Sensation Machines

by Adam Wilson

  After less than an hour of focused googling, Wendy finds herself on Ricky’s Facebook wall, which has filled with memorial posts: condolences, scanned Polaroids, RIPs. Someone’s made a GIF of the deceased hoovering coke on a cloud. Wendy searches through dozens of tagged photos until she finds what she wants: the three of them on Coney Island, eating hot dogs. Michael’s burnt everywhere but a rectangle of chest where his book must have been. Wendy wears a bikini and looks tan. She laughs at something Ricky’s said and a tiny piece of hot dog missiles from her mouth toward the camera. She clicks share.

  “You knew him?” says Lucas, who’s appeared by her side. He wears high-waisted dress pants, chalk-striped and suspendered. A patterned silk tie stops halfway down his torso. Blond hair gelled into a side part. The same beautiful shoes as yesterday. On any other man, this would look like a costume.

  “My husband’s best friend.”

  She could have said old friend or close family friend, but Wendy feels the need to establish a remove. Perhaps out of guilt. Perhaps to explain her presence in the office. To make it clear that grief will not affect her work. As a woman, she feels she must make this case.

  “I didn’t realize that,” says Lucas. “I’m sorry.”

  He produces a handkerchief and offers it to Wendy. The item is silk. Wendy waves it away. The handkerchief must be for show. She can’t imagine Lucas having tear ducts. Can’t imagine him carrying, in his pocket, something tainted with snot.

  “Yeah, well, we didn’t exactly get along.”

  “That doesn’t mean you didn’t love him.”

  No, Wendy thinks, I didn’t love him, and now I must live with that.

  “I feel like an asshole. My husband’s home alone.”

  A normal human would tell her to take a personal day. He’d say that work can wait.

  “I’m going to ask you to do something,” says Lucas. “It might seem strange, and outside your job description, so I need you to understand that my intentions are noble.”

  “Okay.”

  “People are going to say a lot of horrible things about your husband’s friend. They’re going to dredge up a lot of shit. I want to give you the opportunity to catch that shit and turn it into gold.”

  “Shit into gold,” says Wendy. “Copy that.”

  “Nøøse is going to try to use his murder to shape the narrative around Basic Income. They’ll say that the violence that occurred is the consequence of an unfair society. That people get angry and then people get hurt. And the only way to change that is to placate the people.”

  “By passing the UBI.”

  “They’re going to say that your husband’s friend—well, they’re not going to say he deserved to die—but that his death should be a wake-up call. That people like us should be scared. That we should do what they want if we don’t want more violence.”

  “By passing the UBI.”

  “Lillian will brief you on the details.”

  “You’ve discussed this with Lillian?”

  “We’ve discussed it,” says Lucas, like she’s naïve for asking, so grief-blind and domestically consumed that she can’t grasp the urgency of their predicament. Hasn’t she established that she left Michael crumbling toast on the floor?

  “And what about this product?” Wendy says. “How long until I’ve entered the circle of trust?”

  “Take care of this,” he says. “And come in tomorrow with a concept for the billboard. After that we’ll talk.”

  “You want me to come up with a billboard for a product despite not knowing what that product is?”

  “Exactly,” says Lucas. “We’re in a bit of a time crunch. We hadn’t originally planned to launch for another four months, but this vote on the UBI changed our timeline. We’re pushing the launch to next week.”

  “And why is that?” Wendy asks, but Lucas is already walking away.

  She closes Facebook in order to focus, but not before checking the photo she shared. It’s received sixteen reactions, a mix of hearts and cry-face emojis. Two people, accidentally or not, have ticked like.

  8.

  Instead of heading home after hanging his flyers, Michael finds himself crossing the Gowanus Canal. The area is mostly unaugmented, though a dozen iridescent 365™-branded moons orbit the Whole Foods roof-deck. Otherwise, the landscape is uncommonly bereft of added flair, the former industrial wasteland now filled by fast-casual condos, with their slab marble lobbies and patio balconies, their blindingly reflective facades. The tech bros who’ve bought here must be too busy for Shamerican Sykosis, and their wives aren’t gamers, and their kids are still too young to play.

