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 CHAPTER 1 Switch and gRazer November 6, Tuesday afternoon “NetPolice are following the trace left by a group of technoAnarchists that projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon...” BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice. I have to tell Audrey. He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid computer glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real. * * * The chip on Audrey’s temple came to life with a blue glow. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind flashed “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode a cascade of reports flashing the story. “Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that...” ‘Earth to Audrey...’ A sparkling icon burst and glowed red like an ember. This time it was Nina. ‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey texted, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake. Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids. * * * The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void. He went over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Crap, just missed it! The next 54 was in half an hour. Might as well walk. Dano made his way along a broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts. He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of vacant-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. He crossed the street. Dano walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated chip-reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet. * * * “Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent. “If they catch them I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.” “Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.” “You mean, like, in this case, is it satire, or is it copyrighted?” “Yeah, and who gets the money from the T-shirt sales, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?” “I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.” “I know, it’s so bizarre. Shows you how far things can come along in a year. I never thought I’d live to see the day.” “It just goes to show. When it comes down to it, Real is a lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.” “The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?” “Who? The Canadians that wanted to join?” “No, BLANK!” “BLANK? How should I know?” “Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?” “Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs... totally nerdy!” “So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?” Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it...” “About what?” “About designing a game... okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.” “Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?” “Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel. “It’s not the same.” “What’s not the same?” “SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes I think you’re trying to avoid Real.” “Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?” “According to Oxford? Let’s see... ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’” “But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up...” “Oh, help me... am I a woman dreaming of a butterfly or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a woman?” Nina buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.” Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!” “Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming it up, in which case... I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?” “Audrey!” “What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.” “Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?” “What do you mean?” “With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you... ?” “Of course not!” “No? You’re acting awfully defensive.” “There’s nothing going on between us.” “So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?” “Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But doing SIM for gRazers isn’t exactly easy. Half the time they complain, and the other half they’re not plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.” “Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.” “Yeah... I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about it, but it’s fun... okay, sometimes.” “At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the technicolour dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times...” “That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.” “Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s... well, he’s fucking amaaazing... the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?” “Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire video eyes. “You guys have something there.” “But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?” “Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.” “Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world is going corpFascist anyway?” “Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?” “Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals...” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “Yes, and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head. “Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity. Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Or were they?” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.” Nina rolled her eyes. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.” “Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into a skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place. “Oh, Audrey!” “Maybe I’m just paranoid.” “Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow.

Chapter One Continued

 CHAPTER 1 Switch and gRazer November 6, Tuesday afternoon “NetPolice are following the trace left by a group of technoAnarchists that projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon...” BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice. I have to tell Audrey. He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid computer glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real. * * * The chip on Audrey’s temple came to life with a blue glow. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind flashed “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode a cascade of reports flashing the story. “Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that...” ‘Earth to Audrey...’ A sparkling icon burst and glowed red like an ember. This time it was Nina. ‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey texted, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake. Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids. * * * The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void. He went over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Crap, just missed it! The next 54 was in half an hour. Might as well walk. Dano made his way along a broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts. He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of vacant-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. He crossed the street. Dano walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated chip-reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet. * * * “Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent. “If they catch them I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.” “Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.” “You mean, like, in this case, is it satire, or is it copyrighted?” “Yeah, and who gets the money from the T-shirt sales, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?” “I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.” “I know, it’s so bizarre. Shows you how far things can come along in a year. I never thought I’d live to see the day.” “It just goes to show. When it comes down to it, Real is a lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.” “The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?” “Who? The Canadians that wanted to join?” “No, BLANK!” “BLANK? How should I know?” “Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?” “Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs... totally nerdy!” “So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?” Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it...” “About what?” “About designing a game... okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.” “Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?” “Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel. “It’s not the same.” “What’s not the same?” “SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes I think you’re trying to avoid Real.” “Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?” “According to Oxford? Let’s see... ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’” “But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up...” “Oh, help me... am I a woman dreaming of a butterfly or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a woman?” Nina buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.” Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!” “Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming it up, in which case... I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?” “Audrey!” “What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.” “Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?” “What do you mean?” “With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you... ?” “Of course not!” “No? You’re acting awfully defensive.” “There’s nothing going on between us.” “So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?” “Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But doing SIM for gRazers isn’t exactly easy. Half the time they complain, and the other half they’re not plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.” “Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.” “Yeah... I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about it, but it’s fun... okay, sometimes.” “At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the technicolour dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times...” “That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.” “Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s... well, he’s fucking amaaazing... the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?” “Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire video eyes. “You guys have something there.” “But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?” “Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.” “Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world is going corpFascist anyway?” “Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?” “Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals...” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “Yes, and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head. “Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity. Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Or were they?” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.” Nina rolled her eyes. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.” “Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into a skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place. “Oh, Audrey!” “Maybe I’m just paranoid.” “Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow.
