I’m the writer in residence in an empty house you’ll never see. I’m sleeping in a small box, floating on a bed of sea noise. We will never visit the holo drive, though I have been there several times, posing as a motor sports enthusiast. The plastic caverns of the refreshments hall. I’m considering applying for some casual work shlocking giant plastic cups, sequestering fast food detritus, buffying benches while keeping an ear out for the muzac changes. Mindless but infinitely variable clone moments. The viewers glued inside their Aramis pods, tracking the crinkle of holo space, the city’s pollution vectors. I find the deserted pod lots peaceful, especially in the early morning, when it’s raining. We sometimes turn the lasers on, construct satellites and death stars in the vacant holo hall. It’s wireless moments like these you begin to feel closer. Live moments of a digital age recur and loop. Working somewhere just to be somewhere else. Working nights then emerging exhausted but with credit on another city moonscape morning, another neon feed.
