“W
elcome to the abode,” John boomed. Mark found John in his usual state: The will-o’-wisp floating in the centre of the room. His naked form perched on a mountain top of rug and fur. His feet rummaging endlessly in a shag pile beneath his toes. His right and left hands fingering the invisible strings of a most exquisite instrument, while a large vein protruded from his abdomen and bulged in syncopation with his silent symphony; throbbing, it traced upwards past his thorax, found his neck and disappeared into his gaunt face, which surveyed his gaudy kingdom. “Look at me, Mark!” John teased. “It’s only natural.” The room was also in its usual state— John’s “arena of divine sensation,” a space so powerful that it seemed only John could tolerate it. For Mark it was sensory overload, and as a result he would be left nursing a migraine weeks after the ordeal. The window shades were a decadent velvet and always drawn. The walls were violent, splattered with paint. And beneath him the ground was layered with thick rug and fur. It was here that Mark focused most of his attention, in an attempt to flee from both the overbearing claustrophobia of this radiant cage and John’s naked body. Here at least he found a comrade— a sensitive ally to soften the aggression that rose above him. “I thought you preferred the unnatural,” Mark murmured, while keeping eye contact with the floor. “Have you not heard? Natural is the new unnatural. The paradigm has shifted,” John returned and then waited for a reaction; his friend remained still. “We have known each other our whole lives. You know I work on a principle of full-disclosure with all my friends.” “Some things are best left to the imagination.” “Ahh, you’re quite right. I am robbing you of your fantasy and I know how painful that can be.” John sat back and exhaled a heavy breath from his chest. He took his time, patiently expelling the heavy weight of his reality, slowly loosening the constricting grip it took around his lungs. Momentarily freed from his burden he let his head hang and stared at the floor, with eyes darting fretfully to and fro. Mark and John sat still; Mark punctuating the calm with a grimace every now and then, as his migraine worked its way across his brow. “You’re suffering Mark. More than I am. You shouldn’t fight it. Embrace your environment and accept the disorder. You’re struggling against the struggle and
that only brings more torture. Embrace the disharmony of the room. Accept it as a part of life and the feeling becomes quite pleasant. I equate my headache with a perpetual state of euphoria. Become one with it.” “Your preaching is tedious,” Mark groaned as he closed his eyes. “But not as tedious as the migraines you suffer with. And as such you continue to endure my lectures. When you finally embrace your pain, then will my lectures be your only tedium and you will no longer accept them, and you will finally command me to shut up or just stop visiting altogether…But by then I will no longer need to lecture you.” “I still don’t understand why you don’t just make the walls whatever colour you want,” Mark exclaimed, gesturing at the walls while keeping them as far out of his sight as possible. “Instead of going through the labour of heaving those paint buckets everywhere. It’s irregular.” “It’s irregular and original,” John sighed. “I bet you dream in black and white.” “I do. Like the rest of the world.” “Don’t you remember dreaming in colour?” “I do.” “Does it not bother you?” “No. Why should it?” “I doubt the rest of the world dreams at all.” John moved towards his window and raised the shade. His view was the best, here on the top floor of Habitation 1, Row 1, City 1, and yet the dust filled his lungs as he raised the curtain. After clearing the debris from his throat, John spoke, “Look at my masterpiece, the crowning achievement of mankind: the Great Hall. Looming over everything, not just City 1 but 1 through 50. Dull and empty, a testament to man’s complete and utter lack of invention.” “You’re the creator. Why not do something about it? Change the plans.” The heavy weight had returned to John’s chest. He stepped away from the window and took a moment to expel it. “I have no power. I’m just a factory. They tell me what they want, and I give it to them, for the good of the people. I am not a sociologist, or a psychologist, or a politician. I am uneducated. Science, imagination— both those things are dead. And now that the Great Hall is finished, the final piece is in place and I have built them their Utopia… the last proponent of the art is being put out of commission. There is no need for me anymore.” John stared blankly into his creation— his prison— and drew the shades.
“They are going to take away my room, Mark. They want me to become one with the body. Tolerated while I was useful; but I can’t live the way you do, in the grey… I trusted that they knew what was best for us. And besides I had this room to amuse myself in, to distract myself. But now that I’m facing assimilation, I feel like we were never meant to live like this—autonomy—sprawling cities of identical units—grey monoliths… I offer you a rainbow, and you ask me if it comes in grey.” Mark shifted uncomfortably in his sensible shoes. Identifying with the autonomous, he found himself under siege, and prodded desperately for safer footing. John continued, “We had the power to be anything. And this is what we chose. What does that say about us?” “That we are survivors.” “Survivors! We are already dead. We have reached equilibrium and equilibrium is death. We are a benign tumour just replicating. Entropy sustains life. Disorder, Mark! Those splatters on my wall. They sustain me. The universe wants disorder. What I have created in this room is only what the universe has asked of me— it’s natural…But my time is up. I’ve been told to grey-wash everything; what I am doing here is no longer how our world works. I told you, the paradigm has shifted, natural is the new unnatural.”
M
ark raised the heavy blackout shade which blocked the perpetual sunlight from his habitation and looked out into the avenue. He smiled at the new addition to the street. It was only a matter of time before Row 32 possessed its own oddity. They had been popping up all over the grid at a steady rate for the past month. Row 32, like every other Row 1 to 100, consisted of 50 habitations, each capable of sustaining 50,000 inhabitants; each habitation was a large, uniform, slablike grey high-rise. That was until recently— Row 32’s newly birthed oddity stood proud; its brilliant blue facade shining bright betwixt its grey brethren, burning the retinas of all who dared to gaze upon its brilliance. Mark sighed at the congestion down below. A large crowd was amassing outside of the building, blocking the subway. It had been almost a month since he had visited John. The escalating environment was forcing his hand: today he would go and see his friend, if anything, out of curiosity, more than concern. Mark surveyed the crowd once more as he headed for the subway. There were two types of response to these oddities: feigned ignorance, head down, shuffle on past, go on with your day; or complete 43