Rephlex

Arriving at the 2.4 children, 2 adult, suburban dream house we call
home I find Jez and Bevel making toast. Too much buttered toast.
Sitting there watching the Chromatoholemitter (Sony's finest model)
painting its rainbow of kaleidoscopic holo patterns in the corner of
the room. A mini production line, Jez puts bread in the old silver
toaster between his legs; the power cord hanging over his shoulder,
butters it and passes it to Bevel who busies herself throwing it
randomly into the stale air of the room.
Stepping stones of toast over the filth and dusty fibres of a once red
carpet.
This is the only room we use, its windows boarded up with planks
salvaged from an unconstructed flat pack wardrobe. The remnants of
someone's dream furniture, an unfulfilled dream. The planks let in only
a slit of orange fluorescence from outside and it cuts Bevels face in
half, blue cigarette smoke a hazy plain in front of her.
She looks to me 'Did you score?'
The behaviour of Rephlex users waiting for a hit: Busy yourself with
something other than living life.
Jez, the leather bound human rat, features gnarled from one to many
wrong word in the wrong ear. One too many beatings from thugs with real
influence, the very people he idolises. In the light from the
Chromatoholemitter his skin looks like colour changing wax.
Seeing my expression he gestures a hand over the carpet 'Testing
Murphy's Law, Matt. You know "Things can go wrong then they will". What
can go wrong with toast? I ask you. Lands butter side down's what. You
score the 'phlex oh buddy oh pal?'
I nod.
Scored one Light and two Darks off some Pinkel thugs earlier today.
Had to travel to the remains of SCU, a long journey but worth it. Not
easy to deal with; the Pinkel Triangle gang. They're a bunch of SCU
college thugs on scholarships and trust funds. Mamma's boys who can
afford to live constantly in Rephlex, something us suburb scum can only
dream of. But living your whole life in Rephlex screws up the
connections in your brain like a hack in a database, cuts up the
boundaries between real and unreal, life and Rephlex.
The Pinkel Triangle gang spend their time on a search for their holy
grail, The Pinkel Triangle: A four sided shape with three corners. In
the unbound constraints of Rephlex anyone can imagine this shape and
see it in their mind's eye.
But these kids with their top of the range, parent-paid-for, cyware
and designer labels want a real, physical, Pinkel Triangle and kick the
crap out of anyone they believe to possess one.
Always good for Rephlex deals though.
I handed the Light to Bevel and the Dark to Jez who took it like a rat
coveting food. Rat man, Human rat faced bastard. We don't get along
much. Why won't he break his face on my fist?
Bevel gets up and switches off the Chromatoholemitter, its constantly
shifting light pattern of holo fading like a ghost 'Let's go to
Warehouse, shoot Rephlex on the way, Matt you gonna come this time?'
The heel of her black stiletto has speared a piece of cold toast.
Not my kind of scene. Bevel holds my arm as she asks me so I agree to
join them anyway.

The VW van moves through the abandoned suburb streets like a banshee,
its modified engine screaming as it tries to keep up with Jez's Light
Rephlex hyper-stimulated nervous system.
He sees the turns before the turns even exist. Only the Light can do
this. He and Bevel swapped their vials before we left.
She sits on the dirty old mattrice in the back, she shoots the Dark
with a stolen hypo; silver chrome lined and reflecting the dark under
her eyes. I see the change in her eyes then and there, whatever remains
of the eyes of the girl who came to stay with us in the suburbs gone,
replaced with the dull intensity of Rephlex. Her pupils dilate, her
eyes become two shiny black orbs set in a pale white porcelain face.
The Dark moves visibly through her bloodstream like some perceptible
virus, tracing the pattern of her arteries under the white sheaf of her
skin. One line traces its way from under her black PVC miniskirt,
moving slowly under the fishnets and along a smooth white thigh.
'You looking at my girl Matt?' Jez says, breaking me from my reverie.
His eyes don't leave the constantly shifting road, like small electric
shocks his face twitches into that same lopsided grin he always puts
on. You fucker.
Bevel smiles at me. She knows.

Warehouse. The antithesis of my perfect night out, a giant breezeblock
box filled with thousands of people dancing in Rephlex, searching for
the stream. As we step in I can feel the change as abruptly as if I'd
stepped into a rainstorm, the air so wet and heavy with the alcohol
stained breath and Rephlex induced sweat of a thousand dancers,
euphoric; each in their own private version of Rephlex and one step
closer to the stream but never quite there.
Jez has already made his way through the wall of clubbers and dealers
at the bar, making their shabby small time deals, to get his favourite
blend of vodka and gin.
Bevel holds my arm again and I feel something; not love. Not even
lust. Just something. She holds me tighter than before, her brain lost
in the infinite horizons of Rephlex 'Dance with me Matt. Let Jez drink
his poison, he can't reach the stream on Light. Maybe we can find it
together Matt'
I tell her I haven't shot the Dark yet. Without the fuzzy shield of
Rephlex warehouse scares me. The thousands moving as one mass and yet
each with their own set of tribal dances. Their faces richtuses of joy
and terror and love and hate. Primal feelings, Rephlex returning them
to a base state.
For some Rephlex is just another high, another way to waste a few
bucks and a Saturday night. For some it's a religion, a way to get
closer to the stream; the mind that dreams the universe into existence.
But for everyone it's always the same. Always the same experience
whether good or bad, and no matter what its always good. I remember
once I spoke to a Shaman at a tube station who told me that through
Rephlex he saw the cadavers of his dead relatives who haunted him
always in Rephlex. For him it was a terrifying experience but he kept
on entering. Kept paying for the Dark.
For me it's different. I experience something new each time. Never the
same thing, I am the part of the mythology that no one has met but
everyone hears about. The shifter, the mover, always different.
I tell Bevel that I'm going to the lounge to shoot the Dark.
'I'll come with you' she says.

