymore. Droids that are allowed to enter have already been verified via an encrypted key. No one else can go in or out of the building. No one is accidentally anywhere. No one leaves their house. “Wow… Rikyu. What kind of shit are you in. None of this has happened in decades.” “Idk, but I think it has something to do with this random bot. The address that my droid was last pinged at is at the same address that the rando put on their screen after you left.” “Who is at the door?” The door. I totally forgot about the door. “ What do I do about that?” “Go look?” I get out of my cyberchair and walk over to the door. I go to open it, but it is locked. Fuck I realize that I haven’t done this in so long. I forgot to unlock the door. I get the door open. There is no one there. I look down the hall. LED lights so bright it looks like an empty white void. Nothing to either side. Hmmm… today is weird as fuck. I go to close the door and as I do I look down and see a package. It is a black box with “The Floating World.” Logo on top. I pick it up and go to open it. On the front of the box are the words, “Everyone is watching, No one remembers, is this even real?” What the fuck does that mean? I open the box. a thin note sits upon black wrapping paper. To Rikyu, “We have your droid. You have ours. Meet us at xxxx and we can swap. Come alone. Come ready. Wear this.” and under the note wrapped in black paper is a heavy cotton t-shirt. I recognize it at once with the logo “The Floating World” the disgusting promise of an effortless land, this is the shirt that everyone got when they moved into the The Floating World. It is the uniform of the society, only this one is different. There are numbers above the words on the left and right side. They look like coordinates, or addresses, or a code of some sort. On the left is 210.138.184.59 and on the right is 162.89.0.47. I have never seen a version of this shirt that has been edited. If I remember correctly that is illegal. I pick it up and flip it around. The moment I flip the shirt it comes to life. In cyberblue the image of a temple slashes pixelized streaks flashing into existence and then fading away. The words “Everyone is watching, No one remembers, is this even real” flash as the temple disappears and they fade just as fast. I turn the shirt back over to the front and the coded numbers are gone. “That was weird…” I say under my breath. Looking at the numbers I realize I have seen these before. They are old school internet protocol addresses, from a time when people cared about privacy. They only show the general location of the user, not like today’s Neo-IP addresses that can tell if you moved your rig to another room. I pop into my rig and put in the first address in an old IP address locator. “210.138.184.59” I say to the AI It zooms out of The Floating World, into a land called Texas, then the United States, still searching it zooms east. I see all of these land masses I have never heard of. Europe, China, and finally it focuses on a small chain of islands labeled, Japan and finally we land somewhere in the western part of Tokyo. Tokyo… I feel like some of the video games I play talk about Tokyo. “Tell me about Tokyo.” “Tokyo was the capital of Japan. Japan is an island chain that fell into turmoil after a massive population collapse. The island chain is now uninhabited.” “Was there A Floating World city in Japan? Why are do I have an IP address?” “The Floating World is a one of a kind city of the Future built for your pleasure.” The AI responds, but it’s tone has shifted. If it were human I would think it went from actively responding to reading lines from a script. “Is there any association with The Floating World and Tokyo or Japan?” “Yes, there was an art movement in a city called Edo in Japan called Ukiyo-e - Pictures from the Floating World.” “Where is Edo?” “Edo was a city that lasted from 1603 to 1868 and was located in Modern Day Tokyo.” “God Damn these fucking robots. So literal and so frustrating.” So the first IP Address is in Tokyo. What about the second? “Look up 162.89.0.47.” It zooms out of Tokyo and follows the exact path back that we just went in reverse. As we pass China, Europe, Texas, Austin I start to get the chills. I know it before I see it. The IP address is located in the same general location as the address that my droid is being held hostage. I sit there silently. “what….” “warning! warning!” The rig starts freaking out. I am missing questions again. Another penilization. I missed the last two. I am down to one screen for the rest of the day. I exit. There is no point now and I need to figure out what is going on. I can’t consume. I don’t have my droid. I am at my end. The only option I see is to go find my stupid droid and see what all of this is about. I don’t remember the last time I went outside. It must have been a decade or more. I throw on the shirt they gave me. This all feels so fucking scary. My heart is racing. I don’t want to do it. I just want to lay in my rig and watch other people watching droids doing shit. I go to turn back and I hear the voice from my dream…”rikyu!” I turn around. No one is there. Something about that voice pushes me onward. I step through the open door. I don’t close the door (no one steals anymore. no one goes outside and no one really owns anything.) I feel the comfort and safety of the room sucking me back in, but I fight it. I don’t look back. My back foot steps out and through the portal. I am outside.