Monday, November 9, 2009

Third Person Disorder

My girlfriend says I need to do some character development.  OK, that may be true on a personal level too, but in this case she means my writing.  Soon as she said it, I thought what the fuck, I mean, it’s autobiography.  Also, it’s just the start.  I think it’s a shitty parable, but here it is – the start of yet another first novel the world doesn’t need.  It almost certainly especially doesn’t need a queer, cyberpunk, meta style autobiography.  Still, I couldn’t dream up this shit, it’s all true, every word – and it only happened last year.

Scar and the Board of Human Affairs

Scar leaned on the counter of her local lesbian bar in a stereotypically laconic, dykey sort of a way and began to count clichés.  High femme lipstick lesbian over there in the corner, defying the rules by buying her own drinks.  Baby boi dyke hustling around with a pool cue, acting tough and praying for someone to love.  Old school butch with the obligatory ill-fitting jeans and a bulky cellphone clipped to her bulky waist.  The newer, more androgynous models, drinking overpriced things with groovy names.

Tribe.

Queer folk had their own spaces, they weren’t allowed to mingle.  Straight society had played with tolerance for generations, before admitting that actually, it didn’t want perverts anywhere near its wives and children and cattle, thank you very much.  For those Queers who didn’t naturally dress Queer, there were pink triangles to be pinned to lapels, so that they could be identified and shunned by the mainstream breeding population.  And Queers weren’t allowed near children.  At all.  Society knew what them Queers were like around children and it was having none of it, thank you very much.

She ordered a clichéd beer and drank it straight from the bottle, in a clichéd kind of way.  She began to peel the label from the frost-sweating bottle with her clichéd short nails while she examined her clichéd comfortable workboots to make sure they had the right level of clichéd anti-fashion scuff marks.  Everything was perfectly clichéd, from her clichéd button-down shirt to the clichéd distressed jeans and the clichéd well-tailored and exquisitely battered leather jacket.

As she counted off the clichés in the bar, she counted exes too.  As a fully accredited dyke, Scar had been out with around a fifth of the bar’s floating population, had consoled another fifth when it was heartbroken and listened to about nine tenths of it complain about their girlfriends at some point.

Obviously Scar wasn’t Scar’s real name; her real name was something feminine and clichéd and Scar was the nickname she’d picked up back in the day when she hated herself enough to indulge in some clichéd self-mutilation.   Scar looked around at all the women she knew, all the clichés she recognised in her adoptive family – because when you’re queer, your real family generally poisons you with clichés and you have to indulge yet another cliché, go out and make your own new queer clichéd family, just so you have somewhere warm and comfortable to go.  Scar was sick of clichés.

The following day, she showered off a mild hangover and rode a clichéd motorbike through a generic city (queer people have to live in cities, because, on the whole, smaller communities are just too full of gossip and rejection) to the Human Affairs Office.   She stood in line to get forms, then she stood in line to get the forms stamped and then she stood in line to see a consultant.

“So,” quoth the officious official behind the desk, “so you think you can be a Human?  What makes you think you qualify?”  Scar scanned the official, remembering that for people to accept you, you need to make yourself as much like them as you possibly can.  So she tried to look bored and pretend her wallet was stuffed with photographs of her children and that she was liable to apply make-up at any moment.

“Well, I have the right DNA, for a start …” but as she was saying it, the official was already shaking her head.  “DNA can be manufactured these days, you know this.  We’ll need more.”

Scar thought it over.  What was common to all humans?  “I belong to the species at the top of the food chain!” she yelped, delighted to have thought of it.  The official shook her head again.  “No, you don’t.  You’ve been designated ‘Queer’ which, as you really ought to know by now, puts you slightly above chimps, but far below chihuahuas.”

It was true.  It didn’t seem right, but it was true.

She thought some more and then said, “I weep tears when I feel sore and I am euphoric when I am in love.  I can think and feel and learn.  Surely those things make me human?”  The official carried on shaking her head until Scar began to be concerned about whiplash.  “What you have to understand,” said the swivelling official, “is that once the Societal Norms Authority has designated you ‘Queer’ you immediately have fewer rights than Humans and are more likely to end up depressed, ill and dead – Queers are worth very little to us I’m afraid.  Look, just go back to your cliché-niche and be grateful you are still permitted to process oxygen.”

