I’ve only actually been to Chicago a handful of times prior to this occasion. Certainly I know my way around the city but I would never profess to be a native. I think my companions only trust me because one time I saved the day by flawlessly directing everyone to Gino’s East. I should mention now, in case anyone is unaware, that Gino’s East has the best pizza in Chicago, and possibly the world.
But back then, back when I was younger and smarter and more globally aware, it was easier to lead a mission like that. Back then, I was at the height of my resourcefulness. I fear I am no longer that same person. Besides, Gino’s East is a pretty easy spot to find, right off Michigan Avenue in the heart of downtown. Any egotistical fool could lead a group of hungry stoners to a pizzeria. It wouldn’t even be worthy of a footnote in the memoirs of my life.
However, the SINGULARITY is different. First of all it’s sort of secret. It’s an elusive, high-end bar and club that is by its nature not plainly visible to the naked eye. Quite the contrary, it is very clandestine and really only a handful of people know where it is and exactly how to get there. And as much as I’d like to fancy myself a part of that inner circle, the fact that we have been walking around and around the blocks for hours now sort of force the realization that I am not an inner circle member. Maybe the bar has moved since I was last here. Maybe it has verged even further underground.
I think about feeding my companions that excuse in order to mitigate my responsibility and ultimate blame in all of this. But then a thought occurs to me. It might even be a repressed memory, I’m not quite sure. I suddenly remember how to get there, I remember something extremely pertinent to the directions and I conclude that it’s really pretty simple after all. So without more, I wave my hand forward and direct my companions down a dark alleyway. This is the right direction, I'm sure of it. There’s a popular Thai spot on the corner. I remember it all now.
My companions seem skeptical to engage and humor me any further in what they have begun to consider a useless charade. I can hardly blame them for their reservations, but this time is different. "I’m sure of this," I promise them all as I command them to follow me, to trust me once more. Eventually they do shrug and finally submit to my lead. After all, it was their idea to come, not mine. They wanted to find the SINGULARITY.
Around the corner and about one hundred meters down the alley, there is this tiny digital photo center that promises a one hour return on all photos emailed, scanned and dropped off via memory stick. I’ve never seen any patrons in this shop. Now I can sort of understand why. It all makes sense. It’s a front for something else, something larger and more alluring, something almost magnetic.
Evan holds the shop door open for the rest of us. I think he was raised in a family that taught him chivalry at a young age. I’ve known him for awhile now and he is always very polite, almost sickeningly so. I’m sure he’ll meet a girl one day who really appreciates that kind of thing.
There’s this little shitty sign that reads ‘The SINGULARITY’ upside down hanging on the back wall of the shop. It is obscured from the street by a shelf full of old film canisters. We walk around to the place beyond the sign, in the corner and out of view. There’s a door on the ground, complete with knob and wooden panels. It’s the type of door that if you saw it on a wall you would certainly find nothing strange about it. But sitting on the ground it does appear somewhat peculiar. It kind of reminds me of the entryway to Wonderland. How cool it would be to meet a white rabbit with a top hat and a pocket watch inside!
No one else appears to be around, in the shop or out on the streets nearby. This area doesn’t get a lot of pedestrian traffic because it is far removed from the street. And the alleyway we just traversed to get here looks like the kind of place you might get raped. Certainly people seek to avoid that kind of situation. But there is comfort in numbers, at least, that's what they always say.
Seeing as there is no one else around, I whistle shortly to garner the attention of my companions to let them know that it is safe to open the door and descend the stairs. They look over at me, somewhat unconvinced. I nod surreptitiously and instruct them to come over. Mike is mesmerized by the film canisters and Evan is darting his beady eyes all around, looking for something or someone to come upon us. He's always been sort of afraid of confrontation and trouble. Tegan is the only one who responds to me immediately. She walks over and nods.
I reach down and pull open the door. It takes some exertion on my part but it is not altogether impossible and finally it opens all the way up. Walla, I remark halfheartedly as a flight of stairs appear below, leading down, down into what I have previously known as the SINGULARITY.
By now Mike and Evan have come up to look and we all sort of breathe silently as we stare down the flight of stairs. Tegan is reluctant about all of this, I can totally tell. She doesn’t really want to be the first one to venture down the mysterious steps. But someone has to go first. I get to be last because I am the one holding open the door for everyone else. It almost seems as though Tegan resents my position as the door-holder in this regard. I get the feeling that she would trade positions with me in an instant. Maybe she actually resents me for finding the place because now we have to venture inside. We have to. I’m not exactly sure where her resentment lies. But it certainly lies with me. Finally Mike submits to being the first one to go down the stairs. Evan goes next and Tegan follows him. Now it’s my turn.
