Part 1 – Moon

Your Face is Not An Organ (Part 1.1)

We went to the Moon to have fun, but the Moon turned out to completely suck. Part 1.1

We flew up and our feeds were burbling all sorts of things about where to stay and what to eat. Part 1.1

The waitress came by and Link stopped and smiled at her and she was like, What a nice young man.
That was because he purchased like a slop-bucket of cologne from the duty-free. Part 1.1

Impact (Part 1.2)

I was trying to talk to Link, but I couldn’t because I was getting bannered so hard, and I kept blinking and trying to walk forward with my carry-on. I can’t hardly remember any of it. I just remember that everything in the banners looked goldy and sparkling, but as we walked down to the luggage, all the air vents were streaked with black. Part 1.2

I tried to concentrate on all the stimulus, and the fun, all of it. Part 1.2

Even with his impact helmet on, Link stood out. He’s much taller than anyone else, because he’s part of a secret patriotic experiment. Part 1.2

She was the most beautiful girl, like, ever. She was watching our stupidity. Part 1.2

Juice (Part 1.3)

I shifted. I watched the juice. For her own amusement, she was letting it go, gentle and sexy. Part 1.3

The Nose Grid (Part 1.4)

Link and I were chatting about the girl, like I was going, She is meg youch, and he was going, What the hell’s she wearing?, and I was going, Wool. Part 1.4

Quendy came back from the bathroom and said, ‘Omigod! Like big thanks to everyone for not telling me that my lesion is like meg completely spreading.’ Part 1.4

We were all just kind of staring at her like she was an alien. She smiled. We kept staring at her. (The group watch Violet) Part 1.4

She and the girls spent the rest of the hour fixing Quendy’s hair to like showcase the lesion. Usually, Quendy is just like a kind of broken, little economy model of Calista, and she knows that, and feels real bad about it. But when this girl helped her, it wasn’t like that. Quendy was the center of everyone for a long time. Part 1.4

The Moon is in the House of Boring (Part 1.5)

Quendy bought some shoes, but the minute she walked out of the store she didn’t like them anymore. Marty couldn’t think of anything he wanted, so he ordered this really null shirt. He said it was so null it was like ordering nothing. Part 1.5

They were protesting all these things, some of them even were protesting the feed. They were like shouting, ‘Chip in my head? I’m better off dead! Chip in my head? I’m better off dead!’ Loga rolled her eyes and was like, ‘Omigod.’ Part 1.5

The old man reached out and, with a metal handle, touched me on the neck. Suddenly, I could feel myself broadcasting. I was broadcasting across the scatterfeed, going, helplessly, We enter a time of calamity! We enter a time of calamity! I couldn’t stop. And he had touched Violet now, and Link, and Marty, and from all of them, it was coming, We enter a time of calamity! We enter a time of calamity! Part 1.5

Part 2 – Eden

Awake (Part 2.1)

The first thing I felt was no credit. I tried to touch my credit, but there was nothing there. Part 2.1

… I was currently disconnected from feednet, of course, and I was starting to get scared, … Part 2.1

So I opened my eyes. Part 2.1

College Try (Part 2.2)

We’d been up for fifteen or twenty minutes. Everything in my head was quiet. It was fucked. Part 2.2

Boring (Part 2.3)

I couldn’t find anything interesting about that picture at all. There was nothing that was about to happen or had just happened. Part 2.3

Still Boring (Part 2.4)

They said that they had identified him, and that he was a hacker and a naysayer of the worst kind. Part 2.4

Suddenly, our heads felt real empty. Part 2.4

Missing the Feed (Part 2.5)

That’s one of the great things about the feed — that you can be supersmart without ever working. Part 2.5

Everything we think and feel is taken in by the corporations, mainly by data ones like Feedlink and OnFeed and American Feedware, and they make a special profile, one that’s keyed just to you, and then they give it to their branch companies, or other companies buy them, and they can get to know what it is we need, so all you have to do is want something and there’s a chance it will be yours. Part 2.5

Cache and Carry (Part 2.6)

One was a message from the crazy asshole, which said, You have been hacked by the Coalition of Pity. The other was a good sale at Weatherbee & Crotch, which, by this time, I had probably missed. Part 2.6

Night and Boring (Part 2.7)

Once, she went to the bathroom, casual-like, and came back with her hair parted a different place. Calista and Quendy watched her. Later, without saying anything, they went and did theirs different like that, too. Part 2.7

She said, ‘You go try to have fun like a normal person, a normal person with a real life — just for one night you want to live, and suddenly you’re screwed.’ (Violet to Titus) Part 2.7

