But even though Hugh’s desire to flee his WG meant that he arrived at the Vibe Check a full 20 minutes earlier than expected, his many, more dedicated-to-the-cult-of-Ramesses colleagues were earlier still. The bar in the Dialogue Section had already been erected, and the bros were already tapping their Prosperium-Pay Apps then gulping down beer. There was also a new addition to the group: a life-size automaton styled after The Terminator, and from the place in the film where his flesh had begun to peel away, revealing the metal skeleton beneath.
“Enjoy or I will terminate you,” said a pre-recording of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice from the center of the android-barman’s chest, and then as soon as the crate of Rainer needed replenishing, “I’ll be back,” as ‘he’ headed off for more.
“For fuck’s sake…” Hugh began, as he pushed his way through the still predominantly human throng. In so doing Hugh accidently elbowed the, to his mind, worst blue-shirter, as he forced the man beside him—actually no, the ‘victim’ was just as bad—into a ‘playful’ headlock (i.e. a headlock)-
Plus:
2 x The worst ultra-tech-bro-frat-boy-fan-boy goons. Ever. (AKA Ted Dudas and Sam Jamms)
“Remember you’re my booth bitch, bitch,” said Ted, tightening his grip, and then “What the fuck-” as Sam’s fist thudded into his testicles.
“Wouldn’t be a proper booth bitch if I didn’t give you blue balls,” said Sam, and Ted reeled backwards. “Looks like I’m the big Ted now.”
The headlock, it now transpired, had been part of a failed attempt to halt Sam’s monologue on the benefits of ‘authenticity branding models.’ Yet all it did was cause the other men to laugh. Harder. Faster. Stronger. An eternal bromance where hipsters, nerds, and jocks all merged into one big ball of facts, figures, and testosterone: a living embodiment of the 500+ companies which, according to the copy of Germany’s NewSpace Centre Magazine strewn across the nearest plinth, “shared a single vision: ‘I want to, and I will build a Space startup!’
“
Ping!
An email lit up Hugh’s cell:
From Subject
Frau Prof Logik RE: Feed Times & Pulse
Durations
Indeed, the only AstroLabs™ employee, and possibly the only Space startup employee, and possibly the only startup employee in Berlin, Europe, the World, the Universe who wasn’t a bro, was Hugh’s immediate supervisor, Logik: a person who, for various reasons—both professional and understandable—only ever set foot in the underground lab next door (and only when she really, really, really had to).
And of course, the thought of Logik now made Hugh feel even more guilty. And not just because his tardiness had forced her to chase him. His avoidance of the Lab was only partly due to how most of his research could be completed outside of it, and mainly the result of the sporadic WIFI, which impeded on his ability to research new audio plugins (specifically, eight-bit loop and rhythmic styles, the thought of which were often preferable to that of imminent extinction, which a room full of dying animals tended to evoke)-
“Fuck!” said Sam, shaking his bruised fingers.
“Fuck off!” countered Ted, pushing Sam hard against the workstation.
And then the ball of bros careered past and thudded into the polished concrete wall behind, while all the other men laughed. Again. And Hugh smiled a fixed smile. And tried not to remember all the ways in which the WG disapproved of, yet indirectly benefitted from, how he made his dirty living. Or would have made his living if he could bear to face the things he planned to kill, numbering animal, near-vegetable, and email correspondences among them and-
“Hey?” said Rob.
“Oh hey,” said Hugh, dejectedly. But then, when he saw what Rob was holding, he momentarily forgot all the worst parts of their presents and their futures and “Oh hey!” because unlike the rest of the ‘team’ Rob had commandeered two bottles of embarrassingly fashionable pale ale, almost as if he knew what type of non-man Hugh really was (and almost as if Rob might, at times like these, want to be this type of non-man too?).
And unable to help himself in an acceptable manner (i.e. in the style of an aggressive hipster and/or nerd and/or jock-turned-entrepreneur) Hugh helped himself in an unacceptable one (i.e. in the style of someone sympathetic to what remained of the past decade’s metrosexual fad for micro-breweries with fake hand-printed labels). Taking a bottle, which was decorated with cartoon raspberries, he immediately began to drink. And drink. And drink. Because, okay, so it wasn’t quite midday at AstroLabs™ Berlin Branch, but it was 5PM in many places throughout a solar system filled with horrors that Hugh now needed, with quiet intensity, to drown-
“You sure you’re drinking quick enough there?” said Rob.