 CHAPTER 1 Switch and gRazer November 6, Tuesday afternoon “NetPolice are following the trace left by a group of technoAnarchists that projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon...” BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice. I have to tell Audrey. He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid computer glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real. * * * The chip on Audrey’s temple came to life with a blue glow. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind flashed “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode a cascade of reports flashing the story. “Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that...” ‘Earth to Audrey...’ A sparkling icon burst and glowed red like an ember. This time it was Nina. ‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey texted, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake. Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids. * * * The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void. He went over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Crap, just missed it! The next 54 was in half an hour. Might as well walk. Dano made his way along a broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts. He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of vacant-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. He crossed the street. Dano walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated chip-reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet. * * * “Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent. “If they catch them I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.” “Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.” “You mean, like, in this case, is it satire, or is it copyrighted?” “Yeah, and who gets the money from the T-shirt sales, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?” “I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.” “I know, it’s so bizarre. Shows you how far things can come along in a year. I never thought I’d live to see the day.” “It just goes to show. When it comes down to it, Real is a lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.” “The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?” “Who? The Canadians that wanted to join?” “No, BLANK!” “BLANK? How should I know?” “Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?” “Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs... totally nerdy!” “So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?” Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it...” “About what?” “About designing a game... okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.” “Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?” “Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel. “It’s not the same.” “What’s not the same?” “SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes I think you’re trying to avoid Real.” “Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?” “According to Oxford? Let’s see... ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’” “But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up...” “Oh, help me... am I a woman dreaming of a butterfly or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a woman?” Nina buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.” Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!” “Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming it up, in which case... I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?” “Audrey!” “What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.” “Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?” “What do you mean?” “With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you... ?” “Of course not!” “No? You’re acting awfully defensive.” “There’s nothing going on between us.” “So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?” “Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But doing SIM for gRazers isn’t exactly easy. Half the time they complain, and the other half they’re not plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.” “Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.” “Yeah... I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about it, but it’s fun... okay, sometimes.” “At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the technicolour dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times...” “That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.” “Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s... well, he’s fucking amaaazing... the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?” “Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire video eyes. “You guys have something there.” “But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?” “Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.” “Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world is going corpFascist anyway?” “Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?” “Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals...” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “Yes, and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head. “Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity. Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Or were they?” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.” Nina rolled her eyes. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.” “Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into a skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place. “Oh, Audrey!” “Maybe I’m just paranoid.” “Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow.
