Slogans - Prince XML

Chapter 10
be getting stuck in certain frames. It begins in bursts, showing the overly made-up face of what
is presumably the candidate for the election – Den cannot honestly say that he has seen this
man before, nor does he much care. He has learned that some of these billboards can break
into the car sound system as it passes. Luckily for him, he has turned off the radio altogether, or
he would doubtless be assailed by some of this nonsense. His lip curls at the irony of his own
intolerance of this kind of advertising. Well, you don’t have to like it to make it.
He thinks back to the pleasant afternoon he spent with Cathy Kim, and how they ended up
in his bed.
Suddenly the image is gone and a slogan appears prominently but looking not unlike a
frame in the actual video sequence. The frame contains a slogan: WEISSKOPF MAKES
CHILD PORNOGRAPHY. Some more of the film runs and then another: WEISSKOPF IS
UN-AMERICAN. Then another: WEISSKOPF THINKS HE’S INTELLECTUAL. And so
it seems to repeat.
Den is a little curious but it takes a moment for him to see what is going on. It looks like
some kind of smear campaign. But are these activists responsible or are they just exposing the
subliminal content that someone else has planted in the ads?
Some international news channels are here on the scene already. That seems strange in
itself, since the police seem to be doing their best to shut this down quickly. Perhaps this was
staged.
The traffic is slowing down and moving into single file. His mind wanders to the work he
did on political advertising in the U.K. a couple of years earlier. It seems a far cry from this. A
police man waves him past, staring at the line of traffic with impenetrable black glasses. Den
does not look back, but files past and follows the traffic into a line that is bound for the next
exit. He follows the ramp as it curves up and around and directs him away from the traffic.
After a short spell on this residential looking road, he finds the turn he needs.
Finally he is off the freeway and onto the narrow road that leads towards to hills. It is
narrow but straight and it fills him with a sense of release, as if this narrow constraint on his
driving were somehow a new found freedom. He puts his foot down on the gas, the only
freedom left to him, and enjoys the simple sense of power that the acceleration gives.
As he approaches the forested hills, the road begins to wind around a river and then begins
to enter a series of bends to ascend. He has to slow at the first of the sharper bends and notices
that the road quality is deteriorating. Den curses the sluggishness of the car and shifts the gear
stick into terrain mode. He loathes the automation of this rental. Soon they will automate the
steering of these cars too and then there will be little room for drivers. Probably a road like this
would cause cars of the future to simply stop and deny the possibility of coping.
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