SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-three ━ vice in plastic shells

• • •

Music loud enough for the bass to dictate the rhythm of your heartbeats. Flashing neon lights pulsing between the false privacy of complete darkness and the crepuscular blue, purple and red luminescence that pertains to those minds which are most active during the night. There was a thickness in the air inside the Silver Spoon, one Mia recalled had always been there, along with those heavy scents combining across the dance floor and even in the lounges filled of tables where the more rich could spend their money on less than civilised means of entertainment.

Sweat, cologne, cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes right out of a distillery were all perfumes that invaded her nostrils while she pushed through the least active spots of the moving crowd engaged in a sort of primal dance of flesh against flesh, where everyone had some reassembling need to be touched. She had been there once: young, alone and tired of loving something blocked off from her by a screen. She had once been a student just like those she now passed, aching to feel like she belonged to something, to anything bigger than herself.

Though the club going used to be a nice distraction back when Lucien had introduced her to it, it didn't last. Sooner rather than later, coming back to her dorm feeling filthy in her own skin had clued her in that all these environments had to offer were quick and cheap fixes of pure vulgarity, similar to an actual drug. She decided since that she'd much rather pay in solitude to stick to the cleaness of her work and the reliability of her screens. There was purity in technology, one that she had scarcely ever found reflected outside of it.

Being back there felt strange.

Very little seemed to have changed in the Silver Spoon over the years, save for her, no longer throwing herself at the undulating mass of people, but rather standing aside, moving slow and watching.

Had there always been this much drug use in this place? Mia wondered, well aware normal people didn't go to nightclubs to stare and observe the things others felt all that much braver to do under the illusion of privacy the darkness conferred onto them. A single passing glance narrowed her eyes on the clouds of red smoke raised from the VIP lounges and the packets of red ice left out in the open on their round, low tables, like accessories discarded between bottles and glasses of colored drinks.

She looked away almost instantly, because if there was one thing she knew, it was that staring at addicts was a dangerous gamble with incredibly concerning odds to get her into trouble. Especially when red ice was involved. She hadn't understood it back when the news of the new drug broke out and she didn't understand it still how anyone in their right mind would take that thing which is guranteed to kill them, one way or the other.

Though the presence of red ice in the club made her uneasy, Mia knew she was quite literally too far in to back out now. She chose to distract herself by finally looking up at the android models dancing on their poles and she could have sworn they wore actual clothes back in the day. But her eyes were not deceiving her of the current situation: the androids were wearing only the glow of the neons under the onslaught of spectators staring up at them and their programmed routine of sensual and provoking moves.

Welcome to law and order, Mia thought to herself. We can program androids to be your wet dream embodied, but we draw the line at androids recording and reporting the illegal activities happening right next to them, because God forbid we invade the privacy of criminals.

So many years spent working on all these androids which could actually make a difference for the better in the world, only for the common people to most certainly remember only that which the company knew would sell the best: vice in plastic shells. Vulgarity wanted more of the same. Depravity wished to see itself into all that was pure.