## Narrative: The last thing I remember was a sweet smell of the sakura orchards and a vision of something more. A world full of beauty and balance and a women. Who shone like a pink moon, beautifully integrated into the moment. As I reached for her hand the vision began to crumble “Rikyu” she screams. <This is my first dream in years. It wasn’t just advertisements. How did it get there> I woke up with a shout, her name on the tip of my tongue, and a massive headache. A nostalgic sense of longing filtred through my body and the smell of the sakura lingered before the world hit me hard. I feel bodies on either side of me. My head is throbbing. My mouth tastes like I just licked the skin of a plantain. My reality starts to find it’s footing in the recesses of my mind. I am not from an idealic world full of joy and presenece. I am from the land of the scroll. My scream wakes nema up. The Body on my left. She left her mic on because the sound of hearing me sleep makes her feel like she’s not alone. Rando, the body to my right that we picked up last night doesn’t seem to wake up to my scream. Nema and I have been partying together for the last few nights. Generally a good time, but I can feel the need for more creeping in. Last night we brought home this rando and were able to get off natty, but by the end of the second session we both blasted porn on our iSight just to finish. The novelty barely lasts these days. **<Insert interaction between Nema and I that creates familiarity and might be able to show versus tell on the line above.>** I look over to the rando. Surprised that she hasn’t reacted, maybe her mic is off, but it is rare to not set your droids homing beacon on when staying at people’s places you’ve never met. “Nema, do you remember her name?” Nema: Oh yeah it’s. Hmm. Damn I actually don’t remember anything about her. I nudge her. She doesn’t move. I worry that her droids battery has died, generally there is an auto homing beacon before the distance away exceeds the battery life to reach it. I reach down and try to do a hard reset. Her mouth shoots open as if it were violently screaming. Out of her pops an old timey projector. “What the fuck my dick was in that last night.” From the projector a grainy film starts to play in the style of EPCOT’s City of the Future…promoting the The Floating World. Nema, “What is going on over there.” Her eyes are still closed. Rikyu, “Nothing. Just some old The Floating World propaganda coming out of the rando’s droids mouth.” Nema, “Let me see. I love that old timey shit.” It takes Nema a bit to get back in her suit and up and running. Eventually she sits up on her elbow and looks over me to see the hologram above the rando. “What if life were easy as Ube Pie! Pleasure at the touch of a button. Never leave your couch. Never have to work again. Never have to try again.” <I want this to start off as if it is doing the epcot style pitch, but slowly it degrades into something more sinister. The person speaking looks more and more evil. It sounds less like an oldtimey advert and more like an evil command. “Own nothing and you will be happy” kind of shit. “Humanity used to have to strive to be better, we were divided by race, wealth, intelligence, The Floating World solved this. There is only equality. We are equal. As the droid begins this last sentence the hologram starts to corrupt it glitches to imagery of orgies, drug overdoses, suicide, sadness loneliness and it creschendos with an imagery of a young girl being removed from her parents in The Floating World. It would appear she was born illegally. Nema and I sit and stare at a total loss for words. “…the fuck was that. I need some coffee, a stim, a beer, and some soma. My circuits are blown out. Fuck I think we might have gone too far.” It is hard to remember the last day we had any amount of sobriety. What is the point. Nema, “Did that just happen. It’s giving me weird ass vibes. Get that shit out of here.” ***<Getting Ready Scene Never leaving the bed. Pressing buttons for flavored Goo or having our droids do things.>*** Eventually Nema and I agree to send our droids home. We still can’t figure out the rando. When Nema’s droid walks out the door the Rando becomes alert and in the most fucked up way screams “Rikyu, come home” in the same voice that was in my dream last night. I whirl around and the droid is lifeless again, except an address has appeared on the screen. It is in a part of town I haven’t been since I was kid. It might be one of the last places I spent time outside. I was just about to receieve my first droid at 13 and I would never have to go outside again. That was a weird place. ***<Something weird happened there. I bumped into what looked like a beggar. Those don’t exist anymore. and he said my name. He said he was my uncle. That was fucking crazy because parents hadn’t existed for multiple generations. Everyone knew that was no longer a thing.