Life at the Sentient Bean / Melee

By the time I entered I could see Bannister was trying hard to control himself as he asked for apparently not the first time, “Can you give me a clue just what you feel it is lacking?”

With that Cyrus saw me and said, “Finally, someone who understands what this music needs?”

“Alright Cyrus, lets go give it a listen,” Cyrus picked at my shoulder like I was a cuddle stone as we went off to audio land. There were plenty of mirrors in there so I knew he would be distracted while I told the mixers in private to pitch the music up a half step and play it louder. That would keep Cyrus busy for a while. I could wangle the real issue from Banister while he was occupied with his tin bird brain ears. Now for some quality B and M pacification.

Bannister and Mora were in conference looking none too happy. The Chinese censors were coming over. Apparently they take their fish seriously and wanted to review our perhaps overly sexualized fishy character for sanitizing.

“But we bribed them already.” Mora was seething.

“So we will bribe them again.” Bannister said coolly. Once we get this product rolling out, it will fly off shelves in the overseas market alone. Not to mention if they still maintain this political Kabuki ban here; the black market proceeds will have Cyrus up to his beak in seeds. But where is Fang Fang Wu?”

“I don’t know. I am going to talk to Suki tonight and see what she knows.” was my first offering in this round of deep conference.

“So then what? I mean, what are you going to do?” Bannister said in his ever practical manner.

“First thing is go and zap my invoice to you so you can pay promptly before leaving.” I said with a smile and started heading towards my office.

“I mean about Fang Fang,” he said in an apparent attempt to delay the inevitable billing.

“Collect from you and then go find her. The question is which one of those things will be more difficult.”

Bannister just rolled his eyes. Aurora Mora was trying to sneak out of the room. “I haven’t forgotten you either Aurora.” I said over my shoulder and closed my office door.

Behind that office door is where this story started:

I am the moral hazard. The risk the money lenders use to foist their canard to justify usurious rates and divine right to reap prophets. I did not set out to exemplify and justify their mean spirited ways; but here I am.- Pyoter Bierbuston Symes ~ 21st Century Saying

There were doors behind doors of the pantry doors. A door that led to a staircase up. A door that led to a door to the porch and then out. All doors where I never knew there were doors. But when my son said he saw a girl with immaculately combed floor length silky black hair sweep her way out of one of those doors that I knew not of, I knew who she was and I knew why the cold chill of my blood pumped through me. I had been here before and yet I had never been here before.

It had been an ongoing dream place that had manifested itself in my sleep many times. I knew there were chambers back there . I knew it would be filled with space that I craved. Space that was once mine, but no longer is. Filled with plush comfy furniture. As upkeep bills kept rising, that part of my brain; my house, my life had been walled off. Shut down. Substantively and existentially as well. But the part of my cellular structure that thrived on consumption screamed out to eliminate those barriers so I could stack more items within those walls. On those walls. Around those walls. Never mind that it has been decades since I needed such luxuries. Less the time that I even wanted those luxuries. Until recently I had eliminated all such perceptual stackings.

But what of that son of mine? He would be about my age right now. If he had survived. I would like to see how my recombined stacked DNA had turned out. Perhaps some records still were held from before the hair plundering began. I departed right after it was clear that the Stax Lords resplendent in the comb over copycat hair had prevailed.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Gaping Maw

I walked back through the Mediatrix ruined lobby of the building and beckoned the elevator and boarded upon its speedy arrival. As the elevator doors closed I reflected.

I had enjoyed my time away from this circus. But now I am back into promoting the hypnotization of millions via bouncy signals to our upper atmosphere and back. I now had a greater appreciation for the gaping maw of consumerism. I had originally been an unwitting part of the ploy but now I was firmly ensconced in it. I knew both backs of the beast these days.

I had stared into the eyes of the slobbering beast. Felt the allure. Allowed myself to be enveloped in the lushness of the tight and slippery sliding slope. I plunged in plumbing depths of debt so deep without realizing where I had prodded. Feeling secure while balance sheets still showed black, yet cognizant of many factors only marginally acknowledged, but still denied. As the siren song of “we need this” and “I want that” to fill my empty and miserable life, I only found that it was never enough. More was needed to continue to keep the beast happy. To feel it’s naked warmth beside me in the cold black night of trying to understand why, why, why I was doing what I was doing, doing, doing. My head was filled with the platitudes I thought I was foisting on others for a payout, but while foisting it on them those platitudes were wheedling there wormy wanton way into my monkey brain. Driving deep to that tiny reptile that lives within us all.

