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UpsideDownCake

  Jo was the bottle of Pepsi, and the sad, almost empty bottle on the bedstand was Jo.


  Jo Manson woke up to the blue and red logo of the Pepsi company, with the black liquid serving a good backdrop to paste Jo's eyes on the logo and nothing else. But that red, blue, and white ball has been seared permanently into the brains of every human and fish alive, that one might even question the point of existence of the black liquid at this point.

But one does not.

"Stop staring", Jo snapped at the Pepsi bottle, and came to a more vertical state of being. Jo was made of said black liquid at this point, from having too much (which is the exact right amount) of it. Jo was the bottle of Pepsi, and the sad, almost empty bottle on the bed stand was Jo.


Once at the sink, Jo opened own mouth, and fizzed, like any good can of soda. Jo looked at the toilet in the far corner with five stacked toilet seats.


Jo needed a toilet seat, and bought exactly one toilet seat. The tiny trackers (which are little eight legged creatures that are currently in the process of evolving into crabs), swiftly conveyed the information of said purchase to their data lords, who duly made note of Jo's newfound interest in toilet seats.


Jo was served targeted and tailored advertisements for more toilet seats. Many of them and many many more. Jo thought, 'I bought a toilet seat. Now I'm told I need more; many many more. Oh what the hell, keep 'em coming', and ordered five more. One wast lost in shipping, and now Jo is the proud owner of five toilet seats.


The entire South wall of Jo's apartment is a huge pane of one way glass, with a giant advertisement on the other side. Jo always looks at it and wonders, even fantasizes, of what the giant piece of glass is selling. It is one of the greatest mysteries of Jo's life. To actually see what is on it, Jo would have to go south after exiting the apartment building. But Jo works north, and eats north. So hasn't ever seen south.


The TV was watching Jo the entire time, and put on a show based on the interest it gauged from Jo's behavioral pattern and movements this morning, and current algorithmically generated trending topics.The show consisted mostly of unintelligible colour swatches slowly swirling around and churning. Jo was fizzy and bubbly, and neither did notice nor care.


Jo put on a grey shirt, a pair of bright fluorescent socks, tucked neatly and completely beneath the high lip of grey shoes and the hem of a pair of black pants, and a dull grey windbreaker (it was summer and windbreakers were in style).


Jo went outside and promptly turned north. The road signs were not visible in the hot white sunlight, but since luxottica was forced to shut down operations after social media finding out that they, as a company, were against individuals who identify as attack helicopters, sunglasses were not a thing you could get.


Jo hailed a taxi. Taxis were free now. En route, the taxi asked questions about Jo's professional life, personal life, sex life, and so on. The collected data was then anonymised and locally processed.


Jo got off, and walked towards the giant cuboidal concrete building, with shipping trucks full of boxes constantly leaving it. It looked like a giant cuboidal mother jellyfish giving birth to tiny cuboidal children, who were each, still, full of even smaller cuboidal grandchildren. A beautiful thing, nature is; Jo thought, and walked into the orifice labeled customer support. Jo started talking to the glass of the massive screen on one of the walls of the room, "Jo Manson. I lost my fifth toilet seat in shipping"

"What seems to be the problem?" The screen asked

"I lost my fifth toilet seat in shipping"

"I couldn't quite understand you."

"I lost my fifth toilet seat in shipping"

"May I recommend you an echo dot to play fifth toilet eat, by sipping?"

"I LOST MY FIFTH TOILET SEAT IN SHIPPING!"

The voice echoed back and forth for a solid three seconds at the flat concrete walls, firmly stating its absurdity.

At this point, the screen turned on, and asked to click the most suitable query:

  1. extremely satisfied with my purchase

  2. rate my latest purchase

  3. how do I bulk order my last purchase

  4. something else

  Jo clicked d), and was transferred to another room, and escorted by another, better chatbot assistant. The intricately plain walls helped in masking the passage of time.


After an unknown amount of time, Jo was stretched into a 2d plane, rolled into a tube of zero thickness, lit on fire at one end, and smoked by a strange bald person. Once Jo was released, and put back at the gate of the building, it was winter. Crop tops with trenchcoats were in fashion.


Jo went home and found it empty and freezing. There was a visible patina of dust over every surface. Having been recently turned into a surface, Jo understood the pain. The power and heating were cut because of micro-lapses in payment.

 Jo curled up on the couch and said out loud,

"AI is categorically bad and evil"

"We'll never get a colony on Mars before 2100"

"We should all start geoengineering NOW!"


Jo lied there, in the warmth of the blanket statements, and died.


Her dead body rested on the couch, exactly like her alive body.

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