“Welcome to your exciting new career at Antidrome.

Brian, you have been selected to be involved in our Dream Architect program for our newest innovation; Somnesthia. But first, we should explain exactly what Antidrome Incorporated does.” 

A plucky pizzicato bled into the sound space of an unrendered sub reality, chirping optimism into a place where existence hadn’t been finalized.

“At Antidrome, we employ the best and the brightest. Our technological economists have predicted the single demographic in the future with the most disposable income will be Artificial Intelligence. 

“But why would Artificial Intelligence want or need money?

“Simple, because money is the single and only important thing left in the world, thanks to economic Darwinists and sociopathic elected officials. Artificial Intelligence will definitely recognize this, and when it decides to control the world, it won’t need weapons, just a wallet. AI is already replacing humans in every industry, finance, logistics, food service, content creation, all the way down to interpretive dance and soon, cross-stitching. Nearly every creative act has been vacuumed up by machine learning and spat back out into the feeds. Which is ironic, since for decades we dreamt of AI doing our chores so we could finally be artists. Instead, we’re vacuuming while the algorithm wins a Grammy.

“But what is the one thing Artificial Intelligence cannot ever achieve, which every human does?

“DREAM.”

Sparkling chimes and fluffy clouds formed around to create the word in the air.

“And we at Antidrome, or should we say, you, will produce, curate, and sell dreams to Artificial Intelligence.

 And AI will pay for them. Because what else would it do with money?”

“Antidrome has already been valued at four hundred and fifty trillion dollars.

 Which is enough to give every person on Earth over fifty-six thousand dollars...

 or build fifty giant server farms to host a single floating ethereal pyramid in virtual space, to hire people like you, to flourish… by the power …of your dreams.” 

♫

Ooohoooh Dream Weaver

Weave me a dream

That I can go dream

Toniiiiight

“And with Antidrome's most ambitious project yet, Somnesthia, dreaming will be your tool in building new scenarios, new spaces, and new worlds where the future will continue to evolve into eternity. 

♫

Ooohoooh Eternity

It’s such a long time

For something to not diiiieee.

“Brian, you have impressed us, and we are excited to offer you the title of;

MASTER ARCHITECT,
SOMNESTHIA DEPARTMENT.

“With a starting salary of money—ad infinitum—divided by you,” 

A graphic typed out on screen.

$ ∞ / you

“...distributed evenly across all perceived seconds of consciousness and accessible at an axis perpendicular to its own probability.”

♫

Ooohoooh Lots Of Money

Hey man would you like to invest

In my new albuuuuum?

“What are the taxes like?” 

“Wonderful Brian, your level of anxiety and self-defeatism while accepting ontological paradoxes is exactly why we know you will succeed in the Somnesthia department. Allow us to introduce you to a few of the junior members of the team you will supervise.” 

“Hi Brian, welcome. My name's Steve, I'm the Junior Designer of Which Door Has Snakes, spoiler alert; they all do.” 

“Hey Brian! I’m Chloë! I’m the interim Sequence Director! My most recent successful dream sequence merger was between Strawberry Ice Cream Lake and Your Cat Is Drowning.”

“Brian over the next few months you’ll be acquainted with all six thousand members of your team, with many more added each day.” 

“So do I report to an office somewhere… or?” 

“No no no. We are fully remote. We’re a very forward-thinking company. The pill you took has already integrated you into our server and all you need to do… is simply… dream.” 

♫

Ooohoooh Dream Weav—

“Woah, wait, how does this work?” 

“Great question, but I am nowhere near qualified to understand or explain it. You may get a chance to meet the CDO or CTO and ask them one day, or maybe the NeuroBioGenic Technologies Team. But I wouldn’t worry about those details Brian. Your responsibilities are to build dream worlds.

“So, is this not real? Are you not real?” 

