The Cube

She runs her hands along the semi-opaque structure that is the Cube. She is only partially aware of what she is doing. You aren't really allowed to touch it. But here, where the Cube's south western corner rests at Williamstown Beach, no one really cares to police the Rules. She knows there are whole suburbs out there. Well, used to be any way. She doesn't really know why they didn't extend it out over towards Hoopers Crossing or up to St Albans, especially when it goes a fair way East. It hugs the coast all the way down to Cheltenham, so surely they could have done the same on the other side. Yes, it isn’t technically a cube. It was in it’s initial plan, but everyone important with beach side homes put up a stink. The walls still go straight up and the roof sits flat, but it’s southern edge fits comfortable against the coast line. Rich people are weird though, because you can’t actually see the ocean through the wall.

Her Gran'Ma always talks about how the West was the wrong people, that all the work that was done in the early 2000s to decolonise was just a cultural capital aesthetic. Virtue signalling by the up-and-coming bourgeois. Her Gran'Pa said it was coz the west vandalised the crap outta all the roadworks that took years and years to build out past the West G8 Bridge. So much graf. There was a bit of graf along this corner of the Cube. Mostly laser etched. Occasionally you would see some holographic, but this was easier to track, so there was less of it.


She had heard stories about when the Cube first went up in 2050. They'd put out a tender for an artist interpretation of the outside world, environmentally themed, in line with the mindfulness neuro-hype of the time. It was projected across the Cube. Gran'Pa said it was some hyper-Ai-impressionist bullshit like all the Post-Neo-Liberal structures that were meant to placate the middle and working class. And like all those "artistic" structures it was lacklustre and only lasted about a decade. Someone had hacked it at first and played praise porn, and then once they managed to stop the hackers it eventually started to just glitch out on it's own (as all Ai does) and it never got fixed and then they turned it off. 

She's aware of where she is but isn't sure why she is there. Daydreaming dissociation is her jam. She loves the comfort she creates when she zones in. Why do they call it zoning out? Like it's actually an internal place that she goes. She is aware enough of her external world for this practice of introspection to be safe, but not so much that it ever really influences the thoughts and feelings she conjures inside her. 

Gran'Ma says it's a coping mechanism, Gran'Pa says she is just wasting her life. The DSM-33-AUKUS says it's a symptom of AuDHD-hereditary-wokeness. She doesn't care what it is, it feels good. Gran'Ma once made a half joke that you could do magick in that internal world, she caught Gran'Pa shoot a look that could kill and Gran'Ma awkwardly laughed, and said "well you know magick isn't real". 

In her internal world it was though. In her daydream state she created worlds of adventure through thick old growth forests, along coastlines full of seals and plovers, flying fish. She wove fine nets of magickal metals that she cast into the sea or air or earth, and drew out of it spells that purified and healed. She enjoyed the spectrum of dissociation. Times when there was almost nothing going on, just the bare minimum sensory input or output required for human safety. At the other end full blown new world creation and story line, all in her mind’s eye. 

It felt almost dangerous to let her imagination float out across the fabric of the Cube, into the world beyond. A thrill she allowed herself on special occasions. These special occasions seemed to be increasing. At first her birthdays, then public holidays. She felt like she could do it on days off. But it was also creeping into the corners of daily dissociation. That felt dangerous. It's never good to wonder too much, that's what her Gran'Pa would share, "nor wander" her Gran'Ma would chime in.

But today she follows that thread of introspection, let's herself feel as though the reality of the mundane world is just a film she is floating through. Her internal world is alive and thriving. Corners of her mouth rise slowly as she thinks of beyond the Cube. Land and air and sea thriving without the corruption of human greed. She senses the cracked ash felt under her feet getting smoother, her perception kicks in and she is rocked back into the here and now. Recognising she has walked closer to main roads and businesses and people. She doesn't want to be perceiving so much here, but she also doesn't want to be perceived. You need to be seen to be ignored. You can't be smiling. You can't be glassy eyed. 

Snapped out of her dream, she sees she has walked a block from the Cubes clean lines, she wants to get back to it. Back to her dissociation. Back to her breath. Back to her heightened awareness softened through the slowing of her neural navigation. Disordered they say. She prefers it to the new age pharmaceutical incense or enhanced neural blockers or just general SSRIs, that have been providing the world with suicide ideation since the late 1900s. 

At a quickened pace she has made it to the Cube's looming body. No one really cares to be this close. Maybe because in some way they don't even notice it, maybe because it scares them. She has heard whispers lighter than a hushed inhalation that people have seen handprints on the external face of the Cube. She starts to think about that now. As she slows her pace. Watches her feet. One step, one inhalation, second step, exhalation, in, out, step, step. 