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 CHAPTER 1 Switch and gRazer November 6, Tuesday afternoon “NetPolice are following the trace left by a group of technoAnarchists that projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon...” BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice. I have to tell Audrey. He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid computer glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real. * * * The chip on Audrey’s temple came to life with a blue glow. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind flashed “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode a cascade of reports flashing the story. “Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that...” ‘Earth to Audrey...’ A sparkling icon burst and glowed red like an ember. This time it was Nina. ‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey texted, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake. Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids. * * * The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void. He went over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Crap, just missed it! The next 54 was in half an hour. Might as well walk. Dano made his way along a broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts. He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of vacant-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. He crossed the street. Dano walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated chip-reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet. * * * “Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent. “If they catch them I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.” “Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.” “You mean, like, in this case, is it satire, or is it copyrighted?” “Yeah, and who gets the money from the T-shirt sales, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?” “I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.” “I know, it’s so bizarre. Shows you how far things can come along in a year. I never thought I’d live to see the day.” “It just goes to show. When it comes down to it, Real is a lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.” “The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?” “Who? The Canadians that wanted to join?” “No, BLANK!” “BLANK? How should I know?” “Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?” “Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs... totally nerdy!” “So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?” Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it...” “About what?” “About designing a game... okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.” “Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?” “Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel. “It’s not the same.” “What’s not the same?” “SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes I think you’re trying to avoid Real.” “Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?” “According to Oxford? Let’s see... ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’” “But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up...” “Oh, help me... am I a woman dreaming of a butterfly or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a woman?” Nina buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.” Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!” “Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming it up, in which case... I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?” “Audrey!” “What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.” “Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?” “What do you mean?” “With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you... ?” “Of course not!” “No? You’re acting awfully defensive.” “There’s nothing going on between us.” “So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?” “Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But doing SIM for gRazers isn’t exactly easy. Half the time they complain, and the other half they’re not plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.” “Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.” “Yeah... I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about it, but it’s fun... okay, sometimes.” “At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the technicolour dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times...” “That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.” “Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s... well, he’s fucking amaaazing... the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?” “Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire video eyes. “You guys have something there.” “But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?” “Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.” “Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world is going corpFascist anyway?” “Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?” “Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals...” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “Yes, and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head. “Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity. Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Or were they?” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.” Nina rolled her eyes. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.” “Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into a skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place. “Oh, Audrey!” “Maybe I’m just paranoid.” “Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow.
 CHAPTER 1 Switch and gRazer November 6, Tuesday afternoon “NetPolice are following the trace left by a group of technoAnarchists that projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon...” BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice. I have to tell Audrey. He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid computer glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real. * * * The chip on Audrey’s temple came to life with a blue glow. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind flashed “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode a cascade of reports flashing the story. “Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that...” ‘Earth to Audrey...’ A sparkling icon burst and glowed red like an ember. This time it was Nina. ‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey texted, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake. Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids. * * * The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void. He went over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Crap, just missed it! The next 54 was in half an hour. Might as well walk. Dano made his way along a broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts. He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of vacant-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. He crossed the street. Dano walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated chip-reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet. * * * “Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent. “If they catch them I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.” “Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.” “You mean, like, in this case, is it satire, or is it copyrighted?” “Yeah, and who gets the money from the T-shirt sales, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?” “I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.” “I know, it’s so bizarre. Shows you how far things can come along in a year. I never thought I’d live to see the day.” “It just goes to show. When it comes down to it, Real is a lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.” “The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?” “Who? The Canadians that wanted to join?” “No, BLANK!” “BLANK? How should I know?” “Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?” “Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs... totally nerdy!” “So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?” Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it...” “About what?” “About designing a game... okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.” “Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?” “Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel. “It’s not the same.” “What’s not the same?” “SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes I think you’re trying to avoid Real.” “Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?” “According to Oxford? Let’s see... ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’” “But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up...” “Oh, help me... am I a woman dreaming of a butterfly or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a woman?” Nina buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.” Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!” “Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming it up, in which case... I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?” “Audrey!” “What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.” “Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?” “What do you mean?” “With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you... ?” “Of course not!” “No? You’re acting awfully defensive.” “There’s nothing going on between us.” “So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?” “Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But doing SIM for gRazers isn’t exactly easy. Half the time they complain, and the other half they’re not plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.” “Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.” “Yeah... I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about it, but it’s fun... okay, sometimes.” “At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the technicolour dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times...” “That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.” “Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s... well, he’s fucking amaaazing... the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?” “Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire video eyes. “You guys have something there.” “But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?” “Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.” “Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world is going corpFascist anyway?” “Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?” “Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals...” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “Yes, and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head. “Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity. Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Or were they?” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.” Nina rolled her eyes. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.” “Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into a skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place. “Oh, Audrey!” “Maybe I’m just paranoid.” “Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow.
