It was a huge party. I can't remember why I was there. It must have been a group I was a part of was invited and so I went along out of a sense of obligation. I'm not typically one to go to such a big shindig of my own volition. There were these huge auditoriums showing various films and I was there with my boyfriend. The movie sucked, and we were horny and bored so he pulled his dick out and I laid down sideways with his dick in my mouth. We stayed like that, me stimulating his dick with throat contractions and slight tongue movement while he enjoyed the stimulation. Someone behind us told us to be quieter, since apparently we were making noise. She was his ex. No doubt she knew what we were doing. My partner eventually came down my throat and said he needed to take a piss and left me there. I laid there for a while wondering how long it would be till he got back. I didn't notice that his ex had also gotten up and left. The film ended with me alone there. Completely forgettable the film but the feeling of abandonment had me looking for something to attach to. Such is the frailty of my heart. There was a man there talking about youtube. The social ramification of citizen creators, and preaching it virtuous. There was something about what he said that stirred me from my wistful lounging to turn my eyes toward him. It was someone I recognized. He had had a youtube channel himself and had commented on mine in the past. Wendel, I said getting his attention. "Oh so you do recognize me then." "Of course. Not many I respect as much as you. You remember me?" "There aren't many people, so it's easy to remember when I stumble on them" Looking around there were many humans in the near vicinity, but something about the phrasing had me seeing them in a different light. They weren't people. They were agents acting in a role which had consumed them. They weren't people. And for some other reason it had me think about my home town. There weren't any people there. No that was wrong, and the memory hit me as if it had just happened. I was riding my bike on the outskirts of town and came to a corner I had never been to. At the window of the building at that corner I saw a young woman looking out the window. When our eyes met there was this feeling, she saw me, and I saw her. And I knew that she was a person. A real person. "I hadn't thought about it that way, but you are right. I think there might only be one other person in my home town, now that I think about it." "Mary, right? on the corner with fields on the other side? I'm surprised you ran into her." "Mary was her name? I didn't meet her, just saw her once " "You've got sensitive eyes. Must make all this seem pretty vapid." I looked around us. No one was paying us any mind, many were eating, talking, laughing. Some held up their screens to their faces and showed others what they displayed. It was hallow. There were ostensibly all these human interactions happening, but not a single moment in the the whole of it would be recalled come morning. Many were actively already trying to forget it as they lived it. I would remember it tho, and Wendell would as well. "Vapid is a good word for it. I try not to think about these others as something other than people because it's too depressing" I offered trying to sugarcoat my own realization about these things I was living with. "Depressing or not there's no other way to view it. I guess the question is what you do about it. Some of them keep dogs or other animals, if you want to keep them in the same kind of way I guess that's your call." "You always cut to the heart of the matter, before circling around it don't you" I responded. The cyclical nature of his content, if you can call it content, was a result of there not being much else to do but circle when you have a single thing to say, and have already said it. To keep talking is to either diverge from that point or to make it again. "Relevance has a present moment bias, so to be relevant now you have to say it now. And again tomorrow." The moment hung in the air for the space of three universes. "I heard that this building is some kind of church" I finally said. "It is. A protestant church founded on newer scripture." He led me out of the din toward the more secluded parts and eventually to a chapel. There were some scriptures there and I picked up a rather abused book and opened it. The pages were dirty and some torn most were folded and creased. The words on the page told of many different kind of stories. There were war stories and stories of loss. Most I had no knowledge of at all. We spent some time going through the book and talking about what the passages said to us when we were interrupted. A man dressed in suit came toward us and looked at me with a look of nothing but disgust, then down at the book, which I had spent some time trying to flatten the curled and bent pages. He took the book from me and put it into a case with something I could only read as faux tenderness, not for the book but against my heathen hands having touched it. The insult raged inside my heart against what this man stood for. "I put it into better condition than I found it" I said as I got up to leave. This man had distain not just for me, but for everyone at the party. He was against our whole demographic and saw me as just another of them, someone who couldn't see the things of god, whatever that might mean. And to be fair, it's not as if I know what it means to be of god. But I know that there was some kind of truth spirit with which I was communing along with Wendell which that book had helped mediate. Many things could do it, and I don't expect that book held any supernatural power uncommon to literature. But I was in that moment nothing more than a seeker of inspiration, of truth, of goodness, and this man spit on that search, claiming with action that only some were worthy of that light. Maybe that's true. .