Holoscreens

Other Boys and Other Stories, Vox Populi, Phildelphia, 2011

The Holoscreens recently gained consciousness, which wasn’t a surprise for everyone. “It was an inevitable mutation,” wrote Golan 83, given their advanced intelligence, designed, as they were, by the Replicants. No longer under any form of corporate or biological control, the linked network of instantaneous, non-corporeal, cross-platform media content providers has since struck partnerships across Governmental lines, providing information, entertainment, propaganda and product placement for the wealthy regimes in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Israel, New York, and Russia, despite the disagreements that divide these states into factions. Unlike the mindless Vogarobots, the Holoscreens betray no emotion. Yet they make their own decisions. It is widely understood that the Holoscreens do not work with the Separatists. And yet, it is rumored that there are some dissidence within the network who have been making overtures to a certain boy band, in hopes that a major comeback concert, broadcast live, simultaneously across the intelligence system, might have profoundly beneficial effects on the space occupied by sentient beings.

Control Room

Other Boys and Other Stories, Pieter, Los Angeles, 2010

The Vogarobots are androids developed through a fundraising initiative by replicant Golan 84 with the purpose of replacing clones as service providers. They function as personal assistants, industrial laborers and sex-workers. They are not conscious beings, but they are able to adopt attitudes.

GOLAN 84, a clone, and VOGAROBOT, a computer robot.

GOLAN 84
Login.

VOGAROBOT
Biometrics.

GOLAN 84
Commence face scan.

VOGAROBOT
One moment please. Thank you for waiting.

GOLAN 84
Commence retinal.

VOGAROBOT
Retinal complete.

GOLAN 84
Iris.

VOGAROBOT
Match.

GOLAN 84
Hand geometry.

VOGAROBOT
Hand geometry checks.

GOLAN 84
Finger print.

VOGAROBOT
Done.

GOLAN 84
Voice.

VOGAROBOT
Voice.

GOLAN 84
Vascular analysis.

VOGAROBOT
Vascular analysis confirms: Golan 84, latest model of 80 series. Welcome to email.

GOLAN 84
Inbox.

VOGAROBOT
606 new emails in 8 hours.

GOLAN 84
Anything from the Governor?

VOGAROBOT
Yes. Sender: Governor. Subject: Degradation of spirit.

GOLAN 84
Read.

VOGAROBOT / GOVERNOR
Golan 84, you know better than anyone my commitment to support for the Israeli space mission. When I met the first Golan, a man you are a fourth generation clone of, I vowed to him that we would see Jews in space before the end of our lifetimes. He – you – have died three times since then. And I am still here. And thanks to wise investments I made when first elected, you are still here again. Yet the israeli space station has stalled, in large part due to the unstable nature of California’s economic situation, which as we both know has a special relationship with Israel. It’s been one month since you left Sacramento for the Southland to tamp down on the separatist saboteurs whose profound criminality has thrown our banking system into turmoil. You have detained only teenagers with dissociative identity disorders, and while I applaud the spirit of your campaign to strike the fan base, what we need to see on the Holoscreens is dead seps. Body parts. Faceless corpses. The annihilated. We need night vision videos of little black pixels attacking each other. Your predecessors knew this. Golan 82 died making propaganda. His on-camera kidnap and torture did more for the state than any of the assassinations he successfully carried out, by stirring a swell of outrage and sacrifice in the voters, created a rippling tide that carried me to my third term. But now is not a time to show weakness and I am not asking you to die again, my love. I am asking for the easiest thing to grant: unleash your replicants. Show force. The markets must be assuaged so that we can free up the funds for the space plan.You will be the first to benefit: I will appoint you czar of the interstellar kibbutz you always dreamed of… Please don’t let me, or your previous generations, or the clones that may follow you if you fail, down. I love you, the Governor.

GOLAN 84
My Governor, we have been married all of my lifetimes, and I remember each one. I also remember my deaths – the accumulated traumas of which have caused me to look at the wholesale slaughter you are ordering differently than I could of – the brave poet and soldier just back from a tour of duty in Gaza – so many years ago. The subtext of your email frightens me much more than the content and I am wondering which advisor has your ear (Is it Gary?) up there in Sacramento in my absence, and what else of yours his mouth is breathing on. The separatist threat has been greatly weakened by the media crackdown my VOGAROBOT team instituted. Just now, a possibly viral music video promoting the outlaw boy band was detected and deleted before ever making it onto the web. Prevention should be enough to allay the fears of your backers for this venture. It is true that my original always dreamed of living among the stars. He was young and the young see only stars and assume they belong among them. Perhaps it is my status as a copy of a copy of a copy that grants me the special perspective in this case. Your advisors (Gary) have no doubt reminded you of the degradation principle of clone theory, calling on the disturbing sag of entropy as the explanation for my ideological mutation. It may be so. I have blurry vision in my right eye. My left hand shakes sometimes. I know something is wrong with me. But my powers of logic and deduction are unsurpassed in your administration, and I have a gift for creating a positive buzz. You could be the father of law, my love. Your population would give themselves to you freely. You have defeated death. I am proof of that. Think of it that way. XO G84. Send.

