Album cover by Louis Roskosch
Boss Panic 1 by Saskrotch
Track 6: Now It’s Summer
Koi rode the commuter train. The commuter train was one of the few places in Lantern Koi liked to go for the sole purpose of seeking inspiration: inspiration was what moved past the windows in front of him. The mystery of what took place in all those buildings, fields and stores flying past always stayed with him, and the solution to that mystery was whatever Koi put into his tracks. Since the solution was always fabricated, he could draw from the same mystery over and over again. He could sit on the train like a doll abandoned by its owner and gaze at, into and through the window across from him. Sometimes people sat directly in front of him but he could still see the world go by on either side of their heads. Sometimes the world came in from the left and sometimes from the right. At that moment there were two schoolgirls sitting in front of him, and they kindly sat with a gap situated between their barretted heads so that Koi could watch the world go by. And the world did go by, over and over and over again.
This feather-framed world was cast in gold. The buildings were yellow beneath the sun and the blades of grass were fallen rays. Such was the first real day of summer, with Koi having shed his baboon-fur jacket for a white dress shirt, sweat circling his armpits, hair sticking stubbornly to his forehead. His brand-new adidas, pure white and pure green, popped against the grime of the ridged floor. Sometimes he looked at the schoolgirls and the covers of the books they were reading and sometimes he looked at his shoes. Mostly, though, he looked at the world.
He looked at the glass bodies of the twin office buildings flashing by. Although every other building was yellow, orange or some variation of the two, these buildings were the blue of the ocean, reflecting some other time or place in their millions of windows. When he saw these two blue buildings against the gold of the world, Koi knew he was seeing a Nuptial Squid track, one of the ambient pieces that Nuptial Squid had made before changing IDM forever. He kept watching. His eyes fell again to the girls.
Schoolgirl A was reading a book titled ‘Cinema for Junkies’ while Schoolgirl B was reading a book titled ‘Junkies for Cinema’.
‘Did you know Tarkovsky had an Oedipus complex?’ asked A of B.
‘No,’ said B to A.
‘He did. He was in love with Mother Russia.’
‘Sounds more like Stockholm Syndrome to me.’
The commuter train sailed past a wall of concrete. Beyond the concrete was a field of wheat, the wheat moving in elegant, dancing waves. Koi half-expected to see people swimming in it, to see flashes of bodies splashing through the wheat in trunks and bikinis. He wondered what it would be like to lie in the middle of the field as stalks fanned his skin.
A young businessman – businessboy, really – got on at the next stop and stood in front of the two schoolgirls, blocking Koi’s view. Nearly every other seat was available, but the businessboy made a point of standing in front of the girls. Koi sighed. The businessboy was holding an alligator-skin briefcase in his hand and a stalk of wheat between his lips. The train continued its endless journey as the businessboy measured and weighed the girls with his eyes.
‘Watcha reading?’ the businessboy asked.
‘Uh, could you . . .’ Koi muttered.
The businessboy turned to him and made a face.
‘What?’
‘Uh . . .’
‘We’re reading about the effects of drug movies on culture and the effects of drug culture on movies,’ said A.
The businessboy turned back to the girls, the cockroach instantly forgotten, the look of annoyance and disgust on his face transitioning into a well-greased smile. The girls lifted their books ever-so-slightly for inspection, for the businessboy’s approval. He looked at the covers. The cover to ‘Cinema for Junkies’ depicted a syringe injecting milky liquid into a film canister. ‘Junkies for Cinema’ depicted the same thing, only with a red background.
‘Aren’t you girls a little old for movies?’ the businessboy asked.
The girls giggled.
‘What do you know?’ asked B.
‘Well, whenever I watch movies, I know I could be doing something else,’ the businessboy said with a winking smile. ‘Something more . . . productive. IfyouknowwhatImean.’
‘Uh, excuse me . . .’
The businessboy reeled back at Koi with the flame of cologne in his eyes.
‘Are you retarded? What’s your problem?’
Koi wondered if the vein throbbing on the businessboy’s temple was connected to the one throbbing on the side of his neck.
‘I, uh, didn’t mean to interrupt your mindless flirtation, but, uh . . .’
‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’
‘Uh, I mean, uh . . . I mean, I meant to interrupt, because, uh, because . . . I’d like to see out the window. Please. Uh . . .’
‘You’ve got a gallery of windows,’ the businessboy told him, and then he was done with Koi.
Koi stared at the back of the businessboy’s head. He then plugged the green ear buds of his mp3 player into his head, closing off the world by closing his eyes and piping in hot music. By means of random selection he found himself listening to a Kowie song, something he had not done since the day he had begun making tracks. What had suddenly seemed artificial and manufactured after experiencing Architecture at Phone In Sick now felt comforting. Kowie pronounced English words with a confident lisp and tones that were too high and thin, but did Kowie care or even notice? Koi opened his eyes and watched the music video unfold before him: the back of the businessboy’s head, each hair as insincere as the head it was attached to, swivelling from one girl to another, Girl A touching and tugging her hair when she was looked at by the businessboy and Girl B touching and tugging her hair when she was looked at. Both were interested in the businessboy, easy to tell by the way in which they angled their heads, glanced sideways at the businessboy and played with their hair, self-consciously, subconsciously, consciously and unconsciously. When they got up to leave at the next stop, did the music video follow them to a room somewhere? When the three of them left together, did Kowie still linger, or were there only the sounds of the street, of pedestrians talking, mumbling into a mush of background noise, cars honking and idling, signs buzzing? Was it only in Koi’s head that Kowie added a touch of—? How could it be that the businessboy and the two schoolgirls were completely unaware that their world had become surrounded by music?
Koi took out the ear buds. The door whooshed shut. The windows before him were clear of obstruction. He sighed some relief. The commuter train continued on its merry way and Koi tilted his head back, the back of his head tapping the glass behind him, the sudden sensation reminding him that he was alive, that he was in fact there. With the ear buds out of his ears, he was no longer viewing music videos but viewing music itself, the beats of the buildings playing out against the melody of the sky. The windows were his tracker.
‘“Oh, and the days of your life”,’ he sang mutteringly to himself.
‘!’
Koi turned his head in the direction of the exclamation mark. He turned his head to see a black-haired girl he had never seen before, a girl beautiful enough to be a model, her skin plastic like a model’s. Actually, she looked a bit like an android. A replicant, maybe?
‘Sorry, but was that Kowie?’ the replimodel asked. There was something slightly off about her voice, an untraceable accent lingering in her words. Koi immediately thought of Vasilisa, though the accent was different – almost mechanical.
‘Uh.
‘I’m really into Kowie right now, though the Jujube Sundaes are really cool. Do you listen to a lot of K-pop?’ A forced-sounding cadence, barely noticeable – yes, she must not have been human.
‘I used to,’ Koi answered honestly.
‘You have to listen to new things,’ the replimodel said as if in agreement. ‘I only got into Kowie recently, so he’s really big for me right now. Before him I listened to . . . Um, it’s sort of embarrassing. I shouldn’t say.’
What could be more embarrassing than K-pop?
‘Well, I was really into country music,’ she said, averting her gaze. ‘Not old country, either, but the new stuff. I listened to it because my mother . . . Sorry, I must be bothering you. I just never heard anyone sing Kowie before. I’m the only person I know who listens to him.’
Koi gave her an uncomfortable smile.
‘Uh, it’s all right.’
The replimodel smiled back.
‘I’m Chantal,’ she said.
‘Uh. I’m Koi.’
‘Koi? I think I’ve heard that name before. It’s not very common. Are you from around here?’
Koi gave her a blank look. He looked out the window in front of him and saw several under-construction buildings flash by. He looked behind him and saw the Tower of Baba Yaga. He turned back to Chantal.
‘You mean Lantern?’
Chantal nodded and touched her hair.
‘Are you, uh . . .’
‘I’m from a cityship floating around in another solar system,’ Chantal said. ‘You know – in the future.’
‘I see.’
Of course, any girl who would go out of her way to talk to him would have to be crazy. He supposed it was all right, though, since he was crazy too.
‘The cityship is also named Lantern – did you know that?’
Koi shook his head.
‘Well, it is, and it’s really . . .’