>*** I decide to have my droid bring it to that address when I return from Nema’s. I need to get to streaming. My droid is on autopilot so I login to the droid games and I start placing bets. I login to my bank account to see how much UBC I qualified for yesterday. I am hit with an ad for the cheapest gas station horny goat weed possible. Fuck, the retinal scanned must have picked up that I was too faded to pay attention to the ads. You can always tell if you got paid more while you are logging in based on the quality of the product of the advertiser. The governments send the data to conglomerate bots before we receieve our payment so they are always one step ahead. I watch the ad. As a penance to the ad gods and my dick last night. I purchase the a single dose of the horny goat weed to be added to my transport tube. I get in my bank account and it is sparse. It looks like I won’t be able to stream my bets today. It’s a consumption day. That is as well as I am incredibly hungover. I begin to sort through the content to see if there is anything of interest, but per usual in a world of infinite options, there is nothing to choose. I have the ai model auto select and choose the max amount of screens it thinks I can handle based on my hrv, body temperature, and glucose. Three screens pop up. FUCK ME. On a decent day I can handle 10. It’s gonna take me a few days to get out of this cycle. I drink my monster energy. And lock in. They test you at random to make sure you are paying attention. If you get something wrong it hurts your UBC for the day. I start to notice an increasing number of food and sustenance ads. The ai must realize my blood sugar is flatlining. In 15 minutes to an hour it will be non-stop images and smells of food within my budget. The early guys start with deals. As I wait longer the price goes up. It hurts more to have discipline. I started skipping meals a few months ago. The AI hates me for it, but I like being able to save up for something really delicious. It has started to learn my game though so I need to throw it off from time time. Today seems a good a day as any. I select the cheapest shake. Artificially full of calories, corn syrup, and cock. It’s a hot honey chicken and fries shake delivered directly to my bedside. I go down to 1 screen while I eat. Some bullshit streamer going all in with a months earnings on a Droidara. The lull in my attention creates just enough space for me to realize it has been over an hour and my droid isn’t back. It usually takes 10 minutes or so for it to return from Nema’s place. I ping it’s location and it isn’t showing up. It has it’s last known location but it says it is dead. “What the fuck. I was at 42% before I left this morning.” I zone in on it’s last location before it died. It is the completely wrong direction from my place. “Damn it Nema, where did you send my droid.” My heart drops as I hone in on the location. My droid is at the exact address that was, I look away from the screens for a few seconds to confirm, is flashing. I get pinged for looking away. I lock back in to the screen. Utterly shocked and not sure what to do. I am so distracted I miss the quiz. I don’t even answer the question. I sit in defeat. I lost over half of the ubc I made in the last hour. The penalties for not consuming are incredibly high. I call Nema. She declines immediately. I call again and send an “SOS answer the phone GD” text. She calls back in 10 minutes. “What Yu? Idk about you but it only gave me two screens this morning. I can’t afford to be down 1 right now.” “Where did you send my droid?” “What?” “My droid. Where did you send it? It never made it back to my place, it isn’t responding and it’s battery died in the Crescent.” Nema looks off screen. “My droid made it back. I didn’t do anything I swear. About 30 minutes after our call it stood up and walked away. I assume you called it home. I found it odd that you took so long to send it back. I figured you were just playing with the rando that was left behind. “Bullshit. Who did you sell it to?” I generally wouldn’t trust Nema. Not anything against her personally, but you don’t trust anyone these days. I moved to call the droid police, this could help make up for my low bank account, and then I remembered. I never called the droid home. I checked my logs. I never called it home. I was so distracted by this other bot, I didn’t think twice about it. “Oh shit. My bad. I never called it home. Who summoned my droid?” “Yeah you should be sorry you fu…wait what? You didn’t call it? The security software for these droids is supposed to be impenetrable. No one has hacked a droid since I was 8 years old.” “Who the fuck could have hacked my droid?” I hear a knock at the door. “What the… Nema someone just knocked on my door” No one knocks on doors anymore. Droids that are allowed to enter have already been verified via an encrypted key. No one else can go in or out of the building. No one is accidentally anywhere. No one leaves their house. “Wow… Rikyu. What kind of shit are you in. None of this has happened in decades.” “Idk, but I think it has something