Blueprints of the Afterlife

and nasty that came from four guys in Sweden. It was the kind of music that made you think this Neethan Jordan guy was a menace to society. Better lock up your children ’cause he’s out to corrupt them with his magnificently erogenous body parts. Neethan’s feet strode across the field of red fabric running alongside the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Names scrolled beneath his strutting shoes: Anatole Litvak, Jetta Goudal, Sabu, Nita Naldi. Breaking the fourth wall, Neethan turned to the camera and said, “I don’t know if I’m in my head, in a computer, or in a world that’s actually real!” Cars passed in what looked to Abby like an old-school video toaster montage—a sedan full of gaping, fanged clowns, a grainy Zapruder-film town car convertible with JFK waving from the back seat moments prior to his assassination, an ice-cream man dressed as a carrot leaning out of his window offering Fudgsicles, a gaggle of rambunctious exploitation flick Hell’s Angels. This wasn’t the physical world Hollywood Boulevard, if such a place had ever existed, but some kind of lazy, received idea of it. The red carpet led Neethan to the intersection of North Curson. A gas station, palm trees, abandoned cars. The red path veered to the right, north, into the hills. Here and there the husk of a house. Neethan’s breathing was amplified now, signifying exertion and panic. The sun dropped. A white cat skittered up, considered him for a moment, then dashed into some bushes. Scattered tabloid news rags and hip-hop-branded forty-ouncers across the carpet’s path. All these mansions, shuttered and dormant, gardens overgrown, vines snaking up gates and walls, curling around visionless security cameras mounted on poles. Individuals whose names used to appear in the credits of things that cost $100 million to make once lived here. A palm jutted up through the pavement in the middle of the street. Abby scratched her pubis: scritch scritch. The camera considered the sunset and the onset of utter darkness.

Intertitle: TEN DAYS LATER.

New shot. Exterior. Morning. Neethan asleep on the red carpet. Pan back to reveal the carpet stretched through a semiarid Californian post-FUS landscape. Neethan’s clothes, disheveled from over a week of travel by foot. His lips were flaky, chapped. “This is crazy,” he said. “I can’t keep going on like this. When is this carpet going to end?” And yet he pulled himself to his feet with a swell of music and continued. A shot of the punishing sun, time-lapse images of it rising and setting, the moon, stars pinwheeling across the fast- forwarded night. A commercial for hair-growth cream. A road sign read: DEATH VALLEY. The carpet continued forward, across the desert. The music was martial, percussive, as Neethan stumbled ever onward. Close-up of Neethan’s peeled, delirious face. Finally, amid the sand and ripples of heat, he collapsed face-first on the acrylic carpet.

New shot. Exterior, night, everything lit blue in moonlight. Oops, somehow a boom mic poked into the shot. Neethan still lay passed out on the carpet, which ran alongside a two-lane road. From the distance came the sound of an approaching vehicle. Pinprick-like dots of light that grew larger with the steady increase in volume. Turns out it was an ambulance. After illuminating Neethan in the headlights, the vehicle slowed down and pulled to the side of the road. The back doors squeaked open and a pair of Sikh paramedics hustled to the fallen actor, loaded him onto a stretcher, and inserted him into the ambulance.

There was a montage of close-ups in which the paramedics’ faces were not seen, only their gloved hands manipulating syringes, unscrewing caps off tubes of ointment. They slid an IV into Neethan’s arm, pried his eyelids open and penlighted his pupils, glued electrodes to his forehead, and unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a tanned and waxed six-pack.

Cut to shot of the ambulance, idling on the side of the road in the dark night.

More interior-montage footage, a syringe poked into an ampoule, then into Neethan’s arm. The beeping of machines as the paramedics purposefully went about their business.

Cut to a shot of the ambulance, the doors opening, paramedics carrying Neethan back out on the stretcher, over to the place where he’d reposed. They lifted him from the stretcher and set him prone on the red carpet as the first featherings of dawn appeared on the horizon. Hustling back to the vehicle, the paramedics loaded the stretcher, hopped in after it, then closed the doors as the ambulance spat gravel and zoomed away.

Close-up on Neethan’s face, eyes closed as the day’s first sun rays foreshadowed the brutality of this valley of punishment. His eyes fluttered awake. Medium shot as he rose, stretched, surveyed the blasted landscape. The red carpet extended ahead and behind. Yawning, he stepped forward. Close-up of his shoes, scuffed leather, moving across the carpet.

Wide shot, putting the expansive Western desert on grand display. Up ahead, a figure stood motionless beside the red carpet. Close-up of Neethan squinting. As he drew closer he discerned two people standing side by side. Fifty more paces revealed them to be a man in a suit and a cameraman. Media. The reporter gripped a microphone and seemed to have been conducting hours of preparatory smiling. Neethan cleared his throat and extended his hand in greeting.

The reporter took Neethan’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Hola. Soy Pefas Munoz de las noticias del canal siete.”

“Hi, Pefas, nice to meet you. Glad to be here.”

“?Que puede usted decirme sobre su nueva pelicula?”

“?En ingles o espanol?”

“Espanol, por favor.”

“Stella Artaud: Asesino Newman,Temporada Cuatro, es la ultima temporada en la serie premiada de Stella Artaud: Asesino Newman. Yo interpreto al Doctor Uri Borden, un cientifico de clonicos quien se involucra en la insurreccion y tiene que decidir abortar el Mesias o no. Es una serie estimulante, exhibiendo efectos de los mas avanzados y accion en todas partes, con mas que un poco de ternura.”

Abby paused the show, unkinked her neck, and shuffled into the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet she propped her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. It was night, she thought. She’d have to look out the window to be certain. After flushing she stood in front of the sink avoiding eye contact with herself. Just a quick peek, she thought, just to see how I’m holding up. She squeezed the porcelain sink lip and tried to raise her head. She found she could only do it if she closed her eyes. Breathing hard through her nostrils, she forced herself to look. Her face was broken out, that was the first problem. It was hard to mess up compliant Eurasian hair, but hers had turned greasy and knotty. Black bags under eyes jittery and blasted red.

“What’s wrong with me?” Abby said, and though she knew well the answer still she refused to admit it. She’d been around people in this shape before. She’d seen Jadie like this. She knew what an embodiment looked like.

Q&A WITH LUKE PIPER, PART 4

You made a lot of money in the tech boom.

That’s an understatement.

Tell me how it got started.

I don’t feel like talking about that today. Shut off the recorder.

Come on, now.

Shut off the fucking recorder.

Okay, it’s off.

The red light’s still on.

That’s the battery light. The switch is to OFF, see?

This whole thing is bullshit.

Why are you angry? Did I make you angry, Luke?

I’ve been nothing but patient with you. But nothing I say is going to move you to do anything besides file your stupid little report. You’re humoring me. Nothing I say is going to matter to you.

Of course it matters to me.

Bullshit.

Okay, have it that way. You can find someone else to help you tell your story. Be my guest.

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