Ray-Ray, a "Very Good" connection.
I like this Serial Experiments: Lain thing. It has more behind the concept than the actual execution however, like my own work.
The dialouge sucks. A shame. I'm sure that It's much more graceful in Japanese.
I'll have some more to load in a second, as soon as the wireless connection improves. But I'll have to be fast with the keys, I only get fleeting moments of "Very Good" or "Good" connections.
I didn't have time to edit this schrott.
Consider the following for your continuing edification:
------------------------------------Eric------------------------------------------------------------------------
The formerly well secured door waves slowly, nudged from the wind issued down the bare concrete corridor.
Within another concrete den just inside and to the left of the door and it's adjoining hallway is our character for the evening.
He's set down the olive drab bag and gutted it's contents onto the floor beside him. He holds aloft a plastic device that appears to be a telephone reciever with four alternating wires attatched to the bottom lobe. Balanced on his knee is a wide circuit board contained in a transparent sleeve. He clips two of the reciever's wires onto the contacts of the board.
Mounted above his head is a large steel box with a door mounted in the front that's been prised open. Inside is a baffling knot of colorful wires, secured into long braids by plasitc ties. Our hero (it says "Eric" on his nametag, but that's probably not his real name) stands and withdraws a pair of wire cutters smeared with dry blood and cuts off one of the ties. He attatches a small 9-volt battery to the circuit board with an alligator clip and selects four wires carefully from the box on the wall. With the cutters he severs them, pockets the tool, and produces a long penlike contraption with a metal nose on the end. Carefully he touches it to the ends of each wire.
The third in the series causes the machine to produce an electronic whine and an LED in the handle strobes frantically.
This device he puts away and clips his last alligator clip onto a contact on the board, attatches it to the conspicuous wire, and opens the new flood of information coursing into the telephone sized decoder, pressing it to his ear.
What he hears, exactly, is hard for the narrator to describe in readily available words. To simply say something like "80-cycle hum" or "static" would be adequate,
but not in this case. This was a noise that could be described by those words, and accurately. But, due to the fact that it's being percieved by someone privy to some very exclusive knowledge pertinent to this building, the company that it's owned by, and the electronic information supply stream that intersect with them. What he hears is a blast furnace of electronic rage. A blizzard composed of shards of glass. In it, he can just barely make out a voice, like decoding a cipher, small and strained. It communicates to him something that he needs to know and in very quick time too. It was aware of him even before he entered this room, and it will be aware of him when he leaves it. Running with his tools stuffed madly back into thier bag, having no time to organize or disguise his having been there. Not after what he learned. But he felt he knew now more than he did when he entered the tunnel that lead him here, and it was worth it when he re-emerged and ran away towards the rising sun.
To recap:
A. It is aware
B. It is now in control
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Ranna - couple nights ago---------------000000000000000000000000000000Oh shit. Especially now...
Man my heart's beating way too fast. I'm hammering the backspace key so hard that glasses are rattling, I can't type straight. Pupuls huge, here we go again...
"Makes life go a little bit faster..."
I've been giggling like an altarboy to the "Dr.Phil Wisdom Generator" on this page:http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/mad-science/dr-phil/
Giggle along to randomly diced gems like: "You don't need me to tell you to raise the roof."
or "You don't need Pac Man Fever to poop on a cracker"
or my favourite "You don't need Don Knotts to join the Peace Corps."
Not to connect this comment with the deliberately idiotic ones above (check the ones mentioning "Cruisy Toilet Sex") but I suspect that the merciless/magnificent bastard that writes for Rotten.com's Library may in fact be my dad. Not outside the realm of possibility, Davie street was busy in the mid-eighties.
Oh brilliant! "You don't need a 50-watt light bulb to find your inner child molester."
I beg to differ, sir!
+++++++------++++++++Else.--------------------------------------
Don't be lonely.
