God creates man, man is left to his own devices, man gets bored. So one cold, brittle evening, Milena got her nose pierced, promptly freaked out about it, then went about drugging her coworkers so they could get pierced too.
“Ooh,” they all said at once, crowding around the baggie Boxer was holding up. It was beautiful, they’d never seen anything like it. A new designer drug, known only as babypowder, the crushed pieces were silky, glimmering silver and blue in the fluorescent light. “This will do the trick.”
“Oh that stuff is crazy. Even I wouldn’t do it,” said Dr. Fu.
“Well you shouldn’t, you’re the who’s going to do the piercing,” Milena told him.
“Hm, so right.”
Milena examined her nose again in the mirror. “When is this gonna stop bleeding?” (Dr. Fu shrugged.) “You’re a surgeon!”
“Was a surgeon,” he corrected.
“I suppose it’s a good thing I’m wearing black,” said Milena, who was wearing a shirt that said ‘MILF Hunter’ in sparkly white letters.
All three of them were piss drunk, so they put on their coats and legged it to the bar. The city looked as it always did, barren and cold, pinpricks of buildings peering through the translucent fog that hung thick and low around the shivering waste of taxpayer money streetlamps. Milena’s coworkers went to the same watering hole as all the other office workers, a place called Blue Peroxide.
“Ugh, I’m so excited,” said Milena as she skipped down the sidewalk. “Those jerks deserve it for kicking me out of that meeting and sending me home. Who hasn’t shown up to work on no sleep? They’re so lucky I don’t get hangovers. Bunch of losers.”
“It occurs to me,” Dr. Fu said, “you can play the race card. Just say it’s an Indian thing. You guys get nose piercings all the time.”
“It is an Indian thing,” snapped Milena. “But – not in the way I’m – ugh, I don’t want to. Shut up, this is more fun.”
“I agree,” said Boxer. “The race card is boring.”
“God forbid you two be bored,” returned Dr. Fu.
Blue Peroxide was one of those bars that pretended to be real down to earth, with unpolished chrome hardware and spunky drink names, but the bartenders wore tuxes and no one ever got carded. The three of them stuck out like sore thumbs among the patent leather shoes and monochrome ties; Dr. Fu in his scrubs and buzzed head, Boxer’s nipples sticking out in his black, mesh shirt and Milena with her scrappy pigtails, blood streaking down her throat and pooling into her collar.
Boxer leaned over to Milena. “Remind me, do we own this bar?”
“I don’t think so,” she replied. “I avoid this place like the plague.”
His eyes gleamed up. “Go talk to your coworkers. Order a round of something pungent. Preferably a red wine.”
Boxer went over to the doorman, with his winning smile and shook his hand, slipping several crip hundred-dollar bills carefully into his cuff (freshly extracted from an ATM using Idgie’s card). “For your troubles.”
Dr. Fu sat down at the far end of the bar, polishing his needle lovingly with sanitizer. There were only two bartenders on duty, both malnourished, both grumpy. One of them had an architecture degree. There were any number of things Boxer could do. Probe out the apron pocket of cocaine, wi-fi search their web activity, twirl his switchblade around, flash some more hundred-dollar bills, or, and this was his favorite, win them over. Boxer was the only reasonable person you’d ever met. A bit of honesty went a long way. “Why, it’s only a silly prank”, and he had an enchanting voice, with the most gentle lilt, that drew you in and held your breath, “and he’s a doctor, we promised them we’d do it the right way”, because the only thing that mattered was what he was saying, “let me take those drinks over, don’t you worry about a thing”, eyes sweet with understanding, “of course this job sucks, you know my friend works at that agency, I’ll put in a word for you”. Only the mad, the irrational scream and shout and make a scene.
It was quite the scene, at the table, or would have been if they were conscious. Milena was standing at the head, giving a valiant speech, about browser histories and mandatory quiet hours to the mass of lulling heads, slack fingers around glass stems, slurred breaths going in and out, so fragile this mortal coil. Dr. Fu hustled over, with a big smile that was all teeth, brandishing his needle.