The lounge is a rough collection of burgundy leather sofas and low
unpolished plywood tables surrounded by curtained walls, matching the
sofas. A small enclave to chill, to get away from the mass of sine wave
flesh on the dance floor. And to enter Rephlex.
While loading my hypo (mine for seven years and engraved with a
Chinese dragon along its chrome cylinder base, the animal of Rephlex)
with the Dark I notice an untitled leather bound book on the table by
us. Inside it are words I've read a hundred thousand times before. I
read it to Bevel, asleep or unconscious in some faraway part of Rephlex
beside me.

'We exist as streams of consciousness flowing through the eternal
emptiness. Our minds are not part of this universe, even though we
belong here. This universe does not really exist other than in our
minds. It is a fiction, a beautiful fiction created by the stream of
consciousness to give meaning to our very existence.
But now we are stuck, stranded in an island of fiction. Stuck in a
dream of our own creation that has become nightmare, where too many
minds are brought into suffering only to be destroyed and once more
returned to the void. We poison our fiction, our consensual dream with
aggression, avarice, prejudice and hatred.
Rise up my children. Rephlex is the world between the fiction and the
Stream. Rephlex is a brand new fiction all of itself. Rise up and face
yourselves'

'Gospel' Bevel says awake and staring right at me, her eyes still lost
in her Dark.
She takes the silver dragon hypo from me and shoots the loaded Dark
into my left bicep. I feel synapses firing and misfiring. Always the
initial confusion followed by the euphoria. Here, at the start,
entering Rephlex is like any other stimulant. But it changes.
'Lets dance' Bevel tells me.

On the dancefloor, among the tribes. I truly enter Rephlex. It passes
over me in layers, like a screenwipe paring down reality and building
it up again. The tribes vanish left to their own rain dances, their own
rituals for their own personal gods. Tonight, for now, my god is the
music. I feel myself changing with every snare and thud, I am a Mobius
loop constantly inverting in on myself, resonating at 347 beats per
minute. Shifting away from the physical into some kind of wavelength
that only exists here, in the warehouse, my mind some kind of receiver
to the ancient tribal dance that moved our ancestors into frenzy, the
vibration of everything. Bevel is here with me; I feel her hot smooth
skin against my non-existent body. Then it keeps coming, more layers of
Rephlex moving towards me like mega-tsunami. The tribes have become
metallic apparitions looking at us through thousand yard stares, the
warehouse a phasing arrangement of atoms, dusty and bare. But Bevel is
still with me, reflecting against me like two mirrors facing each
other. Infinite tunnel. The breakbeat goes on. 347bpm.
5.78333bps.
Rephlex.
But more. The layers of Rephlex keep passing, throwing more reality
away with each sweep. The Warehouse fades, the tribes and their endless
dance fades, the floor and the clouds and the dome above fade letting
me see the stars burning in space for the first time.
But they fade too, blinking out like faulty light bulbs.
Leaving only darkness. And Bevel in her fishnet tights, that same PVC
miniskirt she always wears to Warehouse, her leather jacket the same
colour as dried blood.
She looks directly at where my eyes should be, retinas long since
faded into nothingness. Her eyes still black orbs set in a white stone
face. Eyes almost darker than that surrounding us. She is so beautiful,
and now she is all that exists. The universe around me gone. But she is
still there, the only sensory information my mind still has is her. She
stops dancing, part of her black fringe flopping in front of one of the
black orbs of her soul.
'The stream' she says.

I am here. Bevel is here. And fuckface Jez has just turned up. They
have bodies that exist as my only sensory perception, around them
nothing. Not darkness, not white light.
'The test was a success meh boy. Half the toast landed butter down. If
Murphy's Law were true all of it should've landed down, but hey, that
means the test went right anyway. Why? 'Cos the test went wrong you
see. Could've gone wrong and did. By the way Matt I'm not too happy you
went off with my girl. But when you vanished in the middle of the
dancefloor I thought, well screw him, at least he's got the decency to
disappear when troubles a' coming eh?' Jez the rat ass starts laughing,
filling the nothingness with a sound like nails on blackboard.
'Shut up Jez. Matt you've reached it. Only the shifters can. The
stream added Rephlex to the dream to help people leave it, to help them
escape'
'Didn't you ever wonder where it came from, eh boyo, no one grows this
shit, no one chemically produces it. It comes outta nowhere bout ten
years ago and everyone thinks hell yeeah! Gotta get me some oh that.
But all you god damn alcoholics and junkies don't care where it came
from. Man all we gotta do is dream the shit up and there it is.' If I
had a fist I would've knocked him out.
'Now you're here and you're the first. I wish I could've come with you
but you left me in Warehouse. But it's okay. It's time for a new dream.
Where you are right now, all the minds of our universe are here. They
speak through me. You, you are the first, but not the last. You have to
start for us Matt. Start the new fiction. Start the new consensual
dream. More will join. Maybe I'll join you one day' Bevels image says.
A small part of it is her.
She twists a strand of hair in her fingers. The way she did whenever
she was nervous back at the house. Back in the suburbs.
I see a chrome dragon moving in the distance.
Start a new fiction. I barely understand the old one.