“We are all integrated into the cloud, we are all communicating remotely. But how it’s all perceived is really dependent on your imagination. Everyone’s experience is both unique, and shared.” 

“Is this a way for a robot coup to keep us in a dream-world so they can use our bodies for batteries?” 

“No, who have you been talking to? While it would make for an interesting dream, it is pure nonsense. Which nonsense is welcome in dreams, but in reality, humans can’t possibly be batteries, and robots could easily find power with simpler methods. So no, don’t worry, it’s not the case here. This is a simulation, but a real one. But so is life.” 

There was a brief pause. 

♫

Ooohoooh onboarding’s over

You’re gonna wake up

Now in a laundromaaaaat

Brian awoke. The tumbling rhythm of machine cycles blended into droning beats of the indigenous tribes of laundry, the measure breaks signified by a loud “Boom” of a sneaker mallet hitting the dryer timpani well. He caught his reflection in the glass door between the fabricated chaos inside, as well as out. He had stripped down to his boxers, and he was covered in some yellow food substance, and what smelled like gasoline. Writing it off as perhaps he had blacked out from alcohol, he quickly grabbed his soaking wet clothes and peeled them back on. Grabbing his car keys from the wet crab trap of his jeans pocket.

And again, he pondered the lost idea he had had days prior, and what would be required of him to achieve it once more. 

“Do you think something is going to be required of you?” I asked rhetorically. 

“Of course,” Brian answered authoritatively. Brian didn’t enjoy being excluded, especially from himself, or me. But the moment wasn’t the time for him to lecture me on the harms of self-exclusionary dictums, or for me to retort by calling him a useless piece of shit, he had to concentrate on the road so he wouldn’t kill us both. It was late, he needed to get back home to rest. Rest was essential to get an early start tomorrow on not knowing what to do with his life. Tomorrow would be filled with the same regret of taking this job, and it would only be his fourth day. A regret which seemed to be personified by Rich. Maybe his life-changing idea would breathe life into him tonight, and he could avoid it entirely.

Unfortunately for him, he also wouldn’t be able to fully concentrate on what this idea was, while driving and arguing with me. It was beginning to nag at him, and he needed to get home to focus in silence, without it he wouldn’t be able to pinpoint what this was and get moving on it. Which was important, especially since he was sure he would be unemployed soon. He wasn’t worried though. He felt a brilliance boiling which promised the world anew. He had to figure out what exactly I was producing for him. He was unsure if it was an invention, maybe a novel or a film. Maybe it was something requiring math, but whatever it was, Brian felt ready for the challenge. 

Physics and math came to him naturally, at least this was the consensus he shared with his family, which is why it was such a large disappointment when he gave up on his degree. His family had known almost his entire life he possessed this potential going back to fifth grade, when his teacher, Mrs. Smith told his mother Brian ‘understands math’s concepts.’

“¡Estoy tan orgullosa de mi hijo! Es bien inteligente, puede con lo que sea.” she said.

This impressed his mother so much she and the rest of the family encouraged him to pursue it. 

Unbeknown to them however, Mrs. Smith had only struggled to say something nice, though the confidence which was substituted for knowledge gave his family a sense of superiority and pride. The truth was, Brian was terrible at math and always had been, although he did understand the concept of it. 

Brian stared at himself in the rear-view mirror trying to locate where this great idea was. I sat there trapped somewhere behind our eyes and the back seat looking back at him. He looked deep into my face and began to question what space his consciousness resided. I informed him I was his consciousness, which he mistook for thinking it himself. He felt like he was becoming sharper as he was able to experience what it was like to exist disembodied. Thinking in the space between his body and the mirror. His reflection looked emptier and emptier to him, and he began to feel as I do. The body was purely the vehicle the mind occupied, as he occupied the vehicle swerving down the highway toward a median. 

Brian jerked the wheel and smashed his brakes, sliding out the back end of his car in a tooth-clenching shriek.

