Central Park, pt. 2
“Meet TPONY”
Previously: While mapping the cultural landscape of Central Park, Deshawn runs into a woman named Jen who seems weirdly eager to categorize him. Their interaction is interrupted by the loud vibe of a new group that just entered the park.
○ Opening Era: Spring, 2026, Manhattan
As the young man started to walk over, Deshawn gathered his things, but it was too late.
Here we go again, thought Deshawn.
“Hey,” said the young man. “I’m Sandeep. Were you with that clipper lady?”
Clipper? He meant Jen. Embarrassment and excitement simultaneously shot through Deshawn. Somehow this guy had managed to classify Jen’s pattern before Deshawn had. Clipper.
“No, uh, no, I wasn’t with her.”
“It’s cool, bro. There’s nothing wrong with clippers. Punk, lib, hippie, ’metamodernist’ – they’re all just labels. A bunch of my high school friends are clippers.”
Now Deshawn was really interested. Did this guy also track memetic tribes?
“Anyway, I felt you tuning in,” he said, “So now I’m saying hi.”
Deshawn turned, feigning surprise and glancing away. “Oh. No. I’m just sitting here.”
“Oh yeah? Because, like, if you’re interested in what we’re up to…”
Deshawn was interested in what they were up to. “No, sorry––I mean, I like your outfits. Anyway, I’m just drawing here.” He fumbled with his notebook. It fell into his lap and slid open onto the ground.
Despite Deshawn’s best efforts to look away, he caught a glimpse of Sandeep’s face. Sandeep had brown skin and black hair, tied in a bun behind his head. His eyes were looking down at Deshawn’s notebook as if he’d seen it before.
“Yo. That looks familiar,” Sandeep cocked his head. “Wait a minute. Yoooo!”
Reflexively Deshawn tried to curl his mind into a ball so Sandeep couldn’t scan him, but it was too late.
“No fucking way. You’re Mapmaker!”
Deshawn shook his head.
“Yeah, you totally are. Bro. Maps! It’s me! Yeet! MoYeetO”
Deshawn straightened his glasses. He’d never met someone from his Discord in person before. He wasn’t sure what to do.
“I got our whole crew into your stuff.” Sandeep aka Yeet gestured at his motley group. “You’ve been an inspiration. Your shit’s gotten so much better since the Opening, obvi. Brooo. You’re like our spirit animal.” Sandeep was growing more animated. “You have to see what our lil quartet has been working on, bro, you have to.”
Deshawn arched his head to glance over Yeet’s shoulder at his group. The girl with the reddish-blond hair waved at him. He felt his face go warm. “Quartet…that means four. I only see three of you.”
“One of us is a thoughtform. Like your friend in there,” said Yeet, pointing to Deshawn’s head.
He meant gran. No one besides mom had ever noticed the mirage of gran.
“Oh huh,” Yeet furrowed his brow. “Seems you’ve got at least a couple friends in there.”
A couple? Deshawn had no idea what he was talking about.
“Come hang with the crew for a second,” said Yeet.
“Um,” Deshawn teetered between curiosity and timidity.
Yeet beckoned him over to the others on the blanket.
Deshawn followed.
“Meet TPONY!” said Yeet.
“Sup,” said the guy in the nebula print hoodie and shorts.
“Hey,” said the girl with the lip stud, squinting through the sun.
The twitch started in Deshawn’s cheeks. “TPONY?” he asked, despite himself.
“This Part of New York,” said Yeet.
“I thought we changed it to These Poasters of New York,” said the girl.
“Our true name is a matter of controversy at the moment, but anyway, it’s a sort of an in-joke about this Twitter community we all belong to––”
“TPOT,” Deshawn said.
“Woah, do you have an alt on Twitter? Don’t tell me we’re mutuals already, bro.”
“No, I’m just a lurker.”
“Are you sure?”
“Introduce us, Yeet!” said the girl.
