HIKIKOMORI MAN (Reality Fix Mix)
By Andrew S. Wade
(C)AndrewSWade2004allrightsreservedorIkeelyou,Engleesh!
Hikikomori, n. Japanese word meaning "People who
withdraw from society".
Got up. Garbage on the tapedeck. "My Lover's Box" blots out the noise of the neighbours. Like static, like white noise. Put the kettle on. Switch on the computer.
Look in mirror. Hair everywhere, eyes feel stuck together; probably a side effect of all the make up I'm using whenever I do go out.
When I do go out.
Moved into the basement a week ago. Cheaper. No windows. No outside. This is good.
I've painted it and installed daylight bulbs. It's a spacious crib, and virtually invulnerable to attack. The house could fall down and I wouldn't know. They could blow up the whole city, the whole world, and I wouldn't know. Or care.
***
The coffee is good. I think about having a cigarette and decide not to. I have vast though limited supplies and anyway I just don't want a cancer stick. So I work the screen instead.
Programming language's going really well. Predicate calculus,
empirical logics. Atomic propositions. Almost
like a real language now. I break up for coffee. Turn up the
music and turn off the monitor. Read a book. Using a computer
all the time is kind of bad for your eyes and it is good
to look at something that is not a light source for a change.
I doze off, then open the fridge and have a beer. Read some more, then think about watching a movie. Plug in Kill Frenzy 2 instead. Put hairs on chest. Die, alien scum. It has a plot as well, though. Better than a movie- lasts longer.
Hours later I unplug and go to bed with my book.
****
Get up. Shave. Go to sign on.
Come home to my beautiful pad. Bastards have cut me off.
They sprung an
interview on me, then told me I was obviously not available for
or actively seeking work. I don't give a shit, though.
I have enough of their money now anyway.
*****
Log myself in. I've noticed something: People on the internet
are such wankers nowadays. Just seem to be up for a fight
and a wind-up. None of that early talk of community any more.
I just can't be bothered with them, so I plug in Hanza Sword
Justice 3 and play until my eyes bleed.
Then I take a break, read a book, study a technical manual
(yummy!) and log myself in again. To do more programming.
Now this is a truly rich and varied world. I am on home
territory now. Forests of propositions, thickets of predicates
and Boolean logic. Unexplored territory of the next language,
other worlds of planning and logic wheel overhead. Test
that routine. Does it work? No. Why? Well...
I look up and see the screensaver tracing abstract patterns
in front of my eyes. I have fallen asleep reading one of
my programming manuals. I look at the screen saver and in my
mind's eye I see something like this:
x = rnd;
going on somewhere inside the box.
I break into the loop and hit RANDOM on the music player.
It finds some nice industrial hillbilly rock-and-roll for me
to work to. Go over some routines. Save my work and run it.
Rewrite code. Save work and run it. Rewrite code...
Eventually I break and flip to an online game called
Political Bagman. It is a strategy number that you
play for money, money will be important to me because my
social security has just been cut off and the rent assistance
will be automatically terminated a few weeks after that.
Fortunately the landlord, utilities and delivery men are all
wired into my bank account, and so is Political Bagman,
and I just happen to be a fairly good player,
so I don't have to get a real job. Which is just as well.
I have just bugged the building the Opposition Party Convention
is taking place in when the phone rings. I ignore it until the
mission is complete then pick up.
"What do you want? No, not today. Look, just fuck off, alright?"
Friends. Who needs 'em?
****
In the same way as the McDonald's hamburger is not a discrete
product but just the same hamburger being sold over and over
again, from one minimum wage-slave worker to another, it is the
same day over and over again. And it is a good day. Nothing like
the feeling of bunking off. Of autonomy, of stealing back your
life.
His personal hygene starts to slip for a while, but he gets used to the smell. He shaves. He doesn't shave. He trims his beard. He shaves again. He still has enough vestigial vanity to dress properly, but he is like a parody of his former self, like an Edwardian ghost in flapping, ragged evening wear, mind still focussed in on those Evlyn Waugh parties and happiness and Bright Young People, long after they have all grown old and died. His culture, his sense of self, all are fossilized, frozen on a summer's day at the turn of the century. At least he knows which century.
He never grows old and dies, because it is the same day, over and over again.
*****
New technology has become available which allows him to obtain free power. His stocks of food and cigarettes and coffee are so high as to be virtually inexhaustable. He doesn't even go on-line much anymore, except to play. To pay the rent.
time = 1;
*****
The power goes off. The generator does not kick in this time. I panic and knock something over, click my lighter. I am in a dark, dank chamber, walled in like a Tibetan monk. I do not panic until I realise that whatever happens, this means that I will have to go outside.
