Obfuscation

Part 3

In which The Fighter and The Failure catch the bullet train from Singapore to Shenzhen in order to meet Cy, a biohacker with a penchant for pretty and eccentric gadgets. They discuss their intention to create an obfuscation device that would overclock the amount of incoming news to the brain in order to scramble any attempt to give order to it, but Cy wonders if they might not be better considering the notion of Sideways Music (Ned Markosian, Sideways Music, Analysis, Volume 80, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 51–59).

Sleeping on the Kunming rail,

passing unseen the litchi and

mangrove plantations beneath

iron pillars the size of inverted

super deep boreholes, white

coats smooth and super clean

holding up magnetic lines we

dream along in fair sequence.

They wake on platform four as

their bullet snake feigns death

and stretches beside the others.

From station it is a short wander

adjoining a light matrix of young

starfield commons up alleyways

full of jumble markets with boxes

full of assorted future warez.com

The Failure says, my lad, place

your nose to thine florets, we’st

seek Cy’s workshoponderlando.

I wish to get data drunk on junk

spam revelations incoming from

a world that cannot stop talking.

Plz decimate our pattern hungry

senses and splinter all the things.

We find her outside a bar, Thee

Melted Crayon, slurping a neon

cocktail that shee deposits behind

a hologram of an oak tree, fixing

her grip on a transparent umbrella

with a projector built in so when

you long gaze up ‘neath the brolly

you see a sky full of HD digital rain

falling from where, def not this sky

as it is a sunny afternoon, sure no

Son, but so too no sky. Upworld is

a labyrinth ceiling of sly balconies

investing gravity withdrawals Cyoh

knows all too well, plastic pastelish

raincoat ready to deflect falling fish,

gamma yays, emotions, palimpsests

backing up to heaven where she’ll

audit their algorithms in good time

through this demo cyan augmented

reality sun visor Cy wears daily that

produces a wireframe slow motion

delay video replay seen aka events

in her vicinity, tiny cameras mounted

within strands of hello chestnut hair.

You thinking of sewing a chip ‘tween

ears and eyes scatter sensory input,

Cy tips up box of PCBs and solder ah

but I think it will just benchmark some

state of rave confusion and recursive

semiotic fission. You want not junk -

you want a hyper ethical experience

(remember, complexity isn't a vice).

She stretches northward, dude r u

savvy to the notion of what major

philosophy kids, she glances left +

right, call, whisper, Sideways Music.

The Fighter and The Failure = no.

Cy touches her heart and JS Bach

starts playing, BWV 847 via MIDI

clavier, blood pulsing metronome

guiding horizontal passage so each

note can resound in turn. Consider

with me, she tilts her smile ninety °,

if each note did not follow the other in

sequence, across time, but this order

was turned sideways, so every note

in the song played at the same time.

What a mess, right. Well how about...