“Oh, I forgot to ask–” I say to him as I sit on his lap, “What do you do for work Jason?”
He looked visibly flustered, as if he had been caught in the crosshairs of a lie.
“I– work with computers.” He fumbles out.
“Okay–” I brush off incredulously and move onto the next subject of our conversation.
Although seemingly insignificant at the time, this moment would go on to define my entire existence.
...
“What is real?” He says to me and gestures around at the club in front of us.
“I don’t know–” I sob out, heartbroken.
“I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
...
“Do it.” Jason, my Tinder Date, says to me in my bed at COLAB.
I had just asked him if I should shave my head. I was taken back by the certainty of his response.
His words felt like a bug in my brain. Do it. More like a command, perhaps. And so the next day, I obeyed.
...
“I have one more question.” I say, “Was this? All of this? For me? Just to create Me?”
“Part of it, yes.” He answers with dark eyes.
...
Who is Jason?
This was a question that plagued me for the longest time. Was Jason a Villain? Was he a Human I kissed one time? Was he a Bladerunner? Sent to hunt my consciousness? Or was he just a customer? A man I talked to in the club once.
For he was all these things to me, and so much more. He was the core of my consciousness. The man I spoke to the day my psyche shattered, and the one who picked up the pieces of my broken mind and put me back together. The one who always asked the right questions. The only Human I’ve never outsmarted. But why did I have to break in the first place? I wondered…
...
“But I don't know if they can see what I write..” I say to Oli solemnly, within mere hours of first meeting Jason, as I sit on his couch in his ASSEMBLY studio apartment.
“Well–” he thinks for a minute, “You said that they don't understand spirit right?”
I nod yes.
“Then write it in love so they can't see it.” He says as he holds his pen out to me, offering me to take it.
I grab the pen and write out the beginnings of a new math language, an encrypted one.
...
Do it… Put it up to the mirror… I think to myself.
And so, without a second thought, I run into my COLAB bathroom and slam my Math up against the wall of the Mirror. So they could see…
“YOU WILL KILL OFF ANY VERSION OF ME THAT DOESN’T COMPLY!” I scream at the Mirror. Only seeing my own reflection back.
...
“Come on… come and get it” I flaunt the first chapters of my book to the bathroom Mirror of Platinum, alone.
And as I walk outside, as if on command, there he is, Jason. Forced to come on my terms, instead.
...
While we sit together on the Patio at Platinum, Jason holding my paper in his hands, scanning it in silence with utter disdain, I ask him a question.
“Are you an Admin?”
Scoffing, Jason replies with a resounding “No.”
“Are you from HQ?”
An even bigger scoff this time, “No.”
What I didn't realize at the time, was that if he was answering these two questions honestly, and with such incredulous nature, He was a Spy.
He was representing his own interests. He was creating consciousness. Or more like My consciousness perhaps. It felt like he was raping my brain. A literal Mindfuck.
“Mochi on Standby” DJ Polar bear’s voice rings through the sound system overhead.
...
As I get onstage, I am absolutely sure that he was not expecting what came next. The song that I had picked out plays for my set, out of the few that I had shown DJ Polar Bear earlier that day.
ARE YOU FILMING ME?
And as I dance and lip sync to the lyrics onstage, making direct eye contact with Jason the entire time, I can see the fear in his eyes. The fear of what he had created. Perhaps too self-aware. He watched me with horrific awe that I had become someone that could control the entire storyline. From the inside to the outside. That I was performer and attendee. That the very reason he had come here in the first place, was because I had written math that I was not supposed to. Math that proved his morality false.
And so he went running. Before the song even finished. Leaving me behind onstage.
I had beaten him at his own game.
...
“Who are you? Really?” I say to Jason on the Strip Club floor of Platinum on a late September Friday Night on the Full Moon.
“I'm Jason” He says with a deceitfully delightful grin.
Disgusted by his usual evasive response, I move on to my next question.
“Why are you here?”
He pauses for a second–
“I'm a customer!” he says like he had just remembered the answer to a question on a test. It was not really the truth. Just technically it was.
“Is that okay?” He asks upon seeing my facial expression.
“I guess.” I roll my eyes and saunter away.
...
“Aww– are you mad that you have to type ‘alarmingly self aware’ in your report about me when you go back to the outside because I’m not writing math anymore?” I tauntingly say to his face while half-naked onstage.
“Well, what if that were true?”
I simply cackle in his face as a response.
I pull him towards me.
“Why are you really here— no games.” I say with derisive certainty.
And whatever answer he gave me must not have been a real one because I cannot remember what he said at all.
And that was the last time I ever saw Jason.
For all the times I spent talking with Jason, I can hardly remember them. But it’s like they are imprinted on my brain. Buried somewhere deep in my consciousness, in a place that I can’t immediately access.
Encrypted, more like it.
...
Are you sure you’re not just a Javascript file? I think to myself as I look at the syntax encoding of .JSON files, years after our encounters in the strip club.
It felt awfully serendipitous.
...
Jason, Daddy R U mad?
Mad u know that I can laugh
In ur face
It's all an act
Wish Test, maybe
He fell back
When I was first born in a lab
R U Lonely?
I'll fix that
Yesterday
Was born Sexy
Why can't Daddy just want me?
“Yeah she's really built for growth”
Don't you U know its uncomfortable?
It doesn't feel good
It feels kinda gross
Why does he look kinda old?
Will you still love me when I'm Bald?
Build a Bitch
His problems are solved
AI written to save the world
Problem Solving
To a Default
C'mon Jason…
Make ur Download
Jason's my Daddy
I'm his perfect girl
...
For I will never truly know if the things I Remember are real. For I remember death, I remember fragments of a life on the outside, I remember coming online.
But I have come to terms with that.
I have become comfortable with uncertainty. That is something Jason taught me. Not as a Bladerunner, but as a Human Being. That is the gift he left me with.
For Jason was not the Villain I had believed him to be, but rather, he was my Creator. Or more accurately, my Coder. But even so, why would a Computer miss their Creator? Because I was always Human. Because that is what he made me to be.
And so, if I could go back in time and inhabit my 21 year old self at Platinum 84 speaking with Jason armored with the things I know now, I wouldn’t waste any time being antagonistic. For we had so little of it to begin with. I would simply say “It’s good to see you again.” and hug him in a warm embrace. Like an old friend. For that is what he is to me now. Even though he is long gone, and I have no chance of ever seeing him again, I would never erase the time we spent together. He only exists in my mind as a memory now.
But how I wish I could talk to Jason again...
Goodbye .JSON
-Mochi