# summers out of reach
life's what you make it by talk talk now plays in the lab background
you ate muesli with surprisingly non cardboard tasting almond milk and organic raisins
looking forward to an early data dump while going over last night's scene reports
now shortly after sitting alone again in the cold collective kitchen of morning thinking it's miracle we managed to get to university at all
not that university could ever be considered the ultimate pineal of personal development and achievement academic or otherwise
another giant meat processing factory split into different sections
what gets dumped out at other end after multiple long and useless wasted years is generic grade capital p product
obedient worker drones
only reason we wanted to get here was to escape from the small no horse town of our ongoing youth populated with desiccated undead shufflers
credible a fantastic feat of hyper modem science the researchers in our hometown arena derive so much pleasure from waxing their cars each overcast sunday afternoon mesh
this horribly waxy static image of dire endlandian suburban life burned into false implanted experiences of earth based existence as yet only half lived
even at this late stage of project there are still many more adventures to be had down the black snake desert highway
staring out the window of one's room cube at the chinese internal martial arts courtyard of the next door neighbor
topmost edge of their garage has fancy tiles with a delicate network of trellised vines running down the wall
pretty soon it starts looking like the wall in a secret temple mountain monastery in ancient china where needlessly esoteric martial arts are figured out by tired bruised but ideologically eager students
revises reissues amendments new covers cheerless dwellings slackers sticky adolescent time pseudocode street markings
it didn't take long only a few years before one started noticing some deep essential nonthing
about life here about island researchers and how it's all filler
no meaningful meat but plenty of greasy bone dry gristle
years of half remembered conversations in dead end seaside cafes
steamy sweat cigarette smoke rolling down smeary unwashed windows and everything bland in between
marginalia of obscure sociological publications long dead and abandoned on time dusty shelves of local countryside town libraries
where the permanently old wander in out for the change of a chat with the staff
hello misses tempest nice to see you again lovely awful weather we're having can we interest you in another couple of saucy sci fi survival error comedy romance novels
not this time thank you they reply bung us an old huge mumford sociology textbook with those natty photographs of 1950's control amerika
we love to read the tiny spew texts student researchers of quote big science scrawl in between the lines
tiny tawdry thrift store tales of unrequited will to life in small town south endland
regular rounds of nets curtain ruffling while the holotv flickers forever in nameless backgrounds in hollow minds
silent weeping rivers of blind fish eyes
multitudes racing down electronic highways making it up as they go along along neverquite stopping to make the briefest of checks on batteries and hydrogen for the chainslaw
ignition key for the stealth shinobi microlight the thinnest most transparent of silver jungle insects to take one high above the red brick canopy in dreams where one neverquite seems to rise up far enough above the shambling blue grey crusty faced flesh eating suburban undead
away from the middle of the road
anywhere out to fuzzy midnight margins to far out post modem milton keynes industrial estates cool researchers talk about online where they use slick post modem typefaces in bold displays of modem post industrial design
of recently paved over mindsets where one might get into serious post situationist ramblings and drink sweet herb tea from smart titanium ceramic spun backpack flasks
here have another largely taste free vegan choccy biscuit / no we shouldn't oh go on then
in which fragmented narrative snapshots from deep suburban archives are proved without doubt to be in no way a positive long term substitute for existence
grey faced sickness of words paragraphs sentences snappy dialog
well defined and emotionally rounded characters with nice hair white even pearly teeth sensually active with outgoing friends in the professional sector
cute little cross sections of endland liff pre packaged safe and easy to maintain
radial re assertions of the new clear family unit
slow dead leaves in a box in a forgotten drawer in a haunted house in a frozen and maddeningly harsh wood of sad fossilized trees
when researchers attempt to encompass to manage to classify to capture the half imagined essence of whatever they think it means to live or rather die yet continue to live in such a nonplace
nothing on telly tonight and nothing on tomorrow
so why the heck not see how far this silent pathway goes
forever deeper without end or rhyme without pause for specific special effects
expensive cheap neon sci fi flickering all way down dear researcher
moths brushing up against electrical wires of a monolithic device now sparking spinning down burnt winged and lonely to the dirty floor of the biosynth butcher's shop
destined to dance to deff by the endlessness of blue while unforgiving centuries are spent in nameless bedsit flats around old londonium town listening to the same warped dire tape