I cross the floor and hit the power box. Nothing happens. I light a candle and fiddle with the generator. It groans to life and the lights flicker on. Computer, too. It boots-up and then freezes.
I examine the screen, and nearly scream. It reads:
________HA__HA__HAHA____HA____HA________
Then the image flickers, and is replaced by the usual graphical-user-interface logon screen.
No doubt about it. I will have to go out. To find parts for the power supply, go to a cafe or something, get a virus checker. I have to (ulp) interact with the (gag) real world.
Anything could have happened... out there. Last time I saw the news, by mistake I might add, it was some terrorists offering to bomb cities, wipe whole regions off the map with nuclear devices. Elections being cancelled, troops walking the streets. What could be going on out there now?
I don't want to know. But I might have to.
I stay down here as long as possible. A lot of my programs don't seem to work anymore, maybe because of HA HA HELL (or did I imagine that?), maybe because there's no Internet anymore.
I will wait for the power to give out again. Then I will go up. Up and out...
*****
He writes new progams and waits for the power to give out again. It does not. He hot-wires his old mobile phone, plugs it into a television ariel socket to get a signal, and gets a connection that way. He does not connect to news sites, and does not connect to sites where he might be exposed to a conversation with another person. He just needs the credit, just needs the connection, to make his programs work, to pay the rent. He doesn't even look at his bank account, just takes it on faith that it will all work out in the end.
And he almost forgets.
*****
There's no coffee anymore. Tapwater is sporadic and I generally boil it before drinking any. I have given up smoking rather than go outside and find out what has happened. Fragments of news still reach me, but I sucessfully blot them out of my mind.
I play the game. I program. I read old J.G. Ballard novels and listen to mix tapes of the Mark Radcliffe Show that I made when I was twenty-one and used to go to raves and fuck people, and had a car and a life and a world.
I drink cheap vodka and boiled water and cry a little. Then I jump up and down on the mix tapes and turn on the computer monitor. I never turn the computer off these days for fear of seeing HA HA HELL again. I do not need to see it on my PC again. I can already see it in my dreams.
****
The power has gone off and will not come on again, no matter how much I fiddle with the generator or kick it, or plead with it even. I vaguely remember that the old technology, such as the genny is based on, actually requires fuel. It has a kind of chimney, an exhaust pipe that feeds up into the outside. Still, it went on for quite a while.
I am sitting in the room reading a book by candle light. I wander if the candle will eventually consume all the oxygen in the room and force me outside before I am ready. I reach for my personal stereo and flick it into life, the old passive speakers proceed to murder some Covenant. The track it is playing is Tears In Rain. I pick up my typewriter (manual, non electronic, like a mechanical laptop computer) and punch in some work. Documentation for software. I can write the program and run and debug it in my head. I don't need electricity anymore.
I get tired. Go to bed and read, turn off the candle and sleep in the dark.
*****
I wake in the dark. It feels early, although night and day haven't meant anything to me for years. I go back to sleep.
I am reading by candle light and eating beans out of the tin when I hear the noise. A creaking sound. The roof. The house, falling down. Another reason to stay in.
There is an almighty crash and the candle goes out. I prepare for death, but all that happens is that some brick dust falls on my head.
I will have to come out now...
I read the documentation I downloaded and printed out before the machines stopped. The emergency information: How To Survive A Nuclear Attack. It explains that radiation remains in the air for a couple of weeks after an attack. But that is not neccesarily what has happened. All my battery-powered gear still works. Wouldn't they have been knocked out? Or would being underground have protected them?
*****
I wake up I light candle I read I write I listen batteries die I write more gibberish I read old gibberish. I function, I go to the toilet (now inexplicably backed up and stinking) I run water I wash I drink water. I don't get sick anymore, not after the first time. I read I write I eat I sleep I shit.
I light my last candle.
I look around at my home. I search among the heaps of trash that are my possesions, I find gun. I load gun, I fire it into wall. Gun works. I find big stick, I swing big stick. I collect weapons food water. I put sunglasses in shirt pocket like tourist in Ha Ha Hell. I climb ladder for the first time in what feels like years...
I open
I stumble in the light. Feel in pocket for sunglasses, put them
on. Lie in the dust and the light coughing. The old house creaks
around me, the rubble and the garbage and the rats.
I pick myself up and I walk to the doorway. I go out.
It is even brighter. Like the first man on
the sun I blink tears, look, force myself to look at whatever
has happened.
My home was on a hill. Now it is on an island.
My own private desert island.
I think: I am Hikikomori Man. And now I am free.
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