 CHAPTER 1 Switch and gRazer November 6, Tuesday afternoon “NetPolice are following the trace left by a group of technoAnarchists that projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon...” BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice. I have to tell Audrey. He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid computer glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real. * * * The chip on Audrey’s temple came to life with a blue glow. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind flashed “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode a cascade of reports flashing the story. “Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that...” ‘Earth to Audrey...’ A sparkling icon burst and glowed red like an ember. This time it was Nina. ‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey texted, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake. Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids. * * * The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void. He went over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Crap, just missed it! The next 54 was in half an hour. Might as well walk. Dano made his way along a broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts. He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of vacant-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. He crossed the street. Dano walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated chip-reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet. * * * “Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent. “If they catch them I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.” “Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.” “You mean, like, in this case, is it satire, or is it copyrighted?” “Yeah, and who gets the money from the T-shirt sales, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?” “I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.” “I know, it’s so bizarre. Shows you how far things can come along in a year. I never thought I’d live to see the day.” “It just goes to show. When it comes down to it, Real is a lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.” “The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?” “Who? The Canadians that wanted to join?” “No, BLANK!” “BLANK? How should I know?” “Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?” “Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs... totally nerdy!” “So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?” Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it...” “About what?” “About designing a game... okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.” “Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?” “Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel. “It’s not the same.” “What’s not the same?” “SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes I think you’re trying to avoid Real.” “Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?” “According to Oxford? Let’s see... ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’” “But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up...” “Oh, help me... am I a woman dreaming of a butterfly or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a woman?” Nina buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.” Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!” “Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming it up, in which case... I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?” “Audrey!” “What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.” “Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?” “What do you mean?” “With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you... ?” “Of course not!” “No? You’re acting awfully defensive.” “There’s nothing going on between us.” “So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?” “Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But doing SIM for gRazers isn’t exactly easy. Half the time they complain, and the other half they’re not plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.” “Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.” “Yeah... I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about it, but it’s fun... okay, sometimes.” “At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the technicolour dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times...” “That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.” “Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s... well, he’s fucking amaaazing... the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?” “Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire video eyes. “You guys have something there.” “But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?” “Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.” “Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world is going corpFascist anyway?” “Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?” “Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals...” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “Yes, and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head. “Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity. Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Or were they?” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.” Nina rolled her eyes. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.” “Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into a skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place. “Oh, Audrey!” “Maybe I’m just paranoid.” “Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow.
