Ris stops, looking around at the congregation, as an existential crisis sets in—proliferating experiences between self-identity warping within the structures of a cognitive dissociation. Hypnotized, she stands huddled among the masses, gazing at the holographic video walls, feeling a little at sea as the DJ conducts his post-architectural symphony; tethered lines between the past and future encapsulating the present; “existing only in this very moment are glimpses of an iota of who I am,” Ris remembers.
“I think it’s time,” Alicia tugs on Ris’s hand, snapping her back into the present moment. The resonance of the bass shakes the warehouse. She nods. “Are you ok?” Alicia yells over the music. Ris nods again.
Still holding Alicia’s hand, they meander in and out of the openings of people towards the right side of the video wall. Beach ball battered souls in the eye of an EDM hurricane, moving around one of the barricades, towards a hallway leading backstage, they finally reach a vacancy of people—a calm refuge from the storm calling them.
A security guard appears out of nowhere and startles them, “Passes?”
Ris looks up, still in a state of dissonance, "Passes?"
"Yeah…passes,” he says, blocking the hallway in front of them. “You have to have passes to go any further.”
"Zer0 is my boyfriend; he didn't mention anything to me about a pass. He said that we’d be on the list,” Alicia says irritated.
“Don’t have a list. No Pass. No Backstage,” he says starkly looking over at Ris’s hypnotic eyes of fractional blues staring at him from behind her lace mask.
“Are you sure we're not on your list?” she smiles at him.
“No Pass. No Backstage,” he says dismissively, turning to walk away.
Ris reaches out and touches his forearm, “Hey, wait a minute, are your eyes two different colors?”
“Um,” he pauses, his body half turned towards Ris, as if unsure he should continue trying to walk away. “Y-yeah, yeah they are. I get that all the time.”
She gestures towards him with her finger so she can talk into his ear, “ It’s heterochromia, right? I have it partially on my left eye! ”
“Um, yeah, I think that’s what it’s called. My dad had it. So I got it now.”
Ris looks surprised, “I got mine from my dad. He has it too! Well, had it…yeah,” taking off her mask to show her left eye.
The guard takes another look over Ris and softens a bit, “Well, if it means anything to you at all, your eyes really are beautiful. I’ve never seen a pattern like that before.”
Smiling at the guard, she tucks her hair behind her ear, “Thanks. Hey, listen, not to sound like a broken record, but this really is Zer0’s girlfriend. We need to speak to him but he's doing his set right now. We can't text him as he uses signal jammers at his events, as you probably know. I mean, what are we supposed to do?” She pauses just long enough to glance at him. “Are you sure there’s not a list in your head you might’ve forgotten about?” She steps back with an award-winning smile.