to do with this random bot. The address that my droid was last pinged at is at the same address that the rando put on their screen after you left.” “Who is at the door?” The door. I totally forgot about the door. “ What do I do about that?” “Go look?” I get out of my cyberchair and walk over to the door. I go to open it, but it is locked. Fuck I realize that I haven’t done this in so long. I forgot to unlock the door. I get the door open. There is no one there. I look down the hall. LED lights so bright it looks like an empty white void. Nothing to either side. Hmmm… today is weird as fuck. I go to close the door and as I do I look down and see a package. It is a black box with “The Floating World.” Logo on top. I pick it up and go to open it. On the front of the box are the words, “Everyone is watching, No one remembers, is this even real?” What the fuck does that mean? I open the box. a thin note sits upon black wrapping paper. To Rikyu, “We have your droid. You have ours. Meet us at xxxx and we can swap. Come alone. Come ready. Wear this.” and under the note wrapped in black paper is a heavy cotton t-shirt. I recognize it at once with the logo “The Floating World” the disgusting promise of an effortless land, this is the shirt that everyone got when they moved into the The Floating World. It is the uniform of the society, only this one is different. There are numbers above the words on the left and right side. They look like coordinates, or addresses, or a code of some sort. On the left is 210.138.184.59 and on the right is 162.89.0.47. I have never seen a version of this shirt that has been edited. If I remember correctly that is illegal. I pick it up and flip it around. The moment I flip the shirt it comes to life. In cyberblue the image of a temple slashes pixelized streaks flashing into existence and then fading away. The words “Everyone is watching, No one remembers, is this even real” flash as the temple disappears and they fade just as fast. I turn the shirt back over to the front and the coded numbers are gone. “That was weird…” I say under my breath. Looking at the numbers I realize I have seen these before. They are old school internet protocol addresses, from a time when people cared about privacy. They only show the general location of the user, not like today’s Neo-IP addresses that can tell if you moved your rig to another room. I pop into my rig and put in the first address in an old IP address locator. “210.138.184.59” I say to the AI It zooms out of The Floating World, into a land called Texas, then the United States, still searching it zooms east. I see all of these land masses I have never heard of. Europe, China, and finally it focuses on a small chain of islands labeled, Japan and finally we land somewhere in the western part of Tokyo. Tokyo… I feel like some of the video games I play talk about Tokyo. “Tell me about Tokyo.” “Tokyo was the capital of Japan. Japan is an island chain that fell into turmoil after a massive population collapse. The island chain is now uninhabited.” “Was there A Floating World city in Japan? Why are do I have an IP address?” “The Floating World is a one of a kind city of the Future built for your pleasure.” The AI responds, but it’s tone has shifted. If it were human I would think it went from actively responding to reading lines from a script. “Is there any association with The Floating World and Tokyo or Japan?” “Yes, there was an art movement in a city called Edo in Japan called Ukiyo-e - Pictures from the Floating World.” “Where is Edo?” “Edo was a city that lasted from 1603 to 1868 and was located in Modern Day Tokyo.” “God Damn these fucking robots. So literal and so frustrating.” So the first IP Address is in Tokyo. What about the second? “Look up 162.89.0.47.” It zooms out of Tokyo and follows the exact path back that we just went in reverse. As we pass China, Europe, Texas, Austin I start to get the chills. I know it before I see it. The IP address is located in the same general location as the address that my droid is being held hostage. I sit there silently. “what….” “warning! warning!” The rig starts freaking out. I am missing questions again. Another penilization. I missed the last two. I am down to one screen for the rest of the day. I exit. There is no point now and I need to figure out what is going on. I can’t consume. I don’t have my droid. I am at my end. The only option I see is to go find my stupid droid and see what all of this is about. I don’t remember the last time I went outside. It must have been a decade or more. I throw on the shirt they gave me. This all feels so fucking scary. My heart is racing. I don’t want to do it. I just want to lay in my rig and watch other people watching droids doing shit. I go to turn back and I hear the voice from my dream…”rikyu!” I turn around. No one is there. Something about that voice pushes me onward. I step through the open door. I don’t close the door (no one steals anymore. no one goes outside and no one really owns anything.) I feel the comfort and safety of the room sucking me back in, but I fight it. I don’t look back. My back foot steps out and through the portal. I am outside.