Scar inspected her newly shined boots and wondered what to do.  The official sighed and reached for a rather toxic looking leaflet and handed it to her.  “Achieving Heteronormativity within the Mainframe Mainstream Heterosocietal Structure,” she read.  The official began nodding, “This is the only way you will ever be reclassified as Human – and it’s well worth it.  You’ll instantly gain all the benefits gained by Conformist HeteroHumansTM.  Take it home, read through it and then contact the Agency.  There’s a course and an exam, but we’ll help you.”

The road home was blurred, as roads are when the journey’s unclear.  Scar sat in her kitchen drinking coffee and staring at the pamphlet.  It was covered in clipart, the colour had bled beyond its firm, black lines.  There was a helpful checklist of things to do to become Human.  Scar thought about all of the things that made her look and feel like a dyke and was suprised to find that of all of them, only one featured on the official list.  She slept with women.  She’d thought that if she grew her nails and wore different clothes, she’d be regarded as Human.  She was even willing to trade in the bike for a hatchback and the boots for something more feminine.  She’d been prepared to relinquish vegetarianism in favour of steak and even to contemplate drinking beer from a glass.

Apparently the criteria for being classified as Human were simple for her.  All she had to do, was have relationships solely with men, or simply forego relationships altogether and hey presto, people would stop looking at her sideways, society would accept her.  To be Human, Scar would basically have to give up any hope of love.

It seemed inhuman.

Poignant, that last line, don’t you think?  Too blatant though, all of it.  I thought I’d do some scene setting and character development next, so this is what I came up with.

Home was an apartheid-era concrete monstrosity kind of like an Alcatraz for hamsters.  Well, of course it was; this is that sort of story.  Scar chained her boney to a monstrously concrete pillar and sloped off upstairs.  You had to lock your wheels down tight, but front doors weren’t even necessary they were so pointless.  Not only were you under strict orders to have your domicile accessible to the security forces, but if a Hetero felt like strolling in and helping itself to your possessions, there was no protection, no recourse.

The revolution had already taken place, you see … pink triangles out on the streets in peaceful and then violent force.  Fists and slogans and the media rushing around like delightedly headless chickens – the whole damn shebang.  After the revolution, somehow the same society which had managed to embrace the “love see no colour” slogan, had completely rejected Queers, mostly because they didn’t breed and had sex that the Heteros didn’t want to think about except when they were completely alone.

Queers had been assigned flats, two to each flat – one male and one female.  Anybody whose gender didn’t fit snugly on to the binary went into communal digs.  The “logic” disregarded science completely and was geared towards the strange hope that once in a confined space, a man and a woman would eventually give in, fuck and therefore be bisexual at the very least, if not Hetero.

Scar’s flatmate, Dave, was as butch as she was.  He was, in fact, butch enough to pass for Hetero and be accorded Human status, but he was too stubborn.  “We’re living in a fucking post-armageddon cyberpunk cliché, darling!”  he called to her as she slammed the unlocked front door.  “You’re wearing my jeans.” said Scar, “Also, this shit is steampunk.”

Another good reason to be Human – they got the best tech.  Queers got last years obsolete, clunky machines and low-priority connections and always, always, the threat of complete disconnection.  The solution?  ID theft, of course.  A more personal kind of a closet.  With your real ID, you logged on and danced to their tune.  Any supposedly subversive information and communication went on to the fake ID and you hid your tracks compulsively for fear of getting bust.

At that point I realised I was writing the damn commentary instead of the story, but if you’ve ever tried to wrestle a plot out of your life, you know how hard that is.  So I rebooted my brain.

Scar shoved her way into her flat through a fucked up plywood door and flopped out on the fucked up couch with her boots on.  Time to log on to the underground i.e. an old school bulletin board (remember them?) online, that had been around since the time of dinosaurs and dial-up.  The moment of connection still made her saliva dry a little and her palms sweat a little.  Scar loved the internet with a serious amount of addiction and devotion to its safety and its surprises.

Who do you want to be today?

Some hacker’s parody of a vintage software marketing slogan welcomed her along with a login pop-up containing her real name and the names of two unknown Heteros, dead for all she knew, their identities hijacked and sold.  Software all masked and secured so that any snooping authorities just see some housewife in Texifornia checking out the latest state approved news or whatever.  Veto the hacker told Scar that all approved net services had the word “breed” embedded in every single image, as Hetero indoctrination and Scar believed him.

As usual, there wasn’t a lot on the Java Divers Bulletin Board and what was there seemed pretty tedious, but that, of course, was the kick.  If you made it on to the site as a legit browser, you’d retreat pretty fast for fear of death by boredom, but if you were in the know, you knew … you knew that every innocent seeming word in the place was coded communication.

