I'm late. Future's set is at least halfway finished and I'm stuck in a glacial-paced bag check line. I can hear the songs emanating from the distance, taunting me. Flower-crowned festival types get to witness "Commas" on a Jumbotron while my insides burst from the fear of missing out. I'm doubled over from the pain of proximity. I fantasize about being able to give each person ahead of me twenty dollars in order to allow me in front of them. I count. That's at least 600 dollars I don't have.
Two months prior, I'm watching a methodical, viscous pour over ice. A single, carefully eyeball-estimated ounce of codeine syrup followed by enough Sprite to give the solution a watermelon pink hue. "Two Styrofoam cups of death, take as needed," reads my imagined self-prescription. I forget the clinical, pharmaceutical nature of cough syrup as soon as it is repackaged and presented to me in this form palatable to children. Gummy bear garnish optional.
This is an experiment. I'm curious to see whether or not the lean will bring me closer to understanding Future—not that I don't feel like I do already—but while I tend to drown my problems by listening to his music every day, he has been known to drown his own in the mixture sitting before me. I might as well attempt to bridge that gap, at least this once.
I'm in an apartment located in Atlanta's Zone 6 and beside me a rapper named Slug Christ is being very persuasive. "When you start to feel wavy," he instructs me, "Sip slowly." I pretend to know what that means. The closest sensation I'm familiar with at this point occurs when I drink iced coffee too quickly on a hot day and the caffeine hits me all at once. Regular coffee has the built in buffer of being too hot at first. I wonder if anyone ever mixes codeine syrup with hot tea in order to serve that same purpose, but I digress.
I'm self-medicating partially because I just found out a Future video was shot at a house nearby where I could have potentially been present had my finesse powers been more developed.
I look down at my double cup and I had, naturally, forgotten what was said to me about sipping slowly. Do I feel wavy? I don't know. I stand up. My weight shifts over to my left in a way that feels like the only option. Ah, I think to myself, this is why they call it that.
Eventually, I get to the core of the experiment. I tell someone to put 56 Nights on and I listen closely, prepared for rapture. My motor skills have been rendered a joke, but I don't feel particularly different. I don't feel sedated. I don't feel euphoric. I don't enjoy the music more nor do I feel like I relate more deeply to it or the man behind it. I just feel slower.
Perhaps he was meant to elude me for now, I rationalize to myself internally. I'm not supposed to see God just yet.
Weeks later, in the same apartment, I'm given the chance to experience Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset. I put it on like Gucci goggles, immersing myself in a digital world of which I can see 360 degrees around, moving accordingly to the position of my eyes. I panic briefly as I consider my blindness to the physical realm and hope to God, for their sake, that no one uses this as an opportunity to tickle me.
In this virtual reality, I'm sitting at what appears to be a regular desk in a regular room. A computer monitor faces me and some writing utensils populate the surface. This better not be all I get. This is more boring than normal life.
I look down. I can see my own virtual lap and shoes, though I comfort myself in knowing I would never wear these. They must have been modeled after the shoes worn by the program's creator, who, judging by the shoes, is a fucking nerd.
"Someone put on 56 Nights," I plead desperately at the real world, which I can only assume is still there. Someone complies and I look around once more. The light is changing. Bright cubes start to bounce around in front of me. Now I'm outside, apparently. Tall grass emerges. My whole environment is transforming rapidly. I'm witnessing a time lapse in three dimensions. I'm traveling through centuries—civilizations are created and destroyed—but I remain spatially motionless. Future’s "Purple Coming In" plays in the background.
Too much is happening. Trees become buildings. Grass becomes street. It starts to rain digital raindrops. I still have the primal urge to take cover. I'm dizzy. My eyes are exhausted and my mind is upset with me. I try to let it wash over me instead of actively paying attention to all that is going on. "The greatest story ever told, them pretty hoes get exposed," groans Future from the speakers, guiding me through my struggle. Actually, now that you bring it up, Future, I think to myself, this environment could perhaps benefit from having hoes.
I'm alone in this cold, time-accelerated, post-apocalyptic virtual world, much like the man in the episode of The Twlilight Zone entitled "Where Is Everybody?" In the episode, the man wakes up on a dirt road. He walks into a town, finds a diner, a theater and a bunch of other shit, but no people. When he enters a certain threshold of psychological panic, we discover that the whole time he had been isolated in a sensory deprivation chamber, being trained for spaceflight to the moon and that he had hallucinated everything about the town. I, on the other hand, am isolated in sensory overload, presumably being trained for spaceflight to Future's home planet, Pluto. But in both cases, again, tragically, no hoes.
The overwhelming amount of stimulation and underrepresentation of hoes has my head feeling as heavy as the lean made me feel, as though any slight movement on my part would prove both unnecessary and uncomfortable.
I finally reach the end of the line. I hand my bag to the checker, but I've accepted my fate. Future performed his last song just moments ago. I have gone through the five stages of grief already—mostly denial—but all of a sudden I'm not in a rush anymore. Perhaps this just wasn't the time for me. Perhaps he was meant to elude me for now, I rationalize to myself internally. I'm not supposed to see God just yet. I look up from my state of distress. I look around. Hoes are everywhere.
Alex Russell is still searching for Future. Follow him on Twitter here.