“Umm…” gurgled Hugh. He realized he had already finished the bottle and smiled sheepishly. Yet the ale was so pale! So light! So shamefully fruity! “The thing is-“
But before he could go any further the lights dimmed.
“Okay guys, let’s show the real big man a little respect!” shouted Ted.
The background chatter subsided. Sam pressed another button on the control panel. The doors at the back of the Space slid open and a particularly operatic score by Hans Zimmer began to play. It rose and rose, becoming ever more insistent as a projection of Ramesses’ giant head slowly emerged from the darkness. It was white but flushed, a little flabby around the edges, and topped with an orange beanie and state of the art, noise-reducing headphones-
“Can you feel the vibrations?” boomed the head.
The back of the leather gaming chair, and then the craggy walls of dark, but oddly flecked rock trembled behind him, making it appear as though Ramesses was suspended inside the Bat Cave. Obviously, no one could feel the vibrations, which were probably taking place in another pseudo-art gallery, which was quite possibly in another country, or even continent, but instead of saying so, the entire room waited with the same fixed smile that Hugh had already perfected.
“They’re caused by steam passing through the turbines,” the head continued. A hand loomed into view as Ramesses rapped his knuckles against the nearest wall. “Mineralized CO2. By 2025 we’ll have cleaned up over half of our carbon emissions. Go Team Astro!”
There was a pause, and then Sam made a whooping noise. Ted glared at him through the gloom. Another pause, and the rest of the room followed suit.
“But that’s not all we have to celebrate,” Ramesses carried on, and straight away the whooping died down. “Our latest radiation tests show progress…”
The whooping stopped completely. The eyes of the entire room swiveled in Hugh’s direction while Hugh’s eyes swiveled towards Rob. Of course, Logik would have forwarded the new data to Ramesses, but the new data was just three days old, as well as being far from conclusive-
“Yeah but-” Hugh tried to begin, only-
“By the end of next year humans will be able to travel through deep Space safely!” shouted Ramesses. “Or perhaps even this one!”
And Hugh choaked so hard that he almost threw-up the ale-turned-bile now rising in his stomach. Because even if there was more data, of an older and more definite type, the things that Ramesses was promising just weren’t possible. Because in the world that wasn’t a rich man’s fantasy, science was Just. Plain. Slow.
Hugh swallowed the acid taste down, trying to come up with a face-saving solution. Which was hard when Rob was breathing like a group of frightened bears, or sleuth, beside him. After all, it wasn’t just humankind at stake here. There was also the larger and more pressing matter of their individual reputations: every dead animal buried beneath the Lab was accompanied by the remains of a rocket that had failed to land correctly-
“Yeah but-” Hugh tried again. The image of a dead hippopotamus—no doubt the first of many—quivered on the fringes of his amygdala. “But- I- but we-“
“But we-” Rob echoed weakly
“Humankind might die on Earth,” boomed Ramesses over the top of them. And having no excuses that could either be said or heard Hugh and Rob fell silent. “But we, and our children, and our children’s children will live- not only live but prosper. We will live and prosper on Proserpina!”
Ted turned the volume on the control panel up, so that everyone really could feel vibrations (even if said vibrations came from the speakers attached to the projector rather than what was supposed to be the mineralization process). There was another moment’s confusion, and then more whooping. And then all the other bros were stamping and banging and sloshing and spilling drinks. And then whooping in a way that that bordered on screaming—Harder. Faster. Stronger—and then just as it peaked-
Ted flicked another switch, and the already dim lighting turned into an all-enveloping darkness.
“What the-” murmured one of the other bros.
“Just hold tight man,” murmured another.
And then a hologram of a mineralized CO2 wall appeared.
And a split second after that it doubled, then doubled again, each time becoming smaller and more intricate.
Hans Zimmer started up again, but this time much louder than before, and from an especially rousing part of an especially dramatic movie that involved a military tattoo.
“We are House Atreides,” said Hugh, recognizing the score, and then, “We are nothing but worms.”
And then the whooping resumed.
