He pushed through fishnet curtains and then the steel double doors of Nines & Circles and emerged into a room that could have contained two of the bar side by side. The first thing he noticed was the comparative cleanness of the air. It didn’t smell like boiled ash. It was cooler. There was an air flow. The walls were grey. The ceiling was grey. The panelled floor was grey. Dual rows of strip lights illuminated the space. It was empty. His feet echoed in the huge featureless room, through the blank grey double doors at the other end.
The station concourse was bleach white and smelled like antiseptic. The tannoy pinged periodically and filled the space with echoing robotic announcements. From ground to ceiling the station occupied three separate levels of the stack. Light streamed in through huge overhead windows set into the wide arched roof. Narrow panels set into the walls and ceilings contained automated LEDs. Small shops and food outlets lined the walls, multiple internal levels above were ringed with catwalks, and walkways criss-crossing overhead.
A man wandered between the scattershot humans singing with a baffling enthusiasm, uncaring of the muted world around him. Caleb swallowed a sincere, if fleeting, desire to interrupt and ask for his dealer’s number. He needed somewhere to sit down for a minute. He headed towards the nearest Astral Doe, next to a Bread ‘n’ Filling selling baguettes for a small ransom. Convenience had a good sales pitch, no matter the price tag.
Wood-pattern panelling lined the inside of the Astral Doe. Neutral browns and natural hues, cosy light and public-domain soft jazz threatened to lull him into a doze. It clashed violently with the station announcements and the permanent rattle and scream of track and wheel. A few people were scattered about the windows and the tables that lined the side. A bored girl with straight shoulder length and thick-rimmed glasses watched him from the counter.
The seats were occupied, but there was nobody at the counter. He ordered an Americano. The price came out a little above usual. Had they upped the prices? He scanned the list. The price on the board was the same. He started to point it out, but the girl behind the counter was already making the drink. He opened his mouth, frowned, closed it again. Kept frowning. Opened his mouth. Paused. Closed it. Deliberately replaced his frown with an overly broad smile, opened his mouth, became convinced that his expression was more maniacal than friendly, realised that he was standing in a coffee shop opening and closing his mouth like a drunk goldfish and gurning at the back of a barista’s head, and decided to keep his mouth closed this time.
To distract himself, he scanned the news. A business tycoon had been found with an underage kid, a generation-war think piece rehashed some self-righteous talking points, someone else complained about the immigrants, a bank collapsed, a stack collapsed, a celebrity collapsed, police were found selling a haul of cocaine they’d intercepted two weeks ago. An advert: ‘Be a better person. Make more money’.
The barista girl put the Americano on the counter. He grabbed it, crossed to the counter with the grey plastic tray of white and brown sachets, grabbed one at random, tore the top off one end, and stuck some sugar into his coffee. He snatched up a stirrer, whipped it through the cup a few times, chucked it into the bin chute, replaced the white lid, and left. He crossed through the scattered crowd milling about in the large open space and sat on a row of benches with a half a dozen other people, opposite an enormous screen mounted on the far wall.
On the screen, a guy sitting at a table in a cream dressing gown took a long drag from a cigar and then turned to the camera as if becoming aware of the audience suddenly. He began to talk about a car. He told them about the series of numbers and letters associated with the engine. His tone suggested that this was perhaps meaningful in some abstract fashion, but Caleb wasn’t sure how. The man told them about another car and the various letters and numbers associated with its engine. And then a third. Then a fourth. And a fifth. Presumably the man was selling cars.
The coffee was not an Americano. It was a mocha. He’d walked off with someone’s coffee. He shrugged, took another swig. Grimaced at the burning on his tongue, decided to wait before the next swig. Between swigs of coffee, he watched the man on the screen bloviate, struggling with an overwhelming sense of bemused pity. Caleb waited for the call to action, but it didn’t come. This individual had spent a great deal of money to make probably the worse car sales advert in history.
