Player One: What Is to Become of Us Read Online Free Page B

real life would fuse together. There would be loud music. Before he began to turn immaterial, his body would turn itself inside out and fall to the ground and cook like steak on a cheap hibachi, and he would be released and he would be judged and he would be found pure.
    But his congregation talks about the afterlife as if it were Fort Lauderdale.
    Whatever. What matters now is that Luke is practically vibrating with freedom.
    And he has decided that, although he is a failure, failure is authentic, and because it’s authentic, it’s real and genuine, and because of that, it’s a pure state of being, unlike the now-hopefully-dead fakey-fakey Luke — and feeling authentic feels great! Heck, maybe I’m an outlaw now — I am an outlaw now!
    And now Luke has twenty grand in his pockets, and he’s watching a little red-headed dude come into the bar and put his hand on Karen’s thigh. She doesn’t look too happy to meet him. Screw it. They’ll both just keep looking until they each settle for someone equal to themselves on the food chain. That’s the way Charles Darwin works.
    Luke’s conscience suddenly rattles him. By force of habit, he talks to a God he once believed in, but this time with a small twist: Lord, I know that faith is not the natural condition of the human heart, but why did You make it so hard to have faith? And now it’s too late, because I don’t believe in You anymore. Why did I never discuss my doubts with any human beings? My elders could have set me on the righteous path. But maybe in the end it’s best to keep one’s doubts private. Saying them aloud cheapens them — makes them a bunch of words just like everybody else’s bunch of words. If I’m going to fall, I’ll do it on my own terms.
    Ironically, being honest with himself about his crime is making Luke feel genuinely spiritual as he looks at the cool Hitchcock blonde at the pathetic “business centre” across the room. He wonders if she’s noticed him. What would she think of his crime? Luke thinks she’d look at his shoes in particular, and those shoes would speak to her, and what they would say is “Payless,” and she’d write him off, so screw her; the moment he gets into town, he’s buying a pair of ultra-executive shoes in a swanky store, and he’ll never feel ashamed of his grim footwear ever again.
    What’s that? She just looked at him — and she’s smiling? Hot diggity !
    Hot diggity and yet: crippling fear . Lovely on the outside, most likely monstrous on the inside — if his former flock is any litmus. She’s most likely addicted to video games and online shopping, bankrupting her parents in an orgy of oyster merino and lichen alpaca. Fancy a bit of chit-chat? Doubtful. She’d most likely text him, even if they were riding together in a crashing car — and she’d be fluent in seventeen software programs and fully versed in the ability to conceal hourly visits to gruesome military photo streams. She probably wouldn’t remember 9/11 or the Y2K virus, and she’ll never bother to learn a new language because a machine will translate the world for her in 0.034 seconds. But most of all, this cool Hitchcock blonde is a living, breathing, luscious, and terrifying terminal punctuation mark on Luke’s existence, a punctuation mark along the lines of This is the New Normal, Luke, and guess what — it’s left you in the weeds, and you , pastor, reverend, good sir, have outlived your cultural purpose and you , father, forgive me, are a chunk of cultural scrap metal, not even recyclable at that. Go huddle together for security with those other doddering, outmoded walking heaps there at the bar with you. Compare your turkey-wattle chins and Play-Doh waistlines and grow misty-eyed discussing the collapse of Communism and the final episode of Friends .
    ___
    Having figured all of this out, Luke remained unsure what to do. Cultural irrelevance be damned, he hadn’t had a date in over a year. A date: he cursed himself for