7. God of the Game
Syurga
I left Club Utopia, my brain updating all information conceived in Sparta. The strategy can be summarized accordingly:
Brand Positioning: A cosy hangout for intellectuals to chill and network.
Partners: Starbucks and potential member franchisee*
Marketing Campaign: Coffee and TV** (using the Blur song of the same name as theme)
* To be loyal to the Starbucks brand, all construction of the dimensional bubble will be in the setting of a Starbucks café for branding purposes.
** In other words, the potential caffeine has to spur the mind like the idiot box.
The lower strata of Syurga had no sunlight. It was in permanent darkness except for artificial lighting from the neon bulbs of shops that lined the streets. Certain spots reminded me of many cosmopolitan Earth cities. Old uncle selling Chinese takeaway, the front of his stall decorated with roasted chickens and ducks, hanging from hooks like a zoophilic horror movie. The XXX corners and strip clubs, streetwalkers chatting up potential clients in cars and hovering cars. 24-7 convenient marts. Even many of the citizens look Earthly.
I enjoy people watching, and in many occasions, avatar watching. The pinnacle of many tall buildings can be seen from the ground, piercing space like Babel on steroids. Our phallic obsession: erect, and artificially make it bigger, taller and stronger. The sun shafts find strength as you ascend the levels, the architecture changing, metal and glass skyscrapers with huge parks and lakes within its enclosure; pristine like a sea of chandeliers with natural luminance dancing upon its surface. There’s so much here in Syurga, you can spend centuries and not be bored.
A thousand meters above sea level, I rested and decided for breakfast. There was a shopping mall nearby, and shops dotted the walkway. I chose an outdoor seat at a restaurant, a galactic fast-food chain serving big breakfasts of eggs and meat, poultry supplied from a farm on a planet orbiting the Orion Belt. It was a suitable time to relax and watch the world go by.
The culture here at a kilometre in the sky is urban middle-class. Families raising their young, teenagers exploring their avatars, Nephlim exploiting theirs. There was a group of girls with catlike ears and miniskirts, tails slinking out from knickers, used as an additional limb. At the distant corner, half a dozen bikers that could transform, together with their machines, into flying phoenixes of the rainbow’s hue, hung out.
Beneath a monument of prism glass that reflected the happenings in other parts of Syurga as well as other worlds, boys skate on jet powered boards, attempting a variety of stunts to impress the ‘cat’ gals, I presume. They were smokin joints rolled by hand, and some even had their incarnations as wild animals to scare mothers and little children.
The restaurant faced a garden, wherein its centrepiece was a fountain with waters annoying and disobeying the laws of nature. Instead of cascading towards gravity’s command, the liquid danced as if to tease the many lovers canoodling by the rim of the pool. Some placid, others amorous, and as though seduced by the songs of sirens from the core of this unnatural waterfall, the lovers were drawn into the sea, making love underwater while mermaids coaxed them into foreplay in a netherworld.
I felt like getting away, climb to the highest peaks of the commercial district and jump down. This was not suicide (you couldn’t kill yourself anyway) but rather merely a sport. Many people do this to feel the mighty rush of air against their face even as they stare into the blackness of space. There is a temporary grace, as if physics forgets its role, confused even, whether to propel matter into the far regions of the cosmos, or to plummet back to Hell, the centre of Syurga, which powers its massive economic system.
Realizing a pull of my psyche into the dark territory of Death and Hades, I might as well come clean and tell you something I’ve learned about my transfigured self. I can’t die. I can’t seize to exist. Yes, I can merge my consciousness into another being, or even evaporate into the particles of nothingness, but yet, in one way or another, I still am. And in the countless aeons outside the concept of time, it is only a matter of moments before I rediscover my past.
Call this a blessing or a curse, sometimes there is nothing but pure optimism to realize my life in this never-ending charade; however, often I too feel unadulterated dread, wondering if there is a sweet oblivion for me to be buried in.
This makes me think of the Great Beyond; not death per se (because I can’t die…duh, how many times must I say this???) but the domain of the dead, instead. I wonder what death is in the antithesis of things; the complete opposite, and how one can cross over. It’s a curious spirit I’ll say at play that makes me wanna go away, but Sharon, or Sha-Rronne rather, that makes me stay.
AI generated art prompted by author
All characters and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.