The street's thronged with people. I'm not lonely because everything he says gets calculated in "Drug Dealer Time", which is at least three times longer than regularly experienced time. Ah, well no... He says ten minutes = anywhere from five to a half hour. Ten to Fifteen = Thirty to Forty. Actually, I think there's a specific ratio involved. ETA equals one hour divided by the amount being purchased divided by ten, which equals, in this case, thirty minutes... Six to go.
Limosines with girls hanging dangerously out the windows. Bottles lost on the street, a sluggish train of input crosses into my brain, short skirts, fake breasts. Beep-beep! We are the goonsquad...
A speedbump of random illogic moves through my brain with deep viscousity. It's Brian, the delightful gerbilface. He lingers with me a moment. In-between pipeloads we've been kicking around the idea of stars being enourmous combusting soul-ovens, running with my idea that the soul is a fom of electromagnetic radiation that we haven't yet learned to detect with our instruments. These stars are breaking down awareness into it's constituent energies, and thus the sun is constantly clamouring with rays of thought and random blasts of unassociated raw concept. That accounts for the mind-fuck whenever I meet up with Brian: his mammoth use of base has miscalibrated his electromagnetic presence which disorders my thoughts the same way it constantly does to his.
Unreal circumstances, things that you would be puzzled horribly by, even frightened by, become something that you can be complacent towards when you live like this. Vancouver seems to radiate contagious madness at our level, I've lived here all of my life and I can still see it. Which I suppose means that it hasn't assimilated m-
I leap into the passenger seat of the waiting car once again, vaulting off of the pavement. It's warm and humid in here. "Sup' dogg."
"Hey."
"A point?"
"Uh-huh."
He passes me the small green flap of paper. Blood to a vampire.
I hand him my money.
"A pleasure as always."
He laughs quietly. "I'll drop you just up here by the Stone Temple." Swerving dangerously into a paralell park in one deft move, he lets me out and I wink at him.
"Have a good one." he says. It's practically ensured. I've got my works all wrapped up in durable plastic (fabric of the future) in my fatigue pocket. Now it's just off to the nearest bathroom, I think that I'll go to the always hospitable one at the internet cafe on seymour, the one with functioning door locks. I stash the bag and tun around...
...straight into someone whose face is awfully, gallingly, scrotum-shrinkingly familiar. I feel dopesick already.
"How's it going Wren?" Feminine voice, dark eyes, beautiful smile, hair shorter than I remember. There's others too. Others that I recognize from school (I guess, by deduction).
"You see it all Chrissie..." I say. Somehow. A pageant of vaugely familiar faces all aged noticably by two years out of high school, beard stubble, enhanced breasts, etc. All of whom observe me with friendly, slightly descending gazes. And I look at them, I'm sure, with an indifference that I can't even drop anymore. One that says: have your image, mine's actually attatched to something bigger than the Mirage. Something that's not real but worth dissapearing with.
I've got something better, and I don't even need to compare anything with you.
"How are you?"
"Ok. We're all rolling." Wonderful news.
"Talked to Nathan?" what? That's not right at all. She knows what happened to him. Is she just trying to fuck with me?
A couple of people in her entourage visibly notice this breach of cordiality.
"Nathan?... No... Jesus, Chris. Did you not..."
"Never mind. Where are you going?"
"Home." She saw me leave the car and and probably sleight the bag into my wristband. She's only asking to keep up an appearance.
"Well we're all going to the Roxy. You should come with us." Oh please. God, no.
I'm cold, by anybody's standards, but I don't think that I have the heart to turn down this charitable invitation from this rather dull but stunningly gorgeous girl that I've had a crush on for years but was sadly engaged with my now-deceased friend Nate'. I take too long to mull this over, and she senses my indiscisiveness.
"C'mon, why just go home? It's saturday." She looks me in the eye with some transmission etched there. I never found out if she knew about how I began to use.
Nathan may have told her, even though I told him not to. I would have forgiven him that, a little pathos only enhances the mystique. What the hell is she getting at, she can't possibly find me attractive. What the fuck is she up to?
