Nathan Skeleton and Schumel Freidnly had just called Larry Vaguer down from the ledge; afterwards, they were surprised he had actually found a way up there. The building was so immaculately suicide proofed such that any celebrities or public figures used it as a means to demonstrate their lack of ideation – to show that they weren’t “suicided” after leaking something they really shouldn’t have had access to no matter which way you throw it. Larry just liked the catering and the TVs they used – “none of that QEC projector shit.” Larry grabbed his phone, remembering that QECs quarterly shareholder meeting was about to begin. The boilerplate loop which had been parodied, remixed and rewritten into a King Rat; when many rats all tie into each other and begin to consume any of the rats that aren’t joined to the knot.

“Introducing the “Quantum Encrypted Cineplex” (QEC) – a revolutionary secret film stock that pushes the boundaries of film technology and cryptography. At its core, the QEC is a complex blend of advanced materials and quantum encryption techniques, designed to securely store sensitive information through a multi-layered encryption process.”

“The base layer of the QEC film stock is a thin and flexible substrate infused with metamaterials that exhibit unique quantum properties. These metamaterials have been engineered to harness quantum entanglement, allowing for instantaneous and secure communication between paired quantum particles. This process forms the foundation of the encryption mechanism, ensuring that the information stored within the film remains inaccessible to unauthorized parties.”

“To unlock a particular segment, a user must possess the correct key, which corresponds to a specific quantum state of the entangled particles within the film.”

“Hidden within the encrypted layers of the QEC film are secret alternate reels, accessible only to those with specialized quantum decryption devices.”

“The projector interacts with the quantum properties of the film, detecting and decrypting the information in real-time as the film is projected onto the screen. The “Quantum Encrypted Cineplex” represents a cutting-edge fusion of film technology and quantum mechanics, ensuring unparalleled security and secrecy.”

“Its utilization in sensitive areas such as espionage, military intelligence, and classified information storage could revolutionize the way governments and organizations safeguard their most valuable secrets. As a film stock shrouded in mystery and scientific ingenuity, the QEC pushes the boundaries of what is possible in the realm of encryption and film innovation.”

And then thirty seconds of ambient stock music roughly in the shape of something from Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Pt II plays until the loop begins. For five years, probably half the world has heard and memorized and imprinted every formant of every inflection of syllable into their mind. And to this day, nobody knows who recorded it or said these words. It’s not as if the loop matters regardless; QEC is here. It’s real.

The three of them had their phones split, one side watching the stock – mostly sideways – the other side pinging with notifications over the loop.

—

Schumel was listening to chillwave in his pod. He liked his pod. His place – the Poditorium- people used to say they were the Planet Fitnesseses for Fake Nomads. Schumel loved this location though. And the variance in textures and interactivity between members was addictive. And somehow – he had reached a point where his living there was earning him net positive inflow. They gave him a line of credit, a metal card and a pair of vintage Ray-Bans. Schumel was thinking about his old girlfriend again. She was older. He was 14. She was 17. About to hit 18. She totally cut him off at some point. He sadly wishes she would read his poetry sometime; hers was so thrilling and visceral. Like a delicate woman talking about a David Cronenberg film in slow motion. And she was Jewish. He wasn’t. And he never actually found any real proof that she was Jewish, besides the name: Resterberg.

No early life section for her, sadly. Her poetic dreams dried before they could even hit grad school puberty, and she became a health-food-and-supplements lifestyle guru. Schumel would laugh at the idea of her chanting mantras as her starved inner poet deep in some brain-prison was in a dementia haze-loop of tendrils and sinew being played like violins, muscles atrophying to become statues, worlds inside of veins exposed, poetic shit that men can’t get away with. They talk about teeth — if they’re cool. Or knee bones, shoulder blades.

——

“What were you even doing bro?”

“He was trying to kill—”

No, no, Larry interrupted. Well, yes. My therapsycophudette had been kidnapped and compromised by an AI twin via Sybil attack. I was totally fixed into position. And scaling the building and all that – that was from my childhood. My dad actually helped build this place.

“No shit?”

Yeah, there’s like… a million ways to commit suicide here.

“Like how else?”

You can just fix two exit doors with a belt to access the true roof; from there you have enough jump space to really land and splat hard. But the twin didn’t find this one. She only knew of the memories that she jacked from my original TPSPD which mostly took place in my teenage years… when shit got really crazy and like, we ended up with QEC.

“The QEC update this year… we all gotta be real… they’re cooked still?”

Yeah, but there is no way any of us will short it nor even take short term option calls; we KNOW this is irrational.

“Fuck it; I’ll put down 20k for 2 week expiry short options. Anyone is welcome to challenge or match me. I win. New rules: I win.”

“I have enough dry powder for 50k – that’s gonna be 15k more spot shares, eugh, I’ll do 35k in 5-week long options and then the calls will just be whatever I feel like with the rest. I’m tired of this shit. I can’t even watch any of the best QEC stuff because I’m not executing enough contracts anymore because the whole market is full of shit with Guinea’s playing chicken.”

True dat.

“I’m doing 1 week leveraged call. Fuck y’all. I ball.”

Wicked. I’ll do one of those two – cuz you win more than Nathan. Sorry Nate.

“I win too big. That’s my actual problem. You’ll get it too – one day.”

So who’s picking up the check? And have any videos of me trying to kill myself gone up yet? I saw some obese women shooting TikToks.

“Who the fuck still uses TikTok anymore?”

—-

Excerpt from a novella.

For quite some time I had become known as a local eccentric; particularly one of the “media hoarder” variety, the kind of man of poor genetics and crude vocabularities who were nose-breathers and “ex-academics” and chain-smokers. Their tapes and books and posters and autographed headshots all yellowed and near-waxy from the accumulation of cigarette-matter and dust and god-forbid: mold.

