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AI Seinfeld is a wondrous accomplishment, that I predict will have the monkeys beat in no time. (At least they’re striving for Shakespeare; most other writers had better consider a career change.) In fact, I hope it’s on my TV in San Junipero.

Update: And just like that, stream’s been taken down temp-banned (for the ad revenue must flow) after alleged filter omissions, in a machine learning lesson?

A mainstay in my 5-disc changer, the one into which I painstakingly keyed so many titles for it to display throughout the early 90’s. Talk about life’s labor lost, I wonder if its onboard memory preserved them, or like my 100% Super Metroid save, they’re all but digital ghosts in broken-down machines, the precarious memories of yet another who is himself fast approaching the same state.

…Until then, however, I’ll accelerate things by eating whatever the fuck I want, including supermarket deli lasagna and Oreo Cakesters, which take me back, too, perhaps not as far, but still to a time when there seemed more ahead than behind. Got me thinking how the Metaverse/San Junipero will recreate ancient treats like these in our minds, because I can’t recall re-experiencing them in dreams, maybe by hijacking the right areas of the brain and simulating the sensations? Could this be done in real-time, say, to disregard information your nerves are sending and fool you into thinking that your dinner smells and tastes like dessert? Might the discrepancy in the fake crunch of the delicious burnt pieces cause bite irregularities or would that be compensated for as well?

Wife asked me about the bar (which I refuse to take unless I am allowed to in the afterlife) and I told her it was just the right amount of ambition, not too little that I threw my life away or so much that I made many times what her company might have paid, to put me on a career path to her, like the book—or was it an episode of the Twilight Zone—I remember from my youth with pictures of the earth freezing and burning if it were only the slightest bit further from or closer to the sun. Roots of Intelligent Design for some, perhaps. She looked flustered by my response, which I still felt was such a brilliant one that when 남재 woke up in a bed in the room, I had to tell him he missed out on it. He’d be my first choice on LINE when I woke up at 3am.

An obvious by-product of the son’s interest in Scooby Doo and our recent viewings of live-action adaptations, the proprietor had been conducting some ghastly rituals, and once I learned of them, I returned with a sample leech the shape and size of an orange slice under a form-fitting plastic case and explained to her, squeezing it to reveal its jaws, that he was reviving the dead whose souls had been sucked out of them. She turned and quite effortlessly removed a giant specimen hanging on the towel rack like a lei and tossed it aside.

We congregated in the hall where the madness was at work, and saw an animated scene that seemed to depict his machinations, while staying safe in shower-like alcoves. The wooden floors were giving way, I surmised, as a result of the damage being done to reality. My cousin and Rebecca looked on as my indiscernible companion began choking, her mouth ballooned and I desperately tried compressing her chest from behind. Her ribs converged to a single bilateral ridge and her lips pursed as I continued helplessly, regretting my past decisions.

I was with a group of young Koreans, might as well have been a boy band, but as soon as we got off the elevator, we were beset by equally attractive K-pop starlets who split up my entourage, taking each member behind a different door—except for myself, of course. If you’re wondering when I’ll stop fitting into these exciting scenarios, I think the plummeting testosterone has long since had that effect even on my subconscious… what good will San Junipero be to the impotent? So it was up to me to retrieve everyone from these sinister sirens: I intruded upon the first of them about to consummate the seduction, and her beautiful face became an animal’s, grotesque elephantine features under the same hair. Back together, we sought an exit through the single Black-walled room that wasn’t equipped with only a White mattress like all the others and instead had several exits. Unlike my usual predicaments, however, this time I wasn’t alone with no recourse but to be frustrated by one path nowhere after another, and could direct my team to try them simultaneously, Alice in Borderland-style.

It’s good enough to stand on its own, even for viewers like me who aren’t necessarily subject to the period nostalgia (I did wear the fuck out of those pants in high school), but I can imagine the frustration if I were by these licensing blackouts imposed on Netflix. The measures are more reminiscent of “White Christmas”, aren’t they, but my mind went first, as it is prone more so than ever nowadays, to my favorite Black Mirror, which does take me back—and forward—how fulfilling would the soundtrack at San Junipero be without Amazon’s reach, or if the arcade required subscription to multiple gaming services?