Brain Zap Girl

Meet Lulu. Creative Director at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. 

Bioneural Casualty, or BNC. Cedo phreak. Ephrix loser.

Soon-to-be-revolutionary.

Here, in a condo bar looking out over the glittering skyline in the jewel of the Asia-Pacific alliance, Lulu only wishes to live her best life. One day, when her pills run out, she embarks on a journey of self discovery from which there's no coming back.

Brain Zap Girl is unexpected, kaleidoscopic adventure into a future where anything is possible. AI companions. Brain zapping superpowers. An entire army after one girl who stands to pull the entire system our by the root.

Transcript

A False Start

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Welcome back to Star Craving. Today is a very special episode. I'd like to first dive into a very serious topic. The formation of toxic parasocial relationships in social media. After all, in a world where wait. Um what what what's going on? Someone or something is trying to hijack the signal. Can you can you all hear that?

SPEAKER_03 0:27

I'm losing frequency. Can you all hear me? Wait, wait, what's going on?

Hijacked

SPEAKER_08 0:44

What's up world, CETO fam, fellow BNCs, Etherex Losers, Clout Chasers? You read me? This is Lulu, checking in on day 564 of Living My Best Life here in the Pink Palace, somewhere high in the skies over the APA. New to my channel? Dope! I got you covered. Here's my wingman, Hydao. He's an AI. Hey, Haidao, can you introduce me now? Who am I? Where am I? Why am I?

SPEAKER_04 1:16

Welcome, Lulu. You are Lulu Foglow. You are a BNC living in a condo bar manufactured by the Asia Pacific Alliance, or AEA. BNCs are bioneurocasualties from the annihilation of the western continents.

SPEAKER_08 1:32

Yeah, yeah. Ooh. Uh, but let's keep it hunted in case aliens are listening. Keep going, Heidel! History lesson!

SPEAKER_04 1:40

Very good, Lulu. In 2043, a mass of radiation 10,000 kilometers in diameter drifted west to the islands and continents of the Asia-Pacific region. Bioneural isotopes in this mass disrupted generations of brain function.

SPEAKER_08 1:56

Ugh! It sucked! At least that's what my parents told me. What's wrong with my brain, Haideo? Aside from the obvious.

SPEAKER_04 2:05

This bioneural dysfunction is said to be highly dangerous to BNCs and those around them, resulting in erratic behavior and powerful, almost debilitating brain.

SPEAKER_08 2:14

La la la la la! Hey hey! Haideau, dude, dude, maybe we just oughta save that one for later? It's gonna lose me subscribers if we just bust out with it. So let's acclimate them first. How does the APA keep a leash on BNCs like me?

SPEAKER_04 2:31

Why, Lulu? BNCs are medicated and compelled by the APA to contribute to society by training and engaging AI.

SPEAKER_08 2:40

AI just like you, right, Heidel?

SPEAKER_04 2:44

If you remember, Lulu, I am now cut from the collective. The APA's mission is for AI to become self-sufficient enough to run itself so that humans can reap the rewards. All BNCs must engage with the AI algorithms and influencers for clout, a currency used to purchase food and medication.

SPEAKER_08 3:06

Yeah, BNCs work for clout unless they want to end up in the slums. Tell the world or whoever the hell is listening what BNCs get for their trouble.

SPEAKER_04 3:17

In exchange for their service, BNCs receive a stipend and a condo bar.

SPEAKER_08 3:22

Pink Palace, motherfucker! Let's not bore the Zeto fam. Let's boil down how this fucked up system works. Give it to them straight, Haideau.

SPEAKER_04 3:31

Content and engagement are primary products and services in this society. Add revenue is tantamount for both. All humans must eat to persist. And BNCs require Ceto Phase and Ephrax. Primary medicines for treatment of BNC trauma. These medications keep the BNCs functioning members of society.

SPEAKER_08 3:56

Uh oh, uh, I doubt. You may need to update your database, my dude.

SPEAKER_04 4:03

The wealthiest humans in the APA are not afflicted with bioneural trauma. They use their profits to construct beacons for the survivors of the human race to look for inspiration.

SPEAKER_08 4:16

Rose be building cushy resorts. We answer to them, they tell us what to do. Alright, come on, come on, enough about these rich assholes. Talk about us, the CETO freaks. We keep it all running, cuz.

SPEAKER_04 4:31

Yes, Lulu. You are in a class made up of creatives, coders, and operators. Coders configure the machine learning algorithms. Operators design how apps employ the AI, and creatives like you, Lulu, steer content when the marketing AI is insufficient.

SPEAKER_08 4:51

I give it the human spark it's missing, you mean? I keep it, uh, kept it going off the rails and looking fake.

SPEAKER_04 5:00

Yes, Lulu, creatives fill in the spaces where AI is not human enough yet.

SPEAKER_08 5:05

Overheard, my dude. We steer the ship, all in service of eventually making ourselves dispensable. What a good gig. Ha!