 CHAPTER 1 Switch and gRazer November 6, Tuesday afternoon “NetPolice are following the trace left by a group of technoAnarchists that projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon...” BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice. I have to tell Audrey. He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid computer glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real. * * * The chip on Audrey’s temple came to life with a blue glow. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind flashed “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode a cascade of reports flashing the story. “Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that...” ‘Earth to Audrey...’ A sparkling icon burst and glowed red like an ember. This time it was Nina. ‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey texted, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake. Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids. * * * The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void. He went over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Crap, just missed it! The next 54 was in half an hour. Might as well walk. Dano made his way along a broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts. He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of vacant-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. He crossed the street. Dano walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated chip-reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet. * * * “Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent. “If they catch them I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.” “Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.” “You mean, like, in this case, is it satire, or is it copyrighted?” “Yeah, and who gets the money from the T-shirt sales, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?” “I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.” “I know, it’s so bizarre. Shows you how far things can come along in a year. I never thought I’d live to see the day.” “It just goes to show. When it comes down to it, Real is a lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.” “The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?” “Who? The Canadians that wanted to join?” “No, BLANK!” “BLANK? How should I know?” “Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?” “Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs... totally nerdy!” “So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?” Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it...” “About what?” “About designing a game... okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.” “Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?” “Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel. “It’s not the same.” “What’s not the same?” “SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes I think you’re trying to avoid Real.” “Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?” “According to Oxford? Let’s see... ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’” “But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up...” “Oh, help me... am I a woman dreaming of a butterfly or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a woman?” Nina buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.” Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!” “Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming it up, in which case... I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?” “Audrey!” “What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.” “Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?” “What do you mean?” “With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you... ?” “Of course not!” “No? You’re acting awfully defensive.” “There’s nothing going on between us.” “So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?” “Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But doing SIM for gRazers isn’t exactly easy. Half the time they complain, and the other half they’re not plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.” “Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.” “Yeah... I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about it, but it’s fun... okay, sometimes.” “At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the technicolour dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times...” “That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.” “Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s... well, he’s fucking amaaazing... the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?” “Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire video eyes. “You guys have something there.” “But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?” “Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.” “Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world is going corpFascist anyway?” “Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?” “Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals...” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “Yes, and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head. “Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity. Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Or were they?” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.” Nina rolled her eyes. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.” “Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into a skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place. “Oh, Audrey!” “Maybe I’m just paranoid.” “Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow.
 CHAPTER 1 Switch and gRazer November 6, Tuesday afternoon “NetPolice are following the trace left by a group of technoAnarchists that projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon...” BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice. I have to tell Audrey. He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid computer glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real. * * * The chip on Audrey’s temple came to life with a blue glow. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind flashed “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode a cascade of reports flashing the story. “Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that...” ‘Earth to Audrey...’ A sparkling icon burst and glowed red like an ember. This time it was Nina. ‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey texted, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake. Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids. * * * The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void. He went over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Crap, just missed it! The next 54 was in half an hour. Might as well walk. Dano made his way along a broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts. He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of vacant-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. He crossed the street. Dano walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated chip-reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet. * * * “Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent. “If they catch them I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.” “Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.” “You mean, like, in this case, is it satire, or is it copyrighted?” “Yeah, and who gets the money from the T-shirt sales, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?” “I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.” “I know, it’s so bizarre. Shows you how far things can come along in a year. I never thought I’d live to see the day.” “It just goes to show. When it comes down to it, Real is a lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.” “The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?” “Who? The Canadians that wanted to join?” “No, BLANK!” “BLANK? How should I know?” “Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?” “Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs... totally nerdy!” “So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?” Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it...” “About what?” “About designing a game... okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.” “Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?” “Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel. “It’s not the same.” “What’s not the same?” “SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes I think you’re trying to avoid Real.” “Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?” “According to Oxford? Let’s see... ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’” “But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up...” “Oh, help me... am I a woman dreaming of a butterfly or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a woman?” Nina buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.” Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!” “Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming it up, in which case... I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?” “Audrey!” “What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.” “Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?” “What do you mean?” “With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you... ?” “Of course not!” “No? You’re acting awfully defensive.” “There’s nothing going on between us.” “So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?” “Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But doing SIM for gRazers isn’t exactly easy. Half the time they complain, and the other half they’re not plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.” “Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.” “Yeah... I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about it, but it’s fun... okay, sometimes.” “At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the technicolour dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times...” “That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.” “Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s... well, he’s fucking amaaazing... the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?” “Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire video eyes. “You guys have something there.” “But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?” “Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.” “Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world is going corpFascist anyway?” “Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?” “Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals...” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “Yes, and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head. “Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity. Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Or were they?” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.” Nina rolled her eyes. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.” “Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into a skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place. “Oh, Audrey!” “Maybe I’m just paranoid.” “Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow.
