  TALIBAN TELEMARKETER

A  Fucking Novel

by Kim Cancer

All Rights Reserved, 2019

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MORNING: The punching alarm clock ended my regeneration.

My alarm clock is a robotic arm from my FRED Corp. SUNNY sani-BOT, and it slaps and punches me awake every work morning.

Off-days I schedule it to tickle me.

It was 5:30 am, and the chore of going to work rained upon me in fierce head-slaps.

Morning blobs of sun trickled in, through the torn garbage bio-bag curtains, slicing sunlight into my dark concrete box.

I slapped back at the alarm, which disabled it, levitated my naked body upwards, and swiped my hand machine as I usually do first thing in the morning so I could check CHITTER.

After CHITTER, I'd watch news, catch up on deadlines from the  Fucking News Channel STREAM.

On my hand machine I scroll the CHITTER exchanges, emotions markets, mucker index levels, forecasts, disaster forecasts; radar for accidents/incidents, rallies, events, weather in my vicinity, so I could decide which/how mods, body armor I'd require, which route to take to work....

It'd been years since Congress legalized violent crime, abolished all gun laws. Laws only penalized crime against the Class A (Class A– Uber, Premium Class, generally the wealthy, politicians, connected...)

Most, including myself, were Class B – Useful; then there were the Class C- Obsolete but redeemable; and Class D- Unemployable/Expendable.

(Class was decided by several factors: FRED, wealth, education, employer, friend and acquaintance ratings, reviews.)

For anyone outside of Class A, as well as those in it, being anywhere in public spaces without government subsidized body armor, armaments, was akin to suicidal.

Checking CHITTER, no active muckers, disasters, accidents, fires, weather events were on the radar, so the day was off to an auspicious start...

I rubbed my temples and opened a hologram feed STREAM for  The Fucking News Channel .

President Bigfoot III was giving a speech in the auditorium of an underwater naval base, talking in panache, prepositional phrases, abbreviating his plans for the economy and the Cyber War.

He wore a navy-blue skirt, black vest, a white dress shirt with rolled up sleeves, silk red tie and on the heart of his vest he had a small rainbow American flag lapel button.

A sasquatch CHEWBRONNI, hairy as a gorilla, his wavy pink hair was combed and parted to the right. He squinted his bright blue eyes as he spoke and was smirking awkwardly, twitching.

There was a crowd of maybe 20 sailors, in Village People attire, all with mustaches, synchronized dancing and strutting behind him as he spoke.

President Bigfoot III paused here and there for questions from his spirit animal, a pet graybeard baboon he held on a chain leash.

Triangular American flags flew from rafters above the stage, set ablaze, burning bright sweet red.

Small American flag graphics flew in the top left corner of the feed, twirling crucifixes touched.

The Cruel at the bottom of the STREAM splayed e-SPORTS news, scores.

I walked over to my kitchen (which isn't too far from my bed since I live in a small s-unit in a vint puke pink art deco hotel turned condo) and I slick on the automatic rat shit coffee machine.

I opened the door to my small refrigerator BOX, which was possessed by the ghost of Ezra Pound, and took out some cockroach milk for my tangy sweet/sour crispy grasshopper cereal.

There were leftover Burmese food takeout cartons (roast python) in the fridge.

SUNNY sani-BOT prepped my cereal while I window-shopped for 3D weapons on my hand machine.

President Bigfoot III said something about how hydration must be achieved.

The President's shaggy arms rested on the burled walnut podium, which reached up to his torso and had a big, round, blue Presidential FRED seal on it.

The Cruel spread today's headlines: "173 human dead when two commuter tube trains collide head on in East India, 214 humans wounded" "STREAM STARS J-Ro and D-Pet adopt and strangle to death a special-needs Ebola tribesman from Benin, LIVE at 9 pm." "Category 7 Hurricane forms off the coast of Cape Verde."

"... "

A heckler interrupted the President Bigfoot III's speech.

A hulky, 6'6 tall black man with blond pigtails, wearing a blue frilly Shirley Temple dress, cried out: "Mr. President! I'm a little girl! I identify as a 7 y/o white girl! I'm a little girl! I'm a little girl, motherfucker!"

The crowd gasped, laughed and yelled.

Clapter, others straight applauded, most turned hand machine video/pics, and others stampeded out of their seats.

The girl in pigtails was trampled semi-conscious in the aisles by the mad rush, and a  Fucking News journalist punched her in the head, detached the little girl's hand machine, snatched it and ran away...

Ninja suit secret service burst out of the shadows, trapdoors, and pounced on the heckler.

Five of them tackled the little girl and beat her senseless with their fists, feet and nunchaku.

One agent lasered her in the back of her neck. They dragged the girl by her arms and legs...

As they were dragging her away, a couple of the Village sailors spit on, kicked the heckler in the stomach and back. Blood was streaming from the heckler's mouth, down her pained bloody smile and troubled chin.

A couple ninja suits shielded President Bigfoot III, whisked him and his spirit animal away.

The optic feed from the base was suddenly lost and the screen went totally black. The picture then shifted to the news studio in New Yack...

The Cruel bottom half of the screen enlarged- bold, red lettering: "Breaking: PRESIDENTIAL ASSASSINATION AVERTED, WOULD-BE MUCKER CAPTURED!"

One of the two  Fucking News BOT angers, the MBOT, Budd BOT, an avuncular, obese lobster with a pleated, dark brown, pin striped suit, bass drawl (and obvious toupee) shouted how this is a disgrace and a travesty.

The other  Fucking News anger, Christine BOT, an attractive, brunette- slim waist, leggy, big blank eyes, large breast F-BOT (pan-naked, plastic wrapping suit unit) had a horrified compression, proclaimed infinite shock.

"What would motivate --- to --- as reprehensible as this?" Christine BOT snipped, raged and shook a handgun at the camera.

They concurred the heckler should be executed as soon as possible on  The Fucking Execution Channel STREAM and debated an appropriate method: Chainsaw, Strangulation, Boredom...

The Cruel at the bottom of the screen glowed the weather.

"... "

I whapped to the  Fucking Exercise Network , drank a repressant, listened to vint Madonna: "Get into the Groove" and imitated the F-BOT, jiggy motions walking me into low impact aerobics.

I completed my aerobics with a set of yogurt stretches and short freditation.

Into the bathroom, I inserted the disposal hose to my anus, defecated.

My sani-BOT wiped, cleaned, groomed me, and sprayed me over a quick de-bac/g-bac mist shower.

ME: I'm Kim, Kim Cancer, and I am dictating this to my posterity N-APP, for forward/backward time launch to the networks.

(My seeder, if receiving this, you are connected via a neural link. You are receiving this digi-packet via binary infra-transfusion and may disconnect or reconnect with it at any time.)

ABOUT ME: Kim Cancer: I'm a 24-year-old organic male human in a 100% human carrier vessel.

I'm 5'9, 170 pounds, muscular stature, thick legs, jacked quads and pecs. I got short black wavy hair, hazel eyes, super high cheekbones; long, skinny fingers, olive skin, ivory teeth and I'm left-handed.

I've been told I bare a slight resemblance to the vint actor Nicolas Cage.

I live here in Next South Florida and work as a telemarketer, psychic telemarketer, in a Funeral Room. There are quite a lot of them in this place.

In case you don't know what exactly a Funeral Room is, please allow me to explain.

FUNERAL ROOM: Funeral Rooms are telemarketing operations, psychic, set up in cheap office space consisting of coffin pods, neural links and chains.

Humans, too, of course, to make the calls. Every Funeral Room has humans (usually 95% human, 2% BOT/Cyborg, 3% unknown).

Funeral Rooms incur little overhead and can easily be moved if they get de-platformed, deleted, go out of business, or sent to the cloud.

(They're referred to as "Funeral Rooms" because most occupy space that was once a funeral home, back when burials were legal. Many were also Walmart.)

What is done in these rooms is primarily soliciting money by cold calling (i.e. calling people who have not asked anyone to call) names off lists, via telepathy, brain to brain, AI neural networks connecting hand machines, phones, brains, bodies.

Most everyone had been chipped, either at birth, or by choice, to preserve/improve Class, employment options, though many lived off neural grid, but those off-grid, out of neural network, were automatically designated Class D – Unemployable).

Awake, daydreaming, asleep, we Funeral Rooms can reach almost anyone.

There are several different types of Funeral Rooms that pitch everything from vacation packages, weapons stocks, body armor, hand machine parts, disposal hoses, F-BOT parts, coupons, you name it.

Many rooms are in the primary business of separating people from their CASH, but there are also rooms that provide services, companionship, and necessary rage.

(Most compassion Funeral Rooms were run by BOT, though, due to consolidation.)

((The emotion SALES rooms, like mine, have been the most profitable in most recent years....))

(((Emotion sales rooms only connect, zap, brain to brain, via neural network.)))

The key to success in emotions sales Funeral Rooms is to make as many psychic connections possible. As many brain zaps as possible. Like, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 per day.

Sound like a lot?

Why make so many zaps?

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? WHY?

Because 9 out of 10 people will hang up, curse, froth, and/or not answer their psyche.

Focus, concentration is a chore.

I could make a hundred b-zaps and get cursed out every time. Most people don't like to be cold-brained and aren't shy to express dissatisfaction.

Also, these same lists of names and brain digits circulate among thousands of other Funeral Rooms, so these brains are zapped, called and buzzed a billion times. It's no wonder that these folks react so evocatively.

Most of our customers, those buying services from Funeral Rooms are retired, disabled, or Canadian.

Many of them are lonely and just want someone to talk to. There's always somebody out there who will buy. If there wasn't then there wouldn't be so many Funeral Rooms.

It can be a repetitive, thankless task, being a psychic telemarketer, but you can make CASH at it if you are persistent and have thick skin.

My boss makes over 2 billion Next American Dollars, (BAMABUCKS) a fiscal.

Last fiscal I made 90 million BAMA.

(My rent/utilities being 1 million per motherfucker, I've been performing well, but am aiming for 200 million this fiscal.)

(Nowadays, psychic telemarketing is an increasingly lucrative business. because of the Loneliness Index, hand machines, table and eye usables... More and more of my customers aren't even elderly, disabled, or Canadian...)

The phone room I work for pitches emotion commodity trading. I am an emotion, mostly Rage, Outrage, and [U]rage broker; meaning I can advise and place orders to invest, buy/sell contracts, options, in the emotion and [out]emotion commodities markets.

Mostly we do the emotions markets, sold on the CHITTER EXCHANGE: SPAZDAQ.

I had to take a screaming and weeping exam on the markets and received a Series 8  Fucking Fiduciary Certificate.

Human Being, being an emotion broker, I'm licensed to sell, buy emotions, [out]emotion.

Maybe I'm more of a telemarketing bookie, than a broker, to be honest. Because the emotion commodities markets, for spectators, is much like gambling.

And it's no peanuts or corncobs, synth liver, or mod-fish spines, no 20K BUCKEROO touch-off lottery scans, either.

We're talking real BAMA. Often big B. 1M B is our minimum investment to open an account.

MARKETS: The emotion market, CHITTER is ticklish, which is how so many lose in it and, normally, only the hedger-trimmers and sharks make any BUCKEROO...

To sum it up briefly you buy or sell a contract or an option to buy/sell a contract of a particular emotion (Sadness, Rage, Outrage, Annoyance, Anger, Embarrassment, Disgust, Love, Passion, Lust, Pity) which has a fixed expiration date and is traded/tracked through neural network, levels loaded, monitored on SPAZDAQ.

(Boredom was one of the first emotions traded, but, now, Boredom being so prevalent, rampant, easily available, it's lost its financial worth and is considered by any/every nation to be humanity's greatest threat.)

Emotions, as opposed to stocks/shares, where every stockholder wins/profits if the stock increases in value, an emotion commodity contract has TWO sides, and will always have a Winner: the alpha-ginner and a Loser: the beta-hoser, making it a "zero sum" type of investment.

Why?

Why is there always a beta-hoser?

Because there are two sides to a contract, the rise side (which makes BAMAS if the emotion increases) and the put side (which makes BAMAS if it lessens). You line your BAMAS up on one side or the other and you win or you lose. Simple as that.

You can buy a future or current emotion contract or buy future or current emotion contract options.

An option is an "option" to buy or sell that particular contract. Buying options is a bit less risky than contracts because you are only liable for the value of the option (which is the premium you pay for the option itself) if the emotion moves against you.

However, if you sell an option then you must be ready to provide the actual contract if someone exercises the option. But most options aren't usually exercised. My Funeral Room typically pushes options.

The emotion contracts are riskiest because they can fluctuate very quickly causing big losses or gains in a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds, depending on the intensity of the emotion...

Investors in the emotions are also liable for the full value of the contract they've purchased.

It can be hard to liquidate futures contracts or options because orders are taken in line meaning that there might be a couple hundred people ahead of you trying also to offload of that position, and holding the wrong position, investors can lose BAMAS by the second...

(There's a common misconception that if you keep a contract until the expiration date, you'll have an emotion possessing you, like an evil spirit... It doesn't happen like that. Delivery of the contract emotion commodity is rare and only trades at specified clouds, approved by the SPAZDAQ.)

The main players involved in the commodity trade are the sharks, spectators, and hedge-trimmers.

Hedgers are those with a financial interest in a certain emotion commodity and use the markets to hedge (help offset losses, maximize profits).

Sharks are the super-rich, who play the markets, either as part of their business empires or simply for fun.

Spectators are just in it to generate profits. Spectators (and many sharks) are widely hated by hedgers because they often profit from hedger's losses. But without spectators providing trading volume, liquidity the markets wouldn't run as smoothly.

The governmental bodies that oversee the industry are the ETC (Emotions Trade Commission, based in Washington, DC) and their enforcement/police arm the NEA (National Emotions Association, based in Chicago, Illinois).

The ETC liaisons with government, exchanges, publicity and enforces/creates policy. The ETC used to police SPAZDAQ, but in order to increase and decrease bureaucracy, they created the NEA to monitor, paperwork individual firms.

The NEA audits, fines, and takes disciplinary actions against firms/individuals engaging in emotions trading misconduct, such as churning an account (trading too much, simply to generate fees), misrepresenting emotions, filing false claims regarding emotions trades, or insider emotions trading, trading emotions linked to oneself, relative, associate, etc.

The NEA are 100% human and always very clean cut, dress like Mormons, short sleeve, white-collar button-down shirts, black slacks. All are required to lack any emotion whatsoever and must be a certified sociopath.

They pay on-site visits to firms, in groups of 20 or so, make unannounced visits to emotions brokerages and will demand emotions trade records, stand next to a telemarketer and listen in on brain-calls.

The NEA can fine, suspend and revoke licenses of firms or individuals, and file criminal charges.

The ETC can, as well, but rarely does, preferring to devote most of its time/budget on lobbying FRED corporations.

So there it is, my industry and its players...

The BAMAS, thrill of the close. The roar of the Funeral Room when the markets open.

Due to hand machines and automation, no other industry has grown at the rapid clip the emotions market has.

With persistence and patience, it can be lucrative and invigorating, but does wear you down. Headaches migraines, short tenures, and suicides are commonplace.

MORNING: I had to motor, ready for work, but still had time to watch another STREAM. Where did my happy sticks go? There they are... Mango flavor...

I swiped my hand machine and flung  The Fucking Music Channel back on and levitated into mid-air, cross-legged, scraped a quick happy stick and shimmied and shook my shoulders to a Black Magic KPOP video.

Chugging my cup of rat shit coffee, I waltzed to my closet, assembled my light, easy-breathing body armor. It's like a wetsuit, covering my legs, feet, arms, crotch and torso, up to my neck.

There'd been three muckers and two mass shootings in the last couple days. My hand machine's morbidity app said there'd be a 30% probability of shootings today, 20% of a vehicular ramming attack and a 60% chance of a light stabbing.

I holograph-snapped a light blue button-up shirt, shiny black slacks, striped white/black necktie (Windsor knot, of course!) and crocodile skin wingtips.

Here in the floating partition of Florida (Pompano Beach, Broward County, an hour north of Miami) it's sticky hot, at 98 degrees per morning, 107 per afternoon, 91 nighttime, so most of the businesspeople here wear the lightest build of effective MADE in N USA! body armor, which was govt subsidized for Class B.

Material clothes atop body armor was generally a thing of the past, worn mostly by Class C, D.

It's spiffy holographs now, beamed on via hand machine.

But attire has remained the same in modernity, slacks, dress shirt (much of the time still the usual Florida businessman rolled up sleeves) and a tie, dresses, skirts for T, NB, and females.

Those who can afford to, during high mucker tolls, upgrade their body armor or purchase force field, repelling hologram wear (a popular item – boomerang force field that flings back bullets at mucker).

Toilets had long been replaced by disposal hoses, which led to bays where human waste was converted into fuels, synth animal feed (most organic furry/feathered animals were extinct), bug feed.

Bugs, easily grown, harvested, especially cockroaches, were used for everything from food to sanitary items...

Stepping into my automated restroom, walls holographed views of the Italian alps, when they had snow, and I urinated into the disposal hose and hummed.

While doing so, my robotic arm squirted cockroach gel and rubbed it into my hair and combed my dark black hair backwards into vint Gordon Gecko style.

The look suited me. A holograph formed a bathroom mirror. My CHITTER feed liked the handsome.

Sliding out the door, I heard robo-dogs howling and whining down the hall.

I patted myself, made sure I had my happy sticks with me. I did. Mango 100s. All was well. Everything was good. I sipped rat shit coffee from a vacuum cup.

COMMUTE: The elevator tube in my building was again broken so I had to repel via spider rope, from my hand machine, down the building's exterior.

(The stairwell was filled with alligators, baboons, hyenas, and Hennard's ghosts [plus rumored to have a grizzly bear] so no one used the stairs, and, if they did, they never reappeared, so most, when the elevator tube wasn't working, repelled, jumped or flew out the windows).

Being on the 5 th floor, it was a bit of a pain to repel, but decent exercise. Every now and again I'll descend/ascend via rope ladder, parachute or fly.

Sweating like a pig, I marched and skipped out into my building's adjacent, outdoor P-lot (which is too small and has torn up asphalt) and entered/wore the thick, humid morning oven air.

It wasn't too hot, only around the low 90s with the heat index.

I saw one of my neighbors who lives across the hall, Charles. He was changing a flat tire on his old VW Beetle Flyer.

The blondie, he wore a dirty, ragged pale green military uni with a yellow circle smiley face button pinned to it instead of nametag, ranking...

His gut rumbled as he let out a series of farts.

I waved hello to him and he just gave me a strange look, at least I think he was looking at me. I noticed a sniper gun in his passenger's seat, so I moved quickly.

I got into my auto-car, a black BMW 2--- 7-Series Meth coupe, with J Bone interior.

It had some scratches and dings, the worst being a long, very visible scratch on the driver's side door.

The car was given to me by chance...

An Arab in white robes stopped, parked the car on the side of the road, near the beach, where I'd just parked my hover-circle.

He asked me: "Hey, Fredo, you like car?"

I told him: "Yes," and he tossed me the keys, walked into a McDonald's and detonated a suicide vest.

That was a year ago. His family told me his suicide e-note said someone there had spit in his food and later keyed his car.

His family figured I should keep the car and I did.

Occasionally his ghost would appear and accompany me to work and we'd talk NPL Football or about girls. His name was Salem, but I called him Mustafa.

Inserting my fingerprint into the ignition, I started the engine and scanned my hand machine for music. Classical Metal, namely Ratt, was on my playlist... "Lay It Down..."

The car was a mess. Its gray J Bone interior had numerous coffee stains, happy stick tingles, and strange markings, like hieroglyphics, that Mustafa refused to explain...

The rest was in decent condition, though, especially the soft, scaly, synth lizard skin seats...

Besides Classical Metal, I like mash Slap music, and would rock to it on my commute, dancing and moving in my car as it navigated gridlock.

Slap got me pumped up and ready to hustle. I'd listen to the air STREAMS, especially Hot Beach 104 FUCK U.

My most favorite song: "Shiggy SHaky" was playing a lot these days. Sometimes Mustafa and I would listen to motivational tapes...

I saw Charles, in his car, loading his sniper rifle, and I scanned my hand and peeled out the parking lot, spinning my wheels, ready to begin my voyage to the office.

The traffic was wretched, as always, lines of ants in a feeder...

As usual there were lots of shitheads cutting me off, shooting handguns and AKs at each other, giving the finger or exchanging kind words.

A deranged McDonald's employee, chanting: "Huberty, Huberty, Huberty" twirled a dead synth cat by its tail and ran into traffic and raped a hover-cycle's tailpipe.

What is it about driving in cars that turns otherwise civilized human beings into pre-evolutionary monkeys?

Even with most on autopilot, flyers, road rage actually worsened.

Not great for the commute, but excellent for the emotions trade business....

Like my coworker, long hair blondie, Martin's sales pitch: "Profit in Rage! Rage! How about every time you see a roadside fistfight or shooting, instead of being scared, or angry you might be late to work, you're happy, because you're MAKING BUCKEROO!"

Not that I'm immune. It happens to me too. I flick off somebody or yell. Wave my fist and punch the air. I really hate it when people fly 30 or 40 mph on the highways. I hate that SO FUCKING MUCH. I'm grateful for Mustafa and my hand machine; the freditation music, too. The freditation massively assists my serenity.

COMMERCIAL: And now, a word from our sponsor, the body armor enhancement suit maker, PROTEX!

Hi, I'm Dr. Jordan BOT.

Obviously. You know there's a mucker, right at this moment, lurking, trolling CHITTER, checking mass murder scorecards, licking his chops trying to find his pronoun to the top of the list... But DID YOU KNOW, that most body armor does NOT repel Russian V-bullets and will NOT protect you from arson, flamethrowers, acid attacks or strangulation, poisoning.

BUT PROTEX will! PROTEX will protect you from any and all attempts on you and your family's lives with its patented smart shield, boomerang repellent.

The bullets simply bounce away! Even Russian bullets, insidious liquids, powders, flames, you name it! PROTEX forms a protective, safe space bubble, IMPOSSIBLE to penetrate!

Get fitted for your PROTEX suit today and receive a FAMILY discount of 15% off! What are you waiting for? DO YOU WANT TO DIE? NO, OBVIOUSLY YOU DON'T! BUY YOUR NEW PROTEX SUIT TODAY!!!!! (Not available for Class D, cyborgs, BOTS, the mentally retarded, nuns, or Russians.)

Dah, dah, DAAAAAAAAAAAAA, this is HOT BEACH 104 FUCK U FM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE SOUNDTRACK OF SOUTH FLORIDAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

COMMUTE: The Funeral Room wasn't too far from my building, maybe 30 minutes or so. I motored A1A North up an ivory causeway and crossed over to Route 1.

The causeway glides over a beautiful radioactive uranium green canal, retirees and unemployables fishing there; former YAHOO! employees in panda suits, riding in cigarette boats, blasting bazookas off at the sun.

A cult of homeless dentists had a tent next to the causeway, but it burned in the last serious series of intentional fires.

One Chucky Doll Face homeless dentist was naked, his lips compressed into a straight line. We made eye contact and he waved and smiled and was apparently fixing to amputate his leathery bald penis with a dental saw...

I drove by a few robot office buildings, a feed portal selling barbecue rodents, mostly possums, and a  Fucking Donuts . Then I curved by the lake.

Occasionally I'd sky-surf on a hoverboard or passenger drone an alternate route to the Room out of sheer boredom or if my car was awaiting download patches.

It took longer, the alternate route, but it was far less congested, and a HOOT to be whipping in circles about the large red, fiery lake. It had the most evocative and melliferous glow.

Due to its smoke and fire, around it there's almost no traffic at all...

(CAUTION: Just make sure not to have a software glitch, fall off the board or out the drone because there were fucktons of Burmese pythons, alligators, and swamp creatures down there.)

((The swamp creatures were a cult of former pharma lobbyists, led by Shkreli cyborgs, Class D, BOTS. They'd tar themselves in mud and shit and show up to your house if you left money or food in your backyard. They lived these days off hunting alligators, synth birds, snakes and cannibalism and were shot on site for fun or by legal decree.))

(((Many cities, States, and towns in Next America, either formally or informally, had culled their homeless populations, through communal mass burning or shooting campaigns, or mass poisonings. However, Florida, thus far, has allowed them to roam freely, except within or too close of a proximity to Class A compounds...)

Sometimes I saw synth pelicans and synth flamingos flying over or around the lake.

One time I saw a synth pink flamingo that had gotten run over by a car. It was still half alive and trying to get up and flap its wings. I thought briefly about helping it, but I decided to just keep driving. The thought of wanting to help it made me feel noble.

A swamp creature probably ate it later and ended its misery.

As I approached the Funeral Room, next to Shipman VR High School, at a crowded intersection, I saw an old purple pig man in violet overalls and coke bottle eyeglasses over a red ski mask, riding on flying roller-skates.

He fuck-ended an SUT (with a BASS BOOM stereo playing Slap) driven by two thuggish ruggish BONE Cult youngsters dressed in baggy clothing and blue ski masks.

An argument ensued.

The teens folded the SUT, drugged the old man with syringe dart shots and beat him with oily hot frying pans.

The other cars just drove by, shooting hand machine videos, hollering and a couple honked at them to get out of the road.

" Voodoo doll, motherfucker! Voodoo doll! EAST 9999!" chortled the teens as they beat the man.

I checked my index for random street violence and interlaced my fingers, cracked my knuckles.

Ready, ready, ready to start another day. I crept closer and closer to the Room. I was ready for psychic calls and cracking BUCKEROO.

I thought of one my commanders: Dog Pit Vick. His taunts, fist pumps, fingers and silence. Taupe tweed hologram suits and foaming mouth. The flipping animal.

"Is your girlfriend happy... Why can't you afford the new... Quit digging in my pocket!"

How he'd be on all fours, barking and running around the Room, yelping and howling, biting the least productive broker that day, but the first to slap a back, lick hands, face...

Quote vint DMX lyrics...

"Y'all gone..."

Caffeine, endorphins, adrenaline. Happy sticks in my front pocket ready. Serotonin from my repressant plucked me up.

I hooked left off Route 1. I scraped another happy stick to balance my keel, scraped the stick down hastily in three or four pulls and flicked it out my driver's side window.

There was a bit of a breeze going, and it landed in the back seat of a low-flying pick-up convertible I passed. I heard a scream.

The tank floating ahead of me, neon rainbow hummer-clone, with elephant tusk antennas, American flags flying from them and an "I Support the Trumps" bumper sticker...

The tank suddenly swerved off the road and struck a DROP sign, thick chocolate smoke billowed from u-shaped dent in its hood...

The driver, a Tony Montana BOT got out, narrowed his eyes, and started kicking his car. He then looked over at me.