So I kept plunging in deeper and deeper. With every orifice splitting insertion while still not realizing that the slobbering full figured personification of rampant consumerism was only spreading her legs and lips to swallow me up whole with the designs to squeeze me out, cum and all onto the pavement of life. With the dribble of my essence being lapped up as collateral. The prime directive was:

I want more,

I need more,

I will not be happy until  I have more.

I will grind and swirl to drain everything last drip I can because without all these things I might feel as nothing and acknowledge that I am just an animal that has learned to stack things on top of other things and then tell others about that stack.

So my ultimate contribution was to breed more consumers in training. I was surprised but I made do. All under the slobbering consummate consuming cunt, the base fruits of my burning lust learned their lessons well. Wanting the constant distraction of being plugged into something as often as possible, just like I did, so that they would not miss a single bulletin of what they should be wanting today. Desires tailored to keep things just out of reach enough to create more minions that contribute to the wreckage of over consumption for the landed to feast upon. A whole society based on consumption and constant endeavors to get others to want more as well. The mountains of goods and services continued and we stopped making things of worth. Instead doing what we could to sell things to each other, pat ourselves on the back, and then buy more things we really didn’t want or need to fill our empty lives, to have more things to stack on top of other things.

So we partied, fucked, drank, ate, eliminated things that made us unhappy or gave us pain, and then fucked and ate some more until we start thinking there might be something  better to eat, fuck, or eliminated around the next bend. Besides this one is all spent and is just a twisted smoking heap of rubbish anyway. What was I thinking settling for this.

The elevator announced my floor number.

Time to start stacking.

Like the debts stacking before the Chinese cornered the market on our health insurance racket. They proudly had our country now and told us it was time to turn our heads and cough, The Right Wing Oligarch shutdown of our government was just what the new founded Chinese Oligarchs were waiting for. The Wingers, Baggers, and inadvertent Trumpsters opened the door and we all flowed into the dumpster of Empires. Just as I flowed out into the melee beyond.

When the doors of the elevator opened I could tell by the sounds coming from the suite that things have gone from bad to worse.

“The music is all wrong” Cyrus was squawking.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Fish on the Brain

Cyrus strutted in with those words. I swear he dressed and moved more and more like a parakeet every time I saw him. Which was rather disconcerting considering  he was a very large and a very rich man. But there he was in a powder blue suit, the whitest shirt I had seen in years, and a mottled grey bow tie. Perhaps his morphing into a bird had something to do with his fish fixation of late, but a clear theme had emerged with his work. At his side was Aurora Mora and it dawned on me where I had just seen that face and figure. The animators had used her to model our fishy temptress in the spot. Cyrus’s motivations and drives were generally as confused as the confused and obfuscated messages we were foisting on the public.

“You need to get Fang Fang back lads, she never would have let you stray as far from the fishy trail as you had in that last cut.” Cyrus whistled as he found the mirror in the room and he moved his head jerkily as he admired his beloved.

He was right of course. Having the Fangster shacked up with Cyrus was a great source of insider information. She would give us a heads up in the night after Cyrus had one of his brain storms. We would be well on the way before he even arrived at the suite. Fang Fang also would take great delight in describing Plush's mating rituals which often involved him brainstorming current campaign ideas while doing “unspeakable things to my person” as Fang would put it. She claimed to suffer through it, but the look in her eye belied the suffering point.

All I know is when she fled Cyrus and begged me to hide her she was not the same Fang Fang Wu from Buffalo that I had met in the alley behind the Sentient Bean. She had sharpened edges upon return. Sure she still portrayed the tough worldly smart aleck oriental female delight in public, but the softer private side of her had disappeared after Cyrus. The only glimpse was in her dreams and nightmares. Only then could I see the original little Wu’ster, But after waking up shivering she would collect herself and not ever let the inner little girl out to play anymore.

Bannister was talking budget with Aurora, because nobody talked dollars with Cyrus. Bannister had that producer middle man hat on now so I knew the rest of the day would be one of:  “How much will this cost?, What is taking so long? I’m not paying for that.”

But that’s OK. We would make our dough by marking up the lunch order. Bread and Circuses should have been Cyrus’s middle name.

Cyrus was done at the mirror, so he began to chirp about the ramifications of the research into the meme of fish. I knew my headache would get much worse as this little diatribe began.