I say "Ok, But I've got to run home and drop off some stuff. How about I call you and meet you at the door?"
"Ok, I'll come up and get you in." That seemed to go well. Maybe she doesn't know...
What have I done? Well, I've still got the hit to look forward to. I check into the oblivion motel: "Can I use your bathroom?"
Cute-pizza-face says: "Sure, it's just around and in there." Pointing crookedly into a blue doorframe with only darkness beyond.
I enter this room and flick on the light, unconsciously bolting the door shut. My esophagus reverse swallows in maddening anticipation.
Here we go...
A song by the Beastie Boys is playing on the stereo just outside the door and I can hear the signs that someone's waiting outside.
I set up on the back of the toilet cistern. For a second, the prospect of going to a club with Chrissie after doing this, makes it seem like a very accomplished evening.
Arranging spoon, syringe, cotton, and lighter I gather some water from the tap. Using the syringe to lift it from the source to the spoon after I empty the contents of the bag into it, I press the plunger and drown the beige-white powder. Delicately I lift the spoon and hit the darkened side with flame. Thirty seconds later I have a puddle of urine yellow liquid in the cooker. I drop a tiny wad of cotton into it and it swells up, immediately absorbing twice it's weight in liquid. I jab the needle into the center of the wad and pull the plunger back very carefully, watching the intake of water. Bubbles form, then subside. I dry the cotton with it and hold it up squeezing out the air.
Here we go... Every time like the last...
I roll up my sleeve. The inner cubital vein stands out slightly. "Slightly" a year ago would have been "Bulging deliciously" now.
I pierce and draw a little on the plunger...
Contact. AAAAANNND, Release...
...
[Christina Aguilera - Dirty]
The pressgang won't leave them alone as they enter this club, they gradually peel off at the entrance.
The turnout is very good for an unremarkable weekend at an unremarkable club. They form thier psychic wake as usual, that which thrills those lucky enough to be in the entourage, because everyone that meets eyes with them knows who they are, or rather, who she is and who the rest of these people must therefore be. Well-established in the club, she and the other's are all subject to the finest favours available to them. A whole cadre of lesser emulators cling to her, identical in apparel and skillset.
Manipulate, and Market. Not unlike Wren, but with a decidedly more purient edge to it.
A glass's throw away, a petite brunette answers her sophisicated phone to the rasping voice of someone that she percieves to be an old friend fallen from grace and the deserving recipient of pity and compassion.
============================================================================
The Spooks. In the Vampire: The Masquerade world by White Wolf gmaes.
The spooks are a corruption of the Malkavians perpetrated by the Tremere. They posess the Disciplines of Dementation, Obfuscate and Thaumaturgy, and even show a propensity towards excelling at the art of Necromancy, should they have a chance to learn it. Thier ability to use these powers have aggravated thier mental derangements to the point that all of reality is merely a dream to them. Thus, they have less trouble summoning unearthly horrors with thier powers. They are particularly attracted towards the faries, the Sluagh in particular. Since they were created in the 1800's, they have proven themselves to be highly uncontrollable and difficult to influence. As such, Spooks have joined the Camarilla, Sabbat, or remain Independent. Most however, remain vestigally connected to thier Tremere progenetors through thier descent to the one original Spook, a sixth-generation Swedish Malkavian called "Erik".
-----------------------------------------
"Pop" Chapter 2.
Wren does not look so out of place in the club as he thought that he would. Scruffy, wan and distant in the eyes, he blends in as well as any. Pleasantly lifted from his previously dour mood by the presence of this unearthly beauty that he's been chatting subliminally with for a couple minutes. She's visible just over the shoulder of shrill, irritating girl that he thought that he was interested in. (as much as this is possible in his case)
This woman, glad to be free from the clothing of her associates and those adoring leigons that watch her, finds something endearing about Wren. the way that he stands a little twisted. The dissonance in his eyes, something foreign, not depression or ignorance or hate but an actual negativity. It seemed to inspire a notion in her mind that she did not recognize at the time, but it was closely related to sympathy. However, she knows not quite how to, or whether or not to connect with him. Granted, they are already connected by the gestures in the looks that they cast at each other. Acknowledgement, openly feigned indifference, intensity, and then, somehow, warmth...