“OK, OK: This here is PinaCollider,” he said, gesturing toward her. “You know her by her articles in Psi-tings. But, by night, she’s the most subversive element of whimsy-Twitter. But never call Pina an egirl.” Then, whispering, “She’s totally an egirl.“
Pina kicked him.
“Ow. And over here is…guess who.” Yeet gestured at the Asian guy in his nebula-prints.
“Uh,” said Deshawn.
“It’s Emp!” said Yeet. “Otherwise known as EmptyGlass. His account is mostly earnestpoasting about Buddhism, Effective Altruism, and lame decel stuff.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Emp.
“Then there’s the one you can’t see…yet. StrawberryDakini,” said Yeet. “She posts about, I dunno, emotions and magic – aka woo.”
Actually Deshawn could see someone, in a very vague and faint outline. She had a nice vibe.
“And finally me, MoYeetO,” said Sandeep, “My Twitter game is about actually important things, like geopolitics and how the our technological golden age is nigh. I’m basically the second coming of Steve Jobs, but more Indian and better looking.”
“Oh. Uh, cool,” said Deshawn. “You’re all named after drinks?”
“Yeah…. We all changed our usernames after a few too many shots at KGB Bar.”
“It was a lot more funny at the time, believe us,” said Pina. “Hey! What’s that say?”
Before Deshawn could move back, she drew near to palm the thing that hung from his neck. He couldn’t remember the last time a girl had been this close to him. Wait, since when did Deshawn wear something around his neck? He looked at it. It a metal pendent in the shape of…a fish? No a deflated balloon. That seemed familiar. He had a difficult time keeping his eyes on it.
”Huh. It has a bunch of capital letter carved into it. S-T-L-N-N-Y-R-L-S,” she read. She tried to sound it out: “Stlnnyrls.”
“Daki is saying that it’s a sigil of some sort,” said Emp. “They’re often made by simply subtracting the vowels in a word or phrase.“
Yeet rolled his eyes. “More woo shit.”
“Stlnnyrls…. Settle In, Yearlies,” Pina attempted.”Stallion Yarls – no. Stolen In Your Lies. I don’t know. I’m just saying things.”
Deshawn drew back. “I don’t think it means anything.”
“Where’d you get it,” Pina asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You…don’t know?”
“Pina! Crew! Do you know who this is?” Yeet said, breaking the awkward thread. “It’s the friggin’ Mapmaker!”
“Woah,” said Emp. “I’m honored. Great to meet you in meatspace.”
“Hot diggity dog!” said Pina.
They were all staring at him now. He scratched his ear. It was hot, humid. The sun was in Deshawn’s eyes. Deshawn knew that the longer this encounter went on, the higher his chances were of blowing it.
“I gotta get back to school,” he said.
He grabbed his backpack and walked stiffly toward the exit of Sheep Meadow. He saw Yeet’s people watching him from his peripheral vision, waving goodbye. Instinctively, Deshawn and a couple of them ducked as a faint hallucination of a dragon soared over the grass. The dragon perched atop a tree and stared straight at Deshawn.
“Ah, so you finally accepted your quest,” said the archetypical dragon.
Deshawn started walking faster.
“Excuse me, could you turn that down somehow?” he heard a woman say to the group of geeks playing Dungeons & Dragons. The woman was normie from the feel of her – but to have seen the hallucinatory dragon she must have been a Game of Thrones fan or something. It was surprising she wasn’t on numb-ers.
“What do you mean ‘turn it down?’ We’re playing D&D,” said a geek.
“I dunno, like put your brain on indoor voice.”
“You can always just move away; the park’s a big place.”
Deshawn passed other people who seemed not to have noticed. If you weren’t a fantasy fan, the hallucination probably would’ve been drowned out by the more mainstream collective imaginings of sex, baseball, unpaid bills, and the latest pop hit earworms. Thankfully the mindspace here was too crowded for more contagious genre possession, like back at the Ren Faire.