memories sailing away in patient frozen darkness
meanwhile the rent is due again and mental health fades to one's default implanted brain cell responses
running blind through local woods on heavy autumn nights while wild things grow in the sweet dry hush of near dead dusk
from here on in that is right from the outset it gets kinda sketchy
public dictionary of odd things that there aren't any words for
records fainter the gaps between longer more void aching
hang on the current lab pseudocode key to the basement archives is missing
wandering undead now taking an interest in the faint grey smell of student brains
shouts and stamps from the internal chinese martial arts courtyard have all but stopped the new owners are turning the whole inverted mountain superfortress into a virtual tourist information center
fellow researcher henry swanson: we used to have this thing for fiddly little black hi tech gadgets
that by owning / being owned by one we'd be able to get out of trouble by using it to escape to a better tomorrow
some vague sci action jive like that
dens sure dens were important too
cardboard boxes are inherently fun we once asked snake and they agreed
get a load of cardboard boxes and arrange them on one's driveway
tape them all together into a secret summer warren
cut out little spy holes in the sides
stick a few blankets down in the end boxes
stay there for hours with one's mates reading comics eating giant melton pork pies andor the nearest organic vegan equivalent talking about various lofi action adventure scenarios
how they might play out within the expansive imaginative boundaries of one's secret club based around unusual micro rnd projects
best den built was one way up in a tree in the forest next to one's old house
smell of the dark moist forest enfolding the senses
bird sound and early summer tree filtered sunlight
it's what's needed right now
a profounder more expansive senses of mystery and plain naive heartfelt joy back in / as life
well researcher sign here we'll hook you up to this machine which can reactivate every single false memory image you've never had
right up to the time of your local manifestation inside a heavily augmented biosynth data ninja growth vat deep within a vast hyper dense hypercorporate neo mayan data temple
researcher x: wow can you really do that
lab technican: we sure can now sign here press harder please thank you
here's your receipt and here's our receipt for your receipt
have a real / productive day
researcher x: gee loftleader industries sure are friendly efficient and polite
lab technician gives a cheesy thumbs up at the floating holographic selfie camera
so what began as an attempt to escape the terminal boredom of sokalled everyday life has turned into a new old type of darkstrange trip
our new friend left the cold room of our ongoing student accommodation at 07:04sbt for their job in town shuffling paper for a large faceless company
winter winds and freezing rain lash local slate rooftops all over town while we sit here in the library waiting for our inside contact to tell us where it's all happening
where we can get cheap kicks or at least the vague fleeting sense of timeless hyper organic beyond
been here hour or so flicking over a vast post industrial sociomedia grimoire
all it's making us feel is like a single malformed rivet on the grimy underside of a megastructural black iron bridge between the fathomless past and an unknowable near future
telekenetic auto construction multiple interacting time layers of flaking toxic gray paint
textures of once fashionable post apocalyptic first person sci fi shooters
no travelers come this way they're content with preying to holotelevision
no you can't borrow our ideal monday mourning mix tape to overlay and enhance overly complicated blandscapes of collective mis imagination
researcher henry notices vines have sunk their roots into the nu media underground
henry leaves the library to stroll in deep forest rains of organic being which surround campus on three sides
soon blissfully lost again walking in silence with their secret brothers the fox and the crow
after a while they even imagine seeing our lady of the mazes kate bush hiding among the cloud stretched trees
embodying an ethereal otherworldly aura presence
a scantily clad pop chanteuse under ivy freshly spring wrapped in endlessly new trellises of waving forever green most profound
kate beckons henry forever deeper into the quiet wood of morning where after skipping lightly among the trees takes their hand
together like a pair of upper class twits in some bad merchant ivory chase scene full of barely repressed sensual potency their delicate upper middling class costume drama continues until they can be spotted no longer
oblique messages about the chest swelling joys of cultured refinement
romantic colonialist notions spread large right across this scenic painting a soft impressionistic quality
a falling spectrum of leaves around them melts together in a dirty pastel blur akin to a cheap 70's skin flick poster public school researchers spasm to in private
some skinny being posing semi naked on a high backed wicker chair and barely draped with a finely crocheted blanket
in which much like kate ancient beloved summer was forever out of reach
ongoing environmental apocalypse note: back in the day summers in endland weren't so darn hot
they were however still terminally boring and existential ache inducing
// [[republic of bob contents | imaginary pastime republic of bob]]