Hello! It’s been a while. I’m trying to work up to some more posts again, starting with this! This is the opening chapter to a hypothetical novel about two men who share the same name but wildly different lives. The first chapter sets up their lives a little bit but also describes a history of where they live. I hope you’ll enjoy:
This story tracks the not entirely accidental meeting of two unhealthy self-obsessed men, connected only by the same name and a mutual existence on an unhealthy self-obsessed planet.
The first Jon Bingle was a 27 year old substitute teacher living in his city’s self-proclaim most interesting city. He believed he was a man of enormous potential. A frustrated talent that was forever stifled by an unfeeling world. He was wrong. His meeting with the other Jon Bingle would solidify his place as one of history’s most insignificant men.
The other Jon Bingle was a 24 year old man who had already realized his meager potential to its fullest extent and then some. He made all of his notoriety online under the name BlivLord Streams and was in the process of broadcasting his death to millions of entertained subscribers.
…
A little window dressing to start. Both Bingles lived in New York City which was alternately called just ‘New York’ (which upset the people living in New York State), the ‘Big Apple’ (which annoyed people against silly nicknames), or ‘The Greatest City in the World’ (which bothered everyone else). There were hundreds of thousands of movies and songs and books written about the Bingles’ city, the most recognizable of which was a christmas film about a moron who had gotten on the wrong plane to the city and set about duping its inhabitants into letting him stay in fancy hotels and eat in expensive restaurants. In the end, he attempted a double homicide on two city vagrants in an abandoned building. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York made $360 million dollars at the box office.
Other movies and songs and books about the city also had a large market pull and whenever they made a big disaster movie about a big alien going on a big rampage over big buildings and cars they made sure to always set it in New York because the buildings were so big and the cars… Well there was such a big number of them.
Famous and attractive people from all over made a big deal over how much they loved the city and what a big deal it had been for them to go there. Regular people too, were proud to be from a city so great even if it seemed that for virtually the entire history of the city its greatness hadn’t rubbed off on them but had in fact built on top of and over them.
The city’s first great act had been to cheat its original people out of living there for $24 and glass beads. Teachers took great excitement in shocking their classes with that transaction because everyone today knew how great the city was and what little you could do with $24 and glass beads.
Everyone knew what a raw deal it was and the Dutch people who had done the cheating decided pretty quickly to build a wall along one of the city streets to keep the people who had been swindled from getting back in.
New ‘Amsterdam’, as the Dutch people called it, kept growing past the wall and pretty soon they didn’t need the wall street to keep people out. Instead, they turned it into a hangout spot where Dutch businessmen could buy-and-sell things with British businessmen who were hoping to outswindle the swindling Dutch into getting the city for themselves. One of the things they loved to buy-and-sell were human beings.
They sold them back and forth and brought new ones to keep it all going. Then they would buy-and-sell all of the stuff that the human being’s they’d brought over were forced to make. And for a helluva lot more than $24 and glass beads, too.
The scheme was so popular that after the British had been out-out-swindled by a group of people calling themselves ‘Americans’, the new Americans decided to keep the whole thing going. They invented all sorts of reasons to say it was ok for all the buying-and-selling to keep going. That, because the people didn’t believe in the same religion as them, they weren’t the same people. Once the enslaved human beings started to believe in the same religion as the buying-and-selling human beings they said it was because they looked different. The Dutch and British people had been white and most of the people they forced over were black.
After a while, a few people who were tired of seeing human beings forced to make things, and the human beings, who had always been fed up, kicked up a fuss. They fought a big war over it with buying-and-selling people killing each other on both sides.
In the end, they reached a compromise. They ended all the forcing-and-killing so the buying-and-selling could keep going on. Just with no human beings. The white people could keep on calling themselves ‘Americans’ on their papers while other people would have to call themselves things like African-Americans, after places many of them had never been to and would never go.
When Jon Bingle and Jon Bingle met each other their country was 250 years old and this rule was still in effect. Their country had done so much buying-and-selling that it was hands down the richest and most impressive nation that had ever been. The city both Bingles called home had become the buying-selling capital of the world. It had the most movies and companies and sneakers and cereal and sneaker cereal collaborations by far, with more made everyday.
Since the big war, people in the Bingle City of New York had gone on buying-and-selling like maniacs with only a couple recessions and depressions to set them back. No one had killed each other at that scale with the borders of the country for quite some time until, when both Bingles were very young, a group of pretty sick individuals decided to blow up New York City’s biggest buying-and-selling buildings.
These people did not believe in the same religion as the Dutch and British had. They were not white. You can find all this on the internet like I have, but I like to think I’ve saved you some time.
…
The Internet had come into being just before Jon Bingle and the Bingle known as BlivLord Streams had themselves and they had grown up entirely in its aura. The Internet was primarily a place where people put pictures of themselves at the beach but it was also used for a great deal buying-and-selling as well as screaming-shouting-learning-watching-gaming and masturbating. The best thing you could be on the internet was talked about.
…
Everybody in the United States was supposed to be on The Internet. If there was something you enjoyed doing or succeeded at there was no excuse to not be doing it on The Internet (and buying-selling with it). Especially young people. The Internet was bulging with the presence of young artists and chefs and singers and models hoping to get other young people to look at them and tell their friends to look too. Those people who got looked at became famous and important. Even people who hadn’t seen what they did would treat them nicely once they were told that other people found them important enough to watch. These other people were not famous.
The Jon Bingle known as BlivLord Streams was extremely famous and important when he met the regular Jon Bingle. So famous in fact that people who talked about the substitute teacher Jon Bingle had to always add little caveats like, “No, no, not that Jon Bingle” or “Yeah, like BlivLord Streams, the famous guy.”
The Bliv in BlivLord streams stood for Bingle Live Instant Videos. The ‘Lord’ part was a title from the earliest days of buying-and-selling. Streams was because people watched BlivLord on the internet in long unbroken videos updated to the very second to see the famous Bingle BlivLord doing everything under the sun.
BlivLord Streams had been live streaming his life for 184,193 hours, 43 minutes, and 12 seconds non-stop, 24/7 (which means non-stop), and continuously. For both this feat and the things he did for all to see, he was wonderfully, enviably, and laudably, ‘watched.’
The other Jon Bingle, an internet persona non grata, was slowly being driven insane by this fact.
Most of the regular Jon Bingle’s suffering was no doubt a result of the buying-selling-watching society he had grown up in. But plenty of people were made miserable by this and they didn’t go crazy. Misery needs a strong combination of coincidence and callousness to turn lethal. BlivLord Streams’ existence provided this in spades.
Hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think and if you’d ever read any more. Hopefully I post Part 2 sometime soon…