She described the cityship in little detail. She had found it claustrophobic and overly restrictive. She described it as a utopia. As a utopia it was incredibly boring, she told him, because all of the excitement had been washed out of everything. Even the videogames were boring because the player never lost – the world was always saved, the princess always rescued.
‘That’s how videogames are now,’ Koi said.
‘How about this – you can never lose at fighting games, at two-player games where you fight somebody else.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because we don’t have them.’
‘Shit.’
Street Fighter II had changed his life. Chantal told him that the citizens of the cityship did not even have lives to be changed – everything was lived for them, and they never lost at anything.
‘I can see why you, er, came over here,’ Koi said.
‘I really like it here,’ Chantal said with a smile that must have been programmed for sincerity. ‘I really like Kowie and Virtua Fighter.’
At this point Koi had to assume he was either drugged or dreaming. Or that Chantal really was a replimodel, an artificial girl from a cityship in a far-off place from a far-off future. Perhaps Dana would know.
‘Do you, uh, live in Lantern? While you, er . . . while you’re on vacation, I mean.’
‘Oh, sure. I live over there.’
She pointed at a short apartment building painted blue. Koi noted that the colour of the sky had begun changing without him having been aware of it, his perception of time having apparently faltered. The sky was fading from blue to pink, the blue seemingly being sucked into the apartment building. The commuter train came to a stop just past it. Koi could picture Chantal entering the building and never coming back out, its entrance a portal to another time and place. He would always remember the blue building as a contingency plan, in case he was one day forced to abandon his current life for another.
‘Well,’ Chantal said.
‘Uh . . . yeah.’
Chantal offered him another smile before slipping past the sliding doors. Koi burst from his seat at the last moment and slammed his face against the glass, missing his chance by more seconds than he would like to admit. He wobbled backwards and tripped over his old seat.
Koi sat on the steps leading down to the station. He had got off at the stop after Chantal but did not have it in him to backtrack. Instead he rested his chin on his hand, his elbow on his knee, and gazed at the pink sky. He found it remarkable, really – the sky was solid pink, coloured in by a child with MS Paint.
He thought about Chantal, and how he had found inspiration in a mirror reflection; faced with himself, he desired to become someone else.
What would he be today? Which identity would he create for himself, only to kill off once he found a new style that interested him? Would he be Wav Smasher? Exon Blaster? The Whoosh Man? Spishack X-17? No, they were all dead, buried under the snow of winter; now that it was summer, he would need to create a warmer persona. He would utilise warbling melodies, culled from vinyl records warped by the sun; he would fabricate hip hop beats from his childhood memories, thick and full and phat. He would call himself ‘Excited by Ontario’.
Behind him the commuter trains stopped and whooshed away. Passengers arrived and departed, filing past Koi, careful not to brush against him. Once stars appeared amongst the pink, Koi stood. He walked forwards, stuck his hands in his pockets and turned left. He walked the length of a chain-link fence that led him further and further away from Chantal’s blue building.
He continued walking until he found a record store to stand in front of. He stood in front of the store’s window, covering the used cds and records on display, and stared blankly in front of him, focusing on nothing but the unwritten emptiness. His mp3 player beeped steadily in his ears and then died.
Chantal was gone forever – the woman who would have been his one true love; the woman who could have taken him to a nonsense place in a nonsense future, the only place and time that could have ever made sense to him. But the schoolgirls and the businessboy were gone forever too. So? So everything was fleeting.
An old man in a beige hat and overcoat paused to acknowledge him, having noticed this golden fish out of water.
‘You look like you could use a cigarette,’ he said.
Koi's Story Continues In Track 7: Study of a Drawing by Bobby Myers
Track 0: Uh
Track 1: The Nerd Wave
Track 2: Playing Koi
Track 3: She had said the only words that could have affected him totally and truly
Track 4: A Sudden Loud Knocking
Track 5: A Two-Man Play to Be Performed on a City Bus
Track 6: Now It's Summer
Track 7: Study of a Drawing by Bobby Myers
Track 8: Loose Change
Track 9: Foam
Track 10: The First Person
Track 11: Please Be True
Track 12: Title Track