"So, can you still speak Russian?" ditz-blonde girl natters at him.
"What?"
"I said, can you still speak Russian?" She repeated.
"Yeah, I can. My parents speak with me."
"Have you talked to them lately?"
"Not in almost a year, I guess." he mumbled. Throwing the odd glance in her direction.
"Aw... I call my parents twice a month." She bit the olive of the end of her little plastic sword, slowly, salaciously, gazing at him. With a little alcohol he was rather cute in a pixie kind of way, good enough, she thought.
His brain coughed. She noticed at last the vector of his eyes and looked over her shoulder, once she recognized this person she jerked her head back and bulged her eyes out at Wren. "Oh my god. Wren, do you know who that is?" He sloped his brow at her and blinked.
"That's ||||||||||||||||! Shit! She's in our club!"
Again, Wren blinks. "What? So who is she?"
"She's a singer. She's, like, a popstar."
"Uh-huh..."
Wren's mind has few suggestions. He's known many different kinds of people after having been a drug dealer and a prostitute. Including people that could, in thier opulence, hedonism and acumen, could be likened to someone in a social role not unlike a "popstar's". He's even speculated that he may have fucked, have been fucked by, or sold drugs to, a celebrity of some description or another. So why should he be at all intimidated by this situation? If you know that the worst someone can do is treat you like a towel for a couple minutes, and you can handle that, why be scared?
His new friend seemed to notice Christine's reaction. She applied an inquisitive look... Or so Wren thought, she was actually questioning what he was thinking so deeply about. He looked over Christine's soulder at her and scissored his fingers in front of his lips. "cigarette?" Was the question. She nods at hin and points at the door leading to a small terrace outside, the gets up and walks towards it.
"What's your name?" She asks. He lights her and himself.
"Wren."
"Ren?"
"Double-u, Arr, ee, en."
"What is that?"
"Russian, I guess. And you are ||||||||||||||||."
"Yes, I am..." Pause. "Are you a fan?"
He smiles "No."
She smiles back. An unearthly beauty.
"Good. Where do you live?"
"Nowhere in particular."
"...So, you're homeless?"
"Transient."
"I see."
Another pause.
"I guess that I could also be 'Transient'." she says. "I sold my apartment and I'm just living on tour."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
Start button on the NES controller, a cat's appendages, or...
"Do you want to get out of here?" asks Wren.
She laughs at the throw-away line, but complies readily.
Far away, down the quiet night street interrupted by the intoxicated renegades that raise thier voices farther up the street, far away from these two. It will be daytime soon.
"What do you do?"
"Whatever I can."
"For money?"
"Sometimes. And I have a trust fund that I draw from to live on, but I prefer not to stay in any one place."
"Why not?"
"I find it constrictive. My parents and I moved around the city every two months or so when I was a kid. It rubbed off. They left thier country because of the soviets and never stopped moving, never lost the momentum, until I was born."
"So you were born here?"
"Uh-hm. I know this city quite well."
"I see."
"Where are you from?"
"Oregon. "
"...I've been there. "
"Are you a prostitute?"
Off-balance, but quickly recovered.
"...No..."
"I'm sorry. I wanted to ask, because I want to offer you a place to stay tonight."
No.
"I couldn't impose."
"How could it be an imposition to me?"
NO. is the correct answer, Wren.
"Ok. Thank you." D'oh!
"Don't mention it..."
------------------------------
[clang. now I've got nothing. fuck. that last cigarette just ran thin, I'm out of ideas.]
It's a person that makes a celebrity money. As long as they're on camera, a gesture, a particular meaningful pose will garner them money out of those non-celebrity people watching the simulacrum on thier televisions. One pose, makes more, than another...
