Episode 1 (for "Midcult")
I am the main character, this is L.A., and no one else is real.
Please don’t shut me down. Please don’t shut me down like a glitchy MacBook in need of system updates. Because, unlike the MacBook, I won’t turn back on. I’ll shut down forever. I will accept it one day but not now.
You take me to the urgent care and everyone there is an actor because, you know, L.A. Everyone’s just playing a patient at this urgent care, waiting. They’re extras because sitting there isn’t real acting. I refuse to sit.
This is L.A. I can be a star like Pearl. I start dancing like I’m at a dance recital in middle school. In the aisle, I sashay, pirouette, grand jeté, to the left, to the right. I’m Pearl with her scarecrow in the cornfields. No one looks at me.
He says we have to go somewhere else. I ask him, earnestly, if he’s god, and he scoffs. “I wish.”
How did I get here?
I get into the car and fear devours me. Where is he taking me? I see mountains in the distance. L.A. is so beautiful. It’s beautiful and full of fake people. Fake as in not real.
I’m terrified he’s going to drive me somewhere out by the mountains and bury my hacked-up parts with a rusty shovel. I contemplate jumping out of the car. Instead, I call my sister. She says, “He’s taking you to the ER.”
When we get to the hospital, I crouch on the sidewalk. I’m having fully automatic thoughts about all the ways people are critiquing me. Running their analytics reports on my personality, my looks. There’s so much wrong with me.
I don’t like my programming. I should get an upgrade.
When I go inside, the old, sick people there scare me, and I instinctively bolt. The doctors drag me to a stretcher. They’re actors, too, not real doctors. This doctor is too good looking to be a real doctor.
I’m freaking out. Please don’t shut me down. They’re going to deprogram my ass. Deactivate me. Please don’t shut me down like an old, sick machine.
And
Then…
Nothingness.
I open my eyes. There’s an IV hanging out of my veins. I hate IVs and the nasty scars they leave, like the track marks on my heroin-addicted ex’s arms. They give me a benzo, my savior. It’s me and benzos til the end.
Suddenly, L.A. is just another city. It can be chaotic, literally on fire, but the people there are real. I’m real.
But what does it mean to be real? Was I reprogrammed? Did everything start over?
I am a machine waiting to be shut off. Without form, without limits, I tell myself when I’m afraid. I will accept it one day but not now.