Alright I have to interrupt myself here, to say that no way am I going to paste any code key here – just in case.  So all you’re going to get, is the translations.

The Empress, in her dark, subcultural corner, was setting up some kind of pagan power festival, involving sex, fetish and apparently, the birth of another revolution.  Scar looked up to the Empress and was terrified of her.  Further down the board was what Scar needed – information about the Human Infiltration Scheme.  That particular initiative did exactly what it said on the lid.  It assisted Queers in rejoining Humanity, with the aim of overthrowing it.  So far as far as Scar could tell, all that happened, was that people vanished.  One day you were having a beer with Jay down at the Charmageddon, the next, Jay was gone and if you tried to find out where, strangers began to follow you around.  You soon learned not to ask.  Talk at the Charmageddon the next night would revolve around Jay’s treachery and how she was never a real Queer anyway.  Like there were degrees of Queer or something.

She opened the Humanity thread and scrolled down the instructions yet again.  Stage one, complete.  Make contact with the Board of Human Affairs.  Go home and do nothing.  The initial contact would already have alerted the authorities of another migration possibility, Scar would now be firmly on their radar.  Stage two, a telnet address, a MUD written to teach wannabe migrants to pass.  The authorities had their own slick software for it, but this was different.

Click …

Username: input the reference number assigned to you by the BoHA.

Password: input your Java Divers username

Welcome to HeroWorldTM!  Do you really wanna be a hero? y/n

Scar paused.  Did she?  Well, to be honest, no.

yes.

User RF5374/8 input your chosen nickname.

Oh shit.  Shit, shit, shit.  This was where she had to start using her real first name for the first time in two decades and it felt all wrong.  Flashback to rejection, confusion and pain.  Fuck that, she’d been incognito and on the run far too long.

Jane

Your nickname does not match your ref.  Try again.

Fuck.  OK.

Siri

Thank you Siri!  You are now a level 1 migrant to HeroWorldTM – you have reached the Departure Lounge.  As you walk through the door, you notice a bar counter, a flatscreen and another door.  Type /look to see who else is here!

/look

You see Robert, Molly, Helen and Jia.

/look Robert

You see a tall, dark man, with a wry smile.  Comms enabled.

/look Molly

You see a woman.  Comms limited.

/look Helen

You see a woman.  Comms limited.

/look Jia

You see a woman.  Comms limited.

No same-gender hook-ups here then.  No gender guessing either.  Scar decided that a bar without the ability to check people out was fairly pointless and was tempted to quit, when …

Robert: Hello Siri!

Siri: hi

Using title case in telnet?  Robert’s a bot.

Robert: If you need anything, just yell!

Definitely a bot.

Siri: i need a drink

Robert: Type /get drink

/get drink

*A crystal glass of white wine spritzer appears before you as if by magic*

Of course, white wine fucking spritzer.  Drink of heroes.  Scar knew the drill, she had to stay in character.  She spent another half an hour making mindless conversation with Robert the mindless bot and reading Molly, Helen and Jia’s equally mindless chats with him.  She sipped her spritzer, bade the bot a polite farewell and …

/quit

Back to Java Divers to read the instructions yet again, her new mantra.  Too risky to download them, but she needed to see them again, despite having a rather accurate copy stowed in her mind.

Stage Three – spend twenty minutes minimum on a minimum of four days a week in HeroWorldTM – no routine, stay in character at all times.  No matter what.

To cut a long, boring and raw text based story short, that’s exactly what I did for about a month or so.  My long-forgotten Siri-self hung out in that departure lounge talking to Robert for about a week before any other male appeared.  Suddenly I was talking to this guy called Anders, who I assume is a faggot and as uncomfortable as me with the whole thing.  I imagined him as completely effeminate, which helped me flirt with him publicly.  The other players must have been doing the same thing and Anders must have been going the text based equivalent of deaf with all the line noise.

Stage three – continue to frequent your local Queer shebeen, do not arouse suspicion.

Or anything else, Scar supposed.  No prowling allowed while migrating.  No love.  Not even sex.  Scar began to look at everything with goodbye eyes.

“Honeybunny,” said Dave, “what is wrong?”  Scar shrugged.  Rules of the game, she couldn’t tell anyone anything.  It was the part that hurt the worst.  She could fool Dave easy enough, she was often depressed.  She lay in bed stimming – twirling her right foot slowly round, first one way, then the other.  Just another sign of her Siri-self re-emerging; soothing and disturbing at the same time.  Sleep seemed utterly foreign, might as well log on.

