Psychofauna

Road to the Ren Faire

Previously: We meet Deshawn/Mapmaker, a boy who obsessively makes maps of the world's new psychogeography. However, he is terrified of stepping outside.

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○ Months after the Great Opening, Manhattan

Deshawn woke just before his head hit his keyboard.

How long had he been sitting at his desk? Was it light outside? He had no way of knowing. The aluminum wrap coated the window like a silver cocoon. He checked his phone: 8am. These days he didn't wake up until 10.

Deshawn heard his parents in the living room just outside his door. They'd just said his name. He pressed his ear to the door.

"...is not developmentally challenged, Deb. He's just a sensitive kid. It's a phase. I probably would have been the same way at his age, with all this Psi craziness."

"It's not normal for a kid his age to not have friends. To not get outside."

"Deb––"

"We're doing this family trip today whether he likes it or not."

Deshawn didn't want to hear it. He put his headphones back on and Googled for the first music that came to mind: a YouTube video of "lo-fi beats to relax/study to." Then he opened the software he used to make his maps. Soon enough he was in the zone.

Some amount of time between an hour and a month passed.

Then he heard a muffled voice: "Deshawn, open up!"

But Deshawn was at work. There were too many new subcultures to document. Too many new maps to make. Too many new followers demanding too much new content, like a swarm of squirrels tapping on the door to his room.

The doorknob jiggled, but Deshawn had locked the door. "Deshawn! It's time to go!"

Deshawn turned up the music in his headphones: post-ironic country glitch. It was a new genre. Now that everyone was more porous, genres were colliding, mixing, mutating. There were too many new genres to keep track of since the Opening. But someone had to try. On his computer, Deshawn drew a link between the node of operatic EDM and new neoclassical.

"Deshawn, I'm going to turn off the internet!"

That was bad. He needed to move faster. Make it to a "save point." Get everything out of his head and onto the Internet. He opened the Discord his followers had made and typed: <Does anyone know whether there's a link between these new alt-academia universities-of-practice and––>

The door opened.

"I found the key." His mom looked down at him with her hand on her hip.

Mother with hand on hip, Deshawn thought. That's an archetype isn't it. Does it have a name?

"Let's go," she said.

"But I'm not finished."

"Little man––"

"I'm 15."

"––You've been cooped up here for months. You can't just lock yourself in a tin foil prison all day. Come on, I cancelled my department meeting for this." She cupped his face in her hand. Deshawn winced. "I know it's been scary," she said. "But I promise you, it's safe outside now."

"What about last week's street war between the Christians and Nondualists?"

"That was Asheville, honey. This is New York. We know how to put ourselves back together again. We did it after COVID, and we've done it after Psi."