Screen Fever

Dispatch #9

The taxi drivers here are really something, absolute treasures. Like jolly Santa Clauses who can’t stop giving presents to people like me — for some reason, I never receive coal, only the most awesome presents every single time I hop in a cab. Tonight’s ride was epic, a masterpiece of screen addiction. Overall, my ride was smooth tonight, we moved through the city as if on rails, casually segueing from streetlight to streetlight until I was safely dumped out the back door of the taxi — and yes, I asked around, but the consensus was really 50/50: half the people I spoke to jumped in the front seat of a taxi, while the other half took the rear. I stuck by my Canadian guns and chose the backseat, regardless of how twisted I needed to contort myself to slither into the slim space available.¹

Matuš, tonight’s chauffeur, was lit up like he was Grace Jones’s dance floor partner at Studio 54. Just bright, blasted light enveloped him: painted with a 21^st century tinge of blue common to the contemporary screen, that special glow which never existed prior to the invention of liquid crystal glass. Mixed in were other hues, like garish greens and a brothel-coloured red that made him into an escaped, half-baked character from Black Mirror or some other such dystopian sci-fi fantasy.

I saw him long before I knew it was my taxi. His interior lights were so bright they were doing double duty, cancelling out the yellow TAXI sign on the roof and nearly overpowering the headlamps. His lumen guides were the byproducts of LG and Apple and Sony and other electronics manufacturers. I wondered how he even managed to navigate at night, for all this blasted energy turned the windscreen into a mirror. I was checking out my double chin in the reflection of the car window, slightly annoyed at what I saw. Why do I have such a slow metabolism? But that strike of vanity quickly passed when I started to count the amount of screens arrayed around him, resembling the cockpit of a B-2 bomber pilot.

To the left of the steering wheel, his phone was lit up with directions; simple enough. To the wheel’s right, another mobile phone, this one tuned to WhatsApp or some such messaging platform. Except Matuš was beyond mere Latin letters. He communicated in emoji and GIF, hundreds, nay, probably thousands of dancing little pink hearts gyrating on his screen, electronic kisses dancing across his face as he drove. I couldn’t help but think of Peggy Olsen’s brilliant advertising tag line, the one that got her bounced from the secretary pool into the big leagues with Don and the boys: Belle Jolie lipstick, according to Peggy, was a “basketful of kisses.” That was Matuš and I: we were in a mobile basketful of kisses. I, too, felt the warm glow of romance, kissed by the discards of his emoji activity, an illicit third party to his affair. Mounted, somehow, off the dashboard, was a giant a tablet that he managed to split into four screens: yes, four. Rotating clockwise, from top left, a football (soccer) match; some kind of music video channel playing what I guessed was quite cheesy Slov-rock — but of course I cannot tell you if the music itself sucked, because there was another screen reserved for the tunes, this one was dedicated just to the visuals of slippery men in cheap leather. Moving along, one looked like a newsfeed of sorts, a perpetual cascade of messages. I was hoping they were stock prices. I imagined he was a part-time cabbie, full-time day trader that wasn’t a very good day trader so he had to drive a cab at night, but was at least trying to make a go of it and still addicted to the lure of JPM, MCD, AMZN.

Peggy’s big moment.

The final slot was mercifully blank; even Matuš must’ve thought: enough. And yet, there was more. The in-car screen, while not quite on a Tesla scale, was still the IMAX equivalent for a car. Here, the radio was tuned, the clock flashing (the clock, of course, out of sync), and other bits of automotive necessity was displayed. But then next to that screen, was another phone! Correct, reader, a third phone! This one programmed to the taxi app. I could see his finger itchy, hovering in proximity to the ‘accept’ button, but never quite pouncing. Probably because he was distracted by every other screen, melting his brain and thus reflexes capable of accepting new rides. And yet, there’s more. Below the rear view mirror, a dash cam was mounted. This one, however, had a mini screen, but big enough for me to latch onto. I became transfixed: I was looking at me in the reflection of the windshield (and my double chin), looking at me in the rearview mirror then looking at an image in the the dash cam of the journey I was on; an exhausting kaleidoscope of mediation that I suddenly combusted into pixels and exited this meatspace and became a full citizen and entered simulacra. And yet, there were even more screens!

Brazil.

I couldn’t believe it, but it happened. By now, I fully understood what it must be like to be a tween today, haunted and consumed by so many devices that all I could do was drool. When he flipped his turn signals (frankly, I was impressed he even bothered), his side mirrors turned into cameras! What a fantastic turn of events. I didn’t know where to look, every turn of the head revealed another layer and another screen, and more information. Enough! I buzzed my window down a bit to create an escape hatch from Matuš and his pink-hearted gifs. Immediately, my attempt of escape was thwarted.

“Je zima,” he said. It’s cold.

1. Read Dispatch #5; I can never decide if they want me in the front or back.