Our eyes met and he yelled: "What the fuck is joo looking at, mang!?"

I laughed at him from behind my bulletproof window and accelerated.

WORK: I hovered into the lot of our Funeral Room's building and occupied in my usual left spot, under a large plastic palm tree, next to Omar's Porsche-Gunner.

I was glad that nobody had taken my space. Yesterday some asshole's Ford Flying Fuckyoumobile was there. I had Mustafa place a hex on it.

A few of the guys from the office were out front, laughing, palm reading, having a happy stick. I stopped by them for a second, scraped up a stick of my own.

Omar, Stephen, and Martin stood in a semi-circle of cloud bubbles and muttered swear words.

Adam was with them but just went inside.

Omar, was of Afghan eugenics, muscle-bound with military style haircut and a square jaw.

He fidgeted with his tie constantly, was homophobic and misogynistic, but a silver tongue at selling Fear and Hate...

Stephen was a strange bird. About 60, short gray hair and close-cropped beard. A man of few words, he stared at coworkers, making most everyone uncomfortable. He also was addicted to hand machine poker, gambling VR. But when it came to hitting brains, clocking CASH, he was cunning and ruthless. Especially on the Greed.

Martin was short (5'5), early 20s, had face tattoos, long blond locks and a boyish, high-pitched voice and lisp. A rather disturbing looking fellow, he was basically stupid, low IQ, bad at everything he did, even automated holograph clothing, AI rhythms, but on the brainwaves, he was a master salesman. His specialty: charming the elderly with his dim-witted approach and goofy likeability.

(Believe it or not, Martin said he used to work as a mime performing on the street before going into the psyches.)

All were on hand machines, competing at an e-GAME of distinguishing human female asses from FBOT asses, then liking/disliking the asses, and chatting back and forth, shitting on each other, via texts, emojis, laughs and scans...

I chucked my stick, went inside, ready to bang brains, crash BAMAS...

The company that employed my services: "Liberty Emotional Investing Corp" had a Funeral Room on the right quadrant of what was once a Walmart.

The Walmart had been the sight of three mass shootings, a stabbing, and it finally closed due to automation and was partitioned into office space...

Our Funeral Room occupied where the dairy section once was.

It seemed cool in the room, icy, cooler than the air conditioning. Mustafa said there were at least two ghosts, mass shooting victims, Akyra and Jason, in there...

There was a robo-doctor's office and a staycation sales type of company next door...

The building was still Walmart blue, boxy; its windows tinted black.

I face rec'd, and automatic doors slid open, MUZAK, Christmas melodies playing; they hummed year-round.

The AC was cranked and temperature chilly, 62 F. The plastic Walmart, China factory smell remained.

The moving floor led me to the door of the Funeral Room.

On the door was a huge, rectangular sign that read: "Liberty Emotional Investing Corp" in kablam black, Times New Roman font.

The company name was underlined atop a picture of a smiling Statue of Liberty holding up a rainbow American flag.

Facial recognition sucked me into the Funeral Room, and I followed the floor to my coffin pod.

Our room was a beehive network of wireless coffin pods, equipped with chips, antennas, each coffin pod chained to the floor, in case of accidental levitation pull.

The coffins, real coffins, repurposed, once belonged to the rich...

(With overpopulation and environmental calamities, cemeteries were either washed away by flood, destroyed by earthquake, wildfire, gamma ray, various other catastrophe, or simply torn up to make way for real estate; corpses, skeletons dug up, and, depending on status, used in research, construction, or the creation of BOTS.)

Most Funeral Rooms, the successful ones, that is, constructed their cubicle farms, networks from coffins of the rich, believing the millionaire, billionaire coffin shells would increase wavelength prosperity karma.

Entering the coffin pod, telemarketers would either sit up in it or lie on their backs, sliding open or closing the lid via hand machine control.

Inside each padded telemarketers' coffin was e-pictures of his/her loved/hated/stalked ones, market charts, inspirational quotes, VR screen shots of exotic locales, e-pics, e-posters of e-SPORT STAR/STREAM STAR.

Many telemarketers, like our floor chief Schrank, slapped up e-pictures of dead children in his coffin pod.

Imagery of humans in revealing attire had long been frowned upon or outright banned in most workplaces decades ago.

Between every 5 or so coffins was a sloth table telemarketers could use to eat, talk, break.

Under the sloth table, a cabinet with spare equipment, suction head parts, digi-sticks.

The Funeral Room was sterile white. White everything, white walls, white tables, cabinets, doors, dividers, blinds.

Only the coffins were different colors, but most were white, brown, and black.

The room was amazingly spotless, clean, bacteria free, stainless, maintained meticulously clean via robot maid BOT and roving BOT vacuums.

The walls had flashboards that sifted and pixeled between pictures of extinct animals, FBOTS, dead children, video from primitive abortion procedures, market charts,  Fucking News updates, reality STREAM, e-SPORTS, baseball highlights, footage from fires, natural disasters, poet hunting, comedian culling, random/intentional stabbings, shootings, street violence and real estate porn.

A coffee BOT/snack drone hovered around, delivering liquid and solid refreshment to agents, delivering directly to coffin pods.

Face scanning open my coffin pod, I sat into it and finished up my vacuum cup of rat shit coffee and nodded hello to my neighboring telemarketer, Jennifer.

It's rare to find a girl in this line of telemarketing, but there is a brave few.

In fact, with automation it's been rarer to find a human woman working anywhere. Most workplaces employ FBOTS.

Jennifer was a lovely, midwestern nice girl, slightly shy; extremely attractive.

Not in a supermodel, STREAM star or perfection FBOT, but more a girl next door, 20 th , 21 st century, down to earth way.

She and her boyfriend had moved down to Next Florida from East Ohio and she took this job thinking she'd make primo BUCKEROO.

She really needed to make some BAMAS. She said she's broke, and her boyfriend, who she lives with, had screen records, CHITTER feuds, CHITTER quotes that made him an Unemployable.

Not seeing many female humans, I appreciated Jennifer, her organic femininity, soft syllables and nuclear smile.

She looked particularly pretty today, with her milky, Geisha white, silky skin, and her shoulder-length curly light brown hair twisted into pigtails...

About 5'2, she had lovely navy blue, almond eyes, and a pert little slim body, with pear shaped breasts, and a firm not too big or small ass that really looked spectacular in that short skirt.

Her baby blue blouse matched her eyes and her heavy blue eyeshadow...

Really liked her abundance of make-up, every day a different lipstick color, and her girly painted nails... And don't even get me started on her fishnet stockings!

There was an underlying sexual tension between us.

We were quite flirty and super-friendly with one another since we trained together for the Screaming Exam and started working at Liberty around the same time.

"Good morning," I said.

"Good morning," she said and smiled at me as I lay down in my coffin pod. She was sitting upright in hers.

I asked her how it went yesterday with this account she's been trying to close for a week now. She told me how the Abu never answers his brain and that she's getting sick of calling him.

She handed me a stack of digi-sticks, hot pink colored, meaning they identified as female.

Jennifer hated calling women because they always cursed, downvoted, slapped hexes on her.

"I hate women," she said.

"I like women," I replied and smiled at her.

She smiled back coyly and quickly looked away, melting into a mellow glow...

I didn't mind calling women because they were usually more polite.

Many were lonely housewives, unemployables, and happy to talk to anyone. I'd made BAMAS from them plenty of times and operated contrary to the common mantra in Funeral Rooms: "Don't pitch the bitch!" because most women, in general, will quickly terminate transmissions or constantly pester about their emotions account if they do open one.

"All right, everybody! Bring it in, bring it in!" snapped Schrank, who popped out of his coffin pod with a heavy swagger.

Schrank was pumped up today, I could tell. A clear liquid leaked from his faceless head. I suspected he'd been injecting asteroid juice again.

A real "RA RA" type of guy; he commanded the room like a sports team.

He'd e-path text at people (even while they were on brains, trying to pitch client bastards)

((Clients, customers of Liberty were often referred to by us, un/affectionately as "bastards"))

Schrank was always stalking the floor, trembling, spitting as he spoke, leaning into brokers' coffin pods: "C'mon, Wendigo! Give me something today!" "You can do it!" "That's what I'm talking about!"

He loved giving chest bumps, slapping asses, and punching walls, either in anger or elation...

At the beginning of every workday he always gave a speech to get everybody psyched up to hit brains.

Today was no exception, and he wiped his mouth with his arm and gathered the troops...

"All right, everybody, listen up, we got out 29,023 front loads yesterday."

(Front loads are a digi-file, filled out with information re: price points, profit potential, market history of an emotion.)

(("Front Loading" was sending these front loads to prospective bastards in the hopes they will buy into that emotion contract, scan BAMAS, open an account.))

(((It was obviously better they immediately buy an emotion, but front loads, especially if re-sheeted or shared, did lead to sales...)))

"Opened 260 new accounts in Outrage, 174 in Embarrassment, 21 in Pity, and, what the.. is this right... 2054 in Surprise!? Sammy the Bull, that you?"

"Function correct. The kindergarten fire in Jinan, East China, intentionally set by hacked FBOT."

Hologram footage lit the ceiling, displaying the carnage, children, FBOTS, burning alive, around 100 of them, due to a malfunctioning face scanning entrance/out-door..

Sammy the Bull continued: "Footage leaked, viral to the left network." "BAMABUCKS!!!!!" He got up and screamed at the top of his lungs, voice straining.

The entire room applauded.

Schrank: "You see, this is it! This is what I'm talking about! Be a KILLER! Scan EVERY network, hit every list, every eye, brain. Scan, scan, scan, scan more. Punch, push, prod. Kick and bite!

"You claw, you hustle, you teleport yourself and tickle souls!

"You are an animal! A savage!"

Holograms spit from Schrank's ears, images of animal attacks, crocodiles eating tribesmen in the tropics, piles of bodies from wartime atrocities, furry kittens being stomped to death by giant robot cats, train wrecks, fire-breathing flying dinosaurs pillaging Asiatic cities, burning skyscrapers, people jumping from upper storeys of flaming glass towers, plummeting, flailing jumpers, a sadistically smiling elderly Italian man in a Versace jumpsuit, sitting in a golden jet-propelled wheelchair, throwing live whimpering synth puppies into the frozen Niagara Falls, and, finally, a calm, white sandy beach, turquoise waters lapping the shoreline, BAMABUCKS from clear blue sky, drizzling like rain, soft Christmas music, Holy Night...

Schrank struck a Jesus Christ pose, outstretched his arms, stood silently as the images whipped about.

Then he clapped the room into operation and screamed out: "YAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!"

Every agent jumped to their feet, out of their coffin pod, and screamed back:

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!"

The clock hit 9 Anti-M. The wall screen moved to the CHITTER SPAZDAQ feed and feed of a LIVE terrorist attack...

(Rogue, insurgent Pakistani robo-bat boats, armed with catapults, hurling suicide midgets covered in flaming synthetic cowshit at Hindi human fem farms in North East India) had the VIX and Fear options moving green...

The t-t-trading day had begun!

And then, just like that, every agent manned his/her coffin pod, attached their headsets- a suction-cup with a thin pointy antenna (allowing for quicker, wider neural range) to their foreheads and started zap-dialing, calling out to brains, shaking, accessing hand machines, scanning digi-files...

The room roared, alive with the sound of popping, chatter, and hand machine shuffling.

(Sometimes it got SO boisterously loud which made it necessary to slide shut the coffin pod, enable sound sealing...)

Because of the terrorist attack and spreading bushfires in Z-Stralia, the market was moving fast, and the Funeral Room was abuzz, pitches for Grief, pitches for Rage, but mostly pitches, at least Stateside, for Apathy...

"Hello this is --- from Liberty...!" "May I speak with..." "Hello..."

Jennifer just got hung up on five times in a row. Her expression soured.

Dark Web Cunthulu, my other neighbor, snorted napalm powder from his talon and offered me a bump. I politely passed, as did Jennifer.

I scanned my digi-stick lead sheets (sheets with names/neural numbers of prospective bastards) and started to zap.

The first brainwave of my first file was a Mr. A. Burke, of Rochester, New York, last known physical address in North Miami Beach...

Additional Personal Data: Retired, 87, Jamaican, has model FBOT 926, violent, has seven children, unmarried, watches gameshows, hate-watches stand-up comedy.

Florida retired people. Probably the best people to call. Inside all the time due to the sun and heat, muckers.

Retirees enjoyed us calling. Several of my clients were retirees.

My suction cup headset buzzed the digits and Mr. Burke's brain rang.

Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorp... Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorp...

"How about it, mon?" answered an old sounding gentleman, in a Rasta accent.

I went into my pitch that I had memorized by now.

"Hello, this is Kim Cancer from Liberty Emotional Investing. I hope you're doing well today, because, as you know, many others are well, and many others are not.... It has come to my attention that from time to time you like to make high return investments in emotions... Particularly that of Hatred, especially towards stand-up comedy...

Are you currently doing any Hatred/Rage investing right now, and, if so, where are your BAMAS working for you?"

"Stand-up comedy?" asked Mr. Burke.

"Yes, sir... I notice, from data..."

"Fucking stand-up comedians, mon... I hate EVERYTHING about them. Bumboclaat! Their smug expressions, taunting the audience, the set-up, punchlines, their pausing for applause..."

I could hear what sounded like a gun being loaded.

"Sir, how would you like to invest in options that could..."

"You're not UNDERSTANDING. I'm going to shoot a stand-up comedian if he EVER steps foot on my property... FIND A PLANE FULL OF THEM!"

"No, sir, this is about investing, making BUCKEROO. Turning your plane of thought into BAMA burners, earners... Harnessing and capitalizing..."

And with that, the connection ended.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...

The sound of white noise.

I was standing in my coffin pod, clutching a tennis ball in my hand. Most high-earner telemarketers stand. A chain gang telemarketer, Gotti, told me once you think better on your feet. He was not wrong.

Mr. Burke was a dud. Perhaps he had dementia.

Maybe he was a true psycho, preparing a rampage; perhaps he was an unemployable and the data was faulty. Or maybe he'd been tormenting me.

Heaven's Gate, The Cult of Tiggers, those who like to torment telemarketers, fuck with us constantly and upload recordings to cold webs and dark sites, video and audio download channels.

Tiggers banked BUCKEROO selling ads, ramping humongous audiences eager to hear a telemarketer cry or yell. Bets in casinos on live STREAM would be placed.

Tiggers would tell you their house is on fire, pretend to be premium tier police or act like they know you: "Kanye, is that you, playing jokes again?"

Lots of freaks, these brains...

There were plain strange people out there as well. The other day I received a brainmail. We usually just disconnect on brainmail unless it's a client you already have or a promising front load.

But this brainmail was a LAUGH RIOT!

It was an Indo-Pacific man, Mr. Godse, breathing hard, cursing in Hindi, and moaning, grunting, gargling, making horse sounds...

It was so damn uproarious that I played it to Jennifer, and she almost fell out of her coffin pod, laughing and crying so hard...

A lot of brain signals we connect are obsolete, unable to compute, too old to understand what's going on. They haven't been reassigned, reconfigured, or uploaded to the cemetery cloud yet.

One lady I reached just yelled "What?", "Who?" the whole time until I ended transmission. Another believed me to be her long-lost friend, "Tay" and wept uncontrollably. I offered her cloud services. Then booked spot options on Confusion.

There was an older broker, in a coffin pod near me, Babi Yar.

Babi Yar was a fucking maniac, but in an endearing way.

He'd been doing this for years, since forever.

He'd sold everything from cars, commodities, stocks, kangaroo meat.

Babi Yar was overweight, gave no fucks and never downloaded AI aesthetic wares for his figure, his receding hairline or fang teeth.

We got along well, both being of Italian descent.

I admired his pencil thin moustache; few could rock it with such panache.

His eyes were perpetually bloodshot, so I'm guessing he didn't do cryogenics or regenerate and always appeared to be under the influence of various mood enhancers.

His thick Italian New York accent reminded me of my uncle, which is part of why I liked him. Today he donned a cheetah suit with a shark tooth tie.

He could have holographed a better image, sure, but, really, no fucks were given.

If he didn't kill the BAMAS, perhaps the bosses would sharp on him, as was the tendency toward those in full blown animal suits or sloth attire.

But they never banged much on high earners, which Babi Yar was.

Making the BAMAS he did, perhaps he'd be happy, but no, every day, EVERY DAY, he arrived to the Funeral Room and manned his coffin pod in the foulest, rudest of moods, especially if he'd been fighting with his wife. (Unlike many of the other telemarketers, he preferred organic human females...)

Panning over to him, I text swiped a hello, and he swipe-replied: "Everything sucks!"

Crazy Kehoe confided in me that Babi Yar had a serious tickling fetish, peeling with strictly enhanced, endangered or extinct ostrich feathers, the priciest, the Bugatti of ostrich feathers.

Babi Yar as well had issues with swipe machine betting on prospective death tolls of Bus Massacre VR STREAM e-SPORT SIMS- Bus Passenger Massacre IV, Khudda and Bus Passenger Massacre V, Fatehbad, his favorites...

Babi Yar had banked BAMAS (billions of BAMAS) and should probably be able to retire by now.

However, Crazy Kehoe said his tickling fetish, betting swipes forced him into still working.

One thing about Babi Yar, though, he was an honest guy. His wife knew ALL about the tickling and swiping, which isn't even why they fought.

Babi Yar also always informed, explained in digits, the risk in emotions, the market's fluctuations. Never lied. The Truth was always the Truth to him.

Babi Yar slicked me as I was about to make my next transmission and said: "You're doing it all wrong. Telemarketers are made, not born...

You need to stick to the script. Stick to the script. What I always do when I hit the brain is I just ask for the person by their first name.

I don't care if a dog answers the phone. I say: 'Hello, Ningyang, Ningyang?' Then I go straight into the script. I don't even stop. If they try to stop me, I just keep on going until they bzzz me. And if they stay on, I just continue with it.

If they ask me if I'm reading from a script, I tell them: 'Yup, how does it sound?' and they laugh, and I keep going.

That's the way you do it. You just bulldoze right over them. You always got to control the transmission. The second you lose control, you're done, finished, forked. Make sure you got the data. The data. Liars can figure but figures can't lie. Data. BAMAS. Cold Call Cowboy, my friend. Cold Call Cowboy..."

SSSSSMACKER: The NEA had many protocols regarding data, customer/client occupational circumstances.

The DRT, PPE, C5S, among other regs that were cupped into your flow during the training transitioning. There were times when sticks were moved, blurred lines, this or that account opened, when the BAMAS weren't right.

T-Agent impulse overrode protocol.

NEA insufficient accounts were discouraged, at times punished harshly.

Why bother to open insufficient accounts? Insider Anger, Greed, Disappointment, Hate- that occurred.

Certain retirees, unemployables, degenerates, those who shouldn't have options, do.

But in this job, working on "slammer" or "smacker" (Slammer: BUCKS paid only if sale completed, scaled as a percentage, typically 15% market value of the emotion option/contract) so telemarketers will be desperate.

Freedom Dividends, public government food sticks, nutrient pills and containment units don't a happy life make.

FBOTS are not subsidized in Florida, either. Organic mating or dating isn't cheap.

Telemarketers survive. Telemarketers, the A-List, the famous, they thrive. Bank BUCKS from STREAMS, sales, sponsors. But most telemarketers don't. Most survive.

The first month at Liberty, like most Funeral Rooms, telemarketers only lick "Dibs", an allotment of BUCKS disbursed, and it counts against a future smacker. So, if say Dibs are B1,000,000, that B1M the company scrapes from the first pay scan, whenever that is.

Not an easy business, seeders. But it beats harvesting metals, farming cockroaches, and for those who can't sing or dance or play e-SPORT or code/program, and don't want to scrape by on Freedom Dividends, it's one of the most human occupations left.

WORK: Monkey mind, cobalt blue, sliver of magenta, and so I reboot and recalibrate: Back to the waves.

I rubbed my temples, summoned more and more signals.

Saw telemarketer stat STAR Nicki Sixx Cruz's face on hologram, dressed as a 1920s brown shit fascist, full regalia, saluting a skydiving hemophiliac Jenner; the hemophiliac Jenner clawing at a faulty parachute, plummeting into a football field of rose bushes.

Most of my leads weren't answering. I received disconnected number mental error messages.

It was morning time.

Time for news, coffee, and the rallies. Many bastards at the rallies, these days, gallivanting in slews...

RALLIES: The rallies had picked up in popularity, owing to the fact that many were without work, living on Freedoms, U/unemployable or just bored.

The Peoples Temple had started the trend, and, with CHITTER, it went viral.

Rallies in every city, town, neighborhood. They'd be mass screaming rallies, mass crying rallies, or, most recently, mass laughing rallies.

Rallies for the next rally. Rallies about rallies.

Every rally was basically the same. An arena or theater, full or half full or a quarter full, hosted by Jones BOT, depending on the cycles.

Fast-moving images and sounds played on a jumbotron screen or streamed directly to audience hand machines (though most would fold arms, hold hands, watch the jumbotron, for camaraderie) and the audience, in unison, screamed, hated, cried, laughed together for 10 to 20 minutes and left vindicated, hugging, fighting, kissing, stabbing or shooting.

(Even before the national legalization of murder, Florida Stand Down Laws and Population Control Act 6278 made stabbing and shooting a subjective offense, allowable at nebulous opportunity.)

Such rallies were a blessing and a curse for telemarketers. Rarely planned, they erupted sporadically, FLASH MOB, with little advance notification of location or version (Hate, Laughter) but if a telemarketer had or found a bastard at one or discovered one in time, sold fat enough, SNAP EPO, it was a goldmine!

WORK: BZZZZZZ...... BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ......... 404.... Female Cockney Accent BOT VOICE: Language barrier breaker ware algorithmic fail. Language barrier breaker ware algorithmic fail... Disconnect. EEEEERRRRRRPPPPPPPPP....

Black cat, broken mirror morning, all no-answers, disconnects, attempts, hang ups.

An enraged Boy Scout leader, Mr. Hamilton, I binged a few minutes ago, taught me ingenious new uses of Glaswegian profanity, cursing me out because he was dishing for an important thought, and I was tying up his line.

I hadn't sold or gotten any front loads out. Not one.

I could hear Jammiyathul, the Sri Lankan, Jungle Jammy, his vowels rising above the roaring vocal fray. He himself had coined the nickname, having grown up in the jungle of what was left of the island state...

JJ was yelling through the phone congested background: "Everything we talked about in the markets last week is happening, everything's happening! Let us be in today, men, and make some trades. You know this water war isn't going to stop.

Do you think water prices will be falling anytime soon? What about Sudan? What about the churches? The water cunt terrorists? The LDD?

One new water cunt terror attack and it is B70,000 a bottle. How many waterfalls are left, men? How many glaciers? Ice caps? How thirsty, men, how thirsty are you now? We must get in now before it's too late! You will be happy next time there's a terrorist attack! Trust me!"

I knew that last remark could be socialized, so I placed two options on Mock Outrage...

BREAK: Usually I had a rest once or so per hour, slipped out for a happy stick.

Outside, in the shade of synth plastic, I saw Dylan and Eric, on their hand machines. Joining them, I swiped on my hand machine and scraped a happy stick.

Dylan was watching dark web stand-up comedy on his hand machine; he gleamed in the sun, grinned and buzzed me a link.

I clicked on it and caught the comedian, mod-gen, pants locked at ankles, shooting fireballs from his ass.

(The informal ban on stand-up comedy had lasted two years. In this time, at least 700 human comedians were slaughtered, mostly by beheading; Chapman BOTS led the charge on  The Fucking Execution Channel  STREAM, hunting, via BOTCAM/drone, stalking stand-up comedians, impaling on them spikes, defiling, decapitating them; flying BUZZSAW the preferred, most popular, crowd-pleasing method of executing the comedians...)

((Contemporary stand-up comedy available only on the dark web or pirated digi-stick, produced in undisclosed locations. Vint stand-up still widely available on STREAM))

Eric was browsing FBOT upgrades, vint German delivery packets, and soft patches.

Dylan shared three videos, but they were too long (nearly violating TL;DR informal laws, TL;DR regs stating no MOVIE over 3 minutes; BOOKS, no more than 100 words; NEWS not over 1:30 minute/seconds; ENTERTAINMENT VID 2:30 minutes/seconds; LIVE STREAM feed exempt).

Bored, I slicked to  The Fucking Torture Channel feed.

Unemployables hanging by one leg, foot hammer nailed to an inverted crucifix ceiling.

Unemployables had a silver feeding tube plunged into their throats, fed a soup from a cauldron of comedian blood/shit/piss, synth sugar and divorce lawyer vomit, all in the hope of viewers scanning them BUCKS.

Enjoyable, sure, but my current favorite  The Fucking Torture Channel  feed had to be the "ROPE".

One where a BUCK hungry contestant, by law, a morbidly obese man/women, Class B/C, must run and fly bungee jumping off tall office buildings.

Before jumping, they'd have to calculate rope measurements through a series of trivia questions.

Those who survived went on to be upgraded to Class A, VR school teachers, or STREAM STARS...

Crazy Kehoe fling-texted he'd seen on CHITTER that there'd be a mass poet beheading from San Francisco later and sent me the link.

I swiped the X and somersaulted inside, to the unisex bathroom.

Inside the bathroom there was a shaky lizard, fleshy features, tall, a turbo iguana, wearing mirror sunglasses, happy stick dangling...

S/he'd been hired as the disposal, refreshment assistant and wasn't sure if s/he was a lizard person, mod-animal or ABOT (neither was I).

The shaky lizard smiled and offered a survey screen. I swiped left, in retaliation, and kicked open a stall door.

I could hear some voices coming from the adjacent box. It was Elisabeth Battery and Joey Ransacker.

I wondered if maybe they were closet human-sexuals. But then I heard sotto voices/snorting, probably vac snappy dust or whopper dings, and figured they're just prowlers, delivering a load of death.

Unsheathing the disposal hose, it slipped from my hand, and my penis broke loose, urine hit the floor.

I don't know why, but it was satisfying, pissing on the floor, pissing on a thing, instead of into a thing.

Yellow piss spilled into the adjacent box, and I heard Elisabeth and Joey curse, tear out of there. I maintained my flow until my bladder emptied.

After I was done, I opened the box and the shaky lizard was on the floor, frolicking, lapping up the urine with forked tongue... In mere seconds the floor was dry and spotless.

I fuck-linked to the network and five starred the reptile.

WORK: Back to the Funeral Room, my coffin pod.

All no and disconnects. Truly a broken mirror, dismal day.

"I'm not interested" "Please take my name off your loads" "Where did you get my neurons?" "Please stop connecting" "You've reached a brain link that has been disconnected or is no longer in service"

Brains sucked. Thankfully, it was about lunch time. I swiped up to my co-worker Woo Bum, and he agreed to walk or drone the sustenance shack for a pill or mod-meat sandwich.

