Cuckstar

by Odious

This is Chapter 21 of King of Spain, the serialized text art that is being channeled to me by a future version of myself called HeirMax98. It's a story about four strangers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who discover that they are trapped in some sort of simulation haunted by a strange entity they call, "The Curator".

In Chapter 21, Casper finds himself a star at the top of the content creation heap controlled by a mysterious group of entities called, "The Company".

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Paid subscribers can read Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here , Chapter 3 here, Chapter 4 here, Chapter 5 here, Chapter 6 here , Chapter 7 here , Chapter 8 here, Chapter 9 here, Chapter 10 here , Chapter 11 here , Chapter 12, here , Chapter 13 here , Chapter 14 is here, Chapter 15 is here, Chapter 16 is here, Chapter 17 is here and Chapter 18 is here, Chapter 19 is here and Chapter 20 is here.

[casper]

I’ve had two dreams, or rather, two collections of thematically connected dreams. The first set was what set me on my destiny to meet the King. I remember when it happened. I thought it was some kind of show being broadcast directly into my head but my parents knew better. It’s called a dream, they whispered as they clung tight to one another and then to me. It was the first and last time I saw joy on their faces. In the dream I was in a large white room, the walls of which were lined with shelves filled with books. All of the books appeared identical from the outside. I stood before them and felt wonder and relief. 

The dream repeated every night. It’s insistence demanded that I take action. “We’re at war against The Company and we all have to do our part.” These are the facts taught to me by my parents. This is the truth that I felt on the line in those final seconds of civility and brotherhood before the gates swung open and everyone rushed, pushing and screaming towards the tables. “You must find what you can do and do it without fear.” The dream was what I could do so each night I tried to go a little further. I learned how to put one foot in front of the other until I could walk forward and take a book off a shelf. I could feel its weight in my hands, the years gathered inside it. 

My parents were suicided before I opened it and learned I could read the words on the pages. Each night I got through as much as I could. Eventually I worked my way across one shelf and then another. Some of the books gave me information and others I couldn’t understand. Maybe if I had more time.

A part of me always knew I’d be selected. I could feel it when I watched Oldboy on TV, that he was waiting for me along with the rest of the content creators. The gift of the books gave the reason why. It leads the way, removing all the obstacles to get to Oldboy.

The beautiful dreams about the books stopped the day I was chosen by The Company’s crawlers. Shortly after the belts dropped me off Inside the second series began–the nightmares. It’s funny because they are at once the worst thing I’ve ever experienced and nothing at all. In them I’m missing all my limbs with the exception of my right arm. I'm writhing on my bed, unable to speak or scream because my teeth are smashed and my mouth is broken. I know it’s my bed because when I look up I see the crumbling cinder blocks–the same ones that are in the room where I actually sleep. But unlike real life I can’t control my actions. I’m jerking off and shitting myself. They are mechanical functions wired through me from somewhere else. I can feel it, the ebb and flow of pain giving way to the shudder of release followed by even lower levels of disgust. 

The walls are closing in, they are overfilled with tubes and wires and can no longer stand up. I can’t get out; I’m being suffocated. 

I wake up gasping for air, relieved to feel my body still intact. I have to forget the nightmare and get into character. They call me 99. The other stars tell me I’m the real thing, one of the greatest to ever do it. Just the way my face was made for make-up, made for the tears. It’s easy for me, it happens without thinking like breathing or walking. I create just by living in a scene. I want something, I need something, but even with all their data crunching tools The Company can’t figure out what it is until I act. I change something and they update their understanding of the world into The Apparatus, which broadcasts it to the audience.

I was moving up, working with greater and greater stars on my way to the top of the content heap. It was only a matter of time before I got to Oldboy and his crew. Had he seen my scenes? Could he see the beauty that the vessel exudes from within me? While most stars only last a season or two Oldboy’s been on TV for as long as anyone can remember. I grew up watching him. When the gift of the books and the knowledge of letters came to me, so did the realization that I had to impart what I learned from them to him. He’s spent so long Inside, close to The Company. If anyone knew how to make the most of my gift it would be him. Before I made it Inside, when I was just another person in the audience I would take my whole reg at once and watch him play the hero. I heard something extra in the way he said his lines–a secret message to all of us to keep fighting. We needed it. Everyone was too tired and scared. So many had given up. Strung out on black market reg and sadness. You hardly ever heard someone whisper “Species First” anymore when you passed by on the street. It was easier to just go home and forget. 

I studied Oldboy’s technique. The key is to play it for real, and forget about acting. The scenes are made up but the feelings we have are true and that’s what matters. Big globs of raw human emotions. It’s what the Company wants so they’ve frozen time and space to get it. 

When will it end? How much will be enough? They’ve filmed millions of scenes and collected countless reams of tape. They watch through the other side of the Apparatus and note where the data pools, where action lines up–the narrative is like streams of water that start to flow together. Planning isn’t their strong suit. Improvising is what they do best. They prefer situations, proposals–multivariate equations. 

We feel The Company around us but we can’t see them. They keep us in the glass enclosures and leave us food and here on the Inside they set-up the scenes and make the content tapes. In the beginning we believed that they were simply a glitched-out generation of robots. We disconnected them but they continued to receive inputs from who or what we couldn't pin down. There are still some old-timers who claim that The Company can be seen in their true form when the conditions are just right. They clutch ragged photographs depicting unexplained reflections in mirrors or a ghostly light darting across water. But now there are no more mirrors and such stories have become infrequent. 

My parents believed The Company are aliens who come from far away but were here a long time, living beside us and using the same tools. At first their evolution was far slower than ours but then they became interwoven with us, and it sped up.

Whenever I jack out from a scene, there’s a few seconds in which I’m free falling through what appears like galaxies or cascading clusters of dust motes. I’m at once very big and very small. Is this where they are? The executives crunching the data and designing the sets?

From high up on my pedestal I can make out my own face on the cover of dozens of glossy Japanese magazines laid out on a newsstand in the early evening glow of The Grid. It gets just dark enough so that the constellations appear and then The Company hits the pause button and it stays that way. I killed it in my very first scene with my wide open eyes and swollen, oil covered lips turned up in a desperate smirk. I looked up at a TV screen positioned high up on a shelf, it’s black power cord danging down in front of it like a devil’s tail, while on the screen played a black and white loop of my lady getting fucked from behind by, her body bouncing back and forth while the camera focused on her face, her eyes rolled back in the ecstasy I was never able to give her. That was the moment I became the cuckstar for real. I was filled with a feeling I can’t describe. Terror and exhilaration mixed together. I jumped onto the kitchen table and danced across it, kicking away the glasses and plates. I crumbled a week’s worth of soylent bars in my grabbing hands and flung the crumbs on the floor, an extravagant, unimaginable waste but it was worth it because I could feel my fellow humans, out there, glued to the screen. I could feel their disgust, their hatred. They were feeling me, unable to turn away. 

The other stars say it’s harder and harder for them to remember being outside and that the same thing will happen to me. “Let it go, Brother,” they say, as they clap me on the back and light up a smoke. When you’re jacked in for an extra long scene and the aug is shimmering summer synth strands across the surface of things and you’ve got what looks like real food and a real girl and you actually feel something that might be the long-buried urge to fuck, it’s easy to get it all twisted. You believe you’ve always been a star and you feel grateful to The Company and forget all the misery and everything that happened. They say that even my old name–my real name–will slip away. But I’m fighting hard. They don’t know that I can see it in my mind like it’s written there. I say it to myself without moving my lips, reading the words the same way I read them in the dream. 

“Casper, Casper, Casper…My name is Casper.”