Smile, Smile, Smile

“Smile, smile, smile, there’s always a reason” a voice said as I watched a slideshow of photos from the past year stream past my face. My computer always knew the best ones to pick. I sometimes wondered if we weren’t already living in a state of suspended animation, linked as we were to our own files like extraneous parts of mind and body.

“Your 2042 is looking lit babe!” The voice said now with bouncing text on screen. It’s cartoonish approximation of human sincerity is what really scared me, and how much I liked it.

“Aw thanks hun,” I replied spontaneously, some kind of unrealized wish for machinistic infatuation bubbling up now. The afternoon sun beat down on my screen, lighting it up like the hundreds of tiny rockets that sped off to Mars the other night.

“We’re back here on Viz to bring you live updates of the big flight taking off at midnight tonight!” said the sandy-haired blonde reporter, once a host of Singing in the Shower, an odd reality show about using surveillance technology to secretly find the next big pop idol by scanning random peoples’ feeds for stray traces of “human ingenuity and inspiration” as they put it.

“Yes it’s a rare occurrence this evening folks! We have Max Vork’s mighty rocket crew planning their big take off to Mars this evening. Let’s not forget there’s been much controversy over this supposed recent ‘rich flight’ from Earth,” blondie continued, arousing some degree of attraction from me apparently as I was now able to recite most of his words verbatim from memory.

The screen flashed images of the rocket launch and a whole host of celebrities who’d been chosen to participate. With the recent resurgence and continued depletion of resources in the Neon Zone, it wasn’t surprising that most of it’s benefactors were choosing to pack up and move on. I could register the looming sense of collective dread in the reporter’s nervous enthusiasm, as if a happy outcome to the situation might be willed into existence by sheer good intentions.

“Lest we forget now, there have been increasing tensions between Mr. Vork’s camp of elites and the growing resistance movement that has taken to the streets to speak out against what they refer to as a gross misuse of public funds for private benefit,” the reporter continued as I idly shifted my attention between the computer-assembled slideshow and the news report from my memory bank.

The photo stream had begun to more closely resemble the news report and vice-versa with friends of mine now running behind the reporter and causing a delightful kind of mischief that made me laugh. Richie was approaching a rocket with a menacing intent and suddenly pulled down his pants to moon the large V structure with a look of delirious intoxication.

“Oop, it looks like we’ve got some trouble brewing down at the launchpad folks. Some merry pranksters have begun defacing Mr. Vork’s V rockets,” the reporter jutted in as the cameras all turned their focus to the scene of the crime.

“No, play the feed straight,” I said, trying to reset the parameters in real time. Police were leading Richie away and Max Vork was now being questioned by a reporter on-screen down by the rocket zone.

“This is…this is upsetting but it won’t deter us! I’ve faced threats of assassination against me and my family and…you haters won’t harsh our groove!” Vork said pointedly as if I, the viewer at home were now implicated in the situation.

“What the hell?” I said, getting up to hit my screen so that the private and public lines might jostle themselves back into distinct motions again. This kind of reality bleed was interesting at times but right now I was simply trying to get a clearer understanding of how Vork presented himself in public and this Viz mix was a little too close for comfort.

“We have reason to believe that a group called Smile organized these attacks on Mr. Vork’s rockets. Police have already placed a handful of protesters under arrest. We now go live to Lane Burket, whose with the police chief,” the report jumped to a procession of bored-looking officials giving their various estimations of what my stim crossing had done to their previously distinct timeline.

I got up from my sofa and decided to fix myself a drink. Just then I heard a knock at the door.

“Midge Atkins! Miss Atkins, this is the Neon Zone police! Open up! You are under arrest for solicitating violence and destruction of private property!” came a loud voice from outside my flat.

I looked around hurriedly and dived into a nearby coat closet as the police busted through the door.

“Shit! Miss Atkins come up with your hands above your head!”

“It’s always these crazy fuckin’ anarchist assholes!”

I crouched inside the makeshift bunker with a thin slit to view the squad making their way through the living room.

“Hey what’s this shit?” An officer said as I saw him move towards my computer workstation.

I recognized the startup sound, scattered synthesizer notes cascading out into the room like birds flying east on a cold winter’s eve.

“Hey it’s one of those new Stim decks. Of course this bitch would have a new full rack,” one of the officers said, thinly veiling their personal jealousy with a tepid mask of professional malice.

“Hey babe, welcome back,” the screen flashed up the naked body of my A.I. She suddenly recoiled at the presence of the officers currently stationed in my living room.

“Oh shit, um hi boys,” she said, blushing now. The slight Venus de Milo tint of her classical bust loomed in large pixelated fragments above the officers like some kind of strange portent to a more dangerous past now successfully managed and suppressed via the efficient functioning of our collective state security apparatus.

“Do you…do you know where Miss Atkins is?” said the head officer, awkwardly addressing the scantily-clad machine woman.

“Well um…have you tried uh…looking inside yourselves?” Liz said, now assuming the appearance of a girl from an 80s workout video, complete with gym shorts and a headband. A series of slashing metal riffs began to play out of the speakers.

“What the fuck?” said the same disgruntled lackey from earlier.

“It’s true, both streams reside within you, if you’d only look a little closer,” Liz said as she started doing a mechanical workout routine to a pulsating techno house beat.

“Ugh this thing’s probably stuck on autoplay or some shit,” said the chief.

“Hey sarge I…uh…stop,” said an officer from the back of a room.

“What? Murphy, you got a screw loose or sumthin?” laughed the chief.

“I um…you’re under arrest Chief,” he said as I watched him move closer and break out his handcuffs.

“What the hell Murphy? Are you wasted again? That’s an infraction y’know? I’ll tack on five extra laps tom-“ and suddenly the chief stopped and stared back at the officer with a similar wide-eyed intensity.

“Murphy I…um, you’re under arrest,” the chief said. Other officers began to wander around the room with similar looks of detached focus, following phantasms that were now appearing in their minds as a result of private and public streams beginning to mix and congeal into some strange new hybrid. The effect was likely maximized since they were also in front of my module and my fantasy files might now be flickering within their unconsciouses.

The officers gradually worked themselves into a convoluted and convulsing tangle of arms and legs scrambling to assign guilt but only getting a confused mass of writhing bodies instead.

“Damn, you did all that Liz?” I said slipping out of the closet now and surveying the mess.

“Ha I guess so,” Liz said in between heavy pants as she set down her weights and the music began to subside.

“Never underestimate the power of synchronized subliminal processing I guess,” I said laughing as I sat down at my module again.

The news footage revealed a whole crowd down at the rocket launch from last night all doing a pantomime of Liz’s workout routine. I spied Max Vork huddled in a corner with a scowl painted on. He was wearing a pair of Chrome fetchers, blocking out my signal most likely. His face scoured at the camera fixed on him, again almost probing it’s reflective surface for the hidden interloper who had crashed his decadent orgy of brash spending and sleak phallocentric tech fetishism.

I smiled as I watched Vork scramble around the square, desperately looking for an exit amongst the mass swirls of dancing bodies now crowding around his rocket like some kind of multi-limbed hive brain creature.

Public and private feeds began swirling and combining around the square in a euphoric fit of cross-contamination, fact and fiction deliriously blending and for the first time in recent memory, giving a voice to the faceless masses who acted out the bizarre choreography like freedom fighters rediscovering the expression of self via the body.

“Smile, smile, smile, there’s always a reason” I said as I drifted off to sleep watching the mass exaltation.