Talk about timing. My AutoBev is broken. I’m halfway through a message to the repair department when it hits me.

iPerceive on.

Suddenly, the kitchen is a gustatory wonderland, full of multicolored hot/cold/sweet/bitter/fizzy/flat/flamboyant drinks. I sip the vodka.

#burnssogood

I gulp it down, the whole cup. It’s exactly what I need right now. There’s a pleasant tingling in my stomach and fingers. My head drifts off like a balloon.

“Excuse me?” I hear from the other room.

iPerceive off. My head is clear as a bell.

Hmm...

On, buzzed.

Off, sober.

On, off, on, off, on/off/on/off/on/off.

“Hello?” calls Sergeant Johnson.

“Just a minute,” I call back, grabbing the hot cocoa/water. Oh yeah, it’s not even warm. It gets dumped in the disposal. I run to the bathroom, shove the cup under the shower head and hope. Yes! It’s warm.

#thankgod

Stg. Johnson is sitting on my sofa, shivering. I hold out the cup and he takes it.

“Thank you,” he says. “There’s no need to panic. I’ll be fine. I’ve seen worse.” He looks at me, and sees me shaking worse than he is. “Really, I’ll be fine,” he adds.

“Look,” I say. “This isn’t a free ride. You can stay and get warm. I’ll even get you something to eat, but then you have to go somewhere else.”

“Where?” he says.

“I don’t know. I’ll find for you a place at a shelter or something. Is there anything else I can do for you right now?” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “Tell me your name.”

#impossible

He must not have any apps, not even a rudimentary like iDentify.

“Lauren Van Kamp,” I say.

“Thank you, Ms. Van Kamp,” he says and then lies back down on the sofa.

While he sleeps, I InComp the city shelter. (Poof) Suddenly I’m standing in a concert hall sized room. It’s stacked from floor to ceiling with occupied beds.

#cordwood

“Hello,” says a worker. He’s grey-haired and has bags under his eyes. iDentify tells me his name. I ask him if there’s a free bed. He says no. I offer a small bribe. He says no. I offer a moderate bribe. “That’s enough to afford LifeCoach. It looks like you could use it,” I say. He laughs, then says that it doesn’t matter how much I offer. The shelter is full. He clarifies:

#atcapacity

#wayovercapacity, actually. He takes me outside and shows me a crowd of hundreds of people. They’re all waiting for a meal.

When did this happen?

*Ping – Poverty has been on a steady incline since...

I interrupt WikiSearch. This is another one of those things that I really don’t need to know. Fuck, why haven’t I seen this before. I flip iPerceive on.

A flock of storks...

#jesuschrist, that’s why.

I flip iPerceive off. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do,” says the grey-haired man.

“Goodbye,” I say, hanging up and shaking my head.

Sitting in my living room, I bury my head in my hands. LifeCoach tells me of my serotonin levels, suggest a day at the spa, offers wonderful holidays, real and virtual, and tells me that my self-satisfaction levels have dropped 452%, in a single hour. They’re the lowest since I have gotten the app. I can’t think, so I shut it off. I’d give anything for an #operasingingfirehydrant, for my #newyork1950s, for my #pureperfection, to forget.

I search the Dsense corp app store. There it is: GuiltFree. It promises to erase most of the last two days, but it’s out of my price range. Maybe with my bonus...

#shit

I missed the merger, which means goodbye bonus.

•

For lunch, my ProGusto cooks filet mignon with mashed potatoes. The two dishes are actually some type of grey protein slurry, just with different constancies.

Sergeant Johnson is up and off of the couch. He’s in a good mood and wolfs the protein slurry down like it really is filet mignon. I turn on iPerceive and pick at my food while watching the crisply-painted fire hydrant across the table from me. It’s not moving, but the food slowly disappears.

The fire hydrant starts singing. “Huh,” I say, turning iPerceive off.

“Is it supposed to be cold tonight?” he asks.

Very cold, but I don’t tell him that. It’s one of those things that he doesn’t need to know. Instead, I say:

“There’s no room at the shelter.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“And I can’t keep you here,” I say.

“I know,” he says. He finishes his meal, gets up and slowly walks to the door, dragging his feet. He opens the door, turns and says, “Thank you.” Then he smiles, scarred lip peeling back to reveal missing and rotten teeth. And there’s something about the smile. It’s not ugly. It’s like the song, the one from my DreamWell archive, the one my grandfather played on the disc in the antique shop, melancholy but joyous, sober but whimsical, flawed but...real, something that I could touch, something I could feel, something created, existing only for a moment, shared between two human beings. It’s not perfect; it’s beautiful. Sergeant Johnson turns and leaves, shutting the door behind him.