—— Fin ——
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## Narrative: The last thing I remember was a sweet smell of the sakura orchards and a vision of something more. A world full of beauty and balance and a women. Who shone like a pink moon, beautifully integrated into the moment. As I reached for her hand the vision began to crumble “Rikyu” she screams. <This is my first dream in years. It wasn’t just advertisements. How did it get there> I woke up with a shout, her name on the tip of my tongue, and a massive headache. A nostalgic sense of longing filtred through my body and the smell of the sakura lingered before the world hit me hard. I feel bodies on either side of me. My head is throbbing. My mouth tastes like I just licked the skin of a plantain. My reality starts to find it’s footing in the recesses of my mind. I am not from an idealic world full of joy and presenece. I am from the land of the scroll. My scream wakes nema up. The Body on my left. She left her mic on because the sound of hearing me sleep makes her feel like she’s not alone. Rando, the body to my right that we picked up last night doesn’t seem to wake up to my scream. Nema and I have been partying together for the last few nights. Generally a good time, but I can feel the need for more creeping in. Last night we brought home this rando and were able to get off natty, but by the end of the second session we both blasted porn on our iSight just to finish. The novelty barely lasts these days. **<Insert interaction between Nema and I that creates familiarity and might be able to show versus tell on the line above.>** I look over to the rando. Surprised that she hasn’t reacted, maybe her mic is off, but it is rare to not set your droids homing beacon on when staying at people’s places you’ve never met. “Nema, do you remember her name?” Nema: Oh yeah it’s. Hmm. Damn I actually don’t remember anything about her. I nudge her. She doesn’t move. I worry that her droids battery has died, generally there is an auto homing beacon before the distance away exceeds the battery life to reach it. I reach down and try to do a hard reset. Her mouth shoots open as if it were violently screaming. Out of her pops an old timey projector. “What the fuck my dick was in that last night.” From the projector a grainy film starts to play in the style of EPCOT’s City of the Future…promoting the The Floating World. Nema, “What is going on over there.” Her eyes are still closed. Rikyu, “Nothing. Just some old The Floating World propaganda coming out of the rando’s droids mouth.” Nema, “Let me see. I love that old timey shit.” It takes Nema a bit to get back in her suit and up and running. Eventually she sits up on her elbow and looks over me to see the hologram above the rando. “What if life were easy as Ube Pie! Pleasure at the touch of a button. Never leave your couch. Never have to work again. Never have to try again.” <I want this to start off as if it is doing the epcot style pitch, but slowly it degrades into something more sinister. The person speaking looks more and more evil. It sounds less like an oldtimey advert and more like an evil command. “Own nothing and you will be happy” kind of shit. “Humanity used to have to strive to be better, we were divided by race, wealth, intelligence, The Floating World solved this. There is only equality. We are equal. As the droid begins this last sentence the hologram starts to corrupt it glitches to imagery of orgies, drug overdoses, suicide, sadness loneliness and it creschendos with an imagery of a young girl being removed from her parents in The Floating World. It would appear she was born illegally. Nema and I sit and stare at a total loss for words. “…the fuck was that. I need some coffee, a stim, a beer, and some soma. My circuits are blown out. Fuck I think we might have gone too far.” It is hard to remember the last day we had any amount of sobriety. What is the point. Nema, “Did that just happen. It’s giving me weird ass vibes. Get that shit out of here.” ***<Getting Ready Scene Never leaving the bed. Pressing buttons for flavored Goo or having our droids do things.>*** Eventually Nema and I agree to send our droids home. We still can’t figure out the rando. When Nema’s droid walks out the door the Rando becomes alert and in the most fucked up way screams “Rikyu, come home” in the same voice that was in my dream last night. I whirl around and the droid is lifeless again, except an address has appeared on the screen. It is in a part of town I haven’t been since I was kid. It might be one of the last places I spent time outside. I was just about to receieve my first droid at 13 and I would never have to go outside again. That was a weird place. ***<Something weird happened there. I bumped into what looked like a beggar. Those don’t exist anymore. and he said my name. He said he was my uncle. That was fucking crazy because parents hadn’t existed for multiple generations. Everyone knew that was no longer a thing.