Flux. Link. Network.

Reboot?

Ignore?

Abort?

Playing out like a flash animation spinning in his mind, a conceptual outline of his new project fades into view:

3-D Billboards Slicing Through An Octagonal Mindscreen With Technoslave Ambience Droning in the Background.

"We don't need a Forrester report to tell us that our demographic is shifting dramatically and the out of sight price-to-earnings ratio is gonna scare the daylights out of them once all the dead chickens come home to roost." So says Detournement, a rapid exposure culture-jammer who excels at flourishing a 360-degree branding agent that marks her future revenue stream in ways she can no longer keep track of.

"Only artists can thrive in this market environment," she keeps bantering. "We of the poor. The MFA-enriched poor who tell it like it is. No pussyfooting here, just loads of arty web site development sponsored by Daddy's funny market funds."

"Uh, money market funds is what I think you meant to say," says DJ Client. He's her one and only. Her one and only big stick mooch with all the cool and cum a young girl can get by on.

"Market may be crashing," Lady D. keeps riffing, "but how you react and manage these cycles will have a major impact on your success in building wealth over the long-term. What we need is an Image. Something that will catch on with the Gods of Money-Junk. An avatar."

"An avatar?" asks Client.

"Yeah, a kind of All-Knowing All-Noding 3-D Omniscient Narrator that has access to everyone's purchasing patterns, but instead of this Grand Storyteller being generated by a big bad corpo giant, A Doubleclick Devil, it's being generated by an anonymous artist collective that wants to change the world AND get rich doing it. This would be the same artist collective that pretends to be conceptually-pure, politically-correct and anticonsumer. In theory, that is. But in practice they keep selling objects to rich elites whose mega-companies destroy the environment. But let's not think about that. That's not what matters. What matters is that it's the hot new trend in contemporary art. The mainstream media is buying into it, right? They're swallowing our handles like it's fresh-squeezed cum juice. CNN just called it Pure Art, but USA Today, hoping to increase their own market share, said CNN was lost in the past and renamed the phenomenon E Suprematism. An exhibition of this work is now available both at the Whitney Museum of American Art and online at MCIWorldcum. The exhibition's publicity program isbeing sponsored by Philip Morris. Union Carbide. Exxon/Mobil ..."

DJ Client, another rapid-exposure culture jammer focusing efforts on musical mutiny and executive decision-making power, was no longer paying attention, although Lady Detournement kept talking.

"The suit is still pending," she said and DJ kept silent.

"If you think about it," Detour was rambling, "we have a history in direct marketing that goes back to the days of the gold-rush, and so labeling our turf Silicon Mines was the smartest thing we ever did. How many articles did we get out of that?"

DJ got up and went to the fridge. He looked out the window at the big mountain crags. They called these rocks The Flatirons. It was a zillion dollar view. Literally. Good thing they bought in before the big land grab.

"Nuthin much in here," Client yelled out as he peered into the fridge, "except cold spaghetti and bottled water."

But did it come from the source?

"Detour, where this water come from?" asked DJ.

Detour didn't answer. She was too lost in her rap. Which she kept practicing, as if going over her lines before the big performance tomorrow.

"Sound bites, baby," she whispered, and then, back into character,

"I think it's going to take a visionary, or make that Visionary, capital V, like Vagina, Verbatim, Velly Velly Vonderful, Vaccine and Viagra." She cut herself off.
"You got any dope?" she yelled at Client.

Her character was becoming undone. Post-corporate. It must be about nine at night. If it's pre-corporate, it must be about six in the morning.

But what about those work-anxiety dreams? You know, the ones that replaced the dirty wet dreams.

DJ came in with the bowl of cold spaghetti and sat down and started slurping it up with his chopsticks, extra slurp noise reenacting his glory days in Tokyo, when the clubs were destined for mating calls.

"You out," said DJ with an extra loud slurp, and so Detour shook her head, mussed her dirty blond hair up a bit, and tried again.

"It should be a core part of the agency's operations that we create fictional realities within the context of real media delivery systems."

    FICTIONAL SITES, REAL MEDIA

"The emotional content is what comes across," she said, trying to trigger some more sound bites out of him. "People want the emotional content. They want to build a relationship of trust with their daily computer interface."

"Well, that's why I do it," he said, slurping up more noodles.

"Why? What?"

"Images and sounds are everywhere. And all we basically do is look into our computers, eyeing the beyond."

"And feeling left behind . . . "

"Exactly. Feeling left behind and searching for Meaning. Same old same old."

"Listen: I need to vacillate."

"Cool. You got Vaseline? Can't vacillate without Vaseline - and that's an order!"

"No, but I got my DJ's wet spaghetti fingers and a dildo appendage I call The Carrot King."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. And he's about to abdicate. That's why I want to test-run our vacillation - before it's too late."

"OK, but without the slick Vaz, I can't promise anything...hmmm, so what do you say? First me, then who?"

"No, first me, then who!"

"Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Versioning."

"Versioning who?"

[sound of match, deep inhalation, profuse exhalation]

"So what I am supposed to be? Your Johnny-Come-Lately Muse of The Spheres?"

"You contuse, Mon Cheerio. Contuse and confuse. You are NOT a come lately. Maybe come often, but never lately. Take it from me. The Ink-ubator. The drip-dry Abstract Expressionist disseminating ghost notes on the pixellated parchment. E-fucking-lastic. Like I be the robotic brethren sittin' tight with my homies on some old publishing house's still in-demand back list. I got me some prestige. I got me some clout."

"You ain't got no back list. And there ain't no such thing as a publishing house. Unless you call this wall of virtual space I keep uncovering a kind of publishing house. But that'd be like calling my life's work a fancy home page."

"But it IS a fancy home page. That's what they said it was on CNN, and CNN rules."

"OK."

"OK!"

"But I want you to share my Weakness."

"Your weaknesses, baby. Repeat after me: I want you to share my weaknesses. Say it."

"I want you to share my Weakness. My Weakness is grand, it's the total summation of all my petty little weaknesses, the same petty weaknesses that make me like every other no-fucking-body with their endless petty weaknesses. But it's also more than that. My Weakness is Supreme Weakness. Untouchable Weakness. Prolific Weakness. Totally networked and branded Weakness..."

"The Supreme Fiction is what I'm hearing here. You know, I thought that that embrace we had tonight, at the airport, when you first saw me come down the corridor - that was sincere."

"I'm glad you liked it. How many of those politically-incorrect Chinese herb-pills did you eat on the plane?"

"Four."

"Only four?"

"Yes, but they were a tasty four. Although the last one gave me trouble. My mind is so clear I can't see the sky for the heavens..."

[light of match, deep inhalation, profuse exhalation]