"... "

I liked Woo Bum. We both enjoyed "Rope" and had similar taste in FBOT models, VR.

Woo Bum was sort of a friend of mine. Well, a 'work' friend, really. The type of people I only talk to or hang out with within the confines of work.

Woo Bum and I often had lunch together, and we'd casually trade hostile memes, Triumph the Insult Dog quotes, CHITTER feuds, and random insults with/to one another.

We'd been in training together, after all...

(TRAINING: The Liberty training for new brokers, a week-long, 8 hour a day crash course, held in the dungeon of the Walmart building.

The dungeon a dank, wet floor, gray concrete walled circular classroom, with digital chair/desks that administered random electronic torture shocks, and the classroom's walls plastered in e-photos of murdered 20 th , 21 st century dictators: Qadhafi's corpse, Saddam, Mussolini hanging...

A flickering fluorescent light dangling from the ceiling turned on/off randomly...

We got a stack of loose-leaf papers about emotions, and the markets, kill sheets, e-pictures of significant massacres, psyops, exotic flowers.

The instructor, Herr Schmidt, was a former agent who now ran a Jesuit containment complex nearby.

He'd detonate emotions, prices, market fluctuations, punch walls, and beam video of animal torture, mass murder and various forms of abuse, plus cheerleading competitions, coral reef dildos, and deadlines.

At the end of the course, we knew all emotions, prices, option regs, inside and out, plus how to front load, upsell, downsell.)

WOO BUM: I reviewed, rated him highly, but he wasn't really the type I usually friended.

Beside "Rope" and FBOT, we didn't have much in common. Work certainly brought disparate unions...

Rare for an Asiatic, Woo Bum was a redneck, with a strong Panhandle accent, but used coding to standardize his English for business.

He liked MASSACAR, had a mullet, a scraggly goatee, wore overalls on casual Fridays, and went python hunting.

A heavy earner, hard worker, Woo Bum could wear what he wanted and did. His holographs changed daily; flashy tacky neon blue suits, emperor robes, even bathrobes for a few minutes here and there before a commander's glare hovered him formal...

LUNCH: We sat outside the pixelated store, in adjacent cushion claws, palm reading as we ate synth mod BBQ turkey sandwiches and grasshopper chips.

Woo Bum forwarded me to a CHITTER feud flame war and flash memes about the water crisis.

We shared a laugh.

Woo Bum swigged from his cherry corn cola. Then burped the alphabet.

I was horrified and wondered if he'd booked options on Revulsion.

Starting my way back, Woo Bum said he'd be back later or never.

Turning away, I heard gunshots from a one-eyed mucker, fatty horseface mid-male, imperial Japan headband and vint USA Olympic Women's Basketball jersey.

The mucker, naked below the waist, was shooting a Bushmaster  XM-15 ORC 300 BLACKOUT  at random flying drones and cars, roller-skaters, singing: "My Heart WILL GO ON!"

Woo Bum hand machined an electric bolt and dropped the mucker.

A crowd formed around the mucker, kicking, punching and robbing him of his weapons, ammo, fanny pack, body armor and moccasins.

A death van, public police BOTS rolled in and repossessed the mucker's internal organs...

My hand machine pogo-sticked me back to the Funeral Room.

On the way, I saw a shiny building, about 11 stories high, encased in clear bluish glass, tinted dark.

It was on fire. An HIV Cosplay Cult circle-danced around it.

The building, cubist, cube shaped in a nihilistic design.

Opposite of it sat a translucent, BOT-made triangle lake, with mechanical ducks and piranha fish. There was a heart-shaped beautiful-hydrogen fountain out in front of the building, shooting neon green liquid, HFRV element, its lattice of spouts crisscrossing.

Outside the burning building stood a couple agents from Liberty.

They were talking to a bipedal hippopotamus. The Hippo was wearing an expensive dark brown pinstripe Armani suit, chains of gold, and had human-licked salt and pepper hair.

The Hippo was Liberty's boss of bosses. Commander and owner.

His name, Ted Bundy. AKA Taliban Ted because he was fucking relentless and a zealot when it came to pushing emotions, crashing the BAMABUCKS.

TALIBAN TED: Taliban Ted founded the Funeral Room a couple years ago.

He started at a rodent investment company in downtown Miami and was asked by the firm to leave after some of his clients filed ass-action complaints.

The REC (Rodents Exchange Commission, the governmental watchdog of the Rodent Securities Market) wanted to bust Taliban Ted for a rat/rabbit mating manipulation scheme that cost investors a bundle of BAMAS.

(Rabbit, rat, possum, squirrel, due to their quick/easy breeding, coffee making, meat producing, adaptabilities, capabilities, like cockroaches, were a staple of food/beverage consumption and cog in world economies.)

((A secondary market for marsupials such as kangaroo meat, coffee existed, prospered.))

(((Luxury, specialty markets primarily in elephant meat, bone, fecal processing for coffee)))

Taliban Ted had too much heat in the Rodent game and decided to go into Emotions. With earnings and capital he'd amassed, he began Liberty.

All was going swimmingly, until late last year Taliban Ted and a couple brokers from Liberty landed in hot water with the NEA.

Some customers complained about how their Emotions were treated.

But Taliban Ted reckoned it was more due to his STREAM and that the accounts in question fared poorly due to the Presidential Popularity Contest that was met with more Apathy than forecast.

The matter went before the NEA hearing committee, and the NEA suspended Taliban Ted's emotions license for 3 years and fined him B1,000,000,000. The other brokers were fined and suspended (one spanked via wet hot towel, live on  Fucking Punishment STREAM).

TT swapped the company into his wife's name (his wife is a swipe-a-holic slapper who runs an FBOT beauty salon, parts shop).

He changed the name of the firm from "Liberty Trading" to "Liberty Emotional Investing" and opened a water options Funeral Room just across the street from Liberty.

Despite Taliban's record, he was able to open a water options brokerage because the regulatory environment was different. It was run by cyborgs and electronic ghosts, no formal regulatory body, aside from a small division of FRED.

(Our Funeral Room also pimped water options here/there.)

Taliban picked his water brokerage's location so he could run Liberty by proxy, sever.

Apes from Liberty would hover up there during the day for chats with him. Even with telepathy and facetimes, many still preferred non-digital eye contact. TT was one of them.

Taliban hovered by the Funeral Room, off-hours, for pep talks, riling us up, or rattling off on an inferior. He carried a bullwhip and sack of sweet pussy sucker pops.

His speeches were full of curse words, inspirational quotes and head-slapping, both of himself and others, both in love and in anger.

TT (whose voice was a lisp) was talking to Walter about Walter's new flamer spear.

Walter had fashioned the flamer spear himself, DIY, from a broomstick and vint BUM GUN, filled with insecticide, hairspray, and paint thinner.

"The doctor is the worst killer of the poor; his pluralistic chaos, vigilante justice..." Walter seethed, clutching at the flamer spear.

Taliban scoffed and hugged at his brand spanking new FUCKING Jetpack.

"Oh yeah, this thing is a friggin' beauty, throttle and vortex."

"Barrel size, solid black, crispy. Has infrared, laser-tuning, mucker detection and deflection..."

"Hey Kim!" he yelled out to me and swiped me.

"Big Ted! TALIBAN!"

I walked over to him, shook his hand. His handshake was firm, palm clammy, his hands the size of a catcher's mitt.

"What's with that account you just opened, that bastard in Ding, Delaware?" he asked.

Me: "Yeah, good bastard, bought ten positions on Sadness. He likes Dismay too and wants to do a spread on it."

Taliban's eyes reddened. His lips pursed.

"Load him to buy some positions on Jealousy, at least five. Calls or puts, doesn't matter, just load him up. We need some more trades. This month is Martian. With the Wife STEAM STREAM, Jealousy will be through the roof. We need in on the action..."

(Human wives, all named Laci either/or Aileen, ranking high in Misery, Boredom and Insecurity, though owning excellent aesthetic wares, gears, PS, had been chosen by the Congressional Entertainment Committee; their eye cameras cracked, a team of MBOT horse dick square jaw studs sent in various capacities to seduce.)

((Their husbands, E605, were to be randomly beamed CUCK senses, sensory shots of camera, blasting images of their wives flirting, their drooling clamshells, their ass-smacking pummel-fucks. It was set to be a highly-rated STREAM and viral on CHITTER; bets, contracts, investments drawn on retaliatory measures; Jealousy, Anger, Murderous Rage sure to be hot options.))

"Jealousy. We need in on Jealousy. Murderous Rage speculation is already trading at all-time highs. There's word that it could be anyone's human wife chosen. And, of course, everyone involved is Class B or lower."

"Every episode is sure to have one murder or physical, verbal assault. ECNN Jealousy is going to be IN-THE-MONEY soon. We gotta buy while it's OUT-OF-THE-MONEY."

[MARKETS: Rarely profitable options called "OUT-OF-THE-MONEY" options. They were called "OUT" because they were far from the strike price (price you wanted the option to move towards for profit). You could buy several out-of-the-money options for very little money each because they were rarely (though sometimes) profitable and almost worthless.]

[[ECNN Jealousy had long been OUT because of the prevalence of Apathy. Atheism, and Automation.]]

[[["IN-THE-MONEY" or "AT-THE-MONEY" options, like Apathy, Anger, were more expensive because their profitability likelihood was greater.]]]]

[[[[What many Funeral Rooms did was buy stacks of OUT options because they were cheaper, and, when sold to the bastard, on each option they sell they charge a smacker.]]]]

[[[[[Therefore, it was more profitable for brokerages to sell a bunch of OUT options and charge a smacker on every single one than it would be for them to sell one or two IN options. The IN options may be more likely to make the bastard a profit but not make the broker as many smackers.

However, the practice varied from room to room, broker to broker, but those who worked solely on smackers, and received no salary, often did push worthless emotions.]]]]]

[[[[[[Unfortunately, many bastards didn't research the markets or specs of the emotion option they bought. NEA had long-banned brokers from adding bastards' Social Nets due to many brokers counter-profiting off Rage futures.]]]]]]

[[[[[[[This is why so many bastards lost money. They'd be fast-talked into buying an emotion they didn't understand or was worthless, and they didn't have the attention span to research it. Funeral Rooms needed new bastards and trades because they really burned through bastards, had many bastards launch shooting attacks, ax attacks, bombings, head-slap, dick kick, cunt punt, vomit hose rampages on brokerages... Most Funeral Rooms, including ours, had bulletproof, explosion proof glass windows, construction, facial recognition entry.]]]]]]]

[[[[[[[[Liberty, like most Funeral Rooms, was neither shady, nor completely ethical. We were basically a gambling house, catering to spectators. Sure, we had telemarketers who broke or bent rules. They'd be fired, though, and beaten. Most of our team was legit. I tried my best to be. I was proud of my rapport with my clients, and honesty.]]]]]]]]

LUNCH CODA: Jenildo the Homosexual and I took turns sales-pitching each other and punched each other in the face.

(Telemarketers at Liberty often did this, at the urging of Taliban or just to practice. Telemarketers pitching, fronting each other, in hallways, bathrooms, before/after shifts, slapping, punching, kicking afterwards.)

Jenildo and I hugged it out and Jenildo recommended my soul to God.

Taliban whipped us both with his snakeskin belt and kissed our heads and we locked hands, said a prayer to FRED, and Woo Bum and I scraped a happy and we all merrily skipped together (sans TT) back to the Liberty Funeral Room.

On the way, Woo Bum told me NEA had, on his feed, just shut down his previous room for what the NEA calls "churning accounts."

[This is the practice of trading a bastard's account excessively for only the purpose of generating smackers.]

Woo Bum swiped out his happy stick, smiled, and said he worried they might come after him because of his chemtrails.

He said he didn't care if NEA was Class A, he'd shoot or stab, grenade fuck them all, because his human girlfriend was pregnant, and he couldn't be an Unemployable again. I could tell he meant it by the quivering in his voice. It was the first real emotion I'd seen in him or anyone, in person, in a while.

"Drugs or Jeebus," I whisper in his ear.

"BAMAS," he replied.

We stopped to watch a flying fuckyoumobile glider-car smack into a FRED subsidized real estate dev billboard.

The flyer exploded upon impact, and Woo Bum and I watched the flames eat into the billboard. We zoomed off as the billboard began its collapse into the street nearby and the fire spread.

AFTERNOON SHIFT: Back in the Funeral Room, there was a company séance for Fear EA6 and an animal sacrifice, a synth squirrel, by a local voodoo priest, to ward off the approaching hurricane.

It would likely miss Florida but bury the remnants of a Caribbean island, Papillon, once populated by escaped private prison slaves.

Most modern buildings could withstand frequent hurricanes, CAT 7, included, but still there'd be Fear, with a hurricane nearby, and the surfers who'd brave/livestream the tidal waves, and the daredevils flying their jetpacks, paragliding into the storms for Thrill.

(Force vacuums rendered once damaging storm surge, tsunamis a relic, but still, the radar images stoked Fear.)

"... "

I manned my coffin pod and hit brains.

Got hung up on quite a bit and had a lot of no answers.

My bastard, Mr. Most Glorious Dipendra, from Ding, Delaware wasn't there.

I left him a brainmail to beam ASAP, get in on Jealousy...

Brainwaves started to heat up, I got a couple promising front loads, and then SLAMMED!

First was Mr. One, who owned an insult business in New Jersey Shore.

His business was sending MBOTS and FBOTS to sing insults or fake assaults, shooting attacks and catch the reactions on STREAM cam. He glowingly bought 7 IN options on Rage.

Then a retired antique SEXTOY marketing exec in Cuntsville, Texas, a Mr. Butts.

SEXTOYS were useless in the days of BOTS but were sold as antiques, collectibles on the networks.

We had a nostalgic chat about the days of pocket pussies and dildos, full contact sports.

(MMA, Gladiator Fights – usually Cyborgs or BOT... Were the only contact sports left, but, without humans, CTE, actual death, they lacked their former place in the pantheon of entertainment. e-SPORTS, VR overtaking them long ago.)

((Baseball one of the few sports still played by humans, mostly Class B, C, and had enjoyed a renaissance since the rules had been altered, allowing for batters, dissatisfied with a pitch, to charge, attack the pitcher with the bat, beat, choke him/her with it, and pitchers able to throw directly at, bean, any batter, opponent, heckling fan or teammate.))

(((Brawls, knifings, and one Molotov cocktail throw per team were not only tolerated, but encouraged, and ratings soared.)))

((((For the 9 th inning, a decapitated comedian's or poet's head would be substituted, used as the baseball, batted, hit, caught, and could also be kicked))))

(((((Golf, remade into a conflict sport, played spontaneously, in urban areas, with golfers allowed/encouraged to attack, swinging golf clubs, striking each other, caddies, onlookers, pedestrians... Golf second only to baseball in human  Fucking Sports STREAM popularity)))))

Mr. Butts bought 3 options on Dismay.

I was raking in smackers. Our board lit up with my name on it, and a few balled up pieces of re-papers were thrown at my coffin pod. A show of admiration.

Jennifer winked at me, too, which gave me the fuzzy-wuzzies.

But then the waves started to cool. I was hung up on, jibba-jibbered, flurries of non-answers, disconnects.

Despite  The Fucking Happy Channel STREAM hologram footage of smiling 1970s Scandinavians, vint. "Don't Worry, Be Happy" ringing here/there in my neural, between zaps, my mood soured and worsened when a day trader, Mr. Barton, in San Diego Beach punted me after taunting me for having a big nose and saying that only a thin layer of perspiration could keep me to "Maggot Mile."

(MAGGOT MILE, FLORIDA: Is what this part of Florida was once known as, and still occasionally is, due to the prevalence of Funeral Rooms, Email Rooms, and Door-to-Door Marketers, Doomsday Sellers and kinky special FBOT factories.)

((These types of companies are pretty much the only economy outside of agriculture, namely python/alligator/lizard farming, and cocaine tourism- Sunshine State being the only to have legal cocaine districts.))

(((South Florida has armies of mobile, roaming doomsday marketing companies, going Door-to-Door. They're banned from incorporating in other States, but still legal here, and hence able to operate in other States.)))

((((Florida also has cults of salespeople, crawling, prostrating, begging, cajoling, roving door to door, hustling, BOT parts, e-books/mag subs, weapons, or better BAMA card processing rates to businesses.))))

(((((The Doomsday Sellers, Marilyn Manson Cults, were the most persistent. They'd knock on doors for at least an hour, cry, grovel, beg for attention, donations. Every year it was a different catastrophe: a tsunami, tornado, asteroid, earthquake, supervolcano, network outages resulting in mass death, or just death by boredom. Doomsday Sellers were nearly always the Unemployables, off-grid, neural link disabled. Since they lacked or chose not to wear body armor, they'd be frequently killed. Many took pride in shooting them or assaulting them. Viral CHITTER videos,  Fucking Mayhem STREAMS featured door-to-door sales cults being brutalized/raped/killed/licked/enflamed.)))))

FLORIDA: Florida had always attracted weirdness, pirates, people who like to talk like pirates, castaways, absconders, Mennonites, Funeral Rooms, rogue operations, surfers, Tim Dorsey, criminals, OJ Simpson, sweet talkers, drug lords, e-SPORTS, and rejects.

It still had the "Homestead Exemption" statute, which meant authoritarians can't seize your house for anything other than an offense against Class A.

Still many build, pour BAMAS into their homes and real estate knowing it can't be seized.

Florida was also ahead of the curve in legalized murder.

The aforementioned "Stand Your Ground" statute, way before the legal solution of legitimizing, legalizing mass shootings, murder, and violent crime.

Rape and other sex crimes, like most of the States, were still illegal, except towards the CLASS C, D, though neither rarely were practiced, with BOTS able to service those needs...

(Any offender who did rape or molest a Class A, B, [eye cams, face rec, sex sec cams, sec cams, DNA nanotech making the crime virtually impossible to get away with, except for Class A offenders] convicted offenders' organs/blood harvested, then put to death by flamethrower BOT, and since most anyone was linked through the neural networks, it was nearly impossible to commit illegal fantasy crimes too, or inappropriate thoughts, subversion, threats to FRED...)

Florida had always been ahead of the curve. Automation didn't change much, either, with most of the population being an Unemployable, anyway.

The bottom half sinking lessened the population, particularly that of Unemployables, that so-called "Great Catastrophe". One of the many climate events.

Though once the land was mechanically reclaimed, refined, drained, reinforced with barrier concrete and Element 627, wave repelling fields, vacuums, regurgitation channels, canals, habitats, many of the Class A and B returned, rebuilt, improved it immensely.

I, for one, have always lived in Florida and never wanted life anywhere else.

Most travel, wanderlust is obsolete, anyway, with VR Travel.

For better and worse, Florida is home.

The palm trees, sandy beaches, crystal clear neon waters. The chemical sunsets...

Home...

"... "

DANIMAL: Dan the Man, the DANIMAL, the Quantum Boogeyman, walked by my coffin pod and jokingly kicked it, seeing I wasn't dialing.

DANIMAL swiped me a hostile message about how straws, pipes, guns, tanks, knives, skyscrapers, missiles were all phallic, extensions of the penis.

He continued, revealing that extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves had been controlling at least three of our telemarketers and handed me a golden amulet with a stencil of a kitten on it, telling me it was the perfect ELF weapon.

"I guess it's better off this way," he egged me on, "and you know that seemingly healthy, dashing and handsome STREAM STAR who dropped dead at 50? No one REALLY cared that HE died; middle-age assholes only worried they might croak too. Narcisticks! I've been recording their voices. I know."

"End the torment!"

"BACK TO THE WAVES!"

DANIMAL playfully kicked my coffin pod again, kicked Jennifer's, Woo Bum's, and smiled, waved, jumped through the ceiling.

"... "

RETURN: I realized that I've been soft scrolling my hand machine, catching up on celebrity STREAM STAR gossip, my mind rambling on.

It happened to me frequently. My mind wandered. After I made 200 or 300 waves, it was hard to focus. I zapped back and buzzed a few more leads. Nothing doing. Fortunately, I'd smacked those options before or else the day would have been a bust.

END OF SHIFT: The day was finally coming to a merciful end. I watched the closing bell suicide on the CET in Chicago North on  FUCKING MONEY NEWS .

(The daily suicide was usually a Class C or D human who'd either kill him/herself for fun or allow floor traders or BAMABOTS to murder him/her for compensation.)

((Today it was a failed sports mascot contestant from a  Fucking Reality STREAM, in a gorilla costume, who ate a running chainsaw as the closing bell rang.))

Most of the brokers were packing up their things and leaving. Some were staying to work late and make more buzzes. I think I did around 200 something digits all together. I decided to leave and gathered my things, straightened up my coffin pod, and detached my suction headset.

Angry Anders stood in Dracula face by the Funeral Room's door, pinching everyone's ass on his/her way out. I stopped to fake punch him in the dick, and he didn't even flinch, only complimented me on my earlier smackers.

I hovered to the lot, saw Jennifer strapping on her hover-vest.

It was beat up, propellers rusty. I felt sorry for her that she had such a crappy transport.

She noticed me looking over at her, meekly smiled and waved goodbye to me. I jiffy smiled and waved back.

Then I entered my vehicle, scraped a happy stick and turned on the radio to the Slap station. A vint song from the slapper CC Murder Murder was playing.

Mustafa, holding an imaginary bear cub in a headlock, bobbed his head to the beat, and we proceeded back home.

Radar showed an active mucker nearby, on a flash, rock throwing, face slashing spree.

He'd emerged from a companionship shopping mall, (now shuttered) an abandoned mall that humans still go to, just to walk around, stare into closed stores, set fires, hunt wild baboon, hyena and spray paint anti-boredom slogans.

Punching into my hand machine, I adjusted my route according to radar...

RIDE HOME/AFTER WORK: The ride home was never as hectic as the ride in the morning.

I passed a burning carbo auto-truck, carrying mucker corpses to be cremated, and my exhaust fanned its flames; a circle of onlookers vacuuming pumps at it booed and hissed me.

Work hours were 9 am to 3 pm (the hours which the emotions exchanges are open) so I usually beat the afternoon rush hour. Although many don't work, were automated, still, many drove to their former places of employment and back every day.

There were a lot of flying school buses around this time. Each one fully armor-plated, with jets, flamethrowers, and each child, starting in preschool, wielding weapons, automatic rifles, each child in solid body-armor. Each thoroughly trained in martial arts, rendering childhood obesity a relic, at least the Class A, B.

Muckers were rarely successful anymore in attacking schools. The last successful (plus 5 human death toll) school attack resulted from a pack of roving, starving hyenas inadvertently(?) finding their way into a high school food dispensary in Ohio City.

Since then body armor software patches upgraded to withstand even pit bull, shark jaws.

(Although the majority of furry, feather, warm blood organic quad-ped mammals were endangered/extinct, baboons and hyenas had proliferated widely, and, in select areas, were intentionally let loose and allowed to roam freely in Class B, C neighborhoods by FRED, in hopes of fostering higher levels of community, togetherness...)

On my drive back I always saw a homeless tribe of lawyers, painted neon green, wearing only loin cloths, on the blue light intersection of Route 1. They were begging for kangaroo meat, begging for BUCKS at stop lights.

The leader of the tribe, a chubby Mr. T guy with missing front teeth, heavy gold chains and a dirty brown trench coat would occasionally prostrate in the street only to be kicked away by roving police BOTS.

Unlike the other lawyers in his tribe, who'd be shot at, and insouciantly murdered by passing motorists, drones, the tribal leader still had body armor of the highest caliber. I saw him eat grenades once and vint BOLLYWOOD dance afterwards.

I often saw another panhandler a couple blocks further up on the same road, a haggardly, cock-eyed, skinny, skeleton white naked Kellyanne lady with coiffed, pointy purple mohawk.

She'd hold out a wooden peg leg with a forbidden plastic shopping bag tied to it and she'd beg for BAMAS and cockroach milk.

She also couldn't be killed.

I witnessed more than three people shoot her, saw her run over by an 18-wheeler, and every time, her exoskeleton reformed, and she sprang back up, continued panhandling, showing zero malice, grinning ear to ear.

On Tuesday and Thursday, we bang out at 3pm but are required to come back in the evening, from 6pm to 9pm.

Evenings were an opportune time to close front loads, after hours emotions trading, spot up futures, especially Violent Rage peaked then, domestic violence most frequent at dinnertime.

It used to be humans hated being called at dinnertime by telemarketers, but these days human wives appreciated the interruption if her husband was violent.

Husbands as well enjoyed a break from nagging or something to alleviate boredom, another human to speak to, or scream/curse at.

One of my best bastards, I call at 6pm every Tuesday, and he screams at the top of his lungs until he's hoarse and will afterwards purchase Serenity options.

Many times, on Tues or Thurs, I'd simply stay in my coffin pod, zap as many brains as possible. Do around 600 zaps. Any agent with over 600 zaps won a free organic lunch. Possum burgers, kangaroo, alligator steaks were magnificent motivational tools...

There are days when my neighbor Zany Zephen and I have roachmilk pancakes at IHOP.

The waitress working there lived in my building, but now is a cyborg slave, sold her humanity to FRED to end her lifetime of torment/boredom.

Her human name was Laurie, body form slightly chubby, blond shoulder length hair, big boobs/butt, blue eyes.

Maybe 30 human years.

She had a cute face and I flirted with her, even though she wasn't human or an FBOT. She gave me free rat shit coffee.

I wasn't going for roachmilk pancakes today, though. I needed a walk...

A few dead bodies, not sure human or BOT were on the road, and I thumped over them, returned to the car cubicle of my building, feeling tired, worn out from beatings and brains.

A few days prior, a commander, Gadirov, had crabwalked and beaten me during a bathroom break, for paying tribute to the anniversary of vint metal band Warrant's singer's death.

Despite my body armor, it injured, bruised me.

If he wasn't Class A, I would shoot or stab him. Most supervisors are Class A and armed with laser cannons, mucker detection systems; very few workplace massacres happened anymore...

Parking my car, I noticed an idiot in a vint football uniform, pads, cleats, everything, across the road had crashed his Spider UV into a plastic palm tree and traffic was stalled.

The public police and public ambulance and BOTS were there. I saw their blue, pink and red lights flashing.

I heard Mustafa say four humans died when a moto-hover-cycle going 190 mph hit a proto-car on the loopway.

There were horrible road accidents, every day, with people, BOTS, animals dying.

Most weren't reported unless enough died, especially humans, especially Class A.

Bored, automated people sometimes caused accidents intentionally, turning to ramming, auto-attacks because it was getting harder and harder to kill with guns.

It really hacked up traffic and made commutes longer when there were road accidents, intentional or not.

In the car cube I saw crazy eyes Charles.