So we just sat there, together, and we didn’t say anything. And it wasn’t bad. Part 2.7

Father (Part 2.8)

When my father got there the next morning, he didn’t stay long. He was being very powerful and businesslike. He was dressed up, and he looked like he was ready to give some orders and sort things out. He looked like everyone around us was stupid and he was going to roll up his sleeves and do some real clarity work. Part 2.8

‘This is . . . Dude,’ he said. ‘Dude, this is some way bad shit.’ (Titus’ father) Part 2.8

Salad days, with Sneeze Guard (Part 2.9)

It was the beginning of a great day, one of the greatest days of my life. We all played the dart game, and we laughed and sang ‘I’ll Sex You In’. Everyone was smiling, and it was skip. Part 2.9

… everyone wanted to dress like they were in an elderly convalescent home … Part 2.9

The Garden (Part 2.10)

Violet came back from the doctor. She was all intense looking. Part 2.10

She rubbed my head, and she went, ‘You’re the only one of them that uses metaphor’. She was staring at me, and I was staring at her, and I moved toward her, and we kissed. (Titus and Violet) Part 2.10

Dead Language (Part 2.11)

‘He’s a college professor. He teaches the dead languages.’ (Violet about her father) Part 2.11

‘They’re languages that were once important but that nobody uses anymore. They haven’t been used for a long time, except by historians.’ Part 2.11

I looked at her funny. ‘You write?’ I said. ‘With a pen?’ (Titus and Violet) Part 2.11

‘It’s the first thing my dad teaches the students on the first day,’ she said. ‘It means, “I came, I saw, I conquered”.’ (Violet) Part 2.11

Release (Part 2.12)

The Ford Laputa. Sky and Suburb Monthly says there’s no other upcar like it. And we agree. Part 2.12

And the feed was pouring in on us now, all of it, all of the feednet, and we could feel all of our favorites, and there were our files, and our m-chatlines. It came down on us like water. It came own like frickin’ spring rains, and we were dancing in it. Part 2.12

In other news, protests continued today against the American annexation of the Moon. Several South American countries including Brazil and Argentina have submitted requests to join the Global Alliance in response. Part 2.12

Part 3 – Utopia

Normal (Part 3.1)

Things were back to normal real quick. Part 3.1

We had this major debate going on because we watched the Oh? Wow! Thing! and there was this part where Organelle asked Jackie whether she had meg hips …. Part 3.1

We had a party at the end of the week over at Quendy’s, because her parents were off choking somewhere. That was when everyone was having those choking parties. I mean, it was completely midlife crisis. Part 3.1

‘We’ve all been through this big thing together,’ she said. ‘It’s got to change us somehow.’ (Violet) Part 3.1

Undervalued Truffle (Part 3.2)

… Link and Marty were playing each other at this game, The Cranky Tumble of Dark House, one of the ones with zombies and mutants, and they were all spinning around and shooting their fingers like guns. Part 3.2

I looked around me. Everyone was nodding their heads to music, or had their eyes just blank with the feedcast. It was just a party. Nothing but a party. Part 3.2

It is our duty as Americans, and as a nation dedicated to freedom and free commerce, to stand behind our fellow Americans. Part 3.2

The Others in Mal (Part 3.3)

I was feeling strange sitting next to Violet, and she wasn’t laughing, which was weirding me out. Part 3.3

I feel like we’re the only two of us who like remember the, like, the thing.
People want to forget. (Violet and Titus m-chat) Part 3.3

‘My feedware is damaged.’ (Violet) Part 3.3

Nudging (Part 3.4)

. . I remember, as the last forests fell . . . at about that time, we would see hawks and eagles in the cities. People walked outside more, back then. Part 3.4

Lose the Chemise (Part 3.5)

‘What I’m doing, what I’ve been doing over the feed for the last two days, is trying to create a customer profile that’s so screwed, no one can market to it. I’m not going to let them catalog me. I’m going to become invisible.’ (Violet) Part 3.5

We kept going from place to place, asking for weird shit we didn’t buy. Part 3.5

‘What do you think about resisting?’ she asked me really hard. Her jaw muscles were sticking out.
I said, ‘It sounds great, as long as I get to wear the chemise.’ (Violet and Titus) Part 3.5

Sniffing (Part 3.6)

They came to us. It was like they were lots of friendly butterflies, and we were smeared with something, and they kept coming and coming, and their wings were winking beautifully, and more and more came. Part 3.6

A New Place (Part 3.7)

I was afraid that she would be too smart for me, but she wasn’t. I don’t mean she wasn’t smarter, because she was, but just that there was so much she hadn’t done. Part 3.7

