Cyberpunk

says:
    May 25th, 20__ at 1:23 pm
    Why were the articles almost instantaneously removed? You’ll tell me it’s due to some all-encompassing conspiracy, when the real answer is those papers got their stories wrong so they had to pull the articles. Happens all the time. I guarantee retractions will be published within days. Oh-master-of-Google, prove me wrong by finding another news-outlet corroboration to either story. Read carefully, please. I want a news-outlet that does not site the Burlington Free Press or Miami Herald as their primary sources. If you try such a search, you’ll be at it for a long time, because I can’t find any other independent reports.
    slugwentbad says:
    May 25th, 20__ at 10:13 pm
    I’ve called Billingsly’s office on three occasions, and I’ve been told he’s unavailable every time.
    Jenn Parker says:
    May 25th, 20__ at 10:23 pm
    Oh, that proves everything, then.
    discostewie says:
    May 26th, 20__ at 8:27 am
    Bees and bats and amphibians are disappearing, mysteriously dying off (are you going to refute that too, Jenn?). Is it so hard to believe that the same isn’t happening to us?
    batfan says:
    June 25th, 20__ at 3:37 am
    Hi, remember me? Come check out my new gambling site for the all the best poker and sports action. It’s awesome. http://www.gamblor234.net
    speworange says:
    August 222n, 20__ at 10:46 am
    Humans are harder to kill than cockroaches.
More Grant Lee
    Becca Gilman • May 12th, 20__
    I went to Grant’s wake today. The visiting hours were only one hour. 2pm–3pm. I got there at 2. We had some common friends but I didn’t see anyone that I knew there. I didn’t see his sister or recognize any family members either. I waited in a line that started on the street. No one talked or shared eye contact. This is so hard to write. I’m trying to be clinical. The mourners were herded inside the funeral parlor, but it split into three different rooms. Grant’s room was small with mahogany moulding on the walls and a thick, soft tan carpet on the floor. There were flowers everywhere. The smell was overpowering and made the air thick. The family had asked for a donation to a charity in lieu of flowers. I don’t remember the charity. There was no casket. Grant wasn’t there; he wasn’t in the room. There wasn’t a greeting line, and I don’t know where his family was. There was only a big flat-screen TV on the wall. The TV scrolled with images of Grant and his friends and family. I was in one of those pictures. We were at the Pizza Joint, standing next to each other, bent over, our faces perched in our hands, elbows on the counter. I had flour on the tip of my nose and he had his PJ baseball hat on backwards, his long black hair tucked behind his ears. Our smiles matched. It was one of those rare posed pictures that still manage to capture the spirit of a candid. That picture didn’t stay on the screen long enough. Other people’s memories of Grant crowded it out. Also, the pictures of Grant mixed with stock photos and video clips of blue sky and rolling clouds like some ridiculous subliminal commercial for heaven. There was a soundtrack to the loop; the music was formless and light, with no edges or minor chords. Aural Valium. It was awful. All of it. The mourners walked around the room’s perimeter in an orderly fashion. Point A to B to C to D and out the door. I didn’t follow them. I held my ground and stayed rooted to a spot as people brushed past me. No one asked if I was okay, not that I wanted them to. I watched the TV long enough to see the images loop back to its beginning, or at least the beginning that I had seen. I don’t know if there was a true beginning and a true end. After seeing the loop once, I stared at the other mourners’ faces. Their eyes turned red and watered when the obviously poignant images meshed with a hopeful crescendo of Muzak. The picture of a toddler-aged Grant holding hands with his parents seemed to be the cue. Then the manufactured moment passed, and everyone’s faces turned blue when the TV filled with blue sky, that slickly produced loop of heaven. I wanted to shout fuck heaven, I want Grant back and I don’t want to die. After an hour had passed, I was asked to leave as someone else’s visiting hour was starting. They had a full schedule: every room booked throughout the afternoon and evening. I peeked in the other rooms before I left. No caskets anywhere, just TVs on the walls. Pictures. Clouds. Blue Sky. More pictures.