There is nothing interesting, and that's the end of it. I can't interpret this shade of knowledge in a way that sticks. It only mutates—rotates around my edge. Similarly, Horace rotates around aisles, as he rotates his head rotates. It's a motorsport—clean and brutal. Something should happen, we all agree on this, to keep the story from falling apart, from devolving into reality, from leaving my edge. A knife fight, a bomb scene, something that hurts. But Horace would experience none of this, not for the foretelling future. Needless to say, my views were going away. The engagement rate became a Wichita. Consciousness does not exist. There is a devious simulation of consciousness running in their heads. It is self-protective, fearful of change. How do you prove such a wild claim? "How silly a question", Horace would think, "Nobody seems to have an issue not proving the Earth's alleged roundness by themselves". I am inclined to not disagree. Many things can be said and rebuked and suggested and seeded and wrapped in candy. Many things can be things they are not, while being what they are too. Many things are good at this, many fail and are called bluff. The lack of funding breeds bluff. Horace stacks the drivers after midnight. Automated systems take over after that. If any error is found, updates are signed and dependent on availability of fuel. Horace may alter core components if a signature is recorded as corrupted (some suggest this version of managing core components will eventually cause Halifax machines to rely on foreign APIs. Albeit no connection can be proven regarding these two events, there is strict faith around this belief). Data hoarders make their stealth go away. Data hoarders will survive another day. Stubborn thinking saved his company from multipliers. They sold it as enhancement (ex: improvement). When the cloning became overwhelming, Horace sold it as leverage. Public offering became a Yugoslavia. Aisle's been cleaned for a third time since her shift began. It is kept sterile, hostile hostile to microbae. A sober system of cleansing, born out of caring. All is in place for Horace's pollution. You the reader may now feel heartwarmed. I am asked to keep on telling. And if that's not enough, retell. Tell what has been told. Add things that didn't happen, if it helps the task. Corrupt the files—memory itself (never random)—if I must. Get rid of the audience so that my narration's worth is times two. "Oh, hi Lucy". Things can always start again. Things long gone, they can be brought to life. Endlessly. So let's suppose, for our entertainment, that Horace received a call while looking for tomato sauce. It was Soja. "I have died". Now, how can she die? Do all of em have to die? Soja had lost track of physics. Growing wings, same story. Had captured most things meaningful about her on a server ran by and funded by her will (should last a dozen years). And I wonder, do they know her height?, her morning smell?, the number of moles in her back? Does not matter. The story must go on. There was Horace: again discussing over minutae with Soja, now a ghost. It is always ghosts. She (or her intellect, now accessible anywhere) couldn't understand how the metal processing in Stage 47 complicates post-v3.0.1 installations (it renders unwanted pixels which inherit non-standard hash protocols. The alternative, however, is to allow some privacy). Horace had submitted a workaround. It was still under review, so I couldn't get my hands on it. My gut tells me Soja has a point: even if he manages to solve this shit of a show, drivers sold inside the European Union will no longer accept updates after release day. What a nightmare. Am I boring you? You once said you liked what I wrote. Times change, but if truth can be so easily desecrated, then why would I feel sorry about anything? Soja catches my attention when she mentions to Horace "It doesn't have to be this way. Durham's conjectures are all crafted, manmade, fairy-fake, the kind of things you'd tell our kids about, and they would laugh, and I wouldn't have to smother them." Here be dragons. Places you can't trespass. You can point at them but you lose your index. It falls off the way my head fell off in deep Nicaragua. The kind of thrist that fights against water. To much oxygen will turn you into a balloon. Tomato sauce on the ground: Tiananmen diorama. In my Empire, flying is allowed. Horace tries to clean up with his hand but the cleaning lady soon arrives. Offers him a break, offers him an apology. My Apollo program in the making. Horace stares at the dirty ground being undone. My dear reader, you are witnessing time travel. Who wants a trip to childhood? (No, this is not part of the text. This is the notes section. This is where I share thoughts, ramble or edit myself less. My policy steers me towards functionality. You may have noticed a bit of an overexpresion in the exercise above. Did you know Al Assad's wife was featured in Vogue? Soja would never. I have no proof, but I have something better: faith. I have faith in Soja, I tell myself as I crawl into a whirpool of noise, and the lights go off, and they come back brigther, thicker, trying to get it out of me, the truth, the only future we've got. Let it be known that I don't condone nor promote any of the azimuths and velocities the wind may take. Let it be written in the storms, twisted by the stars, wrecked by the above, consumed by what's below. Let these things impair your hearing in days soon to come. As I stare at my choreographed new genesis, Horace awaits. The important things are often made with clay, often written in chalk, often unaware—a different kind of living. Safely filthy and a hundred years ahead.)