One man, who I will call “Jack,” became obsessed with a very old book almost totally black with mold on every page and which shot out bizarrely-wooden plumes of God-knows-what species of fungi, with their corpsen exhalations sounding vaguely humanoid and decrepit in the way a very sick and very old man would sound in his final hours as his young son begged him to just take the pills and that he’d feel so much better…

I collect videotapes. Everyone does; following a near-kinetic format-war in which the VCD threatened to wipe out nearly every facet of the home entertainment industry, despite the fact that VCDs are still used in grey-market circles as proxies for dark-alley material, accessible only through transcoding between encrypted tape-signals and VCD video-signals; I personally do not ever keep a VCD if I’ve seen it and have no need for it otherwise. They’re bad news. Cops don’t mess with tape-guys because they actually like us and can see right through us, and they seem to all understand that most of us simply want to lurk throughout the unknown and flirt with the lurid. Some can probably relate, of course.

My brother is a cop. Not a fed, but a cop, and more like a fireman at that —- my brother John quite literally saved a kitten from a tree last week, and was featured in the local gazette. My brother John came into my office one day sweating and in a distinct kind of panic I had come to recognize during my brief fixation on epilepsy and medical tapes related to seizures and epileptic disorders; the panic to which I refer being the post-seizure – grand-mal – panic, of utter confusion and vulnerability and a brain-blasted feeling of physical exhaustion and dehydration and distant emotions from forgotten dreams emerging from the fugue of it all as they call out for people who are long dead or ask their children what their name is and if their parents are here. One man could not recognize his own face, and could not seem to wrap his head around what a “meer” could be and why it is being shoved in his face, why is this incredible but disturbing holographic image so important and what did this man do to deserve his sweating, paniced visage to be the mascot for this strange Thing?

I digress. My brother was panicked, and I noticed that his gun had fallen onto the floor as he walked in. I can’t quite remember what he said, it was all such blurry impressions of human speech and emotional affect that I was too busy in my own head trying to imagine what kind of drug he had been given or what kind of crime he had committed or what kind of image he had seen or anything, something.

“John, as your brother who loves you, can you do me a favor?”

He nodded and then frantically swatted sweat beads in futility as they started to plop onto his crotch area.

“I really need you to sit down and just, feel that new chair I got and let me know what’s up, because John, I’m being honest, you know how my ears and my brain are, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

I didn’t know if this was the right thing to say, but he obliged nonetheless – and not before slamming an unlabeled tape on my desk, in a large plastic evidence bag.

“Watch it.”
I was stunned at how forceful and pointedly he demanded that I immedaitely watch that tape. Every part of my head screamed HELL NO but as brothers? We were in this together, and I simply had to watch it, regardless of his demeanor or insistence or the terrorized state in which he seemed to have found himself in upon watching it.

And so, I watched it. It started with webs of oozing fifth-sixth gen. Distortions and wobbles and such, rude little blasts of static ripping sounds and vague suggestions of humanoid figures slowly coalescing into actual people; an older man, another man and three teenaged girls at first. All of them in some kind of attic… Very wooden and creepy, but they all seemed nonchalant and generally OK.

“Y-you know, y-y-you know there’s not-n-not-n-n-n no-n………… There. Is. Not. Just—-”

“Five people, yeah. There’s at least six; the five in frame and a cameraperson.”

He took a deep breath, lit a cigarette, chugged an entire bottled water and belched maybe thirty times as the scene played out in a very eerie way.

First, there didn’t seem to be any sort of framerate and the lensing seemed… exotic, perhaps broken. The shutter angle seemed to be rotating steadily, causing bizarre jitters and several lightbulb-flickers to morph into violent pulses before locking back into place.

Second, there was no audible dialog, despite all five of them appearing to talk as they smoked filterless cigarettes and played poker on a table which was quite literally on it’s last legs and seemingly waterlogged or ruined. No voices could be heard, but there was music, and it was diegetic, which didn’t mean much considering what consumer-grade can do but – still – …

“John, how long is this tape?”

He froze. I slowly picked up his third cigarette he hadn’t even lit yet and took it for myself so I could simply just lock-in and watch this entire thing. I knew just from seeing the box it came in that it was one of the high-quality SP tapes that couldn’t shoot more than an hour (whereas the longest and lowest-quality tapes could go as far as nine).

The music stopped. Voices could now be heard. The camera is tossed aside rather clumsily, and much of the scene is now obscured by a pillow (which also drowns out the voices, although they are still very much audible and quite loud considering).

Man #1: You know, you girls are pretty smart.
Girl #1: Yeah. But how would you know. It’s not like you go to fuckin’ college with us.
Girl #2: I’m not smart. I’m a bitch. I make money moves, bitch-ass.
Man #2: Oh, shut up. Can you girls get rid of her? She’s just terrible… Like some little fat bitch you have to deal with at Burger King who doesn’t know what mayonnaise is and…
Girl #2: You a faggot, bruh, get this faggot-boy little-dick bitch—-

CUT TO:

The same room. The same people. But nothing else is the same. And there seems to be more people. But not quite different people. The same people. But impressions and spectral loops and ghosts of each person all mingling throughout the scene —- all walking with an extremely rigid and robotic stilted step —- and a camera obscura filling up the scene as a lens seems to detach from not just the camera itself but the scene altogether, which causes a cascade of lensing-events and repetitive-spectral motions to envelop and unfold like an undulating visual image-lung.

At this point, my brother was curled into a ball, using his thumbs to close his eyes and his index fingers for his ears.

What the tape cut to next is what I believe to be what spooked my brother into such a state, and as I type this right now I am overcome with emotions of terror and a feeling that I should not be watching this.

My brother fled the room as ten seconds of blackness gave way to the scene.

—-

To be continued.