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Ode |
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fractal007 Senior Member
since 2000-06-01
Posts 1958 |
After reading that thought phone piece I thought I'd draw a little on the Bible, HP Lovecraft, and my own experience as a programmer to write you this cyberpunk piece. Worship Kyle stood up with the crowd as the band raised their voices to the ceiling and the lights moved to the sounds. This was the song that always caught Kyle by surprise. He was not a Christian. Yet he attended these worship rallies and claimed to be among the faithful. I stand to praise you, Kyle sang. He could feel a lump bulge in his throat and a flush stir in his face as the words rang out to...to what? To God? To a deity? To Jesus? No, he felt these things as the place in his brain lit up. Yes. That's what he called it. It was the place. When you sing out to God you turn on the place and the lights to pay attention to are really the nerve impulses travelling across the cortex. Your spirit moves through me, Kyle sang, like a mighty rushing wind. Kyle loved this part. As the chorus rang out and tears formed in his eyes he knew now, more than ever, was the time. Holding out his left forearm, he stroked the skin upward with his index and middle fingers, taking in the rush and incorporating it into his behavioural complex. He'd done this so often that it was now a part of the ritual. No, it wasn't that. For the faithful it was but for Kyle and for the rest of the spiritcore crowd it was part of the behavioural modification, the final phase of an anchoring for a neurolinguistic programmatic solution to the humdrum of everyday life. More songs went by and Kyle sang or sat as directed by the rest of the crowd until the service was over. Now it was time to leave. "Friend!" a man with a pleasant voice said, as he gently placed a hand on Kyle's shoulder. This was a believer in the truest sense. "I sense that you are a man of God." "I am," Kyle lied. "It is so good to see the youth in our congregation. I hang out with the older folks mostly, but sometimes I come down here just to see you kids. You're the next generation in the good fight and praise God there's a lot of you!" Yeah, I bet you do like hanging around here you pervert, Kyle thought. What he said out loud was "Maranatha. He is risen." And then he walked away. A spirit junkie needed to learn the lingo of his fix. That's what they called them, fixes. A fix was a service, a gathering, or a ritual. Usually fixes were ecstatic, though Kyle had heard of some junkies who went for the more old-style stuff. Kyle was working on mastering the lingo of his fix. He wore the right clothes, the clothes that said I'm hip, I'm cool, but that also had a modesty about them that made Kyle laugh. It's cool to be a Christian. But it's not too cool. It's not metal cool, or punk cool. It's just hip. Kyle spike the language of the true believers. He knew a few greek words like "koinenia" or "kristos," a regular New Testament scholar. Sin Leaving the auditorium, Kyle headed straight for his car, but was stopped by Sharon, his long-time crush. "Hey man," she said, "you were pretty messed up in there." "Yeah," he said. "You weren't so bad yourself." Actually he couldn't see her at all. He'd been concentrating too much on the song to care what Sharon was doing. He expected that she would be doing what she usually did. She'd raise both hands and shake her head a little, just like the faithful. She could incorporate herself well into her fix, even when partaking. Then it occurred to him. "You mean you were watching me?" "Yeah, it's what I always do. I watch the junkies so I can see what techniques they use to reprogram." "And what technique was I using?" "Standard," she said, walking coyly toward him. "You grab the hand," she grabbed his hand, "and you stroke the skin to establish a basic pavlovian association." She slid her right hand up his left arm until it was wrapped around his back and then pulled him tight for a kiss. "You know, you hang with me more often and I'll show you stuff you never thought possible." Mene Mene Tekel Parsin They entered her apartment, Sharon holding onto Kyle's hand. Kyle thought this was going to a run of the mill makeout session, but was disappointed when a couple of other people were there too, hunched over their laptops. Was this a coding party?. Steve from work he recognized. The others, though, he'd never seen. "I've been working on a little something for a while now," Sharon said. "I've been keeping it a little secret." "And what are all these guys doing here?" "These," Sharon said, "are my associates." "Hey girl," Kyle said, "I thought I was your associate." "No," she said, "You're my lova." And she grabbed him and kissed him again. Kyle looked more closely now. The people were seated at Sharon's coffee table. At the centre of the table was a tall blue thing that looked a bit like a crystal. "Sit down on the couch," Sharon said. He shrugged and sat down on the couch. "Close your eyes." He closed them. "This isn't some kind of hazing to get me back for the async GC bug a while back is it?" There was a humming sound now. "Now," sharon said, "Open em up!" Kyle opened his eyes. All over the walls now there were characters and numbers. He thought at first that the thing in the centre of the table was a projector. He was about to call Sharon's bluff when he turned around. The walls blurred a little as he turned but when he got his focus back he could see blue-green writing on the wall behind his head. The writing stayed there when he put his hand in front of it too. Kneeling on the couch now in order to face the wall, Kyle tried something. He reached out his right forearm and moved his two fingers up the skin. Immediately the place lit up and the letters started to blur a little. Just as the letters were about to dissipate, Kyle thought he saw "Your such a no0b" written with "pwnd" just underneath it. Then the whole room disappeared and Kyle found himself standing now. Sharon stood before him and under him was the dense throng of true believers. They writhed like tube worms with a volcanic vent of worship music billowing out at them. "No way!" Kyle said. "You guys wrote an NLP API?" Sharon pulled him close again and said, "Now I'm going to show you stuff you never thought possible." Any idiot can see that the result is true. |
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