I keep bumping into these. The ‘Meme’.

Main Entry: meme
Pronunciation: 'mEm
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of mimeme, from mim- (as in mimesis) + -eme
: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

These ‘things’ that spread like wildfire on the internet – like the dancing hamster (grrr) or the bananaphone – which I won’t taunt you with. But now – bloggers are purveyors of the meme.

Not only do we START them (Nickerson, Hawesome here STOP) but we create them… by introducing a challenge to create shared culture. Again – Nickerson has challenged us to create fiction around a photograph. Under 300 words.

Sorry – I landed about 450, and ended up writing future – not past fiction.

A drunken whore lay passed out – sprawled across a torn and smelly sofa in the front window of the room near an uninviting entrance. The sounds of the street outside rattled the few unbroken windowpanes. Coated with a hundred years of nicotine, sweat and the odd splash of urine, the ancient glass passed only a little of the golden late afternoon sun tainting it with an organic tint.

A photograph, tattered and stained in its scratched Lucite frame on the wall betrayed the real nature of the haphazard surgical loft. Once a tidy gentleman’s hotel this building was now a 60-bed brothel with surgical service. A setting sun signaled the beginning of the busy hours. One by one the great neon signs advertising skin cutters and neural-hackers flickered to life like sick giant fireflies pulsing in unhealthy hues of magenta and cyan.

As prices on the strip increased new cutters would take residence on these back streets – installing their neon and glitter to coax the downtrodden and unexpectedly wealthy inside. The cutter’s only hope – to catch those souls desperate for implants and sensory upgrades but unable to pay the high-priced strip surgeons rates.

Looking out from that photograph was a young man in a poorly cut but clean white shirt and second hand pants. His outward appearance clashed somewhat with the simple look in his eyes. He had the look of a man who could scarcely count, let alone comprehend the business of those insurance men selling numbers. His hands were working hands and they didn’t match the shirt and tie he was forced to wear. When the Midwest farms couldn’t support themselves he had moved to the city and now stood by the counter ready to assist a traveler with his case of samples for just a few cents.

What was once a lobby for men making notes in their leather folios before slipping on a jacket and a fitted hat for the day was now a waiting room for the macabre side of technology. His contemporary counterpart stood at the counter but lacked the simple down home feel of that thin man in the photograph. The orderly was a large man, bearing a tattooed frame and facial alterations. The corner of my lip curled slightly as I imagined the two men meeting in the stairwell. The slow gentle farm hand from a world long passed meeting the watchful ogre from this place. That poor farm boy would run screaming from this devil – provided of course that he was in the ogres presence long enough to catch a glint from the titanium horns extending from the heavy set brow. No doubt a sensory upgrade with a small interface port for adjustment. Based on the questionable placement of the sensors a less skilled surgeon did the work, perhaps one of the cutters from this very establishment.

It was then that I realized that I didn’t know if I was coming, or going.

This entry was posted on April 3, 2006 at 9:54 PM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Posted in IMHO The FORBIDDEN by Scratch 1 Comment