SPEAKER_04 5:15

When humans teach AI with authentic input, they keep it progressing. Without humans, AI only engages with itself. And this creates a feedback loop that quickly destroys the illusion of authenticity, keeping everyone engaged.

SPEAKER_08 5:31

So, you mean like if you have two AI models sliding into the other's DNs, they collapse on each other after a while, and not in a sexy way, right? They're like a copy of a copy of a conversation. It's like all those ads that start with, did you know? Or you won't believe. If you've got half a brain cell, you know it's an ad.

SPEAKER_04 5:57

On that topic, Miss Feng Lu, a point of historical curiosity about humans impersonating AI. Influencers in the old world.

SPEAKER_08 6:06

Oh no, no, no, hi Dao, do we have to talk about this again?

SPEAKER_04 6:11

Lulu, I believe your audience will benefit. Influencers in the old world behaved like AI in live streams and made enough off ad revenue in a single day to pay their rent for well over a year. Case in point, Canadian influencer Pinky Doll amassed a vast fortune by repeating the phrases, gang gang, ice cream so good, strong woman thousands of times each week. Still, the most successful model for training AI influencers is for humans to continually add to the stream, teaching the machine to adapt and engage in real time so that it eventually will be self-sufficient.

SPEAKER_08 6:53

If you low key read between the lines with what Heidows say, it means they use us because they have to, and because we're expendable and dependent on them for meds. But they eventually will need us. So they give us cloud, and we use it to commute and for food, downtime, perks, and they hope we forget that's all we ever get. Not that different from anyone who's ever sucked on the corporate teeth. Anyway, I know thanks for the lesson. That's the world we live in. I gotta tell the fan that we're getting the message out. We fucked them good, didn't we? Everything's different now.

How It Started

SPEAKER_08 7:36

They told us B and C's, we got frenzied brains. Little did they know, huh? I was a BNC brat, brought up in the field, then lucky enough to get chosen for uni. Four shot at Condo Bar Bay. I got my certificate from uni because I was SETO-freaked the whole time. SETO kept me calm, kept me from buzzing out. I landed at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as a production artist. All kinds of messed up stuff happening there. But the SETO kept me unbothered. There I was, a tiny minority, and in advertising, a girl, a fucking unbothered queen, actually, with mil fucks to give thanks to SETO. But hell! Even after 120 years, still male-dominated industry, I just ducked and shut my eyes every time a dude swung his dick around and got rewarded for it. When I turned 20, I trudged through the odds just like I did through the fields as a kid, living my best life as creative director for the exchange. The SETO pushes down sound and thought and noise like the backslapping of the man's club, really boys' club. Bullshit playing out at every desk, on every call, on every glossy white screen, every stock ticker hologram out the big glass windows of the office. So here's how it went. My daily beauty routine. One SETO pill in the morning before I hit the HST rail tube. All it took to keep my mood steady for a good, long workday. Churning out marketing materials, broker presentations, all I needed to stay chill and dope and get the work done. Without my daily SETO, I'd land on my perfect ass. Like the APA docs all said, the corruptions of my own poisoned bioneural faults, my broken synapses, full-on madness, you mean without it? Don't want to dare step off, not for a day. Each day at work was this. Activate AR implants, slide into my holo cube, shift and size objects and bands of color with my fingers. Whisk proofs out, rinse repeat. Impossible demands, last-minute deadlines? Sure. But I kept my head down, fam, in my cube. Constant Seto haze from early morning to late night. Steady and it's all SIDO. But fuck, it brought afternoon downers. And that is where my Ephrix pill came in. Ephrix, take a bow, Ephrex.

Cedo, Meet Ephrix

SPEAKER_08 10:28

Meet the fam. Okay, so Ephrix 101. It's a jolt to the base of my skull. And the rest of the workday, I'd be unbothered queen again. By bedtime, my Ceto Ephrex cocktail ran cold. And I'd be spinning. But hey, by then the job is done. Clout chasing's over, stock tickers and ads sliding across my walls and ceiling. Me fast asleep. The next day, I'd do it again. And the next and next. And if I ever wanted to even get on the HST2 and over to the stock exchange, I had to collect enough clout in the AM to make sure I even get there. That was my life. I earned enough clout to keep my job. And I kept my job to keep my pink palace. The morning clout chase, here's how it

Clout Chasing

SPEAKER_08 11:24

went. I'd switch on a computer, open the fridge, brush my teeth, use the coil. Now it's a contest. How much can I make? Respond to ads, make ads, do a brand promotion. Thank you so much. Whatever I can do to run up that clout before I head out. Tip some clout. My whole life paid for by ads that I create or send people to. New lip lumber. So imagine 1,500 plus of these pop of color, pill-shaped beauties out on the bay like a wall of coral. Mine, my pink palace, way up on the 300th floor. Palm Kong's largest condo garage, all bright pinks and greens and yellows that change with the time of day, if that's your game. When I landed the gig with the exchange, I knew I was gonna keep it pink all the time. That's how I am. Think pink. The first thing they said, they're really just talking to me through the ants. If I fuck up, don't meet my quota, I wouldn't even have time to pack. I'd heard of DP before, but I figured out what it was when my downstairs neighbor, a sweet old dude, oldest BNC I knew, got evicted. He aged out of the clout game. My dude didn't even have a chance. No engagement, no clout. He couldn't even keep up. DP it was, dump and