 CHAPTER 1 Switch and gRazer November 6, Tuesday afternoon “NetPolice are following the trace left by a group of technoAnarchists that projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon...” BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice. I have to tell Audrey. He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid computer glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real. * * * The chip on Audrey’s temple came to life with a blue glow. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind flashed “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode a cascade of reports flashing the story. “Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that...” ‘Earth to Audrey...’ A sparkling icon burst and glowed red like an ember. This time it was Nina. ‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey texted, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake. Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids. * * * The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void. He went over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Crap, just missed it! The next 54 was in half an hour. Might as well walk. Dano made his way along a broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts. He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of vacant-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. He crossed the street. Dano walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated chip-reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet. * * * “Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent. “If they catch them I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.” “Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.” “You mean, like, in this case, is it satire, or is it copyrighted?” “Yeah, and who gets the money from the T-shirt sales, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?” “I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.” “I know, it’s so bizarre. Shows you how far things can come along in a year. I never thought I’d live to see the day.” “It just goes to show. When it comes down to it, Real is a lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.” “The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?” “Who? The Canadians that wanted to join?” “No, BLANK!” “BLANK? How should I know?” “Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?” “Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs... totally nerdy!” “So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?” Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it...” “About what?” “About designing a game... okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.” “Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?” “Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel. “It’s not the same.” “What’s not the same?” “SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes I think you’re trying to avoid Real.” “Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?” “According to Oxford? Let’s see... ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’” “But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up...” “Oh, help me... am I a woman dreaming of a butterfly or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a woman?” Nina buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.” Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!” “Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming it up, in which case... I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?” “Audrey!” “What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.” “Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?” “What do you mean?” “With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you... ?” “Of course not!” “No? You’re acting awfully defensive.” “There’s nothing going on between us.” “So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?” “Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But doing SIM for gRazers isn’t exactly easy. Half the time they complain, and the other half they’re not plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.” “Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.” “Yeah... I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about it, but it’s fun... okay, sometimes.” “At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the technicolour dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times...” “That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.” “Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s... well, he’s fucking amaaazing... the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?” “Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire video eyes. “You guys have something there.” “But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?” “Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.” “Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world is going corpFascist anyway?” “Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?” “Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals...” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “Yes, and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head. “Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity. Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Or were they?” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.” Nina rolled her eyes. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.” “Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into a skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place. “Oh, Audrey!” “Maybe I’m just paranoid.” “Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow.
