The Café OA
by Donna Malcolm Hirsekorn
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The Café OAby Donna Malcolm Hirsekorn |
Sitting in the café, the sensadour with the synaesthesia interfacer singing and painting his laments of the soul? I wondered if he knew how blatant his words and colors and fragrances sounded and looked and smelled to my senses. He sang and painted about his girl friends who did not love him anymore, who used him to further their own places in the world of love, sex apathy. At the counter the customers clustered two, three on the stools that had that look of decline instead of recline, the reactive stools swaying with whisps of utility fog, interactive in more ways than just one. As I sat upon my stool it would tilt the way it pointed as if it were a magnet pointing to the performer on the stage, the stool's simple expert system and his interfacer turingrade ai speaking in a language no biont could understand. What did they make of his words, what did they even care? They had their own universe of communication.
My Companion System AI came on briefly, inputed the surroundings, and outputted a poem.
The ambience of the café was one of solemnity instead of joy.
Decorated in warm, rich browns, yellows and reds accenting the booths and the bar;
Shining and polished from many years of dripping nanofactured brew upon the planks
And the ceremonial wiping up of the malt and the wiping in of the wheat grain into the wood grain as if it was
Ying and yang parting and pairing together and totaling one with the last wipe
Of the ceremonial clothwipe tossed carelessly on the grappler holder of the bartender bot after the moisture
Was transferred from the wood onto the fabric of the nubs imbedded and woven like
The lives of the patrons of this café.
E had been like that since interfacing with a high transapient wandering poet sentient ship last tenyear; eir empai rating boosted several orders of magnitide as a result of that one chance encounter.
The aerostat bot bartenders hover from one end of the bar to the other actively seeking business from the patrons. This being the middle of the week and still early enough for the patrons To be the older group of humans bent upon drinking their choices from wine to hard liquor to coffee and tea. Rejuved too often and often too cheaply, too many overwrites of memories that shouldn't've been wiped, too much keeping of memories that should. A little later the group would change and the younger generation would wander in, and then the hustling would begin to get heavy with the shouts and yells of I'll Have a beer, wine, krank, martini, frundy, shot!!! Now! I'll have more now. And don't skimp on the phenyl activators!
It is the middle of the orbitcycle in a hot and humid month of StationAugust. In the last twentyyear, the hab ai has gotten into the habit of making August like this, and September cold and dry, despite the complaints of the citizenry. The stars and other orbitals are clear and shining brightly through the airwall, with Arcadia Bishopring being on display and the orbital of the month. The blue of its biosphere and diamondoid brightness of the support structure being perky and unusually large in the night sky.
It is hard to breathe with the excitement of what is coming from the cyberware of the synaesthesist and the mixture of conversation all around me. I tried not to listen because to listen means to become involved and I only wanted to hear the music and not wander about the lives of these humans in this café on this night. I am weary and in need of something magical to happen and not mundane. I look at my partner and see the boredom there as well. He is here for me and not himself, it is an unselfish act on his part. He prefers to be in his pure computronium domain where the walls are not reeking of biont debauchery and shame. He prefers the warmth of the comfort of his possessions and the knowing that all is right in his world his safe place is the here and now of home.
Amongst the strangers we have the common knowledge of the songs that are being sung/painted/incensed by the sensadour on the stage. His voice is not right. His colours are wrong. He is missing something that needs to be present? I don't know exactly what, is it sincerity, honesty, or playing the audience? To my eyes his swirling colours look like he has been sucking on Helium all day, a little bit giddy. It was a feeling of unrest both within the words of the artist, his neural augments strumming out the tunes and the lyrics coming out of his heart with the in between beats and not the right count of the rhythm that should have come from his voice, the colors garish, the odors too pungeant. His neuronal interfacer glide effortlessly upon the shiny interfacer. I watch his left neural jack hitting all the chords, it is too bad that his voice is not as good as his jack. To overcome his inability of the moment he turns up the colours a little too brightly. The interfacer is foglet-linked, nanoacoustic, molelectronic and it was mellow and now it is just loud and garish. The younger people are entering the café and it is their time now. Let them have the loudness, and the brashness, and garishness, it is time to go home to my habmodule and crash and nest within the confines of the soft and plushness of the smartcouch.
