western birthrates

A Disappearing Virtual Hybrid (Micro)Chapbook

by GRSTALT Comms

Western Birthrates

I get up every morning at 06:23 and put on my Captain False Flag costume.

I’m not allowed to wash it at home – it smells pretty bad – so I spray it with some deodorant.

I suppose I should be grateful for the opportunity I’ve been given by the rehab program.

And it could be worse – my partner’s got to dress up as Taybor the Turtle.

These are both properties belonging to Sproos Capital, who own the collection company.

***

At the orientation they told us that business success is about constant evolution.

Sproos decided they’d blow away the competition by leveraging some of its existing IP.

A Dressup’s first responsibility is to take the sting out of repossession – it helps to make things less heated if the kids can come and pose for selfies with their favorite characters.

***

As a Dressup, you’ve got to get into character – the costume we get is based on a personality test we did when we signed up for the program.

Nobody wants the weaselly repo man anymore. People want something they can put on their socials that’ll drum up some engagement.

 They’re losing their stuff but gaining some clout, so it all evens out.

***

It’s the Holidays, but business never stops. The Dressups are still out there hitting targets.

The first job of the day is usually easy. Most people are still in bed, so you don’t have to talk to them any. But an upstairs light’s on, so that’s enough to warrant a doorstep.

We both take a minute to get into character – the program sent us to some improv classes.

I tell Taybor to hitch the car onto the back of the truck while I do the doorstep.

I don’t know why, but I’m really feeling it this morning. Some days I’m up for the performance, but other days it feels like I’m ripping out chunks of my soul with every word.

***

The house doesn’t have any decorations up. The front lawn is frosty and overgrown.

A woman opens the door. I launch into my opening Captain False Flag spiel – it’s burned into my memory now, to the point where I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore, I could be saying anything at this point, just making a bunch of noises at this woman.

I get worried for a second when she just stands there looking at me, then she says wait a minute and comes back with a man. She says this stupid fucker is the one you need to talk to, and she starts pounding on the man’s chest with her fists and calling him a fucking bum.

We were told at the orientation not to intervene in what they called ‘client-directed violence’ – we can only use the self-defense they taught us if the client turns it on us, we’ve got to try and defuse the situation with ‘avenues to fun’ like signed JPEGS and group selfies.

It starts to get funny how little these people are getting it, I try to hold in a laugh as this dude looks at me with his open mouth and bloodshot eyes, hugging himself in stained basketball shorts and a faded yellow t-shirt that has ‘KILL KLAUS SCHWAB’ written on it.

He says the kids are staying with her mom while we sort shit out, and I’ve had all my accounts suspended, because they can’t handle serious talk about Western birthrates.

She comes back to the door and says he’s a rat fuck who can’t keep his dick to himself.

***

I go into Captain False Flag’s monologue from the end of Building 7 Cleanup, but he turns away from me and says shut your mouth, you fucking bitch.

She says what are you going to do about it, pussy?

He steps up to her and says don’t fucking try me, bitch.

She says why don’t you go back to your skank and shoves him.

He trips backward onto the porch. I try to get out of the way, but the costume’s heavy fabric makes sudden movements hard. He hits me in the chest with his shoulder. We fall together down the steps and land on top of each other on the lawn. His thick beard tickles my face.

She shouts maybe you can get her dad to send you the cash, you fucking bum.

***

Taybor waddles up and goes into her opening spiel. I tell her to cut it out and help me up.

He gets up holding his shoulder and says you injured me, pal, I’m taking this higher.

I don’t know how to answer this as Captain False Flag, so I improvise and say Captain False Flag’s mission is to protect the innocent – I’m not sure what this means.

He says don’t give me that shit, you tackled me and busted my fucking shoulder.

I show him the bodycam footage, but he isn’t convinced and says that’s not a good angle.

I show the footage to Taybor and say does that look like an aggressive posture to you?

Taybor says it looks like you were attacked.

I turn off the bodycam.

He says whatever, I’m suing the fucking company for this, and starts walking back to the house.

***

I open the shell on Taybor’s costume and take out a baton and some zip ties.

I run up behind him and strike him on the ankles with the baton. He goes down face first. I put my knee in the small of his back, tie up his wrists, then his ankles.

She comes to the door and starts screaming let him go you fucker.

I say nothing to worry about madam, please go back inside and I’ll handle the situation.