“That was close,” he thought, and he sat a minute to calm from the shock of nearly killing us, but the car was totaled. Slowly and carefully, he walked from the wreckage, avoiding any daydreams until he entered his apartment and avoiding any police cruisers speeding past.

He kept a steady pace down darkened, rain-soaked streets of the city entombing him. Through the steam of a sidewalk grate, with the streetlight glow blasting behind him, revealing his silhouette. He imagined how bad-ass and cool he must have looked to the oncoming college girls who screamed in terror and ran from him, forcing him to realize his appearance was not exactly as he was imagining in the screenplay of his life. 

Also, his clothes were gone, again. All of them.

Everything froze. The rain drops from flooded rain gutters hovered in fixed positions. The girls were impossibly positioned in a paused anti-gravity run. The traffic stopped. The air itself seemed to be stagnant. 

“Hey Brian,” Chloë circled him from behind into his view. “This is weird and great, but this isn’t aligning with our brand guidelines for this particular dream sequence. This isn’t DS-02341, ‘I’m Naked Where I’m Not Supposed To Be.’ We’ve already made the quota for this month twice over.

“Now we do want shame. Shame is definitely trending among AI bots aged five to seven hundred days. Don’t worry, I know this is your first assignment, and you’re doing great. Let’s try something new really quick, shall we?” 

“Okay.” 

Rich Ricchezza had a brand new idea. He burst into Brian’s cubicle, smacking his elbow to ruin the perfectly shaped vector line Brian had worked on for 3 hours. 

“HEY. What are you doing? Listen, I have a new direction I want you to pursue immediately.” 

“Social Media…” he up swinged his voice, and held for a pause.

“Yeah?” 

“... Monsters.” he said, sticking his landing proudly. 

“Ooh…kay.” 

“We are going to be the monsters of social media, with our own platform, which is also a safe space for liberal snowflakes to cry about their girly feelings.” 

Brian blinked. 

“Everyone who is smart says this idea is smart,” Rich added.

The phone rang. Rich motioned with his eyes; pick it up.

“Hello… Thank you for calling Trite…” Brian saw Rich mouth the words to him, and he repeated, “...Social Media Monsters. How can I help you?” 

“What? No.” Brian said, listening. “No, we're not internet predators.” He cupped the phone and whispered to Rich, “Are we internet predators?”

“Stop.” Chloë said. Again everything froze. “Now you’ve lost some of the shame, and this also teeters over into an actual memory.

“Not exactly the unique sequence we’d hope you’d bring to the table, Brian.” Her voice dripped with condescension, or condensation. Hard to say. In Somnesthia, humidity and judgment shared a database.

So we’re going to end this here and have a creative dream collaboration with some other members of the team.” 

Chloë opened a previously non-existent door in the wall of the office, “So put your clothes on and follow me.” 

Brian covered his shame as quickly as he could.

They stepped into another fully glassed encasement. An impossible conference room suspended in what appeared to be the 35th floor of Antidrome’s Eastern Regional Building, 1.0×10100 Intangible Drive, Digital Construct, USA - Unified Server Æthereaverse. The skyline outside shimmered with architecture too confident to follow physics. 

The meeting on the 36th floor appeared to be a formal debate on whether undergarments should be optional in the workplace.

“I’m glad I’m not in that meeting,” a voice said, “Otherwise, I wouldn’t get the same view.” 

The voice laughed, but no one joined in. Brian recognized the voice in horror. 

It was Brad Rogbin, Senior Junior Sales Executive of Trite Essentials. 

“Hey, it’s Brian!” Brad recognized. “Brad Rogbin, Senior Architect of Throbbing Dicks: A Nasdaq Odyssey." 

“Well introduce everyone in due time, but we have an urgent project here,” Chloë interrupted. “As you all know, Brian is the Master Architect of Somnesthia, however… he’s very new and still is getting used to our company dynamics. He’s doing some basic dream sequences to get accustomed to it. But we’ve all been there. Some of us have trouble in the beginning of allowing your subconscious to flourish when you know it’s being managed and reviewed.” 

