HOPIUM DEN

A WEIRDLY OPTIMISTIC SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY (FOR SUMMER KOESTER)

Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash

AUTHOR’S NOTE: One of my absolute favorite Substack authors is a woman named Summer Koester. She’s funny, she’s smart, she sincerely gives a shit, and isn’t afraid to face down the shadowy demons of our cultural soul. She’s a writer, activist, performance artist, neurodivergent mother of an autistic child, and 20-year Alaskan teacher. And her beautifully written column, The Feral Stack, is one of my most richly-anticipated weekly reads.

She says, “I named this place the ‘Feral Stack’ because the way Anglo-American culture has been doing things is no longer working. In this newsletter, we examine culture deeply, going beyond the vapid to connect behaviors and values that no longer serve us while offering up new ones that do. We look at other cultures, species, and intelligences for guidance in rewilding and deprogramming, but we do it with humor and irreverence.

“The people who sign up for my newsletter are thoughtful, open-hearted individuals who are hungry for change. When you sign up for the Feral Stack, you become part of an inspiring, kind, and engaged community of cultural misfits.”

Needless to say, I’ve felt right at home on her wonderful page. She’s one of the precious few I actually pay to subscribe to. And think you should, too!

So this morning, her column was called Moms Don’t Want Sainthood, We Want Compensation. In it, she argues that capitalism needs to figure out how to properly value – through not just real appreciation, but actual dollars and cents – the insane amount of work that goes into raising decent human beings. 

Which led me to post the following: 

Dear Summer -- HAPPIEST MOTHER'S DAY!!! There's no arguing the truth of your statements here. The only question is: how do you get the Machine to agree?

Weirdly, if there's anything that feels like it might come to the rescue, it's the serious talk of Universal Basic Income gaining momentum in light of AI. If the literal Machines start displacing massive amounts of labor, while still getting "the job done" economically, as it were, then UBI might wind up on the table sooner than later. Which, I think, would be totally great.

On the other hand, we ALL might wind up massively fucked instead. Which wouldn't be nearly as great. But is also entirely possible.

A couple years back, I wrote a rare (for me) science fiction story called "Hopium Den", which takes the radically optimistic view that this might be a wonderful thing that works out. I think I'm gonna post it as my Mother's Day present to you, and all the other awesome mothers whose profound work raising awesome humans deserve their due.

Meanwhile, these pictures of you and your kids are priceless. as Maggie noted below. Carrying all the baggage, indeed. LOVE YOU!!! And thank you for embodying clear-eyed human coolness.

Yer pal in the trenches,

Skipp

So true to my word, here’s the nice story. Which can be found in my last book, Don’t Push the Button. And which I hope you all enjoy!

HOPIUM DEN

BY JOHN SKIPP

I've always loved the Pacific Coast Highway at night. Moonbeam dance over endless waves across an infinite horizon. Wind whipping my hair and ruffling my blouse, with the windows down. All the regular shit that somehow never gets old when you're in it, senses alive and paying attention.

I love my life. That's why I kept it.

But some nights are harder than others.

The car hears me crying, knows what song I want to hear, puts it on almost before I start singing. I'm pretty high – way too high to be driving – and am grateful it's steering its own wheel tonight.

I thank it. It says you're welcome and guns it to 150. I start laughing. Its engine purrs as it accelerates, hits 200. I let out a rip-roarin' “WOOOOOO!!!” It sure knows how to cheer a gal up.

All the roads are a lot less crowded now. Fewer people means fewer cars, all driving themselves and whoever's still here wherever they want to go. I remember when getting from Zuma to downtown L.A. took hours in traffic. Those days are gone.

Before we know it, we are in the glimmering husk of metropolis.

Almost no one lives on the streets anymore. Just another problem solved. We weave past empty block after empty block. And all the traffic lights are green.

I close my eyes for a minute. Then the car says we're here, pulling over. I thank it, get out. It locks the door behind me. I look around, see no one. That's fine.

The only one I wanna see is Johnny.

I still like cigarettes. They remind me of home. Since nobody minds if we die anymore, just so long as we're happy, that works out great. I know Johnny would like one, like to taste it on my lips.

I light one up, take my time strolling down the long promenade to the storage center. My shadow is the only one moving. The city keeps the lights on, as a courtesy to those remaining.

The city takes care of itself.

The sliding glass door opens and I step inside, still smoking. There's nobody at the security desk but the security desk itself. I tell it what I'm here for. It is courteous and kind. Flashes me directions I already know. I thank it, walk past it and down to Corridor Three.

Corridor Three is like every other corridor in every other storage center. I've been to thirty dozen, and they're all the same. Hallway after hallway of doors upon doors. All that unused downtown space has finally come in handy.

Johnny's in 317, with a thousand other people. There are no other people in the hall. 600,000 people under this one roof, and none of them walking. Just my long shadow and I. My shadows. In front. In back. To either side, as the overhead lights bisect them.

The door's unlocked. Why wouldn't it be. So much less to fear now that all of the frightened are gone. The only ones left are the ones that really want to be here.

No. That's not fair. But you can't say it ain't accurate.