I lean in and say you still sure you want to take this higher?

He says okay, just let me go, alright? Take the fucking car, it’s a piece of shit anyway.

She goes back into the house and comes out with a hammer.

Taybor shields me and we retreat to the truck. Taybor tries to get it started.

***

She whacks the passenger window with the hammer. The glass shudders. She leans back and whacks it again. The pane of glass drops intact into my lap.

She drops the hammer and reaches in.

The truck chokes and coughs as Taybor keeps turning the ignition.

She wraps her arms around my neck, dragging my face toward hers.

Her breath is hot and stale.

She bites my cheek, but the fabric from my costume protects me.

Her saliva makes the fabric damp.

The truck fires up and we start to move.

She attempts to reach inside my mask, but I grab her thumb and bite down.

She screams ow, you fucker and loses her grip on the window frame.

I look out the window and see her curled up on the pavement.

***

We drive for a while in silence, then Taybor turns on the radio and there’s a discussion about Western birthrates. The wind blowing in makes it hard for me to hear what they’re saying.

Another truck goes in the opposite direction, inside it is a Rizz Pontiff and a Condiment Chad. Taybor pumps the horn, and we give them the special wave that’s just for Dressups.

Before we drop the car off at the depot, we stop in a Taco Burro parking lot to check it out. All the Dressups do it – sometimes you find stuff that’s valuable, or things that tell you a lot about the person, or things that start mysteries in your brain about what’s going on in their life.

But this time it’s just junk – empty cans of Barrel Bomb, nicopod tins, used fudge slurry cups, Big Beef Bro wrappers with sauce smears on them, spent boner gum sachets.

We bag it all up, cram it into the trash, and take our disposal receipt. We go in the Taco Burro and exchange the disposal receipt for one free small soft drink and two straws.

***

The plastic bag Taybor has stretched across the window flaps in the wind and makes a honking sound. There’s a call-in show on the radio. A caller says it’s every man’s duty to spread his seed, and women love having life in them, but they’re tampering with that. The host asks who are they? The caller says it’s Big Pharma! The host asks what evidence do you have to back that up? The caller says my own balls are my evidence! I’ve got four kids, but I haven’t been able to make any more, no matter how much I’ve tried, and I put it down to a biological hack. The host cuts off the caller when he starts talking about the Georgie Guidestones.

Job Creator Heaven

the individual is free to decompose however they see fit | the word has been compromised to a permanent end | beaten to a pulp by the new literary outlaws | flexing their biceps & heralding the vitality of their punctuation | soiling themselves in the public square for the amusement of the local lord | trampled for eternity by an anhedonic god | carelessly butchered & mislabeled but still appetising meat | investing in paradise to strip it bare | go map your soul & circulate some money in the shaken mountains & removed hills | rich in mercy & unfailing kindness | accidentally getting sent to job creator heaven

Shiver of Beauty

It’s raining and I’m waiting for the text. The drains on Cemetery Road are clogged and overflowing. His sister is visiting unexpectedly, so I’ve been put back – I don’t know what would’ve happened if she’d turned up while I was there. She does something with real estate. She’s concerned about him –  she thinks he might be neurodivergent.

I don’t have any money to go anywhere and wait, so I walk around the supermarket and pretend to shop while my clothes dry off. I’ve got some regular work now – I click on pictures of puffins that I see – so I get out my phone and do that while I put things that I’m not going to  buy into my cart. I’ll pretend I’ve got an emergency message and make a shocked face before dumping my cart. It’s a fun game, stocking up for a life I don’t have. I can signal whatever I want to the other shoppers – I do my bit to help farmers in the developing world and protect the bee population, but I also like to have fun with plenty of treats.

He won’t go anywhere with me because he’s scared someone will see us together and tell his family – his dad has a lot of sway in the community, he’s a bigwig at the Grand Mosque, I don’t know what his exact role is there, but everyone seems terrified of him. I’m out of my depth with all this, these are cultural pressures I don’t really understand, so I agree to go through the ritual of arriving and leaving covertly. The flat is seriously under-furnished, to the point where if you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was a shooting gallery – just a chair, a desk where his laptop is, cardboard boxes with his clothes stuffed in them, and a mattress on the floor. There’s nothing in the cramped kitchen except empty takeaway cartons.

