Cipher

Three

I arrive at the hovel, wet again. The sky broke down once again to let its anguish befall over us with full pressure. I get it- its sadness. I get its anger.

The world isn't what it was supposed to be. Not anymore.

I peel off the heavy t-shirt, drop off the soaked jeans and flop down on the bed in my boxers to watch the ceiling fan make its lazy circles. I watch as it sways with every arc it completes. This fan is ancient; they don't exist anymore. As is the stereo sitting on the shelf, with actual magnet coated plastic film cassettes in it. My little babies.

When I think of it, I realize this entire flat has a lot of things that shouldn't exist anymore. Manual showers. No sensors to detect my mood for hot or cold water. A simple wooden door. Creaky floorboards. Walls made of plaster.

It makes me think that I could imagine what life used to be like before AI.

I push myself off the bed and pick up a cassette; the exterior is white cheap plastic that still hasn't demolished throughout a century, and has a paper tape that once in its life might have been white- now resembles a dead leaf in the season of autumn- flaky and dusty brown, bearing a half-written name of the song. I never found who the singer was, but my suspicion is it was this Led Zeppelin. I have another cassette with a song that appears to have been sung by the very same man and its tape is still intact. And then there are the Beatles cassettes which make me feel like I should have paid a fortune for them, the priceless gems that they hold.

The person I bought the cassettes and the stereo from was very poor and carrying out the sale along with plenty other merchandisers who couldn't afford to keep belongings anymore. He was a rather decrepit old man with greying curling hair that stood out in contrast against his naturally dark skin, and had wrinkles covering every inch of his face, making it appear as though it were a crinkled paper that you might try to smooth out.

He was wearing a pale wrinkled shirt, with grey pants and rubber flip-flops. I still remember every detail about him. The way his shoulders stooped low, the way he blinked those striking blue eyes of his.

I could tell these cassettes and the stereo were his most precious belongings. Precious, yet useless against the fierce bouts of hunger that would overtake him if he didn't get some money.

I wanted to help him- and I wanted the cassettes. They were classics, so he was justified in asking the price he asked. I doubt anyone else would have bought them.

So I bought them.

The hesitation in the eyes of the man came once he held the money, wondering if it was worth it.

"I'll take good care of them," I had assured him.

Staring down at the cassette in my hand, I wonder how that guy is now. Maybe he's dead. No- probably dead.

The poor cannot survive this world.

I load it in the stereo and press play; heaven explodes in the hovel. I let the music wash away the bitterness of my thoughts. Through music, I honour his memory. I bask in the knowledge that the old guy once probably listened to this very cassette and closed his eyes to it and let himself get carried away with it.

I throw myself over the mattress once more, grinning at the miserable ceiling fan, letting the familiar beats roll around in my mind.

For a moment, I allow myself to fantasize living in the same world as the singer; the simple world with basic technologies, a world so blissfully devoid of sophistication. A world with death, a world with music such as this, a world with a love that was pure, a world with religion, with culture.