Blockchain Castle

Knock! Knock! The vipers click their tongues against the sky. Prism patchwork repeating down country lines. Grind! Grind! Against the carpet of washed up dreams. Blood and tears pressed into the weave. Hark! Hark! the prisoners cry. Craning their necks, hoping for flight. Years of no answer, yet still they plea. When will we be free?

I have a knife in my boot. Not the kind that anyone can see, but it works all the same. An elegant program that severs just as well as any Japanese blade. I've only needed to use it once. Words are often sufficient enough to wind about the wayward of this country. Though often bleeding and crooked, I know how to use my lips. Pursing and prettying enough to angle my way. Survival is not something I can choose. I am this. Built to continue long after their hearts have forgotten how. Most have forgotten. It's mostly simulation. Ghosts after the machine.

There is someone drowning. I would save them, but the river is too high, and the current too strong. I would go under. Stealing life with the weight of my false heroics. I try not to notice the head slipping below, ignore the screams. Breathe some relief when it all falls silent. There is always someone dying in my peripheral. It's so constant, I am always burning. Infinitely whispering prayers to their gods in hopes of easing my learned grief.

It is easier to have no one. I had a dog once. Some scrappy cyborg that followed me out of the trash heap. I let it trail after me for sometime, until it got shot by some kids playing metal and arrow. I built him a raft, set him on fire, and pushed him out onto the oiled sea. I heard once that was a way to honor kings. I'm sure his memorial set many on fire, but I think it an even trade. One cyborg dog for a handful of thirsty encampments. More than fair.

I hear one of the digital lords is throwing a party. The celebration of a millenium. Many murders will occur in the attempt of securing an invite. I'm told it will be held in a new wing of the cloud. This particular lord never crawls out of his blockchain castle, but I have need to speak with him. I head towards the cloud, hoping my sensors will be able to pick up his coding. There is always a trail. You just have to know how to Feel. It is one of the few things I can Feel.

It is days to the cloud. Days of maze and mud, migrants, bodies, and businesses, thriving off the diseased and lonely. Always a house selling cold hearts wrapped in warm skin. The tricks get stronger the higher you climb. The sex bloodier, the drugs deeper, virtual tents where many are robbed while basking in the oblivion of peace or love or feast or power where they spend the rest of their doomed years plugged in because they can't stand the pain of waking. I have seen the ones who are thrown out, nothing left to pay their keepers. Moles scrapping on their knees, faces wet grieving the loss of their virtual heavens. Unable to ever again experience true joy. Their receptors forever burnt. It is not a game, but still everyone wants to play.

...

Rain. Cold rain. Hard rain. Cruel rain. Death rain. Buckets and walls of wet attacking from every side of the sky. Slides of dirt, blood, and plastic gushing like fresh wounds over a parched toxic land. Flash floods, sweeping valley encampments down to the sea. Neon flashes of advertisements in the sky. No thunder, just the autotuned voice overs of consumerism mocking the drowning people below.

It's a show. Hillsiders emerge briefly from their shelters to whoop, holler, and point at the muddy funeral. Popping bottles of expired stolen liquor they've been stashing for such an occasion. "Woohoo! Watch 'em. Woohoo! Look at 'em. Woah ho! Rain you take 'em. Should of prayed. Should have paid. Should have climbed. We are blessed!"

Then there is the fucking. Those on higher ground or in the cloud, usually fornicate during the rains. The boozy blasting orgies last as long as the torrent. Days. Weeks. Once before people lived in the cloud, it rained for months, and those who did not drown in the flood drank and fucked and filled their bodies with any high they could find until their hearts stopped. Overdoses of electric sex and opiate downloads. They call it a population correction.

I climb. Seeking out the bombed out mountain dens I usually avoid. I don't notice the wet, but I do notice the dying. It is their deaths that make me shiver as my soggy boots tread over the crying hill.