How weird is this? But for fifty bucks' worth of rice and canned milk, somebody's reboosted the entire taste track through so many human skeletons that you can hardly get through the peak without interrupting, you're so hot to buy a soda. A doughnut. A hamburger. Old Spice cologne.
In transcription school, you learn all about effective pacing, so you don't overwhelm your user. You learn all the legal criteria for the production codes and rating system. What distinguishes a G-rated peak from a PG-13. Classifications based on the physical reactions, the electrolyte balance and hormone levels, pulse and respiration of a test audience. A good way to flatten a peak—say, lower it from an R rating to a PG, is you rewitness through a dope-smoking stoner. An easy fix.
To graduate, we each had to produce a feature-length peak experience. For my thesis, I had a great concept. We're talking three to six hours of marketable sensory content. My idea I had, it was so great. I threw a party. Invited one Asian friend. One Jew. One black. One queer. One hot lesbian. One straight cheerleader girl. One Native American. One redneck hillbilly. One Hispanic guy. An Irish. An Eskimo. You get the idea. One of everything. They didn't know, but I was boosting while I played host, spending almost exactly ten minutes talking with each person. The cream on my idea was, I'd ask each guest back, to rewitness the party. Each guest would meet themselves and see, hear, smell, and feel themselves for those ten minutes we'd talked.
Splicing all the boosts together, I made it so the whole four-hour peak was tinted by each person meeting him-or herself. The Hindu meeting the Hindu. The Quaker meeting the Quaker. Shit like that, for hours.
Another student in my same class, he boosted the birth of his first kid, then rewitnessed it through himself while he held the kid on a sunny day. Four hours of sentiment, tinted with Percodan. You can tell by the slight halo effect you get boosting through somebody on painkillers.
The Percodan guy, the faculty committee said his thesis peak was extremely commercially viable. And they gave him 360 points out of a possible four hundred.
My thesis, the committee didn't like so much.
It went beyond a disaster. Nothing sharps the contrast like adrenaline. Each guest got so tweaked, seeing how they occurred to strangers, it made the boost almost unbearable to stay plugged into. Beyond bitter. Boosting the peak, you'd sweat so hard it kept interrupting the feed. Some faculty members couldn't stay plugged in past the second hour.
My concept was, I figured people would love to meet people just like themselves. Like, why most French people stay living in France. Why all the Southern Baptists go to the same church. You know, birds of a feather.
What totally wipes ass is, the committee withheld my degree.
The bunch of dipshits.
These days, every month, when I have to send the school a payment on my loans, at the bottom of the check, where it says "For…," in that blank I always write, "Thanks for the best rim job ever!"
To make those dipshit payments, I work here. Renting out copies of Little Becky's Easter Egg Hunt to people who just want to get through another awful night, alone. These people, boring themselves to death.
How weird is this? But inside me, in secret, I know that thesis didn't wreck my life. Not by much. Even saddled with a hundred grand in student loans to pay, I can't get too upset. I learned something, maybe not about boosting peaks, but about people.
Whatever the blessing, the talent, or technology, we can still find some way to fuck it up. The other day, the Percodan guy who graduated with top honors after his boosted birthing experience, he comes in here to rent a peak, still lugging around that baby. He tells me, he just lets it slip, that he's got Robert Mason under contract to boost an upcoming white-water raft trip. Such a bullshit big-name fucking player he's turned into. Such an industry hotshot.
It's not even a year old, and he's already stuck a little black port into the back of his kid's neck.
16–The Team
Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Every Honeymoon Night, I'd wear the same lucky veil. Different nights, I'd wear a long or short wedding dress. A night in late August, driving in a car with no air conditioning, I don't want to be wearing a thousand layers of tulle with heavy silk on top of that. You can't find the stick shift in all your petticoats. But wintertime, if you drive into a snowdrift, Party Crashing on icy streets, that same tulle can save you from freezing to death.
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): The night in question, the team was Echo, driving; Green Taylor Simms was her shotgun; I was Right B-Pillar Lookout. A girl named Tina Something was Left B-Pillar Lookout, but she keeps kicking the back of Echo's seat, telling her where to turn to find some car that might have a flag up.
Backseat drivers are bad enough. But from somebody riding Left B, that's too much. Un-asswipe-acceptable. Echo pulls over, and Green says, "Enough."
This Tina Something says, "Fine." She throws open her door and gathers up the skirts of her pink bridesmaid dress in both hands. She says, "Even boosting a Little Becky beats being your slave."
Green and me, we look so swank in our tuxedos, wearing black bow ties, with fake carnations glued to our lapels. We have "Just Married" written down both sides of the car with tubes and tubes of white toothpaste. Those Oreo cookies, twisted in half and stuck on. We have cowbells and tin cans roped to the rear bumper—a clear violation of the I-SEE-U Noise Limitations, but even Daytimers will cut slack for young marrieds.
Cowbells bouncing and white streamers flying from our antennae, we pull up to the curb, and some guy's standing there with his hands stuffed in his pockets. Tina Something throws her bridesmaid's bouquet in his face, saying, "Hey, dude." She yells, "Catch!" The girl's silk flowers hit him in the face, but he catches them. He's quick. He's a quick guy, and we're short one lookout. How weird is that?
I yell, "You!" To the guy, I say, "You got gas money?"
It just so happens that guy is Rant Casey.
Echo Lawrence: Listen up. Getting onto a car team is like the starting position in any sport. If it's an established team, you'll start on the lowest rung. That's Left B-Pillar Lookout, meaning backseat behind the driver. The number-three position is Right B-Pillar Lookout, the backseat behind the shotgun. Number two is riding shotgun in the front seat. Being driver is the same as playing quarterback, center, pitcher, or goalie. The number-one position. The glamour spot.
Tina Something (Party Crasher): My old car—I called her Cherry Bomb—she got scored into the gaddamn junkyard, tagged to death. That happens, and chances are you'll start at that bottom position, behind the head of some other driver with her wheels still intact. Somebody like Echo Lawrence. Don't think I hate Echo. It's just that she lies. Ask Echo what she does for a living; if she tells you anything except sex work, it's a lie.
Echo Lawrence: Pay attention. "Tag Teams" are crews put together on the street. A "Shark," a lone driver needing a team for help or protection or company, he'll cruise around before the «window» opens, looking to draft players off the curb. If you don't have a car, just stand on some corner with your thumb out. A car will pull over and ask, "Are you playing?"