Welcome to HeroWorldTM please type /read message to access [1] new message.

/read message

*Please type /open door*

/open door

*You are now at the gate.  Your intro phase is complete and you are ready to approach Stage Four.  You know how.*

The telnet terminal promptly closed.  Autoquit.

Stage Four – refer to BoHA brochure, apply.  Do not attempt a make-over.  Follow procedure.

Shit shit double shit.  Siri was going offline.

Scar stood in front of the mirror and stared.  Her hair had grown out a little in the telnet month and she’d hardly noticed.  That explained the lack of attention at Charmageddon – she thought she’d been giving off unapproachable vibes, but clearly she was just fugly.  No good being a dyke about town with a hairstyle copied directly from the bastard child of Elvis and a cockatoo.  She still didn’t think she resembled Siri, despite the lengthening mop of greying brown hair.

This third person shit is just shit.  Here’s what I looked like back then.  Hair as described and a bit curly.  Oh hell I hated those curls.  Blue eyes and two of them.  Unremarkable nose and mouth and a permanent scowl.  Body – well, not bad, but hardly athletic.  Thing is, as soon as my hair got longer, I felt chaotic and untidy.  Usually my hair’s about the only tidy thing about me and it’s shaved to a number one regularly.

It was a Monday Scar wouldn’t forget.  Ever.  She got up and freaked Dave out completely by making him some toast.  She slung on her leathers, hopped on to the boney and rode the city arteries to the BoHA building.  She’d emailed the address on the brochure and made an appointment with some clone-drone Hetero called Justin.  Justine smiled just like a croc.

“Siri …”  he said, smiling, “… um … rag .. er ..”  “Ragnarra,” replied Scar.  “Rhymes with rug.”  Neither of them made the obligatory rugmuncher joke – that was a first.  Scar wondered if Justin wanted to though.  He told her how it all worked and how it worked made Siri go dizzy immediately.  If she wanted on to the Hetero Programme, she’d have to decide and go, like, now.  No turning back, no passing go, no going home to say bye, nothing.  It was the gate again and Scar wasn’t at all sure she wanted to go through it.  Did she really want to go this far for the cause?  Was she subconsciously hoping she’d really end up Hetero?  Suddenly Scar wasn’t remotely sure who the fuck she was or what she wanted.

Who do you want to be … right now?

It was massively confusing.  She stared at Justin; a slight guy with a rather metro look to him.  Was he ex-Queer?  Was she allowed to ask?  Probably safer not to.  “Listen,” said Justin, “what you are now I once was.  Just go through the fucking portal, yes?”

Not what she’d expected him to say at all; Scar had been prepared for some serious beaurocratic aerobics, instead she felt like she was in an RPG.  Well, game on, motherfucker.  Scar got to her feet and said, “Let’s go.”

It was intense, man.  I was kidding around about the third person disorder earlier, but dead serious, I have it.  I used to get told to stop treating myself as a work of fiction more times than I care to count and at that moment I felt like I had retreated right to the top of my skull and everything was hissing and buzzing around me like white noise.

Sounds dulled and Justin’s mouth kept moving, but Scar couldn’t lip read beyond the fish tank glaze over her eyes.  He made a phone call, he opened his office door and Scar found herself or lost herself walking down a long, white corridor.  Could things get any more metaphoric?

Panic set in with a vengeance.

“Siri?” said somebody and Scar didn’t react.  Again, “Siri?”  Scar tried to focus.  Yet another drone was motioning her towards a shuttle, Scar couldn’t hear anything but her new old name, so she just got in.  She sat hunched forwards, her hands cupping her cheekbones, jaw clamped tight, eyes screwed shut and a headache brewing behind her sweating forehead.  Sometime or other, the shuttle stopped.  Somebody ushered Scar into a building, somebody took her into a small room.  Somebody gave her a pill and some water and Scar slipped into sleep like she’d been pushed there.

“Deprogramme!” yelled the annoyingly perky cheerleader with the pom-poms, “Reprogramme!  Breed, breed, breed!”  What. The. Fuck?  No remote, no way to switch off the screenfeed in her room and nothing heavy to throw at it either.  Scar groaned, remembering that she’d gone through the fucking portal, yes.  The alarm-screen was followed swiftly by her door opening and the entrance of another drone, smiling warily.  “Siri!” warbled the drone, “Welcome!  I’ve brought your clothes and when you’re dressed and ready, just press the bell and I’ll come and show you where to get breakfast and meet everyone.”  Exit drone.