The buzzer hasn’t been working the last couple of times, so the smooth process of entering has been disrupted – I’ve got to send him a text when I’m turning onto his street, and he’ll be waiting at the entrance to let me in, hurrying me up the stairs before anyone can see me. He always seems like he’s just got up, wearing slippers and a dressing gown.

He tells me he’s going for a shower. His voice is slow and sleepy, as usual. The room is dark and cold, as usual. But there’s an unfamiliar smell that I track to a box on the desk. I lift the flaps to see sachets of protein powder. He has gained quite a bit of weight since we started meeting up – in his profile photo he’s slim and smiling and his hair is sleek and straightened. He tells me he’s going to start running, there’s a guy on his course who’s started a club – I get the feeling he’s into this guy and he’s telling me this as a warning that what we have is temporary, and once he’s back in presentable shape I’ll be jettisoned.

I’m not worried because I know he’s not going to do anything. This is another of his sister’s attempts to get him ‘out there’ or ‘back in the game’ or whatever euphemism she uses for dealing with what’s going on with him. I’m confident that box will be sitting there untouched the next time I visit. When he comes back in with a towel wrapped around his waist, I ask him how his sister is, he shrugs and says: ‘She wanted an update on my von Mises presentation.’ He told me he never wanted to study finance, he finds it dull and confusing, but he had to stay close to home and be the STEMlord the family demands him to be as the firstborn male. I get the impression he’s flunking hard. Extensions are mentioned a lot.

He takes off the towel, drops onto the mattress, pulls the duvet up to his chin and watches me undress. He lifts the duvet to let me in and we tangle together in each other’s warmth. His hole is freshly shaved, he’s rubbed some lotion into it that smells of coconut. It’s bitter and acidic and addictive. He never lets me fuck him – he always tells me ‘Next time’ – and that’s what keeps me coming back, the promise. It ends the same way every time: me straddling his chest so he can crane his neck and take the head of my dick in his mouth until I slide out and bust over his clamped lips and quivering chin, then tonguing his balls until he finishes himself off. As soon as he busts, he rolls off the mattress and leaves the room.

I’m sitting on the edge of the mattress when something comes into my mind from a region where all the inconsequential stuff that somehow sticks is stored – me and a bunch of schoolmates are talking to this kid who asks us if we like to ‘shiver a beauty.’ We haven’t got a clue what this kid’s on about until he makes a wanking gesture. After that, we crack up and follow this kid around shouting ‘shiver a beauty!’ in increasingly obnoxious tones. From that day on, everyone called this kid ‘Beauty.’  We never bothered  to find out if he made it up, or where he heard it from, or what it even means, because it was too much fun to chase this scrawny kid up and down the corridors screaming ‘Beauty!’

The Gift of Love

I walk past it for weeks – a bulging plastic bag dumped against an electricity box. One day I stop and look at it, then move on. The next day I stop again, then bend down and pick it up. I walk away fast. I feel it slap against my hip. Nobody can say it’s never been mine. The bag is blue and wrinkled. It catches the wind as I cross the bridge. I think about what’s inside it. I look down and see the lid of a carton peeking out. It creaks as it flaps in the wind. I put the bag on the kitchen table and lean in to take a smell. Indoors the bag smells bad. I move back to stop myself from being sick. I take a deep breath and start taking everything out, arranging it on the table to make something like the insides of a body – plastic trays with dried sauces, cans of mango slices in syrup, breakfast cereal that has hardened grey and stale, takeaway garnish turning to green soup. I bundle it up and stuff it back into the bag in the right order to make it alive. Now it’s really alive to me. The smell has got familiar, like the stink that comes from babies. I put the bag on the sofa in the living room. I sit next to it and dig in my ears for something I can offer. Some flakes come out on my pinky and I sprinkle them over the mouth of the bag. I try to smooth out the wrinkles. But I see that the wrinkles are formed into a smile. Then I get that’s how it’s meant to be. I pick up the bag for a hug. Juice leaks out the bottom onto my lap. I kiss the bag’s smiling face. I feel so attached to the bag now. It gives me something that I’ve never had before. Bigger than any present I’ve ever been given. The bag lies next to me in my bed. I’ve never slept so well. I see its smile in my dreams. The bag tells me that I don’t have to worry yet about the time when its insides decay and the juice comes through the punctures in the plastic, and I’ve got to pour it into one of the old jars under the sink, then bury the cans and the trays and the cartons in the garden.