  Michael’s almost forgotten that he’s wearing his helmet when he enters Prospect Park. He moves briskly, passing the usual cyclists and joggers, plus some weed-smelling Rastas heading down to Drummer’s Grove. Michael pauses by the entrance to the Third Street Playground, standing as close as is societally acceptable for an unaccompanied adult male to stand. He feels he’s earned the luxury on this mournful afternoon: to close his eyes and listen to the playground chatter, its exultant human hum; and to allow himself the daydream of what might be, for him and Wendy, maybe, one day.

  On the nearest bench, a pair of parents wrangle shoes onto their reluctant toddler’s feet. The kid was playing in his socks before, practicing walking from the edge of the swing-set to dad’s outstretched arms. He must be one or slightly older, and he walks pretty well, arms raised for balance in a kind of chicken-wing posture. But he’s resistant to shoes, which Michael senses must be an ongoing issue, the mom reassuring the crying kid that sneakers are a great, fun item that everyone wears. Then the shoes are on. The crying has stopped. The kid stands planted on the playground’s rubber matting and stares with suspicion at his feet. After a long hesitation, he lifts one foot maybe an inch from the ground. The foot immediately drops like a leaden anchor and the boy nearly falls. He tries once more with the same result, then bursts back into tears. The parents relent. They take off the shoes.

  Michael’s so invested in this drama that only now does he realize someone’s talking to him. He turns.

  “Excuse me,” a girl says. “I need help.”

  The voice is meek. She’s eight or nine years old. Her school uniform cardigan drips blood.

  “Help,” she says. “I’m bleeding.”

  “Where are your parents?” Michael asks, but the girl says “help” again, and keeps on saying it, “help, I’m bleeding,” as Michael kneels for a closer look. The blood, he now sees, spills from a nickel-sized wound in the girl’s neck, though the wound is expanding, and steam appears to be rising off it. When the girl speaks, blood drips from her mouth.

  Michael’s yelling for a doctor. He’s tearing at his shirtsleeve to use as a tourniquet. He’s relieved to see a man in a suit moving with urgency their way. But as the man gets closer, it becomes apparent that he too is bleeding, spouting thin, dark streams from his forehead, and he too is saying “help.” Now a woman approaches, her intestines unraveling onto the pavement and trailing behind her like a long, pink tail. And here’s a teenage boy with half his torso blown off, and another with a head wound, bobbing and falling, sending brain matter everywhere, and Michael’s suddenly surrounded by even more victims: all gushing, all dying, all hobbling toward him. He’s screaming in the helmet and no one can hear him; he’s screaming, and he’s trying to rip off his shirtsleeve, and to rip off his helmet, when, in an instant, they all disappear.

  A banner unfurls from between two trees. It reads: 28,407 americans were killed by gun violence this year.

  9.

  Broder enters the bodega, hood up, hands in pockets, touching the gun. The bodega smells like cat litter. A woman scratches lotto tickets on the glass top of the ice cream case. Another has a dozen items bundled in her arms: garbage bags, protein bars, various soups and beans, three bottles of seltzer. No shoppin
g baskets in sight. A can of cream of mushroom falls from bundle to floor. Broder picks up the item. He places it on the counter.

  “Thank you,” says the woman. She eyes the dented can, decides it’s still good. A tattoo across her clavicle says Stay Gold in backward mirror script.

  The store clerk spits sunflower seeds into a plastic cup. He wears one of those unlicensed New York Yankees caps where the logo’s in a slightly wrong font. His teeth are incredibly white and he seems to take pleasure in showing them off, taking seeds one at a time, cracking with his central incisors. Broder can’t stand the sound.

  “You take cards?” the woman says.

  “Visa and Master,” the clerk says, and spits.

  He puts another seed between his teeth. The woman opens her purse. Broder eyes its interior: cash and change, two MetroCards. There was sixty dollars in Ricky’s wallet. It won’t last Broder long. He touches the gun again and looks up to see his own warped face in the security mirror. His nose is thread-veined and bulbous. He sees the security camera hanging from the ceiling, sees the top of his own head on the security TV behind the counter. The woman pays and puts away her purse.