He'd just pulled in too and was locking his door with a key. I guess he didn't have the luxury of keyless, face rec entry like I do.

As I exited my vehicle I smiled and waved hello to him, and he returned a weird look again.

Though I still wasn't sure if he was looking at me. His clothes were splattered in blood; hands dripping cherry pie.

Why was he always in the parking lot? I thought maybe he was a spy from the NEA. Taliban told me he thinks he has a Soprano following him on Tuesdays and Fridays...

My landlady, Griselda, was supposed to come to pick up the rent. Griselda was a dwarfish, pudgy, rabbit lady, with a square face, no chin and big brown burning eyes.

Human years: 50s or 60s and she'd been too cheap or luddite to upgrade her PS/AI software to project a younger image.

She wore much too much makeup, had a bushy, wavy mane of graying black hair and she doused herself in a nauseating perfume and had some of the tackiest hologram clothes you would ever see. Leopard print everything.

Her jewelry, while I'm sure was quite expensive, had a cheap look to it; she might buy it off one of those  Fucking Home Shopping  STREAMS.

She had a high-pitched nasal Bostonian accent, was very forgetful, and often didn't show up to pick up the rent CASH or blood.

(Rent could be paid by either Freedom Div, CASHBAMA, or vials of human blood. Human blood being quite valuable, used for a variety of medical, cosmetic, mechanical purposes.)

Sometimes Griselda would forget about the rent altogether and I'd have gotten a free month if I didn't remind her. She'd reward my honesty with helpings of kangaroo haggis, which I appreciated...

One time she asked me why I just didn't send the rent to her, which I usually paid in blood vials, by delivery drone.

I told her she never gave me her address (which was true).

She said she'd send it to me after she visited a tenet in the building, but never came back. Every time I asked for her address, she'd promised she'd give it to me later, but never did.

She owned half of the apartments in the building.

BUILDING: Speaking of the building, it was antique and in bad shape.

From the 19--s, retrieved from a sinkhole, it was originally built in the art deco, Streamline Moderne, style of architecture, curvy, horizontal, and resembling an ocean liner.

Five storeys high, time and various hurricanes, however, had taken their toll on it... Not much had been done during its boring reconfiguration.

The (probably) once neon pink exterior paint was now a puke pink.

Various exterior and interior bits of the building were crumbling away. Chunks of the building would fall off, strike a person or BOT.

Last week, a STREET/SWEEP BOT returned the favor, hurling a chunk of puke concrete back at the building, which, in turn, caused a larger piece to break off, the larger piece then dropping on and flattening the BOT!

Besides the exterior, the basement flooded a lot, with seawater, skeletons, BOT parts, and alligators, pythons, baboons living down there, as well as in the stairwells, where no humans went.

One of the two elevator tubes has been broken for a year.

The BUILDING REPAIR BOT never fixed it, despite the numerous complaints from tenants, driven to madness, whacking the BOT with tennis racquets, throwing tantrums.

The working elevator tube broke quite often and would do peculiar things like floating floor to floor and opening its doors even though no one was in it.

The building was rumored to be haunted, scene of a formerly criminal Colombian cocaine cartel culling...

Out of the ordinary, stranger things would happen in my apartment (and in former Laurie's too) like goggles, forks, or cups disappearing and reappearing later in the damnedest places. Stuff fell over for no reason.

The building's interior was decent, however.

The doors to the units were a bucolic beige, made from synthetic bleached oak.

The synth banana silk carpet and hallways and lobby were alt-bright neon pink, lined with overhead, spherical freon lights.

There were paintings of car crashes, a chimpanzee biting off a woman's face, tidal waves and red velvet couches in the lobby.

But only paintings, impressionist rendering of couches. No real, physical couches, but one could be downloaded, and 3D printed, rented via hand machine.

The building's plumbing was a disaster. One time there were rubber robo-frogs (spawned by Russian hackers) spitting out of the bathroom sink hose/faucets, chewing, gnawing at people's faces, and radioactive python snakes springing out of waste disposal chutes, burrowing into people, through their anuses, eating into lower intestines.

It continued, the robo-frog, anal python assault issue/problem, for 5 days, FIVE DAYS until SOMEONE called a local NEWSBOT about the situation.

The management company that runs the building was blaming the city.

The city blamed the management for having faulty pipes, dumping waste, contaminating and sexually experimenting on pythons.

They, the city, even came to inspect the pipes three times. I was surprised they didn't condemn the building like they did to a similar aging art deco up the street.

The whole thing was a scandal. It was all over the  Local Fucking News STREAMS. I was defecating out my window the whole time and using only air particle water.

The local news Alison BOT, was stationed, streaming outside of our building, ambushing residents for interviews for 29 straight hours.

A BOOM NEWSBOT later burst from a synth mangrove outside the building's management company, questioning a cyborg, microphone/cam tentacles omni-directional.

The cyborg wouldn't comment however and tried to hide her face, using an umbrella.

Finally, the management, under heat from social media, fixed the problem.

It was the management's fault after all. A busted pipe near a robot factory, also managed by the management, the factory run by i-robots and sadists.

The management company being the management company, too cost-efficient to fix it, until their fingers forced.

My friend Anissa said properties like this were relics of the time in Florida when owners of aging art deco buildings couldn't sell to developers, because the developers wanted to tear down and construct new luxury condo towers on the land.

(The art deco code stipulated they couldn't be demolished because of historical ordinances regarding buildings of a certain age).

So, to circumvent the law, owners would allow the art deco to rot and fall apart so that it had to be condemned; thus, paving the way for its destruction.

Property values had shot up, and many extracting owners were eager to unload to development companies seeking to build luxury condominiums.

Luxury condominiums were all the rage in south Florida; many seniors on fixed-incomes, rent-controlled properties were forced from their homes, made homeless.

The land being overbuilt and pushed further and further below sea level was part of what led to the "Great Catastrophe" when the bottom half of the State sunk and broke apart during the Cat 6, New Labor Day Hurricane.

Ironically, my building was deemed vintage enough to be reclaimed, salvaged from the underwater debris, retrofitted and repurposed, while many of the luxury condos were not.

"... "

Sitting in the lobby on a 3D couch, staring at pink floor dolphins, I checked the clock on the spirit house outside.

Almost twenty minutes past when Griselda said she was going to meet me.

I picked up to move and figured I'd find her later, although I was upset that I had just spent twenty minutes of my life waiting for her and I'll never have that time back.

I decided to take a stroll on the white sand/coral shell beach, which I often did to unwind.

FREE TIME: The elevator tube was working and pushed me up to my floor.

Face rec'd into my apartment, and I holographed into a light blue tropical shirt with white floral patterns, flip flops and dark green camo-cargo cartridge shorts.

I pissed into the disposal hose, piffed up a happy, watched the  Fucking News Channel .

Revolutionary Sean Suicide BOT, his dark proton charged octagon visors and bucket shape D2, was on the feed, flicking crazy about the gay synth cat issue, housecats too gay to mate, breed, dwindling cat video supplies, cat toy sales.

The Cruel at the bottom of the screen: "10 FRED Corp human soldiers killed by a roadside ice cream truck bomb along Russian border."

"91 human civilians, mostly school children, were killed by a series of coordinated kamikaze clown attacks in Canada West."

No group on CHITTER had yet claimed responsibility for either incident.

e-SPORTS scores, tomorrow's weather for major cities. Everywhere was blazing hot or freezing cold. Floods in the Midwest and intentional fires in Cali Next.

I switched to the  Fucking Fire Channel  and watched a burning ranch-style mansion, the owner, Bigfoot IV, hanging out of a side window, attempting to scale the left wing, grappling steel chains, while exotic Tibetan dogs were burning alive in a fiery diamond acid pool behind...

The elevator chute was offline again, so I jumped out the window, hand machine parachute gliding to the beach nearby.

BEACH: I liked to walk on the beach because it gave me time to ponder random things and look at girls in bikinis.

A lot of human girls, FBOTS, cyborgs bathe topless, wear thongs, wear nothing. Little I enjoy more than a firm, well-bronze-tanned ass in a skimpy thong lying in the sand, catching UV rays.

The ability to go power walking, paragliding, or cartwheeling along the beach, being so near the neon green water, was what I appreciated most about my neighborhood zone, my building.

A winding boardwalk that'd morph into a rollercoaster, led along the beach, stretched miles.

Parts were plastic, synthetic, wooden, stretches fitted from human bone, and it had benches and cabanas, full of animated skeletons, dopamine stations.

Lots of graffiti in those cabanas, much from before the GC, hieroglyphics, computer code jokes, a lot of stuff in Spanish.

There were girly brain numbers on the cabana walls and on the walls of public bathrooms too by the beach.

Jumpy Jared dared me, so I called one and asked her if it was true, what was written regarding her sexual exploits. I figured she'd disconnect, but we ended up having a long conversation about the Second US Civil War, and we went on to VR date for a couple weeks. The relationship sadly ended soon after, however, when she went to jail for assaulting a public traffic BOT, with a vibrational, over an air dispute.

(Jails/State/Fed/FRED Prisons had been largely closed, for budgetary reasons. Mentally ill, Unemployable prisoners culled, deported to Russia.)

((However, a handful, in remote locations, remained in use, housing those who committed offenses towards Class A, B, police/private property, certain privileged BOTS.))

(((Prison camps run by BOT guards, manned by human scientists, from FRED Corps., conducting human anatomical, mental experiments, for the ultimate purpose of developing updates to AI, BOT; advancements in human medicine, cyborg science.)))

((((Prisoners, occasionally selected as contestants in  Fucking Running Game  STREAM,  Fucking Torture ,  Fucking Execution STREAM.))))

"... "

Usually I walk on the boardwalk because there isn't as much broken glass, bullets, and BOT parts, alligator teeth and bodily fluids.

Vintage condoms, cocaine bags, and duffel bags of (old/decommissioned) US dollars wash up on the shore from time to time. Furniture, chunks of plaster, body parts, cars, guns. Florida heirlooms.

Come to think of it, though, you find stuff on the boardwalk too on occasion.

A lot of people jog on the boardwalk. Even during the winter when it's 105 degrees. I saw an Osama pass out once, think he was dying from heat exhaustion. I just kept walking and stepped over him because I didn't want to get involved/sued.

(Families of deceased humans, malfunctioned BOTS, would sue if a [Class B or below] bystander happened upon a fresh, rotting, or dying human/BOT, and could prove the bystander had no part in the death or that it was not a violent death. So it was best to avoid such circumstances.)

It wasn't really that hot this afternoon, only about 100 with the heat index, muggy too, an icky burning plastic smell wafted in the air from the bonfire a doomsday cult of accountants had set.

Their bodies were painted in numbers, and they were torching old phones, computers. Accountants frequently attacked BOTS, committed acts of arson on ROBOT buildings. The "Death Toll" Cult, those, I believe, circling the fire, were often euthanized, their remains pulverized, manufactured into cockroach feed.

I walked down the boardwalk inspecting female bodies and laughing at goofy tourists.

Although most tourism is in VR, Florida still had a lot of tourists, physical human ones.

Murder laws in other States were more complicated, so there were those who came to kill. Also, the legal cocaine, of course, which had been the biggest draw since the GC.

Public nudity, defecation, urination had been legalized too, so there were many tourists into bathroom fetishes, especially North Germans, who'd run naked in the streets, shit while smiling, snapping hand machine selfies to post to the networks, CHITTER.

SANI-BOTS and shit-eating tourists, usually the North Germans, would rush in to scoop up, eat or dispose of the feces. Due to diminishing amounts of pale skin people, pale skin people poop (and pubic hair) was treasured, considered having powerful, nutritional qualities, and was sold to cockroach farms and to wealthy Asiatic aristocrats.

When South Beach existed, there were several hotels, nightclubs. Many were resurrected, refurbished to museums, where tourists could stand with replicas, BOTS of famous celebrities, fornicate or snort coke with them.

Most of the new hotels were tubes, capsule unit towers, capable of holding masses, their BOTS. The modern nightclubs full of VR booths, neural links to tailored fantasy, FBOTS, MBOTS, VIP ROOMS for e-SPORT stars; rarely did anyone dance and or random facetime.

Most nightclubs, in compliance with FRED, had laws about public dancing, strict punishments, including caning, spanking and disfigurement to those who'd dance in non-recognition...

I walked for about an hour up and down the boardwalk scraping happy sticks.

As I was walking back, I saw a bunch of one-legged West Indian tourists hopping hysterically from out of the ocean.

They were yelling: "Shark, shark!"

I looked out into the water but didn't see any fins. It might have been an electric dolphin BOT; tourists mistake them for sharks sometimes. But then I noticed the bloody torso stumps, saw one drop to the sand in a mess of blood, urine.

Organic sharks had long been dead, except for the clones, populated by Asiatic aristocrats for delicacy and set loose by East China aqua bandits to terrorize South China, Japanese, and other adversaries, most recently East China aqua bandits unleashed cloned, viciously hungry sharks nearby Coca Cuba to weaken Florida's fledgling tourist economy.

In fact, I shake-bottle-chat telepathed with a Roy in PCOLA whose roommate's cousin's best friend's sister's surfer boyfriend got his whole arm bitten off by a cloned shark.

Sharing a mutual hatred of surfers, we were both apathetic, but it was a cautionary tale. One the West Indians should have heeded.

I clicked a few hand snaps of them writhing in the sand, blood gushing. Tourist Drone BOTS touched down and mechanical arms began welding shut the wounds. They'd require 3D limb replacements, but they'd probably be alright. A worthy #story for Instablam or CHITTER.

Before I crossed the street to get to my building, I witnessed a macabre sight on the thoroughfare: A couple of belligerents playing twister in a pile of mangled steel, bloody boots, and shredded tires.

It was the scene of a motorized, flying broomstick accident.

One belligerent a drag queen, young (maybe 19), thin, tall, sidewalk haircut, scorpion face tattoos, mauve skin, wearing a hotter pink sleeveless tight spandex half-shirt, matching hottest pink spandex short shorts.

The other a short, fat, old (probably 60), bald polar white guy who had a red CPT Slam A-shirt, khaki shorts.

Both were barefoot.

The drag queen was screaming at the top of his lungs how the Slam was at fault.

The Slam guy, in Southern drawl: "Rooty tooty fruity!" and uppercut punched the queen in the gut.

The queen crumpled, holding his stomach, then used his hand machine to mace and mist the Slam.

Blinded, the Slam stumbled backwards.

The queen cold clocked Slam in the schnozzle with a well-executed right cross and scan stole the Slam's QR and lifted off, via the Slam's rebel flag painted broomstick, snapped a selfie and vanished into the sky.

Slam was rolling around on the sidewalk, with his hands grasping his burning wet face, his nose gushing blood: "My eyes, my eyes!"

The Death Toll Cult of Accountants I'd seen earlier dragged away the Slam by his legs.

I paraglided back to my apartment, flew in through the window.

APARTMENT: Back into my apartment, I was drenched in sweat from walking the beach. My coolant BOT unit was on the fritz again, probably needed an update.

I wanted to take a shower, but the water BOT pressure was too low. Perhaps pythons in the pipes again.

Whatever. I opened the icebox, let a melty spider BOT crawl freeze over my forehead, which brought down my core temperature and dried out my pores.

Despite the water not working well, it felt good to be home. I glanced over at a picture I have on the wall near the kitchen area of my friend Anissa and I at a VR/FBOT strip bar she took me for my birthday last month.

She and I were sitting next to each other arm and arm with a naked strip girly girl BOT doing a headstand next to me.

That's the only picture or anything I have up. I'm not really the type for decorating, I guess. Actually, I do have a " Fucking Hooters FBOT " e-calendar tab stuck up to the wall above my bed.

Since I'm only renting, bloodletting, I figure I shouldn't go out of my way to make it look spiffy or sink CASH into it.

The place is falling apart but looked classy in VR vision. IRL, the walls (and ceilings) were chipping neon pink paint. The floor was banana yellow color tiles, which were always ice cold.

I had a queen-sized bed near the only window- a circular, e-sliding one (tinted rose).

My furniture: ONE old brown dresser, nothing in it, about 4 and a half feet high beside the bed. ONE 35 projection unit BOT for images.

ONE refrigeration BOX, ICE unit included. ONE organic food prepper BOX, coffee machine BOX (my coffee machine occasionally possessed by the ghost of Charles Bukowski, who PREFERS a bitter blend, thank you very much!), and a sustenance PILL storage BOX beside it.

There were no chairs or a couch, though I could project a 3D rental from my hand machine, if needed.

The AC BOT, full of ELEMENT 75832, revolved around me, the unit, piping in 86F cool air.

The apartment was very small, only like 15 ft by 10 ft with a low ceiling and no built-in lights, but the AC BOT also did lighting.

The unit was rectangular, a small bathroom to the north left, kitchen area to the north right, next to the kitchen, a closet, south right, my bed/window, south left, a 3D table/desk/two pleather rolly chairs I semi-perma-DL.

My hand machine disposable 3D utensils, sapper plates, bowls, kitchen mini-sink, floors, walls, disposal unit, myself were kept spotless by the sani-BOT and FBOT/COMPANION BOT.

DINNER: I chewed a cockroach powder pill, chili flavor, drank a quart of purple lime Beetlejuice and slapped myself in the face three times.

PERSONAL: I'd not been in a true, traditional relationship with an organic human woman in ever. My FBOT, who I can change into any aesthetic, and VR PORN had been my bellwether as far as intimacy.

(These days I'd been programming my FBOT/VR to look, sound, smell like Jennifer, and had been banging the hell out of it...)

Like most guys, VR PORN, FBOTS had overtaken organic human females years ago.

Organic females, they're so complicated. Most had their own MBOTS, and the attractive ones stuck to rich, famous, e-SPORT athletes, STREAM STARS, baseball players.

Again, like most contemporaries, my actual relations with organic women had been limited, since mostly schooling was outsourced, remote, VR.

There were a couple, a couple VR girlfriends, met on interaction networks, but they never lasted long.

SEX FILE: I lost my virginity when I was [human] 18 to my aunt (my mom's sister).

Her name was Mona.

She was a voluptuous, beautiful woman with long, flowing, dark brown hair that fell to her shoulders, light olive skin and big pearly blue eyes like a STREAM STAR.

I'd been beating my meat daily those days since forever and had discovered the 'adult' side of the networks.

Mona was really drunk this one day. Practically every time I saw her, she was drunk or on something. She'd been babysitting me at her apartment while my parents, mid-range, Class B coders, hand machine addicts I rarely had contact with then/now, were in a cube VR conference.

Stabbing and kicking at a VR zombie hologram, I craned my neck to see Mona waltz into the living room, stark naked, asking me to join her for a shower! I dropped my VR set and drool poured from my mouth!

I'd never even seen a living naked woman before that. Of course, I hardened immediately, tore off my clothes, and she led me by the hand into the shower BOT partition, sat on a wash stool, parted her legs and grabbed ahold of my 18-teenis and guided me into her paradise.

We humped like rabbits that whole day, slept together in her bed.

When we woke up the following morning, she felt brutal and guilty about it, broke into tears, and said she'd been calloused lonely since her divorce.

I didn't know how to deal with her emotions; it was the first time I'd seen someone cry in front of me, aside from pain or violence. I didn't know exactly what to do.

But she was naked in bed with me, which, eyeing her delicious body, got me stiff, again, and I plunged into her once more, and several more times over the rest of that weekend. We barely talked. Just had sex and drank and scraped happy sticks.

Being a horny young bastard, I of course had enjoyed it. How soft her skin was, how amazing an organic vagina felt. To this day, even the most expensive FBOT or VR PORN can't replicate it, truly, though there are vibrato vaginas and random robo-variants that offer intense thrills.

But NOTHING, NOTHING is truly the same as org human vagina.

I'll never forget how good it was the first time I penetrated her. How it felt. How my cock slipped inside, engulfed to the base in warmth, the warmth cascading through the essence of my entirety.

It didn't really seem like child molestation or incest or anything wrong, the whole thing.

Looking back at it, though, it's pretty disgusting when I think about it, and it likely altered my relations with the opposite sex somehow.

I never saw Mona again after that weekend. She committed suicide, overdosed on Grief pills, and sold her corpse to a cannibal on a DEATH APP a couple weeks later after her ex-husband married a human girl- who was only 19.

ENTERTAINMENT: I'd planned to watch the  Fucking Disaster Channel  STREAM. They'd been broadc'ing vids, loops of tsunamis and sea drowning.

The 04, 11, --, I couldn't wait to watch.

Their AI breaks in when fresh disasters strike, too, buildings collapsing in East China, Shanghai especially trendy.

There were 5 incidents live last night. Building failures, toppling in East China. There was one feed with humans thrown from windows of a Huawei skyscraper in Shenzhen by malfunctioning, hacked BOTS. The incident blamed on a Japanese manufacturer.

I really enjoyed the third installment of the series on tsunamis. One in 36 swallowed and vacuumed a village, straw huts, cars, flailing humans, BOTS, drones picking out survivors. Drones intentionally dropping survivors due to splack by CHITTER viewers, likes and thumbs up, posturing, rambling posts alongside the carnage, pulled from the boards of 16CAN.

A wacky splacker, probably a Russian, interrupted the tsunami footage, broke into the STREAM and broadcast "Ebony Gangbang" a porn star from the 1990s.

She had the roundest ass I'd ever seen and was running a train on a football team of Rocco musclebound meatheads, blowing one guy, getting it anal from one, vaginal from another, jerking off two guys with both hands and there were two other guys masturbating and shooting jizz at her.

It was amazing!

The Cruel on the bottom of the screen read that she'd won an adult film award for this very scene.

The dexterity and poise she showed, unparalleled, the Cruel boasted.

The splacker said he'd been writing her ghost in the machine, cemetery cloud, barrages of fan mail for months and last week FINALLY got a signed picture in a classic AOL YOU GOT MAIL HTML frame!

The splacker dissolved the camera feed. Probably located and exterminated. Splackers were hackers who spliced and infiltrated STREAM feeds for vanity or in desperate pleas for attention, BUCKS or to advertise, or simply to cause mischief.

Splacking was punishable by caning, the caning administered by CANEBOT. Three splacks and you're out LAW meant those who splacked more than three times hung upside down by KILLBOT and had throat slashed. Corpse repurposed and administered to cockroach feed farms.

SEX: Before VR, people actually, mostly human male, called phone sex lines to jerk off.

A lot.

However, despite VR, FBOT, there are niche chatter sex lines to organic human female, proudly advertised as NON-AI. HUMAN GIRL!

Males, predominantly, read sex/nude mags, web sites, before VR/AI/BOT, watching, renting (from STORES!) mechanical physical cartridges.

This was, unsurprisingly, rendered obsolete by VR, FBOT.

(Screenshots of porn sites and girly mags can still be found in classics auctions, though, and fetch collectors' serious BOOKOO BUCKS, buybacks.)

I basically gave up on human females a couple years ago after my last failed attempt at having a girlfriend.

VR/FBOT, way simpler. Especially after zapping brains all day.

Last thing I want is to return to my apartment and require human interaction facetime.

Prostitution, mostly a thing of the past, still existed, in pockets, was legalized, and, once, when bored of FBOTS/VR, I decided to try out an org fem, human sex servicer.

(Human gigolos, male prostitutes, "call guys" existed, too, for hum fem/gay/bi clientele, offering similar sex/companionship, hugging, snuggling, and boredom alleviation services...)

That's how I met my best friend, through a call girl, boredom alleviation service.

MY BEST FRIEND: Her name is Anissa. She's really pretty. She's a human hugger, sexual servicer, and also does part time network sex chatter sessions.

Anissa's got dirty blond, curly hair, a bit past her shoulder blades; she stands about 5'4, and has a slim body that she enjoys flaunting, especially her taught, six pack mid-riff and bouncy C-cup tits and juicy, big round butt.

And her lustrous, icy blue eyes, sparkling...

She's a bit older than me, like late 30ish, maybe even early 40 human years. I never asked.

She loves to wear thongs and sometimes no underwear at all.

She came over to my apartment a year ago for a trick.

I'd found her through a telepathic call girl ad.

She performed her services on me and was amazing and stayed for almost two hours after we were finished having sex and scraped happy sticks with me and we blabbered endlessly about everything.

We hit it off instantly.

When she was leaving, she told me I could see her again and that it didn't have to be like this, we could go out, VR, or something.

We hugged and frenched for 2 minutes.

And so about once a week since our first encounter we go to a bar or VR for a drink and we'll talk, and usually she'll jet over to my IRL place or (me to hers) to scrape happy and have sex.

She has an 8-year-old son, Mitchell, in the ARMY Space Force Cadets, and some regular clients that keep her busy, so she doesn't have much free time.

Her work as a voice chatter sex operator keeps her tied down too.

She does it in the day when her kid is at trainings.

There've been times I flew into the window of her terminal and heard her cooing, shouting things like: "Oh, fuck me! You sexy beast! You fuck you!"

She records, transcribes her sex chats, listens back to them and practices her voicings.

She plays them to me and asks what I think.

(Like if she should have told a guy to eat her pussy or simply to lick her clitoris, stuff about wording, technique).

She zaps my brain, occasionally, and talks dirty to me, to practice, at times joking, at times when she's horny.

One time I told her I had to get back to my Liberty brainwaves and she kept on going and wouldn't stop brain-fucking me. I told her to kindly stop brain-raping me and disconnected.

She's kinda crazy like that which makes her fun and cute. Oh, and she's also got one of those sexy, throaty voices and a Southern girl accent that drives me wild. She's originally from Middle Tennessee, you know.

Anissa is really cool and smart about a lot of things. She gives me good advice about life.

I asked her why someone as pretty and clever as her does what she does.

Why she isn't a coder, engineer or something?

She told me her father abused her... When she hit 18, she'd had enough and ran away.

She arrived down here on a greyhound drone and started working as a human stripper/convo companion, coyote, and sex chatter.

Another organic f-stripper got her into the human sex racket.

She says she makes way more doing tricks and sex chatter than she did stripping (she hated stripping too, she said).

She's done a couple human  Fucking Porn STREAMS; recently did an incest role play where she was the MILF, after a renter of hers turned out to be an h-porn producer searching for new talent.

I saw her, by chance on a STREAM via my FBOT. Anissa blowing a human cop, sucking the happy juice from his cock.

Wearing a black choker, knee high silk stockings, garter belts, and matching black see-thru panties and demi bra, she was delectable and solar hot... I M-saved several mental screenshots of the STREAM, but never told her about it.

She's saved up a decent bit of CASH in interest bearing accounts and figures to retire in a year or two. I like her a lot and greatly cherish her companionship.

Sometimes when I or she is lonely we telepath each other and talk.