The Dimples of Delglacey (Part 3.8)

School™ is not so bad now, not like back when my grandparents were kids, when the schools were run by the government, which sounds completely like, Nazi, to have the government running the schools? Part 3.8

Now that School™ is run by the corporations, it’s pretty brag, because it teaches us how the world can be used, like mainly how to use our feeds. Part 3.8

So one time I said to her that she should stop reading it, because it was just depressing, so she was like, But I want to know what’s going on, so I was like, Then you should do something about it. Part 3.8

So after the movie we went right to the conceptionarium and told them, ‘We want the most beautiful boy you’ve ever made. We want him with my nose and his dad’s eyes, and for the rest, we have this picture of DelGlacey Murdoch.’ (Titus’ mother) Part 3.8

And it unwrapped in my head, a banner for a dealer, and links to other dealers, and a big line of credit, and I was hugging them, and I was like holy shit, by tomorrow I would be driving to pick up Violet in my own goddamn upcar, and suddenly, suddenly, I didn’t feel so stupid anymore. Part 3.8

Lift (Part 3.9)

Violet would tell me, ‘Resist the feed. Look into ox carts.’
‘Yeah, thanks, Violet,’ my father would say. ‘We’re having serious decision flux here.’ Part 3.9

‘He was beaten to death at the club. We saw it. The police, remember? They beat him over the head.’ She reached out and took my arm. …. I bought the Dodge. (About the hacker) Part 3.9

A Question of Moral (Part 3.10)

‘Yeah. Jefferson Park? Yeah. That was knocked down to make an air factory.’ (Titus’ father) Part 3.10

My father nodded and smiled at her with this meg condescending smile on his face, and was like, ‘Dude, I remember when I was like you.’ (Titus’ father to Violet) Part 3.10

‘I want to get worried. If there’s like some meg thing wrong.’
…. My mom reached over … ‘You’re safe.’
Dad said, ‘You have an upcar.’ Part 3.10

‘You’re acting out of line,’ said my father, pointing at me. ‘I’m really disappointed.’
‘Doing what?’ I said. ‘I’m just asking.’ Part 3.10

Observe the Remarkable Verdure (Part 3.11)

The place was a mess. Everything had words on it. There were papers with words on them, and books, and even posters on the wall had words. Part 3.11

Her father looked like a crank. Part 3.11

‘He says the language is dying. He thinks words are being debased. So he tries to speak entirely in weird words and irony, so no one can simplify anything he says.’ (Violet about her father) Part 3.11

A Day in the Country (Part 3.12)

She said it was, that he worked real hard at it, and also worked real hard teaching. She was proud of him, even though he was — from what I could see? like, in my opinion? — an insane psychopath. (about Violet’s father) Part 3.12

She would wait for days until she couldn’t stand it anymore to take it out and try it on. Part 3.12

She said, ‘It makes good times even better when you know they’re going to end. Like grilled vegetables are better because some of them are partly soot.’ (Violet) Part 3.12

Nudging Again (Part 3.13)

There, I’ll be sorting and sifting, and trying to make life as easy and interesting as possible for you and your friend and all of our excellent customers at FeedTech — making your dreams into hard fact™. (Nina from FeedTech support) Part 3.13

The Real Thing (Part 3.14)

‘Yuh,’ said Loga. ‘It’s Riot Gear. It’s retro. It’s beat up to look like one of the big twentieth-century riots. It’s been big since earlier this week.’ Part 3.14

‘Oh, sorry. I thought it was good to use stupid, long words that no one can understand.’
Calista laughed and looked backward, going, ‘Shhh. She’ll hear you and have an alpoduffin … fleatcher.’ (Loga and Calista tease Violet) Part 3.14

Fight and Flight (Part 3.15)

‘You can be a little . . . You can . . . It’s kind of scary for people sometimes. It feels . . . It sometimes feels like you’re watching us, instead of being us.’ (Titus to Violet) Part 3.15

She said, ‘I want to feel something. Let’s feel vertigo together.’ (Violet) Part 3.15

So Much to Do (Part 3.16)

She said, ‘I want to go out and see the world. There’s so much. There’s . . . just so much.’ (Violet) Part 3.16

Seashore (Part 3.17)

I went, You know the part that’s the really ironic thing? The guy? The hacker? You almost agree with him. He completely fucked you over, and you almost agree with him. (Titus to Violet) Part 3.17

We watched it move around. It was dead, but colourful. It was blue when the sun hit it one way, and purple when the sun hit it another way, and sometimes yellow or green. We had on suits so we wouldn’t smell it. (The sea) Part 3.17