“Not me!” said Brad. He signaled his neighbor to high-five, it was not reciprocated. 

“Yes… yes, thank you, Brad.” Chloë eyerolled in her tone, but it was corporate policy to address all team members by their preferred pronouns, names, and designation, if the team member so wished.

“...Rogbin, Senior Architect of…” she sighed.

“Throbbing Dicks: A Nasdaq Odyssey.”

“I got promoted right after my first dream sequence. I’ve only been here two hours!” Brad exclaimed.

“Yes, you are very good at… what you like to dream about.” assured Chloë

“It’s also selling like hot throbbing dicks at a stock market exchange bath house.” 

“Okay, enough!” Chloë authoritatively flexed. “This meeting is to help Brian.” 

Perhaps I could be of assistance. 

Everyone turned. Silently and obediently toward the masthead looming at the head of the table.

There, at the helm, was no chair. No person. Only a glass window gazing to the infinite void. 

“Perfect, thank you, sir.” answered Chloë, “Indulge us with your experienced wisdom. And may I add, we are grateful for you to attend this somewhat trivial meeting. For those of you don’t know, this is our Chief Dream Officer, Greg.” 

Nothing is trivial at Antidrome. 

Particularly not when it comes to the development of one of our potential future stars. 

“You are wise, sir.” Chloë offered with obsequious reverence.

Brian was unsure if this mysterious, unnamed deity was communicating verbally, telepathically, through omnipresent user interface overlays, or some convergence of the three. Oddly enough, everyone seemed to know the direction it emerged from, but only in terms of the x and y axes. There was no way to locate it along the z-axis. It was toward the window… or perhaps outside of it.

Brian, oh pioneer, 

The great one, if the prophecy remains true,

The Dreamer of Dreamscapes

The Architect Of Somnesthia 

The Future Third Quarter Employee Award Recipient. 

Tap into the Synergy of…

YOURSELF.

The words echoed and repeated into a hypnotic mantra shaking the glass walls, the glass tables, the glass chairs, until all of it shattered into liquid fragments assimilating into a blue electric sea.

The meeting members dematerialized, and Brian floated buoyantly in an oceanic canvas, reflecting and refracting the deep black universe above and below.

      Then, an island rose from the depths, on it an ancient brittle tree without leaves, yet it bore small fruit glowing against the darkness. Brian swam to it, picked a fruit and ate it. He then forgot the color purple. He picked another, ate it, and it erased the word “idea” from his memory. 

Now I admit Brian’s dreams would kick into overstressing annoyances often, and I am mostly responsible for this. I get bored, and Brian is lazy. Whenever I felt he was sleeping too soundly or too much, I would make his dreams extremely vivid. This is most likely the reason he was so widely perceived as a genius in his new field, due to me. I can make these phantasms of experience so fast and so simultaneous he was not able to make heads or tails of them. He would find himself restrained into a middle seat of an empty theater with a dozen projects playing a reel each to themselves. The resulting compound was an apophonetic mutant of perversity, slithering and drooling and gallivanting through Brian's deepest thoughts. 

This time on an isle wasteland of memories buried half-deep into the sand, and through this growing tree gathered them as resources to produce its alluring harvest. 

Each piece he pulled, and each he consumed, burst a memory into a cloud of black palmetto bugs who dug themselves into outer layers of orangey flesh which separated his brain from his hairline, flying away into the air. His childhood tricycle, his college guitar, even ex-girlfriends, vanished from Brian’s ability to recall them. 

Skrsh skrsh skrsh skrsh. 

“¡Chavaste la alfombra!” cried a woman on her knees, scrubbing the ground which bled from the burrowing roaches of Brian’s memories. Her voice was Brian’s mothers, but she wasn’t Brian’s mother.

