Jofella 12
sex tapes drome
The weeks continued on shittily, everyday shittiness of waking up, tired as fuck, barely sleeping, can't fall asleep all night, finally when the sun comes up he sleeps for a few hours, then wakes up out of guilt, musn't sleep all day, but he barely slept, he wont be able to fall asleep until the same time again tonight, the vicious cycle, the drinking sessions already start at 5 pm, barely enough time to get shit done with his paintings, averaging about one painting done a month, which is actually better than most the shitty students, who are much shittier at art than him, at least they all painted their paintings depressed and hungover together in the shared class studio, dragging their brushes, every brush stroke was a dragging ache, against the thread of the canvas, forced to conclude that art was best done in pain, the depression keeps Joffrey going, there is something to it, but its not enough, at least not enough to become a happy painter, when he is fishing and happy, his paintings are even worse, sometimes at night he drinks and casts into the Danube, when he's feeling too fucked to be with the people, his friends, tenuous art school acquaintances really, but he barely caught anything, it made him frustrated, he knew paintings inspired by fishing would only be acceptable if he failed at art, making them for artless fishing folk, much worse than folk art really, alcoholic wood carvings of fish would be slightly better, he was frustrated by his shitty art paintings, art cant be made while frustrated, only true sadness, the problem was he wasn't sad enough, it was fake alcohol depression sadness, not deep experience of life sadness, he wanted to capture something deeper, not his gay ass self, that was the problem, he wasn't fucked in the head enough, he was too much of a regular ass lad, a painting is an expression of the artist and his paintings sucked.
Meanwhile, Larissa's friendship with Maria was growing. Despite her unrequited love for Joffrey and despite Maria's existential trauma inherent to her reproductive deformity, they were both mentally better off than Joffrey for the simple reason that they didn't abuse alcohol as much as he did. They still suffered a deep restlessness, even infecting them directly from Joffrey, Maria kept mentioning him to Larissa, how shitty and pointless his art was, how she felt bad for him. Maria didn't know about anything that had happened between Larissa and Joffrey, Larissa felt too guilty to tell her, if it had worked out, she would have told Maria, of course she would find out anyways, and her betrayal of Maria would have been worth it, love is worth everything, she thought. But love had failed her. It was best to just get over it now and forget everything.
"I'll tell you what," Maria said to her, "I'm so confident Joffrey is too much of a baby to even flirt with me, even though its obvious he wants me, that if he does even try a little bit, I will go home with him and fuck his dick off, I swear to god I will do it."
She hadn't been able to figure out exactly what Maria wanted out of Joffrey, it hurt her at first, but she knew it wasn't love, even if it was something more sinister, at least it wasn't that, she could get used to it as long as it wasn't that, and with him mostly out of the way she could focus on art. Art was the reason for it all, wasn't it? She had to at least pretend it was, to give some meaning to the shit storm, some distraction through its purpose. Thankfully she wasn't the only one holding this illusion, every just barely surviving artist was, even art itself is eager to accommodate you through artwork's absolute dependence on other art and artists. When she asked Maria if she wanted to work together on some stuff, she was sparked up with joy, another person wants to join me, some validation, someone to make it more real with, stronger together. It worked out just as Larissa wanted. Sometimes art and life can be so perfect.
"I really do think you have great taste in music, Larissa. I need someone to put some life back into my iPod, I just miss it so much. I miss how it used to be between me and my iPod." She explained to Larissa what she and Joffrey had discussed after seeing the Music Always painting, the trouble she had with enjoying music after the Pokemaster upgraded her iPod.
"Maybe you're just outgrowing your music, I don't believe your soul has been sucked out of you like that, maybe it's your dedication to the Tamagotchis, you love them so much, but it's a childhood passion, maybe all your childlike energy has been put into them, and you have none left for that music." Larissa was nervous to see what artists Maria had loaded onto the device, but it didn't turn out so bad, just the classic late 90's and early 2000's teenage popular stuff, along with some italian and japanese pop music she wasn't very familiar with, a bit mainstream but nothing too cringe. However, the play counts were extremely high, the displayed numbers glitching out and overlapping the track titles. She really did love that iPod. "Why don't I give you one of mine, I've got a lot with some really cool playlists that could be a good change for you."
"No!" snapped back Maria. "I need my iPod, it has to be mine. It's the only one compatible with my Tamagotchis!"
She was right. The warm feeling welling up inside Larissa's body as she digested these words told her it was true. It was the feeling of playing Maria's artistic game, entering her world, bringing her illusion to life through their shared belief, it was not illusion, but it didn't matter, it didn't need to be reality anyways, Larissa didn't have to understand how the Tamagotchis and the iPod interfaced with each other, Larissa didn't have to understand how the Pokemaster was funnelling the outputs of Maria's artistic soul back to the Toji Corporation. Maria saw the tender look on Larissa's face, Larissa stroked her shoulder, comforting her. "You really understand me, don't you Larissa?"