These are not the clothes I want, thought Scar, as she hauled the dress (dress!) over her head awkwardly.  There wasn’t a mirror and it was probably just as well.  Scar didn’t want to see her bandy legs protruding from a dress, thanks all the same.  She pushed the button, the drone arrived and Scar followed her meekly down another corridor.

“Het! Het! Het! Hooray!” squawked a loudspeaker somewhere and Scar flinched.

The dress felt truly bizarre, flapping around her legs.  Air was going where no air usually went and Scar was certain she could feel her leg hairs being fluttered by the aircon.  A canteen, a queue, a tray, a table and Scar was having breakfast surrounded by strangers.

“Hetero is the way to go!” burbled the loudspeaker.

We’re here, we’re queer, thought Scar, sadly.

“Hello noob,” said the man next to her.  Scar blanked him and had a look at her breakfast tray.  It looked like retro-millennium junkfood; stuff in a bun, no chewing required.  Stuff in a cup.  A pill.  OK, what did she need the pill for?  The man leaned in, “Anna’s aesthetics, my dear.  Do yourself a favour and take them like a good girl or they’ll blow them down your throat through hosepipes.  You’ll soon learn the routine.”  Unable to bring herself to speak, a very depressed Scar swallowed the pill.

An inane grin crept over her face and she began to greet her fellow inmates.  Stephen, Marcus, Maria, Helen, Roland … the name Helen seemed familiar, but it was a common enough name and the effort of recall only made Scar’s head ache like a bitch.

Scar, Interrupted

Look, those pills were nice man.  Dinkum sleepers, honed and zoned to chill.  I spent about a week feeling heliumed and smiling more than I ever had before in my whole sorry life.  Eat this, Siri – sure!  Yum yum.  Drink this, Siri – hell yes, yum.  Take a shower, say hello, walk this way.  Whatever.

One morning the pill wasn’t there and the people around Scar started to make sense – it was horrible.  Stephen looked sympathetic and said, “It’s hell when they take them away, but you’ll be alright.”  Scar wondered how on earth she was going to cope with this odd version of reality.  A few more sluggish days of trays and sleep and screaming screens and the timetable began to change drastically.

A drone did something fussy to Scar’s hair and another drone buffed and shaped her alarmingly long nails.  More dresses appeared in her room.  The auto-screenfeed was now interruptable and Scar had access to authorised TV programming and net access.  “Being Het makes me wet!” murmured the screen on a late night porn channel.  Scar resisted the urge to throw up and deactivated it for the night.

Interminable dazed days full of group therapy and worksheets followed and Scar got lost in her own quiet sadness, never speaking unless it was unavoidable.  A pill of a different shape and colour appeared on her breakfast tray and Scar just swallowed it.

“The programme takes as long as it takes,” said Carrie, Scar’s very own counsellor, “it’s completely up to you.  It’s not about mindless compliance either, we want you to work it – you’re worth it!”  Scar’s eyes felt bloodwashed and she began to dream of shattered bones and screams.

My girlfriend suggested I treat writing as a job; do it from 8 till 3 and take an hour for lunch.  I love that woman.  I wrote a thousand of these words one day, a couple of hundred the next and I’ve now been sitting here for a couple of hours, the word count is 4224 and I am fading fast.  Some of this shit is just really tough to relive, you know?

By the time Dr Rose offered Scar the choice of clinical depression rehabilitation or compliance, Scar was medicated and resigned enough to comply.  Maybe the HeteroHuman option was the way to go anyway.  Since the revolution appeared to be passing her by, why not just admit defeat and get the perks.  Blessed are the meek, for they get the best seats on buses.  The ever-increasingly benign Carrie was thoroughly delighted.  “Now we’re getting somewhere!” she parpled.  “Let’s get you debriefed.”  Scar couldn’t even be arsed to make the obligatory underpants joke.

When did you first suspect you might be Queer?

When I was a little kid, I guess … I kept falling in love with my English teachers.  And Olivia Newton John … that smile and …

OK, never mind that.  Right.  Ahem.  How old were you when you had your first queer experience?

21

Had you had … relations with a male prior to this?

Kind of, but it just never worked and sometimes it was really sore and …

OK, OK, your physical was clear and we’re working on the psych side of life now, yes?

Yes.

When was your most recent Queer experience?

About 6 months ago I think, then she started to …

OK, OK.  So you’ve been clean for 6 months.  I just want to say that is a great start, Siri, I am very positive about your future.