She found a book at the Old Library Dome, one of the CBD's only aged building. It talked of this pre–Neo New Age practice called Walking Meditation. Apparently, it is an ancient practice, pre ©Breathwork, pre ©Mindfulness, it's even been attributed to the foundation of ©WalkwithGodx. She doesn't care about any of that though. She just wonders whether what she is doing during her daily dissociative walks, is walking meditation. Does she go to these dream states because of a pathology of her mind, her nervous system, her brain? Or do her walks bring about an altered stated? Is she going to this internal space to hide, or to heal, or just to be? Ultimately, she doesn't care about any of that either. They are just thoughts that drift on by, just as the wall of the Cube continues to slide past her peripheral vision. 

She imagines the Outside. She imagines people suffering in the pollution, surviving off the Cube’s waste, disease and poverty. They say there isn't anyone out there, that no one could survive. But she imagines otherwise. She shakes her head, why disease and suffering? What if it was better out there than in here? She once again sees the old growth forests full of birds, fungi spreading through the undergrowth, naturally occurring wind stirring the canopy. 

There are birds in the Cube, some are real, some are drones, some are hybrids. Nothing sci-fi, just pigeons and the like with spy helmets, or sensor boots on their talons. There is wind too, but it's all created through fans and tunnels and hydraulics, nothing she really knows or pays much attention to. 

Outside she feels a sense of life that is larger and more resilient than her existence within the Cube. She feels her breathe deepening, her skin expanding, her mouth stretching into a smile. Smile lines and unabandoned joy that feel both easeful and that make her jaw muscles ache. She continues along her journey. Heading North, she is somewhere near Scienceworks. While there is a sensory irritation of an olfactory nature, wafting up from what should be the Yarra River, her dissociated state filters it out and fills her head with an imagined sense of undergrowth and bracken, crisp wet air, soft moss underfoot, small creatures scuttling away to hide beneath naturally decomposing logs. 

So lost in her reverie, she never felt the hand that reached out and caressed her cheek, snatch her ID and plant a poppy seed like ball under her skin. It could have been the brush of a luscious leaf and the sting of nettle. It could have been an ant’s pincers and the rush of air as a bird took flight. It could have been anything in her internal reality, but not enough to drag her through the veil of delight and into the mundane existence of life in 2093. The skill which with her assailant worked was exceptional. Or her daydreaming had really shifted into a pathology. 

She continued on her journey stopping at the intersection of the West G8 Bridge, and the WestG8 Tunnel. Decisions needed to be made. Did she continued up alongside the wall, venture along the tunnel, or climb the bridge? 

The Tunnel was completed in 2027, years after it was destined to open. It offered an alternative access to the CBD and was a dark and dangerous walk, a useful tool to heighten an internal experience. The bridge was nostalgic, the height offered the trigger of an inner perspective that felt expansive and liberating. To continue along the Western wall of the Cube would take her to Footscray. She liked it there, but she knew people and they would want to talk and ask her about her Gran’Ma and Gran’Pa. 

Leaning against the wall she brings her full senses to the intersection, to her decision, to the vehicles and throng of movement, and SMACK, the impression of a hand hits the Cube, just beside her face. Fuck! Adrenaline surges, heat washes across face and chest, her heart pulses rapidly and without rhythm. She looks around at the people passing by, all appearing to be existing normally, unaware of either the fading handprint, or her white wide eyed terror. 

She tries to grab hold of her thoughts flying through her mind. It is all a rush. Her blood, her heart, her thoughts, her attention flicking rapidly at it all. And then nothing… 

                                                                                                                                                *

She feels movement, pressure against her physical form at her arms and legs, her back aches from an over-extended arch. As she imagines a pig tied upside down to a pole, she realised she is being carried by four darkly clad figures. She attempts to thrash about, but everything is slightly muted. Her strength diminished. She stills and lets her eyes adjust beyond her captors. There are no old growth forests, or blue skies, nor the sound of birds. But she sees the external side of the Cube, once this looming, massive structure, now a dull construction fading against bright sky and hot light. 

Her attention flicks to her face, it is bare. Her breathing natural. The air smells normal, although there is a slight sting in her nostrils, a dryness. She can feel sweat on her brow. And she thirsts for liquid. She moves her attention beyond the four bodies, and takes in the surrounds she is moving through. A mix of concrete structures, some in states of decay with overgrown flora, some standing. Though nothing looks occupied. There are the remnants of vehicles and power poles. They are walking on a road. And if truths were told inside the Cube, she is aware that she is moving Westward, towards the bright sun…