"Show me how you play with your Tamagotchis. I wanna listen to some music with them."
"Okay little fellas, auntie Larissa is gonna DJ for us."
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"I really want you to fix the iPod for me. I just don't want you to mess up what the Pokemaster did to it.
"Don't worry."
Larissa grasped that even if the Pokemaster was controlling her through the iPod, or whatever he or it was doing, the Toji infrastructure was still a huge part of Maria's special ability. Without the help of Toji, she would never be able to channel her physical abilities into something artistically meaningful. She would have to install something on the iPod that could work around and alongside the Toji enhancements. "Toji and Apple can work together, just like us."
It was like plugging the iPod into her head, she had done it, tried to do it, nothing happened, it wasn't enough to just load on some cool playlists for Maria, she had to completely defuckulate the device, new wires would be involved, circuit chips most likely, uncuckulation, releasing her from it, with no certainty to the exact nature of the causes of Maria's sonic inspiration slumber, or the requirements of her artistic soul, I only know that I must make this the best iPod ever, it is music afterall, it needs no explanation, you just listen to it, Maria was falling off that cliff, away from the music, a distant sound of people enjoying and laughing and crying to music, and Maria was far away, annoyed by the sound of those people and their music, trying to sleep, she could not sleep.
So simple was the nature of music and electricity, Larissa realized you do plug the music into your head, by way of the headphone into the ear, she twisted the white earbud around in her ear, the smooth tender skin, the wax softening the friction, what a beautiful construction. This conclusion was noted down. She was taking the task very seriously, she had a pen and paper. She was an artistic engineer. It was finally a real job with that special real job feeling young artists are tricked into feeling, it kept her going, maybe in this case it really was important.
She had to keep thinking, out think the thing outside of herself who was judging her, judging her artistic status, she took a step back from the earbud, further towards the thing that was the thing in question, the Tamagotchi, isn't that the answer to the problem of the iPod, the prior techno construction, the handheld artistic wonder, the pearl of Maria's existence? There was something fundamental about its construction, there had to be since it had survived so long, plastic shell, screen, a few buttons, that was all, plus the speaker, yes the speaker, audible communication. But all this concealed the flawlessness of the internal construction. She knew it had to be so. She didn't want to take it apart just yet, dissolve the old glue on the seams, pull apart the plastics, but she had succeeded in increasing the artistic intensity of her task.
The software, that was the problem, concurrent with the hardware, as the soul to the body, it needed to be, she thought, it needed, what it needed for its host was to be 'pussed out', that was the word she had been searching for, full of that power to which its owner was the mistress, already she could see a slim little iPod, sliding gracefully from Maria's vagina, well what would the boys think of that, she knew them and their ideas, they were the ones designing the software, there was one good candidate who stood out strong, Nina Protocol, she had read about it on Spikey DJ's blog, if only she could find a way to install it on the iPod without pissing off the little Tamagotchis. Obviously the installation onto a non natively compatible device would require a dongle, but could the device really work for Maria if she had to walk around with dongles swinging from the pod, gathering up sounds from the atmosphere, right out of fucking space, wireless music streaming technology, a fancy term for radio, but Nina was different, it didn’t require the expensive data transmission rates of the cell phone network providers, according to Spikey, a known fabricator of truth and anti truth, musical expression as the primary form of communication to which all humans will one day return, as we came from in the sonic chaos, Nina piggybacked off the Blackberry network, balling up tracks into voice data packets, hacking the voice, the cell phone speaker, a possible partnership with Nokia, with obvious contributions from radio towers across the network coverage zone, new and exciting songs, ever changing and releasing as the youth and well seasoned adults uploaded them to the Nina Network in the sky, and with the iPod attachment accessory all the songs could be programmed into organizational frameworks for maximum listening enjoyment, enhanced playlists.
Larissa got to work. But in hesitation, the age old problem of permission to act. "I trust you Larissa," Maria assured, as Larissa was already getting to work in her head, the motions of the body only lagging behind, a glitch in the Toji matrix, "I'll let you split it open, but I can't bear to watch, just bring it back to me looking like it did before."
I already knew that, slut. I know your pussy better than you know it, well the eggs, no not them, I don't know. I know nothing, but I'm trying. "Can you just give me one of your Tamagotchis, I will need it for parts, and like to see how it fits together, and to combine the stuff all into one for the music, yeah just like an old one or whatever." She gave her a green translucent one who had been refusing to eat his dinner.
