A Story..

He wakes up in a cloudy haze of last week’s numbers and the after-image of an empty bottle of Patron in collusion with some designer amphetamines. The high-end speed cost what most people make in a week but these pills really were at the forefront of pharmaceutical technology and imported from Russia and it seemed important to be at the vanguard of such things. When he closes his eyes, he sees the numbers falling, getting smaller and smaller, other people’s money, and this makes him glad for the blackout shades in this boutique hotel on the riverfront in a large city. The extremely thick curtains make his situation seem vaguely womb-like, though his end goal is something quite opposite. An illuminated "do not disturb" sign on the wall next to the doorknob allows for relative privacy, though he doesn't really know if he's engaged the switches correctly, they are rather complicated and modishly unlabeled. The mobile phone is turned off and the number disconnected, clients will have very little chance of reaching him at this point.

He thinks about the most recent acquisition for his whitewashed designer loft newly renovated by Swiss architects, a neon and glass sculpture that required a party for the install and unveiling. He liked to show these new things to friends and clients, it made him feel like he was a part of something: a part of a culture unfolding itself, making sense of the world.

He didn't realize it for the first few hours in the suite and only realized when the boredom and alcohol started settling: the flat screen television was on. It was not only on, it was tuned to the hotel's default menu channel, featuring all the amenities therein with a looping female voice that chimed in every minute or so, "welcome to, etc..." This hotel-specific station also had a looping musak-like audio bed that sounded like some thoroughly emaciated redux of electronic music popular a decade ago. It was at first pleasantly benign but it was increasingly grating on a low level of his consciousness. However, the remote was missing, the television had no visible buttons and one of his pre-set rules was not to call the front desk for any reason.

Nevertheless he considered making a few outbound calls, mainly because he was bored but also because it was a force of habit (maybe one of his periodic love interests was bored, too). Then he realized that when he threw his mobile phone in that dumpster all his phone numbers were gone and he didn’t even know any numbers by memory, not even his mother’s.
Looking into the bedside table drawer for the Russian blister pak and the small bottle of whiskey that he kept there for safekeeping he thought that maybe this looping electro-musak was helping create an environment do to exactly what he wanted to do…. Then the doorbell chimed.

Sean Dack 01.2010

A Testbed of Futurity