Milena took a seat at the bar and ordered a whiskey sour. It was nice to drink something other than those hideous Toadstools. She unclipped the silver tika she was wearing on her forehead and examined it for a second before slipping it into her pocket. No matter how thin and minimal versions of traditional jewelry she found, it was always uncomfortable, digging into her scalp, weighing down her earlobes. So odd, the display of our differences, must be done delicately, tactfully. When children, it was important to assimilate, no laughing matter. Curiously, it flips in adulthood. It was stylish again, celebratory to be unique, to indicate depth, to know more languages, and wear bindis proudly. Cultured, they called it. That wasn’t something Milena’s parents taught her, she was left to figure it out for herself. Milena wasn’t at odds with her heritage, she was at odds with her upbringing, with parents who said things like, ‘we’re your parents, not your friend.’ So of course she ran away from home and chopped her hair into a mullet and went to Princeton anyway.
Milena yawned, glancing at the time on her phone. Somewhere after midnight. She dabbed at her nose again. The blood had slowed down, congealing into gunk around her right nostril. It was tender. This should’ve been an agreeable moment, watching those jerks get what they deserved, Dr. Fu bent over the unconscious Elizabeth from sales, needle clamped between his teeth as Boxer held her head in place, but her chest was empty and the alcohol sat in the pit of her stomach, uncooperative. She was under strict orders to stay out of their line of sight. Lately, it seemed like everything they were doing had become clinical.
“Too bad Idgie isn’t here, she would’ve loved this,” Boxer was saying to Dr. Fu.
“Where is she?”
“Probably on one of her benders.”
Milena exhaled brusquely. That girl was nothing but trouble. She pulled up Idgie’s contact and called her. The phone rang several times, before going to voicemail. Milena pursed up her lips, calling again. No answer. She checked Idgie’s location, which showed she was up somewhere near the Fishhead. The Fishhead was the jankiest part in a janky city, suffering from in media res of industrialization. With the sidewalks all sticky from smog, derelicts laying around on dirty mattresses, not a police car bothering them in the world, it was Idgie’s/anyone’s go to place for a fix. Because it was right on the fjord, the Fishhead enjoyed a foamy breeze that went lazily up and down the corridors of lopsided houses and junkyards and shattered needles sparkling like rhinestones. That’s where Milena had met Idgie. In someone’s garage. Way before the party began. There was nothing to be done. Idgie would crawl out when she crawled out.
They were known as the Roaches. It had taken a lot quarreling and absurd hijinks to cement that name, smashing their way out of the Fishhead, onto to bigger things, spreading across town like octopus feet uncoiling. In the beginning there was the Word, and it was a troublesome one. They all had the same worm in their brains. Taking over Bible study groups, palms upturned, too-wide grins, stealing toy planes left on the strip, blowing up that oil rig, gathering up bums for medical trials, sleeping with politicians, fighting and snarling like bobcats, releasing military data, melting ATMs with barrels of gallium, jacking up law office toilets with homemade napalm, but store brought is just fine. Do the ends justify the means? But there was no end, no choices, only means, piling up all bloody and kicking. They thought themselves invincible.
Just then the worst thing ever happened. Milena’s phone died.
She looked around at the nearly empty bar, drowning to the sounds of soft, jazzy music coming from overhead. Most everyone had swum home to their treasures. She drummed her fingernails impatiently on the counter. Lately, Milena had been bothered by an odd kind of foreshadowing, something dark lurking just below the surface of her consciousness, imperceptible to the naked eye, catching her only on particularly red dawn, or lingering in the shower drain too long, Milena dare not turn her head for the possibility of seeing something not meant to be seen. It must be her drinking.
In an act of desperation, Milena picked up one of the ancient magazines piled up on a side table. Those things were crumbly, wasting away from disuse, even the ones that came out a month ago. The pages were matte, almost as if they were covered in some kind of substance nobody had ever touched before.
Milena skimmed as she sipped her whiskey sour. Boring, boring, gratuitous, boring. Celeb gossip rags, the Scoob is out and the nipple is back, a chatbot passed the Turing test but spewed racism at scientist, record-setting solar flares hit the earth in a week, degenerative AI cons grandmas into giving up social security numbers, it’s 80 degrees in November, here are six new ways to customize your coffee so your robot doesn’t dip its fingers in it, there are four essential things you need to know to make sure your brand lasts the collapse of civilization, sixty-year old man breaks out of rehab to go piss on the 10 Commandments stone outside the courthouse, another bot war has temporarily stopped all election news from being published –
Milena’s finger suddenly stopped at a death report.