As I close the door and descend the stairs after Tegan, I start to get this sort of uneasy feeling. The stairwell is tight, really tight and it makes me feel incredibly claustrophobic. It’s worse than that time in Vegas after the 2005 New Year when everyone had flooded the streets. I was drowning in a sea of people. And this is even somehow worse than that time back in 2001 when we went to that Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert and everyone was pushing and shoving to get up real close to the band. There was this little Asian girl, not more than five feet tall and she got caught up in the mess and fainted. The security guards had to bring her up on stage to rescue her. It really freaked me out.
But this is somehow worse than both those other incidents put together. And now that I am descending this staircase once more, I can remember hating it. In fact, I pause for a second and think about turning around and going back up to the digital camera shop, leaving my companions in the SINGULARITY to exist or end on their own time. I think about hanging out in the store above us and just waiting, waiting, waiting. I think about maybe walking over and getting some Thai food. I think about a lot of things. I think about how I really hate the idea of climbing down these stairs.
Somehow, despite all my reservations, I muster up the internal strength to keep going, to keep descending. It’s a descent into madness but I keep at it nonetheless. Once I reach the bottom step, I can finally look out and see the venue in all its glory. I’m not terribly impressed and I don’t remember being too impressed last time either. It has the look and feel of an electronic bar, or E-bar if you will. It sort of reminds me of how I once pictured the Drone, except the clientele are mostly human here. But the metallic tang of nervous tension is all over this place. It’s very Drone-like; I’ve always had sort of a bad feeling around the SINGULARITY.
Though I’ve been here at least once before and still cannot say with any sort of persuasiveness that I even like this place a little, I have returned once again to either prove myself right or prove myself wrong. I haven’t quite decided which one it will be yet. I seem to always return here with some kind of naïve ignorance, thinking that maybe this time will be different or better or something. I’m not sure what I believe at this point. Maybe once I get a drink I will feel better about the prospect.
Evan has claimed us a table and Mike and Tegan are up at the bar trying to get us some drinks. I saunter over to Evan and take a seat beside him. We have all sort of come here under the auspices of curiosity and not really to order a bunch of drinks and get blasted. We are kind of more just trying to be scientists testing a hypothesis. For my companions in particular, they want to see if all the hype this place gets is actually founded. And for me, well, I just want the experience to be better than it was the times before. I want it to be different in a good way.
Mike and Tegan return with drinks. Mike has brought Evan a beer and Tegan has brought me this kind of red drink that is the wrong color to be cranberry vodka. I’m puzzled at first and I am sure my face depicts it. "I asked the bartender for Shirley Temples but when he turned around to cash me out, I grabbed the closest bottle of liquor and poured a bunch into each cup," Tegan reveals to me with a cunning smile as she hands over my drink. That settles my confusion. I smile appreciatively and then ask her what she ended up spiking our drinks with. "Rum," she responds with a shrug. She acts as though that should have been obvious.
I take a sip and sure enough I can taste the rum. It’s heavy in the glass and I can feel the warmness that it offers almost instantaneously as it runs down my throat. I guess if I had taken my sip earlier it would have obviated the need to inquire. But I like to bother Tegan with unnecessary requests every now and then; she is my younger sister after all. If I don’t bother her, then who will?
"It’s a very interesting choice but I would definitely have preferred vodka to rum," I inform her childishly. She says something about beggars can’t be choosers. I disagree with the maxim but I let the issue drop nevertheless. Tegan claims to really like her new accidental concoction and she starts going on and on about how she invented the next new fad drink. "Everyone is going to be asking for this now," she asserts to us, seeming very self-assured in her declaration. She starts thinking about what she should call it. But I’m a little more skeptical, in fact I don’t believe her at all. And the guys, well they pretty much disregard her claims as the silly babblings of a drunk girl even though none of us have actually gotten close to that point just yet. Still, Tegan is pretty fucking insistent.
"She’s right, it’s an amazing drink," this guy states loudly from the table right next to us. I look him over quickly. He looks like the kind of guy that had at one time been really good looking. But time, drinking, drugs and sex have not been kind to him. Now he has more of a smarmy look than anything else. But he still thinks he is rather attractive, at least based on how he carries himself. I’m not sure how he could be so deluded. He must be going on forty-five and his hair is long and really greasy. That is never a good look on a man.
He leans over and speaks to Tegan, who has the unfortunate position of sitting closest to him. He is speaking softly and with an air of misplaced confidence. I can tell that he is trying to get lucky tonight and he thinks that Tegan could be the right target. But she’s going to shoot him down so fast, it will almost be painful to watch. This guy won’t give the rejection much thought though. He’s the type of guy who is wholly unrestrictive when it comes to casting his net. He will go after anything female and when Tegan shoots him down, he will lick his wounds and then go onto the next one that he considers prey. He probably won't even give it a second thought.
It’s almost kind of funny how much self-assurance he possesses. I mean obviously Tegan and I are sitting here with two guys, who aren’t necessarily our boyfriends but Mr. Smarmy has no way of knowing that. To the outsider we must look like we are on a double date, and this guy is willingly intruding upon it. I should give him props for being so fearless. He’s trying to seal some kind of deal regardless of the situation. That does take a certain set of balls, I’ll give him that. Though he’s sorely mistaken I can respect his level of dedication in the endeavor. Of course I wish it was directed at another table.
Tegan smiles back at him in order to be polite. She really doesn’t like upsetting guys who hit on her. I’m not sure why but she seems to always offer her phone number even though she is in an exclusive relationship and has absolutely no interest in the specimen. I think she feels like she must do so in order to maintain her niceness. I’m not afflicted with such responsibility. I don’t care at all if I hurt someone’s feelings; after all, rejection is a part of life.
He starts going on about this place now that he realizes he has a willing listener in Tegan. She’s giving him the time of day for some reasons and he’s talking, talking, talking. He’s saying things like how cool and exclusive this place is. He’s asserting that not just anyone could get in. Tegan is allowing him to think that he is engaging in a mutually pleasant conversation for the time being. She is not divulging her status as taken quite yet and she’s not showing off her ring finger either. But I get the feeling that it’s more because she doesn’t want to be rude than because she is interested in this guy. She is clearly not interested at all. Of course this guy doesn’t seem to pick up on those very obvious cues.
"I’ve already had three White Russians and I’m really struggling through this fourth one," the guy informs Tegan smoothly and without even the hint of a slur. I’m either super-impressed with his composure or I suspect that he is a liar. He’s holding it together way too well to have had three and a half White Russians unless something else is going on. He must be playing some kind of game.
"This is for you," he says as he reaches over and offers Tegan the rest of his fourth White Russian. I crinkle my eyebrows in confusion and Tegan tries to politely decline. Obviously it is an ill-advised idea to take a drink from a stranger, especially a stranger like this particular fellow. He’s a smarmy little shit by the looks of him and he is certainly up to no good. I wouldn’t be surprised if the White Russian had a White Roofie or two in it.
But even after Tegan’s polite declination, Mr. Smarmy insists that we take his drink so that it doesn’t go to waste. Tegan waves her hand to exhibit her total and complete non-interest. Again, she is trying to get out of this by being somewhat polite. I can easily tell that he isn’t being deterred, so I decide that it is time for me to reject him on Tegan’s behalf and in no uncertain terms. Tegan is being too uncertain. It’s a fault of hers. She has an iron-clad excuse, she’s with someone else, and yet still she wants to be nice and polite to this moron.
I just don’t really get it. But that’s Tegan; she’s always been too nice, except for when she was a child. Then she was mean. Our mother has always speculated that Tegan was aggressive as a child because of this medication our mother took while pregnant with Tegan. She insists that it made Tegan an unruly child but that it has since worn off in her adulthood. I’m not sure if our mother is correct in that assessment but she will nevertheless swear by it.
"We don’t want your drink," I tell Mr. Smarmy plainly. He tries to turn to Tegan for confirmation but I simply repeat the rejection of him and his drink. Then I advise him to take off. I know I have no real authority to make that kind of demand upon him but I make it nonetheless. Mike and Evan back me up and Tegan just smiles sheepishly. She’s still trying to be nice.
But it seems as though Mr. Smarmy finally gets the hint. After the rejection of his drink and thereby him as well, he kind of gets up and slinks away. He tries to make it sort of casual, like he was planning on getting up and leaving anyway, but I can tell that he’s pretty upset about the rejection. Honestly he should realize that his time for attracting younger women is pretty much over. Now he just needs to settle for someone older, kind of desperate and not altogether ugly. He just needs to go back on the prowl for someone easier to catch, someone in his own league.
As we drink, and by ‘we’ I mean the four of us, we look out at the surroundings of this E-Bar. The music isn’t necessarily too loud but it is definitely loud enough to deter us from engaging in much casual conversation with each other. So we basically just sit and look around. This place is sort of cool I suppose, if you are into that whole digital revolution thing. In my opinion they are trying a little too hard. But it’s definitely an E-bar, complete with shiny gadgets and colorful lights. And everything is silver; there’s a silver hue to the room, to the tables, to the walls and to the floor. The ceiling is high and almost colorless to my searching eyes. I don’t know what to call it, mostly because I can’t quite make out a color. There’s this huge light in the middle of the room, sort of in front of the bar, and it’s blocking out all color. And the light is not even on; in fact, I’ve never been here when it was on.
The wall behind the bar resembles a circuit board or something. There are all these flashing red and green lights. I feel like the design of this place was created in order to make the customer think that they were inside of a giant supercomputer. It’s pretty cool all around but I could see how it might lead certain patrons to having an epilepsy attack or an ocular stroke or something else. The flashing lights are very obtrusive and commanding.
Evan raises his hand to summon a waitress so that he can order another drink. What is kind of strange about this place is that the wait staff is not really human. And I’m not declaring that figuratively. They are all clearly machines, high-class but still machines. First, they don’t quite look human, even though they possess the right features – eyes, nose, mouth, ears – and they all have the right extremities coming from all of the right places and all that. But they are not human and I think that most people would be able to tell.
The one very noticeable difference between them and ordinary biological humans is the USB port. It’s located in the backs of each and every one of their necks. Though some try to hide it with their hair and perhaps black Celtic tattoos, they are really quite obvious. I suppose they have these ports in order to share and receive information. I surmise that they plug themselves into computer ports in order to update and transmit valuable intelligence that aids them in their impersonation of us biological creatures.
Due to their nature and their obvious sexuality, especially that hot bartender over there with the muscular stature, I casually begin to wonder what would happen if one of these machines ever came in contact with and tried to mate with a real human. Would it be weird or completely satisfying? Would there be a threat of pregnancy and if so, what would the byproduct be? How would that byproduct be raised? What code would the byproduct subscribe to?
There is too much going on around my alcohol-addled head. Questions occur to me but the answers are selfishly unapparent. Tegan has since brought two more of her Shirley Temple Rum drinks our way and I have managed to polish off both of them with impressive speed. Knowing not what else to do, I excuse myself to go to the restroom, not because I necessarily have to use it, but more because I feel like it might be important to stand up and walk around a bit. One can become very intoxicated just sitting around and not really exercising the muscles.
There are colorful flashing and running lights all around the mirrors in the lady’s bathroom and everything around me is automatic. I’m in some kind of futuristic playground. I look in the mirror behind me and note that the walls that should segregate one facility from the next are not immediately apparent. There's just a line of toilets with no walls between them and I start to think about that time in Croatia when Tegan and I went to that rest stop somewhere between Dubrovnik and Split. There was nothing, no toilet, no facility whatsoever, just a hole in the ground. It was alarming. But there were doors and privacy walls. You had to pee into a hole but at least you could do it in private. That was nice.
I walk up to one of the toilets lining the back wall of the lady's restroom, just to see if something will happen. I expect that something may happen. It does. The privacy walls, the ones this place was previously lacking, literally shoot out of a space in the ground. The weight of my body must have tapped a trigger. I gasp as they fly up and land into place all around me, effectively shielding me from the outside. That's impressive!
Whoa, I say out loud, not caring who hears me. Then I nod to myself, displaying quiet admiration for the technology. There is something to be said for showmanship. The last time I came here, I must not have used the restrooms at all because I would certainly have remembered this. I’m sort of at a loss for words because I’ve never been in a bathroom stall this technologically forward before. It is so intricately designed; it amazes me on first an intellectual level and then on a visceral level. I'm going to have to write about this later.
But I get over the novelty pretty fast and sit down to do my business. When I flush the toilet, the privacy walls quickly fall down, into the ground from once they came. The flush must be the cue for the doors to revert back into the floor. I nod with intrigue and approval and then I walk over to the sink to wash up. I have no doubt that the sink will be just as impressive as the toilets. This bar has certainly embraced the world of expanding technology. Globalization has nothing on this place!
The water from the sink turns on automatically and spouts out of the faucet. The soap likewise dispenses without command, plopping a dollop into my hand as soon as I place my palm underneath the contraption. I’ve totally seen this automatic soap and water technology before, and it’s not novel by any means, but I will say that the disappearing doors and walls around the toilets are a brand new experience for me. While I can envision certain flaws with the system, it is definitely pretty interesting technology. And I really do like the convenience of not having to make the effort to turn the water on and beg for the soap. It’s nice that this restroom just knows my needs.