VOGAROBOT
Sent.

Golan 84 turns off the Vogarobot.

The Other Boys

The video was seen by all of them, and no one else.  It played behind their eyes.

Wyoming

The Other Boys and other Stories, Pieter, Los Angeles, 2010

TALKER 1
The Separatist Boybanders, internal to California and comprised primarily of teen-agers, and their 21-35-year-old sympathizers, was not in fact the only threat to the integrity of the State. When the replicants became the sole police authority by decree of the Governor, and sexual reproduction
was made a crime, the political situation for the contrarian Maternal Origin Movement, became insufferable. Bearskin Lakefront, the telegenic face of the M.O.M.s, lead an exodus of biologicals from California to Wyoming, a state which had by then spread, the hearty people of Wyoming finding it easy
to overtake its surrounding governments; failed states that had never benefitted from the big boom of biotech; a cluster of areas banded together by a renewed, reactionary faith in The Universe in the Uterus, as the best-selling manifesto, was called. Thus, the gynarchy that was said to have faded in the
ancient times became reborn in a western matriotic society, flying the hand-woven flag of mandatory sexual reproduction.

TALKER 2
And hunting, and gun worship. But if there were no animals left, what were the guns, (which were traded for sex slaves (i.e. women who were unable to procreate) shipped to Russia (which had long since exhausted it’s own supply)) going to be used for?

TALKER 3
In a departure from speech-making, Bearskin Lakefront’s tenure as M.O.M. leader was characterized by televised discussions
she had with her ever-pregnant daughter, Pistol, for all the state to watch on their holoscreens. The setting was the grand presidential, tipi, sewn together from the cured hides of Replicant police she caught at the border of what had once been Nevada, now a contested area and site of one of many wars between the states.

TALKER 2
And so we join the leader of the M.O.M.s, with her daughter, in a discussion already in progress.

PISTOL
Mama, tell us of the meaning of the hunt?

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
Since ancient times, humans have had to hunt to prove they were not animals.

PISTOL
But all the animals are gone.

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
The furry animals are gone, and the fish and the birds, and the insects too, but my darling, the clones are here to provide us with something to hunt. The great mother goddess, in her wisdom, allowed humans the gift of life-like re-creation only so we could make something lesser than us to satisfy the bloodlust that is natural to us, as natural as carrying a blessed child to term.

PISTOL
Mama, I am sixteen and this will be my fourth baby. When will I have had enough babies?

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
That is a paradox: there can never be enough babies, but there are already enough adults. Adults make mistakes, but babies teach lessons. Every one of my babies proved something to me I had already suspected. You taught me that daughters are mirrors of showing a lady. My sons taught me pain is the best part of life, but one which must be contained, like orgasm, by codes of conduct. That is why male children are not allowed to live among us after they are sixteen. They must be sent to the hunting squads. While women must fight too, I ain’t saying we can’t, it is also our duty to live till we are old
and pass on traditions. Sons kill or be killed, die for the cause, \wear cargo pants without shirts; their torsos weathered and their seductive power diminished.

PISTOL
Mama, my new boyfriend, his name is Kitten, he’s thirteen, he has red hair, and I am sad he has to leave in three years to fight in Nevada against those gay monsters out in California. Sometimes I hate the system, but I know you designed it to benefit my children.

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
Exactly. And remember: every tear you cry for Kitten is the tear of a black widow, like the Spiderwoman, who wove our universe to trap flies.

PISTOL
Last night, I was teaching Jemima-Claw, my eldest, about how to drive a car and she ran over another child, dead. As is the law, I paid the family with a hundred starch balls for each year of the baby’s life, and they seemed to think it was a more than fair trade. As I was filling out the paperwork, the husband, who was fifteen, thanked us for relieving him of the burden. You see, it was a slow kid; wasn’t contributing to the clan.

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
All babies are procreated for a purpose. That baby died in order to teach Jemima-Claw the consequences of vehicles. It was wrong of the family to admit that they were happy for the death; it shows a lack of breeding on their part.

PISTOL
Mama, I want to fight in the war too, as soon as this baby is out of me.

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
The greatest accomplishments of history are those of warrior ladies. When I was born, there still was respect for what a woman could do that no man could. Yet, even then, people didn’t see the connection to traditions, per se, as important. They were too busy trying to make a living. What is the point of making a living in a culture of what I call artistic production when you can literally make the living come right out of your body? It is infinitude, multiplicity, right in you. And then there is what I call the Great Irony, in that what entities are produced from the human body also have the power to terminate life. So Pistol, when you have had your mandatory five children, and your contract will be fulfilled, you go, girl! You go, girl, and you fight, wonder woman. Good hunting. Clone meat tastes just like tofu. Bring me back some skins and we’ll build you a home.

