“Harris,” he said. “Don’t lose them. Each one has a key. ey’ll get you in. Just make it to the party. It’s all over at midnight.” Easy for him, of course. He and the rest of the magazine team were already leaving for San Diego, before the convention was even over … but I couldn’t blame them. ere was hardly any reason to stick around Vegas, even for the “biggest night in cannabis.” As everyone else packed and headed for the exits, my two associates – caddies, really – stared at me with wild eyes. We hadn’t ex- pected this one last assignment, much less, one that began in ve hours. I’d already assumed there was nothing else to add to the rotten story of MJ BizCon 2025–other than consolatory footnotes. So condent were we that the feature had killed itself, that the three of us, only minutes before, had downed full “very strong” doses of “metocin” tablets
had our sunglasses… Cars came in one tunnel and le the other, both sides. A lady in yellow uniform told us to pick a destination. Encore? Resorts World? GPS was failing us here in the subterranean. We were a mile and half from our hotel, and yet the Hyperloop could only deliver us to other locations at least that far. Well, why not? I have an old friend who wisely calls this “ knowking yourself” – those times when you fuck yourself, and know that you’re fucking yourself in that moment, but choose to do it anyway . As the timer counted down, so too did our tolerance for this Wonka Factory holding cell. Everything, so straight and simple and modular – yet all lights and shadows zigzag- ging in imposing sine waves. Brighter, louder,
the dissonance grew. I felt compelled to bound back up the escalators and out of the mouth of civilization before it closed above us… but our car arrived. Our driver was in his late 50’s. Like us – interestingly – he donned sunglasses to drive the tunnels. It t; the Tesla's operating system was that of a small rocket, a dashboard of computer screens. e larg- est was split between vehicle status monitor, and (much larger) space dedicated to an ad for the “Power Lunch” at
In the September, 1977 So confident were we that the feature had killed itself, that the three of us, only minutes before, had downed full “very strong” doses of “meto- cin” tablets purchased from a guy named Judd over by the Advanced Nutrients trailer.
purchased from a guy named Judd over by the Advanced Nutrients trailer. To be fair, Judd’s operation seemed legit. e packages said Xüm, Beyond Mush- rooms . A bona de, unsched- uled, psilocybin “twin.” ey made it very easy to microdose all the way up to macrodose. We’d all macro- dosed. I couldn’t speak for the other two, but I was also 30
minutes deep into 100mg of hash tabs. Instinct now told me to nd a safe pocket to keep the tickets: It was nearly 4 o’clock on ursday aernoon, and we were about to get hammered beyond our control. Enjoy Your Stay. We pushed outside. December heat, nice sun aer a few dismal days… too many people in all directions. I don’t remember how we got there, but at some point one of us said, let's try the Tesla Loop. Why not, nally duck down into the huge wormhole we’d been skirting around all week? At least to escape the “Cow- boy Christmas” stampede spilling out from the other hall. ey all looked like they’d own in straight from the ranch in Scottsdale. Rolling down the LVCC Station escalator was a formal descent into madness, riding the assembly line at the candy factory, all sounds mashing into a reverberating buzz in this weird techno purgatory. Long rows of slow, cross-fading neon lights like a shiing rainbow added the martian touch. ank God, we still
Resorts World. We departed into a blank palette, driving down a long hose, a cardboard roll. Not the kind of place you’d want to be in a power out- age. No doors. No room on either side of the precisely Tesla-width road, no place to dash to safety aer a collision… these are things occur- ing to you as you zip around the blind curves, that if all this shut down at any moment, we’d be fucked. All we could do was trust the car. At least it had a driver. Racing 40mph felt like 80, especially with non-stop hypercolors fading into each other. Post Malone singing “Better Now”... this was Fortnite incarnate. e entire experience was clearly designed to optimize a ketamine trip. Just like an amusement park ride, you bullet straight towards a rugged cement wall, turning just in time, as other cars follow a return route mere inches away. We popped up, seemed to hover o the ground as we caught a view of the Fountainbleau, and were taken back under,
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