Circulation

	This party seemed strange all from the start. When I came in I
	got introduced to several people in the bar. It hit me that
	although it was Monday there weren't much regulars in the place.
	Wile ordering a beer, I wondered how I was gonna end that 
	evening. As always, there were several possibilities: Getting
	drunk, getting a girl, getting drunk and a girl.
	While still reflecting upon these things, I noticed that some
	of the people must have left the room, to make place for others.
	The new ones looked just like the old ones. 
	I decided to go for another drink from bar. Taking a sip, I
	wandered off, upstairs. Guess what I found there. People. 
	Lotsa people. Different people, different faces in different
	places, different races. For a moment all those faces seemed 
	to melt into one big mosaic of faces, crying, laughing,
	thinking, loving, passing. Passing.
	A harsh movement, getting up, helped ban this bad magik from
	my eyes. Someone handed out red pills. I took one. Didn't ask
	what it was for - or against. Most of them are against
	reality anyway. I stumbled on, towards the stairs, to look 
	where all the people I know had gone. Well, 'know' was kinda
	overrated since I only got introduced some minutes ago, but the
	people here had no intention of talking to me. Strange enough,
	not much had had that desire so far this evening.
	Upstairs. I encountered doors, lots of doors, a lot of them
	locked. Peeking through one of the keyholes, I saw a couple
	doing things I don't want to repeat here, or even remember.
	There were truly strange folks here, tonight.
	Stumbling on, wondering whether I'd get to do some of those
	things myself, tonight. A passing-by joint was another welcome
	distraction from the real world action. 
	A few coughs later, I was back, still trying to find my destiny,
	whatever that should have been.

	Eventually, I came to a door that seemed to invite me. I don't
	know in what way it was different from all the other doors on
	this floor, still it was as if it had 'Come in' written all over
	it, in some magik invisible colour.
	Carefully, I put my hand upon the handle, pressing it down. 
	Opened it, slowly, carefully. I felt a strange kind of energy,
	prickling on my skin, making me goose-pimpled, trying to make me
	enter. It was like a mixture of The Highlander getting his energy
	shake after a win and the USS Enterprise being sucked into that
	fantastic Doomsday machine. 
	But I was not willing to let anything suck me somewhere, well, at 
	least not a stange door like that. So I stood there, feeling proud
	and tall, while everything around me got sucked in. I noticed a 
	couple passing me by, laughing, waving at me, suddenly being 
	dissolved by this Doomsday Door. I felt like the eye of the
	hurricane. Perhaps I was the eye of the hurricane, then.

	Reality unfolded itself, and it was not before that moment that
	I knew what Gibson meant with the metaphor "unfolding like a cheap
	origami trick". I panicked as the blindfold of unidentified 
	amphetamines and Marihuana suddenly vanished, leaving me there
	with the blank situation.
	I didn't like the aspect of being digested by any kind of domestic
	door, not even a Doomsday Door(tm), so I shut it. 
	Just like that. I had expected some kind of fight, a struggle 
	against those alien forces, but shutting the door returned everything
	to normal. I decided not to tempt my fate again.

	Dizzily, I reflected upon this recent experiences. Failing to reach
	valuable results, I stumbled back to the kitchen, grabbin' another 
	beer. The people in the kitchen were different.  Different from the
	people that were here the last time, different from the people that
	were there the first time.

	Without much concern, I left again, wandering, but avoiding the floor
	I knew the Doomsday Door to reside in.
	Suddenly the thinking cut in. If there was a door eating people, 
	why was this place so damn crowded ? The people around looked all
	indefferent to me, so I decided to mark some of them by spilling 
	strawberry margaritha on them. They reacted like you'd expect normal
	people to react, though. I nearly got into a fight with one guy, but
	avoided that by acting drunk.
	Opening another beer, I sat down at basement level, opposite the stairs
	leading up. 
	It took a bit under 23 minutes for all of them to show up. They all
	disappeared upstairs, and never came back.
	I marked another 10 people, and waited again.
	22 minutes later, the last of them began ascending the stairway.

	Following another thought, I sat down in the living room and counted
	the people in there. Thirty-five. Waited 2 minutes. Counted again.
	Thirty-two. Waited two minutes. Thirty-eight. Waited two minutes.
	Thirtty-six. Thirty-four. Thirty-seven.

	Now there, if there's a place absorbing people, and the number of
	people in a room at any given time is nearly constant ... there 
	must be a counterpart to the Doomsday Door. 
	I decided to call it the Genesis Door. 

	I started marking people with strawberry margaritha, again. Thanks
	to the exchange, nobody there remembered me doing so half an hour
	ago.
	Running around, finding the one room where there were no spilled
	people. I was lucky several minutes later.
	I went to the toilet, washed my hands, urinated. A guy came out of
	the cabin. I washed my hands, simulated urinating again. Another guy
	left the cabin. Again, I washed my hands, watching the cabin. Another
	guy got out of it.
	"Excuse me, sir", I addressed him, "how did you get into that cabin, 
	- err - I mean, how did you get in there?" He looked at me as if I
	had been talking about green martians. "Uh, thought the door perhaps?",
	he answered, not sure what I was asking.
	I rushed to the door, trying to pull it open.
	Locked, of course. I waited besides it. A guy got out, pulling it 
	shut behind him. Locked again. I held it open when the next guy
	came out, mumbling "Sorry, urgent!", and rushed in.
	Nothing unusual in there. I locked the door, waited.
	Suddenly a part of the wall became transparent, and a guy walked 
	right through the wall. He started to unzip his trousers, but got 
	scared upon noticing me. "What are you doing in here", he asked in 
	an unsure voice. "Nevermind", I replied, getting out.
	But I followed him secretly on his way from the kathode to the 
	anode. Exactly 30 minutes later, he was gone, to wherever they 
	all go.

	A couple of beers later, I addressed on of them: "Excuse me, but
	what would you say if someone were to tell you that you only got
	30 minutes to live, in total. And that you'd had only some 25
	minutes left?" He smiled, and replied "I'd say that he's nuts.
	30 minutes seems a bit scarce, to enjoy oneself at a party,
	doesn't it?"
	I nodded.

	Switching from beer to irish whiskey, I sat at the bar.

	For once, I was quite content with just being there, some
	hours in a row.


	tom-23-03-96, at a party
	http://www.teicher.net/cyberpunk.html