  Broder buys cigarettes and a stale bagel. The cigarettes cost sixteen dollars. The bagel’s ninety-five cents. He sits in Washington Square Park and eats it plain. Pigeons peck around his feet. He removes a baggie, turns it inside out, licks the faint remaining powder. He opens and closes the clasp of the bracelet he slipped from Ricky’s wrist. Broder’s teeth go numb.

  10.

  Wendy reinflates the air mattress. Michael can tell she’s annoyed that he’s not doing it himself. It’s like when he gets the flu. She’ll make soup and watch any movie he wants, but her sympathy lasts twenty-four hours. By the next day she’s mad that he hasn’t recovered.

  They haven’t discussed buying a new bed. It’s one thing to expense the occasional taxi, but he can’t buy a bed on the company card. Wendy must be aware of their debt by this point, but Michael’s been given temporary reprieve; now’s not the time to bring it up.

  In silence, they stretch a sheet over the air mattress, slide the duvet into its cover. Michael thinks this should be an Olympic game, like synchronized swimming, the German judge docking points for sloppy corners. He used to narrate, like he was calling the event for ABC Sports. Or he’d crawl inside the duvet cover, light the flashlight on his phone, and pretend to be exploring a cave. He used to be able to make Wendy laugh.

  Wendy suggests they order pizza, a peace pipe of sorts, conforming to neither person’s vision of guiltless consumption. Michael lets her choose toppings.

  They watch the news and eat in bed. Michael eats most of the crust and cheese. Wendy picks at kalamata olives with a fork. Hurricane Marie has left thousands on the Gulf Coast without power. The National Guard stormed the FSU Hillel. When the smoke cleared, twelve people, including the rabbi and two other hostages, were dead.

  “Jesus,” Wendy says.

  Ricky’s murder is addressed after the first commercial break. Devor, it seems, turned himself in, and has since been released. In a taped press conference, he pledges his innocence and vows to assist with the investigation.

  “What do you think?” asks Wendy.

  Michael’s been thinking about Ricky’s sure thing investment. He’s been wondering why Ricky over all the other people at the party. Newscasters speculate that he was randomly chosen, an anonymous banker with the bad luck of wrong place and time. The riot was a diversion, is the general consensus. The detectives told Michael that the bathroom floor was wet. Some people on Reddit say the murderer is black.

  “I don’t know what I think,” says Michael.

  “No,” says Wendy.

  It looks like her bites have finally faded, but it might just be too dark to see. Michael rests his head on Wendy’s shoulder.

  “No more news,” he says. “Let’s watch something else.”

  She clicks into the program guide. Reruns and reality bullshit, four channels showing college hockey. 8 Mile’s on HBO. Wendy says fine, they can watch.

  Michael took her to see it in college, during that stage when couples share the cultural artifacts that molded and shaped them, a shortcut to surface intimacy while the deeper kind develops. The film wasn’t bad. More so, she liked Michael’s passion. Everyone else in New York was too hip to fullheartedly gush over anything, afraid to take the wrong view and lose tastemaker cred.

  Within minutes, Michael’s asleep in fetal position and facing the wall. Only his pate can be seen, a sparse lawn that Wendy wets and finger-combs while watching, mesmerized by the actress Brittany Murphy, whose death seven years later, from pills and pneumonia on a bathroom floor, imbues this past performance with retrospective weight. Gone is the apple-cheeked Murphy of Clueless. Here she’s gaunt and thigh-gapped, all pupil and jawbone, a body offering itself in lieu of other things to offer. When Eminem asks her on a date, she responds, “Why don’t you take me somewhere now.” This character doesn’t believe in the future, thinks Wendy, she fears its conditional tense.

  The film cuts to the two of them inside the auto plant where he works. Murphy unbuttons her blouse and Eminem hoists her onto a clunking apparatus. Her legs come up and her panties come off. For reasons obscure, at first, to Wendy, Brittany Murphy licks her hand. It is an oddly human moment, the last before their bodies take a mechanistic turn, thrusting to the factory’s din and clang.