Deshawn breathed heavily as he walked out of the park. He couldn’t stop thinking about Yeet’s group. How they introduced themselves and then Deshawn just booked it in the most awkward possible way. He imagined them sneering at him from behind, laughing at his weird walk, at how Deshawn clearly didn’t know what to do with his arms.
Several minutes later he found himself stepping onto the B train.
He blinked. That wasn’t right. If he was on the B train it meant he was not on his bike. It meant he was inside a subway car surrounded by other people.
His MetroCard was still in his hand. In his fluster he must have fallen back into his pre-Opening habits.
Oh no. Oh damn. Panicked, he turned to leave. But more bodies came pressing in. He backed away from them, packing himself into the opposite corner. A chime sounded. Then a recorded voice: “Stand clear of the closing doors, please.” Already his mind was being bombarded by the others in close proximity. Foreign emotions and identities swept through him.
The train left the station. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. He saw his reflection in the dark window and was surprised to see that he was neither a white woman nor a Mexican man.
She tried to remember––no, wait, he tried to remember what gran had once told him. “Find the place inside yourself that feels solid. The one that feels completely you. Say ‘This is Deshawn. This is me. This. Is. Jeopardy! Today’s contestants are an advertising copywriter, originally from San Francisco––‘“
Wait, no, that’s not what she said, she said “¡Oye, pequeño!” and then there was delicious food: steaming rice, black beans, pozole de pollo; Deshawn could almost smell the mouth-watering scents, reminding him of his backpacking trip across Europe when he first kissed his wife at that Mexican restaurant, or maybe a burrito stand––was that when he first kissed his wife? Or was it when he signed the deal with Sony? Someone must have ordered tacos to the boardroom.
Wait. Wait. Boardroom? Deshawn was 15. He was a high school sophomore. He was opening Tik Tok on his phone––no, he was playing Neuroblitz on his phone, watching the brainwaves go by, classifying the patterns, racking up bonus points, the game going Bling! Bling! in between the clackings of the subway. Then he heard these sounds slightly differently. Then again, slightly differently, as if from a different angle, through different ears. The ears of someone in front of him.
He heard a voice. Someone familiar.
“Bruh. Bruh. You good?” It was the cashier from the local McDonald’s.
The subway screeched into 135th street. “Uh.” Deshawn wiped the sweat from his forehead. “It’s my stop,” he mumbled.
Deshawn pressed himself against the doors. They slid open. He fell out onto the subway platform, then propped himself against a poster on the wall, hyperventilating. Feeling him, the other exiting passengers kept their distance. The floor of the platform was covered in sooty spots where people had spat their gum. He noticed the wrapper of a marshmallow brand that he scarfed down when he got anxious.
Then he felt a warm presence fill him. It was his gran. She smiled compassionately from a cloud in heaven. The clouds broke and white light shined down. Except that was impossible because Deshawn was still underground. The hallucination disappeared, but gran’s loving ease stayed with him.
Deshawn scratched the back of his neck. “Thanks, gran.”
He lifted himself off the wall to see the poster he’d been leaning against. It was ripped piece of cardboard where someone had scribbled wildly:
THE BACCHANAL
On summer solstice in streets near you
featuring
BURNING MAN ART CARS
A PARADE OF HEATHENS
CHAOS MAGIC LESSONS
FREE PSYCHEDELICS
ECSTATIC DANCE
WILD ANIMALS
PAGAN ORGIES
STOLEN FOOD
DMT ENTITIES
DIONYSUS
with musical acts by
INSANE CLOWN POSSE
DJ SCORPIO RISING
PROFESSOR TRUTH
GOGOL BORDELLO
PU$$Y RIOT
SLIPKNOT
6IX9INE
So this was the Bacchanal that they were talking about on his Discord. It looked like someone had somehow rounded up every band with a rowdy fan base all for one festival.
Deshawn’s watch beeped. 12:45pm. He could still be on time for fifth period if he walked fast. He left the station as something cackled in the back of his mind.
Next release: I haven’t decided yet!