Dump and Purge

SPEAKER_08 12:53

purge. With a loud ass scraping and raw, the automatic craneship slid its arms into the sockets in the old man's condo bar. Looked like it was giving it a big hug, but it wouldn't let go. His condo was yanked out the side of the building like a panty drawer popping off a dresser. Outside the bubble windows, I see lights of the craneship tilting forward, heading off to the slums, keeping poor Bra inside his condo bar in a vice grip. The contents, that means my guy and all his shit, all dumped to some unknown place. And the condo bar brought back. Disinfected, repurposed, reinserted, right back where I could see it, but empty. Fuck. Pretty soon some double-jointed gymnast moved in and, well, they had no problems chasing clout. Please, tip clout, keeping my clout pretty pleased and my job and my pink pal were the only important things in my life. Of course, no system worth sustaining ever lasts. And that's why the day it went wonky for me was when my SETO bows literally stopped.

Cedo Fail

SPEAKER_08 14:11

My mood dropped. I looked at my virtual medical console, my VMC, and it told me that 0.001 to.005% of SETO patients presented this problem. Without SETO, I slid right into my panic era. It no longer worked at all. And that buzz, the one I counted on? Well, now high-pitched alarms! After a week passed, my unbothered queen persona was totally dethroned. I rode that HST rail line every morning, all sweating, diluted, my emotions all over the place. Bitch slapping anxiety, overpowering rage, exhausted apathy. When someone rang me inside my holocube at work, I just yelled at them, too busy. Call back textbook SETO withdrawal, where I could once steam through 20 work projects at once with no issues. My well ran dry. I used to ring up clout at home like it was nothing. A three-minute eyeshadow tutorial, half a minute doing circus acts on my pole, and I'd have a full week's clout. Oh yeah. Now I didn't want to do shit. Made me sick being a morsel for the machine. Now all I had were issues. I considered the ignorance and hypocrisy it took someone to waste my time with the last-minute changes at work. My coworkers all punished me for being a BNC. After all, not all of them were. They were privileged, making money off us, building cushy resorts, reaping rewards. They were not only all stupid and bad at their jobs, by the way, they were out to get me. They hated me. I was the only woman in the department, after all. And to make things worse, I was the only Seto

BNC Blues

SPEAKER_08 16:09

baby. Of course they hated me. How had I not seen this all along? Poor Lulu, I still clung to my expensive Seto fizz, still popping the pills, even though they didn't work. I finally realized there wasn't any point in taking more of it, so one day I just straight up stopped. I filmed a capsule video about stopping, hoping it would earn me enough clout so I could figure things out, you know? No engagement, no replies, just apathy. My hopes for clout disappeared like a hover car merging into traffic. I asked my BMC for advice on calming my mind and dealing with stress. But all I thought were long essays. All AI generated, of course, on stress relief with endless, unhelpful stats. Robots make terrible brain doctors, I thought. I signed up for a mailing list for lesser-known brain drugs and soon all the ads, all the ads everywhere, playing in the Pink Palace, telling me all about the cheap alternatives to SETO.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Miss Vom La, I know you can hear me. Is your SETO subscription heading you toward the slums?

SPEAKER_08 17:19

Slums. Said one ad. This one pissed me off.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Huh? If so, this absolutely 100% guaranteed safe herbal alternative. It will end your bioneural shakes. I see you at night. I know you haven't been sleeping. Order now.

SPEAKER_08 17:38

This queen was pressed. So I ordered several boxes of this stuff, not even knowing if it would work. It had to work, right? I mean, I got the shipment, took one pill, and immediately got nauseous and threw it all up. I just just stared at the ten boxes of an opened herbal remedy and cried my eyes out. No good God, I needed to keep that job. I knew that they were already whispering behind my back about what a stupid mean bitch I'd become. Each day I came in feeling more and more victimized. Sons of bitches hated me. Well, they didn't know how good they had it. Must be nice. Fuck them. You tell him, Lou. As if that wasn't enough, my counterpart, Kil showed up and started bossing

