I Wouldn’t Expect You to Understand

I wake up in bed, next to you, if that’s a thing. If not, you’re just arriving and have sweetly brought me coffee, maybe?

I run my hands through my hair and then hold it all back, which briefly makes me look just like my dad without a beard.

You feel however you feel about that.

Then I go into how I’ve just had this dream1 wherein I was making love with this woman on a mattress on a floor, which sounds super skeezy, I know, but it wasn’t, like, a traphouse or anything. It was like a nice place that had the vibe that it was still being moved into.

Anyway, that was chill, but then I woke up because I had to pee.

I get into the specifics of that, as well as explain that my lucidity has either improved greatly or worsened considerably, since my dreaming experiences a realer than ever.

“If I keep going like this,” I say, “I wonder if I’ll be able to tell which is real.”

That’s a joke, a clue, or an eye-roller, depending upon your level of familiarity with my work, lucid dreaming, and Tibetan Buddhism—as well, of course, as your own desire for our story.

Anyway, I go, the thing is that I tried to go back to sleep, and I couldn’t, so I started talking with this “A.I.” robot that gave me the name of an agent.

You might have a reaction to that, you might not, depending upon your personality, your immersion into the speculative elements of the novel, and your overall impression of A.I.

You will notice that every time I say, “A.I.” it appears in quotes to show that I am using air quotes, since I don’t believe in artificial intelligence. It’s a misnomer.

“I barely believe in natural intelligence,” I say. “Like, that’s hard enough to prove the existence of.”

You can argue with me about intelligence if you want. Or you can kiss me—but I should caution you that I have dragon breath this mornin’. Or you can just smile and hand me the coffee.

In any case, shortly I’m all, Just let me finish. So the robot gives me the agent’s name, right? Then I’m all, What can you tell me about this person? And it tells me a good bit about ‘em. So I take the Nets and Bubblefind™ them. It’s, like, a real person. So then I decide to write them a letter, like, immediately.

I feign a bit of dignity with an urbane hand gesture and say, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand the perils of midnight artistry.” Then explain that this isn’t the first time I’ve woken up in the middle of the night to feverishly write a letter to an agent, then send it, then never hear back.

Or, I dunno. Maybe you do understand. The 21st is lousy with writers. Not that I’m complaining.

Anyway, I wrote the letter—or more accurately, message, I guess—and I show it to you:

Hey Charlie,

I’m reaching out to you at the suggestion of the ChatGPT AI. No, I’m not making that up. I told it that I was working on a vast metafictional novel that was also kind of a series of speculative fiction novels told in a casual style by an unreliable narrator from the future who is writing to and for people in our present. I said that I have a few readers but have had trouble finding a larger audience. It said that sounds like a very ambitious and complex project and suggested I simplify it and try to find a publisher or agent. I said I didn’t want to simplify it cos that might compromise it, and then asked who might represent someone writing something like that and yours was the first name it gave. So. Long-winded explanation later and here we are.

I have to be honest with you, though, I’m more than a little ambivalent about this whole process. On the one hand, I’m fairly horrified by the general state of publishing, but I’ve been at this on my own for awhile now—almost ten years since I started the first book, which you can find here, but maybe don’t? Start with what I’m working on now, which is here—and it’s pretty lonely. I could use some help.

I ablate a piece of it for brevity and to protect someone’s privacy.

Then I give it back to you:

So that’s how I found you and what I’m looking for.

As for who I am, well, I write under the name T. Van Santāna, who is a transgender master secretist from the Thirty-Second Century. They’re also a writer, and they write novels in 21st Century English—typically American English, but not always—to an audience in that time, our time. That’s not me. Well, not exactly, but it kind of is. It’s complicated. But here and now, I live and work in Richmond, Virginia. I am a nonbinary transfemme kina gal, the sort that uses they/them pronouns and makes everyone’s eyes roll. But despite my kind of sassy literary voice, I’m really a nice person—or I try hard to be and people are forever telling me that I am. So I’m not, like, a diva to work with or anything. At least, I don’t think I am …

I take it back right before the end and say that it’s a cringy ending, like, even cringier than the body, and that it basically is me asking to, like, chat or whatever.

You might ask if I’m going to send it.

“I dunno,” I say. “Am I?”

Play procedures

• You might have feelings about whether or not I should contact the agent—in walking around life, in the novel, or both. Let me know if you do.

Oh wait wait wait, I say.

I forgot to tell you the rest of the dream, like the second dream.

You may be like, But T, We’re already in the play procedures section. Just save it for another day or go back and add it before.

And I smile and say, Nooo, it will only take a sec.

Then I get into it, about how I was on a planet somewhere, vacationing maybe, I dunno. And there is woman who is kina punky that I think I might be falling in love with and this guy who is friends with us and is a photographer? He takes really beautiful art photos, even though some of them are, like, dongs. Anyway, I’m worried he might feel hurt or left out. That’s one worry. The other is that I might be rejected by her if I tell her how I feel. So I play it kina cool and ask her if it’s okay for me to be honest with her. She says, What about? and that’s enough of an answer for me to know it isn’t safe, so I say, That’s all I needed. And she laughs and is like, That was easy enough! I say yeah, it was, and she says she promises she won’t be so arch with me anymore. I enjoy her use of the word, and then walk ahead. I get to the hotel room, and the guy lets us in. There are two beds, and I wonder if we have use of both of them. He says we do, and I see he is sleeping in one, and we are in the other. He adds, if you want it that way. Which, I mean, I know where that’s coming from, right? Like, this book. Duh.

Anyhow, that’s it.

I guess I should add a couple more procedures.

Play procedures (continued)

• You can add Charlie the agent to your list of contacts. I dunno what use you’ll have for an agent in our story, but who knows.
• If you want a Bubbler, you can have one. Write it in your inventory. In a lot of games, it would occupy a wrist slot, but that’s kina dumb, right? Like I can fit all sorts of shit on my wrist. So I say it doesn’t really occupy any slots and has no effective weight. In the 32C they can also be built-into almost anything. People wear them like watches more as a status symbol than an actual need to. Kina like clocks in the 21st. Anyway, a Bubbler will let you access Bubblefind™ and all sorts of Bubble™ products. They track you, of course. The CoDex Corporation. They’re recording everything. Of course, it’s possible I destroyed them in one or more of the previous novels? No canon, remember. So you decide. In any case, it works as long as we’re in Soma. May not work in the 21st at large. Sorry, bae, sorry, boo.