She's basically my best friend and the only organic female I speak to, besides Jennifer. And, unlike Jennifer, I am fortunate enough to have sex with ANISSA. And no, I don't pay for it. I did the first time. But now all I pay for is her drinks when we go out or VR.

NIGHT: It was getting late, so I prepared for bed, FBOT tidied me up, brushed my teeth, cleaned me with an agent mist and air-dried me.

I lay in bed, munched on crunchy armadillo skins, and watched a hologram feed of the  Fucking News Channel.

Breaking! LIVE footage of 56 Russian refugees flailing and drowning in a river after their sight-seeing robo-boat capsized in Upper New York. The Cruel showing live comments from viewers, most of which wanted them to die.

I huffed a REM VAC from the AC ARM and drifted off into regeneration status.

REGENERATION VISIONS: I had a couple vivid visions. One was about going to work in the morning with UZI shaped hands and shooting everyone in the office to death.

Then I tried to turn the guns on myself, but I was out of ammo.

I didn't know what to do at this point, so I flipped over a coffin pod, sat on it, and watched STREAMS, took selfies next to the bodies.

The STREAM was the  Fucking Money Channel or another financial stream, but I was so sick of those that I turned the dial to  Fucking e-SPORTS so I could check up on scores, stats.

Instead of a gaming comp, though, there was a gorilla kicking impersonators in the testicles, a line of celebrity, historical figure impersonators, first Elvis, then Michael Jackson, Kanye West, John Lennon, Abraham Lincoln, Uncle Sam, Mao Zedong...

The feed blinked yellow and the police BOTS and SWAT team stormed in. Supervisors at Liberty were Class A, they cried, ordering me to prepare for mortality.

They pointed their guns at me and told me to get down on the ground.

Then I heard one of the cops say: "Wait, this is a telemarketing company! He killed them all! Yippy kai yay, sweet job, bro!"

All the cops lowered their weapons, smiled, stepped over the dead bodies, came over to me, started to pat me on the back, high five and congratulate me. One even offered an e-cigar.

Then I was at a black/white newspaper anime ticker tape parade in my honor through the streets of old NYC; until I woke up, snap pissed into the disposal hose, and resumed regeneration.

The next dream I had was me scraping a happy with Jennifer in the women's bathroom of our Funeral Room.

It was choice happy, Cali brand, and we were both happy as clams.

Her smile dissolved and she said to me, dead serious: "You know I'd fuck you, but I don't have any wraps."

"Neither do I," I replied.

"Well, how about you fuck me in the ass?" she said and offered an open jar of Vicky Vaseline.

"Sure, I thought you'd never ask," I replied.

We kissed, battling tongues, and she then turned her around and bent over the sink. She was wearing those pants she had that made her ass look so perfect and shapely.

I swiped my hand machine over her, and her clothes disappeared; only her naked, heart-shaped, uplifted ass pointing at me.

Swiping myself, my clothing vanished, and she reached her hand back, seized my cock and shuffle-rubbed lube onto my penis.

I opened her butt cheeks and guided my erect penis into her asshole. Wow, it felt amazing, so hot and tight. I pumped my penis in and out and tried to keep myself from coming too quickly because I wanted to savor it.

Jennifer was moaning and saying things in a language my recognition software couldn't pick up. Like she was speaking in tongues. The HOLY GHOST of my dick in her ass.

Then Anissa burst out a stall, butt-naked, and started to lick my asshole.

I couldn't help it anymore and I came like a broken water pipe into Jennifer's tight ass.

"Cum in my ass! Cum in my ass!" she screamed.

After I finished coming, Jennifer's body melted into a pile of banana BUCKS. The stack of BAMAS instantly caught fire. A bluish-purple fire that ate around the bathroom in a pentagram shape.

Anissa ripped off her own tits, revealing chips and circuits!

Had she been an FBOT the whole time? Or a cyborg? I started to cry, and my pubes caught blue flame, but instead of burning, I froze and smelled cinnamon scented e-candle fragrances as the room began to crumble into lava fluid and purple saucer balls...

Waking up, I found my hand covered in happy juice.

It was so vivid, that vision. I'd never look at Jennifer the same way again.

I tapped my hand machine, and it summoned the sani-BOT that disinfected my body, mind, and soul, installed a patch of dopamine, and returned me to a brief regeneration pattern, lighter on REM.

MORNING: The alarm arm slapped through the silence and woke me up with a vengeance.

It was another day.

I did a freditation headstand and pondered my visions. No, I hadn't mass murdered my Funeral Room. No, I hadn't done anal with Jennifer.

But, hell, if I didn't know what my next VR KILLGAME and FBOT FANTASY ROMP were going to be!

I swiped my hand machine, opened  The Fucking News STREAM and set brew the rat shit coffee machine.

BREAKING: A supersonic tube passenger plane crash, in the Strait of Gibraltar, LIVE on  The Fucking News Channel !

They kept showing the same footage of the wreckage, the burning, the charred bodies, weeping relatives at the port pod.

An official AI WALRUS BOT stood for the  Fucking Press Conference about the crash.

"What's the death toll?!" "What's the death toll!?" heckled BOWER BOT, shouting over the prods.

AI WALRUS BOT: "Only the death toll. No one cares of the victims, truly; the victims are unimportant, only numbers, scores; spare the crocodile tears; we are only interested in Andreas, or whichever mucker or terrorist is responsible. Tomorrow the mucker's name will be on everyone's lips..."

I wondered if maybe there was some sort of toxic gases on the plane that could turn all those dead people into flesh eating zombies like in the STREAM, VR games.

It turned out that one human had miraculously survived, was in hospital.

On the CHITTER feed there were commenters rooting for him to die.

The Cruel today: "Explosion in Nepal proto factory kills 100, 10 injured, intentionally set by malfunctioning BBOT" "Serial suicide Buddhist bomber, reincarnated 6 th time, in Sri Lanka Island, walks into kindergarten, detonates, 40 human children dead, 72 humans wounded, 3 BOTS destroyed" "Tonight on the  Fucking News Channel , a frightening look into the world of baboon exploitation at robo-truck stops! Hosted LIVE by Jenny BOT, 8 poppa-momma eastern /7 poppa-momma central."

The Cruel displayed e-SPORTS scores, weather info, tornadic activity in the Midwest.

There'd been a record 21 F5 tornadoes in Oklahoma yesterday.

No wonder only ROBO-FARMS existed there anymore.

For a couple minutes I watched  The Fucking Humiliation Channel.

There were loops of Japanese baseball managers, in uniform, falling down flights of stairs; loops of FRED politicians, in Iowa, during campaign speeches, being pantsed by naked KISS face-painted streakers; then loops of various cackling monkey noise Gaffigan fathers kicked in the nuts by drooling jungle toddlers in Dutch clogs...

Swiped to  The Fucking Execution Channel...

It was my FAVORITE STREAM!  The Fucking Detritus of Death!

The STREAM showed three dilettante obese literary critics and an amateur obese CHITTER film critic, who'd been stripped nude, painted cobalt blue, and were being body-shamed and chased up a Himalayan mountain by a mob of Asiatic Ladyboys, in burkinis; the Ladyboys whirling maces, nunchaku, sharpened toothbrushes, and medieval weaponry.

I flipped the feed to  Fucking Music,  watched a Black Magic KPOP video and did step aerobics naked for 15 minutes.

Then I stood and masturbated into my FBOT sucky sucky hose, in front of the STREAM, ogling the East Korean girls, their slender frames, Asiatic features, banana skin, longity legs, sapphire eyes, synchronized dance movements and rump shaking.

I couldn't tell if they were FBOT or human and didn't really care.

After I came, I BOT programmed a quick shower, shave, teeth cleaning, nasal hair e-pick, ear hair e-pick, and stepped into body armor, holographic chalk gray slacks with blue pinstripes, an off-white button-down dress shirt, so firm the creases could cut goat butter, and twirled on a burgundy tie.

I kicked on crocodile skin cowboy boots with sharp spiky spurs for aesthetic effect.

I decided against my preset breakfast of spider flakes and cockroach milk and instead popped a protein pill and had a nutrient injection of alligator bone marrow shot up my buttocks.

My coffee machine's robotic arm handed me a vacuum cup of rat shit coffee. I slid open the window and parachuted out, not wanting to barter with the broken elevator chute.

I saw Charles in the parking lot, again loading guns into his trunk.

Why was he always in the parking lot? Perhaps he slept in the parking lot, in his car, shot people and came back to sleep, eat, and then go out shooting people again. Who fucking knows...

I didn't even bother to wave to him and jumped into my car through the sunroof, swiped on the engine, tuned to the Slap station, scraped a happy stick and began my journey to the Funeral Room. Mustafa wasn't there, and I couldn't figure out why. He'd disappear to Paradise City and Panama City, here or there, so it wasn't unusual for him to be gone. I sort of missed him and hoped he was alright.

COMMUTE: At the start of my commute, as I was attempting to stop at an aerial red light, I almost hit a fly-skiing pedestrian who was flying across the street, near the canal pipes.

She, an attractive young Latina, Selena Gomez clone, with curly, bright red hair, down to her slim waist, started to curse at me.

"Watch where you're fricking going! You're going to hit someone! Asshole!"

She went up into her skirt and pulled a small, pointy penis gun she'd hidden inside her vagina and brandished it at me, ready to fire.

I gave her a cold look, flicked a happy stick at her, which hit her in the center of her forehead, stunning her, and I ran the red light, accelerated, fled...

I saw her in my rearview mirror, enraged, flicking me off, skiing frantically, chasing after my car. I flipped her a bird out the window, literally, a 3D e-pigeon, with serotonin in its beak. The e-pigeon, with its soft exoskeleton, dive-bombed into her mouth, down her throat.

Paralyzed, she plummeted down from the air, landed with a thud, face first, SPLAT, in the street, coughed and hiccupped gray feathers.

But then she smiled and made a lotus gesture in my direction as I drove off....

CHITTER radar revealed a mucker, on flyer ski, nearby, shooting pepper spray into the faces of random pedestrians, open doors/windows...

CHITTER alert, too, re: Cult of the Unabomber, its members beating BOTS, suspected BOT with sharpened pikes, smacking and smashing hand machines, crossbow attacks on drones, flying robots...

Making my turn onto Route 1 I saw a SALESBOT, wheels for feet, black stallion horse body, offering downloads of lesser bandwidth newspapers, Communist manifestos, to raiders in their cars, waiting at red lights.

The SALESBOT wear bright orange colored vests and hoist newspapers in the air while they walk, breakdance. What a shitty job, I always thought, whenever I saw those BOTS.

(At least they'd banned emotions software long ago for BOTS, though it could still be pirated, found on the dark web.)

((Mostly it's used for SEXBOTS to enhance true companionship functions but didn't always work out well; often Jealousy would override all other emotions, BOTS slaying owners. Most malfunctioning BOTS had to do with pirated emotions software, enhancements, hacking...))

As I watched the SALES BOTS, I thought about humans once doing that work, standing around intersections, trying to sell newspapers, fruits, snacks at red lights, breathing diesel exhaust, fumes from obsolete fossil fuel combustion engines, getting run over, struck, mangled, killed by Florida drivers. No wonder the State legalized murder.

Unable to control it, my music faded, and I heard commercials beaming into my neural link, sounding in my brain, rattling my ears...

The first for the "Freshenator!"

AD (in Barker voice): "Do YOUR bowel movements stink like something awful? Sure, all of them stink, but are yours REALLY funky?

Well, we have the thing you've been waiting for! The Freshenator!

It's a small robo-capsule, taken orally, that injects itself into your bowels and sprays them CLEAN!

So, the next time you visit your disposal hose, it will smell minty fresh!

Choose from an assortment of smells! Vanilla, lavender, coconut, chocolate, cinnamon, orange, rose, and more. Buy yours today!"

(Lightning fast voice disclaimer: Using this product may cause unwanted side effects such as bloody stools, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, vomiting, nausea, hunger, dizzy spells, sleep loss, rash, confusion, trouble urinating, sudden anger, depression, mood swings, Salsa dancing and cold flashes. Discontinue use if one or more side effects occur and are severe. Or just kill yourself. Jackoff and Jackoff, a FRED family company.)

AD (in Gottfried Hysteria voice): "Are you having trouble securing a new mortgage. loan or a new air-car? Are IRS mercenaries on your back? Are you sentenced to be caned for outstanding debts? Do you have credit card debt, divorce, dysmorphia, self-hate, and/or bankruptcy? Do the bill collectors keep on hassling you? Are there re-possession BOTS in your box/house right now?! Well if so, then you might be qualified for a new type of debt management solution that is taking Next America by storm!

PAY WITH YOUR ORGANS! PAY WITH YOUR ORGANS!

PAY! WITH! YOUR! ORGANS!!!

Did you know a good HUMAN kidney can fetch up to B400,000,000?! A lung B500,000,000! Kneecap cartilage B200,000,000?

Corporations and research labs, wealthy individuals pay top BAMABUCKS for HUMAN organs and BODY PARTS!

Come in today to one of our offices and one of our friendly customer associates will appraise your organ or limb.

We will give you cold, hard cash, CASH! CASH! CASH! Turn those organs or limbs you barely ever use into CASH! CALL OR STOP BY TODAY!"

"... "

Thankfully the AD waves ceased, and soothing sounds of Slap music filled my car again...

DRIVE: As I was driving up Route 1, I saw a turtle BOT on the left side of the road, in front of a strip mall, waving around a sign for a fast food cricket place.

At the next intersection, a flying yellow school short bus, full of special children, rear-ended a silver Rolls Royce FLY Phantom.

The driver of the car who looked like a professional e-Vasketball player, STREAM STAR; wait, I think it WAS him, got out and started to shoot out the buses' windows with bullets from an ivory handgun, killing the children.

Knowing they were "special" and likely Class B, C, no one would care, and the Rolls flew off, driver boasting about it, posting pics, selfies to CHITTER.

Further up the road, I saw a Happy Happy Smile Polar Bear in a dashiki. He was pulling a half dead Flower Child from a totaled BEETLE A-CAR on the aerial highway.

Nobody (including me) stopped to help him.

Many of the motorists who passed by him yelled and gave him the finger for stopping up traffic. Two motorists, in a FLY Chevy Caprice, shot a solid shit pellet, from a slingshot, at the Happy Happy Smile Polar Bear but missed.

The Slap station played the same exact song over again for the third time in a row, so I switched to  Fucking News Radio. Hosted by Berg BOT...

There was a serial killer on the loose in West Palm Bitch. A man/BOT/Cyborg without a face...

He'd been cutting off (Class A) people's heads in luxury A-CAR lot parking garages, helipads, using an axe, and/or chainsaw, and painting the heads with pixies, vint Pokémon, and placing the decapitated heads on spikes out in front of gated, barbed wire Class A compounds.

He also left one in a trash BOT outside of a private police station last night.

They're calling him: "The West Palm Headhunter."

Berg BOT also said, in  Fucking Celebrity News,  the pop singer, the extraordinarily sexy, bitchy human pink diva, Before Never, who'd sliced off her husband's penis (the night prior to his Class A cert) and fed the penis into a disposal BOT, LIVE on STREAM, was set to release a new album,  Fucking Before Never , and that the STREAM STAR, professional golfer power-couple, Broga, divorced due to sheer boredom and the husband's penchant for raping (and being raped by) llama BOTS.

"... "

WORK: I got to the office and the same crew, Kehoe, Woo Bum and Adam were outside, scraping happy, transfixed, staring at their hand machines, a stream of the  Fucking Disaster Channel .

A skyscraper in Dubai, the tallest in the world, was fully engulfed in flames.

Conspiracy theorists abounded about the cause of the fire. BOTS? Wiring? Terrorist attack? Muckers? Communists? Maoists? Boredom?

It wasn't clear.

Adam and Kehoe laughed and commented on the form of workers swan diving from the upper stories.

CHITTER rooted against the rescue drone BOTS and a ruckus was caused when a rescue drone BOT crashed into the lower levels. The building then collapsed like a stack of dominos.

Adam, Woo Bum, and Kehoe roared, snorted, and slapped fives.

I floated inside, face rec'd into the Funeral Room, eased into my coffin pod...

BRAVE NEW SOULS: There were some new telemarketers on the floor today. I didn't get their names and didn't much care. We got a lot of new telemarketers. Most didn't last long.

Liberty had placed zip recruit ads on the networks, saying: "B1,000,000,000,000 your first year!"

When clicking on the link, hand machines could summon a BOT to the applicant, face rec scan his/her retina, background him/her, Class/education/worthiness, and attach itself to the applicant's back and fly the applicant in, hover-copter to the Funeral Room.

"... "

They always need to hire a lot of new telemarketers because there's a lot of turnover in the Funeral Rooms. Telemarketers burned out quickly, the rejection, zapping brains all day, connecting, viewing into unsavory, unemployable minds; the pressure, and physical, mental bathroom attacks.

Mental breakdowns, vomiting, nausea, jumpers, 5 or so suicides a month average per Funeral Room.

Many Funeral Rooms employed BOTS, cyborgs, but none could really connect on the level a human could.

It was that so few people actually spoke to other humans, that telemarketer calls, though still mostly reviled, had gained popularity and it was easy to (eventually) decipher a BOT from a human.

BOTS could never, even if modified with AI emotions, truly connect brain to brain the way humans could.

And, conversely, there were those who became telemarketers out of desperate need for human contact.

Being alone, in concrete boxes, staring at hand machines and holograms, and most VR was simply porn, KILLGORE play, and chatter on CHITTER found most humans increasingly depressed.

That's where most humans were, including me. After the wave of automation, most jobs didn't exist anymore.

BOTS did, made everything, developed countries had very few full-time employed, and offered subsistence provisions to citizens.

What had been "developing countries", formerly known as SHITHOLES (termed officially under UN Charter 45) had either ceased to exist, due to heat, flooding, starvation or lack of resources.

(Nearly all Caribbean Islands devastated by earthquake, flooding, hurricanes, swallowed into the seas...)

Most of what was Pakistan and India was destroyed in their nuclear war over Kashmir.

East India rose, incorporating fragments of Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka as vassals; East India emerging as a leader in engineering, BOT tech, Quantum computing and becoming one of the world's richest, most advanced nations.

About the entirety of Africa, Central/South America was done in by asteroid strikes, ensuing tsunamis. The continents relegated to a set of self-regulated island nations, mostly growing fruit, farming insect, populated by BOTS...

Europe's Muslim majority linked with the Middle East, formed a new caliphate.

But, under the direction of a charismatic young King of Saudi Arabia, His Majesty Sultan Merah Faisal Fah Khalid Bin Hussein II, Europe/Arabia united, titled itself "Eurabia" and flourished, living in peace, with Jews/Christians tolerated, albeit required to pay nominal sums in Jizya.

A prosperous Eurabia, with its moderate blend of Islam, ensuring equal rights to all, regardless of gender/sexual orientations.

Generous welfare, social programs, for every citizen; its vast wealth brought social stability, and QISABOT fleets wiped out what remained of Jihadists, Jihadis...

(Most contemporary muckers, terrorists no longer motivated by religion; now it's usually politics, boredom, loneliness...)

Japan and China had a savage war that went nuclear and decimated most of their respective populations, with China on the losing end, most of its weaponry defective, army unable to fight, due to obesity, diabetes, tobacco/pollution related sickness, aging, lack of will, internal unrest, unemployment/displacement from automation, boredom, phone/gambling/gaming addictions...

China was broken up into Communist East China, The People's Republic, with its strict eugenic laws, forbidding non-Han; its territory comprising: Heilongjiang, Gansu, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shanghai to Zhejiang; and The Democratic Republic of China, South China, an autocracy: (abolished eugenics, though primarily Han) Taiwan, Fujian, The Pearl River Delta.

Sichuan, Guanxi, Guizhou, Qinghai, Hainan Island incorporated into The Kinder Gentler Communist People's Republic of Vietnam, and the New Tibet, East Turkestan nations were born.

Japan, though devastated from the war, and fractured into several more islands, opened its immigration, incorporated the Philippines, the Korean peninsula, as vassals, and became a world economic leader, producer of entertainment, anime, anime VR porn, FUCKBOTS, Quantum BOT science.

Vietnam (The KGCPRV), which had taken over the mantle from Chi-Com CCP as the "World's Factory", run by humans/BOT and developing rapidly, flourishing, aside from 600+ AQI air issues, KGCPRV being one of the few countries still utilizing dinosaur juice fuels and housing the grimiest, most toxic factory operations...

The KGCPRV, Japan, ASEAN nations established a shared, free trade, open international water route, where the former "nine dash line", "South China Sea" had been.

(Though the Asiatic nations traded, were predominantly peaceful, rogue, insurgent East China aqua bandits, pesky Russian pirates occasionally attacked a robo-boat or set anchor traps, trapping boats at sea; rogue East China submarines emerging to blast with tear gas, pillage the stranded cargo ships, head slap, feather-duster tickle attack the crew...)

The remaining ASEAN nations were run by BOT and grew hefty crops of durian and cockroaches and, under beneficent monarchies, alleviated poverty, pollution, though, like many Western nations, struggled with boredom, obesity; faring better, however, far fewer muckers, due to adherence to modernized Buddhism, Islamic principles, legal happy, hand machines, and VR.

America had CIVIL WAR 2, which didn't last long, as the South, Red Side, had (again) too little economy, and this time was far too ravaged and plagued by apathy, obesity, too many droughts and tornados to pose a threat, especially after Texas declined to join and briefly seceded.

Next America rose afterwards, its massive debt consolidated and purchased outright by a consortium cooperative of large corporations, FRED.

Next America purchased, annexed the island of Greenland, as well as Mexico/Central America, what remained of the Caribbean, and the whole of Canada (to extract Canada's marijuana, natural resources, minerals, Element 115) as well as, ironically, incorporating the British Islands, Ireland, granting them Next American, autonomous, territorial status...

Next America's Presidential, Congressional, State, Local elections were replaced by popularity contests, reality STREAMS, and bond auctions; the Presidency became more a punishment than anything.

(Next America had turned to a series of BIGFOOTS as Presidents, as the yeti, sasquatch were the only souls brave enough... Before the series of BIGFOOT, the President [always Class B] would regularly be hogtied, whipped, tarred and feathered, beaten, burned, mocked, tormented, and raped in any city he/she would visit.)

((This generally stopped with BIGFOOT, who, as a Class A, and standing around 9 feet tall, hairy and of solid muscle, and a master of all martial arts and combat styles, an expert in bomb-making and weapons use, and the possessor of a 19 inch penis, NO BIGFOOT had yet to be assassinated, though two were, regrettably, mostly for the assailants, physically attacked.))

(((One assailant, a Martian, being eaten alive by the BIGFOOT on  State of the Fucking Union LIVE STREAM.)))

((((Next America with its vast treasure and superior technology, natural resources, reclaimed the mantle as the world's Lone Superpower.))))

To deal with its New Confederate insurgency muckers, guerrillas (Reds), and to reduce the population, Next America had legalized all violent crime, most drugs, except cocaine (Florida being the only State to legalize that).

The only threat posed to Next America, Z-Stralia (New Zealand/Australia/Oceania consolidating, because, why not? [The Why Not? Pact in fact being the official name of the unification pact in New Zealand, Australian, Oceania's Parliaments]) and the only threat posed to the New World Order was that of Communist East China and the Soviet Union of Russia (Russia having reverted to communism or tsarism, no one, including the Russians, completely sure, but not again Atheist, in fact banning, punishing Atheism, apostates to Christianity.)

Russia had grown in size and power, forming an alliance with East China (even though they had remained neutral in the Japan/China war, infuriating the CCP, but geopolitics, alliances, global times called for desperate measures).

Russia had also increased, purified its population with many Caucasians, Europeans, Confederates, the Alt-Right, Breitbart Cults, KKK, Neo-Nazis, Incels, Brexiteers, Evangelical Christians and Jews migrating there, with Soviet Russia being the sole super majority white Christian nation left*.

(Russian emptied its caucuses of Muslims, non-Christians, through voluntary initiatives [despite claims of being involuntary, sporadic pogroms], transporting the Muslims to Eurabia)

((And Soviet Russia incorporated Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, Estonia, Poland, Malta, Finland, Serbia, Transnistria, Afghanistan, the Other-Stans, except Pakistan, into the Soviet Union, and re-established the Jewish Autonomous Oblast as well as a Komzet Jewish Refuge, network of Kibbutz near Chernobyl, for Jews. Jews being the only group allowed, tolerated as non-Christians, exempt from apostate laws...))

(((*Next America around 55% white, but far less Christian, 80% Atheist/Apathetic/Pesci))).

The Russians/East China and Next America vied for world dominance, and a new Cold War was born, chiefly a Cyber War, with hackers cracking BOTS to occasionally murder/maim, but mostly to simply mildly annoy.

Cyber skirmishes, BOT hacks, but neither side wished to see more nuclear war, and many FRED corporations held operations, hedged fiscally both ways, so it was in no one's interest to have the war turn hot...

(Plus, the never-ending Cold War boosted both sides' morale, weapons corps, anti-Hack industry, maintained citizenry compliance, patriotism, alleviated boredom.)

Best of all, for everyone, the world's population was finally nearly to sustainable levels, interstellar colonies established in Andromeda (predominantly inhabited by Class A) and there'd been talk, in Next America, of reviving penalties for violent crimes.

Most of the economy in Next America, like the rest of the world, revolves around easing boredom in one way or the other.

Hence the number of STREAMS, door-to-door sales (many door salespeople- only job available to Unemployables- being cult members, suicidal, sub-human Unemployables wishing to be shot, stabbed or hugged) and, like Liberty, telemarketing companies.

Most other human occupations involved maintaining maintenance BOTS, robot factories, BOT parts, computing, coding, and engineering, and special human tasks involving hyper-intimacy or intense interpersonal interaction, coaching of human social skills.

When I finished my schooling, mostly VR based, tests done in physical locations and occasional forced social functions where no one talked and stared at their hand machines, I'd tried my luck at being an e-SPORT star, STREAM STAR, space colonist, brief stint training for Andromeda posts, but nothing took off.

I'd gotten so bored, and sick of living on Freedom Dividends, so I decided to go into telemarketing.

Like me, at first, lots of telemarketers attempt to become STREAM STARS, or telemarketing STREAM STARS, but most don't make it.

A lot of telemarketers become bored with dialing 500 or 600 times a day.

Then they become bored with being bored and bored that their boredom is so fricking boring.

A lot of telemarketing operations had designated suicide rooms where agents could go to pray or kill themselves.

Amazingly, very few telemarketing rooms had mass murder attacks. Telemarketers would usually quit beforehand and killed someplace else.