>*** I decide to have my droid bring it to that address when I return from Nema’s. I need to get to streaming. My droid is on autopilot so I login to the droid games and I start placing bets. I login to my bank account to see how much UBC I qualified for yesterday. I am hit with an ad for the cheapest gas station horny goat weed possible. Fuck, the retinal scanned must have picked up that I was too faded to pay attention to the ads. You can always tell if you got paid more while you are logging in based on the quality of the product of the advertiser. The governments send the data to conglomerate bots before we receieve our payment so they are always one step ahead. I watch the ad. As a penance to the ad gods and my dick last night. I purchase the a single dose of the horny goat weed to be added to my transport tube. I get in my bank account and it is sparse. It looks like I won’t be able to stream my bets today. It’s a consumption day. That is as well as I am incredibly hungover. I begin to sort through the content to see if there is anything of interest, but per usual in a world of infinite options, there is nothing to choose. I have the ai model auto select and choose the max amount of screens it thinks I can handle based on my hrv, body temperature, and glucose. Three screens pop up. FUCK ME. On a decent day I can handle 10. It’s gonna take me a few days to get out of this cycle. I drink my monster energy. And lock in. They test you at random to make sure you are paying attention. If you get something wrong it hurts your UBC for the day. I start to notice an increasing number of food and sustenance ads. The ai must realize my blood sugar is flatlining. In 15 minutes to an hour it will be non-stop images and smells of food within my budget. The early guys start with deals. As I wait longer the price goes up. It hurts more to have discipline. I started skipping meals a few months ago. The AI hates me for it, but I like being able to save up for something really delicious. It has started to learn my game though so I need to throw it off from time time. Today seems a good a day as any. I select the cheapest shake. Artificially full of calories, corn syrup, and cock. It’s a hot honey chicken and fries shake delivered directly to my bedside. I go down to 1 screen while I eat. Some bullshit streamer going all in with a months earnings on a Droidara. The lull in my attention creates just enough space for me to realize it has been over an hour and my droid isn’t back. It usually takes 10 minutes or so for it to return from Nema’s place. I ping it’s location and it isn’t showing up. It has it’s last known location but it says it is dead. “What the fuck. I was at 42% before I left this morning.” I zone in on it’s last location before it died. It is the completely wrong direction from my place. “Damn it Nema, where did you send my droid.” My heart drops as I hone in on the location. My droid is at the exact address that was, I look away from the screens for a few seconds to confirm, is flashing. I get pinged for looking away. I lock back in to the screen. Utterly shocked and not sure what to do. I am so distracted I miss the quiz. I don’t even answer the question. I sit in defeat. I lost over half of the ubc I made in the last hour. The penalties for not consuming are incredibly high. I call Nema. She declines immediately. I call again and send an “SOS answer the phone GD” text. She calls back in 10 minutes. “What Yu? Idk about you but it only gave me two screens this morning. I can’t afford to be down 1 right now.” “Where did you send my droid?” “What?” “My droid. Where did you send it? It never made it back to my place, it isn’t responding and it’s battery died in the Crescent.” Nema looks off screen. “My droid made it back. I didn’t do anything I swear. About 30 minutes after our call it stood up and walked away. I assume you called it home. I found it odd that you took so long to send it back. I figured you were just playing with the rando that was left behind. “Bullshit. Who did you sell it to?” I generally wouldn’t trust Nema. Not anything against her personally, but you don’t trust anyone these days. I moved to call the droid police, this could help make up for my low bank account, and then I remembered. I never called the droid home. I checked my logs. I never called it home. I was so distracted by this other bot, I didn’t think twice about it. “Oh shit. My bad. I never called it home. Who summoned my droid?” “Yeah you should be sorry you fu…wait what? You didn’t call it? The security software for these droids is supposed to be impenetrable. No one has hacked a droid since I was 8 years old.” “Who the fuck could have hacked my droid?” I hear a knock at the door. “What the… Nema someone just knocked on my door” No one knocks on doors anymore. Droids that are allowed to enter have already been verified via an encrypted key. No one else can go in or out of the building. No one is accidentally anywhere. No one leaves their house. “Wow… Rikyu. What kind of shit are you in. None of this has happened in decades.” “Idk, but I think it has something to do with this random bot. The address that my droid was last pinged at is at the same address that the rando put on their screen