The dialouge sucks. A shame. I'm sure that It's much more graceful in Japanese.
I'll have some more to load in a second, as soon as the wireless connection improves. But I'll have to be fast with the keys, I only get fleeting moments of "Very Good" or "Good" connections.
I didn't have time to edit this schrott.
Consider the following for your continuing edification:
------------------------------------Eric------------------------------------------------------------------------
The formerly well secured door waves slowly, nudged from the wind issued down the bare concrete corridor.
Within another concrete den just inside and to the left of the door and it's adjoining hallway is our character for the evening.
He's set down the olive drab bag and gutted it's contents onto the floor beside him. He holds aloft a plastic device that appears to be a telephone reciever with four alternating wires attatched to the bottom lobe. Balanced on his knee is a wide circuit board contained in a transparent sleeve. He clips two of the reciever's wires onto the contacts of the board.
Mounted above his head is a large steel box with a door mounted in the front that's been prised open. Inside is a baffling knot of colorful wires, secured into long braids by plasitc ties. Our hero (it says "Eric" on his nametag, but that's probably not his real name) stands and withdraws a pair of wire cutters smeared with dry blood and cuts off one of the ties. He attatches a small 9-volt battery to the circuit board with an alligator clip and selects four wires carefully from the box on the wall. With the cutters he severs them, pockets the tool, and produces a long penlike contraption with a metal nose on the end. Carefully he touches it to the ends of each wire.
The third in the series causes the machine to produce an electronic whine and an LED in the handle strobes frantically.
This device he puts away and clips his last alligator clip onto a contact on the board, attatches it to the conspicuous wire, and opens the new flood of information coursing into the telephone sized decoder, pressing it to his ear.
What he hears, exactly, is hard for the narrator to describe in readily available words. To simply say something like "80-cycle hum" or "static" would be adequate,
but not in this case. This was a noise that could be described by those words, and accurately. But, due to the fact that it's being percieved by someone privy to some very exclusive knowledge pertinent to this building, the company that it's owned by, and the electronic information supply stream that intersect with them. What he hears is a blast furnace of electronic rage. A blizzard composed of shards of glass. In it, he can just barely make out a voice, like decoding a cipher, small and strained. It communicates to him something that he needs to know and in very quick time too. It was aware of him even before he entered this room, and it will be aware of him when he leaves it. Running with his tools stuffed madly back into thier bag, having no time to organize or disguise his having been there. Not after what he learned. But he felt he knew now more than he did when he entered the tunnel that lead him here, and it was worth it when he re-emerged and ran away towards the rising sun.
To recap:
A. It is aware
B. It is now in control
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Ranna - couple nights ago---------------000000000000000000000000000000Oh shit. Especially now...
Man my heart's beating way too fast. I'm hammering the backspace key so hard that glasses are rattling, I can't type straight. Pupuls huge, here we go again...
"Makes life go a little bit faster..."
I've been giggling like an altarboy to the "Dr.Phil Wisdom Generator" on this page:http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/mad-science/dr-phil/
Giggle along to randomly diced gems like: "You don't need me to tell you to raise the roof."
or "You don't need Pac Man Fever to poop on a cracker"
or my favourite "You don't need Don Knotts to join the Peace Corps."
Not to connect this comment with the deliberately idiotic ones above (check the ones mentioning "Cruisy Toilet Sex") but I suspect that the merciless/magnificent bastard that writes for Rotten.com's Library may in fact be my dad. Not outside the realm of possibility, Davie street was busy in the mid-eighties.
Oh brilliant! "You don't need a 50-watt light bulb to find your inner child molester."
I beg to differ, sir!
+++++++------++++++++Else.--------------------------------------
Don't be lonely.