Limbo and Prayer (Part 3.18)

Calista got it done yesterday. Quendy made this face. Now that lesions are ‘brag’. Now that they’re the spit. (about lesions) Part 3.18

Flat Hope (Part 3.19)

‘The natural world is so adaptable,’ she said. ‘So adaptable you wonder what’s natural.’ (Violet) Part 3.19

The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever. (Violet) Part 3.19

Our Duty to the Party (Part 3.20)

‘Can I tell you? We are hovering in the air while people are starving. This is obvious! Obvious! We’re playing games, and our skin is falling off.’ (Violet) Part 3.20

‘You don’t have the feed! You are feed!’ (Violet to the group) Part 3.20

…. and suddenly I realized, The party is over. Part 3.20

Part 4 – Slumberland

52.9% (Part 4.1)

The men in the wheels stared out, their mouths open, their eyes looking at everything flashing by, but the men were not moving at all. Just looking at the world helpless, in circles, the world going by. Part 4.1

87.3% (Part 4.2)

He sent me an address. ‘Go there,’ he said. ‘If things neural were going swimmingly with Vi, the number you detect would be about ninety-eight percent.’ I went there. It was some kind of medical site. It said Violet Durn, Feed Efficiency: 87.3%. (Violet’s father and Titus) Part 4.2

She rubbed her eye. Why are you standing so far away? Part 4.2

87.1% (Part 4.3)

‘It’s not you,’ I argued. ‘It’s the feed thing. You’re not like that.’
‘Maybe I am like that. Maybe that’s what’s wrong.’ (Titus and Violet m-chat) Part 4.3

I asked her, ‘What did it feel like? At the party?’
She waited. Then, she admitted, ‘It felt good. Really good, just to scream finally. I felt like I was singing a hit single. But in Hell.’ (Titus and Violet) Part 4.3

87.1% (Part 4.4)

They asked FeedTech to take on payments for research and repairs. They said that FeedTech had to, because it was about the life of a girl. Her feed’s warranty had expired years ago. (Violet and her father) Part 4.4

86.5% (Part 4.5)

‘She was like, Da da da, she was completely in mal, don’t listen to her, da da da, she’s a complete fuguing bitch.’ (Quendy to Titus) Part 4.5

‘Don’t you want to know?’
I said, ‘I guess not.’ (Quendy to Titus) Part 4.5

52.0% (Part 4.6)

My dad was there with me. He’s not doing very well. (Violet) Part 4.6

She decided not to have the feed installed. She called it ‘the brain mole’. (Violet about her mother) Part 4.6

82.4% (Part 4.7)

I could still smell the hospital in my nose. It wasn’t anything around me. It was her. I stopped breathing, but the smell was still there. I held my breath. (About Violet) Part 4.7

80.9% (Part 4.8)

I want to sit with you in a place where I can’t hear engines. (Violet) Part 4.8

I want to get older. (Violet) Part 4.8

78.6% (Part 4.9)

When I got to the end, that was it. Part 4.9

If you don’t look right at them, they can look just like an empty shell. (About hologram teachers) Part 4.9

77.8% (Part 4.10)

‘Titus? . . . Titus?’ Part 4.10

76.3% (Part 4.11)

She had tried chatting me a few times since she sent me the list, but I had on my busy signal. (About Violet) Part 4.11

Do you think she’s being mean to me? In telling me about that part with me standing by her bed? (About Violet) Part 4.11

Have you heard about this Central American stuff? Two villages on the Gulf of Mexico, fifteen hundred people — they’ve just been found dead, covered in this black stuff. (Violet) Part 4.11

76.2% (Part 4.12)

.. it was pretty clear he was thinking, My daughter is spending these last like precious hours with some malfunctioned asshole. (About Violet’s father) Part 4.12

59.3% (Part 4.13)

She kept sending things. I didn’t open them. I let them sit. I was walking around School™ the next
day, feeling them like, feeling them crowd me. (About Violet’s message) Part 4.13

I didn’t feel good. I sat on the sofa. I looked at the fireplace. I had deleted all her memories. (About Violet’s message) Part 4.13

57.2% (Part 4.14)

I got up and went to my bedroom door. I just stood there, and didn’t push the button to open it. My hand was on the button, but I didn’t push it. I stood by the door. Part 4.14

She was like, ‘Are you coming or not? This is my big time. I’m going to really live.’ (Violet) Part 4.14

