Xeno yearns to have access to The Nth Dimension like The White Boys, famed telepaths who suffered brain damage when they made contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. Out of work as a bartender since the Shoki Pao dance club mysteriously burned d...
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The bouncer stood in the thin shaft of porch light, blocking the cramped club entry with his steroid-bulked physique, his face obscured in unruly hair and beard. He heard footsteps crunching across the dirt path maze of barb-wired fences leading directly to him. Xeno and Trianne stumbled into the light coming from the misted windows of the converted brownstone factory, the outer facade steeped in run down brick, and ashen shadows.
"Look into the light," the bouncer grumbled. He flashed a hand-held scanner beam into Trianne's pupil, until the device blipped and flashed the results on the LED display:
COMPED BY HOLLYMONDE
"Go ahead." The bouncer motioned for Trianne to pass with a wave of his hand. She walked past the brute and pulled open the decrepit steel door of The Whispers, allowing throttled bass and drum beats to escape into the night air, as the door shut behind her. The bouncer thrust his palm out towards Xeno, halting him, until his pupil scanner reset. "Look into the light . . ."
Once inside The Whispers, Trianne took a few steps into the lobby and paused for Xeno's entrance. A herd of giddy clubbers careened into her, carrying her away like social kelp in a current of steamy perspiration, muddy chatter, heavy bass notes hitting her in the face, vibrating the membranes of her eardrum, the whole construct of it all supported by slabs of sewage-stained concrete walls, and rusted metal frames. She swerved and took a shot in the eye from a random dance laser, a flash of pain in her retina, a pomegranate splotch of temporary blindness.
Someone yanked her out of the crowd and swung her around, bracing her against the concrete wall, watching, her, waiting in silence for her vision to return. The strands of Xeno's premature gray hair came into focus.
"What took you so long?!" Trianne yelled to be heard above the crowd.
"According to the werewolf at the entrance," Xeno yelled back, "we've been assigned balcony seats! Do you know where the H.I.P. section is?!"
"Yeah, this way!" Trianne led Xeno by the hand past depleted ravers, slumped against a serpentine bar like gazelles sacked by tranquilizer darts. They oozed their way through the dance floor mob, clogged with shirtless guys and bikinied girls with matted hair and runny goth mascara, inviting Xeno and Trianne to sip from luminous drinks, and probably wake up naked in the back of an abandoned van.
They cut through a thicket of couples on the dance floor, standing palm to palm, forehead to forehead, eyes shut tight in nameless disco trance solace, melding minds with Holly's 5-track transmission, using the Social Ray feature of the black box. The glowing green light on the control panel indicated the concert goer was now telepathically linked. Over the sea of heads, against the back wall of the stage, stock footage of the Sun rose on a cyclorama in a wash of orange light over the Earth's aquatic horizon, accompanied by rolling karaoke lyrics to Holly's hit single, "Energy Vampire," sung with her synthetic multi-octave voice:
