He leans back, the leather chair upholstery softly creaking as he shifts his weight. Chin rested on his fist, elbow leaning on the armrest – the 21st century 8-bit-spawned equivalent of Rodin’s thinker – he scrutinises his beauties, one by one, the nine big panels arranged in a 3×3 grille. There’s nothing else in his field of vision. He has painstakingly sanitised the space to eliminate distractions so he can concentrate on who he’s watching. Obsessions have a process too.
Someone sounds the buzzer at the front door, and he’s insta-annoyed. Interrupted from his indulgences. What’s worse, he’ll need to talk to another human. Ugh, he groans, blinking twice, trying to remember who it may be and whatever had he been thinking to invite an interruption on himself in the first place. Must have been some kind of bodily necessity. He’s learned to ignore those, for the most part. He only deals with humans if he doesn’t have a choice, pretty much everything else can be done online.
The buzzer goes off again, a longer, uninterrupted press this time, the person doing the pressing reciprocating his annoyance. Point made. He springs out of the chair and realizes he’d better put something on. A pair of frayed jeans is mopping the floor and he pulls them on. He fishes a faded smiley face T-shirt from the ragtag pile of clothes on the bed. It reads Nirvana above the smiling yellow blob, not that the name rings any bells to him. He doesn’t quite know where he got it, but it’ll do. He doesn’t dwell on notions of presentability too much, at least as far as he’s concerned. But he does care about how those he watches present themselves. That’s an entire game within the game.
A third buzz, and he freezes, cortisol spiking for a split second. His mind races through the blue-light fog, then mercifully remembers. Ah, those must be the three new screens he ordered. He vaguely recalls putting in an order for them the day before yesterday. That must be it. Finally! Took em long enough. Okay, sometimes, more is more, especially when you got so many people to watch.
In case you’re wondering – he’s not a voyeur. He’s rationalised this plenty of times already, not that anyone noticed his pastime nor expected explanations. See, he likes to think he’s an impressionist. An artiste painstakingly capturing imagery of people in their most natural expression. Only his canvas is neatly arranged China-made 4K LCD panels.
There is so much potential to express oneself in the digital realm. Oh, and hard drives are so much tidier than canvas. Imagine the space you’d need to store paintings. He’s got stacks of hard drives, and the clutter/storage ratio is infinitely better. All of them neatly labelled and catalogued for easy retrieval. So much more practical than paintings. A fist hammers on the door, replacing the buzzer.
“In a minute!” he shouts and frowns as he hears his squeaky voice.
He never really liked the sound of his own voice. He very much prefers to listen to the whole spectrum of sounds those he watches produce. You don’t want to imagine the symphonies he is privy to. He shuffles to the door, weaving his way in and among boxes big and small, soft drink cans and grubby, suss-smelling food takeaway boxes. At the door, he unlocks the half a dozen locks lining the side of it. Very old-school security. He doesn’t get many visitors. Finally, he opens the door
only to stare at a copy of himself.
He blinks, his eyes taking a second to adjust to the white neon lights of the hallway. This is not a trick of the senses. Yup, it’s as if he was staring into a mirror. His doppelganger is wearing the exact same faded black Nirvana T-shirt and frayed jeans and is completely unfazed by looking at himself. Vacant, soulless, like he’s watching just another stream in an endless on-screen procession of streams. In his outstretched hand, there is a hard drive with the label “Jimmy.”
Jimmy takes the hard drive from himself, frowning.
He glances back into the gloom of his apartment, at his screens and sees all of them tracking himself, standing at the door, holding a hard drive.
The images dissolve into static. What happens beyond the screens?
….
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