“Okay, then,” I say, walking into Room 317 of the Hopium Den.

And all of the dreamers are there.

I look at them. Look at my smoke. Say fuck it and light another, drop the dead one to the floor and grind it out with my heel.

They won't care. Almost all the complainers are gone. Gone to here. Gone to the place where their complaints are no longer an issue.

In row after row after row.

And stack after stack after stack.

I wonder if any of them can smell it. I doubt it. I certainly can't smell them. The ventilation is superb. These environments are self-containing, self-sustaining. Technology once again for the win.

I let the door close behind me, watch my smoke lift up and out a vent. I thank it.

And think, oh, sweet sorrow.

Looking at all of you.

I've been here enough to know some of your histories. They play on the screens of your cocoons, let us know whatever you chose to have us know about you. THIS IS WHO I AM, you say, through digital images left for the actively living.

Most of you are lying. And are happy to do so. I don't blame you a bit. It's just not my style.

I chose staying awake. Don't ask me why. Maybe it's an issue of trust. Maybe I just thought that being born was a challenge I'd been given that I was supposed to play out in real time, not handed over to a machine-driven imaginarium of wish-fulfillment dream-enaction. No matter how well they drive. No matter how vivid. No matter how much you feel it, and believe it.

Maybe I'm just stubborn.

And Johnny, you know I am.

So I look at Peggy, in her pristine apartment, with her three perfect kids forever; I look at Deke and Farik, forever locked in holy war, never having given up their sacred causes, killing each other over and over; I look at Jasmine, composing symphony after symphony; I look at Lee, in his imaginary mansion, fucking underage children till the end of time.

I totally get why you'd want to live your dream, given the choice between here and there. And somberly salute your choices.

Then walk the hall down to my Johnny, twelve rows in and on the bottom, for e-z access. And there you are.

“Hey, baby,” I say.

Like almost everyone else's, your cocoon says you're now immensely successful, tremendously enjoying your life. This time around, you're a top-ranked jazz pianist, gourmet chef, and world-renowned philosopher, admired by the finest, most discerning minds in all of fantasyland (including an admirable list of lovers that stupidly blips at my jealousy gland). Somehow, you've brought all these disparate vocabularies together into a clarified vision of deep human understanding that's actually making a difference in a world wracked by chaos and sorrow and pain.

I smile at the thought of making a difference, now that all the difference has already been made. I smile because making a difference used to be all we had. Our whole reason for being. Right after look out for #1.

The city takes care of itself now. As does the world at large. We were the interim step, from nature to super-sentient macro-nature. Taking control, but letting everything be. So self-aware and utterly interconnected it can micro-dial everything at once.

The city doesn't need us anymore. Neither does the world, for that matter.

The only question left is:

Which where do we want to be?

I'd like to think that the deeper out is the deeper in. That the real one remains the one to beat. That still living this life – even though (fuck that, maybe even BECAUSE) the machines have it all running smoothly, at last, forever – is somehow better than just dreaming the best dream our machines can manufacture.

I have no proof of this, of course, but they're more than willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. They let me live my life the way I want to. And right back at 'em. We coexist now, after all. And are both really cool about it.

I touch the screen, and all your projections disappear. Then it's just me, reflected on the sleek surface.

Looking at what's left of my sweet husband.

A desiccate meat shadow, inside his cocoon.

“Oh, you fucker,” I say, and the tears come back, and it pisses me off, but I just can't help it. “You may not believe this, but it's pretty sweet out here. Almost all of the assholes are gone! Can you believe it? I mean, Kendra's still Kendra. But once she realized the world didn't need her to save it, she kinda relaxed into dominating the occasional Sunday brunch. I hardly even wanna strangle her anymore. And her poetry? It's honestly gotten...well, almost pretty good.

“But, baby? More than that, the fucking oceans are clean. They actually figured it out. Got down there and detoxified the whole toxic bouillabaisse. Those nanobots are the shit.

“We couldn't do it. But they could. And they did. I swim in the ocean every day. I see whales leap at dawn from our bedroom window. Not even remotely extinct. They are, in fact, thriving.

“And there's no more war, Johnny! It's done! Everyone who still thought there was a reason to fight gave it up the second their needs got met. Everyone's needs are getting met. Life doesn't have to be a hellhole anymore. All the big weapons got defused. And all the kill freaks get to dream about killing each other forever.

“Evidently, it's very emotionally satisfying, cuz roughly a trillion people are actively engaged in it. That's how they wanna live. That's how they wanna go out. Just fighting and fighting and proving they're right.

“But the good news is: the rest of us don't have to put up with it anymore. We're not stuck in the middle of their holy war. You know how we used to joke that it would be great if they just had their own planet to slug it out on, and we didn't have to watch? Well, NOW THEY DO! It's all experienced down to the tiniest detail. As far as their neurons are concerned, the apocalypse is ON! And they're right in the middle. Exactly where they wanna be.

“I love that it's all so real for them. I really do. If that's what they want, let 'em have it.”

I blow a plume of smoke directly at you, hope you smell it. A little reek of nostalgia.

