Cell

No-one else in the room again, noisy night, and hot. City sounds, like artwork. I flip the switch and cycle through the options. Rest the cell against my thigh, settle in. Scanner clips my retina and ID’s me to open up the full allotment, got to knock at that credit somehow. Remind myself not to blink too much. Scanner bug sometimes decides I’m not watching if I blink too much and shuts off the ads. Screw it. Now I just want to blink.

It isn’t so bad before sleep, the adfeed. When sleeping alone at least. So easy to sleep alone these days. The agencies love it too, when your brain’s slopping out sleep chemicals and your defences are down, impressions count fivefold when the head’s in that shape.

Woman onscreen, naked breasts, they’ll read my pupil dilate and deliver it back again. Every freaking time. Every night it delivers the sex hit at a slightly different time, iterating towards perfect receptivity. Treating me like all I am is meat and gaze and the consuming instinct. Not worth getting worked up over it, they’ll just pick it up and add it to my profile. Their log is my life. Turning in at midnight on a Friday, sitting on my bed and my cell making commerce at me. What went wrong?

A series for delivery food. Too late for that, man, too much crazy chemicals. Uppers and downers and even-me-outers, some of them even prescription, even legal. My stomach couldn’t even handle it if someone paid me to swallow.

So many beautiful people in these ads. Smiling and all the same colour, same as me, side by side. No sign of the gang bang that wiped out three kids last night and got the whole city up in arms crying racism and revelation. So much more palatable on the screen and me with neon scratching at my windows, bed shaping itself to me. Christ, I’m alone again and every single one of these ads has a couple in it. Every one has a couple. What was that about? They tailor the skin colour to me but they’re selling me on falling in love? What’s the angle on that?

Not tired. And if I go out, then the ads win, because clearly I want to go out because I’m lonely thanks to this. And if I don’t go out it wins anyway. Let my credit float me while it can.

Same choice every night.

Neon flash in my eye, but nothing on the wall, the walls around me, and why do I still have no posters? Why do I still have nothing?

I’m not tired.

My cell is beeping at me. I’ve missed some ads and its turned off the feed. Waiting for me to settle back in.

But there’s something happening outside.