Feed

by M.T. Anderson

I wanted to buy some things but I didn’t know what they were.

I couldn’t find anything interesting about that picture at all. There was nothing that was about to happen or had just happened. I couldn’t figure out even the littlest reason to paint a picture like that.

That’s one of the great things about the feed — that you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and shit.

Later, without saying anything, they went and did theirs different like that, too.

“Busy?” “Yeah. With jobs. I guess they can’t come at all.”

I never heard Loga tell a story this good before, and she even used her hands and stuff,

“Maybe these are our salad days.” “Huh?” “You know. Happy.” “What’s happy about a salad?” She shrugged. “Ranch,” she said.

“I can read. A little.

I made hook-hand. She made hook-hand. We pawed each other with hook-hand.

the American annexation of the moon.

That was when everyone was having those choking parties.

I didn’t want her to look at them as if she was sorry.

“What’s wrong? Can you still get like, stuff and shit?” She laughed. “Yeah. Both of them.

In my dream, they told me they were the police.

it was one of those nodule shirts

So I turned up the brightness, and I went down, and I shined it more bright, and it turned out the black moving goo was all these hordes of cockroaches. There were miles of them, running all over the tops of the domes.

“Sure. Then I could swivel it.”

Violet asked me, “What are you? What’s your cup size?” I shrugged and played along. “Like, nine and a half?” I guessed. “That’s my shoe size.”

“It’s fine. You’re not listening.”

“It sounds great, as long as I get to wear the chemise.”

She told me about how things were getting really bad with some things in South America, but she couldn’t really tell exactly how bad, because the news had been asked to be a little more positive.

I hated it when she got like this, because then she wasn’t like herself, I mean, she wasn’t like this playful person who drags me around the mall doing crazy shit, she was suddenly like those girls in School™ who sit underground and dress all in black with ribbing and get an iron fixture for their jaws and they’re like, “Capitalist fool — propaganda tool,” holding up both their hands, etc.

“And the chin, dimples, and hairline of DelGlacey Murdoch.”

They must’ve had just one sun for the whole place. All the houses were really old and flat. The streets were blue and cracked, and they were streets, I mean, like for when things went on the ground.

I saw people praying over missiles.

Oh, okay. Shit. Okay. So can I go like back to sleep?

jackass

The Swarp XE-11: You can take it with you.

“Yeah. That may have cost us a few.

Violet said, “I can never keep any of the riots straight. Which one was the Watts riot?” Calista and Loga stopped and looked at her. I could feel them flashing chat. “Like, a riot,” said Calista. “I don’t know, Violet. Like, when people start breaking windows and beating each other up, and they have to call in the cops. A riot. You know. Riot?” “Oh, I just thought you might . . . know. . . . Maybe . . . I wondered what incited it.”

I dropped her off at her house. We didn’t make any plans. There weren’t any plans. I spent the rest of the night doing homework. It seemed like that was the only thing left to do.

We had on suits so we wouldn’t smell it.

Let me just push the bowl toward the wall.

Oh my god. . . . It’s a penis thing, isn’t it?

He was cloned from the bloodstains found on Lucy Todd Lincoln’s opera cloak.

I make my own announcements. Into the garbage can, so it echoes.

i love violet

She told me about the scales on butterflies, and the way animals lived in ducts, sometimes whole herds. People would hear the stampeding through their walls. There were new kinds of fungus, she said, that were making jungles where the cables ran. There were slugs so big a toddler could ride them sidesaddle. “The natural world is so adaptable,” she said. “So adaptable you wonder what’s natural.”

there is so much to unpack here. i love this book. butterflies have scales? people hear stampeding through ducts? the worldbuilding is incredible

and then the feed was going, it was doing this song, I got some feet, and those feet, they’re gonna walk. Walk, feet, you walk, the ten toes, I walk with the feet, that one,

i forget if they metioned yet why all the art is bad. but its such a good detail

Then you’re walking around alone. You know, there’s this weird moment where you realize that you’re alone, and no one else has been walking for a while. You realize that the moment, the exact moment, when you became alone is already over. You’ve been that way for a while.

The weirdest thing is that you know that you’re more alone than anyone, but that more people are thinking about you than ever before.

I was disgusted, like, Huh? You can see her like muscles and tendons and ligaments and stuff through the lesions.

this might be titus's first original thought

And you’re talking — you’re starting to talk in a fucking sestina! Okay? A sestina!

holy shit i didnt notice this. what is a sestina and how does it relate to marty? is it like link = lincoln?

She fixed her hair, which was this hair held together with two magic wands.

chopsticks?

. . . the poor sales of the Ford Laputa in the Latin American market can’t be explained by . . .

I wanted Violet to be uninsane again, just a person who would touch my face.

damn it titus. LISTEN TO HER

Violet said, “How many do you need before you’re done?” and I said, “These are yours, first,” and she said, “How many do you need?” and I said, “You know. You completely know,” and she said, “That’s why I want to hear it from your mouth.”

what

She waited. Then, she admitted, It felt good. Really good, just to scream finally.

“I know. It wasn’t her.” I didn’t say anything. I just nodded.

titus is almost getting it

She’s the one who this is happening to. I don’t know what you’re saying to her? But I hope you aren’t sulking weirdly.”