Japaniter

scratchy sacking clothing. food intravenous. more and more information. bombardment of self and other. constantly sending and receiving data. at what point do you take a break, or do you live and breathe it?

characters -

Alex, a young post-jehovas witness girl with happy teeth, grew up in Gateshead, Newcastle, in the late 80s. She studied 'new media' at school and now develops the Global Jehovas Witness Network (find online - what's interesting about it, should be googleable). Her mother is a fat oik who has always kept her down, and emotionally tied to Gateshead, but she occupies a vast world of Jehovas', and has impacts via chat rooms the world over.. (older brothers too..)

Drones - Maj & Lia - spiritual leader from Slovenia and his embittered wife, who complains about the noisy planes overhead all the time, but hypocritically travels extensively. Maj is the soft househusband who provides her with her spiritual bread and butter. He is a kept man, and meditates most of the time to keep away the visual/data bombardment.

Setting - Japan, Jupiter

Hot, really hot outside, it's like flickering light constantly, the crackle and hiss of fluorescent bulbs on every building, reacting to those with the most presence, and as a result, those who shy away from engaging with internet presence are left alone in the dark. Maj gets up, he rolls over on his futon, looks at the wall clock and grimaces, it's 6am and brighter than it should be given its fake-winter. Fake winter is the climate controlled season that the Office of Satisfactory Meteorology created on Jupiter for its new inhabitants. It has the result of being a shock to the senses, a cold rush of wind will be followed by a snow fall, the flakes all uniform size as if they have been administered by a machine, which they have. All the while the brightness is blinding, and signs and symbols for lifestyle direction come at you from every angle as you traverse the streets in a Fake winter wonderland.  

Maj shivers a little, his naked body silhouetted against the glare from the window. He doesn't check his email, he barely checks his emails anymore. He stands up, stretches slowly and powerfully, every muscle in his dark bag of skin is highlighted by flashes from outside, the outside that is constantly getting in. He wiggles his toes on the rug, luxuriating in the sensation of soft and warm for a moment, before heading for the shower.

The walls of this apartment are concrete, or at least that's what they look like, but they are infact a new mineral that they found in abundance on this planet when they arrived to settle, many years ago. The curiously dull mineral walls withstand the unrelenting onslaught of conditions, and in their inert heavy physicality Maj takes solace. A literal shell from the outside. Sometimes he sits in front of those walls and just stares into them, until his peripheral vision goes starry and blurry, and he becomes aware that he is a physical being and alive. Those walls hold up low ceilings, which have embedded in them soft lights that allow a cosiness, like a den, a warren from which to view the outside tentatively. Wall to ceiling windows run on the north side of the house, and from that side he turns away always. In favour of the solace of the grey walls. He wakes up to a low drone, an inescapable drone of electricity and power, that will never cease, not here anyway. He knows there were places in the universe before where you could escape these elements, but he has only mild memories of these kindled spaces, knowledge of green, and brown, what he considers 'real' green, and 'real' brown, not the computer generated greens and browns that he was taught about at SCHOOL.