And that is pretty much how all of Scar’s individual counselling sessions went.  Carrie would ask her stuff, she would start to reply, she’d start coughing, make a frenetic little note in her notebook and move rapidly on to the next question she didn’t really want answered.  Group sessions consisted of sharing hopes for the future, which for almost everyone seemed to consist of bright and sunny days strolling arm in arm with a member of the opposite gender.

A little later down the counselling conveyor belt were Queers Anonymous meetings, were people would “share” by shuffling nervously and saying, “Hi my name is Dwayne and I have been clean for 18 months.”  Or whatever.

Hi, my name is Siri and I have been clean for 8 months.

Hi Siri!

What a fucking rip.

Hi, my name is Helen and I have been clean for 11 months.

Hi, Helen!

Woooop, she’ll be getting her one year chip soon and probably a Laura Ashley fucking dress to go with it.  Joy.

I just want to tell all of you that for the past 3 months, I have been dating Anders!

Yay!

Whut. The. Fuckitty. FUCK?

Was she Helen the freaking Hero?  Would she admit it to Scar if she was?  Because if she was, then she was theoretically either part of the revolution, or a turncoat like Scar.  Surely she’d have remembered her name, Siri wasn’t common in those parts.  The instructions had been explicit – real names were a must, but no recognition should be shown on the outside world.  Scar had to get online, fast.  How the hell was she going to contact Veto the hacker?

What do you want to do today?

Generic connection screen, generic connection, under the authentic identity of one Miss (Miss!) Siri Ragnarra, no longer a rugmuncher.  I want to hack the fuck out of this system, thought Scar at scream pitch, why the suffering fuck did I never learn how?  Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit freedom.

Breathe.

There must be a way.

Java Divers!  It was on the open net, perfectly innocuous, perfectly authorised.  Hell yeah.  Yeah!  Scar could feel her hands shake as she typed in the URL and her lungs felt paralysed during the few seconds it took to kick up the content.

Shit.  If she used her usual JD login, Scar would run the risk of being bust.  OK.

Register

Click

New account

Better just be completely upfront, use her legit details and then slide right into very careful code indeed.

Welcome, Siri!

Java Divers, your online community for serious coffee adoration.

Love that coffee, thought Scar as she scrolled anxiously through the threads, hoping the gig hadn’t been busted, hoping that this was still the way.

At this point I realise I will have to blow the code, even though I refused to earlier.  I’m not going to change was I said earlier either, it’ll just lower my damn word count.  OK, by the time you read this, JD will no longer be the place.  Sorry.

Scar felt like air-punching when she saw the Empress, still there in her corner, offering liberation and perversion.  She hit ‘reply’ and said, “I prefer vanilla latté, but I adore your style.”

The humanity instructions were still there and Scar read them again.  There was still no data beyond the scheduling of that appointment – no help there then.  Damn.

Original poster: Troy

Show all posts

Click

Showing 101 of 3245 posts.

Fuck.  At least she was on a priority connection now, but that was still a lot of reading, she’d definitely be monitored if all she did was sit and read them online.

New tab

Enter URL

http://www.facebook.com

There, that should generate enough crap to smokescreen her.  Scar did a few quizzes and signed up for three moronic sim games.  Facebook did its thing, auto-refreshing compulsively, while Scar read lots and lots of words about coffee.    Despite her knowledge of the code, unless there was new stuff, stuff she didn’t know, just about everything Troy had posted was, in fact, about coffee.

Scar persevered.  She might as well – it gave her a goal and got her through the mundane brainwashing of the clinic.  She watched Helen intently at meetings and after a few meetings, got to see the famed and fabled Anders.  Subversive or revolutionary?  How was she ever going to find out?  Her attempts at conversation with both Helen and Anders were met with courtesy, but that’s all.

She told Carrie about Facebook and Carrie was thrilled, especially when she saw Siri’s profile.

Name: Siri Ragnarra

Interested in: Men

Looking for: Friendship, Networking, A relationship

Facebook was Hetero, binary-gendered, approved.  She mentioned Java Divers too and Carrie thought that coffee shops made for great dates and that it all boded very well indeed.

Scar read about coffee and played backgammon and vampires and did a million quizzes that told her what kind of guy she’d marry and what literary character she was and Scar got bored.  She clicked her way off the JD bulletin board on to their main page and was confronted with a cutely corporate coffee logo and a photograph of a coffee shop on Main in the city.

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