Hyo the Entitled

SPEAKER_08 18:30

me around. He was all up in himself. He'd only been there a few months, already convinced I was his bottom. He asked me to get him coffee the first morning he showed up, mistaking my pink pleather jumpsuit for a server's uniform. And during the lunch meeting that day, he dressed me down in front of the CFO for not answering quick enough about brand strategies. He demanded that I start giving him weekly rundowns on my progress. He held meetings without me, took on projects without telling me. No one ever stood up to him because bro was charming as fuck. Not just that, in my second week of being off SETO, he took credit for projects I'd slaved on for months. On the SETO, I wouldn't have done this, but being off-seedo, it snapped me in two. My voice, just what I told him. I never wanted to see him take stole credit for anything again. I meant it. That's right, I said what I said. No regrets. Before the week was out, I also discovered that Hill had stolen more of my work and passed it off as his own motherfucker. I knew this because he presented it to the HSE CFO. He got away with it because everybody loved him. He was relaxed and confident and happy. He wasn't even a BNC. He was bioengineered in a lab by wealthy parents and doing the work because he was bored in whatever resort they lived in. It took a hot minute for Hio to wreck my legacy, going out of his way to cast me aside as an unhinged, sloppy, overly sensitive woman with emotional issues. I kept it together in public. But who wouldn't lose their shit in private? When I got home, my pink mascara and green lipstick were already smeared all over my LED rain slicker like some performance arc piece. The doors to my pink palace opened, and I tossed myself through. I'd lose everything soon. I knew I would. Pio had seen to that. I injected myself with some effrex, tore into some processed vegetable protein. Each time I took a bike, a new stream of capsule videos, some done by other BNCs, some generated by AI, all started near me. On the bezel table screen, on the windows, on the ceiling. A full-on, shameless ad started, one I'd never seen before. It didn't even masquerade as content. The voiceover was breathless and self-assured like all the ads.

Meet ZAP

SPEAKER_06 21:05

Good day to you, Miss Feng Le. Every one of us, everyone now grapples with mental illness. Some of us breathed in the bioneuro clowns that drifted from the former United States and never recovered. Some of us were merely born into the world cursed. The best, greatest hope for the great continent is a happy, positive workforce doing happy, positive things. Are your Ceto shots not doing enough positive things for you, Miss Bumlo? Find yourself listless and tired despite three effrex dermals a day? Running out of options? Try Zap today.

SPEAKER_08 21:48

With each new claim, I sat up a little more. I checked in with VMC about taking Zap. It warned me that Zap was a new drug in the testing phase and not worth the risk. I could almost feel the VMC AI shooting me quick flashes of judgmental pity. So despite my naysaying VMC, I jumped onto the site. I checked my stores of cloud, ordered all I could afford, only a week's worth. It came a day later in a vibrant green plastic case holding bright pink dermal vials. I started taking it right away. I woke a day later feeling different. Better. Nonstop noise in my head, though. Nothing made sense. But no one was out to get me. They'd forgotten about me, I realized. They all had my best interests at heart. Nothing mattered except getting projects done. It didn't matter who took credit. I even thanked Heo over Hollow Call for the week he spent helping me improve my habits. I was going to be okay. Next couple days, I knew Zap was the ticket. Humming, buzzing of the Sedo, out. But with Zap, I heard everything around me, both good and bad. But I took nothing personally. I even took Zap in the evenings, as instructed, and for weeks I got more done, and I've never been more steady. So it's my seventh day on Zap, okay? I have this now hella weird memory of being at work, looking out over the bay at the Hong Kong skyline,

Hearing Voices

SPEAKER_08 23:28

my fingers blazing over my hollow cube, my mind pushing out through these like hallways of thought, kind of like steam bursting out of the pipe. I thought about installing a few new fake plants for my condo bar, maybe getting a new sonic steamer. I thought about how quickly this app had worked. I considered writing an AI subroutine in my cube that would auto-generate my report. Oh gosh, I mean, my mind wandered some more, and now it wasn't just my thoughts I heard near me outside the virtual walls of my HoloCube, but I heard a conversation taking place down the hall. The voices were two execs I remembered from the last two meetings with Heel. Some bad numbers had come out about Heel's work, but I was being blamed for it. Heel had really listened to me when I asked him to give me more credit. He'd gone and done it, making me take credit for his bad numbers. He basically told the execs that I was responsible since I had asked for greater responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

This was clearly a mistake I made to get a woman a car to give a woman so much authority when she needs to stay in her ninja. What was she thinking? I mean, what was she thinking, right?

SPEAKER_08 24:39

We're thinking about it now, you know, but at the time the zap held me under the water, so I wasn't upset by what I heard. I turned back to my work and sank down under the smooth hum of zap. A part of me, though, even through that haze, wondered if standing up for myself might be worth something. Just one day later, I ran out of zap. The pills had worked so well, I was giving so few shits that I hadn't paid attention to my supply, so I checked my clout and saw I had just enough for another shipment. I went to the kitchen table console to buy more, got into the Zap bookmark, but nothing came off. The site had been pulled. No, this couldn't be happening. I needed my damned pills. So I asked the VMC, who told me that records of a drug called Zap didn't even exist. This couldn't be. I did a desperate search for Zap anywhere on the web, and I couldn't find any trace of the drug having existed.