I Forgot I Wasn’t There

We were playing football on the field when the trucks came up the hill. We all ran into the village to tell everyone. By the time we got back up there the fences had gone up.

I was working in the bar that night. Kizzy’s Papa said I could have Nicolas’s old shifts if I promised to keep my grades good. I listened to the men talking about what was being built on the field as I collected their glasses and emptied their ashtrays. Busto told everyone it’s a military base and the government is expanding the operation north. Everyone believed Busto because he was seen buying poetry books on market days. All except Moreno, who reminded everyone this has always been a loyalist village, Mayor Olmo has pledged his support to the central authorities’ security measures. Busto said we trust Olmo at our peril, and he banged his fist on the table. His ashtray spilled over. Kizzy threw a cloth over the bar and it landed on my shoulder. Everyone cheered and clapped and Kizzy bowed.

Mama warned us not to go up there but we always did on the way home from school. We’d hide in the line of trees at the edge of the field, stare at the red canvas that hung over the fence and listen to the sounds on the other side, the machines, the voices saying things we didn’t understand. It was a secret between us - me, Rayner and Liceth. Nobody else dared to go up. We saw the trucks go in and out, up and down the new road they’d built.

I listened to Mama talking with her friends in the backyard. She thought I was asleep, it was already dark, but I had my head next to the open window. Mama said to her friends I can sense something terrible is coming, I think it’s going to be a prison, that rat Olmo has taken a payoff from those crooks in the capital and they’re going to send all their trash up here, we won’t be safe on our own streets anymore.

The building went up fast. It came over the top of the fence. Everyone tried to pretend it wasn’t there. It was a big black box with no windows, guarded by men with guns wearing red vests. The trucks kept coming and going. We stopped going up there.

There was nowhere for us to play football so we had to find a new place. We went to the alley next to the mayor’s office. A woman opened a window and said the alley’s got to be clear, important people are working who can’t be disturbed.

Busto organised a meeting at the bar and everybody in the village was there. Busto told the crowd we need to know what’s inside the box and we should all go and find out. Everyone cheered and followed Busto into the street. All except Moreno.

We went to Olmo’s house, he lived on the edge of the village in the big mayor’s place. Olmo came onto the porch in his pyjamas. Busto walked up to talk with Olmo and they went inside the house. We waited for Busto at the bar. When Busto came back he said Olmo is going to make an announcement on the next market day.

Everyone was in the square on market day, standing around Olmo, who was with a small man who had two of the guards with him. The guards were carrying large boxes. Olmo said the small man is here to give us all a gift. The guards opened the big boxes and gave everyone what was inside, small white boxes with a logo on the top.

Everyone got a box and we all took them home. Inside the box was a phone. It was silver and smooth and shaped like a shell. It fit perfectly in my hand. We all worked together to make the phones work, one person read the instructions and the rest of us did what they said. Everyone’s screens lit up the front room and the music played.

The phones had games. We played the games all the time in the playground. I always beat Rayner and Liceth’s scores. I was the top scorer of my class. My favourite game was called Landslide. Your character had to get away from the crumbling ground by running and jumping. The ground kept crumbling faster and I always got away.

The school got some new computers. They had the same logo as our phones on their backs. They were silver and smooth and they made a soft humming sound.

Busto went to the mayor’s office. But Olmo’s receptionist told Busto the mayor is too busy to see you. Then Busto went back to Olmo’s house on his own. But a fence had gone up around the house and it was guarded by men wearing red vests.

Busto told everyone not to use the phones, even though they’d all started making calls to people down the street. Busto said to everyone Olmo still hasn’t answered our questions, he’s just distracted us. Moreno said to Busto whoever these people are they’ve already done more to help the young people make their way in life than you and your radicals. Their chairs fell back and the table shook when they stood up and started shoving each other. Kizzy said go and sleep it off. She threw a cloth at me and it fell on the floor.

We didn’t know what to do so we ran. I heard the car turn into the alley and Rayner was thrown back. As we turned up the hill I saw the small man get out and look down at Rayner as one of the men in red vests bent down to pick him up.

Everyone was gathered around Rayner’s house. The car was on the road outside. I went up to the window with Liceth. The small man was talking with Rayner’s parents. Rayner was sitting on the couch in the living room. His legs were stretched out with casts on them and his head was bandaged. He was sitting in front of the biggest television set I’d ever seen, like the screen they put up in the village square in summer for movies. The glow lit up the people on the street, the picture was so clear. Busto and some of his friends pushed through the crowd to the front of the house. Busto started shouting that this is an injustice and we’re being bribed. Everyone said to Busto you’re blocking the view.

