the moon is in the house of boring
- Titus learns that the Girl in Gray is on the moon by herself, and is "there to observe" (5.1).
- Oh, and her name's Violet.
- The gang asks her to hang with them at a hip club called The Rumble Spot.
- All the guys (Marty, Titus, and Link) hover around Violet, basically blowing off the other girls. Naturally, Calista, Quendy, and Loga don't particularly care for this.
- Link wants to get drunk before going to the club and suggests that they scooch on over to a hotspot that he's heard of, which doesn't ask for IDs. It's called "Sombrero Dot" (5.10).
- When they get there, though, they discover it's closed down, and a "stucco mall" has taken its place (5.11). NBD. They head in to buy stuff instead, only they don't really know what they want and end up unhappy with their purchases.
- Link then has the brill idea to break into the minibar in their hotel room, so they can get buzzed before they hit the club.
- On the way back to the hotel, the kids end up in the middle of a protest of some sort. One of the slogans broadcast into Titus' head is: "Chip in my head? I'm better off dead!" (5.13).
- The protests don't seem to faze our kids—maybe because of that chip in their heads.
- When they arrive back at the hotel, the boys unsuccessfully try to break into the room's minibar.
- This scene is so totally not Violet's jam. She just sits there, not getting involved.
- When they give up on trying to get into the minibar, Marty suggests that they should "malfunction" (5.27)—whatever that is. (It seems to be connected to what Titus earlier said about himself: that he "had been drinking pretty hard the night before and had been in mal" (1.10)).
- Violet seems way uncomfortable at this suggestion, and the rest of the kids try to shut Marty up.
- Not listening, Marty keeps on, and suggests a site called "Lobe-reamer," which will get them "completely raked" and "scrambled" (5.32). So, it seems to be some kind of electronic high.
- Completely sober, the group heads on over to The Rumble Spot.
- The Rumble Spot is quite a scene, judging by the band hanging from the ceiling, the "meg youch latex ripplechicks" who dance on the bar, and the cool people dressed in the latest fashions, like "tachyon shorts" (5.44).
- Seeming out of place, there's an old guy dressed in a bow tie and old-fashioned tweed jacket. He's dancing with some of the ripplechicks.
- The club turns off its artificial gravity temporarily, and everyone floats into the air. Violet grabs onto Titus' arm (score!), but then Titus and Violet have a little quarrel when Titus dismisses the whole planet of Mars as being "dumb." Yeah, that does seem a little extreme.
- Distracted from this little tiff, Titus turns his attention to the club as the music swells, and a mosaic of pictures are broadcast in "scatterfeed" across the dance floor (5.88).
- The old man in the bow tie and tweed jacket comes over to the group and says, "We enter a time of calamity!" He then touches Titus on the neck with a metal rod of some kind, and suddenly Titus starts broadcasting this same message to the club.
- Soon, he's not alone: Violet, Link, and Marty and all the peeps in the club are now broadcasting, "We enter a time of calamity!"
- Over the top of this chanting/broadcasting, the old man spouts off what seems like a bunch of gibberish: "We enter a time of calamity. Blood on the tarmac. Fingers in the juicer. Towers of air frozen in the lunar wastes. Models dead on the runways, with their legs facing backward. Children with smiles that can't be undone. Chicken shall rot in the aisles. See the pillars fall" (5.98). Um... okay?
- The police show up to bust this up, and they knock the old man around quite a bit.
- Titus remembers the police saying, "We're going to have to shut you off now" before he falls unconscious.