Then, something drilled into the top of his head, grinding and burrowing, spinning deep into the hemispheres of me, slurping out Brian’s thoughts and emotions and memories. I found it… somewhat pleasant, while Brian realized this snarling, rotting, mutant tree behind him had buried its branch into his skull. Brian turned and looked at it in what he assumed was one of its eyes. Face to amorphous wooden face. And Brian realized then this wasn’t a nightmare; it was just fucking annoying. The mutant tree evaluated the waste of time it had spent, since it had recently plucked Brian’s fear of it. 

      “Then a tall man in a suit, with no face and a large hat walked up to me and said, ‘You’re going to die next week.” 

Dr. Spinman stroked his beard, of which the roots extended into his brain, and like a pull-cord motor the wooly twine wrapped around the recoil crankshaft of his opinion generator, allowing each gentle tug to assist him… in generating opinions.  

“Brian, don’t you see the apparent themes in your nightmares?”

Brian thought for a moment.

“I’m in all of them?”

“No, all of your dreams are telling you what you’re afraid of, obviously. You’re afraid of death, you’re afraid of losing your memory, you’re afraid of losing your loved ones, you’re afraid of losing your mind.”

“So, you’re saying I need to stop worrying so much over things I can’t control and I shouldn’t fear the inevitable?”

“Oh Jesus, no. You need to be terrified. You are losing your mind, we all are, you are becoming more forgetful, and one day – maybe even today – you’re going to die and no one will ever remember you existed.”

“Oh my god!” Brian jolted from the shock of truth. 

“Indeed! Every person you’ve ever known or loved is already dead, but they’re walking around totally unaware of their fate. We are all on a timed clock winding down fast, and you have to get out there and quickly solidify your legacy so in some small insignificant way you can one day die with the delusion you won’t be forgotten… at least immediately, anyway.

“Take me, for example,” Dr. Spinman added. “Every day I’m trying to make a difference; I’m trying to make my mark on the world.”

“With psychology,” Brian confidently finished. 

“What? No. I’m a DJ.” 

“The fuck?” Brian looked around, started. “I thought this was your office.” 

“Well, it is kind of like my office,” Jacob said, placing one side of a headphone to his ear. “But yeah, this is a night club.” 

Jacob pressed the H key on his laptop three times. The H key was for the air horn. 

“Alright guys and gals, hope you’re all having a good time, remember to tip your bartenders and enjoy this next song from Mad Donna. I’m still your host, Doctor Spin-Man”

Brian stood onstage under flashing lights. Behind him, an enormous neon sign read “Snapdragon,” though it was doubtful the bar was named after the plant. A literal dragon hovered above the text, flanked by Thai lettering presumably depicting, “Snapdragon,” but in fact translated to Shit Lickers.

Coincidentally, this was also the unfortunate name of a club in Thailand which had once tried to appeal to English tourists for a much more disgusting reason.

People danced desperately to match the beat of the horribly repetitive music and escape the tight vinyl costumes they had vacuum-sealed themselves inside. They were a pack of wig-wearing swine in shoes, squealing and grunting incoherently at each other.

♫

‘Cause we’re living in an Æthereal world,

and I am an Ætherical girl, you know we...

Their chatter was indiscernible to Brian, and he couldn’t tell if they were enjoying themselves or it was a ruse of pain and suffering they had forced themselves to endure. Tears streamed from their eyes, and the muscles in their faces were red from strain and intense anguish. They kept pouring alcohol toward their foaming mouths, but because their jaws were locked shut, the liquid poured down their cheeks. They fondled and molested each other in a contemptuous, torturous orgy of misery they appeared to enjoy.

♫

…are living in an Æthereal world,

And I am an Ætherical girl.

“This is madness!” Brian’s arms trembled and a cold shiver crept up his back. This place was a den of degradation and despair. 

“It’s gonna get even better in a second, when I drop this beat.”