I took into my awareness the people at the bar, the older guy with skin a bit too fresh from too many rejuves, who just ate his pseudosentient dinner, never once looking at the synaesthesist but watching a sport event on the 3D above the bot docking station. The rianth sitting to his left is drunk on endorphins and is talking to him about the game on the localnet. A woman of penglai ancestry flirting with a bioborged man trying his best to seduce her. Another couple sitting at the bar trying to make sure their night doesn't end alone in their own cubicles.
A blue-haired nearbaseline sipping glass after glass of wine and when it hits her she will say, Shit, What did I just do? Two young spliceguys talking to the synaesthesist in between his words/colours/scents and his playing the interfacer. An erotogini blonde with red, red augmented lips and too many pheromones talking seductively into a suborg's ear. His is tall and is half siting, half standing, enjoying the delivery and know how his evening will end up. He is far from his home system, staying at the nearby hotel, his business meeting in the morning cycle requiring real presence, not just a tele-avatar. He knows that he will regret the headache but enjoy the spoils of the wine and dorphins and the night with this strange woman at his elbow. It has been a good night for him so far and he is looking forward to more physical pleasure in the near hour.
The artist is a local synaesthesor and will stay local and not advance to the universal stage of acclaim for his songs of love and loss. There are many like him and few that succeed in the business. It is a ball-breaking business, ART with capital letters. He once had a band and they were up and coming but the sensadour had to take off for six months because his neural pathways had becomed overhabituated. In the meantime the band members became restless and each took up with another group. One becoming almost famous but just not quite hitting the mark. When the synaesthesist came back on the bar/club scene it was with a different group and a different sound. Not suitable, they worked together for a while in a discordant way until there were few who came to listen/watch.
Then he dumped everyone and became a solo act, interfacing and singing and painting in his own style which suited his voice until it became warpy and his colours jaggedly swirling at times like tonight's performance. He knew he was blowing it tonight, and an ARTIST always wants to perform at his peak. I recalled a night at another club when he was singing/painting/censing in a fine way. He came to talk/image to us at the bar that night, and standing next to us was a provolve, don't know his name and cant recognise the species, who had been at the same place with a band as this young sensadour. He told the performer what a chance he had of becoming great but didn't quite make it. The young synaesthesist told him not to worry that he and his band wouldn't blow their change it was theirs for the taking. The unknown prolve told his story of becoming an accountant and giving up on his ART. The gods were against his succeeding and if the gods did not favor you then what the hell was the use of trying? He lightly lapped his Grand Piloter and left the bar after being denied the chance to play the fleshphone just once more on the stage. That was fifty, maybe sixty years earlier, before the new millenium, I remember it with sadness.
I say a silent goodnight to the sensadour and mentally wish him well. The young kids were entering as we were walking out; just a few decades out of their creches, not even need for a single rejuvination as yet. I hate to walk out in the middle of a number but the interfacer was just too loud/garish for it to be pleasing and I had to escape to the silence of the dark night lit by a few gentle street phosphers and the stars and other orbitals above. The ocean rhythm and salt spray smells of the habitat sea undoing to my ears what the musician had plunged me into within the confines of the bar. The breeze was gentle and soothing as we tried to enter our vehicle, moving aside to allow several vecs who had taken too much dopeware to swagger in between us on the sidewalk. No danger, given the hab angelnetting, but a mild annoyance. Finally we were inside the vacuum that was love and sitting in the quietness the vehicle ai, sensing our mood, selected the right music, a classic oldie of a former era and much more the speed of our thoughts and minds. The music took us to the place we were about twelve centuries earlier. It was a welcome relief to us to be somewhere pleasant with sweet nostalgia. We could always visit the café OA but our best time was in our own little universe at home.
