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The Gold Base

Video game sky dropped into the mountains of San Jacinto, almost robin’s egg egg shells sundered behind bladed fencing. Blame engrams, their dark shoots intruding the scrublands of teh interweb; yet, I’ve found someone’s gated paradise. Were I thetan god of this AfterEden, my wasserfall of life would be #00CCFF—pure—or almost pure—blue, deposits of green at a ratio of 4:5. The blend is seamless. If you found me there, you would be a flower named “neon sky blue” by relevant authenticating bodies. Nerd-gods bequeathed your unique morphology: #websafe petals that eat the sunlight. You would sing as the hours struck, notes that bend to blue in morning fog that hazes past green into grey.

If I searched you in a city, you would be another character, in blue wrap neon, dancing a rooftop, losing #DonnaKaran, by a #roofpool beneath a #deepblack sky and the #moon. I saw your #Bianchi chained downstairs, chipped sky fragments skirting your dynamo and settling in the #dirt. Maybe I’d make it all the way up, through the fuzzy #blue of the stairwell, to the lip of the water where you pixellate to life. Towelling dry, your #eyes focus on the stones and I say, “it’s getting #cold…”. You’d be like, “If I was IRL, I’d care.”

William Kherbek is the writer of the novel Ecology of Secrets (2013) and the forthcoming UltraLife published by Arcadia Missa (London).