Jarett Kobek - Only Americans Burn in Hell

“I’ll pass,” said the bodyguard.

Above the bodyguard’s head, there were three clusters of helium-inflated balloons, tied together in a haphazard fashion to create letters from the Roman alphabet.

The balloons said:

HRH walked over to the exterior wall of the apartment, placing his hand on its exposed brick. Its windows looked out over the Charles River.

“Fear death by water,” said HRH. “As my manservant drove me towards this monolithic structure, it occurred to me that perhaps my father had some hand in its conversion. The Conqueror is consumed with a smothering love for Boston and its environs. The redevelopment of Boylston in the Fenway was his own initiative.”

“Let’s get going?” asked the sex worker.

“Wunderbar, my dear lady!” cried HRH. “To the stables!”

In the bedroom, two other sex workers were waiting.

HRH and the original sex worker entered.

Each of the sex workers had been picked by Dmitri Huda via an arcane process that began with The Erotic Review, which was the Internet’s top community of escorts, hobbyists, and service providers.

The Erotic Review’s vast userbase was comprised of people who fucked sex workers and then went on The Erotic Review and reviewed the performance, looks, and personalities of recently fucked sex workers.

The Erotic Review offered its reviewers the option to confirm whether or not a recently fucked sex worker provided specific sexual activities during the recent fucking. These included: (1) cum in mouth (2) touch pussy (3) lick pussy (4) two-girl action (5) more than one guy at a time (6) multiple pops allowed.

After Harvard University invited HRH to be a guest speaker, Dmitri Huda had contacted a sex worker whom he’d procured several years earlier using The Erotic Review.

The sex worker wrote back. She wasn’t available. She was working in Dallas.

She recommended a friend, who got Dmitri Huda in touch with an agency that sometimes did cross-over work with people from FetLife.

The agency said that it could satisfy HRH’s demands: three girls, athletic, Ivy League educated, very bi, 420-friendly, unafraid of BDSM, and willing to go anal.

Dmitri asked the agency to procure helium-inflated balloons.

The balloons were HRH’s way of making sure that his requests had been fulfilled to the utmost. Past experience had demonstrated that if the balloons were not present, then other requests would also be ignored.

HRH had learned this trick by reading about Van Halen’s tour rider.

HRH put his rattlesnake suitcase on the bed.

“Good day, ladies,” HRH said. “We meet now in this temporality but I believe that we have known each other always.”

HRH opened the rattlesnake suitcase and extracted a vaporizer and a small, clear plastic bag that contained an off-white powder.

“First, mes chères amies,” said HRH, “You shall watch as I consume dimethyltryptamine. Fear nothing, my sweets, for the effects are not long lasting. This ease of use has earned the substance a wonderful soubriquet. They call it The Businessman’s Trip.”

HRH sat in a plush chair purchased from IKEA in Stoughton.

HRH vaped DMT.

HRH’s eyes went blank.

HRH’s breathing became labored.

One of the sex workers got up from the bed and waved her hand in front of HRH’s face.

HRH didn’t respond.

“He’s out,” said one sex worker to the other sex workers. “Don’t worry. These guys are the easy ones. We give them what they can’t get in Dubai.”

“What’s that?”

“The kissing and the cuddling.”

HRH went on an inner trip.

There was a psychedelic tunnel.

HRH went through the psychedelic tunnel.

Everything looked like a Mandelbrot set transformed into quivering nerves.

HRH turned back and saw himself in the IKEA chair, surrounded by sex workers.

HRH continued through the psychedelic tunnel.

HRH came through on the other side.

HRH found himself in a mystical land, surrounded by elfin creatures, with fractal trees sprouting forth from the earth. The elfin creatures spoke a strange language that sounded more like buzzing than words.

HRH tried to talk but his words came out as shattered glass.

HRH didn’t know it, but the dimethyltryptamine had sent an astral projection of his soul to Fairy Land.

This happened to every user of dimethyltryptamine, leading to endless reports on Erowid.org and Reddit.com. And some very bad writing by Terence McKenna and Tao Lin.

Terence McKenna, Tao Lin, and the users of Erowid.org and Reddit.com thought that they had traveled in fourth-dimensional space and held forth with cybernetic elves.

But really, they were just in Fairy Land, and the astral projection was creating a perceptual filter that prevented full comprehension of the experience.

The women of Fairy Land could see the spiritual projections of dimethyltryptamine users.

The souls appeared like flickering lights.

The women of Fairy Land thought that these lights were ghosts of the People Who Came Before.

They didn’t know that the flickering lights were just some old assholes on drugs.

The trip wore off.

HRH came back into consciousness, back to the watch factory.

HRH jumped out of the IKEA plush chair.

“Another entheogenic experience!” said HRH. “Further communion with the divine! I seek knowledge! Soon I shall have the answer!”

“That wasn’t very long,” said one of the sex workers.

“As I said, madame,” said HRH. “It is the trip of a businessman.”

“You must inform me,” said HRH to the sex worker who leased the apartment. “What is your WiFi network and its password?”

“The network is arcticmonkeys,” said the sex worker. “The password is doiwannaknow. All lower case, no spaces.”

HRH opened his rattlesnake suitcase and removed an Amazon Echo Dot.

It was the shape and size of a hockey puck.

HRH put his hands into his pantaloons.

HRH fished out his smartphone.

HRH engaged with his smartphone.

HRH opened the Amazon Alexa app.

HRH plugged in the Amazon Echo Dot.

HRH used the Amazon Alexa app to get the Amazon Echo Dot on the sex worker’s WiFi network.

Perhaps you are wondering about the exact nature of the Amazon Echo Dot.

Reader, its nature was two-fold.

The Amazon Echo Dot was a device that connected to the Internet and responded to voice command. Its users could ask the Amazon Echo Dot to play music, which would emerge from its onboard speaker. If the Amazon Echo Dot was networked with a television, it could be used to play films and television. It could be used to order products through Amazon.com, which was a website dedicated to the destruction of the publishing industry. And the Amazon Echo Dot could be used to relay information.

To achieve these tasks, users would say the word, “Alexa,” which was the magic phrase that alerted the Amazon Echo Dot that an instruction was forthcoming. Then the user would say an instruction, which would be something like, “Play Jersey Shore ” or “I want to shop for cat food.”

The Amazon Echo Dot would then respond with the synthesized voice of a woman and attempt to follow the user’s command. This synthesized voice was the personality of the device. It was the ghost in the machine. Its name was Alexa.

The Amazon Echo Dot was one in a line of Echo products offered by Amazon.com, each offering some variation in shape and size, but retaining the same core functionality.

Reader, this was the surface nature of the Amazon Echo Dot.

Its true nature was this: it represented concrete evidence of the disconnect between issues that journalists believed were of public importance and the swells of indifference that these issues produced in the public.