Friday, January 04, 2019

'38 Rue Utopia ~ Ep.40

The glassy dude
I'm the science of all that's wrong
~ Baxter Dury ‘Miami’ 2017


The Kulture holds on to what it had at the time; a large slice of the pie; all sources of power.
The Carny lies somewhere between two worlds, the then and now, the virtual and the actual.
Physically, it’s a post-collapse creation, but it hasn’t always been this presence, this lump, this oasis, this grubby circus located in one of the darker surface precincts of Bigmark. The Carny conceived as Carnivale, a sandbox; Peye’s virtual playground; a sanctuary for her creative urge.
In it she’d deposited a community of avatars coded from the last beta version of The Sims™: clunky but they served well enough as members of the audience. For the sound system she’d cobbled together bits and pieces from various mixers and Muzik Makrs whose code had long been penetrated by the military, no doubt looking for shit they could use to kill more people more efficiently.
At that age she had dreamed of programming a reality that would take her away from Bigmark, away from the hypocrisy she saw among the Kulturati, to an alternate reality that even as a young teenager she’d known better than to disclose to the family.
Her Tales were born in the Carnivale’s VR, honing her skills as a storyteller as performed before the avatars who reacted according to their programmed personality matrices, not always satisfying but at least she felt she wasn’t talking to herself.
Things are better now with live audiences...
When it comes to family, Peye’s family especially, nothing is free from exploitation.
Her mother’d somehow discovered her secret virtual sanctuary and immediately seen the potential, both for financial gain and as a tactical outpost topside in Bigmark. In addition, she saw it as a way of containing Peye, then in her twentieth year, a way of breaking the deadlock of Peye’s rebellion; her refusal to work for the family.
She’s proposed turning Peye’s dreams into reality.
“It’ll be all yours darling, to do with as you want; you will be the star of the show; only, can we call it something other than Carnivale; that’s just too pretentious”
The first compromise is the thin edge of the wedge.
Her family only had her best interests at heart; a belief they never bothered to share with her. She soon realised that you get nothing for nothing; it was a hard lesson for the sensitive Peye, her dream now a debt she cannot repay, no matter how hard she cries into her pillow.


Baxter Dury
Miami


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