Though there'd been a STREAM service telemarketing op up the road from Liberty that had been attacked by a former agent, a former neighbor of mine, an Asiatic called "Aoba", who went in with a sickle and beheaded 6 people, giggling and taunting "THOUGHTS and PRAYERS!" "YOU ripped me off!" "TO the Kingdom of Shambhala!" before he was taken out by a security BOT flamethrower (which then set ablaze the entire Funeral Room, burning everyone in it alive- DEATH TOLL: 83 humans, 2 BOTS, 6 Cyborgs, 1 unknown).

"... "

TRAINEES: Those new brokers were being trained by Barbaro.

Barbaro was a straight shooter, a foaming chimpanzee and screamed in the face, at the face, ate into/off the face of new brokers spewing, frothing algorithms and equations, permutations of the markets and terminology, until they burst into tears and/or screamed back.

Then there was the part of the training where telemarketers had to bang their heads against walls, run nails on chalkboards, and drink synthetic horse urine, freditate, pray, write/recite mantra...

Barbaro's mantra: "Don't be afraid to call. Don't Fear. No Pain. No Guilt. Fear/Pain/Guilt is for the bastard. No Regret. No why. Just sell. Just buy!"

I wonder how long those new telemarketers will last. So many new brokers get discouraged quickly by the roughness of the brains.

They'd need to memorize, humanize the script so as not to sound like reading from an encyclopedia.

People disconnect real fast if they can't distinguish a human telemarketer from a humanoid, robocall, or BOT...

LISTEN AND LEARN: How I learned, was by listening in, eavesdropping, picking up other telemarketers' lines.

Manzeel, an Ojibwe, who'd don native attire/face paint, blasted a spitball at me, a care package containing a spider web charm, e-copy of the Satanic Bible, and a pleather bound book that had answers to any of the possible excuses a bastard might give for not wanting to open an account.

A bastard says his wife won't let him: "Oh, your wife is the boss?"

Bastard asks too many questions: "You're on page 4 and I'm on page 1. Let's get back on the same page."

Taliban and all the vets, say to never let a bastard take control of the call.

Some were like pit bulls on the bastards' brains.

Never accepting "no" for an answer.

Many pitched with an argumentative, hostile phone presence. They'd press, press, press more until a bastard caved into scanning his QR CODE.

But then there were others, like me, who took the "be a friend" approach. Others who were in between.

The ones who'd make the most sales, but burn out the quickest, were the fighters, the arguers. They'd find most of their bastards through CHITTER and zap the brain, argue, pester, annoy, goad, shame the bastards into buying emotions.

These were the telemarketers who quit and kill themselves the most. The ones that'd set fires intentionally or torture BOTS, catch/maim/kill wild baboons to relieve themselves.

Like most telemarketers, I cut and burn myself from time to time, but these would take it far, even hack off a limb.

There was one telemarketer, Ian, who amputated his arms, one at a time, then his legs, one at a time, becoming a paraplegic, and eventually drinking enough Willy Lump Lump poison to overdose and off himself.

Those new telemarketers will learn. That is if they stay around. Most lack the dedication and patience to stick with something for more than 15 seconds; modern human average attention span, without AI, was around 5 seconds.

5, 4, 3, 2,..

Plus, in this job, being yelled at, disconnected exacts its toll. It takes a thick skin to do this...

If a bastard thinks it's unpleasant getting called by a telemarketer, think of how it is to be on the other side, making those calls.

I used to get upset (when I first started) when bastards would yell at me or curse me out.

I'd yell back, seethe...

But Babi Yar set me straight. He told me not to fight with them. Just hang up.

And it was good advice. I just hang up now.

When they spaz, freak out, I just hang up.

It eats away at you sometimes, the mental sting of rejection, the anger, the disconnects.

But Babi Yar said it goes away with time.

"It goes away," he told me.

And he was right; it did for the most part. But it still hurts a bit. Especially late at night when you couldn't regenerate properly and mentally reviewed call files. It hurt then, for a few minutes, all the rejection, the black cat days, but... It went away.

"... "

WORK: Again, drifting away in thought, I snapped back, sipped a slug of turbocharged, endorphin laced rat shit coffee and swipe loosened my tie.

A Marilyn Manson Cult member's humming rang in my head: "I do a crooked little dance... funny monkey..."

Gary hula-hooped nearby... In 3D glasses, his retractable beer gut bobbled and jiggled.

His holographed exploding pink suits were loud (but not as loud as the blue green tropical shirts he wore on casual Fridays).

He was inquiring, in a clam chowder accent, if anyone had bastards they couldn't close.

"You got any bastards? Any bastards? Hey, you over there, got any bastards? I need some bastards!"

Jennifer ran backwards, into our X area, and superfly slammed into her coffin pod.

We 'good morning' smiled hello, but I couldn't help feeling awkward around her after my regeneration.

Schrank came out, faceless and watering; he screamed and tore off his holograph shirt during his pep talk.

He electric eel rolled on the floor, and quoted some article from the  Fucking Money Journal saying that durian refineries were running at peak capacity and of a credible threat of cunt terrorist arson attacks and recycled toilet wrecking ball attacks at durian pipelines, supply chains in Nigeria Island and that the price of durian would skyrocket, meaning Annoyance in Asiatic nations and Aggravation toward adventurous eaters...

He said we should use this article in our fronts.

"ANNOY! Get them to buy call options on ANNOYANCE! Let's hope the cunt terrorists do attack those durian pipelines, because if so, man that sucker is going to shoot up and all these bastards will want in on the action!"

Schrank finished his speech to applause, retching and grunting and the room lit up with the sound of suction cups popping on and a cacophony of voices in concert:

"Hello this... from Liberty" "Hello this is... from Liberty" "Hello this is --- from Liberty, hello?" "May I speak with" "This is" "Is that the type of CASH BAMA SLAPPEROO you'd like to make?" "Hello" Hello" "Cunt terrorist strikes on durian pipelines" "Once in a lifetime opportunity!" "An emotion EVERY firm is recommending!"

A coffin shine/shoulder/head/foot massage BOT, a flying diamond shaped orb with testicle tentacles, that comes in once a week to the office telepaths me between calls, asking if I'd like a shine/massage. I politely reclined.

Couldn't get through to any bastard on the first 20 zaps.

All no answers, busy signals, and disconnected messages. A bastard named Micah in Carolina was the first person to pick up.

"Hullo," he said in a deep voice with a strong Southern accent. "

"Hello this is, this is, sorry, Hello, I am, I..."

Click, I disconnected after momentarily forgetting my pitch and getting tongue tied.

That happened sometimes. I made 50 more calls but the only bastards who answered disconnected or cursed me.

I zapped all morning but failed to get any fronts out.

I had some funny ones, though.

One bastard in Eurabia, named Rizwan.

I went into my front with him, and he replied: "You no call me no more. I get 5 call from company like you already today. You are motherbitch yes! You are very, very bad man, yes! I shit you! I fuck you! You are blowjob! You no call me!"

"... "

BREAK: It was getting near mid-morning so I figured I'd go for a happy stick and a break.

I went outside to the front of the building and noticed a hover car, a beat up, blue terror Chevy Caprice low-flyer, inching slowly down the street.

Two black guys with handlebar moustaches and aviation style sunglasses were in the car. One a teen, one a middle-aged man. The older guy driving.

They glared, drooled and winced a dirty look.

One was sipping a cup of elephant shit coffee, and the tusk shaped green cup suddenly slipped from his grasp and appeared to fall into his lap.

"Blood let!" he yelled as he lost control of the vehicle.

It swerved off and plunged into the mouth of the BOT-made lake.

Fortunately for them, the lake wasn't too deep, maybe only 4, possibly 5 feet, and wasn't on fire today.

They both climbed from the car's windows and waded through the water, onto dry land.

The older one, who'd lost control of the vehicle, began strangling the younger one and I laughed at them, finished my happy stick and swiped my hand machine to check on my horoscope (I will face many challenges, it said), and then tip-toed back into the Funeral Room.

WORK: As I crept in my coffin pod, I overheard Schrank trying to deter a bastard on the verge of canceling...

Schrank: "Look, Arthur, the market moved against us, but it was a minor set back.

Listen to this report that just came out yesterday from the  Fucking News Channel explaining the trampoline shortage... What about the children? Think of the..."

"... "

Kehoe was texting to Adam. Said last year's Hurricane K2093213 really made his fiscal.

The approaching storm, forming in the Caribbean, had a potential to be even MORE MORE MORE profitable. Adam rang a bell.

Telemarketer on stilt wheels, Forgotten Scott, was standing up, circling the ceiling, on his suction headset with a bastard.

"There is a tremendous investment opportunity right now in the emotional energy complex! Did you know that the TRIPLE AAA just uploaded a survey saying there are 5% more cars on the road this year than last year? And 20% less in the air... MORE GRIDLOCK! Yes, I'm aware of the gun stocks, which will of course remain blue, but I'm talking ANGER. MORE GRIDLOCK, MORE TRAFFIC JAMS! Think of how happy you could be seeing traffic backed up for miles... Yoga, Yooba, WILL NOT cure... Hello?"

I dialed and dialed and dialed. Tons of brain hang ups, no answers, but I did get a worthy front load out to a retired private arsonist, Mr. Carlos in Arkansas, and a retired entrepreneur in Cali, a Mr. Ferri.

It was almost lunch time. I always looked forward to lunchtime. For I enjoyed my synth sandwiches and memes with Woo Bum. And I always really wanted to get out of the Funeral Room by the time lunch hit.

But my buddy the Asiatic hick was MIA by lunchtime. So, I gathered the nerve, first injecting an upload of CALM, and I asked Jennifer if she'd go up to the gouge store with me. But, to my disappointment, she said she was going home for lunch.

I pricked my finger quietly and smooched up the metallic tasting blood. Then floated outside.

By myself.

LUNCH: I swiped my cowboy boots into robo-roller blades and jetted over to the gouge and saw an old blue hair North German lady carjacked and pistol-whipped for her avocado flying walker; the predator an 8-foot-tall hairy scandal Viking in pistol Birkenstocks and strawberry ski mask.

She stretched out in the middle of the parking lot, bleeding from her skull, struggled to get up, crumpled back down, crawling on hands and knees.

Then a badass black banana boat BBBBASS BBBBBOOOM SUT landed on top of her, crushing her to death. Nobody really noticed, until a group of KK finger tracing teens, joyriding on hoverboards flew by and snapped vids, before jetting away.

After I finished eating a synthetic buffalo sandwich and grasshopper chips, I sat and stared at the remains of the old North German lady, her bloody carcass, the shards of her hand machine.

Sanitation BOTS arrived to clean the mess up, and I panned over to the lake, which was on fire today.

A nun was throwing deformed human babies- the mentally retarded, those missing or with misshapen limbs, swollen or shrunken heads, into the fiery lake, while another nun knelt and said prayers.

Francisco burrowed out of a tunnel, holding a paddle and an e-ticket.

He was covered in mud, dirt and skunk terror shit.

He was naked, no body armor, his frail body painted purple, lists of debts, scribbled in red along his chest and stomach.

He holographed into work attire and sat next to me in silence as we scraped happy sticks, drank rat shit coffee and watched mechanical ducks pick away at the deformed babies' bloated, charred corpses floating in the fiery lake.

"... "

Scanning the local  Fucking News Channel , I read about a flasher on the radar, loose in Davie, nearby a Funeral Room. He apparently had a micro-penis and was more an object of ridicule than considered a threat. Many pics of him were circulating on local CHITTER feeds.

There was also a story about an autistic 18-year-old girl, named Kati, whose father had been raping her.

She stabbed him to death the other night in his sleep, ran away and left a CHITTER post explaining why she'd killed him and was off-grid and on the move to New LA in hopes of becoming a ventriloquist.

The police were looking for her because her father was UBER Class A, wealthy, and thus exempt from child abuse laws, violence...

Another article was talking about how FFFRED Development just purchased a box stack park in Del Ray Beach for B8,000,000,000,000 and evicted all the Class C residents so the developers could build an Unemployable abusement park and robo-giraffe petting farm.

After eating, I swallowed my edible crisp weed sandwich wrapper, coffee cup and chip bag, I pissed on a nun (who asked me to) and Francisco and I floated back to the Funeral Room for the afternoon.

"... "

WORK: Back at the Funeral Room after lunch, and the room was b-b-buzzing.

Everyone was frantically zapping brains, trying to close accounts.

There was a company pleasure cruise, through the Bermuda Triangle, on the MS Achille Lauro, a land/sea/aerial floating casino/hotel, full of FBOT and cocaine, but passage required having closed so many accounts, so telemarketers were desperately trying to wrap up emotions.

Gilbert had a live one on the phone, but the bastard wasn't slipping Gilbert control of the conversation.

"You're just a cold caller! I'm programming a concert. Go away!" I eavesdropped on the line and could hear the bastard squealing.

"I'm a broker and you need me more than I need you!" rebutted Gilbert, who, like most at Liberty employed a very confrontational approach.

With that the bastard disconnected on Gilbert.

Obviously, the bastard wasn't taking kindly to the hostile pitch.

Gilbert, quite pissed, used his sharpened thumbnail to carve open a wound on his forearm, in the shape of a double barrel shotgun, and zapped the bastard's bird brain back.

"You think you can hang up on me like that like I'm some sort of little bitch! Well, I'm not! No, you go, NOW, get that informational packet I beamed and let's start making BUCKAROOS together!"

I lost the feed when an ad for genital deodorant interrupted my thought pattern.

Unsure what the guy said, but Gilbert boiled. The whole Funeral Room quieted a notch.

Gilbert: "Oh yeah, well FUCK YOU! Oh yeah, well here's what I have to say to that!"

Gilbert slammed his head and suction unit into his coffin pod, flew up, vomited and punched the ceiling water BOT.

KANG! His fist bouncing the metal.

"Fuck! I need to close. I need to fucking close!"

He lowered and stormed out of the Funeral Room, went outside for a happy stick.

As he was leaving Kehoe said: "Don't worry about it, fella. The bastard was just a fucking piker!"

PIKER: A "piker" is Funeral Room slang for a bastard who doesn't want to open an account, strings you along, and/or gives you a lot of shit in the process.

A lot of pikers are simply the types who are just too polite to say no or hang up and they just "yes" the whole time.

But calling them back later to close them they'll just never answer their phone or give excuse after excuse.

A piker is the worst thing you can get in this job. They waste time, fuck with us, and raise hopes up for nothing.

There were times when I thought I had a good front load and the bastard turned out to be nothing but a piker.

Like the other day, after a promising front load, trying to close: "Tell me what you do, your occupation," I asked, and the bastard replied: "I can't tell you. It's a secret!"

I knew he was a flipping piker then and there and disconnected, labelled him as a piker.

We'd recently compiled a list of pikers, unemployables, possible muckers, definite muckers, and those threatening actions if we didn't stop zapping their brains.

WORK: Maniac Marc was standing next to Tristan, the perpetual loser, whispering lines for a front load.

"Tell him about the cunt terrorist threats on the durian pipelines," he was whispering.

"CASH in, CASH out"

"Ask him why he doesn't have ANGST in his portfolio."

He continued whispering. Maniac Marc and other BIG BROTHER brokers would often feed lines during pitching.

They did this in large part because they might ask you if they can try to close the account or recommend trades to a bastard so that they can split smackers on it.

Maniac Marc coached Tristan into finally getting a good front load and they high-fived.

"I like this bastard," Tristan beamed.

"He's been investing for years in weapons stocks and wants to get into FEAR to diversify his holdings. He likes FEAR."

MM: "Sure, buddy! We'll get this bastard in large, LARGE!"

Maniac Marc was a beast at closing accounts. He always knew the right thing to say. I passed bastards to him a lot.

Other telemarketers, too, would pass a bastard over to MM (or another BIG BROTHER broker) if they had trouble closing, or just wanted another voice to the neural.

Sometimes several brokers will go into a bastard until he sends a scan. Even if four brokers split an account, a quarter of anything is better than all of nothing.

Rocky was liking and sharing with everyone a story he saw on the local  Fucking News.

BASEBALL BAT BANDIT: An unknown suspect, male or Trans, 5'8 to 5'10, in black ski mask/black spandex leotard, in downtown Miami, was creeping up behind humans and BOTS, on the street, at night, and whapping them upside the head with a baseball bat, leaving a baseball card and running/flying away. Be alert in Area 36, Miami Weed Gardens...

"Dude, that is one crazy fuck. I'm wearing a bucket on my head tonight when I go jogging..." Tristan commented on the link.

COMPLIANCE: Asadullah was over a couple coffins from me, about to close a bastard.

"Alright, now what I'm going to do is to transfer you over to my compliance department and you're going to have to answer a few questions about the risk involved in this emotion and if you swear to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you FRED."

(FRED headed Next America's business governance, and FRED took precedence to everything, including, and especially, that of God.)

However, in order to comply with NEA regs and FRED, a bastard would have to swear on either a Bible, Koran, Torah, Buddha, Joe Pesci, Darwin Book (for Atheists, which most were, these days) or whatever other Cult, higher spiritual or ultimate truth/destiny the bastard believed.

Our compliance dept was a series of BOTS representing HOLY/REVERED: Darwin, Buddha, Jesus, Satan, Imam, Rabbi, Joe Pesci, untold others.

A bastard would answer a few basic financial, reg questions, swear to his TRUTH before scanning his BAMA.

WORK: I could hear Bloody Mary, on at a bastard: "Come on, Stewart! What are you waiting for?! Liars can figure, but figures don't lie! You know this is the biggest Bull Run on JEALOUSY EVER!

A 200% price increase in the last year!"

Bloody Mary then went dead silent.

That's what to do after the package loaded; say the pitch and then go distant, await a response. Schrank says whoever speaks first loses.

Postal Patrick was taping his calls because he had gotten in trouble with the NEA at his last firm.

The NEA (at times as punishment) records all calls and sends the tapes to Chicago for review.

Poor NEA lackey who had to listen to all that, probably an apprentice.

(Tazmal said the NEA will wiretap brains or sneak in SPIDERBOT to the room. He had Angelo come infrared for bugs every weekend.)

Jumpy Jared ran into Schrank's office and rammed his head into the shredding machine. The machine, a large box with a basketball sized hole in its center, was for shredding mental documents. Jumpy Jared used it every day.

Crazy Kehoe was sitting in his coffin pod eating synth donkey flesh tacos and eel rice.

He was wearing a hologram grey suit with a light blue dress shirt and neon pink, flashing e-tie, displaying market index quotes, charts, real time.

Jumpy Jared squirreled his head from the shredder and wept and groveled to Kehoe, about how he can't get a bastard to put in more trades on his account.

Kehoe was a "loader" or "enhancer."

He goes into existing bastards, talks them into investing more.

Kehoe told Jared to transfer the bastard over, spit on his forehead suction cup.

Jared crawled back to his coffin and transferred the bastard.

Kehoe received the signal. His eyeballs rolled solid white.

Crazy Kehoe began shrieking hysterically: "AAAAAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!"

On, on, and on, shrieking, swilling sounds. Finally, the disconnect.

"Fucking bastard; he'll d-run his AI financial advisor and be talked out of it." Crazy Kehoe muttered, smashed an empty vodka piss glass bottle over his own head, and hand machine steam-watched the gash on his skull, counting the streams of drippy red blood, grinning.

The brokers at Liberty hated AI financial advisors, AI lawyers and AI accountants. And human wives. Probably human wives most.

JENNIFER: I looked over at Jennifer. She didn't seem so happy.

She was getting hung up on a lot.

Jennifer looked simply ravishing today. She had on a baby blue short skirt and a white sleeveless top, silver stiletto heels, spiked, with ankle straps, and dark silk stockings showing off her exquisite legs...

Her blouse was slightly see-thru, revealing a lacy pink bra. I think it was from  Victoria's Secret.

Earlier that day I'd seen her bending over to pick up something and caught a glimpse of her panties from in between where her blouse and skirt met.

They were the same pink color, G-string, too...

I wanted to say something to her, not about her undergarments, well, yes, I would like to praise those, but really, I wanted to say something funny to cheer her up. But I just couldn't think of anything...

SHIFT OVER: My day was finally coming to a finish.

My last few zaps were humiliating. A day trader, Mr. Hasebeng, in South Georgia who asked me what open interest was on Embarrassment.

My hand machine froze so I couldn't give him an exact number and he laughed and disconnected. A bastard, Mr. Pagourtzis, in East Texas:

"Son, I been working in the social media industry for 40 years, before you was even a speck in your mama's tubes, so it ain't nothing you could sell me..."

Clock BOT buzzed my coffin pod. My shift was over. I was glad for that.

I decided against coming back for the evening and told Schrank I was feeling a little sick.

He asked me if I was sick of making BAMA.

He said if I made BAMA and closed accounts my malady would go right away.

Schrank always said there was NOTHING that BAMA couldn't fix.

I let him punch me in the stomach and floated away, vowing to sleep it off and come back better tomorrow.

I would be better, stronger tomorrow, too. I was going to see Anissa tonight.

COMMUTE: On the drive home I had trouble seeing the road because of the acid rain, SKYBOTS.

During acid monsoon season, it rains cats and dogs, literally.

Cats and dogs, ANIMALBOTS, falling from the sky, seeded with non-toxic, pollution easing particles, ozone relieving spray guns...

But they were soft as fur, so when they plunked down on the car or head, it didn't hurt and tickled, but it did reduce road visibility, along with the steaming, lashing torrents of sarin.

On the way home, I saw the neighborhood social attention whore, Nasim, the violent vegan, medusa head, waving her hand machine at passing motorists, begging for likes and adds and friends, trolls, anything, PUHLEEZ!

She was limping up to a green flying pickup truck, plastered in Cheesehead bumper e-tags, that was hovering at a traffic light.

The driver, Cult of Gein member, a mullet head, dissolved down his window in the pouring rain and offered her what looked to be his QR CODE.

When she reached her hand machine to his, mullet head broke out a chainsaw, let out a bellowing laugh, sawed off the attention whore's hand machine from her arm, hit the accelerator and flew off.

The attention whore auto-regenerated her hand machine, arm, and smiled. Thanked him in lotus posture. Resumed seeking likes.

HOME: Fortunately, the elevator chute was functional. I'd been sick of repelling, roping up, flying in through my window.

In my apartment I took a shower, had my BOTS wash, towel me. I holographed a turquoise-blue polo golf shirt, brown penny loafers, black socks and blue jeans.

Scraping a happy stick, I watched  Fucking Talk Show STREAM about people who claim to have been abducted by aliens.

One lady said the aliens sucked her out of the toilet from a e-football game bathroom disposal hose stall, and shoved a metallic probe up her rectum, and then shoved the same probe into her mouth seconds later, removing a chain of pearls from her intestines.

Another lady said they did the same thing to her but had the decency to at least use separate probes to extract the pearls.

It was almost time to go meet Anissa, so I ended the STREAM.

The elevator had a wild baboon in it, sharpening a butcher knife, wagging its tongue at me.

So I jumped out the window.

ANISSA: Anissa and I often meet at a bar on the beach called "Hemingway".

It's on State Route A1A (a road that snaked the beach through most of Florida's eastern coastline) and is an upscale bar on the first floor of a luxury hotel (that I once saw a STREAM STAR, GAGA, leaping from...)

(Most bars had closed due to VR porn, FUCKBOTS, mass shootings, home alcohol brewing, and apathy. But this bar maintained its chic, prestige, due to its use as a spot for selfies. Its design, aesthetics, lighting, no VR had been able to replicate, at least not yet...)

The bar had a Hemingway theme, with tropical colors, server Hemingway BOTS, and walls with oil paintings of characters from Hemingway's books, and paintings of Hemingway boxing literary critics, one with Hemingway pointing a shotgun at Henry Miller's crotch...

It served the best mosquito cocktails* anywhere.

(*mosquito: a scorpion liquor mixed w/salty happy dust, serotonin mint)

I, luckily, arrived on time (a drunken North German tourist on a cyber-scooter had crashed into an elderly REB man in an airborne wheelchair at an intersection nearby, which really tied up traffic, and made me worry about being late).

I sat in a matador styled booth and eased into the comfy pleather.

Anissa showed up about fifteen minutes late, as usual.

As she walked in, heads of the men in the bar turned.

I loved the way she walks, how she shakes her ass a bit from side to side.

She looked sexy as hell. Shsh-short black leather mini-skirt, fishnet stockings, and a black leather halter top.

The eye shadow she was wearing was dark blue, matched her eyes perfectly. Extremely hot!

She wore black 10 cm heels, had her hair in a bun and her vanilla perfume smelled intoxicating.

Ten or so years older than most of the women in that bar, she was by far the most beautiful.

We kissed hello and she took a seat.

She texted me that she wasn't wearing any panties and motioned that I glance under the table. She quickly flashed me a naked, shaven vagina by parting her legs.

"Wow, well, besides, down there, you, every part of you, you look stunning tonight!" I marveled, in awe of the goddess before me.

She told me she'd just gotten a part in a new porn STREAM; lesbian sex with the ultra-famous porn STREAM STAR Jenna Blaze.

She was to be playing Jenna's older sister in the feed, currently titled: "Taboo Taboo: Sisters Fuck Too."

The STREAM paid hefty BAMA; she was looking forward to being on film again.

She liked to be in porn, she confided in me. She said she liked thinking of guys and maybe girls pleasuring themselves to her.

I really think Anissa might be a type of sex addict or something. I know it's her work, but she was constantly talking about it...

She told me when I first met her almost a year ago that she'd never even had a steady boyfriend because of her work as a stripper/call girl/porn actress/chatter sex operator.

She said that once a client proposed to her, but she turned him down.

He was rich, too, but she just couldn't imagine being stuck with one man for the rest of her life.

The father of her kid was some trick whose wrapper broke.

They did it at a capsule hotel, and all she could remember about him was that his name was James; he was a circus clown and had an unkempt shock of bright red hair.

After that she got on the control mods.

Her neighbor and her mother (who retired to FL and who has thought for all these years that Anissa is a data librarian) took care of her kid, when he wasn't in training, which gave Anissa plenty of free time.

We drank mosquitoes, talked about world events, violence/crime possibly being re-criminalized, my job, and her steady trick who always yelled out "mommy!" while they fucked, and about the weather.

Hurricane season was about to start.

It was supposed to be really bad this year. Possibly one or two Cat 8 storms.

The suction tubes and irrigation system, vacuum lines, construction of New Florida South was supposedly impenetrable, but, who knows...

We finished our drinks, floated out and raced, auto-pilot, back to my place.

Fortunately, the elevator worked and was free of baboons.

We lay in bed and scraped a happy stick and watched a  Fucking Porn  STREAM called: "Dirty Slut Call Girls Give Head, Part 9,593." It's one of our mutual favorites.

We liked to watch porn together. We'd look for new positions to try and comment on the actors' technique.

After we finished the happy, she got up, twirled and pirouetted, slapped me across the face and gave me a strip tease, a lap dance, and performed oral sex on me and me on her.