‘I’m worried about the chat, though. That’s new. I didn’t know. Did you try to send me things?’
I lied to her: ‘A few things. They were short,’ but I didn’t feel good about it. I said, ‘You could send
the memories to me again.’ (Titus and Violet) Part 4.14

‘She figured it out. I’ve been sketched demographically. They can still predict things I
like.’ She sighed. ‘They’re really close to winning. I’m trying to resist, but they’re close to winning.’ (Violet about Nina the FeedTech assistant) Part 4.14

54.1% (Part 4.15)

There was some shouting going on by the college campus. … We asked the people what it was, and they said it was a protest. We asked for what, and they didn’t know. So we ate our pizza … (Titus and Violet) Part 4.15

‘I love you, Titus. This is going to be the most amazing night. This is going to drill eyes in the back of our heads.’ (Violet) Part 4.15

I said, ‘I keep picturing you dead already. It feels . . .’ I didn’t want to finish the sentence. She was waiting, though, so for some stupid reason, I did finish it, maybe because I was angry, and I said, ‘It feels like being felt up by a zombie, okay? That’s what it feels like.’ (Titus to Violet) Part 4.15

She said, ‘I went to the Moon during spring break to see how people live. When you came along, I thought, Now I’ll have a boyfriend, like people have boyfriends.’ (Violet to Titus) Part 4.15

‘You can finish the like, the sermon in the upcar,’ I said. ‘You’ll have a couple of hours before we get to your house.’ (Titus to Violet) Part 4.15

You low? said a banner. Not for long — not when you find out the savings you can enjoy at Weatherbee & Crotch’s Annual Blowout Summer Fashions Sale! It was a little embarrassing, but I did order a jersey. I did it really careful, in case she was tracking my feed. (Titus’ feed) Part 4.15

51.5% (Part 4.16)

But I am messaging you to say that I love you, and that you’re completely wrong about me thinking you’re stupid. I always thought you could teach me things. I was always waiting. (Violet) Part 4.16

Summertime (Part 4.17)

When school ended for the year, Link and Marty and I went to one of the moons of Jupiter …. It was okay. We had a pretty good time. By that point, I was going out with Quendy, and I kind of missed her. Part 4.17

People were just stopping in their tracks frozen. At first, people thought it was another virus, and they were looking for groups like the Coalition of Pity, but it turned out that it was something called Nostalgia Feedback. Part 4.17

It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it. I felt like I’d been running toward it for a long time. Part 4.17

The Deep (Part 4.18)

I heard a voice say, She wanted me to tell you when everything stopped. Part 4.18

My mother said, ‘Maybe because “we” have been strutting around on a whaling boat, eyeing up the V.P. of Sales.’ My mom had lost so much skin you could see her teeth even when her mouth was closed. Part 4.18

On the news, there were underground explosions that no one could explain in New Jersey, and a riot had started a few hours before in a mall in California, and was spreading, with feed coverage of people stampeding for safety and children falling and professional people beating the shit out of each other with chairs and a body floating in a fountain while the Muzak played a waltz. Part 4.18

4.6% (Part 4.19)

You could stand there and you would feel completely alone, like you were just in a room with a prop. Part 4.19

‘The worst stage was when one could tell she was still awake and almost alert, but she knew that nothing worked. Imprisoned. …. Looking out from the eyes. Her own mind, at that point, was as small and bewildered as a little fly. Behind great battlements.’ (Violet’s father) Part 4.19

‘You’ve done your duty. Why don’t you go along and play your games?’ said her father. ‘We’re the land of youth. The land of opportunity. Go out and take what’s yours.’ (Violet’s father) Part 4.19

‘We Americans,’ he said, ‘are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they were produced, or what happens to them’ — he pointed at his daughter — ‘what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away.’ (Violet’s father) Part 4.19

‘Will you ever open your eyes?’ (Violet’s father) Part 4.19

I ordered the draft pants from Multitude. It was a real bargain. I ordered another pair. I ordered pair after pair. I ordered them all in the same colour. Part 4.19

4.6% (Part 4.20)

I tried to talk just to her. I tried not to listen to the noise on the feed, the girls in wet shirts offering me shampoo. I told her stories. They were only a sentence long, each one of them. That’s all I knew how to find. So I told her broken stories. The little pieces of broken stories I could find. I told her what I could. (Titus about Violet) Part 4.20

And for the first time, I started crying. I cried, sitting by her bed, and I told her the story of us. ‘It’s about the feed,’ I said. ‘It’s about this meg normal guy, who doesn’t think about anything until one wacky day, when he meets a dissident with a heart of gold.’ (Titus about Violet) Part 4.20

Everything must go! (Titus’ feed) Part 4.20