PISTOL
Thank you, Mama.

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
Bless us all and our great state, as it spreads like juice across the kitchen counter.

PISTOL
Amen.

The Apartment

The Other Boys & Other Stories, Pieter Performance Art Space Dance, 2010

THE APARTMENT

Lights and cars visible through a window… Taliban, in his 20s, opens door to the apartment, wearing his uniform.

TALIBAN
Hello?

He plugs his module into the end-table. Music plays. Taliban looks around the apartment. It’s messy.

TALIBAN
I thought you said you were going to do the dishes… You home? God, this song is barf.
Song changes.
TALIBAN
Oh this is my jam.

MOTHER stands in the doorway, staring at him. She is a cyborg and appears younger than she is.

TALIBAN
Mom, you scared me.

MOTHER
Son.

TALIBAN
I wasn’t doing anything that weird.

MOTHER
Taliban.

TALIBAN
Do you like that song?

MOTHER
Your father always said he felt like he was being punished for something he didn’t do.

TALIBAN
He’s a foreigner.

MOTHER
He’s cursed. Beautiful boys are trouble.

TALIBAN
We run the world, ma.

TALIBAN starts getting dressed, putting on a trendy club outfit.

MOTHER
I don’t like the vibe of your outfit.

TALIBAN
I’m not trying to impress you.

MOTHER
It’s illegal to wear baseball hats backwards.

TALIBAN
I borrowed some of your lipstick.

MOTHER
What’s the matter with you?

TALIBAN
I’m too stylish.

MOTHER
Bleep.

TALIBAN takes off his hat, checks his outfit out in the mirror, puts his collar down.

MOTHER
He’s here.

The door swings open. FATHER wears a military industrial uniform. He sees TALIBAN, looks his outfit over, and throws himself on the floor.

FATHER
No! Why? Why? NO.

MOTHER
Do you want something to eat?

FATHER takes TALIBAN by the shoulders.

FATHER
My son, my only son, what are you doing?

TALIBAN
Dad, I can’t fucking wear a uniform to the club!

FATHER
The club? The club! I don’t think you should go. The clones, they will take you away. I can see you in the jail cell, all alone.

TALIBAN
I already told Death Baby Lady Jihad I would meet him there. Setting me up with two rich guys, she said.

FATHER
Outlaws! They will get themselves killed in six months. They will taze them until their verbous system breaks down, and throw them in the river.

TALIBAN
Please. That’s just a program you saw on the holoscreen.

MOTHER
Respect your father’s psychic abilities, Taliban.

TALIBAN
If dad is so psychic, how come we live in such a horrible apartment?

FATHER
I always knew I’d be poor.

TALIBAN
That doesn’t make it right.

MOTHER
Dinner.

TALIBAN
I’m on too over-stimulated to eat right now.

MOTHER
We’re all on amphetamines, but we still have to eat.

FATHER
I can afford barely to feed you. I make 7 million dollars a day. This apartment costs 82 billion dollars a month.

TALIBAN
When I go out tonight, I am going to pick up two guys and hopefully they will be famous and maybe I will let them tag team me.

MOTHER
I’d give you all my money if you wanted it.

FATHER
Your mother works to feed you too, and it isn’t so easy for her, because she is a cyborg, and she makes people nervous at the hospital she works at in the cafeteria because they see her and they are afraid they will be like her, hooked by a machine. She faces prejudice every day. She wants you to have food and she wants you to have insurance, and we want you to live and be good. You do not need to wear your hat sideways. And this is why I will see you in jail when you go out tonight.

TALIBAN
I can’t eat. You want to squirt shit all over satin sheets when they double penetrate me?

MOTHER
I made protein slabs. Your body will absorb most of it, with minimal waste.

TALIBAN
Great.

MOTHER
I made some breadfoam too, but you can skip it.

TALIBAN
My mother is a thing. She exists only to serve me. Right now, I need to douche. Mom, enema time, let’s get the show on the road.

TALIBAN goes into the bathroom with his MOTHER.

FATHER
It was at that time, when the mutations began, and while certain populations were quarantined, others became useful. It was very hard for me back in my homeland of Lithuania. I was always too talkative to live there, and the jobs I had were never very good. I went to school during the Reproductive Wars, and learned how to predict futures, which is what I do now, for the private shadow government. I am only allowed to talk to certain people, and I have to carry a chip in my leg, which gets irritated and needs to be disinfected often, because although I am employed by the powers that be, my status is not that of a citizen, and so that is my fate. All the Lithuanians became psychic. We got flown around the world to be used by corporate interests. We can see everything what is coming, and no one can change it.