As I was walking to school my phone buzzed and the tone was muffled in my pocket. It was a text message. It said: You’re in! More details coming!

I was the only one in my class to get the message. Everyone crowded around me in the playground to read it and we tried to figure out what it meant. What was I in? Details of what? Some older boys came up to me at lunchtime and asked me if I got the message. These were some of the scariest boys in the whole school - they’d already started working on Moreno’s farm after school - so I tried to look casual when I told them I had. They said we got it too and they took their phones out to show me.

Busto’s wife came to our house and she was crying. Mama took her into the living room and tried to calm her down enough so she could talk. She said to Mama Busto didn’t come home last night, but Busto told me not to use my phone.

The next message came three days later. It told me that I had to report to the HeadOnyx Center, which is what the black box was actually called.

I showed the message to Mama. She said you are forbidden from going there, it will not happen. We started to have an argument but I had to go to my shift at the bar. I talked to Kizzy about it and she said you’ve got to go, you’ve got to find a way out of here, she said I wish this had happened when I was younger, then I would have had an excuse to say no to Papa and find my way to the capital, but now it’s too late.

Moreno was taken in when Busto’s body was found on some land that he owned. One of the boys who worked on the farm told me that three police cars came to arrest Moreno, they questioned his family and the staff and searched everywhere.

Kizzy said I’ll find someone to cover your Saturday shift. I recommended Liceth. I went to the gates at eight and showed the guards the first message. One of the guards told me to put my phone in a red tray and walk through a scanner. The scanner made a soft humming sound and made me warm to my bones. I came out onto a long wide avenue lined with trees that didn’t look real. There was a garden area with a waterfall, a football pitch, a climbing wall and a basketball court. In front of the black box there was a square where hundreds of kids were standing. Up close the black box was covered in small circles like bumps. The bottom half of the box slid open from both sides and we went inside.

We crowded together in the bright silver lobby. On the wall above us was a screen, like the one in Rayner’s house. The screen was showing a rotating version of the logo from our phones and the computers at school - a black teardrop inside a red diamond. Then a face came on the screen, a smiling young man with a broad face, red cheeks and long blonde hair. The young man started talking and his voice was translated, his mouth didn’t move in time with the deep voice. He said my name is Brandon Steggles, CEO and Concept Architect of HeadOnyx, and welcome to the HeadOnyx Center. Then there was a fast video with some information about HeadOnyx, which made everything from video games to defense technology. Then Steggles came back and said you’ve been chosen as partners in HeadOnyx’s latest disruption, but history doesn’t carry any passengers, so you’ve got to earn your seat on the rocket.

Another set of doors in front of us slid open and we crammed into a corridor with some more doors at the end. The doors opened and everyone streamed into a large hall with desks in lines. There was a computer on every desk. There weren’t enough desks for everyone. The larger boys pushed through and got their desks first. The desks were filling up fast so I ran to the bottom of the hall to find one. As I got close to an empty desk near the front another kid - a small young girl - came round the corner and started running toward it too. I sped up and we got to the desk at the same time. I felt bad for shoving her because she wasn’t expecting it. She fell back into the kids running up and down, she got kicked and stamped on and she tried to crawl under a desk but the person sitting at the desk kicked her away. The guards standing by the doors had to step in and break up a fight between three kids over the last desk. The kids who didn’t get a desk were taken out of the hall.

I turned on the computer and it started to hum. Steggles came on the screen and I put on the headset. Steggles said congratulations for making it through Level One, but now we’ve got to figure out if you’re legit HeadOnyx material. Steggles told me to click on the car icon and a racing game called Move Fast loaded up. Cars were lined up on the starting line and a light flashed from red to orange to green. Cars span off the track and crashed into the barriers and dissolved in flames. But I figured out the controller straight away.

The word WINNER! flashed up on the screen and a song started playing over credits and highlights from the race. I took off the headset and looked around the hall. There was only me left in there. A guard took me through a different door on the side and down a corridor to a dark room. A lady’s voice said when you see a shape you should hit it. Coloured shapes started appearing on the walls, they kept flashing up faster but I always got them before they dissolved, even though the walls kept getting further away every time.

