They lost another hour watching ads and TV shows. Each show was no more than three minutes, almost all of them filmed in this mall. Some of them were subtle invitations for people to visit the parts and sections they took place in. One particular show was about a kid prankster who saved enough money – working his hardest and without asking his parents for allowance – to buy a Stupid Hair Needle. The instrument was wand-like, with a flintlocks’ wooden grip, as well as a trigger and guard, except the main body was a thin metal rod, spiked at the tip, the spitting replica of a soldier’s weapon. However, instead of killing people, the kid was messing up their hair, clicking the trigger to choose a target, and waving and flicking about to style it however he liked. In this episode, he was determined to ruin a date to which his crush was going. He had standards, of course, swearing an oath to himself to fix the girl’s hair if anything happened to it; her date’s hair, however, he kept messing up and tugging at, sometimes too forcefully the boy was shrieking. The girl discovered this plot and threatened him to never even think about her, that if he saw he saw her walking down a road to change routes and take another. It was, according to her, the first and final warning.
By the time the episode ended, half the adults shook their head in sympathy, their kids, however, were begging to get that Stupid Hair Needle.
Another show played the next instant, barely sparing them enough time to catch a breath. Every head snapped up in horrifying symmetry, a swift movement almost too perfect, as though the intro music was a command they couldn’t dare refuse. The show was, in a political context, full of commentary on the nature of free speech and the aggression of those who advocated it and encouraged the people to exercise it as their natural right. It started with a scene from a nightmarish reality, a protest. The protestors were all men, shouting and singing their demands over the beating of drums and the thundering of their marching feet. This scene of dystopic hell was contrasted with the whimsical comedy of what they called for.
“End sex blockade.”
"We want sex back.”
"We want sex back.”
"Women are dictators. End women dictatorship.”
"End the double standards for sex. End it, end it.”
"If you ask for it, we give you a dick, but if we ask, you give us an eck.”
“We accept all the time but you say, ‘maybe another time.’”
Riot police appeared, executing impossible maneuvers with their steel-plated vehicles. When they clambered out, however, they were all butt-naked, some shaved, others trimmed, and a handful sporting a bush. Almost a quarter had glimmering, hairless skin to give view to their perfectly carved muscles and abs, the rest, however, were hairy gorillas. Their truncheons were as absurd as their nakedness, shaped as erect penis with angry veins, each about twelve inches long. They howled as they ran into the protest, getting support from hoses that spewed, crazily enough, hot, sticky liquid. They scattered them all with the flourishing of their manly parts, and beating the rest with their stupid truncheons. The view panned out to show half a dozen women watching from the comfort of a railed veranda, cackling like a villain twirling a mustache. A statement wrote itself, letter by letter, across the screen, with the rattle of a typewriter.
Mercy for Men. Every donation you make saves a man’s heart. Call now and help in our program to get all men married. A number appeared on the bottom half of the screen.
Mike once called the number on his Codebook. The voice on the other line was magically generated, obvious from its unnatural pronunciation.
“Dating is baiting, marriage is stability, love isn’t enough. If you can’t be friends, you won’t be in love for long. What service would you like to use today, strong brother or sister? Individual rating, in which we assess the quality of the relationship you will have with anyone based on their past? Write the digit ‘one’ if you want to proceed.” And it continued on and on until the voice reached double digits. The higher the number, the worse the service, from an ethical point of view. The list started soft, with things like counseling, convincing, donations, job finding, interest-free project funding, interest-free home-funding, and any other means of starting or keeping a relationship. The closer they got to service number ninety-nine, the worse it got. There was sabotage, revenge, memory transfer and engineering, puppeteering, codependency, forming a toxic relationship that would last, partner worship, reputation assassins for hire, abduction, and murder.
He spent the second half of the call laughing his guts out at the absurdity of the services. But, his interest piqued, he searched further and found, to his horror, that every word the voice said was true. There were people mad enough to kill their partners or deranged enough to keep the relationship living even though the other party was drowning under shit.
Perhaps we don’t actually love our romantic partner; we just love the happiness it gives us.