We then did doggystyle position. I liked it like that with her because of the firm, soft, juicy round ass she sported. Watching her ass jiggle and shake as I slapped and pounded my pelvis.

It's my favorite position anyway.

She really knows how to fuck.

When we doggystyle she tilts her butt at the most perfect angle.

She has complete control of her vaginal muscles and is extremely flexible as well and would do positions, tongue tricks, sexual acrobatics I couldn't have imagined possible.

Anissa is just so awesome. I feel so comfortable with her. She told me when I first started seeing her that I'm the only guy that ever really understood her.

Said she loved my youth, my eyes and my sense of humor. I could always make her laugh and she always made me laugh too.

Sometimes she stayed over and said she was going to tonight. She often had trouble with regen because of her experiences as a child.

However, when she stayed over with me, she'd regen fine.

We banged on and off for a few hours, smoked happy, talked, and watched reruns of "Family Matters" and other stupid old vint sitcoms. I can't remember what time exactly it was when we passed into regeneration, but it was pretty late...

When my punching BOT alarm woke me up the next morning she was gone.

My sheets still had her vanilla scent on them. She left an e-note saying that she'd call me in a few days and had kissed it with her lipstick. I kept it and put it in a memory stick BOX.

NEA: It was morning time at the NEA South Florida branch office.

The NEA had a branch in south Florida, specifically for dealing with Funeral Rooms.

The branch had originated in a former Walmart store, much like a Funeral Room itself, but now it had relocated to the upper floors of a skyscraper in downtown New Miami, overlooking Biscayne Bay.

Drones flew by the floor to ceiling, panoramic glass walls, and NEA Special Agents Connor and Kip held hands in a séance, communicating with the spirits, the waves, the links to which Rooms were on the Watch List.

Liberty had topped them all.

Kip: "They've been piling up complaints for years now. 99% of their clients have lost BAMA."

Connor: "We tapped their lines and discovered around 50,000 partial truths. But BAMA loss is not a crime, neither is mock outrage. True, willful, intentional butthurt, misappropriating emotions for financial gain. There's still no evidence of that..."

Kip: "There will be."

Connor: "Why? How can you be so sure?"

Kip: "Once their commanders' Class A cert is lost..."

Connor: "What makes you so sure it will?"

Kip: "Follow the Ouija boards. Keep tabs on the CHITTER. Their Angst positions are questionable. Arsons, cyber mountain lions near their clients. I've seen the wiki-graphs."

Connor: "The wiki-graphs aren't a true stat. Not unless they're linked to the neural network, and, most importantly, sponsored by FRED."

Kip: "If the Class A were to leave, or be de-cert/d, what would happen if..."

Connor: "Are you on the network now?"

Kip: "No. The Ouija..."

Connor: "Now you're talking."

Outside, over Biscayne Bay, space debris, a junky internet satellite, melted into the sky, disintegrating into infinitesimal specks of sparkling orange glitter...

REGENERATION FILES: Last night, while I regenerated, I had many visions that remained etched, active in my REGEN FILES.

First: I was a kid back in VR middle school. My middle school, Westlake, a very scary place, lots of cyber bullies.

A few years after I'd left some kid who'd gotten picked on a lot went Jeremy, into his Spanish class, and psycho-hacked everyone (then himself) to death, causing brains to, literally, explode.

One rather harsh tradition at Westlake was giving a kid on his birthday what we called: "Birthday Massacres."

Now this wasn't massacring, shooting, slashing, maiming or licking somebody with your tongue or anything like that (I would have liked to have done that to some of those girls from back then).

No, this was a thing where on somebody's birthday you'd punch his brain however many times his age was. So, if he were turning 12, you'd punch him 12 times; the headaches were legendary.

A lot of kids feared going to school on their birthdays because of this. Many would scan sick so they could stay offline.

One time the principal of the school held a special STREAM conference and warned anyone banging brains would have morality points deducted, possibly leading to Class C designations. But the Birthday Massacres went on.

In my dream, it was my birthday, and I was in VR school.

I was buck-naked too and everyone else had clothes on.

I was sitting in class, in the very front row. I was in one of those small, confining, wooden desk/chairs. The seat was frigid and freezing my testicles. I was thinking how maybe no one knew it was my birthday. Maybe no one would find out. I could get away with it. No one was going to punch my brain viciously.

Then the principal of the school, a large, hairy, tarantula 20-foot-tall lady named Mrs. Ratchet, came storming into the classroom.

To my horror, she was naked too. It was not a pretty sight. Hairy spider tits, hairy spider pussy, and webs shooting, farting randomly from her ass.

She started screaming, in an Asiatic language I somehow understood, that she knows it's someone's birthday in this class.

Her gigantic, saggy spider breasts with large purple nipples flopped around wildly in the school smell teen spirit air as she beseeched us.

The teacher in the classroom, Mr. Sanders, a gnome, was dressed in a hot pink cheerleader's outfit, and was shaking neon green pom poms and silver pipe bombs with his eight arms and hands.

He ruffled through the books on his desk claiming that he'd find out. Mrs. Ratchet then turned around, bent over and started to speak from her spider pussy. Her pussy spoke German and sounded Hitler.

Suddenly, everyone in the class got up and pointed at me.

It's him they yelled. It's him! It's him! They all started to curse at me in Asiatic!

Mrs. Ratchet was now yelling at me through her vagina in German. Mr. Sanders had baseball bats and approached me.

I jumped through a half open glass window that was on the left side of the classroom and flew down into the street and into the middle of oncoming traffic.

There were pre-re-historic (PRE-GC, PETRO, PRE-Element 115!) race cars speeding by me at all angles. I shot spider webs from my penis and managed to stop up the racecars.

I ran into a bean shaped coffee shop, jumped up on the front counter and sat atop Vin Baker's head and twisted my penis off my body and proceeded to smoke it like a cigar.

I then ordered a cafe Frappuccino and flirted with the waitress, an anorexic hillbilly opioid hag, nametag: Sabrina, the teenage SNITCH.

Sitting next to me was Joseph Stalin, who was reading a comic book, getting a blowjob from my mother.

Second: In the next regen, I was a passenger on a plane. It wasn't any plane however; it was one of the planes hijacked in VR 9/11 SIM.

I sat in the back row of the aircraft as a non-binary hijacker (with a blurred face) paced up and down the aisles, waving a blood-soaked box cutter around. He was yelling at us in beeps to stay quiet.

There was a dead flight attendant (with her purple eyes wide open), her throat slit and steaming gold blood, right near me, flying in the aisle.

She'd been stabbed a bunch of times in the stomach also. Her flickering nametag muttered Tina.

There was a passenger gargling "Frasier" across the aisle from me, slumped over in his seat. He'd had his throat slit too. He wore a navy-blue airline company uniform that was soaked in the blood still gushing from his neck.

I think there were four non-binary, blurry face hijackers all together on the plane. Two had run into the cockpit earlier and I'm pretty sure they were flying the aircraft now because they threw a pilot's dead corpse and a caterpillar stuffed animal out into the first-class cabin.

People in the plane were screaming, laughing. I could hear some of them frantically making flip phone calls. One Kenny was cursing at the local police about his tax dollars.

I didn't really know what to do at this point. I started wondering where we were going. I could see out the window into downtown, old NYC.

The twin towers of the World Trade Center, flashing neon green, looked close, closer. I then knew where we were going.

The plane started moving faster, faster, faster, and the towers grew larger. I held on to Tina's cold, lifeless hand.

Then I woke up. Was it time to go to work?

I looked at the punching BOT clock and it was 4 Anti-Man.

I'd regenerated until the afternoon, I panicked. How could I have regenerated this long?

I knew Taliban and Schrank were going to be pissed.

I then realized that it was dark outside; it was still night and that I could regenerate longer. Anissa was still there in regen, next to me, snoring, sniffling softly like she usually does.

"... "

Spilling back into regen, eyeing up the ceiling, it was tangled in vines, tropical vegetation.

I was a monkey in the jungle. My bed, Anissa both disappeared, and I was swinging tree to tree, eating synth bananas and defecating hand grenades freely.

I swung up to a winding, twirling date palm tree and climbed to the top and could see out, far into the nether, and noticed that from the point my native jungle habitat ended, a meta-city, metropolis, forest of skyscrapers and lightning, began.

Had this city been here all along? Why hadn't I seen it before? What was there?

From the horizon, a boxy, dark green, military helicopter flying from the city into the jungle's airspace, at a rapid clip.

The helicopter had spinning, circular machine guns on its sides.

It started to fire, flaming napalm monkey shit, indiscriminately into the jungle.

Lions, tigers, rabbits, and bears burning to death.

One grizzly bear was texting into his hand machine while trying to run away.

It got shot in the legs and arms, flopped to the jungle earth, in conflagration.

It clutched to its hand machine as it hit the ground and didn't let go.

Another monkey from a tree near me got scorched down too. It had also been texting into a hand machine. It fireballed and rumpled near to the grizzly bear. I wondered if maybe they were talking to each other. The chopper flew by me but didn't kill me.

Then a crystal-clear cargo plane flew up from out of a swamp, out of the mud-brown water, and spiraled high in the air and circled, concentrically, over the jungle.

It ejected vint rotary phones, with gift bows, little red parachutes strung to them.

It dropped torrents of e-leaflets too.

The plane dipped near me, and I caught one of the leaflets.

As the plane blew past, I saw OJ Simpson, naked, bloody knife clinched in his teeth, skydive from the plane, without a parachute, before he disappeared into the thicket of the jungle; before vanishing, he screamed out his responsibility for the JonBenet murder scandal...

"It wasn't her brother! It was meeeeeeeeeee..."

I began to read the leaflet. It was from President Bigfoot II and his Secretary of Shit: Elliot

"Citizens of the Jungle! We are pleased to announce the grand opening of a new country on your jungle. You will no longer be tormented by lions, bears and monkeys. You will now be able to live an existence of freedom. We have provided you with rotary phones. On the back side of this leaflet are numbers to dial. We will soon provide you with outlines/scripts. Welcome to your new beginning. Welcome to your new family of Hamas! We will provide you with whiskey and credit cards soon. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Five, four, three, two....."

And then I blew up. I awoke again. It was 5 Antifa. Anissa was still there. I wasn't a monkey. She was snoring a bit louder now and drooling on my souffle pillow.

I closed my eyes. I think I am... I think I am..............

TARDY: I was going to be late for work today.

I woke up late and had forgotten to set the punching alarm.

I'd had too much fun with Anissa.

Awakening, I opened a  Fucking News STREAM.

80,000 humans died in 11.5 earthquake in what remained of West Pakistan, and many more missing.

CHITTER cheered the news and reduction of population.

A Holloway had been kidnapped in Saint Salvador, and there was going to be three full minutes of emotion, outbursts on the  Fucking News Channel at 9 poppa-momma tonight.

CHITTER was alive with conspiracy theories re: the kidnapping.

I pondered, licked my chops, postulating that if Saint Salvador's child king government made an insensitive pressure release, RAGE options would be booming.

Since I was running late, I didn't eat grasshopper cereal or drink my cockroach milk, masturbate or do aerobics.

I hurriedly had a sani-BOT wash, nutrient pill, and hydrate me, and holograph on formal attire, a trendy snakeskin suit- cobra skin slacks, shirt, boots, and camel bone bolo-tie (all of which were back in fashion, as recently had been big 1980s hairdos, with the resurgence of vint 1980s metal.).

The elevator was broken again so I jumped out the window and into my car through the sunroof...

COMMUTE: I took the long way to work (even though I knew it would make me later) because I was a bit hungover and didn't want to deal with the traffic.

I watched a cult of lobbyists prostrate in front of the burning lake. One was eating another's leg, like a zombie from an old horror movie VR.

On the way I listened to a motivational tape: "Awaken a Monster Within."

"In life, you need degeneration, deterioration, before you can have a destination, and, ultimately, your ideal detonation."

"... "

WORK: When I got to the office, Schrank, fingers up an FBOT shiggy skirt, shivered me off, ordered me to go see Ted Bundy, so I floated over there...

TED BUNDY: Taliban's office space is much nicer than Liberty's.

It's much more spacious, fancy wood-paneled walls, China silk curtains, Asiatic vases.

As I face rec'd into the lobby, I saw the receptionist, Rihanna, an attractive, tall, thin, young (early 20s) human Carib fem.

I stopped to talk to her for a second.

All the guys from Liberty, myself included, always hit on her.

She looked smoking HOT today, in a body-form-fitting tan pant suit and a heavy gold crucifix necklace.

She has these massive green eyes, caramel skin, giant D boobs, a big bouncy fat ass, and dyed red curly short hair.

I adored that shade of dark rouge lipstick on her full, luscious lips.

She dated a VR friend of mine, Arsenio, from another Funeral Room, and he told me she gave a mean blow. Given the size and contour of her lips, I could believe it...

"... "

I bowed hello to her highness, Rihanna, and asked her when she's going to marry me.

She laughed and told me to get in line with all the other guys.

I told her she reminded me of an actress in a STREAM the other day.

"And what type of STREAM was that?"

"It was a dramatic STREAM, vint..."

Pretty red head cocked to the side, she squinted, told me to behave myself and we shared a laugh.

The female humans left in the workforce had way past evolved from the post MeToo insanity, witch hunts, and informal female hiring freezes, and fem humans enjoyed respectful compliments, friendly flirting.

Not much sexual harassment existed. However, it did, every so often, occur; though with hand machine vids, violence apps, revenge BOTS, harassers didn't usually get very far, especially the non-Class A...

I told Rihanna I'd be back later today to pick her up and take her to dinner with me. She laughed, rolled her eyes and pointed me to Ted Bundy's office.

Ted's office wasn't decorated at all.

It had plain walls, just a desk with a network device, suction cup wireless links, and a small brown bookshelf with some stacks of e-papers, digi-sticks.

Taliban was a grizzly bear today, holograph pin-striped black Armani suit. Unlike most businessmen here, he always wore a sports coat. Today was no exception.

Taliban was sitting at his desk on a suction cup, with one of his bastards.

"C'mon, Mr. Cunts! You know you want to open this account. Where is that guy I talked to last week who couldn't wait to get started? While we're sitting here talking, there's people making CASHHHH. What do you want to be, a guy talking or a guy making BUCKEROOOOO? I'm telling you the YABBA DABBA is set for a BULL RUN!! Load the charts; let's get started."

That's what Taliban always told us to say. Tell the bastard to load the charts, scan sockets, get the bastard started.

"What?! You don't want that BAMA?" "The YABBA DABBA!" "The YABBA DABBA at 17%!"

TALIBAN: "Fine, then, Mr. Cunts. I'm going to take you off my list of successful people today!"

and he twisted off the suction cup from his forehead, headbutted his desk.

Then he glared at me.

"If it's about being late, Ted, I'm sorry..."

"No, it's not about that at all. I brought you here because you upset me the other day."

"How did I upset you?"

"I told you to trade on that Ding, Delaware bastard's account, and you didn't, why not?"

"I couldn't get a hold of him."

"So he's in the witness protection program?

"I tried to..."

"I'm going to stop you right there. I had a premonition that you wouldn't, that account has been a dud, so I booked a set of HUEY LONG options in Disappointment, in my wife's name, and BADA BING! I want to thank you, for working that loser! No body blows today. Most telemarketers wouldn't have the patience to..."

Me, cutting him off: "You're welcome, Mr. Bundy. But I gotta get to the waves."

Ted, with a shit-sniffing grin: "Now THAT'S the attitude I like..."

On my way out, I told Rihanna that I'd be by later to pick her up and take her out for drinks. She laughed and gave me the finger.

I gave her the finger back and told her: "anytime!"

WORK: Back to the FR, to the brains I went. Didn't really get much. Couldn't really get much.

A lot of disconnects and no answers.

Jennifer was having a rough time. I texted to console her: "ebbs and flows..."

She looked SEXY today, like always, in a sh-sh-short black one-piece dress that really showcased her sublime cleavage, sheer dark stockings, and same silver stiletto go-to-hell heels from yesterday.

I noticed that she'd straightened her hair. It didn't look as cute as it did curly, but she was still a goddess...

Jennifer looked as nice as she sounded on the phone, which wasn't always a good thing.

She'd giggle and be a bit flirty and could reel in a lonely male or two, but most of the time she was too Midwestern, too polite.

If a bastard told her they weren't interested, she'd apologize and disconnect the wave!

Me, like most Liberty telemarketers, when a bastard said they weren't interested, would be like: "Oh, you're not interested in slapping CASH?"

I would keep on pestering the bastard until they either disconnected or scanned the BAMA.

That's how a telemarketer HAD to be.

Flipping ruthless! A damn pit bull!

Ruff, ruff, ruff!

A COLD Call Cowboy! Yee-Haw!

(My time with Anissa and a dopamine uptake from my morning sani-BOT had me feeling peachy!)

I asked Jennifer if she wanted to join me for a happy.

She said she'd like that, and we floated outside.

BREAK: "So how've you been?' I asked.

"I've been okay, just stressed out. My boyfriend still can't get employable, his upgrades denied... And I've been stressed because I can't scan. My forehead is numb from pressing that suction cup up to it...

"All I know is that I need BAMAS. My boyfriend is talking about moving back to East Ohio and working for his dad's robot repair company. That's the only place that'll hire him. Freedom Dividends only go so far..."

"I'm thinking of moving back there with him and opening a business, an e-zine called: 'The Racist Press'"

"You're into eugenics?"

"Not at all. I don't even know why I like the name. But I do. It's registered as mine, and I'll do something with it..."

"You don't really seem to care much about the markets. I noticed you never read the  Fucking Journal or watch  The Fucking CASH Channel ."

"Yeah, the only thing I know about CASH is that I need some and don't have much. I got through the emotions test by memorizing a bunch of that stuff. I did fail it twice, you know."

"I hope things work out for you. You're a really cool girl."

"Thanks, I hope you keep on smacking BAMA; you're primo on the phone."

"Hey, thanks..."

"You want to go for lunch? Synth turkey burgers are back..."

"No, that's ok, I'm going home again for lunch. My boyfriend made boiled shady snake and cheese..."

Jennifer floated back in first, and I checked out her ass.

I was about to go back inside as well when Kehoe came out looking as if he just snorted some cocaine. I think he just had. White rocky flakes, crystals lining the rim of his left nostril.

"Hey, you know that jacker, Cho?" he asked.

"Yeah, of course, he mentored me..."

(Cho was a former telemarketer who'd been hired by various Funeral Rooms to VR mentor new telemarketers, be a BIG BROTHER broker when Rooms lacked enough BIG BROTHERS. Cho was a jackal, a madman on the waves.)

"Cho was just indicted. Fixing emotions, arsons, Fear options, rigging into CHITTER! He's in a quarantine now... His Class A will likely be stripped, he'll be de-platformed, cancelled.

There's chatter he could be on  The Fucking Execution stream by next week. You know the flipping NEA. Bet they got his neural plugged up with Despair. Those tinkers! Hypocrites. Hypocrites, hypocrites, HYPOCRITES!"

"... "

Kehoe fished a pair of pliers from his butt pocket and clanked them onto one of his front teeth and, in one swift motion, yanked it out; blood spouted, and he flung the tooth into a plastic bush, clasped the pliers onto his left index finger and pried off the fingernail.

His finger and mouth a bloody mess, his head spun round 360 degrees, and he opera-sang a mantra: "Not me. Not me!"

And with that, his feet turned to afterburners, and he flew off into the sky. I wasn't sure if he'd quit or was off for a break.

I floated back inside and returned to my coffin pod...

WORK: Schrank was storming the floor, like a lunatic.

A syringe full of nitro-roid hung from his left bicep. His eyes bulged, face tomato red.

"C'mon, big Richard! Nightstalker, baby! Make it!"

He berated, though I could see the Nightstalker's coffin pod was empty.

With a clenched fist held high, Schrank admonished Jumpy Jared: "Get out of ---'s pocket!"

Jared had been praying with Robby, fantasy e-SPORTS...

Schrank and Kehoe, as BIG BROTHERS would pace the floor monitoring, cajoling, mentoring, punching, kicking, spitting, and drooling, feeding lines, or just watching agents talk on the waves.

BIG BROTHERS also had a listening device in hand machines where they could pick any broker's waves and eavesdrop. They'd record, monitor, and critique brokers in the RAPE ROOM.

(The RAPE ROOM was where the BIG BROTHERS and commanders took telemarketers for evaluations, promotions, firings, beatings. There weren't any actual rapes there, not that anyone knew of, but when telemarketers left the room, they'd look glazed over, as if they'd been RAPED or TORTURED. Hence, the name.)

Back to the brains.

My suction cup felt like it weighed 100 pounds as I clamped it to my forehead.

I started to zap. I zapped and zapped.

Chris wrote me a telepath the other day, writing how he'd zap 50 space robots and tell them Sadness was going up. Then zap another 50 to tell them Sadness was going down.

If Sadness went down, he'd zap back the 50 he told it was going down.

Pretty spiffy, sane strategy, I agreed...

Jared was now dialing numbers out of the Yella digi-stacks and bleated out: "If I go to hell, I'll be welcomed, embraced by the devil! Will you?"

I zap. I zapped. Zap, zappity, zip, zap, zaps.

F641-4553-301-212-467.

Zewei. Pekka. Eric. Steven. Parker.

555-375-2211-187-211-420-0010. Tyrone.

Pedro in West Lake, Minnesota.

693-325-44-6789. Dre in San Francisco.

"Come on, Alek! Give me something!" I rubbed my palms together as I lasered his brain. No answer.

Machine: "This is Diego and Ariel! We can't take your call right now. Please leave your message after the..." I dis...

Kept zapping. Zippy, zappy, diddy doo... Zipperoo...

Cold Call Cowboy!

I zapped, zipped, zapped, zipped, and zapped. ZAP! 666-756-808-4424! I zap therefore I am.

Rough morning. Time for lunch.

LUNCH: I went to lunch with Adam, and Bao to a hornet restaurant. We had the fried hornet wings, mixed with synth rice, and vanilla larvae shakes.

As we ate, we debated e-SPORTS, the North Miami Def Panthers were playing the New Michigan Hopeless.

They'd been competing in a school shooting tournament VR SIM, reenacting famous mass shootings from the 1960s to 2010s, attempting to beat the gunmens' death tolls, set new scores of their own.

The Def Panthers had won the round with 20 point plus body count, especially rocking the Columbine stage.

Now they were competing in the 2000s. The Virginia Tech stage would be the most critical, and I had New Michigan in a slight edge, due to their star e-athlete, Baoping (banned from the last round for AI) being back in action.

The 2010s was the Super Bowl, the final round of the competition, and if Baoping stayed active, I had New Michigan easily taking that round, particularly with Baoping's sharp shooting skills being the key to the Las Vegas stage.

We finished our lunch, and hoverboarded back to the office.

On our way back we passed by the debris of an office building. It had yet to be reclaimed. Its hollowed core circled by chunks of blackened stone stacked into neat, vertical rows.

Bao said his buddy Ruchao had worked there at a VR vacation sales room before it burned down overnight, under mysterious circumstances, the owner, boss of the company, and his BOTS all disappearing.

Next door to the wreckage was an abandoned Funeral Room where Jumpy Jared worked, Sunrise Holdings. The building had once housed a McDonald's fast-food franchise.

As we walked by, I peered over and saw that there were coffin pods with suction cups still in them.

Some tablets were strewn about on the floor and charts still up on the walls.

A couple of those inspirational e-posters, still flickering, too, must have had a solar charge.

It was a dead Funeral Room. There was a notice from the NEA on the front door.

I knew a couple guys who had worked there. They had lived in my building.

No one knew exactly why it got shut down. The NEA was vague. But there were three brokers executed LIVE, via bungee rope noose hanging, on STREAM, so it must have been serious...

It was rather hot out today, 130 with the heat index and quite humid. The sun was shining awfully bright. I increased the tint on my retina cups...

AFTERNOON: Kehoe was back, mouth of gold teeth and was kneeling before a  Fucking Money LIVE STREAM. "VD Bonds went up today! VD Bonds went up!"

"... "

"Chicago!" "You called Chicago? What are you crazy!?"

I could hear Schrank berating Jennifer, who was crying and blowing her nose into a sani-BOT.

"I'm sorry! I just went off the lead load..." She whimpered and snorted, cat with its tail between its legs type of look on her face.

"Don't EVER call Chicago! That bastard you called could be NEA!"

I'm sorry, I really am. I won't do it again."

"Do it again and you're fired!"

There was an intense paranoia prevalent in these rooms about calling Chicago. They feared that any bastard in Chicago might be a member of the NEA. Never, ever, CALL CHICAGO!

The NEA, Chicago always present in the Funeral Rooms.

Their name was spoken with fear.

They were loathed.

They were the devil incarnate.

Understandable, considering the recent broker LIVE STREAM executions and the amount of FR they close, particularly in South Florida.

Rumors on CHITTER that the NEA and  Fucking Execution Channel were in cahoots.

"These leads are giga-garbage. Kehoe! We need new leads! These leads have been stepped all over..." said Baruch.

Kehoe: "I'm working on it. I'm working on it."

His hand machine spouted an 11 inch syringe, and he stabbed himself in the buttocks and shot up with a green viscous oil and bellowed "WHOA!" and skipped off and punched a synth cactus three times, before working on his suction cup and digging into a bastard's mind...

"... "

LEADS: The leads really had been stepped all over. I'd been noticing it too.

The Room Ted Bundy ran had been sucking first dibs on leads.

Most of the leads came from Alphabet, Google, Facebook, CHITTER. Ted bought this info on the dark web, as did other telemarketing, Funeral Rooms.

There were also harvesting companies posing as survey companies or "enter your name and address to win a dream vacation" type things.

They'd gather golden personal info and sell it to Funeral Rooms. The leads provided were usually on white backed e-logs, with a bastard's name, physical address, brain/neural links, hand machine, social media. Many were dead people, disconnected numbers. There were lists that had only work numbers of brains...

Work neurals could be rough to call. Secretary BOTS hated us calling, human secretaries were the coldest to deal with.

"Is this a SALES CALL?!"

The same lead sheets could viral to hundreds of Funeral Rooms. Every day these companies would zap the same bastards.

Some would get like 10 zaps a day from brokers so a lot of these bastards would change their mental coordinates.

At times there'd be an unfortunate NPC who'd received an identical/mistaken neural link of a bastard on the lists.

Poor sap getting 15 brain zaps a day for someone they never heard of.

One such guy I reached, Abu, with a Eurabian accent, "No, this is no Linda! I have 15 zap a day Linda! I want kill Linda! DEATH TO LINDA!"

A bastard called Punchi Panda, answered without even saying hello: "I don't know who you are! I don't know what you want! I don't know how you got my neural number! Just stop zapping me! TAKE MY NAME OFF YOUR LIST!"

