Storystyling : Cityface (three / 2)

Tales of Speech

There is a place called shopping mall. Some think it’s a city. To some, it appears as the whole world. Some perceive it in terms of the universe. And yet, it’s nothing but a place called shopping mall.

It is situated within the space ensured by providing one’s password. No username is needed, however. People go there to shop.

It is vast. It is glossy. Scorchingly gaudy. Its corridors are labyrinthine. Its compartments are distinctive. And yet, they all have one thing in common – the currency. The currency is impalpable. It is exchanged by swiping one’s virtual card on a device coded in cyber-fiscal encrypto-system. Numberless are transactions made on a daily basis. Annual turnover unfathomable. Profit…noone thinks in such terms anymore. It is an obsolete concept. It seems that for gamizens, it is the very act of making a transaction that matters. Or, the very experience of shopping. Who knows. If anyone cares to acknowledge such a word. If it’s not among the many that can now only be found in dictionaries of etymology. If anyone knows which words are still valid, spoken, and recognized with at least a modicum of understanding.

There is a compartment unbeatable in its blinding glitter. There gamizens go to purchase gambler rush. They don’t gamble. It belongs in the epochs way too far in the past to be retrievable. Noone remembers it except for those who carry conjured up memories weaved in the haze of the vapor enveloping the nodes of cyber-encryptograms. Those worshippers of fabricated desires. They like their visits to gambling arcades. They keep purchasing till their virtual card exhausts itself and the coded devices can no longer receive a single signal.

There is also a shop where purchasable goods is a sense one would normally associate with an intake of nutrients. And yet, food is not a component of the experience cyber adventurers pursue there. They like to indulge in the very potential exuded from decrypto-machines as they engulf the symbols fluctuating across the embroidery whose pillars are encrypto-cyber nodes. They like the flow of the currency. It’s like something one can find in the sections featuring re-enactments of postapocalyptic junkyards, or, find out about in dictionaries of etymology. Or, other choices.

There are areas of the place in question where those who think they would like walking (should it still be a viable entry in the vocabulary widely acknowledged) go. They like it there because merchandize available: (1) matches  their purchasing power & (2) either feels like an oxy-empire, or, smells like fog.

There is a part of shopping mall full of tables. Each table embellished with four accompanying chairs, modest in appearance, yet stately in attitude -- undoubtedly being components of the set called a table and chairs. Each table clad in a tablecloth. Its yarn resistant to versatile circumstances. Many a glass found its place on the surface of that peculiar thing. Some of them half-empty. Those that are not soon become so, since in that compartment the ceiling is a porous tapestry whose threads are generators of the perpetual transformation of condensed moisture into the watery formations, gentle droplets persistently saturating the place with a photonizing whisper. There is noone in that abandoned rainy corner of shopping mall. Because there is nothing to buy. Because it’s not a shop. It’s a café.

It’s dark and shady. It’s quiet. Looks like it’s not even a part of a place that might be called a shopping mall. Looks unattractive. Like none of the shops surrounding it. It doesn’t even have a decrypto-fiscal machine. It doesn’t need it. Noone shops there. Because it’s not about buying. Because it’s not a shop. Shops have no knowledge of a café. They cannot read dictionaries of etymology. They don’t know what a photonizing whisper is, what nodes hold citymaps, what laceworks.

***

once, in an unknown place, i saw a shadow of its past. it looked familiar to me.  i don’t know how i could recognize it when i know very little about the past of that place. i don’t even know what i recognized. i don’t know why it made me feel slightly sad, just as i don’t know why i liked it.

perhaps because it’s not the sad part that i liked. perhaps because it was colored in the language i can understand & speak.

***

i detected the traces of that shadow in the mist of the mild morning air whose radiance is the freshness of the color of the newly blossomed flora. Its gently tamed glow suspended under the steps pregnant with weariness of tantalizing exuberance. As they populate the pavement, they inscribe in the haze veiling the cityscape the code incommensurable with the valence of the moist caking the greenery with the pale photonizing crust. Their steps are devoid of the stories they tell, their stories wary of their void steps.

i think the shadow i saw might be the reflection of the brightness emanating quietly from beneath the layers of languid exhilaration, perhaps clouding, and yet not precluding, the miraculous gleam.

methinks me likes it. methinks it’s colored in the language i can understand & speak.