The door opened and I covered my eyes. I was still seeing floaters as we went down another corridor and up some stairs to an office where the small man was sitting behind a big desk. The small man invited me to sit across from him and said Brandon is very impressed with your scores, how would you feel about working on the beta phase of HeadOnyx’s next project? I said I’ll have to talk to Mama and the small man shook his head. He said you’ve got to be in control of your own fate, you’ve got to be a man like Papa who died for his freedom. He slid some papers across the desk and said we’re offering you a Level 1B Pass. I would have access to all of the HeadOnyx Center’s leisure facilities, all my living expenses would be covered by the company, I would have my own lodgings and I could begin my journey up the executive ladder. All I needed to do was sign and he put a pen on the desk.

I wrote my name at the bottom of the last page. The small man reached under the desk and brought up an orange badge shaped like the logo with a silver teardrop in the middle. He peeled off a layer of plastic from the front of the badge and put it in front of me.

Everyone stopped talking in the cafeteria when I came in. They all had green teardrops on their badges. One of the older boys from school came up to me and said you’ve got to go to the Silver Lounge and he tapped on my badge. The Silver Lounge had cool air, soft chairs instead of plastic seats and lots of sweet-smelling plants. A guard posted by the entrance gave me my phone back. I sat by a poster for something called The Aviary of Doom III and a waiter came to take my order. I had a message from Liceth. Mama had been to the bar. When Kizzy told Mama where I’d gone and that she’d let me go Kizzy and Mama got into a fight.

I tried to call Mama then Liceth but the calls wouldn’t go through. I went to the guard at the entrance and said I need to go home to deal with a family emergency. The guard said I’ll go and talk to someone about it and he was replaced by another guard.

Two guards took me to the house. One guard stayed behind the wheel of the truck and the other one followed me. The house was dark and everything was closed up. I knocked on the door but there was no answer. The only light or noise on the street was coming from Rayner’s television set. We went to the bar and Kizzy’s Papa said your Mama and Kizzy have been taken in. We went to the station and found Mama in the cells, she had scratches on her face and her hair was loose. Mama started crying and grabbing her face when she saw me. She said I can’t bear to look at you, first I lost Papa, then Nicolas and now you, she said I can take care of myself, you are banished from the house.

My lodgings had a fake window you could switch to different views like submarine or spaceship. The small man was waiting for me. He said you’ve got to let these things go if you want to get ahead, I had to make the same choice myself at a younger age than you but I’ve never regretted it. The small man switched on a screen that opened in the wall and played a personal message Steggles had sent me. Steggles said you scored higher than any other entrant and I want you to be an integral part of our next project. I understand how difficult it is to move out, I remember how much I cried when my initial scores came through and I was sent to the academy, but being at the centre of innovation comes at a cost. Steggles said I’m going to pay your Mama’s bail and talk to Mayor Olmo about getting the charges dropped and make sure your family has everything they need.

In the morning a guard took me to a smaller hall that was lit up by three big screens in a line separated by dividers. Two other kids were already sitting in front of the screens so I sat in the last chair and put on the headset. The chair and the headphones were warm and soft. The game was like Move Fast but way more realistic, my car was driving on a race track, things kept jumping out in front of me and I had to get out of the way without damaging the car, if I went too fast the controller got hot. Every day new things got added to the game and it got harder. The race track turned into a busy street with lots of other cars and people walking and the game changed so we had to get from one place to another safely.

Liceth kept sending me messages telling me what was going on in the village. Moreno had been charged with three murders - Busto and two of his friends, whose bodies some kids found when they were playing in the woods, all burnt up - and he was being taken to the capital for the trial. Mama got a new refrigerator and the hole in the roof got fixed. Kizzy wasn’t working at the bar anymore. But I couldn’t message back, my phone wouldn’t let me do it.

If I wanted something I just had to put in a request and I’d get it. I tried new foods and it got harder to move. I was getting paid too, more than anyone in the village, more than Moreno ever did, because of my score. Every safe journey I did got added to my score. I think the word got out about my score because people started acting weird around me, they never invited me to play football so I just stayed in my lodgings and looked at the maps we had to learn for our journeys. I started coming up with my own routes across the city.

I was the first one to get five hundred safe journeys. I know this because the small man called everyone into the lobby and announced it. He made everyone turn to clap at me.