At the academy electronic arts workshop lab her mind was abuzz with industrious energy, a hint of childhood flashback, being poor, repairing and retrofitting old devices if she was to have any at all, in 1998 she had to hack an old Sony walkman to look like a Discman, swapping in the plastic shell and buttons, the other kids were none the wiser. But now it was hardcore circuitry inside the iPod. She pried it open in that feeling of guilt. The Tamagotchi beside it, she could see inside the clear plastic, she knew what had to be done, the iPod functioned near flawlessly, in its original primitive ways, intricate circuit boards, chips and connectors, firing sound light electrons through LCD and disc wheel interfaces, nothing was trivial, nothing out of order, every component sandwiched perfectly together and contributing to the overall solidity, giving the device a dense and luxurious feeling in the hand of techno gold. Yet, beside the Tamagotchi, the failures were obvious, the pod wasn't bubbling out with life and color, there was no room for the soul to swim, a living space that Maria needed in these desperate times, it was a conclusion of necessity in any case, there would be no room to stuff in the Nina dongle, she peeled off the plastic sealant, a fresh and delicious odor of factory care, in the hands of a new mother, gotta respect the old, as life passes on its guardians, the things, we are in charge of its elements, temporarily, the greek philosophers understood these elements, when they invented fire, water and earth devices, in them the units of hand held pleasures were contained, bytes of life, not mathematical or abstract, but implanted directly in the brain, sucked into the device, for a period of time, then escaping like dinosaur bones to earth, turning to oil, clutched in my hand, dripping sludge through the fingers, she felt alive, guarding these elements as was her task for these ones here and now, Jofella was reading the back of a 3.5" floppy diskette box for a description of the game, not this game, which was just a .img file mounted on his system, but his future game, somehow, sometime, it would be involved with all this. Larissa did then what seemed the most obvious, she disemboweled the Tamagotchi from its clear green shell, attached the Nina dongle to the iPod audio jack, took out a heat gun, ballooned out the shell to the limits of its meltingness and gooed it around the pod and dongle in some Shenzhen factory glass blowing operation, sealing it all around the new device, clearing away the hot plastic from the screen and buttons. The device was complete, the iPod and the Nina dongle had their shells discarded and the tamagotchi shell had been melted over and sealed around the whole thing, replacing them.
Smooth touch of wonder, bubbling air forming dispersed pockets creative space, for nature and beyond, in micro organism of earth and the soul, sealed but not trapped through the clarity of their observability, nothing is beyond influence, yet the dangers too were observable, not new ones, but the old, where the Pokemaster had soldered in new chips and wires, Larissa had left everything like that as she was instructed, she wasn't smart enough to remove them anyways, she was only an artist, but it was clear now there really was something sinister going on there, Larissa could detect it even through the earbud, a faint static humm, not a hiss, an inward suction of the humm, it was taking in data, not just letting out sound, and now with some kind of visual confirmation however understandable, it was as clear as a witch trial, the thing was cursed, but so too is much in life, and we live about it day by day, getting along, thriving, and how like life to keep that little reminder of its evilness visible, as Maria's fingers inspected her new device, trailing their pads over the plastic texture, spinning it, handling it, smelling it, peering inside, "Wow," she said, "I never thought an iPod would feel so cool again. I love it."
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Have you ever tried connecting your Tamagotchis to different art disc servers? Or have you ever tried inserting some compatible drives into… into your… your body?
The iPod was just the beginning of Larissa's plan. She was concerned Maria's system was too closed off, that it could only interact with itself, and was missing out on a whole world of expansion ports and inter-device networking.
"I… I wouldn't know where to start. What stuff? I asked Joffrey to cum on one of my babies, he probably didn't even do it, his pathetic little balls." Larissa laughed at her Italian accent.
"What were you thinking? His painter semen can't have those powers with a Tamagotchi outside of your womb. He has to inseminate it while it's still inside you." She didn’t know what she was saying, encouraging Maria to fuck him, but it made sense in her head, a head which was becoming more and more adjusted to the reality of Maria's body.
"Ugh, let's see."
"Well it doesn't have to be him. Maybe you can fuck some other artists, one you actually like, whose art work you actually want to be a part of. Then you can integrate him into your system, expand your network beyond the Tamagotchis. The Tamagotchis are only the beginning of your potential. Through your eggs, an entire world of new art works can hatch. The DNA of the baby you produce, a collaboration and a product, plus the DNA absorbs into your body too, every guy you fuck and reproduce with, I read it somewhere, who knows how far you can go in the art world, fucking people, men, the ones who have semen, the ones who can fertilize your Tamagotchi eggs, all the cool stuff you'll be able to make, the person you'll become."
"I need you to help me, Larissa."
"I know."