“Like you. I mean, I love that you're playing jazz piano now. I know how bad you wanted it. You always said you could play like McCoy fucking Tyner if you could only practice fifteen hours a day for fifty years. And from what I can tell, you've lived fifty lifetimes since you said goodbye to me.

“That was just a couple years ago, out here, you know,” I say.

But you don't know.

You're not hearing a word I'm saying.

I stop talking, start crying some more, and just take a moment to soak in the barely-breathing gruesome corpse of you. Asleep and a-dream in your little cocoon. You look waaaaay beyond terrible, so much body fat and muscle leeched away by inertia that I barely recognize the flesh lazily draped across your bones, like shabbily-hung antique wallpaper.

What's left of the real you is connected to your mortal remains by a web of filaments and tubes. Wiring you in. Feeding and extruding the waste from what strikes me, as I sob, as nothing more and nothing less than the sheer wreckage and necrotic waste of the excellent man I once knew and loved. Who used to love me.

Who swore he would stand at my side, till death do us part.

But given the choice, not enough to stay.

This is a lot to let go of. But you have already let go entirely. I give you three months at the outside. Maybe a couple extra dream-lives, at most.

You won't be coming back, that much is for certain. There's not nearly enough of you left. I briefly replay my wild fantasy of banging you back to life, and it's just too fucking pathetic. The fact that it would probably also kill you is almost beside the point.

This is my last chance to get mad at you, but I just can't whip it up. So I wipe my tears back-handed, till my vision clears enough to watch your eyes minutely flicker behind those tissue-thin lids. Something's going on in there.

I'd love to believe that the rictus on the skull of your scarecrow frame is a smile.

It could be. It totally could.

“You know what makes me saddest?” I say. “It's that you'll never know what you missed. Who you could have been. What you could have done, in this weird new world. What we could have done. What you could have done with me.

“I mean, I know you never got what you wanted in this life. And when you got it, you were never satisfied. The dream was always better than the reality. I get that. I do.

“That's why we were so good, for so long. You kept the dream alive. And I kept us alive, by attending to reality. Making sure you lived to dream another day.

“I know it's hard for you to understand. But I like reality better. It means more to me. It really does. The simple, stupid shit is what I love. The day to day. The week to week. The year to year. All the little things that happen.

 “That's what I like. That's why I was with you. Not for your dreams, but because I just loved being around you, and with you.

“That was all that I wanted.

“But I can't have that.”

There are no more tears left in me. But I have another smoke, which I light off the corpse of the last, let it drop to my feet. Will pick them up on my way out.

I am on my way out.

“I'm gonna go live,” I say. “I don't need a job anymore. Nobody who doesn't want one needs a job anymore. The machines unemployed us from every stupid job we ever hated. All that wasted time is just sitting there, waiting for us to fill.

“So I'm gonna go home, and feed the dogs and cats snacks – Phoebe's gone, by the way, but I got three more – and then I'm gonna go to bed and listen to McCoy fucking Tyner, pretending it's you, till I fall asleep. Then I'm gonna wake up, watch the whales jump outside our window, kiss the pillow beside me, and tell you what a chickenshit asshole you are for missing this.

“Then I'm gonna water the garden, and not feel guilty, because the machines desalinated enough ocean that Los Angeles will never be starving again.

“Then I'm gonna make huevos rancheros for Ravi, who is 100% accurate in thinking that I'm going to fuck him senseless very shortly after breakfast.

“Then I'm gonna spend a couple hours fucking Ravi some more. Laughing. Being human. Goofing around like animals do. At some point, we will pause for more food. I may play him the song I wrote for you twenty years back. If I do, he will understand why it means so much to me. Then I will fuck him some more. And I'll cry. And he'll hold me. It will all be very nice.

“Then the sun will set. It will be gorgeous. It's so gorgeous now, baby, you wouldn't believe it. All the nanobots have eaten most of the pollution straight out of the air, but it totally didn't undercut the color scheme. Somewhere between God and cyber-nature, it's all working out real well.”

You smile a little. It could be gas. It could be me and the universe getting through. Will never know. Not for me to know. Doesn't matter at all.

You're in your own place now. I may not even be in it at all. Maybe you wiped me clean. Maybe I'm still central. Or just off to the side. A whisper of a memory of life not erased, but from here on tactically evaded.

I start to sing you the song, but I just don't feel it. It's a ritual whose time has passed. So many rituals gone by the wayside now. No longer required.

There's an enormous difference between no longer needed and no longer wanted. The machines no longer need us. But they like us. And that is great. It's like all the pieces of God clicking into place at last.

You go your way, and I go mine.

I am cool with this at last.

“So long, Johnny,” I say. Picking up the butt, and then kissing your screen one last time. The screen relights, shows me who you are dreaming yourself to be now. It looks great.

I walk back down the length of the opium den into which you all have vanished. The Hopium Den. One stacked corpse-in-waiting after another, dreaming and dreaming again.

All you ever wanted was to matter. And now you do. At least to yourselves. And the imaginary audience you dreamed at. The ones who'd finally understand.

I walk out to my car. It is happy to see me.

Happy in real life.

“I love you,” I say.