“Fish lads. It goes back to the beginning, where we all began. We all are just chock full of former fish molecules. Damn it! The very core of our brain goes back to when we were all fish. Swimming and reproducing in that primordial soup. It is in our very core. We see these creatures fluttering around, and since we know they won’t eat us, or at least most of them won’t, all it does is engage our breeding instinct. Yes. Three responses. Either we want to eat them, fuck them, or if they stand in the way of our eating and fucking, eliminate them. In this film we are going for the big ol’ randy flounder response in us. Whether they know it or not, people watching this fish will feel invigorated, they will want energy. Energy provided by the caffeine in our illustrious beverage. The alcohol will tear down their inhibitions. Their public persona will become radiant, wide awake, and most the uninhibited little beasts we can be. Shivery and shimmering with moist viscous exteriors, rubbing membrane against membrane coating each other with our own special brand of sputum. Thats what we are selling. Selling the sizzle, not the steak. Any knucklehead can drink whiskey with a cola back. We are selling the ultimate combo platter. Heaped high with promise of immersion into that great ecstasy. Now get on with it! Aurora!! Deep conference.”

Banister in his best cover your own ass moment asked again, “Cyrus, are you sure we don’t need to add a disclaimer mentioning the other ingredients in our product?”

“Tut tut my dear boy. That is so 20th century of you.”

With that Cyrus toddled towards the conference room with Aurora Mora in tow and shut the door.

“Chop chop, wicky wicky,” announced Bannister. “You heard the man”

As we worked only once did a disheveled and wobbly kneed Aurora exit the room to provide the lunch order. “Are you sure you don’t need Cyrus out here yet,” she asked hopefully. I shook my head. Aurora sighed and resignedly returned to the conference room.

Before lunch arrived we had a surprise visitor. It was non other than Suki Su Wu.

“Have any of you heard from Fang Fang,” she asked in a highly disconcerted tone as she scanned the room.

“Last I saw she was busy humping a slot machine.” I said with trepidation.

Suki looked disgusted and then cast her eye’s down in the oriental shame ploy I recognized from her sister. I knew when she would look up from that feint I was in big trouble.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Mediatrix

Mediatrix



My favorite quality Mediatrx had was the fact that no matter how many times I rode with him, he always acted like it was our first time meeting. I was never sure if it was an act, or if it was from his early childhood diet of schmeat. Yep, the old beaker bacon. That was back when we first started growing our animal products, and we had to try them on someone. His country drew the short straw of that global lottery. It was a great idea. Eating flesh that had never, sweated, shat, or peed seemed like a good idea at the time. But when the side effects became apparent the Archetypes had to administer a forgetfulness pharmaceutical to spare the survivors the recollections of the disaster. Good things we cleared that up before that little snafu got to much publicity. So with the blessings of the Marquis De Bob, it was swept under the public rug, which was only shaken occasionally by a few of the politically embarrassed crackpots and conspiracy theorists which were quickly discredited by the ever present media. The poison will never out if if we refuse to know about it.

Even so Mediatrix was always plugged in and as a victim of exploitive experimentation he knew better than to believe most of the fear driving drivel. HIs cab was a rolling hot spot. Sure the world was covered by the ubiquitous G-10 network, but with the ludicrous encryption and sub networks Mediatrix’s cab was plugged into places even the Chinese couldn’t track you on the infernal net. So I used the time to check e-mail for any heads up that Bannister might have about the coming assignment. The world of commerce never slept. Only I did. When I wasn’t awake that is. But being awake was never the easy row to hoe. There was peace from time to time mostly when I pushed myself away from the treadmill and stopped thinking of more and bigger things to take care of the things I thought I had. That was no longer for me.

   But eating was always a pressing problem and since most these days did their tricks for food having long given up the illusion of carrot and stick. No longer were we fooled by the promise of a fine retirement funded from the life time of labor, The reality that those assets were quickly drained away by the privatize entitlement scams that sank in even to your the densest of the masses. We are all dumb money now.

   The e-mail came from Bannister and the news was not good. Cyrus Plush was coming to the session. Although I knew that turn of events would pad the hours considerably for my billing, it would be painful spending that much time in the room with Cyrus perched like a Budgie behind me fretting and a pacing only to stop occasionally to admire himself in the mirror and perhaps ordering in for more cuttlebones to sharpen his beak on. So will my next hours be.

But I do not enjoy it as much as I once had.