She squinted at the tiny, texturized writing. Some young man, Holden White, had been found in his apartment, holed up, hiding from the authorities and god knows who else. The police raid found him in his bathtub, gonzo from opiates. ‘Holden is a defector from one of the city’s criminal gangs, and has been hoarding evidence. The authorities had been hunting him for months, until an anonymous tip came in yesterday morning. Most of the writing in his apartment are indecipherable, either in code, or complete nonsense as it’s been reported his mental faculties have been devolving. Holden’s apartment was bare, except for a mattress on the floor, a really old television set, and tons of notebooks, some empty, some not. Holden died of heart failure in the county jail last night, a mere fourteen hours after he’d been caught. An autopsy is currently underway.’
The sudden sound of whimpering made Milena look up. A great, burly man with a shiny and bald head was struggling as Boxer held him down, half dazed. “Spray him!” she called. Boxer bit the cap off the bottle of saline spray and sprayed it directly into the bald man’s eyes for several seconds till he was subdued.
Even between the matter-of-fact lines of a succinct paragraph, Milena knew something was brewing, like a cosmic force pulling at her hair. Who in god’s green dick was he talking about? The photograph of Holden was small, but in Technicolor. He wasn’t ugly, but his teeth were far too big for his mouth, black hair combed back, aching with pomade, and shirt collar buttoned wrong. The Marlboro red background lit up its subject sharply. They had taken the picture from his university ID. He taught there, when he felt like it. That man had a secret.
A quick search through some Internet forums and Milena found a scrap of one of Holden’s blogs, a URL. she typed up the URL, it led to a blank, softly purple screen, with the words “MAGNA CARTA (INSPECT)” written on the lefthand corner in bold, barely legible black font. That was it. The entire thing. Inspect? Inspect what? Milena called Boxer over, who was into this kind of thing, who told her “no duh, it literally means inspect, like inspect the page for code.” An easy maneuver, opening up the right-click menu and clicking on Inspect so the command center popped open on the right side of the screen. Milena hung up without explaining more and went sailing into the Courier world. It was hard to read through the brackets and commands and tags and whatnot, but there it was, in plain English. The first account, and lucky for her, the very beginning.
The h-tag read, Infinite zeroes, dated last January.
This is 1 of those things that started out bad and I say alright but how much worse can it get. And it did. Before I begin, I should confess that I have a propensity for the macabre and the strange. When a shadow looks wrong, most people turn away, but I want to tear it apart and find what’s making the odd noise. 1 can call it many things, curiosity, lack of self-preservation, boredom, what have you. I myself say: adventurer. The things happen, the world turns and goes from light to dark and back again, but for some reason I feel locked out of my own life, watching from behind glass. I grow tired. I grow tired of waiting for the stories to come to me, for trying to find poetry in the dregs of coffee cups in nameless cups and unknown mouths. A life of mediocrity is not a life lived at all. It is a haunted determination, somewhat cursed, the search for adventure. I live in a big city, and so the buildings and streets are rife with the heartthrob of lives being lived. I don’t understand how the universe is made. It’s very easy for me to pick apart the building blocks of reality, to probe the sinew out of the nerves. I think, if I can do it, anyone can, it must be so simple. I comb through some forums, venture into the dark web. Seemingly easy. Encrypt your web traffic, hide your browser, scroll freely and close your eyes as needed. Takes a few hours maybe. And so, I find out about the Game. I do my best to be discrete here, not name names and reveal weak links. This is not your adventure, and in your best interest to not dig. Curiosity is a twisted thing, and dark alleys and kitchen knives can shatter bones. The paper screen between you and I, it is safety.
Boxer and Dr. Fu were going at it. The heavy, putrid smell of blood wafted through the room like a serpent. The other patrons were too drunk or simple didn’t care about the masses of bodies slumped around the tables like forgotten outposts of some colonial space empire. The two bleary-eyed bartenders were busy wiping things and closing down the registers.
Some moment soon, the lights were going to come on and the music would stop. Till then, they pierced away, needle glinting in the light, blood trickling down steadily, as the glasses tipped further and further, wine soaking down corners.
Schizoposting 