The street's thronged with people. I'm not lonely because everything he says gets calculated in "Drug Dealer Time", which is at least three times longer than regularly experienced time. Ah, well no... He says ten minutes = anywhere from five to a half hour. Ten to Fifteen = Thirty to Forty. Actually, I think there's a specific ratio involved. ETA equals one hour divided by the amount being purchased divided by ten, which equals, in this case, thirty minutes... Six to go.
Limosines with girls hanging dangerously out the windows. Bottles lost on the street, a sluggish train of input crosses into my brain, short skirts, fake breasts. Beep-beep! We are the goonsquad...
A speedbump of random illogic moves through my brain with deep viscousity. It's Brian, the delightful gerbilface. He lingers with me a moment. In-between pipeloads we've been kicking around the idea of stars being enourmous combusting soul-ovens, running with my idea that the soul is a fom of electromagnetic radiation that we haven't yet learned to detect with our instruments. These stars are breaking down awareness into it's constituent energies, and thus the sun is constantly clamouring with rays of thought and random blasts of unassociated raw concept. That accounts for the mind-fuck whenever I meet up with Brian: his mammoth use of base has miscalibrated his electromagnetic presence which disorders my thoughts the same way it constantly does to his.
Unreal circumstances, things that you would be puzzled horribly by, even frightened by, become something that you can be complacent towards when you live like this. Vancouver seems to radiate contagious madness at our level, I've lived here all of my life and I can still see it. Which I suppose means that it hasn't assimilated m-
I leap into the passenger seat of the waiting car once again, vaulting off of the pavement. It's warm and humid in here. "Sup' dogg."
"Hey."
"A point?"
"Uh-huh."
He passes me the small green flap of paper. Blood to a vampire.
I hand him my money.
"A pleasure as always."
He laughs quietly. "I'll drop you just up here by the Stone Temple." Swerving dangerously into a paralell park in one deft move, he lets me out and I wink at him.
"Have a good one." he says. It's practically ensured. I've got my works all wrapped up in durable plastic (fabric of the future) in my fatigue pocket. Now it's just off to the nearest bathroom, I think that I'll go to the always hospitable one at the internet cafe on seymour, the one with functioning door locks. I stash the bag and tun around...
...straight into someone whose face is awfully, gallingly, scrotum-shrinkingly familiar. I feel dopesick already.
"How's it going Wren?" Feminine voice, dark eyes, beautiful smile, hair shorter than I remember. There's others too. Others that I recognize from school (I guess, by deduction).
"You see it all Chrissie..." I say. Somehow. A pageant of vaugely familiar faces all aged noticably by two years out of high school, beard stubble, enhanced breasts, etc. All of whom observe me with friendly, slightly descending gazes. And I look at them, I'm sure, with an indifference that I can't even drop anymore. One that says: have your image, mine's actually attatched to something bigger than the Mirage. Something that's not real but worth dissapearing with.
I've got something better, and I don't even need to compare anything with you.
"How are you?"
"Ok. We're all rolling." Wonderful news.
"Talked to Nathan?" what? That's not right at all. She knows what happened to him. Is she just trying to fuck with me?
A couple of people in her entourage visibly notice this breach of cordiality.
"Nathan?... No... Jesus, Chris. Did you not..."
"Never mind. Where are you going?"
"Home." She saw me leave the car and and probably sleight the bag into my wristband. She's only asking to keep up an appearance.
"Well we're all going to the Roxy. You should come with us." Oh please. God, no.
I'm cold, by anybody's standards, but I don't think that I have the heart to turn down this charitable invitation from this rather dull but stunningly gorgeous girl that I've had a crush on for years but was sadly engaged with my now-deceased friend Nate'. I take too long to mull this over, and she senses my indiscisiveness.
"C'mon, why just go home? It's saturday." She looks me in the eye with some transmission etched there. I never found out if she knew about how I began to use.
Nathan may have told her, even though I told him not to. I would have forgiven him that, a little pathos only enhances the mystique. What the hell is she getting at, she can't possibly find me attractive. What the fuck is she up to?