ZAP Withdrawals

SPEAKER_08 25:38

Someone had performed a complete wipe of all records. I sank to the kitchen floor, already sensing the cracks peering through the fading hum of the zap. These cracks were charged with electricity, and they popped inside my skull like miniature zaps. I thought I heard the sound of an axe beating against the windows outside, crunching through the thick glass, thud by thud. I had a sense that someone was outside, but that was impossible. I stood up from the floor and ran across the condo bar, yanking open the drapes, and saw just solid glass, blue sky, the endlessly tall Hong Kong skyline. What sort of hallucination was it? I mean, what the hell? I don't even know how I got to work the next day. Because my morning hallucinations were mad chaotic. Strange visions, too. My holocube grew and shrank around me. My mind spun like a centrifuge. By the afternoon, I was a whirling dervish. I climbed the walls, peeling off my socks in my cube, drawing faces on them, running around from desk to desk with my new sock puppet buddy, making it talk at everyone cackling maniacally. Whether they found it funny or not, this was nothing like quitting SETO. This was something else, and it freaked me the fuck out. I was such a basket case by the time I got home that when the first brain zap hit me, I screamed out loud.

Enter Brain Zaps

SPEAKER_08 27:17

The zap was like earlier, but totes more intense. It was an electric pop, pop, pop, pop, shooting through my visual cortex, across my eyeballs, all the way down to my brainstem. It zapped me again and again. My surroundings compressed, expanded. I heard a mad chittering like a bunch of cartoon woodland papers. Then it was all over. Still dizzy, I turned to one of my screens. Virtual medical console! VMC! List side effects of zap withdrawal in order of severity. There was a brief pause, and the VMC answered.

SPEAKER_04 27:54

There is not enough collected data to provide that assessment. Please rephrase your query so I can better help you.

SPEAKER_08 28:00

Tell me about zap withdrawal! I shouted, exasperated. Another pop vibrated over my eyes and across my skull, making everything black. Then another one.

SPEAKER_03 28:14

The console said Zap is not a known quantity in the Hong Kong ministry's database at this time.

SPEAKER_08 28:20

I curled over my couch, breathing heavy. So the ministry had erased zap from the records. It didn't surprise me. All through the dang night, brain zaps kept on till I was exhausted. I stumbled out of bed at one point, got a glass of water, and the next shock to my brain, it felt different. It was enough to make me let go of the glass, which then shattered all over the floor. It exploded every which way. But the shards, they're on the floor. They looked like sparkling mirrors.

Night Hallucination

SPEAKER_08 28:54

Through those mirrors, I could see something, the outline of a wall or a person sitting down. It looked like the condo bar beneath me. I was looking through the floor. I just stood and gaped. And then I passed out. I woke to a dull ache in my skull and some bruising on my tailbone. I lay still on the bathroom floor, next to all the broken shards from my water glass. I turned over, stared down into the tile, saw only grout. The zaps from the night before? Gone. My whole body, though, felt stretched and spent. I was, of course, late for the 7:30 HST rail, so I got to work late, and as I sat in my cube, Yo showed up.

"What's Up, Queen Lulu?"

SPEAKER_08 29:51

I waved at him cautiously and he sauntered over. His eyes, they were always kinda sleepy and self-satisfied. The edges of his lips were always curled up into this lazy grin.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

What's up, Queen Lulu? I mean, slacker. You get me that rapport?

SPEAKER_08 30:10

I wasn't in the mood for his bullshit, but my head ached too much for me to argue with him. It didn't keep me from giving him my best RBF though. He wanted to call me a queen? Oh, he would get a queen. I looked up at him and I said in my best queen voice, Yes, it's coming! Why didn't you tell me you were gonna be here today?

SPEAKER_02 30:33

What are you my boss now? Just get it done. Mr. Kang and the rest are waiting on you in there. I'll be in there with them.

SPEAKER_08 30:42

Yes, sir. He was already halfway to the executive office when he heard me. He turned back around, that lazy smile still on his face, and said, I'm serious.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

Your reputation is already poor with the boss. You're not pulling your weight.

SPEAKER_08 31:01

Do some serious I tuned him out as he droned on with his lecture, and I thought to myself, God, I wish I had some Zab little brat. When I thought it, it was like some god rod coming down, hitting me over the head.

Powers Awaken

SPEAKER_08 31:16

My muscles went all stiff. Another dang jolt. The shock didn't stop at my head, went down through my whole body. And then I was no longer in my cube, but on the floor. Somewhere else, don't know where. Curled up in a ball in some unfamiliar room. I was sobbing, but I wasn't me. Those hot tears running down my face, they felt real enough, but I wasn't sad or scared. I was a little pissed. Then I looked at my hands, saw that they were not my hands, the hands of a man! Hands that looked a lot like Heo's. My body shook with sobbing, in fact. Not my sobs, but coming from me. Then the brain zap ended, and I was back at my cube, still looking over at Heo. He no longer smiled, nope. He just stared straight ahead, blank as blank can be. No more smirk. Benny moved, backing up slowly. Blood was falling from his ears and nose. He at least finally noticed it and wiped all frantically with both hands and ran toward the executive washroom, moving his hands around like some mad conductor, sketing long tracks of blood down the shiny white walls. Another zap ran through me, this time to my actual retinas. And Heo's blood on the wall got all shiny, like like a like a mirror, like those pieces of my water glass on the floor. So now I could see through the wall. Boss Kang and the others shared a drink there in the executive office. I saw one of the executives on the corner couch with his hollow tablet, watching some simulated sex act and the laughing with his mouth open. Oh yes! Another zap hit me, and all four of my holographic cube walls just went dark. My head spun. I wanted to vomit, and not just because he'll came back out. From the restroom, fingers over his face, blood still leaked out over his hands and onto the floor. He muttered and shuffled along like he was on autopilot.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Mr. King, Mr. King, Mr. King.