after you left.” “Who is at the door?” The door. I totally forgot about the door. “ What do I do about that?” “Go look?” I get out of my cyberchair and walk over to the door. I go to open it, but it is locked. Fuck I realize that I haven’t done this in so long. I forgot to unlock the door. I get the door open. There is no one there. I look down the hall. LED lights so bright it looks like an empty white void. Nothing to either side. Hmmm… today is weird as fuck. I go to close the door and as I do I look down and see a package. It is a black box with “The Floating World.” Logo on top. I pick it up and go to open it. On the front of the box are the words, “Everyone is watching, No one remembers, is this even real?” What the fuck does that mean? I open the box. a thin note sits upon black wrapping paper. To Rikyu, “We have your droid. You have ours. Meet us at xxxx and we can swap. Come alone. Come ready. Wear this.” and under the note wrapped in black paper is a heavy cotton t-shirt. I recognize it at once with the logo “The Floating World” the disgusting promise of an effortless land, this is the shirt that everyone got when they moved into the The Floating World. It is the uniform of the society, only this one is different. There are numbers above the words on the left and right side. They look like coordinates, or addresses, or a code of some sort. On the left is 210.138.184.59 and on the right is 162.89.0.47. I have never seen a version of this shirt that has been edited. If I remember correctly that is illegal. I pick it up and flip it around. The moment I flip the shirt it comes to life. In cyberblue the image of a temple slashes pixelized streaks flashing into existence and then fading away. The words “Everyone is watching, No one remembers, is this even real” flash as the temple disappears and they fade just as fast. I turn the shirt back over to the front and the coded numbers are gone. “That was weird…” I say under my breath. Looking at the numbers I realize I have seen these before. They are old school internet protocol addresses, from a time when people cared about privacy. They only show the general location of the user, not like today’s Neo-IP addresses that can tell if you moved your rig to another room. I pop into my rig and put in the first address in an old IP address locator. “210.138.184.59” I say to the AI It zooms out of The Floating World, into a land called Texas, then the United States, still searching it zooms east. I see all of these land masses I have never heard of. Europe, China, and finally it focuses on a small chain of islands labeled, Japan and finally we land somewhere in the western part of Tokyo. Tokyo… I feel like some of the video games I play talk about Tokyo. “Tell me about Tokyo.” “Tokyo was the capital of Japan. Japan is an island chain that fell into turmoil after a massive population collapse. The island chain is now uninhabited.” “Was there A Floating World city in Japan? Why are do I have an IP address?” “The Floating World is a one of a kind city of the Future built for your pleasure.” The AI responds, but it’s tone has shifted. If it were human I would think it went from actively responding to reading lines from a script. “Is there any association with The Floating World and Tokyo or Japan?” “Yes, there was an art movement in a city called Edo in Japan called Ukiyo-e - Pictures from the Floating World.” “Where is Edo?” “Edo was a city that lasted from 1603 to 1868 and was located in Modern Day Tokyo.” “God Damn these fucking robots. So literal and so frustrating.” So the first IP Address is in Tokyo. What about the second? “Look up 162.89.0.47.” It zooms out of Tokyo and follows the exact path back that we just went in reverse. As we pass China, Europe, Texas, Austin I start to get the chills. I know it before I see it. The IP address is located in the same general location as the address that my droid is being held hostage. I sit there silently. “what….” “warning! warning!” The rig starts freaking out. I am missing questions again. Another penilization. I missed the last two. I am down to one screen for the rest of the day. I exit. There is no point now and I need to figure out what is going on. I can’t consume. I don’t have my droid. I am at my end. The only option I see is to go find my stupid droid and see what all of this is about. I don’t remember the last time I went outside. It must have been a decade or more. I throw on the shirt they gave me. This all feels so fucking scary. My heart is racing. I don’t want to do it. I just want to lay in my rig and watch other people watching droids doing shit. I go to turn back and I hear the voice from my dream…”rikyu!” I turn around. No one is there. Something about that voice pushes me onward. I step through the open door. I don’t close the door (no one steals anymore. no one goes outside and no one really owns anything.) I feel the comfort and safety of the room sucking me back in, but I fight it. I don’t look back. My back foot steps out and through the portal. I am outside.

3 months ago

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