A third show played, then a fourth and a fifth and no one was tired of turning their gaze from one source of entertainment to another, one screen to another. Every time he vowed it would be the last one, something else started with such a strong hook that he found himself a helpless fish that caught the bait. He wasn’t alone in that. There was something attractive enough in the bait that everyone threw themselves upon it. They all wanted to be entertained for as long as possible until their head hurt. But what would he do with his time, assuming he stopped wasting it? How could he do anything with the memory of tomorrow sewn fresh in his head? He didn’t want that memory to grow; he would drown the entire field. But once he started thinking like an author, he couldn’t stop himself from seeing the bad things. Mike felt an obligation to shed light on it through the dark Ink of his words. He wanted to criticize entertainment, to say that the worst that ever happened to it was that they made it free, but it was definitely helping now. But there wasn’t anything inherently bad unless it was demonized. And so, the best thing to do when time wasn’t moving was to waste it. He would definitely include that line in his work-in-process.
Mall clerks seeped between spectators to offer cheap snacks, drinks, or rent them chairs. To the very few who refused and announced they should be leaving, clerks offered them a trip back home with all their shopping bags for a meager rate. Almost all of them found that irresistible.
When Mike looked back, Nair was lost swiping her eyes from one show to another, one flying billboard to the next. Some of them were hilarious; she laughed. Others were heartfelt; she cried and begged him to take her to where that scene was filmed in the mall.
Even with tomorrow's memory, she somehow seemed to forget there was ever a tomorrow. How could you be so lost in the present to forget the future? He couldn’t help but think how curious that case really way. And so, leading her to where she wanted to visit, he found himself lost in a labyrinth of thought with no sense of time or place.
How can you keep looking for happiness when all you can find is sadness? Everything we do is an attempt to sate our addiction to happiness. Even when we are trying to make people happy, we do it so that we don’t feel bad about it.
What is the better life goal: to find happiness, or to avoid sadness?
But if we never want to be sad, could it mean that our worst enemy is sadness? It actually has all the aspects of a strong and cunning enemy: we can’t control it but it can easily control us, it has so many ways to get to us and we are always on the run from it. In our rebellion against sadness, we stand alone, our cries to the people a whisper.
Could it be that our screams sound like whispers to people? Is that why they can't understand the pain we are in?
But Nair isn’t sad, at least she doesn’t seem to be, and I am sure she can’t forget what happened today… or what will happen tomorrow. Could it be that you can lose a memory, at least temporarily, if you find some sort of feeling? Are feelings stronger than memories?
Someone swooped in on them, starting Mike with a back hug. He turned and realized it was an acquaintance from his second job. Mike affected a warm greeting, embracing him.
"Still haven’t got the birthday gift you promised, Mike,” Sell said. He was fat but much taller than Mike, with sweat stains under his arms. His hair, swept back awfully, had a disgusting amount of gel, clomping it into big strokes that exposed his greasy scalp. But what made it all worse was what his name translated to when flipped. Less. Perhaps his parents wanted to see less of him but weren’t able to, and in pursuit of that goal, they gave him a name that would follow him like a stalker he was aware of his presence.
"Must have forgotten, had a long day.” He reached into his pocket and held out a roll of sealed parchment, which Sell took with a playful thump to Mike’s arm. He chewed a gum in a way that seemed to invite Mike's kunckles to connect with his jaw.
"Lost your way here again, Mike?” Sell asked, pocketing the roll with a wink.
"Nothing easier to lose, am I right?”
"Well, you could easily lose yourself, too,” Sell said, “and you won’t even notice it’s gone until people point it out. ‘You have changed,’ they will tell you. ‘You are not the same, you were better before,’ that sort of rubbish. People see the results without even bothering to think about the process. And somehow, it all has to be according to their feelings. When will people realize their feelings aren’t tracks we’re not supposed to go off of?”
Nair cast him a suspicious look.
"Wise words, friend,” Mike said. “Am I right to assume today’s fee was processed?”
"Yep, wiring it to you right now.” Sell wrote something in his Codebook and Mike’s buzzed in his pocket.
He checked it and saw a whooping amount credited to his bank account. With a nod, he shook Sell’s hand and walked away.
"You have no idea what I am going to buy you now, Nair,” Mike said, shaking with excitement.
"What did you give him in that scroll?”
He kissed her forehead. “Cake.”
“And what’s up with that much money?” She smiled. “What did you to get that much?”
"Finished an audit report. Turns out some people on the job were undermining the president.”
"President Lionokk?” She gasped.
“No, our firm’s president. I suppose they will be sacked this night.”
"Ow, they are quick to act, aren’t they? And at night, too?"
He nodded.
