SKYLERIZED

Gold bottles with ace of spades logos sat cozy in buckets of ice on the table. A posh restaurant in Newark, Delaware allowed for the Lady and the Gentleman to enjoy a meal together for the second time. The Lady, redbone with curly blonde hair, wore a plain black dress. The Gentleman, dark-skinned, sported diamond cufflinks and a navy silk suit and tie. From a distance, it would appear as if the couple exchanged sweet nothings and words of affection. This vision veered from what actually occurred.

This time I had had enough. Boycotts and demonstrations at least drew humor. There were no CD’s, tapes, or vinyl to crush underfoot or rollover with heavy machinery. Across the social networks, my stock had risen. I had two and half million friends, three million followers, and had over half a million snaps traded. Life was good. But not everyone liked my style. I demanded respect from those who despised me, however. “Dett Wyler, why must you?” They’d ask. I told them straight up and down that the reason that I had infused my music with such bravado and swagger was to show that a white man can be just as forceful and aggressive on the mic as his colored contemporaries. But I digress. My birth name is Robert Silenski. I’m totally Polish (I think, I still haven’t traced my full ancestry) but both my parents are Poles. I’ve chosen the name Dett Wyler as my stage name to pay homage to my favorite classical composer, Mr. Robert Nathaniel Dett. It’s pure coincidence that we share the same first name. So, I took his last name because it's so uncommon as a surname and would be cool as a first name. The Wyler part was to throw people off a bit. Like, “Is this guy German? He’s not even spelling it right.” That always made me chuckle.

She cleaned her hands in a basin by the sink in her laboratory; the cleansing was more than to scrub off bacteria that may have been on her hands (although that may’ve been the case). This was a spiritual purging. This was the recognition of doing a work of excellence. It represented a clearing of all the faults that might lie between her fingers, the palms, and the backs of her hands. It represented the washing of all of the negativity leveled against her. Kalia Satterwhite scrubbed until the bubbles formed thick bands of foam around her hands, wrists, and forearms. She rinsed. After applying a paper towel, she slid on some gloves and set to work. What she worked on did not involve liquid chemicals per se. But it was the act of preparing to fashion something of greatness, of wonder. Kalia put the last pieces of this machine that she had been working on for the past 12 years together. It looked like one of those machines at the airport from previous ages that completed a full-body scan, except this one did not imply public humiliation. No. This machine would be the key to eliminating pain in human beings forever, for the most part anyway.

The twenty-second day of December brought an unusual warmth to the city of Wilmington, Delaware, at least for the winter season. Zevon Perell enjoyed the unseasonable climate. He had just reached the floor of his hedge fund, Perell & Power Capital. He stood at six feet four inches and possessed the skin color of embers. His business partner was Gerty Power, a five foot five inch lady with the skin color of sandstone and hair dyed the color of the waters of Aruba.