ref: b9fbb17c04e4ccfb2021dac818e514351ca8f646
dir: /troff/0101.ms/
.LP \& .ce .sp |4.25i .ps 12 .I Every moment of his youth apart from its dream was forgotten .R .PP .ps 12 \(em Bertolt Brecht, .I Baal .R .PP .ps 12 .CW ░ West Berlin, Indiana. 2049. .PP .ps 12 It was time to dry out. Like so many of his contemporaries he'd made his way to West Berlin, to take in the waters, to expose himself recklessly to the moribund, exquisite desolation, to luxuriate in the low bandwidth and the utter lack of interest in\(emor from\(emthe outside world. .PP .ps 12 Newcomers recognized each other easily by the pale strip of flesh bracketing their eyes, where their visors had been semi\-permanently attached, never before removed. The visors would be useless here. They wouldn't even work as sunglasses. .PP .ps 12 He scanned the imposing blue ridgeline but found no antennas. The town was situated in the cleft of an extinct river valley. It was easy to forget sometimes that anything lay beyond, if, in fact, anything did. Mold was everywhere. .PP .ps 12 Everything felt familiar. .PP .ps 12 SL had never even seen the place before moving in. Not with his own eyes, anyway, and his pale strip of flesh was by now starting to fade in reverse, colored over by IRL. .PP .ps 12 He stopped the record player and returned his original Fontana pressing of Scott Walker's .I Tilt .R to its pristine sleeve. Filed it on the shelf. He liked the record, but tonight the input was overwhelming him. .PP .ps 12 He needed silence. .PP .ps 12 He'd come to West Berlin with a friend. Perhaps .I friend .R was too strong a term. A contact. They shared an affinity for a particular misconception of West Berlin culture. Old books, music. Of course, that forgotten world was by now long gone, if it had ever truly existed. Now that he actually lived here he tended to doubt it, but that was beside the point. They shared a consensual interest in the material. One could say they were willfully credulous. .PP .ps 12 Yes. .PP .ps 12 SL sipped his tea. .PP .ps 12 "What's your name, anyway?" his friend finally asked. "I mean, your real name. In real life." .PP .ps 12 It was a dubious proposition. Did SL .I sound .R like an alias? .PP .ps 12 "Ray," SL lied. "Call me Ray." .PP .ps 12 "Okay," his friend said easily, satisfied for now to spackle on yet more bullshit. They'd reconcile the details later. .PP .ps 12 They rode the lateral elevator crosswise down to breakfast in the hotel restaurant. SL ordered his usual scrambled eggs with toast, and in its place he received a small plate heaping with pungent, salted bacon. .PP .ps 12 "You planning to eat that?" his friend asked. .PP .ps 12 The poor fool was oblivious to the spiritual consequences of consuming swine flesh. SL nudged his plate across the table, careful to avoid spilling his tea. He'd spare his friend the prepared lecture. .PP .ps 12 The morning sun ducked behind a crowding murder of clouds and the pair soon followed suit, finishing off the remainder of their meal in silence before making their excuses and retiring to the sheltering darkness of their separate rooms. .PP .ps 12 Hotel surveillance promptly detected network traffic passing between the rooms, a blatant violation of the ToS. .PP .ps 12 The response was automated and immediate, brooking no appeals to \fIBe reasonable, man,\fR or \fIHey, I paid for this room,\fR or \fIJust a few minutes more.\fR .PP .ps 8 .CW dropped connection .R