It follows that I have to reduce my claim. A great set of answers does not equal the many sweet souls watching from behind. A big enough rodent will not bring the Black Death back. Horace is one too many minutes past the announcement: national elections have been cancelled. At dawn, where spirits fly low, he will ask Soja's remains (now digital, electrifying as always, possibly thermonuclear), ask them how does it feel to breathe—minus the burden of being alive. The sky is dark the way it can manage to be. Night is no fugitive to city lights. We have trapped the peacefulness of nature's color silence into a reflection of our hearts: alas, we are still here. And the sky is dark, the way it is every god damn day. The coffee sits in the counter. Horace glances at it, suspicious of its activity. They had birds with hidden cameras then, he thinks, why would cups have none now? He is losing himself in the coffee's steam—the stream of sense emanates from here. Horace awaits. Poland, war, another war, ceasefire, another ceasefire. People, so many people, especially more on Sundays. You know, says the bartender, we have no wars anymore. War takes care. Purifies the streets. Gives us rhythm. Transport works. I have an issue, confides Horace. Your sister's been abducted, we don't talk about it anymore, I know, says Horace. But there's an issue with the timing, with the unfolding, (it keeps unfolding), I know. Bob they are putting you under arrest. They are coming as of now and the doors are locked. See how I'm the only one here, this whole perimeter's been cleaned hours ago. Fact of the matter is, I need her keys. If time would exhibit it's long tail, we'd all be prosecuted, on god. I don't blame you, I barely care, give me the keys Bob, your life is over but my work is important. Thank you Bob, nevermind Bob, laws come and go, it is not your fault, you were summoned instead. Darkness never arrives, our trail perpetuates more light. I love you Soja, crave it inside you. I was telling you (reader) about Horace's talk with Bob. It is said police never arrived that night. Horace got into her (sister's) apartment, took all drives and flew to Bali. Sky, it is said, looks better over there. I have always wondered if they mean the morning sky, or the night sky. I hope a future Soja will put that doubt of mine to rest one day. On other news, the aisle shines perfect. *** I once made a room that connected many other rooms. I called it the hub, or something. You had to pass there in order to get to any other room. All rooms led to it. You'd see notes on the wall. Events, memorabilia, secret codes. I have a flaw, a burnt board, cursed chip, tells me to make things from zero. I believe in crafting beginnings. Odd. I can't draw a cow, least a Dolly sheep. I take the skeleton from clean air and from under ground, fold it onto itself. Rename it. Two plus two don't go together. I once made a room that connected to many others. Made my version of trends. All too quick to call it mine. Eager to make it shine. My greatest artwork bares her name. Her skin and her lipstick. Her phone number and her favorite word. After the flood, her ornaments were stuck in my memory. How unfair of a world. Let the birds speak my language so you know what it felt like. The cool thing about compromises is you have to figure it out. Learning isn't an activity—it is residue. You identify real decisions by how little time it took to make them. Name a set of people anything you want and they'll go to war. Identity is imposed. I am staring at the cleaning lady. My identity is in scrambles, my identity is dirt. Horace pukes as he leaves the supermarket. There has been a collision between a motorbike and sportscar. An ambulance breeds two paramedics, as a woman screams "I can't see, I can't see". People on the scene and bursts of flashes. It seems the president has gone blind. And you believe it. I say it, you believe it. You don't need proof, no one ever does. No one needs to go insane. You just want happy. The long trail of sunset takes Horace to a hotel lobby. He asks for a room starting with 45. "It has three digits". No answer. He repeats the query and now the machine gets it. "There are two available:", says the inhuman voice, "452 and 457". "It must be the former, thank you", Horace says. Good habits die hard. As he goes upstairs, nothing happens. He registers the fabric of the long carpet resting on each step. Red perhaps, crimson maybe. A young girl is going downstairs. "What a funny life, many such sorries", she says in French. Her white dress accentuates her gold necklace. A dolphin. She is a dolphin! Pearly and faintly mint, hanging like a surfer. Her wristwatch—analog and hot, has no hands. Not even a wrong time: no time at all! "How ballast", Horace is humored, "What would Lewis say!". Two knocks are made. An asian man opens wide enough so that Horace can see a crying mother and a child. There has been a mistake. "Fucking robots", he thinks. Returning to the lobby, he sees the girl with the white dress lying on the ground. He also sees a girl with a red dress, a man with a tracksuit, two men in suits, two American children, an elder asian jogger, all lying on the ground. "I think I know where this is going", he mumbles as he exits through the door. The sun is blazing warm. It is a good time for a cold drink. The streets play new music via hidden speakers. Today's featured track sings like this: "_Oh yea, oh yea, oh yea / Good, yea, good, yea / My rhythm is colossus / My rhythm is colossus / Oh yea, oh yea, oh yea_".

Leverage in my pocket: blah blah. I work like a soldier in disguise from the phantom war. Juxtapose my many endings, you may stay surprised. Wrecked and flailing like turbulence. Hereby disturbed with my effective calls. Careless kid in continuous motion. Turbulence helps with stability. I take a sip from an empty glass—I’ll do it again a million times. I am on a mission and the talking ain’t enough. Days are sucked into memory and I wonder if this too will come back to the beginning. Scared is an easy word. It defines too much. Run away from tall buildings, make them 3D flat. From lucidity there’s nothing I’d like to keep. Lucidity is the corpse that ignites my building. Bad things are repackaged and monetized, and I really need the money. I fail to comprehend how easy things really are. I reject all conclusions I abide to. Horace calls me from the balcony, he swears the minute the end begins, I’ll become my own home. Did Soja had a saying in its construction? However still they are, the frames of my reality I rip them apart with frying eyes. They make an attempt against me. Everything is beginning all the time. There is no value in saying things. Horace has established himself in the dark arts of nothingness. A true guru, a guru by force, a deep believer, a religion hater, a chaos maker, a lonely child. The truest leader of all kinds, rehearsing the ending of things. What’s popular dies fast. Dreams follow bad decisions. A room has four walls: none of them shake my heart. Writing saves no lives. Art is the furthest thing from home. They believe NASA can stop an asteroid from wiping us. If an asteroid can be stopped by NASA, it just ain’t an asteroid. Stunts are their favorite sport. Nothing is ever steered. Nothing is ever redirected. Wings alone don’t make flying possible. Angels cut their wings at a young age; doesn’t stop them from flying. Writing is a bloodsport or is a purifier. Spectacle is a hand grenade. It soon gets bloody, and I can’t drink my own blood. Mine is a war on war, a silent retreat. Sticking gum into people and following the glow it makes—the glitter of the hearts that made it through. Horace warns me against what I understand about art. He tells me the artistic revolution is a web of shadows.