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Grapefruit Boulevard Chapter 1.3
"...Ah, man! Guess I //did// wind up at the wrong house. Sorry for tha hassle, dawg."
"It's fine," Bern assured Renzo. "But, if you don't mind me asking, why are you looking for Brenton?"
"Well it says on this little guide thang he's smart, strong, intelligent, charismatic, dexteritous, good with romantic affairs..."
"Ah... Did you get that brochure from Brenton himself?"
"Nah, I bought it from some rat dude named Brent-- Man, what!"
Bern laughed heartily. Heartily indeed. Actually, why does someone laugh //heart//ily? I sure don't use my heart to laugh. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to laugh larynxily? This goes double for someone like Bern with all that cholesterol and such.
Renzo was less amused at his circumstances. "That dirty little... Oh, he jus' //beggin'// for somethin' now."
"...Whew. That was a little rude of me; sorry," said Bern. "I just haven't had a bellow like that in a while." //Note: Bern seems to be dropping out of character around here//
The only response Bern got was an unamused stare. "...Movin' on... Why're you all calm and stuff? Ain'tchu seen what's goin' down out here?"
"No, I guess I haven't. I thought I saw something odd happening indoors a few minutes ago, but my automatic defensive denial mechanism set in and I really just wanted to get back to planning out my food poker idea."
"Food pokah? Tha's jus' plain crazy, man, and you ain't got much leisure time to plan it out now. 'Specially since-- Aw, just come out here. Take a look." Renzo turned around and stepped down from the steps of House 41, onto the sidewalk. It was somewhat dark outside, but not pitch black due to a combination of defiant artificial lights and sheer naritivistic determination. Bern moved onto the pavement and glanced towards the sky, or where the sky would be if it were still there. Instead, he saw a whole bunch of stars up there.
...What? That still counts as the sky? Preposterous. Ask a little kid what color the sky is. It will say it's blue. Of course this isn't true in all cases-- cloudy days, sunsets, and sunrises are all exceptions to this rule, but you can't expect a little kid to know about those. Regardless, it's still mostly true: if it's not blue, doesn't have clouds, and doesn't have the Sun visible at the proper distance, it's not the sky.
"Wow," mentioned Bern. "The sky's never looked so vivid before. Normally the city lights block out the stars, but tonight... It almost makes me want to pull a recliner out and just stare at it."
Renzo crossed his arms and looked Bern over. "You need to get you' priorities straight. For one thing, it ain't even supposed to be night yet-- it's about 4:30. Second, don't look up, brotha-- look on down the street."
Just as Renzo suggested, Bern gazed towards the living end of the road-- by that I mean the end that wasn't the dead end. He still saw the distant fields of stars. At ground level. Where the rest of the city was supposed to be. "Hm. That's odd." He walked over to the edge of the street (for there //was// a distinct, definite edge now) and looked down. There was nothing. The ground below the pavement was gone. It was lonely, empty, space.
To Bern, at least. By contrast, Renzo saw a bunch of rock formations in the distance, as if the whole street were floating in a hollowed out section of the Earth's crust. This can be attributed to differences in perception-- For the bits of reality for which there is no distinct definition, the mind perceives whatever it prefers.
"...Wow," said Bern. Yeah, "wow"'s really appropriate. I'd probably say it myself, in fact. "Just... wow," I might say. "I can't believe this whole street thing we're living on appears to be slightly over the H in the middle of nowhere."
"Ain't the middle of nowhere between the W and the E?" asked Renzo in response to Bern's statement which I plagiarized, "Nowhere don't even have an H, does it?"
"What?" asked Bern. "Who said anything about nowhere? Is my stomach imitating my voice again?"
"You said it. I mean, I think you did. Come to think of it I guess it //did// kinda sound like someone else--"
Excuse me. Can we just get back to the story?
"...A'ight," said Renzo.
"Hm..." Bern placed a hand on his chin and pondered briefly. "If there's no land underneath us, why is there still gravity? I'm not complaining about it (even if it's affecting me more than it's affecting you) but it still demands an explanation."
The man in the bandanna shrugged. "Can you even think of livin' without it? Tha's probably why we still got it. 'Course, I still ain't got a clue what's goin' on..."
"Well..." Bern cleared his throat calmly. "If //I// were to just take a random stab at the problem... I'd say that some external metaphysical agent is manipulating the contiguous space-time variables of this logical geographic sector, causing it to be isolated for an unknown period from the normal universe and the functions by which it is run." Bern caught back up with his breath. "But that's just a guess."
Renzo took a short, yet mandatory, awe break during which the television producers ran some paid advertisements for car insurance, fast food, and allergy medication. "Man, you keep yo' brains in yo' belly or somethin'? Sure seems to be the only thang big enough for 'em."
"Oh, it's nothing. I've taken a few quantum mechanics classes before. It's just a hobby."
"So... whassall that stuff mean?"
"What I just said?"
"Yeah. That."
"I have no idea whatsoever." A pause. "But if I were to just take a random stab at it, it basically means we and everyone-slash-everything else on the street are stuck in a transdimensional non-reality bubble... thing."
"Ah. That sucks... I think."
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