  11.

  The closet is empty except for the prototype. His clothes closet’s elsewhere. The prototype has its own closet, the closet a romantic partner would use if he had one. He does not. The prototype is the closest thing he has to a romantic partner.

  Lucas pulls the item over his naked body in a series of slow, graceful movements. No one is watching. The item could be and will be described as a second skin. He thought about calling it Skin or Skein or Skinn. These names tested poorly. Too crass and direct, like those off-brand condoms sold in coin-op machines. The name he’s chosen—The Suit™—is clear and unpretentious. Everybody owns one. A suit is something a person wears to work.

  Imagine a speed skater’s full-body spandex. Now imagine that outfit so well-matched to your skin tone that it looks like you’re not wearing clothes. Now imagine a fabric so breathably aerated that it feels like you’re not wearing clothes. Your clothes go on top. In this case, a pair of 1966 Levi’s XX 501s in Cone Mills selvedge denim. Custom motorcycle boots made from distressed seal leather and flown in from Japan. Matching jacket. White T-shirt by Hanes.

  Before dressing, Lucas performs a series of sun salutations to the closet mirror, allowing his spine to elongate, his calves to tense and relax. He does five burpees, ten stationary lunges, fifty jumping jacks. He does ten more burpees, twenty split jacks, fifteen single-leg bridges, and a four-minute plank. He does a circuit of back-step lunges, body-weight squats, clapping push-ups, and bicycle crunches.

  The previous prototype ripped in the crotch during this routine. Even Lucas’s crack team of apparel scientists had trouble synthesizing a fabric that could properly house the prototype’s twelve hundred micro-sensors while maintaining target weight and durability specs. The new prototype has a reinforced crotch that does well under athletic duress and provides storage for extra sensors.

  After fifteen years of daily practice, Lucas still can’t do the splits. Some positions aren’t meant for adult male bodies. This doesn’t stop him from trying. He comes to a controlled halt three inches short of his goal, maintaining balance by engaging his glutes and staring at a fixed point on the floor. He feels stabbing pain in both hips, and a satisfying burn in his hamstrings. Keeping his lower body stable, he bends at the torso and touches the floor, maneuvers into a spread-legged pushup, then bounces back to standing. He says, “Namaste, motherfucker,” and pretends to shoot the wall. He puts his clothes on over The Suit™, checks himself in the mirror, adjusts his collar, his hair. The pro
totype remains intact.

  On his tablet, Lucas looks at the data. His heart rate peaked at 180 during this little routine. He watches the live feed as it drops to 150, 140, 115, 65. His blood pressure’s 135/90, on the high end of normal. Blood sugar: 120. He needs to cut down on soda. Blood alcohol: under .01 percent. Water loss: three ounces over the last twenty minutes, an impressively high retention rate.

  When the product comes to market, this data will be sold to advertisers. It will be used as the basis for a new kind of target marketing. When Lucas’s blood sugar drops below a certain level, Bobby Wasabi’s Sushi Palace will auto-text asking if he wants to one-click order the same sashimi combo that he got last week. When his blood alcohol indicates a data-determined peak susceptibility to impulse shopping, Orbitz will email, offering a negligible discount on the ticket to Aruba that’s been sitting in his cart. The Suit™ can track the frequency and weight of bowel movements through its advanced Sensi-Shape™ technology. After twenty-four hours without defecation, ads for laxatives will permeate his streams.

  The data will be sold to insurance companies as well. The Suit™ is a marvel of actuarial science. It knows how many hours you sleep and exercise, or spend seated in an office chair. It can model your posture, detect irregular heartbeats and other pre-existing conditions. It knows how much you smoke despite the lies you tell your doctor and yourself. It can estimate, with unprecedented accuracy, when a person is going to die.

  Lucas hasn’t felt this way since he launched Shamerican Sykosis. The first game he developed, &Co, had been a bust. That was when he did all the coding himself. And he knew, before he’d even brought it to market, that the game wasn’t up to his standards, that it didn’t match what was there in his head.