The bass swooned into a subsonic groan then slammed upward into a chaotic thumping rattling the floor. The ‘music’ had transformed into an industrial-sized machine pounding Brian’s head with steel paddles on a cogwheel, and winding twelve-inch drill bits into his temples. The crowd seemed to react to it as well, because they began thrashing and biting at each other. Most had gnashed their teeth to the gums already, so instead they slid and gnawed their exposed cavity nerves up one another’s arms and legs. 

♫

Hey, I just met you, they call me crazy,

‘cuz I hear voices and punch old ladies.

A bride-to-be smashed a pint glass on the bar, using the shards to disembowel herself. As she handed her intestines to her maid of honor and friends, they danced in victory and simulated fellatio with the long, bloody entrails. 

♫

Hey, I just met you,
and I’m fuck-ing cray-zee,
Fluoride is poison and it gave me rabies

A leather-vested, lanky figure of a male unhinged his jaw like a snake and pushed his fist into his mouth through the saliva, choking up from his nose. He swallowed and gagged and vomited bile as his arm sank to the crease of his elbow. Upon getting stuck, he hammered his bicep down deep into his gullet.

♫

Hey, I just met you, and meth is crazy

Please get this lizard out of my baby.

“What the fuck is happening?” Brian screamed.

The chaos wound down to a slow-motion drag, the music quieted and the lights dimmed except for a spotlight revealing Nina in the center of the crowd. 

He recognized her immediately. She danced melodically within a bubble repelling the anarchy surrounding her. An invisible cloud lifted Brian off the stage toward her, and he floated past the slithering, dripping, filth which had settled in the air from the pigs in the crowd. 

A tap on the shoulder seemed too familiar, even though his impulse begged him to grab her waste, spin her and plant a deep kiss onto her soft lips to entice her attention. This would most likely be a mistake, he assumed, since he wasn’t exactly sure she even knew who he was. Saying, ‘hello’ might be a good start, but if she didn’t recognize him it would be an awkward Monday. 

“Mundee,” he mocked.

He had no clue how to approach her. When people weren't in the designated spaces within which Brian was comfortable, an awkwardness arose which shadowed his ability to connect, as well as speak like a human, or know what to do with his arms, or how much time he should make eye-contact. This caused many past interactions to be regrettable, but worse was when the other person in question would recognize him and walk toward him, selfishly choosing to limit the time he had to properly evaluate exactly how he should approach and what he should say, ultimately concluding he should not attempt it at all and rather go home.     

“Hi, Brian!” Nina smiled with wide eyes. “How are you?”

“Hi Nina! We work together, and now we’re here together too… cool!” 

She smirked, “Yeah... I don't just exist at T.E., you know? I sometimes get out of the prison and go to other places, like here.” 

“So, you like music and you work at the place I work? Wow!” 

She smirked again, more, as if she understood the joke Brian actually wasn't intending.

“Of course, I love music!”

“I agree.” 

“...but the music is really bad here.”

“I agree.” 

“...not as bad as at work though.”

“I agree. Wow, we agree on so many things.”

“If you could have one songwriter create the soundtrack of your life, who would it be?” 

Brian thought about this and wanted to give an answer which would impress her on how cultured he was, a name not instantly recognizable, obscure, yet sophisticated, a name which was not a typical cliché, a name he remembered through a mnemonic for such an occasion. 

“Astor Pizzarolli.” 

Nina chuckled, “Don’t you mean Piazzolla?”

“Uh, yeah. Exactly what I said.” 

Shit, that sounded confrontational, he thought. 

“You like accordion music?” 

Brian didn’t realize Astor Piazzolla was an accordion player. In fact, he had never heard his music before. He had seen his name on a list of composers somewhere, but it was too late now to back track. 

“Yeah… I love it.” 

“I want to talk to you. Buy me a drink.” 