Some bastards claim to be on the DNS ZAP registry and threaten to de-pluck or cause bodily harm.

Liberty occasionally viraled the same exact lead sheets with the same exact names and brains to multiple telemarketers.

Zap a bastard and: "Dammit, you people already called me like 4 times today!"

Start fronting a bastard and it'd turn out he's already been front loaded.

Worst of the lead sheets were those who'd lost a bunch of BAMA with Liberty and weren't thrilled to be zapped again.

We'd been SWAT-ed once by such a bastard, swarmed with police BOTS, in response to a Class A (phony) hostage situation, originating from a CHITTER hoax.

"These leads suck," said Jennifer. "I haven't even gotten a front load out today."

"So many work numbers..."

A couple days prior, from these same leads, I had a bastard, at work, tell me how he got so many zaps per day that he mathematically figured we were losing him BAMA in lost productivity.

I told him to let me help make him BAMA, with Anger option, and he said:

"You're already a bad investment for me, no thank you. I don't negotiate with a gun to my head..."

A telemarketer named Satan once told me how he liked to call bastards at work because you know the bastard's there and has BAMA, so few working, these days. Bastard could be Class A or Uber A...

"These lead sheets are plastics!" Jennifer said as she popped up from her coffin pod and chucked a digi-stick into the garbage can.

The garbage can was already full of digi-sticks, mostly leads.

(To a telemarketer, the leads are quite important. Quality leads are gold. Junk leads are pyrite. Any telemarketer worth their salt will always blame the leads for not being able to open an account. It is always the leads.)

WORK: "Corporate offices," answered Bouhel, who'd been dozing into regen, clutching a wooden pallet.

We always answered our heads saying: "Corporate Offices" instead of the company name. Other FR did that too...

BASTARD: A distraught, 50ish man, receding hairline, ponytail fuck, came bursting into the office.

"Is this Libertys Investments? Where's Jared? WHERE IS JARED??" he was seething, foaming from the mouth.

Schrank asked the ponytail fuck what was going on.

The ponytail fuck, a tall, thin duck hunter of a man, with silver goatee, brown cowboy boots and old blue jeans with Texas-shaped belt buckle.

His off-white T-shirt, with big, bold, dark red lettering proclaimed: "Don't mess with Texas".

The ponytail fuck roared in Texas twang: "That dang Jared promised me my account was gonna make BAMA! That's what the hell is wrong! I done lost my entire investment, 50 fuckin' billion BAMA, to be exact, and now that sumbitch won't return my phone calls, I tell you what!

I reckon I wanna talk to Jared, face to face, like a man!"

Jared, eyes closed, lips pursed, was in freditation on the other side of the floor, sparking up a prospective client.

"... "

Schrank told the guy to leave or he'd call the cops. For all his usual verve, he seemed a bit freaked out. I don't think he'd seen a "bastard" in person.

The Texan, on his way out: "Y'all tell Jared I'm a fixing to shove this up his dang gone fartbox!"

The Texan brandished a potato-sized vial, filled with a clear liquid, a chunk of brainstem floating, swishing inside... I certainly wouldn't like having it shoved up my fartbox...

Schrank had to call the cop BOTS to drag the guy away because he was squatting in the parking lot next to his Ford Fucking Pickup, asking everyone going in and out of the building if they were Jared.

"... "

The Texan put up a fight with the cop BOTS too when they arrived. They gassed him down with pepper spray, re-enacted vint Rodney King, and laser arrested him.

Adam and a couple telemarketers snickered, snapped hand machine vids of the ponytail fuck being dragged off in electric coils and like-posted the pics to CHITTER.

A little after the Texan was disappeared, Jumpy and I were having a happy outside. I asked him if what had happened freaked him out at all.

"No," he said, "shit like that happens all the time in these rooms. You lose some bastard's BAMA and now he wants to kick your ass. I've had death threats and all that before. I got my body armor. I'm not stupid enough to leave home without it.

The way I figure it is that if there were 200 bastards out here in the parking lot, everyone who you dealt with over the waves, not a single bastard would know you, your face. Fuck them. Dumb hick should have invested in Rage options instead..."

"... "

WORK: Back to the brains. I didn't really get much action.

More disconnects.

A bastard in Cali screamed at me that he doesn't talk to telemarketers.

He disconnected before I could tell him that I'm not a telemarketer. I'm a licensed professional account broker,  Fucking Series 8 certified! I tried to say. That's what I always tell people who accuse me of being a telemarketer.

But when they tell me they like talking to telemarketers, I tell them I am a telemarketer.

One lady, Pricilla, who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus, and whose hobby was ramming cult members down with her car, had told me that she LOVED telemarketers, and then went on about her robo-cat, that'd circuit burned.

I tried to sell her on Grief options, but all she wanted to do was talk to another human about her cat, Harpo, and his sense of humor, how she loved him.

When she burst into tears, and I couldn't close or even front load, I had to disconnect and forwarded her to a compassion BOT.

Then I talked to one guy who said he'd lost over B104,000,000,000 in Happiness. Damn pill tech! he said and repeated again and again that he didn't want in after those losses.

"Well now you know how to lose, let me show you how to win!" I told him.

He disconnected.

I talked to one lady, Miss Sparky. She and her husband were true Florida panthers, crackers, had been in emotions for years.

She told me she'd listen to my recommendations but would never open an account with me. "Why?" I asked.

"Because I don't invest with embalmers, cold canvassing."

"When I invest, I meet, face to face, human to human. See if a broker can win a staring contest..."

Another workday over. I collected myself and floated to the lot.

Griselda was supposed to show up later and pick up the rent, but I doubt she'll remember.

I might call Anissa and see if I could stay over at her place because I received a hand text from management saying the pythons were back in the pipes and the water might not be working.

As I got into my car, I noticed a handwritten e-note on the front windshield...

It was from Jennifer; she left early today and looked kinda pissed. I swiped it open...

"Kim, you were always really sweet to me. I thought I should let you know something. Ted called me into his office and told me that if I didn't let him punch out my teeth and 'break' him a bloody, toothless blowjob, he was going to fire me. I told him I felt sick and just left.

That was the last piece of incentive I needed to leave. I'm going to move back up to Ohio with my boyfriend. I hope things work out for you. See you around sometime, maybe. Good luck! Jennifer"

COMMUTE BACK: I was quite distraught about Jennifer's leaving.

On my drive home, I purposely ran over a homeless lawyer, who'd been selling companionship on the side of the road.

I'd always had fantasies about Jennifer dumping her boyfriend for me.

I'd dreamt about us both making lots of money at Liberty. Going out to posh restaurants and dancing. I'd thought of us laughing together, making love, and wanted to get a convertible, drive/fly up the beach with the top down, her in a bikini at my side, music blasting.

I'm not sure, but I think I may have been in love with her on some sort of level. Her leaving and how sad it made me were all I could think about.

As I was pulling into the parking lot of my building, I saw an acrobat Asiatic girl, in black Adidas track suit and shiny white Adidas running shoes.

She was across the street, staring down a warlock guardian angel flying a slow-roving black Mercedes.

The warlock grunted and whapped her, hard in the face. with a chrome McDonald's cup, full of alligator piss.

The cup had a ton of ice in it and the blue cubes went flying everywhere all over the street and sidewalk...

The warlock and his Mercedes vanished into thin air...

The acrobat turned purple, anger on her face like an enraged gorilla.

She sky-kicked into the street, swinging flailing punches and kicks at random vehicles.

Then a low flying, obesity crisis tow truck hit her from behind and kept driving.

I'm sure it must have killed her on impact. But it reversed back over her, touched down, and pancaked her (just to be sure she was dead, I took it).

The obese, hitched to the truck, a Hawaiian man in hula skirt, laughed, pointed, and panted.

"... "

I saw Charles at his car, polishing a sniper gun and I barked in dog voice: "FUCK YOU!" at him. He just jilted his head, perplexed, cross-eyed...

NO HOPE: Griselda was in the lobby as I face rec'd into the building.

She was buttering up a prospective tenet of hers, a 7-foot-tall frog in a tuxedo, their voices barely audible, because nearby was an office building being torn down by wrecking balls of chained obese Hawaiians, the office buildings displaced to make way for a new spiral sheer skyscraper, housing roto-tronic workers, quantum, qubit industry.

It was deafening, the demolition. Thumping sounds shook the ground like an earthquake.

"Good to see you, Kim!" she politely screamed over the construction.

"Good to see you too, Griselda!" I yelled/replied and said: "You need blood for next month's rent?"

Griselda, even louder because the construction/demolition/Hawaiians screaming had gotten noisier: "Yes, I do. I'll see you later!"

With that, she floated out the front door and had forgotten about the frog.

He was just standing there with a confused look.

The elevator worked. I was happy about that.

I face rec'd into my apartment and the water worked too.

It wasn't often that both the elevator and water work correctly on the same day.

I decided to take a shower, but the BOT water pressure was dismal, like a drip.

After work, I'd often go for a walk, but I was too depressed, so instead, I ate chili maggot crawlers and watched the  Fucking Talk Show Channel  STREAM about cyborg cockroach farmers who have telepathic sex with their synthetic herd animals.

I decided to zap Anissa...

I zapped her digits but got a "Deer neer neer... We're sorry but the neural you have just called has been disconnected" message.

I hear heaps of those messages at work.

I figured maybe she hadn't paid her bill, but that wasn't like Anissa. She always paid her bills on time. She is very financially responsible.

I figured I'd go by her apartment to check on her. She lived in a similar type of building as me about 30 minutes up north on the beach. I had a spare key to her unit because I watered her plants when she went out of town and I took it with me just in case there was something wrong.

I worried maybe one of her tricksters had cut her up, Jack the Ripper, or went Jeffery Dahmer on her, and maybe was in her apartment, eating her alive like a zombie from VR.

Packing proton gun, just in case, I strapped on my voto-jetpack and flew over to see her.

I flew over fast. Her apartment box was courtyard style, and I launched to her level, and knocked on her door.

No answer.

"Anissa? You in there?"

I unlocked the door and went inside. The whole place was empty.

Her BOTS, 3D furniture, clothing disks, shoes, everything, gone.

I went over and knocked on her neighbors' door, her friend, Selena, a Cigar, single mother of two, took care of Anissa's kid sometimes.

Selena, however, was bad at splamming BOTS, would break/malfunction them, Anissa said.

I always wondered how someone could raise 2 kids, no problem, yet muck up simple BOTS...

Selena (who worked as a chatter sex operator) answered the door, in a pink velvet tracksuit that'd been holographed with a dizzying array of GIF bloody Jesus images, spinning crucifixes...

A foxy lady, 30ish, long dark hair, brown eyes, tan skin, and a slender, athletic body (she and Anissa went running on the beach a lot), I admired her beauty for a second before inquiring into Anissa's whereabouts.

Selena, in a thick Cigar accent: "Anissa leave this morning. Leave her kid with me. Say she must go. She leave you note. She no come back soon, she say. Anissa mother get little Papito. I sorry. I know you was friend of her."

(I don't know why but she always called Anissa's son "Papito.")

She handed me a handwritten note on shiny, thin 3D tablet paper, smiled at me and closed her door.

I stood in a daze, swiped it open and read it...

"Kim, I just received a counter-offer, and got a contract with a MAJOR STREAM,  Fucking Porn, out in Next LA South, and they need me, IRL, out there. It's a two-year contract and after I'll be set for life. Maybe you can come visit me. I think I may retire in the Cali desert. Here's my new N LA neural number, --- --- ----- . Call, VR me anytime. Wish I could have seen you IRL before I left. Be a good boy..."

(lipstick kiss mark)

Anissa

As I was leaving Selena's doorstep, I could hear her on a chatter- moaning, gagging sounds echoing from her apartment.

"Oh si, baby, fuck me good. You make fuck me good. Bueno! I like you cock in pussy. Oh si, make a fuck with me good. Oh, Papi, oh daddy, you fuck me hard. You fuck me with you rock hard pinga! Si! Si! Si! SIIIIIIIII!!!!!"

"... "

Both of the women I cared most for in my life had vanished on the same day.

Anissa's departure stung most, though. She was practically my best friend. I could tell her anything. She was always there for me.

I loved her. She was the smartest person I think I ever met. She knew something about everything. You name it and she knew something about it.

It wasn't going to be the sex that I'd miss most about her, although I was certainly going to miss that. It was the companionship.

That's what I'll miss most of all. Drinking our mosquitoes together at Hemingway, her laugh and the way she smelled. I'll miss those nights more than anything...

I jetpacked to my apartment and was sad.

The elevator wasn't working so I roped up the side of the building.

I was lonely.

I was angry that everything was going to shit.

Fuck, why couldn't I really be making the kind of CASH Ted guaranteed if I made enough zaps?

Why couldn't I close more accounts?

Fuck! Why couldn't I have more BAMABUCKS, a bigger life unit, a higher car, a supermodel primoBOT or human fem, have sex with more human women or be a celebrity STREAMER, e-athlete, or something like that?!

FUCK! Why couldn't I have Jennifer?

I wanted to be in that convertible with her riding down the beach, so bad, so bad!

Fucking FUCK! Why did Anissa have to leave?!

I'd thought of killing myself before during times when I got depressed, and now I couldn't help but think about it.

One of my 3D guns I downloaded is a shotgun. It's long, silver, double-barrel and holds 2 buck shots. I keep it in my closet.

I always keep it loaded just in case I wanted to kill myself. It would be better for suicide since it's more powerful than my handgun, gorier than my proto or ray-gun...

I swiped off all my clothes, slipped off my body armor, and, tears streaming down my cheeks, I summoned the shotgun out of the closet and fucked the barrel into my mouth.

"I just want to be loved..."

I thought, my finger curling the trigger. I was about to Jesus it when my hand machine buzzed.

I was hoping it was Anissa but was also suddenly irritated.

Who the fuck was calling at a time like this?

Don't they know I'm trying to commit suicide over here?

I answered my hand: "Hello..." in an angry hush. I didn't appreciate my suicide attempt being interrupted.

"Hello, may I speak with Mr. Cancer, please?" said a smarmy, monotone sounding male voice.

I could hear a lot of people talking in the background behind him.

"This is Mr. Cancer..."

"Mr. Cancer, this is BTK from APP Handy. I hope you're doing well this evening, sir.

I would just like to let you know about an exciting new offer we have for you today. Are you one of the millions of Americans paying too much money for their hand machine dats? Because, if you are, I'd like you to know about a new package APP Handy is offering. It starts with..."

I cut him off: "You sound too much like you're reading off a script!"

"Excuse me, sir?" he politely asked.

"It sounds too much like you're reading off a script. Try more humanity in it. Spice it up. That's why we talk to telemarketers. You sound like a BOT."

I couldn't believe I was standing here in tears, naked, shotgun in hand, coaching telemarketing.

"Well, sir, I appreciate that, and want you to know that APP Handy is no ordinary..." right back into his pitch.

He was talented at overcoming objections, I thought, and I appreciated his diligence, dedication to the telemarketing craft.

There was a humming at the door.

I politely swiped the telemarketer on hold.

I didn't feel like putting on any clothes but since my feet were a bit cold from the floor, I slipped on my off-white polar bear fur slides.

Then I motioned with my hand machine, slid open the front door, stood at its threshold.

Holding the shotgun in my right hand, I saw Griselda.

She looked absolutely horrified to see a naked man wearing only polar bear furry slides. Plus, I was still in tears and armed with a deadly weapon.

She gasped and paused, stared at my flaccid penis.

"Did I, did I... come at a bad time?" a puzzled look on her face, eyes still on my dangling cock.

"Heck no! Never been better! How YOU doing?" I said, smiling like a kid on New Christmas morning, attempting to alleviate the awkwardness of the moment.

"I'm... okay. I came by to pick up the blood from you, but I can come back later!"

Awkwardly, she started to back away.

"Would you care to join me for a cup of honey heroin tea?" I asked.

"No, uh, that's ok. I really must be going," as she backed away further.

"Just join me for a cup!" I grimaced and pleaded.

"No, some other time. See you later!"

She was frantically swiping for the elevator.

"Why won't you join me for a cup of fucking tea?!" I lambasted, voice straining...

Then I politely said: "Oh yeah, and the elevator's not working again. Could you please call the management and inform them of the problem?"

"Sure, will do!" and she jumped out the window.

I slid the door and picked back up my hand to see if the telemarketer was still there.

He wasn't.

It was a fem BOT voice: "Deer neer deer, we're sorry, but if you'd like to connect, please swipe shut and try again. Deer neer deer..."

I was still very depressed and thought about killing myself.

However, I felt like talking to somebody before I died. I didn't want to be so alone.

In times like these I'd usually zap Anissa. But I couldn't talk to her right now. I was too upset about her leaving. She was probably on a jet tube right now to New LA, or already there, sucking dick... Breaking fistfuls of BAMA...

So I skimmed my hand machine for the local suicide human-r hotline.

I also opened a stream to the  Fucking News Channel .

Bill BOT was accosting a Cyber War 1 veteran humanoid and CW1 veteran cyborg, both veterans virulently opposed, openly against the Wars.

(Though awkwardness, commercial interlude ensued when they collectively, simultaneously malfunctioned and none of them could remember which War and who was for/against it...)

The suicide hotline's QR was 1-954-dont-do-it.

I scanned and navigated through the muzak, automated BOT menu, screaming like a banshee: "HUMAN! HUMAN FRICKING BEING!!!!!!"

A familiar voice answered.

"Hello, this is Jennifer, from the suicide helpline; talk to me, and I'll listen."

"Jennifer?" I said, astounded/delighted to hear my long-lost colleague's syrupy sweet voice.

"Kim?"

"What are you doing calling here?"

"You know what I'm doing calling here! What the hell are you doing taking my call there?" "Ummm, I needed extra CASH so I work here a few nights a week. It's not bad. I get to help people."

"Yeah, you're a friendly human being. It seems like a suitable job for you. You always cheered me up at work. I like you."

"I like you too. You cheered ME up! All those stupid jokes, texts you sent and all. How come you want to kill yourself? You're so positive..."

"I, it's that I, was so, so flipping sad that you left. Then my best friend, Anissa, left today, went to New LA to be a porn star STREAMER..."

"I wasn't closing enough accounts, so here I am, naked with a shotgun, about to kill myself, begging my landlady to have honey heroin tea with me, giving advice to telemarketers and talking to you."

Jennifer: "Ick, I hated that place. That job. You should leave it too. It's toxic... The mental toll, disconnects, the roaring, cursing, anger... Your mind is like your body, you feed it well, it reacts well. You feed it negativity, toxicity, next thing you know, you're naked, holding a shotgun... Quit that job. Do something better..."

Me: "I don't know if that job is worse than how I feel now..."

"The job IS you now..."

"I'm really sorry it turned out bad for you there, too, Jennifer..."

"Me too. If Ted wasn't Class A... But forget him. It got worse when I came home... My boyfriend told me he's going back to Ohio without me. Said it wasn't me, it was him. He's been n-chatting with a girl back in our hometown, said they're 'in love.' I can't believe that asshole..."

"What a loser! From all you'd told me about him, I always hated him. You're too good for that, you know?"

"Awww, you're so sweet. Hey, you wanna have a bite to eat with me later? I'm in the mood for pancakes and could use company."

(Maybe this is what it took for me to get Jennifer out. Naked, shotgun in hand, on the verge of suicide. Whatever. I'll take it!)

Me: "I love pancakes. Let's go to IHOP, the one near the Funeral Room. I know the waitress there. She gives me free rat shit coffee."

"Sounds good, I'll meet you there at 10, after I get off. You aren't still going to kill yourself, are you? 'Cuz I want some pancakes and don't want to eat alone."

"Hell no, Miss Pancakes! Seriously, though, you talked me out of it. You're good at this. I'll see you soon..."

The connection went silent.

HOPE: I felt better. I had a sani-BOT clean me up, warped my 3D shotgun into a massager and had it iron out my back and shoulders.

I holographed blue jeans, a plain black T-shirt, and drank a cobra shake and watched the  Fucking Reality STREAM.

I surfed into a new reality show called  Make My Dreams Come Fucking True!

On it, an aspiring model, an aspiring writer, an aspiring singer and an aspiring movie star all battled it out for a big break type of  Fucking STREAM contract...

They all played games, dares like the model kicking the writer in the balls five times in a row; the actor, creeping up, setting the model's hair on fire; the singer drinking the actor's urine and the actor eating the host of the show (former child star humanoid BOT) Gary Coleman's feces.

Afterwards the STREAM audience and CHITTER got to vote who should win. It was a five-way-tie, so nobody won.

They were so infuriated that they started to beat the living shit out of poor little Gary Coleman BOT with crowbars until the BOT short-circuited, and they turned on each other, wildly swinging...

Surfing around STREAMS, I turned to  Fucking News and today's deadlines.

A scorned ex-lover had thrown acid on a beauty queen's face in New Mississippi.

A nacho guerrilla in Next Mexico killed his mother, cut up her body with a hacksaw and grilled her severed leg in his backyard and fed it to his dog, on STREAM, went viral on CHITTER.

The Special Girls, a group of mentally retarded humans, saved from a nunnery, were planning a comeback tour.

President BIGFOOT III was planning tax cuts for Class B humans... Two AI NEWSBOTS debated the tax cuts' efficacy.

A 9-year-old girl was abducted by a Santa Cult Member in White Idaho. It hadn't yet been determined her humanity, prototype, ethnicity...

It was almost 10, so I left to meet Jennifer. The elevator wasn't working so I jumped out the window.

JENNIFER 2: We met for pancakes at IHOP.

She was wearing low-rider blue jeans and a tight pink half shirt. I could see her belly ring; it was crucifix shaped, gold and dotted with rubies.

Her lipstick was cherry red, and she had on ample mascara.

Her perfume smelled so sweet, like candy.

We ate baboon milk pancakes, drank weasel shit coffee and talked for hours about e-SPORTS, reality STREAMS, Liberty, her now ex-boyfriend and the weather.

I worked up the balls to ask her if she'd like to come back to my place and hang out. To my surprise, she said she'd love to.

When leaving the IHOP, we gazed up towards the nightly sky show, a palette of exploding green, blue, and red flashing light patterns and shapes beaming from the Andromeda colony.

Jennifer said she'd like to visit there someday. "So would I, so would I," I whispered, before we locked lips and melted into a kiss, our tongues in sparks.

We hugged and jetpacked back to my apartment, where we had sex, smoked happy, and watched the  Fucking Disaster STREAM; a cathedral in Eurabia burning, laughing nuns jumping inside, immolating...

I'd again neglected to set the punching alarm BOT, and we awoke around 11 Antifa.

During regeneration, I had a vision that I was Santa Claus, twirling a cat-o-nine-tails, shellacking a vint Julia Roberts WHOREBOT on her naked ass.

Jennifer was by my side, curled up into a fetal position.

She looked so peaceful and beautiful. I didn't want to break her regen, but my bladder levels were bursting, so I arose, soared to the disposal hose, relieved myself, sani-BOT freshened me up...

When I came back, "Jennifer" was gone.

What remained was a flickering 3D sheet of paper, a bill, B30,647,840 from Happy Handy.

That suicide hotline was a catfish for Happy Handy Fem BOTS. They'd gotten my personal data from the neural link and dispatched a femBOT to play Jennifer.

Happy Handy had the fiercest collectors, too, many of which hosted  Fucking Torture  STREAM.

I glumly scanned my BAMA, knowing it'd fuck my account, not that I had a choice.

It was too good to be true. The real Jennifer, probably back in Ohio with her boyfriend, who, in all likelihood, might have been a decent guy.

My serotonin levels dropped so I downloaded a plug from my hand machine. Feeling better, though knowing I'd miss work, and any opportunity to make back my lost CASH, I opened the  Fucking News STREAM.

I will never forget what I saw next.

REALITY VIEWS: WHAAAAAAAAAABAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMM!!!!

"Breaking News!" The Cruel read in large, red, bold letters on the bottom of the hologram...

NEWS FEMBOT BLOND LAURIE DOO: "Emotions Sales company, Liberty Investing, has just been raided by the NEA and local public police!

It seems the company has been defrauding investors from Next America, Eurabia, Andromeda, Z-Stralia, Asiatic, SAM, and African Islands...

A WATER spec room across the street from Liberty, run by a proprietor who used to own Liberty, Ted Bundy, was raided too. Bundy's and all Liberty's Class A certs have been instantly deleted and disabled!"

They then showed Taliban, and Liberty's entire staff: Jared, Kehoe, Schrank, Woo Bum, everyone, being led out in front of the former Walmart building, in laser coils, forced to kneel.

NEA agents spray-painted "LIAR" on each of them, on their chests, backs.

Fucking News and the  Fucking Execution Channel merged STREAM.

A Leatherface BOT and an Ed Gein BOT dropped from a hover-copter, brandished chainsaws, and beheaded the kneeling telemarketers, one by one, and a Kazakhstani polo team on mechanical horses rode in and played polo with the severed heads.

The panoramic STREAM panned to Chief NEA Agent B. Goetz, who tore open his dress shirt, flexed his biceps, and pointed to the camera. The FEED went dark.

Fear Options on CHITTER charts spiked.

My Disappointment and Rage over the suicide BOT Jennifer instantly vanished, and instead of posting a shitty review, or complaining, I video-STREAMED my story, and it went VIRAL!!!

The NEA contacted me via neural link later that day and told me I'd be one of the few tainted telemarketers whose life would be spared, and unlike others, NEA Enforcer, Dog the Sam Hunter, the blond bullet mullet vampire, STREAM SUPERSTAR of  The Fucking Execution Channel, with his signature dark ass wrap around shades, would NOT kick out my closet and viciously or rabidly mutilate me, eat my genitals...

They'd listened to my zaps, never heard me lie, and appreciated that I'd followed protocol and forwarded customers to compassion BOTS, who, I found out later, were owned by the same FRED that controlled the NEA.

No matter.

The NEA appreciated my heartfelt STREAM feed too...

I was now a tainted telemarketer, though, one who'd worked for a disciplined Funeral Room, a scarlet letter, despite that I'd done no wrong, nor been convicted of anything.

I looked for telemarketing work but couldn't find any.

My building was torn down to make way for another spiral skyscraper, full of roto-tron qubit operations.

By ordinance, I was moved to a smaller concrete box, way farther from the beach, where it was terribly hotter, heat level 140 degrees daytime, 110 night.

My first viral STREAM was the only that brought me any acclaim.

I tried alligator farming, opening a few other STREAMS, but nothing took off.

Anissa disappeared after she'd gone to New LA, and I never heard from her again.

Nothing left, overwhelmingly bored, I wrote a memoir, uploaded it to the networks and finally used that 3D shotgun to kill myself.

THE END
  1. Taliban Telemarketer