I say "Ok, But I've got to run home and drop off some stuff. How about I call you and meet you at the door?"
"Ok, I'll come up and get you in." That seemed to go well. Maybe she doesn't know...
What have I done? Well, I've still got the hit to look forward to. I check into the oblivion motel: "Can I use your bathroom?"
Cute-pizza-face says: "Sure, it's just around and in there." Pointing crookedly into a blue doorframe with only darkness beyond.
I enter this room and flick on the light, unconsciously bolting the door shut. My esophagus reverse swallows in maddening anticipation.
Here we go...
A song by the Beastie Boys is playing on the stereo just outside the door and I can hear the signs that someone's waiting outside.
I set up on the back of the toilet cistern. For a second, the prospect of going to a club with Chrissie after doing this, makes it seem like a very accomplished evening.
Arranging spoon, syringe, cotton, and lighter I gather some water from the tap. Using the syringe to lift it from the source to the spoon after I empty the contents of the bag into it, I press the plunger and drown the beige-white powder. Delicately I lift the spoon and hit the darkened side with flame. Thirty seconds later I have a puddle of urine yellow liquid in the cooker. I drop a tiny wad of cotton into it and it swells up, immediately absorbing twice it's weight in liquid. I jab the needle into the center of the wad and pull the plunger back very carefully, watching the intake of water. Bubbles form, then subside. I dry the cotton with it and hold it up squeezing out the air.
Here we go... Every time like the last...
I roll up my sleeve. The inner cubital vein stands out slightly. "Slightly" a year ago would have been "Bulging deliciously" now.
I pierce and draw a little on the plunger...
Contact. AAAAANNND, Release...
...
[Christina Aguilera - Dirty]
The pressgang won't leave them alone as they enter this club, they gradually peel off at the entrance.
The turnout is very good for an unremarkable weekend at an unremarkable club. They form thier psychic wake as usual, that which thrills those lucky enough to be in the entourage, because everyone that meets eyes with them knows who they are, or rather, who she is and who the rest of these people must therefore be. Well-established in the club, she and the other's are all subject to the finest favours available to them. A whole cadre of lesser emulators cling to her, identical in apparel and skillset.
Manipulate, and Market. Not unlike Wren, but with a decidedly more purient edge to it.
A glass's throw away, a petite brunette answers her sophisicated phone to the rasping voice of someone that she percieves to be an old friend fallen from grace and the deserving recipient of pity and compassion.
============================================================================
The Spooks. In the Vampire: The Masquerade world by White Wolf gmaes.
The spooks are a corruption of the Malkavians perpetrated by the Tremere. They posess the Disciplines of Dementation, Obfuscate and Thaumaturgy, and even show a propensity towards excelling at the art of Necromancy, should they have a chance to learn it. Thier ability to use these powers have aggravated thier mental derangements to the point that all of reality is merely a dream to them. Thus, they have less trouble summoning unearthly horrors with thier powers. They are particularly attracted towards the faries, the Sluagh in particular. Since they were created in the 1800's, they have proven themselves to be highly uncontrollable and difficult to influence. As such, Spooks have joined the Camarilla, Sabbat, or remain Independent. Most however, remain vestigally connected to thier Tremere progenetors through thier descent to the one original Spook, a sixth-generation Swedish Malkavian called "Erik".
-----------------------------------------
"Pop" Chapter 2.
Wren does not look so out of place in the club as he thought that he would. Scruffy, wan and distant in the eyes, he blends in as well as any. Pleasantly lifted from his previously dour mood by the presence of this unearthly beauty that he's been chatting subliminally with for a couple minutes. She's visible just over the shoulder of shrill, irritating girl that he thought that he was interested in. (as much as this is possible in his case)
This woman, glad to be free from the clothing of her associates and those adoring leigons that watch her, finds something endearing about Wren. the way that he stands a little twisted. The dissonance in his eyes, something foreign, not depression or ignorance or hate but an actual negativity. It seemed to inspire a notion in her mind that she did not recognize at the time, but it was closely related to sympathy. However, she knows not quite how to, or whether or not to connect with him. Granted, they are already connected by the gestures in the looks that they cast at each other. Acknowledgement, openly feigned indifference, intensity, and then, somehow, warmth...