 CHAPTER 1 Switch and gRazer November 6, Tuesday afternoon “NetPolice are following the trace left by a group of technoAnarchists that projected Mickey Mouse ears onto Mount Rushmore. The notorious hackers, BLANK, took credit for the election day incident, declaring it another BLANKprank art happening. Authorities say they anticipate arrests soon...” BLANKprank. Kool. Dano steadied himself and turned away from the public vidScreen as the streetcar came to a halt. He usually didn’t pay attention to the brainless mix of infotainment and adverts, but this was juice. I have to tell Audrey. He texted her, hit PLAY on his app, and his head filled with last century Rok blasted from a pair of old wireless earpods. He couldn’t afford one of those eyeVid computer glasses everyone wore, let alone the latest SIMchip jewelry, but he didn’t give a damn. No skin off his back. That SIMchip crap was fucked up anyway. Yeah, so maybe it looked razz on your forehead, but a direct net link to your brain? No fucking way. That stuff messed with your head. Sure, SIM could be intense, as intense as Real, but in the end that shit wasn’t real. * * * The chip on Audrey’s temple came to life with a blue glow. Audrey, fresh from her shower, sat naked and knock-kneed, drying her long iridescent blond hair with a towel. The inbox on the info layer in her mind flashed “Dano” with a cheesy ancient app icon. gRazers! Whatever. She read the text and smiled. ‘Juice,’ she responded, ‘love it!’ She hooked onto her news feed and rode a cascade of reports flashing the story. “Early exit polls in the North American presidential elections are showing Walt Disney Inc., the Republican candidate, with a solid 62 percent lead. Meanwhile, netPolice eyeTs still haven’t been able to dismantle the hacker program that is projecting the Mickey Mouse ears on to Mount Rushmore. Apparently a protest by BLANK against the Disney Corporation’s bid for the presidency, the holo projection is run by a morphing fractal that...” ‘Earth to Audrey...’ A sparkling icon burst and glowed red like an ember. This time it was Nina. ‘sorry :) forgot; gimme a sec,’ Audrey texted, threw on some underwear, thoughtClicked a link and found herself on the lake. Their lake. Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake, wriggling their toes in the spectral water. An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed their faces like some faded bleached-out memory. A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way. Nobody remembered it. No one else came anymore. It was now their private SIMlounge. They’d been hanging here, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first eyeVids. * * * The polite voice suggested he mind his step as Dano alighted into the grey chill of a November afternoon and the Kraut Rok sounds of late Einsturzende. The doors hissed shut, and the driverless streetcar rumbled off behind him. He hunched his lithe athletic frame, zipped up his worn black leather jacket, and stuck his cold hands into the pockets. The stillness in his clear blue eyes was misleading. A deeper look uncovered a gaze that was soulful yet searing, the lucid eyes of someone who sees truth in the void. He went over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Crap, just missed it! The next 54 was in half an hour. Might as well walk. Dano made his way along a broken sidewalk, past grimy, mid-last century Communist-era concrete-panel high-rises. Public housing. It smelled like piss. People here lived like weeds in the cracks of society, barely surviving on bottomFeeder wages. The sun’s wan reflections in shards of shattered beer and vodka bottles confirmed that it too had turned its back on these parts. He passed a rusting carcass of a car. Just beyond it a couple of vacant-eyed Razr4Kids strung out on zingers were jerking like zombies to the jackhammer beat of some deathZKunt band. This was their turf. He crossed the street. Dano walked on. FreeGrazing. Yeah, that’s what they called it, you know, just taking it all in, chill to the menace, go with the flow. Dano was a gRazer ‘cause he wanted it Real. Get it? Just stuff coming at him natural and not have some computer-fed SIMulated chip-reality screwing around in his thoughts like Switch did. Troglodyte, they called him. You bet. * * * “Mickey Mouse ears on Mount Rushmore? I’ll bet they get charged with copyright infringement.” Nina’s pixie nose and the gap in her front teeth did not make her look like the gawky chipmunk that she imagined. Nevertheless they had the effect of tenderizing her somewhat sarcastic mocking personality into something more along the lines of just plain irreverent. “If they catch them I’m sure that’ll be the least of their problems.” “Well, yeah. Still, things are sure gonna get weird if a corp gets elected president.” “You mean, like, in this case, is it satire, or is it copyrighted?” “Yeah, and who gets the money from the T-shirt sales, the US of NA or Walt Disney Inc.?” “I still can’t believe it! Do you really think they’re going to pull this off? Elect a corporation as President of the North American States!? What a joke!” Audrey shook her head in amazement. “And it was a joke!” She threw her hands up in the air. “The whole draft Mickey Mouse for President was a bloody joke, a protest that started in Quebec.” “I know, it’s so bizarre. Shows you how far things can come along in a year. I never thought I’d live to see the day.” “It just goes to show. When it comes down to it, Real is a lot stranger than SIM. