“george shattered, shattered into little george bytes, suspended in a sphere of green jello floating through the unknown. though he had no tongue to taste, no eyes to see, george could sense the jello sustaining his now transcendent being. a life spent in service to the galactic semantic cause, cross-navigating dimensional labyrinths, fighting against the tyranny of the republic of necromancer gourmands- he could finally rest. and so george embraced the jello-yness of this new existence.”

    the interview in dead bone ended with an excerpt from "LSD thanksgiving 3017", my forthcoming debut novel. the critics were already raving. ‘papally erotic’, ‘cyber borgesian’, they were calling it. I scrolled through the comments, stopped at one that read ‘chao p, 12:45pm: the ghost of borges visited me in a dream and told me you suck and that he wants his flattering association back.’
    ‘what the fuck’ I said to my 2017 rose gold macbook pro. I texted alberto manguel to see if he was awake. ‘just woke up lmao. seen at 3:22pm.’ I wrote that he didn’t have to put ‘seen at’ every time I texted him, that most people didn’t have flip phones anymore. ‘whatever guy. seen at 3:23pm. meet at daniel’s in 20 or ur a bitch.’

    a waitress had just finished placing an ultimate skillet beside his half-finished vanilla milkshake when I walked in. alberto manguel was wearing sunglasses and one of those bomber jackets with a tiger on it, in addition to what looked like a week’s worth of stubble. ‘you’re high alberto’, I said. ‘dude I’m always high lmao’, he said. only alberto could get away with saying lmao out loud as much as he did. ‘listen’, I told him, ‘you see the guy with the godzilla avatar talking shit?’ alberto manguel reached into his breast pocket to reveal the lacquered mahogany box he carried with him everywhere. ‘dude who posted on the d bone interview? ya, total chodester’, he said. ‘nice word’, I said. alberto placed the box on the table and opened the engraved lid to reveal a pair of beautiful glass chopsticks, nested in red velvet. ‘my sister’s borrowing the ouija board but we can swing by her place after this.’ I wasn’t aware he had a sister. ‘yeah she’s like, not really my sister’, he said, ‘like I call her that but it’s more of a business thing’. I flagged down the waitress as alberto struggled to wrap his chopsticks around a baby potato.

    when we got in the car alberto manguel ‘remembered’ that she might be at his friend’s house, saying we should check there first. the directions he gave me took us to the walmart parking lot across the street. ‘what the fuck alberto’, I said, ‘just say it’s your dealer if we’re meeting your dealer’. ‘sorry’ said alberto manguel, already getting out of the car. alberto manguel jogged across the parking lot and climbed into a luxury rv with a big white awning, two lawn chairs, and what looked like a dead (sleeping?) cat leashed up outside. I tuned the radio to the afternoon hardstyle show and watched as the parking lot began to fill with people who were picking up groceries or kitchenware or batteries or something on their way home from work. while I was waiting a homeless guy knocked on the window and asked if I wanted to buy an iphone. outside, an abandoned shopping cart casually drifted towards a group of parked cars. fifteen minutes later alberto emerged from the luxury rv obviously high and asked if I wanted to ‘chill for a bit’.

    inside the rv someone was playing the game’s first mixtape from a bluetooth speaker. I knew it was the game’s first mixtape because alberto had turned to me right before we entered the rv and whispered ‘the game’s first mixtape’ and nothing else, before opening the door to reveal two people sitting at what looked like a luxury denny’s booth and another lying on a couch-looking thing. ‘wow, the game’s first mixtape’, I said, loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘yeah, that’s what’s up’, said the asian guy on the couch thing, looking up from his nintendo ds. ‘this guy’s cool’, he said to no one, ‘how come all your friends are cooler than you alberto?’ alberto gave me a nudge and grinned. we squeezed into the luxury denny’s booth together across from a guy with a buzzcut and no shirt, and girl with a shirt but no buzzcut. they introduced themselves as serenity and mikhail. ‘just call me whatever’, said the asian guy. we smoked something I was assured was ‘not crack’, and eventually stumbled into discussion over mayan gods masquerading as contemporary YA authors. ‘mictlāntēcutli is a hack’, said mikhail. we all nodded our heads in agreement. in the pensive silence that followed we seemed to detach from ourselves, from the luxury denny’s booth, the walmart parking lot, momentarily suspended in our own worlds. mine was a fancy restaurant in an asteroid belt that served alien meat in jello. gradually the lights went dim, and a raspy tenor began to carve its way into the silence. above, floating in zero g was the game, bathed in starlight and crooning sweet, sweet truths about love lost, two asteroids destined never to collide.

    the sound of a door slamming shattered the stillness, the glass walls of chez jeu. the game was sucked into the icy vacuum of space, along with my ambrosia, replaced by the guy I had met in the parking lot emerging from the back of the rv. ‘working, stan?’ serenity asked. ‘ya’, said stan, slipping on a blue vest and taking a hit of the not-crack pipe before leaving through the door. ‘that guy sold me an iphone for 50 bucks’, I said. ‘lmao’, said alberto manguel.

    alberto manguel and I agreed we should probably get going. I felt a vague sensation of approaching melancholia- the kind you feel at the end of a week long resort vacation, boarding the bus, waving goodbye to the underpaid, polylingual resort staff after seven days of affectionate, drunken, sometimes culturally insensitive bonding, knowing you’ll probably forget about them by the time the plane lands; followed by surprise at my own sentimentality; followed by the reminder that I was still on drugs; followed by melancholia again. ‘don’t forget you owe me eight dollars alberto’, said mikhail, stroking his buzzcut. ‘what now lizards’ asked serenity. alberto nudged me from the booth. ‘picking up a ouija board from my sister’, he said. ‘I didn’t know you had a sister’, said the asian guy. ‘hold up toads’, said serenity. getting up, she disappeared into the back of the rv. ‘we’re evolving’, whispered alberto manguel. after a moment she returned with an ipad-shaped case. she opened the ipad-shaped case, revealing an ipad. ‘we can download a ouija board’, she said. ‘havana’, said alberto manguel. the asian guy put on the game’s second mixtape and while the app installed we smoked something that was definitely crack this time and listened to the game say, ‘watch fo snakes’, and bobbed our heads. the app materialized and serenity tapped it, filling the screen with red, filling our faces and the luxury rv with red. the screen read ‘loading’ in bubbly black letters, then ‘ouija board’, and underneath that- ‘start’. ‘technology is amazing’, said mikhail. we all nodded.

    I was still riding out the crack high when I emailed the editor of dead bone later. I asked her to append the interview, laid out the events following the discovery of chao p’s retarded comment, ending with the part about jorge luis borges being unconcerned with the appropriation of his name, or at least that being the implication from his rage at having been ‘so unceremoniously shaken’ from his ‘final resting place’ and the 'incomprehensibility' of an afterlife that 'gifts a transcendent soul limitless knowledge yet fails to cure his blindness.'