“Did you say something bro?” Rob raised his voice as the noise rose to an even greater stamping, banging, sloshing, spilling climax now further enhanced by the music. He raised his eyebrows the same way Petronella might have done. “SOMETHING WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT?”
“Not really,” said Hugh.
Because really, what could they say, let alone do?
“WHAT?” Rob half-shouted.
The mineralized CO2 effect walls formed a series of mineralized CO2 effect geometric domes. They began to cover not just the furniture, but everyone’s bodies, hands, faces, until each member of the team was either indistinguishable from, or part of the Space. There was something creepy about what they were seeing, but at the same time compulsive, addictive even, so that it was almost impossible to look away-
The bile in Hugh’s stomach solidified into a knot, so hard and sour and, well, indigestible, that he couldn’t even muster a grimace-
And “NOT REALLY!” he shouted back.
There was one corner of the Space however, where the laser trembled. Faulty sealant had left some of the alarm-system’s wires exposed around one of the door’s edges, preventing it from closing properly. Now it also highlighted the recording’s failure to match the room’s original dimensions, and temporarily broke the spell. Squinting at it, Hugh saw how beneath the glitch there was a tiny AstroLabs™ logo: an overlapping ‘A’ and an ‘L’ inside a planetary circle: a broken anarchy sign.
Hugh blinked in disbelief, and “Total oblivion,” he murmured.
“WHAT?” Rob continued to half-shout.
“TOTAL-”
“WOW!” shouted Sam.
“WOW!” Ted repeated, even more loudly.
“WOW! WOW! YEAH BRO, WOW…” began to echo throughout the darkness in an auditory ball made up of 25 different but very entitled white men’s voices until-
“SOON THE HYPOTHETICAL RAMESSES- RAMESSES-” the giant head paused, irritated, and as if struggling to pronounce a foreign word correctly, “RAMESSESIUM” it finally thundered, “WILL BE A CONCRETE REALITY,” except that now it wasn’t just a head, but a two-meter-tall Ramesses avatar dancing in the middle of a miniature colony of bros that trembled with fear and/or excitement at the broken, unsealed, fucked-up edges.
“SOON WE WILL TOUCH THE SURFACE OF OUR NEW PLANET. BEGIN TO BUILD ON OUR NEW PLANET. AND WE WILL CALL THIS PLANET… HOME!”
The whooping and wowing rose to an ungovernable level.
Ted and one of the optical astronomers high-fived.
Sam poured a can of beer over himself, and then shook his whole body like a dog, were the dog preparing to roll in a bigger dog’s turd.
“SO GET IT WHILE YOU CAN!”
And yet more whooping and wowing, banging and stamping, and spilling and sloshing in the Space that thought it was an outtake from Dune and also Batman’s conservatory. And then above the Hypothetical Ramessesium, a relator-style film of the Hypothetical Ramessesium began to play. The camera zoomed slowly in and out of stills from the hologrammatic city that was still springing up around their feet. And over the top of the stills, information about Proserpina, the different areas and the unique advantages of each, began to scroll across the ceiling…
And then the constant flashing and tapping of Prosperium-Pay Apps became part of the brohaha’s brouhaha (ha ha) as a link to buy-up shares in Proserpina’s off-plan properties appeared-
“SO TAKE TOMORROW OFF,” and Ramesses’s avatar began to glow like the Ready Brek commercial from when the now-millennials were kids. “TAKE WHAT WILL NOW BE KNOWN AS SAFE SPACE TRAVEL DAY OFF. GO HOME. CHILL. IDEATE. ENJOY. AND THEN WHEN YOU COME BACK, BE READY – BECAUSE WE ARE GOING TO REFRAME THE ENTIRE FUCKING FUTURE!”
The Ultraviolet Catastrophe is now available from Zer0 Books. You can order a copy here.
Susan will also be appearing at minor incident Berlin, at Lettrétage on Saturday 17th October. More info about the event and its participants can be found here.
Susan Finlay is the author of the critically acclaimed ‘art’ novels The Jacques Lacan Foundation, My Other Spruce & Maple Self, Objektophilia, and Arriviste, and the (anti-)memoir The Lives of the Artists. Her books have been White Review Books of the Year, Anti-Capitalist Resistance Books of the Year, and selected as as many independent and gallery bookstores’ recommended reads.