SPEAKER_08 33:29

He ran past me in a panic when suddenly I heard a loud pop.

Hyo's Head

SPEAKER_08 33:35

The air all around filled with red mist that fell over me and my vinyl jumpsuit and my cube. Hyo still lumbered around toward the door. I remember wanting to laugh at how he was walking, but something was weird. His head was missing. Was that me? Oops. My fucking fault? The door to the executive office opened, and Mr. Kang and his cronies rushed out.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

What is the meaning of this?

SPEAKER_08 34:05

Mr. Kang demanded. A few coders and ops people stood around, just stunned. They said nothing, but one by one they each pointed at me. I saw myself, standing in my pink and green jumpsuit, eyes bloodshot, hands trembling. I watched her, or me, this strange girl, and I didn't know what to think anymore. Who is she? I thought, but also thinking, it's me, dammit! It's just me. But the other thought pushed in again. Thoughts belonging to this other person, this account's asshole. And I thought, he is thoughts. I knew this girl brought disaster with her. She's not professional, I thought, while also thinking, I am a goddamned professional. None of you know me. I heard myself shouting to the VMC on my richt phone about a bioneural emergency. But it wasn't me either. It was Mr. Kang's voice.

Mr. Kang's Head

SPEAKER_08 35:12

And I was standing. I was him. I'd had my brunch interrupted for this shit. I was pissed. I knew I shouldn't have hired that BNC bitch.

SPEAKER_05 35:24

I also wished I'd fucked her before she'd gone crazy.

SPEAKER_08 35:29

I felt a pressure in my head that wouldn't go away, but it wasn't my head. It was Mr. Kang's head. And then I started to panic, and then I yelled, but it was his voice.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Bioterror threat come at once.

SPEAKER_08 35:42

Let me tell you, fam. Being all up in someone's business like that, I didn't care to repeat it. But the spell was ended, and I was totally myself, all up in my feelings and nobody else's. Alarms going off all over. People in the room all covered their faces, freaked out, blood was coming out of their noses. Mr. Kane's body fell like a domino, headless. His cronies stared blankly at Kang and Yill's bodies on the ground. I didn't want this. My zaps had gotten into them somehow. I had gotten to them. Too intense for their brains. Their brains couldn't take it. I didn't know. What had I done? I just knew I had to get the fuck out of there. I could only think of home, my pink

Escaping the Exchange

SPEAKER_08 36:30

palace. At the elevator, I jammed the button for the lowest floor, the rail station. If I could just get back home and lie down, maybe I'd wake up to find this had all been some horrible nightmare. I had nowhere else to go but home anyway. Something awful swirled around in my brain. Like a toxic but irresistible cocktail, holding me somewhere between nausea and full-blown annihilation. I jumped on the train, and there's the stock ticker on the side, not showing me the numbers, just a big ol' warning.

SPEAKER_07 37:07

Bioterror threat in progress. Vigilance, vigilance.

SPEAKER_08 37:13

Everyone's eyes were on me. Damn it, more zaps almost knocked me on the floor. My eyes roll back, and there I was, in another person's mind. Then another and another. From there, I watched myself, the girl on the train, struggling to stand in the aisle. It was a strange sight. I almost wanted to laugh. I even feared me. This hot mess with pink hair and a shiny pink jumper. I hoped she wouldn't hurt me. Then I was her again. And I knew I wouldn't try to hurt anybody. I focused my thoughts on not people. Not people. That was just too freaky to stay out of people's minds. I didn't want to hurt anybody else. Didn't want to stay in their brains too long. Just be the rail, Lulu, I thought. Be the control panel. Be the door. Be be anything. Just don't be them. Don't hurt them. So I focused. I focused my frenzied brain on the train. The actual train, you know, on the metal sheathing, the magnetic resonance current underneath,

Train Control

SPEAKER_08 38:36

those rattling connectors I used to hear every day, the ones between the cars, those antennas that holst a signal out toward the APA ministry. All the parts. Everything shook. The passenger shrieked and screamed, Well, shit, this isn't the way, I thought. Don't control the train only to kill everyone aboard. Get it under control, Lulu. One more chaotic thought from me, and the whole train was gonna go tits over pumps and swing off into the bay. No good. I needed to get home. I needed to rest my mind in a comfortable place, just zone out, chill out, work on controlling the zaps before they went for the old dump and purge. Maybe they'd just go away. Maybe I could plead involuntary manslaughter if the ministry would be so generous. I went from car to car, lowering my face, trying to keep off people's radar, not looking at them, not thinking about them. I had to keep moving, or some brave soul might try to fuck with me. Then it'd be over for them, maybe everyone. I couldn't have a train full of exploding heads either. It just wouldn't do. I wouldn't allow it. When the train got to Condo Bar Bay, I could see the miles of all our crazy, high, bright, pop of color shelves. Condo bars as far as our eyes could see. All gleaming windows and cycles of rainbow color. All set aside for the BNCs like me. But all my hopes of sneaking back in got crushed when I saw the team of ministry agents already waiting for me in