"So, can you still speak Russian?" ditz-blonde girl natters at him.
"What?"
"I said, can you still speak Russian?" She repeated.
"Yeah, I can. My parents speak with me."
"Have you talked to them lately?"
"Not in almost a year, I guess." he mumbled. Throwing the odd glance in her direction.
"Aw... I call my parents twice a month." She bit the olive of the end of her little plastic sword, slowly, salaciously, gazing at him. With a little alcohol he was rather cute in a pixie kind of way, good enough, she thought.
His brain coughed. She noticed at last the vector of his eyes and looked over her shoulder, once she recognized this person she jerked her head back and bulged her eyes out at Wren. "Oh my god. Wren, do you know who that is?" He sloped his brow at her and blinked.
"That's ||||||||||||||||! Shit! She's in our club!"
Again, Wren blinks. "What? So who is she?"
"She's a singer. She's, like, a popstar."
"Uh-huh..."
Wren's mind has few suggestions. He's known many different kinds of people after having been a drug dealer and a prostitute. Including people that could, in thier opulence, hedonism and acumen, could be likened to someone in a social role not unlike a "popstar's". He's even speculated that he may have fucked, have been fucked by, or sold drugs to, a celebrity of some description or another. So why should he be at all intimidated by this situation? If you know that the worst someone can do is treat you like a towel for a couple minutes, and you can handle that, why be scared?
His new friend seemed to notice Christine's reaction. She applied an inquisitive look... Or so Wren thought, she was actually questioning what he was thinking so deeply about. He looked over Christine's soulder at her and scissored his fingers in front of his lips. "cigarette?" Was the question. She nods at hin and points at the door leading to a small terrace outside, the gets up and walks towards it.
"What's your name?" She asks. He lights her and himself.
"Wren."
"Ren?"
"Double-u, Arr, ee, en."
"What is that?"
"Russian, I guess. And you are ||||||||||||||||."
"Yes, I am..." Pause. "Are you a fan?"
He smiles "No."
She smiles back. An unearthly beauty.
"Good. Where do you live?"
"Nowhere in particular."
"...So, you're homeless?"
"Transient."
"I see."
Another pause.
"I guess that I could also be 'Transient'." she says. "I sold my apartment and I'm just living on tour."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
Start button on the NES controller, a cat's appendages, or...
"Do you want to get out of here?" asks Wren.
She laughs at the throw-away line, but complies readily.
Far away, down the quiet night street interrupted by the intoxicated renegades that raise thier voices farther up the street, far away from these two. It will be daytime soon.
"What do you do?"
"Whatever I can."
"For money?"
"Sometimes. And I have a trust fund that I draw from to live on, but I prefer not to stay in any one place."
"Why not?"
"I find it constrictive. My parents and I moved around the city every two months or so when I was a kid. It rubbed off. They left thier country because of the soviets and never stopped moving, never lost the momentum, until I was born."
"So you were born here?"
"Uh-hm. I know this city quite well."
"I see."
"Where are you from?"
"Oregon. "
"...I've been there. "
"Are you a prostitute?"
Off-balance, but quickly recovered.
"...No..."
"I'm sorry. I wanted to ask, because I want to offer you a place to stay tonight."
No.
"I couldn't impose."
"How could it be an imposition to me?"
NO. is the correct answer, Wren.
"Ok. Thank you." D'oh!
"Don't mention it..."
------------------------------
[clang. now I've got nothing. fuck. that last cigarette just ran thin, I'm out of ideas.]
It's a person that makes a celebrity money. As long as they're on camera, a gesture, a particular meaningful pose will garner them money out of those non-celebrity people watching the simulacrum on thier televisions. One pose, makes more, than another...