4:3ality

Ginza Hills suckers. Only the 45th floor, but nevertheless I’m 23 and I’m in Ginza Hills you saps. Where are you?
Some punks will tell you that 2005 was the height of the Age of Plenty but that’s because they’re spivs; philistines barely worth my contempt. The smart money knows that the 1980’s were the dogs’ bollocks. A man could still be open about his desires in the 1980s. I’ve seen real AVR footage recovered from the era and those guys like Bateman, Gecko and the Mayfair Club were Gods. I heard that someone has found Gecko’s remains in deep freeze and are modelling an AI on his neurophysiology. Fuck yeah, I hope he runs for president.

I stayed up late surfing the 4:3ality streams but even so I’m up at 6am and have the house AI prepare a cup of the finest instant coffee that money can buy. Those hippies over at Xio2 actually insist on grinding and brewing it like cavemen. People are weird. Coffee drunk I head to the 2nd tier gym. Understand that for my age I’m above average; I hear that there isn’t anyone under 40 in the premier tier. Gyms are boring but that prick Johnson is there and he tries to impress me with some imported synthetic cocaine he’s got and I will grant him that it’s the business. It feels like my face is being washed away in the shower and I get lost in a daydream about taking a huge crap in the premier tier gym and flooding the penthouse suites. The gym sensors start pinging me messages about my heart rate so I head out.

Johnson ‘bumps into me’ in the elevator. As much as he’s a chump I offer him a ride to work. He knows Ackman and his crew in Assets and I would love an in with those guys. They dress and live correct. We blitz to the office in my Nissan NX-21. It looks exactly like the ‘87 concept right down to the non-functional cassette player. Girls would love this car. They do. They love it bro. What are you driving anyway? Some modern soulless shitcan no doubt. I have a newly recovered edition of Memory Tracer, they found a super clean version in some teenage girl’s coffin. I crank it and put the autodrive to full aggression.

I gotta say I’m pretty ashamed of Johnson. His suit looks like a fucking tsunami of shit has rained down on him. The material is well off, matte like a wool blend and the collars are thinner than a genecut meth addict. I’m rocking a seersucker blazer with more polyester content than the north Atlantic. This shit shines like a pulsar and has authentic gluefixed lining. It’s these details that the girls notice and frankly I’m upset I have to school you pricks on this stuff. I’m looking the bomb and no doubt. Sarah in security looks away as I walk in so I know I’m fucking dazzling. I would ask her out but I heard she was seeing Sinclair and I couldn’t roll with a girl associated with a man who has biomods. Future seekers like that…well there are no words. Okay there are words: the future has nothing but contempt for us and it makes me angry that there are people too stupid to see that. It’s like a temporal form of Stockholm syndrome.

Work is work. I smash it like a champ and that bacon gets brought home by the container ship. Shit, I barely need to work late. I just hang around to torment the plebs who can’t manage to do what needs done in hours. It’s 7pm so I wander around for a while until I find Johnson hunched over his terminal. I give him a winning smile and we abuse some more of his synthetic coke. Now, I shit you not when I say that my left nostril explodes all over my shirt exactly as Ackman walks into the toilets. Johnson, fashionless fucker he may be, plays interference and talks me up like a boss to Ackman. Ackman hoovers up a few lines, and looks up at us with something like recklessness in his eyes.
Fuckwits, he declares, tonight you are with me at 4:3ality.
That’s it, I’m fucking in; game set and who even cares about your shitty idea of a match?

The NX-21 has to be sold, burned, driven off of a cliff. Fucking joke of a car. Ackman speeds us past God himself in his Lambo Athlon recreation that is so boxy you can cut yourself just looking at it sideways and I tell no lie, he’s got a laserdisc player in it. Obviously I don’t need to tell you the going rate on one of these. Rare as rocking horse crap. He’s hooked it to an AVR broadcaster. I suggest getting some CRT action installed but he claims it would ruin the Athlon’s interior aesthetics. Whatever. He’s got an Inkel badge on the player but I dunno, seems too high end even for someone like Ackman. I suspect it’s a knock off or refab but decide to keep that to myself for now. Ackman is big dicking at my expense but if I get an in to 4:3ality proper then that’s fucking fine with me. We all eat a little shit before we die.