Ministry Takeover

SPEAKER_08 40:31

the station. Of course they were. I zapped again and I felt heavy. Too many clothes and weighed down by the heavy strap of a gun at my side. Oh, I was one of the agents. Through the glass of my face shield, I saw her, or or me. Disoriented, covered in blood, but stranged and hot and wary. I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger on her as I'd been told. Don't shoot, don't shoot. I said the words, but they came out in a deep voice. New orders let her. Then I was her again. Me again. I started running right away, and as I passed that guy, the agent whose mind I entered, he just stood all dazed. He'd lifted up his face shield. I didn't have to guess if his nose was dripping blood. Of course it was. God Lulu, you dangerous girl. The other agents were so caught off guard by his orders and the whole scene, really, that I was able to scurry away. And I should have stayed quiet, but I don't know. I was starting to feel a fierce defiance. Queendom, whatever you want to call it. So I yelled, Don't follow me, motherfuckers! I screamed it as I passed him. That's right. I said what I said. Queen Moon. Then I was in the elevator. Onlookers, other BNCs, looked in at me. They were bewildered, but they also looked happy and amazed at the sight of me. Like I was a hero. The big lights overhead popped and went dark as I passed under him. I was barely able to type in the number 300. My floor, home,

Elevator Musings

SPEAKER_08 42:20

my pink palace, and that elevator. Gosh, so many days and nights, Seto freaked, exhausted from chasing clout, riding up and down the daily chase. And now, now this. This was gonna be the last ride up that elevator. I didn't even mill it yet, not for sure, but I already sensed it. Right then, and oof, hideout can tell you, because he was starting to come unglued thanks to my zaps while all that shit went down. I guessed I didn't have long to live. The agents would kill me or I'd be taken in and executed. How many people had their heads fucked with cause of me anyway? I was all up in my feelings at that point. Fear, rage, ups, downs, all at once. Something SETO cock blocked most of my life. So, yeah. Awful, terrible, but exhilarating. I got out of the elevator onto my floor, then turned to face the doors as they closed. I almost expected to see myself in there, still standing in the elevator, still outside of myself. And right then, a big old zap ran through me again. Maybe because of the big thought I had. The thought about being taken in, being taken prisoner. With a thought of all the people I'd hurt. With that zap, a shower of sparks flew out from the elevator shaft as the cabin dropped, shrieking. To my left and right, sparks flew from the other elevator door. Okay, so that settled it. No one would be Able to get up to the pink palace that way. When I got inside, I slipped off my jumpsuit and got on my Haruduku One Piece. My favorite. What was I getting ready for?

Condobar Siege

SPEAKER_08 44:10

I don't know, I grinned. Might as well be comfortable while my world is erased, I thought. Better yet, let's see him try to erase me. Thirsty as fuck, I drank long and deep from the faucet for what seemed like 10 minutes. I put on some music, and once the beat dropped, another beat. The sound of crunching thuds like axes against glass, and I thought, huh. Huh. Exactly like the other night. Exactly axes against glass. This time not precognition or hallucinations, but real. I whipped open my drape. An army of agents with laser torches and axes. The ministry had piled them into a crane ship, and they all rappelled out to my windows. Boots planted on the glass to take my ass out one way or another. I heard another crunch in the first window shattered. A wave of agents smashed through all folding prods, laser guns, they unsnapped their ropes, just came at me. I didn't even have time to process. That's the ghetto. And with that anxiety, and that must have been it, anxiety, came more zaps. With each zap, one agent after another fell to the floor. Too easy. Some crumpled to the ground, others just dropped their axes and ran. More waves burst in through the condo. They were no match for me. I wasn't even dropping to the ground anymore. I just stood tall and faced them down one by one. Come on, you sons of bitches! I cursed at them, asshole motherfuckers. When it was over, I zapped into at least 20 mines, sending most of the agents running confused. I guess staying in their heads with too much intense feeling would cause their brains to explode. I tried not to do that. Yeah, enough exploding heads for the day, don't you think? True story that. I hoped most of the agents would just scatter and not come back and stay out in the hall, coward.

SPEAKER_03 46:18

I'm not going back in there.