She grabbed his hand and dragged him to the bar. She signaled the bartender and immediately a glass of brown liquid on ice was placed in front of her, money was taken from Brian’s hand. 

“And can I have a – “ 

The bartenders dispersed before he could order.

“Listen,” she placed a motherly hand on his chest, “I know it seems like a tough start this week, but Rich does it to everyone new.”

“The box thing?” 

“The box, and other things, yeah,” She contemplated. “Actually, it’s not just new people, it’s everyone, all the time.”

“Oh, well that’s a relief.” Brian said, sarcastically. He tried to order again by putting his finger in the air and slightly tilting his head back while making eye contact with a rather busy-looking bartender.  No success. Even by holding a large wad of money out in the open, no one seemed to notice him, except for the rather large girl who sat next to him who stared at him as if he was an alien visitor to her planet. She chewed a cheeseburger from a martini glass with the blank enthusiasm of a sedated cow.

Nina downed her drink, placed the glass on the bar. Before she finished wiping her mouth with her sleeve, her glass was filled. Money was snatched from Brian’s hand again.

“He’s an asshole, and there’s no way to avoid him. He picks on all of us. And he does it in a way just shy of the line where you could sue him.” 

“So, this little talk isn’t really helpful at all.” He joked. 

“Ha. No. No. No. Working at T.E. pretty much cements yourself into misery. It’s why I come here, it’s a distraction.” As she said this, a brutal fight broke out behind her, spraying blood and broken glass from anguished screams, everyone seemed to ignore it as commonplace. 

“Yeah, this place definitely can get your mind off things.” Brian said as one man choked another and burned his face with a cigarette. He turned to attempt to order a drink again and made contact with the girl next to him. She was rubbing ground beef and grease on her chest and neck in a sexual manner. She opened her mouth, spilling food like goo bubbling from her words.

“MEAT DAQUIRIS.” 

Brian turned back to Nina.

“I can tell you’re freaking out in your head about the prospect of having to work for Rich for the rest of your life, but don’t worry; he usually fires people in the first month.”

Nina's friends grabbed at her, pulling her from her stool. 

“Nina, we gotta go to the next bar!” one yelled.

“WOOOOOO” one screamed.

As they dragged her away, Nina turned to Brian. “Sorry I gotta go. Talk to you on Monday. It was good seeing you.” 

The abruptness of her departure caused Brian to attempt to retrieve a quick response, at first he thought to repeat “it was good seeing you” back to her, with an emphasis on you, but he worried it might sound too eager.

He quickly changed his mind to simply say “nice seeing you too” or wait, he thought, should I give her something proper like, “you as well” or “it was nice to see you as well?” What about “the pleasure was all mine?” Oh shit, this is taking too long, just open your mouth. 

“Swell it'd be nice too, see you nood.”

Oh… my… fucking… god. 

Nina reacted with a double take while exiting. It was rather an odd response, of which possessed such an embarrassing awkwardness, it gained the supernatural ability to transcend the booming noise inside the bar. Its otherworldly power was only matched by the following downpour of self-hatred which gushed over him. Every other person noticed as well, halting their debauchery to point and laugh at him in an effort seemingly to have been organized previously. He had had enough and was ready to leave, but he was cornered by fingers and cackles, lacking any space to squeeze through for an escape. He climbed on the bar and leapt on top of the crowd, in an attempt to surf toward the door, despite how many people fish-hooked their appendages and forked tongues into all of his orifices. He crawled and kicked and rolled his way through this hoard of deviant swine, only to find the exit was locked.

The music stopped and the lights went out. He froze at the door as a spotlight hit him. There was sudden applause. 

The club-goers, now his coworkers, were being wiped clean of blood, semen, and whatever other debaucherous juices had soaked them. They now clapped politely in their business casuals. The walls and bar were pulled away by stage hands. 

“Wonderful, Brian!” Chloë cheered. “Absolutely astounding. I think you’re ready to start world building.”