“I could eat, like, a dozen of those ThaiSnak Issan larb chicken salads right about now,” Noah said, in deference to one of his sponsors.
As the retro sound system went into an old Arcade Fire tune, I let myself get cozy with another glass of foaming ale, observing the boys on a meta-level. Noah had aged worst of all. The weight had seemingly trickled from his thick, brainy forehead down into his jowls, where it jiggled inopportunely, giving him an afterglow of anger and dissatisfaction. At one time he was clearly the most handsome and successful of our number, he had introduced us to half the girlfriends we ever had (not that many, to be sure), had given us our edgy racial vocabulary, and had kept us updated with a dozen messages an hour on how we should act and what we should think. But with every year it was getting harder to keep me and Vishnu in check. The almost-forties, once the fulcrum of adulthood, was now a time of exploration, and each of the boys had struck out on his own.
Vishnu was settling into the life of a smart, fancy loser, the SUK DIK bodysuit and vintage Bathing Ape sneakers that must have cost five hundred yuan, an overeagerness to laugh too hard at others’ jokes with a strange new honking sound that had developed in my absence-ha-huh, ha-huh-a laughter born of a life of diminishing returns that, I’ve been told, would miraculously end in marriage to a loving, forgiving woman named Grace.
As for me, I was now the odd man out. It would take a while for my boys to get used to my return. They glanced at me strangely, as if I had unlearned English, or repudiated our common way of life. I was already something of a weirdo for living all the way out in Manhattan. Now I had wasted an entire year and a good chunk of my savings in Europe. As a friend, a well-respected member of the technological elite, and, yes, a fellow “Nee-gro,” I needed to reclaim my prime position among the boys as a kind of alternate Noah. I needed to replant myself on native soil.
The three things I had going for me: an inbred Russian willingness to get drunk and chummy, an inbred Jewish willingness to laugh strategically at myself, and, most impressively, my new äppärät. “Damn, cabrón,” Noah said, eyeing my pebble. “Whuddat, a 7.5 with RateMe Plus? I’m going to stream that shit fucking close-up.”
He filmed my äppärät with his äppärät, while I swallowed another mug of triglycerides. Some Staten Island girls had shown up, wearing trendy retro clothes from some point in my youth, looking very Media in their sheepy Ugg boots and rhinestone-encrusted bandanas, a few of them mixing the old-school duds with Onionskin jeans which clung transparently to their thin legs and plump, pink bottoms, revealing to us all of their shaven secrets. They were also looking our way, scrolling their devices, one of them a pretty brunette with beautiful sleepy eyes.
“Let’s fuck,” Vishnu said, pointing in their direction.
“Jeez, cool it, Nee-gro,” I said, already slurring my words. “You’ve got a little cutie at home.” I looked directly into the camera nozzle of Noah’s äppärät: “’Sup, Grace. Long time no see, baby girl. You watching this live?”
The boys laughed at me. “What an idiot!” Noah cried. “Did you hear that, beloved cocksucking audience? Lenny Abramov thought Vishnu Cohen-Clark just said, ‘Let’s fuck.’”
“It’s F-A-C,” Vishnu explained. “I said, ‘Let’s FAC.’”
“What does that mean?”
“He sounds like my granny in Aventura!” Noah was bellowing. “‘FAC? What’s that? Who am I? Where’s my diaper?’”
“It means ‘Form A Community,’” Vishnu said. “It’s, like, a way to judge people. And let them judge you.” He took my äppärät, and slid some settings until an icon labeled “FAC” drifted onto the screen. “When you see FAC, you press the EmotePad to your heart, or wherever it can feel your pulse.” Vishnu pointed out the sticky thing on the back of my äppärät that I thought could be used to attach it to a dashboard or a fridge. Wrong again.
“Then,” Vishnu continued, “you look at a girl. The EmotePad picks up any change in your blood pressure. That tells her how much you want to do her.”
“All right, Mediastuds and Mediawhores,” Noah said. “We’re streaming live here as Lenny Abramov tries to FAC for the first time. This is a future-reference event, folks, so widen your bandwidth. This is like the Wright brothers learning to fly, except neither of them was mildly retarded like our boy Lenny here. JBF, Nee-gro. Tell me if I’m going too far. Or wait. There’s no such thing as too far in Rubenstein’s America. Too far is when you’re shot in the back of the head somewhere Upstate and the National Guard burns your body to a crisp and flushes the ashes down a cold winter’s port-a-potty at some Secure Screening Facility in Troy. Lenny’s looking at me like What are you talking about? Here’s the breakdown on what you’ve missed during your ‘junior year abroad,’ Lenny-boy: The Bipartisans run the American Refund Agency, or whatever the fuck it’s called, the ARA runs the infrastructure and the National Guard, and the National Guard runs you. Oops. Not supposed to mention that on GlobalTeens. Maybe I have gone too far!”
I noticed Vishnu moving his head out of the frame of Noah’s äppärät’s camera nozzle at the mention of the ARA and the Bipartisans. “Okay, Nee-gro,” he said to me. “Set up your Community Parameters. Make it ‘Immediate Space 360’-that’ll cover the whole bar. Now look at a girl, then press the pad to your heart.” I looked at the pretty brunette, at the hairless crotch glowing from within her see-through Onionskin jeans, at the lithe body crouched imperiously atop a set of smooth legs, at her worried smile. Then I touched my heart with the back of my äppärät, trying to fill it with my warmth, my natural desire for love.
The girl across the bar laughed immediately without even turning my way. A bunch of figures appeared on my screen: “FUCKABILITY 780/800, PERSONALITY 800/800, ANAL/ORAL/VAGINAL PREFERENCE 1/3/2.”
“Fuckability 780!” Noah said. “Personality 800! Leeeetl Lenny Abramov’s got himself a beeeeeg crush.”
“But I don’t even know her personality,” I said. “And how does it know my anal preferences?”
“The personality score depends on how ‘extro’ she is,” Vishnu explained. “Check it out. This girl done got three thousand-plus Images, eight hundred streams, and a long multimedia thing on how her father abused her. Your äppärät runs that against the stuff you’ve downloaded about yourself and then it comes up with a score. Like, you’ve dated a lot of abused girls, so it knows you’re into that shit. Here, let me see your profile.” Vishnu slid some other functions, and my profile shimmered on my warm pebbly screen.
LENNY ABRAMOV ZIP code 10002, New York, New York. Income averaged over five-year-span, $289,420, yuan-pegged, within top 19 percent of U.S. income distribution. Current blood pressure 120 over 70. O-type blood. Thirty-nine years of age, lifespan estimated at eighty-three (47 percent lifespan elapsed; 53 percent remaining). Ailments: high cholesterol, depression. Born: 11367 ZIP code, Flushing, New York. Father: Boris Abramov, born Moscow, HolyPetroRussia; Mother: Galya Abramov, born Minsk, VassalState Belarus. Parental ailments: high cholesterol, depression. Aggregate wealth: $9,353,000 non-yuan-pegged, real estate, 575 Grand Street, Unit E-607, $1,150,000 yuan-pegged. Liabilities: mortgage, $560,330. Spending power: $1,200,000 per year, non-yuan-pegged. Consumer profile: heterosexual, nonathletic, nonautomotive, nonreligious, non-Bipartisan. Sexual preferences: low-functioning Asian/Korean and White/Irish American with Low Net Worth family background; child-abuse indicator: on; low-self-esteem indicator: on. Last purchases: bound, printed, nonstreaming Media artifact, 35 northern euros; bound, printed, nonstreaming Media artifact, $126 yuan-pegged; bound, printed, nonstreaming Media artifact, 37 northern euros.