As the man ended his spiel about his eighth car, Caleb looked around himself, and found various other members of the general public, with cocked heads and strained smiles. A woman sat frowning, in her lap a series of pages. She shook her head wearily and went back to her feverish scratching with a ball point. A bulging bag beside her feet betrayed the mountain of other papers she’d need to get through. Two men looked at each other, one spread his hands with an expression of pained bewilderment. Everyone seemed to share a sense of profound second-hand embarrassment.
A buzz in his pocket jerked him back into the present. A message on his phone . “Feeling energised? You should stop by at North Pump gym! H-37 Street, District 32-16, 7L-3N.” Mildly curious, he looked it up. Airbrushed photos of impossibly good looking people flanked the screen. A suggestion that, with minimal effort he, too, could look like the swollen tanning-salon dwelling models in the pictures. On the back that, some instinctive stupid twinge of hope. The upper of mindless affirmation, chased by the mental reminder that they spent their lives doing this. The screaming brake of setting expectations. Hot on its heels, a bemused wondering at why they were always standing in huge empty rooms with great lighting. Nobody had pods like that. Where were these fitness and lifestyle gurus living? Links pointed to an application, a streaming channel, and a video archive.
Now his Placement feed swarmed with ads for fitness-related products and services. Mega gyms, boutique gyms, gyms for women, gyms for overweight people. Ads for equipment, for weightlifting sets, pull up bars, for personal trainers, for sportswear, for clubs, dating apps, supplements, vitamins, pills, steroids, a hundred other tangentially related products. Life coaches pummelled him with listicles and online courses, therapy services and free content, paid subscriptions and seminars upon seminars upon seminars.
“Hey.” Someone stood in front of him. He fought his way out of a feed-induced fog of exhaustion enough to look at the intruder. A young woman. Bony, lightly tan skin, radiant blonde tangles of hair, looking like a tube of toothpaste in white and blue business casual. “Hey,” she repeated.
He squinted up at her, “Yes?”
“You’ve got my coffee.”
He pointed to the cup in her hand. “What’s that?”
“Presumably, your coffee.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t, it’s an educated guess.”
“Teach you that did they?”
“What?” She scrunched her face up like he was a bad smell and then shook her head lightly. “You’re drinking a mocha. How am I doing?”
She was right. He must have taken her coffee. He took a hearty swig, swished it visibly around his mouth. It was still hot. He hoped the mild burning sensation wasn’t showing on his face. “Well enough.” he conceded.
She was just frowning at him now. “And who’s ‘they?’ You’re not crazy, are you?”
“Depends…. will you stop bothering me if I am?”
“Will you give me back my mocha if I don’t?” She paused, her face contorted further. “What the hell happened to you?”
He paused, “Sorry?”
“You look like you tried to go down on a moving train…”
He nodded, shrugged. “Yeah, more or less.”
“Well, ok… You didn’t get blood in my coffee, did you?”
He shrugged again, “don’t think so…?”
“How much have you had?”
“Not much.”
“How much is not much? That was a decent swig just now.”
“I don’t know… You tell me.”
She stuck her hand out. “What? How would I do that? Are you always this much of an arsehole?”
He frowned at her, “I could be. What’s it to you? Fact is, I don’t know who you are.”
She shrugged, “Great. Nobody cares. Can I have my coffee, please?”
“How do I know you’re not just out for someone else’s coffee.”
“Why would I do that? Why would I buy an entire coffee and then stand here trying to get someone else’s coffee?”
“Well, I didn’t see you in there.”
“Well, yeah, of course not.” She took a swig of the coffee she was holding, grimaced at it, “You walked in, grabbed the first thing you saw and walked off. I could have been naked and sitting on a dildo the size of a traffic cone and you wouldn’t have noticed.”
That caught him off guard. He made some experimental beginnings of a response and abandoned them midway through the first syllable. He gave up after he realised he was starting to sound like a deranged seal.
“So, ” she continued, “coffee, please.”
“What are you paying?”