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.” “The Canadians must be really happy they joined the US,” Nina quipped. “So who do you think they are?” “Who? The Canadians that wanted to join?” “No, BLANK!” “BLANK? How should I know?” “Do you think they’re corp eyeT nerds? You know, in their day jobs?” “Frustrated corp eyeT by day, artPrank hacktivists by night? I dunno, doesn’t seem likely. Corp eyeTs are, you know, corp eyeTs... totally nerdy!” “So what do you think those hackers do for a day job?” Audrey shrugged. “Download bankCredits? Design SIMgames? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it...” “About what?” “About designing a game... okay, not a game exactly, but a SIM where people can actually touch each other, you know, inside their feelings. It would be a whole new SIM experience.” “Oh, god help us, Audrey, isn’t feelings what Real is for?” “Nina, in Real you’re only guessing how someone else feels.” Audrey swabbed her hair with the low-res towel. “It’s not the same.” “What’s not the same?” “SIM and Real. SIM is SIM, even when it comes to feelings. Sometimes I think you’re trying to avoid Real.” “Really? And what exactly is Real, anyway? Can you define it?” “According to Oxford? Let’s see... ‘existence that is absolute, self-sufficient or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.’” “But what if that’s all wrong, and Real is completely subjective? Maybe my consciousness is all there is, and this world is something I dreamt up...” “Oh, help me... am I a woman dreaming of a butterfly or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a woman?” Nina buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know about the butterfly, but if I had dreamt up a world, it would have been way different from this one.” Nina lifted her head cautiously. “There, see? It’s not you. You’re off the hook!” “Well, maybe I don’t know, maybe I’m dreaming it up, in which case... I mean, makes you wonder, who’s ‘I’ anyway?” “Audrey!” “What?” Audrey’s washed-out image glared back. “Anyway, I think I’m more of a SIMtreatment kind of grrrl than a SIMgame designer.” “Yeah, I’ll buy that. So, how’s it working out with Dano?” “What do you mean?” “With the SIMtreatments you’re doing for his band. What did you think I meant? Are you... ?” “Of course not!” “No? You’re acting awfully defensive.” “There’s nothing going on between us.” “So you’re not doing the SIMtreatments for his band anymore?” “Oh, yeah. That’s still going on. But doing SIM for gRazers isn’t exactly easy. Half the time they complain, and the other half they’re not plugged in and have no idea what I’m doing. They just don’t get it.” “Or they don’t want to get it because they’re gRazers.” “Yeah... I think they’re only going along with it because Dano wants it. I feel a little weird about it, but it’s fun... okay, sometimes.” “At least they know enough to listen to Dano!” Nina gazed off into the technicolour dreamscape. “I’ve only seen you guys a couple of times...” “That’s ‘cause we’ve only played a couple of times.” “Your stuff is really good, and Dano, he’s... well, he’s fucking amaaazing... the best damned guitarist I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, I’m ‘good’ and he’s ‘fucking amaazing’?” “Come on Audrey, The eXitTrip are awesome.” Nina looked into Audrey’s sapphire video eyes. “You guys have something there.” “But there aren’t any guarantees, are there?” Audrey dropped the towel and it pixilated and vanished. “I mean I can’t help thinking, what if we don’t make it?” “Then you gave it your best shot and you try something else.” “Like what? A corp job? Sell my soul ‘cause the whole world is going corpFascist anyway?” “Audrey, what’s that got to do with anything? Haven’t we had this conversation like about a hundred times?” “Well, maybe that’s because you’re still not getting it.” Audrey stood up and went to her dresser. In SIM she was hovering, in bra and panties, casting discordant reflections out over the rasterized water. “I mean, look at the North American States! First their Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as individuals...” She walked on digital water, a series of freeze-framed steps, back to the dock, with an armful of clothes. “Yes, and now they’re about to elect Walt Disney Inc.” Audrey pulled a sweater over her head. “Power to the people.” Nina shrugged. “I bet Wall Street wasn’t backing Mickey Mouse.” She looked to Audrey for some sign of levity. Audrey’s head popped out of the sweater. “Or were they?” She slipped into a pair of tights and wriggled them up to her waist. “Somebody paid for all those votes.” Nina rolled her eyes. “We’re not the North American States, Audrey.” “Only because there are too many factions in the European Union to buy every one of them.” She stepped into a skirt, zipped it up, plunked herself back down and cast her eyes over the ripples in the water, absently anticipating the recurring glitch in the repeat. That it was such an outmoded SIM program only added to the nostalgic sentimentality of the place. “Oh, Audrey!” “Maybe I’m just paranoid.” “Ya think?” Nina furrowed her brow.