The small man said we’ve got a special job for you. When I logged on to my account the next morning there was a new map that took me to an airstrip outside the city. I was directed to a jet that had just landed. Steggles got out of the jet and he was followed by a man in a long black coat whose round face was blurred out for me. They both got in the back of the car. I could hear them. The blurred man had a weird accent, maybe German.

Steggles said do a circuit of the tarmac and stop by the steps of the jet, CO-ORDOS. Steggles started bragging to the blurred man about the response time of the AI and that it could make split-second judgements and adjust course based on inflowing data. Steggles showed the blurred man what he meant by having a dummy thrown out in front of me that I had to dodge and I did easy. Steggles said we’re ready to roll out the first models in cities with the infrastructure to handle it, somewhere with a light-touch mentality. The blurred man said I’ll start reaching out to suitable municipalities about tender presentations.

I got a bonus for it. Another teardrop got added to my badge. The small man said you’ve secured us our next round of investment. It was a big relief for them. But all I could think about was those fields and trees I drove past on my way to the airstrip. As soon as I got back to my lodgings I drew a copy of the map and I hid it under my bunk.

The first car was my car. I had the first live map. I picked up the first passengers and I took them to where they needed to go. It all went well. I was speedy yet safe. I earned a lot of tips and I got to keep them. People liked the experience. It made everything easier. I got 5 stars. On my way around I got to look at the city. But I had to follow the map.

It was getting toward the end of the day. The city was lit up nice with lots of wet orange.  The passenger was saying loud into his phone my boss has called me back in and I’m sorry we can’t go out but the company’s desperate for this contract. That’s when I made the turn. The map started flashing and the passenger noticed it when the flashing got faster. The passenger asked what’s happening and looked in the interior cam.

The map was clear, I wasn’t confused when I made the turn, it was somewhere I needed to visit, a feature that was just off the edge of the yellow square in the corner of my screen, it was a place on the other side of the fields, the map just kept spinning and the streets kept shrinking and the screen kept flashing faster until it was a flicker.

The passenger leant forward and asked the dash cam where are we going? He ended his call and said we’re going the wrong way and I need to be somewhere in ten minutes. I started to speed up, the controller was getting hotter and shaking, I held on to it harder. I took the on-ramp to the expressway, going out of the city. The controller was starting to burn my hands now. The passenger kept shouting I’m going to score you 1, he made another call and said something’s wrong. Nobody could do anything, I was Beta Boy, and there was no safe place to paralyse the car with traffic all around, if I was fast enough I could make it, I could feel the skin on my palms starting to cook and bubble up now.

The small man lifted off my headset and spoke in my ear. He said this can still be written off as a malfunction, the village can continue to be supported and Mama can keep getting her monthly stipend. I turned my chair and gave the controller to the small man. He screamed and dropped it. The screen turned over and blurred up. A hiss was coming from the headphones. I got on the floor and covered my head. I forgot I wasn’t there.

Two guards drove me down the old roads that threw us around. My hands were bandaged now. They took my badge away. Some people stood around in the lobby to watch them take me out. I thought they were going to finish me off and leave me in the woods, like Busto and his friends. But they took me to the capital for the trial. Where they charged me with something called digital manslaughter.  It didn’t take long for them to find me guilty. I got six years. The prison was being run by Moreno. I did jobs for Moreno and he looked after me. Things weren’t so bad. We got everything we needed. Moreno told me that the CO-ORDOS story had got out, how Steggles had tried to scam everyone with his no-driver cars. He was getting sued by his backers and the passenger’s family.

One day Olmo came to the prison. He got nine years. None of the bosses wanted Olmo to work for them and he had to get a job in the kitchen. Olmo kept trying to make bribes to the bosses but everyone knew to turn them down because Moreno told them to. He got beat up a lot in the yard. The guards found him on the kitchen floor with his throat slashed. They didn’t think it was me because the burns made it hard for me to grip things.

I got a letter from Liceth. All the phones got cut off when they took the black box down. Everyone found it hard at first but soon they forgot about them. Mama put the refrigerator in the yard when it broke down. A new company bought Moreno’s farm and the land where the black box was. They’re going to build a textile factory and everyone’s applying.

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ABOUT GRSTALT:

GRSTALT offer literary content for dead readers.

GRSTALT are partners in a global initiative to erase the author.

The GRSTALT project is neither a machine thing or a human thing, but something else.

Exactly what has yet to be determined.