[d/dn]

That’s when I realised you were some kind of environmental activist. It wasn’t until we were inside the lobby of the hotel however that I finally realised the ‘costume party’ we were crashing was in fact an international conference on ocean pollution. The conference, hosted by the local electronics magnate, had attracted over two hundred…

I was dreaming of our eventual reunion on Jeju-do. I was sitting at an outdoor bar with a group of friends, and you just appeared out of the sea mist, like an animated garbage god. Drawn in some sunless studio, no doubt. Your manhwa self wore a shade of pink I hadn’t associated with you…

The room was never completely empty, of course. You managed to hide yourself amongst my possessions, the loose ties and woolly scarves, mittens. I’d meet you on the subway, when your picture fell out of the text book I was reading. I’d meet you in the laundromat, when your red polka dot top found its…

Whatever else happened, it was certainly you who came up with the name. How about PCB, like a little PC bang! We settled things over a single shot of vodka in some poorly-ventilated bar, making patents and intellectual property plans. Technological dream boosters. High on Chris de Burgh’s emotions, if only ironically. The day you…

When I got back to my tiny room everything had changed. Someone has been in here. The bed had been made, sheets strangling the mattress in a silence of white. The small bin had been relieved of its guilty burden: chocolate cake wrappers, empty grape soda cans. I opened Windows to the applause of street…

Zero smokes, and drinks soju while he waits. Rumbles of traffic and subway bass. Two empty bottles on the table now. He’s been pouring one glass for himself, then placing a second in a growing pod on the other side of the table. He’s one third of the way through a pack of Smokes. The…

Zero Moon sits near the food stall, a bottle of soju and two glasses set before him. Around him the city powers down, OT steam blasting from small vents and holes in its skin. The sub-audible hum, capillaries of electricity fading out. Information still shuttles around, via its own networks deep in the air, almost…

The next morning you crystal clear patch in over the PCB’s secure line, and I can sit with the headset cradled in my arm, watching the morning through Windows, podding your voice’s every urgent burst. Proposing an informational kind of messing with the static stations on OT. Old tech, or off-topic? Your missives, fired like…

When you call I can hear a bug in the line, and not much else. Awoken at 2am by my PCB’s random koan. Finding it face-down by the lamp. Flicking its switch, I imagine you in an airport hotel, staring out the window with the headset held in one hand, a mouse in the other.…