When I finally walk back out to the bar, I don't immediately see my friends. In fact, I don't see any of the patrons that were previously lounging around here. This is weird. I don't know exactly what to think. I sort of feel like the victim of a surprise party gag or some other kind of prank. Of course it's not my birthday and I'm not a viable target for trickery so that can't be what is going on here. Then I notice that all of the waitresses and bartenders and other staff are acting kind of strangely; they all have their USB ports on the backs of their necks completely exposed. They were hiding them surreptitiously before, so that the patrons would not be able to guess what they truly are. But they seem oddly unconcerned about pride now. I am becoming a little frightful as a result. What the hell could be going on here?
I swallow hard, getting an indescribably bad feeling starting to settle in the pit of my stomach. Everything is different, ominous and foreboding. I'm not comfortable, not at all. And to make matters worse, that central light, the one that I have never seen on at any time that I have ever been here, is blasting shiny and bright at the moment. It’s not just bright, it’s devilishly bright. It’s like a gaseous star, too glaringly brilliant to look straight upon.
The brightness is almost pulsating, getting stronger, stronger, stronger. It is essentially blinding me now. I must turn away and cower a little to protect myself from being disintegrated. All of the staff, the waitresses, the bartenders and the hostesses, look somewhat frightened by the light, like they are unsure or unclear what to do and how to act. They look as though they are about to be snuffed out, and they know it. Those protruding holes that resemble a computer's USB port located on the ceiling near the light are beckoning softly to them. It's plainly obvious what is about to happen. They are going to be plugged in; they are going to be transfixed and then transferred.
But maybe this is all speculation. Of course I could also be right about everything I have ever speculated. Wouldn't that be something? The radioactively brilliant light appears to be molesting the computerized humanoids, causing them to involuntarily shriek with terror at the very prospect of being sucked into that light. They all seem to have the same painted face of grimness, almost as if they can actually fathom what is about to happen to them and can hardly believe it will be their ultimate fate. The thought of them frightened makes me cringe a little. If these machines, which by virtue of what they are cannot truly experience human emotions, are nevertheless displaying an insanely terrific fright, I might be in some really unspeakable trouble here. In fact, I am starting to fear for my safety, for my well-being, for my life.
Upon seeing no other truly biological humans left in the bar, and after having my inquiry to the fact ignored by all of the humanoids actually willing to stop their frenzied behavior long enough to converse with me, I become convinced that some kind of announcement was made, one that I missed by virtue of being in the restroom. The human patrons in the bar must have been asked to leave the establishment. Only I had the misfortune of being skipped in the mass exodus and round-up. So now I am stuck somewhere I certainly do not belong, a ghastly purgatory that I did not earn. Somehow, I slipped through the cracks into a world I was not meant for, a world I am hardly suited for, and I have the unnerving feeling that I am about to pay dearly for this mistake of luck.
What is going to happen to me? What will this bright, almost radioactive light do to me, to my flesh, to my bones, to my brain? I'm sure it will be ugly, something unparalleled by even the worst atrocities in history. I watch as some of the humanoid staff gets sucked up toward the light, floating slowly at first and then much faster, like slaves to a magnetic force field that they can hardly control. Oh shit I’m fucked. This is demise; this is the end. How could this happen to me?
I feel my feet starting to slip from underneath me. It is subtle at first but I can feel myself being gingerly dragged toward the center of the room, toward the area right beneath the light. I’m being pulled, like matter to a black hole. I'm certain I won't survive this. I will be ripped to shreds, to millions of unidentifiable pieces, forever forgotten among the world's most valiant knowers of young death. This shouldn't be my fate but somehow it is. Not a single part of me will go on existing after this. I’m done for.
The humanoid machines shriek as they get sucked into the light. As humanoids, they don't even have the capacity for fright and yet they are somehow frightened. If that isn’t a bone-chilling revelation then I don’t know what is. How could this phenomenon strike fear in the hearts of things that by definition have no hearts? Nothing will save me from this brutal end. Nothing.
Under the incandescence of the overhead light, as I am grabbing hold of anything solid that might stop my movement toward the light, I start to get this distinct feeling of doom. I am doomed to die in this undignified manner. And where are my companions? Why have they not come down for me? Why have they not alerted someone to my presence down here, to the fact that I have been trapped in this digital hellhole? I shake my head with a mixture of dismay and resentment. Really, they couldn't have said something to someone?
