“You think Dragon and Star are cocooning, or should we invite them?” asked Boi and Ash flipped her wristfeed up to message her – no reply. They ordered pasta with a reddish sort of a sauce – that was about the clearest you could describe it too. It was sort of red and it was pretty cheap. As the light vanished outside and intensified inside, the bar grew fuller and the noise level rose gently. Sanjeev and Lori began to add a little rhythm to their bartending as the crowd swelled slowly; smiles widened and somebody put some electro-folk on the jukebox.
Star walked in, sans Dragon and plus a small posse, nodded toward their table and then moved off towards the bar. “Isn’t that …” said Ash, “… Nila.” answered Skin. Nila Moon, Star’s girlfriend before Dragon. They’d lived together for a few years, the break up had been acrimonious and Boi had almost caused the band to split by sleeping with Nila a bit soon after all the shit went down.
Cigarettes and alcohol danced on their own wavelengths, full things becoming empty, empty things being moved away to be substituted by more full things and everything circled by smoky blue trails. Jackets migrated to chair backs and hooks and the music developed muscles. At some point, somebody headed for the dance floor and of course other people followed; another Saturday night jol had officially emerged to slice through the weekend.
There was still no sign of Dragon and Skin began to fret slightly, because there wasn’t any reply to Boi’s message either. “She’s in the District, man,” said Ash and the others nodded. “Well I’m not up for a jol tonight anyway,” said Skin, “I’ll make a turn there and check it out.” She left Charmageddon on foot – downtown dockside, everything was in easy reach and the rain had disappeared.
There weren’t any lights showing at Dragon’s place, but Skin hit the buzzer anyway – there was no response. Only one thing for it – try the District. Back in her own home, Skin jacked in.
If dockside wasn’t big enough for you, the District was more than big enough for anyone – it wasn’t actually limitless, but it felt that way. Skin spawned in the landing zone; she didn’t have her own place there, but she knew how to access Dragon’s. A few commands and she was outside the door of Dragon’s home-from-home in cyberspace.
You tended never to look skywards in the District, because all there ever was, was a panoramic, edgeless and never ending Sistine style screening of the film, District 9. There were people, of course, whose sole purpose seemed to be to do just that – sprawl out horizontally, watching the film at different angles and in different abstractions and then they’d get very tense and intellectual about it all. Or they’d just take a lot of drugs and trip completely.
That was the end of the film reference, however; the rest of the District was covertly all about urban decay, but overtly all about whatever anybody wanted. In Dragon’s case, that seemed to be some sort of surrealler than life hybrid of Gaudi and MC Escher’s love child. And the interior was as optical delusioned as the exterior. On and offline, Skin’s left hand raised, palm out to signal her access pass to the entrance mechanism. Her experience prompted her to stand well back as the drawbridge swung open.
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