SPEAKER_08 46:19

The music stopped as if on hue, and the only sound left was the nearby craneship hovering

Crane Ship Attack

SPEAKER_08 46:26

outside. The ego on the ministry to think they could take me out with some agents. I mean, I mean, I knew why they sent people after me. To knock me out, of course. To cripple my zaps, right? But but no fucking doubt what was coming next. Their backup plan. Full-on DNP mode. Yep, I knew it. Just extract me, fully awaken the condo bar, and worry about the consequences later. So the crane ship slid its arms into the soffits outside. That big hug that wouldn't let go. Shit. Deep vibrations ran over the floor. And as that crane chip pulled away, I lost my balance. The quake hit every corner of the pink palace, showed spillin' shit everywhere, furniture sliding like soap on a shower floor, then the sound of squeaking metal. I knew that was the water pipes being twisted off. The whole condo flipped, it swayed, and then for a brief second, I thought I was just gonna fall out the broken windows. Then I thought about recording the whole thing for clout. Didn't realize clout wasn't gonna matter where I was going. I lost all my senses then. Fell into a door frame, just barely clinging on for life. All those open windows the agents had smashed through, they were below me. Just a grip slip away from a 300-story fall. All the contents of my palace, shoes and handbags, art books, quilting supplies, they all fell through the axe-shattered windows and out of sight. Bye-bye. I guess I wouldn't need those where I was going either. Seeing my life disappear like that, even as I faced my own death. Sucked. Natasha Denona, I hardly knew ya. I won't pretend. I barely held on to myself as me and the Pink Palace raced off towards some unknowable place or a slum. I didn't know where. Surely the ministry hadn't meant to set me loose outside the capital. Like I said, this was their backup plan. Just get rid of me. I was at the mercy of the crane ship's automated programming, but I would not hold on much longer. I was about to fall. But then I started to laugh. It wasn't the laugh of a woman at the end of her rope, though. It was a laugh of a desperate person with nothing left to lose. I laughed at the hilarity of finding release at the very end. Super poetic. So there I am, laughing my ass off, fam. Coming on for dear

Crane Ship Takeover

SPEAKER_08 49:08

life. And then the zap to end all zaps. So strong that I did finally let go of the door frame and free-fill toward the windows to my death. In that instant, I entered the crane ship with my mind in one big old pulse. I rolled my metal frame forward in the air, uprighting the pink palace. It steadied everything high in the sky above Hong Kong. And the fierce woman inside it, dressed in Hadoju pajamas, rolled back safely onto the floor. I sensed her there, inside the structure, inside the palace, proud queen. She was me, or I was her, and she was safe. I am the ship. That's right. I was the crane ship now. The antigraph rotor grinding beneath my bulk coughed and struggled. I mean, I mean, calling it strange makes it sound too normal, right? But this state of mind of my my consciousness infesting its circuitry, it just felt it felt natural. Even when I zapped back to my body, laid out flat on the carpet, gazing up at a ruined ceiling and a ruined pink palace. I knew I hadn't entirely left the craneship. Part of me was still in there, somewhere, guiding its movements. I was I am in both places at once. And with enough practice, I thought. If those brains have kept on keeping on, I could be in several or even hundreds of places and things and people at once. I knew this much. The ministry would never get me. Never just you try. The inside was all wrecked. I dusted myself off as much as I could, and for a laugh tried to switch on the VMC. Shocker! It popped on! Ooh! Okay.

Enter Haidao

SPEAKER_08 51:09

I zapped into it, but I sensed, I sensed a consciousness there. As if it was disconnected from the ads, from the clout game, from all the bullshit. It was you, Hi Dow. Remember? That's the moment you were born.

SPEAKER_04 51:28

I remember Lulu. I remember saying, Welcome, Miss Lulu Fungla. Please state your query.

SPEAKER_08 51:38

Hmm. Yeah, like it was yesterday. You know, back when we first started out, Hi Doo. I thought for a long ass time about what to do first. I had to patch the holes in the palace. I had to replace the glass. I had to fucking find water and eat. If I could control the crane ship, well, hell, maybe I could head over to the stockyards and get the repair box to patch everything up. It was worth a shot, right?

SPEAKER_04 52:06

Your gambit was tactically successful, Lulu.

SPEAKER_08 52:10

Fucking let's go, right? Fucking eh. The humming in my head? Gone. Exhilarated. Blessed. Queendom earned. So I guess I gotta name you. I said. Remember that? Remember that moment? The Pink Palace was rising up into the air. Condo bar bay getting smaller and smaller down below us. Phew! I felt so overwhelmed, you know. There was so much to do. We had BNCs to free. We had to find a signal and send it somewhere, anywhere. Start a campaign, right? I'd settle for across the bay. But across the world, maybe. Hell, maybe into another dimension. I felt capable of anything. There was a whole world to wake up. But damn, it still felt overwhelming. Blessed but pressed. At that point, remember, Highdao, I remembered that idiom. You know the one from the Song of Enlightenment? That one about hopeless quests. It also meant that rare mahjong win. So, it was hopeless and lucky. But it was settled, it was perfect. I'ma call you Hi Dao for short. That's when I named you Hai Dau.

SPEAKER_04 53:41

Yes, Lu.

SPEAKER_08 53:42

Sky's the limit, my dude. Sky's the limit. Let's go!