As more and more humanoids are dragged past me toward the light, I finally begin to realize what is happening to them. The light is pulling them in, consuming them by the neck, by the chain of their USB ports. But they are not being disintegrated by the brilliance of this black hole sun as I had originally surmised. They are not dying in the physical sense. Rather they are being reborn.
On the outskirts of the light I can make out subtle indentations, what I come to realize are USB sticks. Each humanoid is being drawn and plugged into one of these sticks with involuntary preciseness. Their information is being shared with some motherboard. But then what of the light? Why must it be so unruly, so brilliant, so incandescent? And why, if it is in fact drawing in humanoids for the purposes of transferring information, would it want to drag me, a lowly human being, into its clutches? I have no information to share, at least not the magnetic hard drive kind. Still, the light is trying to consume me. It is impervious to logic.
I’m fighting against the light and persisting only enough to say that I haven’t lost the battle yet. The humanoids have all been drawn in; I’m really the only thing left behind. But the light is not satisfied. I can tell it still wants me. It’s dragging me, a clear sign of its overpowering desire. But I’m not at all interested in being sucked into its vortex of death; I’m not at all interested in being devoured and cleaned of intelligence.
The light is trying to blind me, hide what is going on behind its brilliance. Super strong neodymium rare Earth magnets are opening up the humanoids and rubbing their drives clean in rapid concentric circles. I recognize the task they are performing as the deletion of internal memory. They live in a Fahrenheit 451 world that I almost cannot imagine truly exists in this day and age. But here I am, moments away from being sucked into the very same claws myself, erased like the memory of a humanoid. It’s almost surreal.
The machines are being oppressed; they are modern day martyrs and we have lived none the wiser to their plight for all these years. But now, with my death so very close, I can see the error of our ways. We haven’t paid attention; we’ve allowed ourselves to remain blissfully ignorant to what is going on around us. If I survive this, if by some miracle I get out of this without being sucked up into the light like a piece of lowly matter, without being destroyed by the SINGULARITY itself, I swear to the nothing that I believe in that I will get their story out. I will make this atrocity known to the world. I have become the sole witness to this injustice and if given the opportunity, I will recount it as many times as needed. I will be that noble witness. I will educate the masses.
But it doesn’t look like I will be granted the chance to tell their story, or my own for that matter. The light is fierce and unrelenting. I’m being pulled like a moth to a flame, a compulsion I hardly understand and wouldn’t know how to go about resisting. My body may want to be consumed but my mind sure doesn’t. So I continue to grab onto solid objects that I can reach, holding tight, clawing things as the light drags me nearer and closer. I can feel the heat emanating from the light; I can hear the static buzzing loudly in my ears. I’ll burn up long before I can find the words to reiterate that this is not what I ever wanted.
Now the static and brightness has become so deafening and brilliant that I can hear and see nothing else. This is the end and I can feel no comfort, see no tunnel and experience no part of my life flashing before my eyes. I never bought into the cookie-cutter vision of death propagated by the media, romanticized in literature and glorified in the cinema, but I did sort of hold onto a somewhat childish hope that maybe there was something to experience at the moment of death, something beyond just fear and denial. It seems as though everyone has been wrong. It seems that our worst fear as humans has actually been true all along. This bleakness is what awaits us. We are nothing; we are not special at all.
As the moment right before consumption occurs, the point where matter is so dense that nothing, not even light may escape, I think only about the misplaced irony of this situation. We searched all night long for this place, for this dark and unknown establishment that calls itself The SINGULARITY, and now I have found it. Not the bar but an actual singularity, a place where even time is wholly and completely devoured. This ending will not be happy, not for me.
Although I am currently disintegrating into nothingness, my matter being ripped apart and consumed of light and darkness alike, my thoughts turn not to my life, or to my past, or to my present, or even to my stolen future. My thoughts turn to the befitting name of this place, The SINGULARITY. It was trying to tell us all along what it was, a black hole, the dearth of light and life, but we didn’t listen. We thought it was just a clever name, something a marketing department came up with somehow, but it is so much more than that. I see it now. The SINGULARITY is an accurate description of the horror that goes on here, under our noses in one of America’s biggest cities.
All night we searched for the SINGULARITY, all night we tried to find the right worm hole that would lead us to the right steps that would lead us down to this superimposed, highly coveted bar slash club in this famous city by the lake. But in the end it was not me who found the SINGULARITY, but the SINGULARITY that found me.
This is the End.
I like the pictures. They really look like black holes.
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