She snorted, “Nothing. Give me my coffee.”
“Not how this works.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it’s so.”
She looked at him, must have realised he was serious, and pursed her lips, “Fine. Placement points.”
He thought about this, “That’s it?”
“Yes. What did you want, a blowjob?”
“Money.”
“Good luck with that.”
“So why should I accept Placement points?”
“Placement is important. Or aren’t you paying attention?”
“How would you even do that?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“Sounds dodgy.”
“My company does it.”
“Your company?”
“Listen- “
“No, whatever, look, what do you want for your coffee back?”
“What are people filled with?”
He didn’t know where to go with that. “What?
“What are people filled with?”
He floundered for an answer, “I don’t know – water and blood?”
She rolled her eyes, “Very good. If you’re fourteen years old and edgy. Experience!”
He waited. She stared at him. “Experiences make stories. And stories make content. You are full of content. You are content.”
He was less and less sure how to respond. Where the fuck was she going with this? When in doubt, someone smarter had once instructed, nod and smile. He did that.
“Look, I’ll be real, it can’t be like a story about baking cakes with your mother – it’s got to be algorithm friendly for Placement. I’m talking about trauma, triumphs, that kind of thing. Impactful teachable moments that audiences snack on.” She looked at him “Do you have any trauma? We can use that. We’ll do coffee. Look, we’re not paying, but it’s great for exposure.”
He shook his head. “No, sorry, I’m not interested. But… thanks.”
She sighed, “ok, fine,” she produced a card, “send me a message if you change your mind.”
He took it. It was pale blue, lightly textured, ‘Clara Makenzie, Perception Engineer, Awareness Ecology Dept., Seed Systems’. He pocketed it, nonplussed, set the coffee down and took his phone out, started tapping out the name of the company. Without missing a beat, she snatched up his cup, replaced it with hers. Walked away. A momentary flicker of outrage started in his chest. He started to open his mouth to yell after her, and realised he had no leg to stand on. He shrugged, pocketed his phone, grabbed the coffee. She’d drank half of it. He sighed, left it on the seat, and headed towards the exit.
Outside, sirens drifted between the smoke and salt in the air. The station occupied several levels of the stack, the surroundings a wide field of heavy steel plates and girders. The wiring here ran in air-conditioned pipes that criss-crossed overhead. A guy in a grey tracksuit stood swaying slightly in the middle of the road and pissed like a broken gutter. A seagull screamed overhead and dive-bombed a man walking along, eating a cheeseburger. He dropped the burger. The seagull screamed again, avoided the man’s swinging fist and flopped upwards to perch on a piece of masonry overhead. The man stooped, picked something up from the ground and hurled it at the bird. It missed by a mile. He turned, screamed at the fallen burger and trudged off.
Caleb meandered down the ramp towards a network of roads and a shuttle stop. A man with an expensive haircut watched him from a set of long sharp stairs, at the top of which an elegant blank building projected importance. He turned back after a few steps and found the guy with the expensive hair was still watching him. Caleb waved. The man did nothing, kept staring. Caleb turned continued down the ramp.
At the bottom, a guy in a light green blazer lectured a half-comatose woman in a stained grey dress on the virtues of a good work ethic. She nodded slowly and then offered him a price for a shag. He looked disgusted and walked off. She cackled and slumped back against a filth-encrusted bin. Caleb’s phone buzzed. A promotion on Placement for a new food product. A grinning cherub waved a tube around and giggled. ‘Consume VitaBlend Plus – now in Screaming Berry flavour!’. Below it, a video of a young grinning girl dancing by herself in the filthy hallway of an abandoned building. Her steps were awkward, and she staggered every now and then as she attempted to kick her legs or spin in an ankle-deep layer of trash. He put the phone away. Somewhere a ship’s foghorn rolled off the waves and over the haphazard mass of construction spewing in all directions. A tide marker fluttered in the rising wind and slapped against the side of a betting shop.
Words and Chaos 
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