The thing to keep in mind is that 4:3ality is a network of like-minded classy individuals such as myself and businesses who serve us. Yes there’s a club and streaming service with the same name but they’re just the most visible aspect of it. The club is where we are received like royalty when we turn up with Ackman. I’ll admit I’ve managed to get in here a few times but we were kept in the main area and the place might as well have just been a themed bar. I was the only person properly attired and the plebs around me didn’t even recognise my refab Walkman that I was tastefully sporting on my waistband. With the orange foam headphones I was looking like a time traveller that night and I barely turned a head. I knew the real party was going on upstairs with no means to act on it. Tonight though we are straight upstairs to the Reagan lounge. I’m pleased to report that Johnson is turned away by the maitre d’ for crimes against good clothing. He looks devastated, absolutely broken. I figure there’s no harm in making his day just a bit worse, so I pick his pocket for his coke as I struggle not to laugh at him. If he’s a real man he’ll learn and come back stronger. If he’s not, well who cares because I have his coke and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it is that the best coke is someone else’s coke. Even more so when there’s this much of it.

The Reagan lounge is impressive and no doubt. They’ve got what look like Jumbotrons at each end of the room. There’s a legitimate and working cassette deck playing some choice cuts that not even I know. There’s even a wall of Face and ID magazine covers. The people are beautiful and diligent in their adherence to correct fashion choices. The ladies lounge rather than sit and a series of well placed hidden fans keep their beautiful permed hair flowing as it should. Ackman gets us a table in the thick of it and orders a bottomless supply of cocktail pitchers. Crazy colourful shit with lots of fruit and paraphernalia. I nip off to the washroom to powder my nose and when I return I see that two fine ladies have joined us. They are looking at Ackman’s data slate as he shows them the price of some newly recovered movies and music that are for auction on the Dead Channels commerce site. There’s still a week to go and even the cheapest item is already fetching 5 big ones, they’ll close out at 10-15 times that. Ackman puts in a few bids to impress the girls which is a cheap empty gesture as he knows he won’t win. Now I know those Dead Channels boys go to some pretty hazardous places and use some cutting edge recovery tech but at times it just feels like they are exploiting gentlemen of taste.

Time passes, we drink a lot of the colourful alcohol and we all do some of Johnson’s coke though I’ll admit that I probably have more than the other 3 combined. What can I say, I’m enjoying myself. The 80’s man never apologizes for going all out; for being his best. At some stage, something starts to nag at me. We’ve been here for hours discussing the merits of low-res video, the pleasing yet impossible to replicate artifacts of analogue media and the joy of the visionary 80’s fashion designers. Whilst I’ll be the first to say that’s all well and nice it feels like I’m at some geeky seed collectors convention. I realise that I’m sweating and put my face on the metal table. It’s cool and my sweating eases. Some coke falls from my nose onto the table and without breaking contact with the cooling metallic surface I lick it from the table. I have just licked the table in a bar that I’ve waited 3 years to get into. Luckily no one saw my temporary lapse into strangeness.
“Did your friend just lick the table?” asks one of the girls, “And why is he sweating like that?”
Shit.

I am standing on the table berating the crowd. I have no recollection of clambering up, maybe someone put me here. On reflection that seems unlikely.
“You are people possessed by your possessions” I scream, “This is not the true path! I am possessed by my demons and that is the way of the 80’s man. These wonderful gizmos that we all love, they are only meant to reflect us, to make us shine ever more brightly.”
The bar has gone silent and I see that someone has hurled brightly coloured drinks against the wall of magazine covers. All eyes are on me.
“Gordon and Patrick would be so ashamed of you if they were here now.” I continue. “We are the best this city has to offer, we should be taking it for ourselves. We should be kicking those tech-utopians out of their towers and making them our own. We should be remaking this city in our own beautiful image!”
The silence is broken by someone laughing then clapping and whooping. He could have been being sarcastic but if he is then the joke’s on him as it catches and soon the whole bar is hooting and applauding. The music resumes and the drinks flow. Everyone wants a piece of me, to buy me a drink or offer me a handjob in the toilets. I have arrived on the 4:3ality scene and it is a beautiful thing.