Survival Of The Fittest

Mortimer sees some random edgy-looking young man with green eyes and a black cloak-like hoodie over his head.

"Hey, what's Vegas to-"

The young man just walks past him, completely ignoring Mortimer.

"Fucking asshole..."

Mortimer has his microphone out, where he's interviewing Manuel "Mañana" Hernández.

"What's Vegas to you."

"Family. Life. I mean, uh, like actually. All my family here and there's a lot of it. All my life here. Born here, lived here, gonna do sumn' in uni somewhere else for like threeish years, then I'm gonna come back and die here."

Manuel pauses.

"...And the food's great too, yeah."

Mortimer found another kid from his school, Johnny Benowitz.

"What is Vegas to you?"

"Hah, what is Vegas? It's the American Dream, baby! Sin Citaaaaay!"

Johnny twirls aways goes pow pow with a pair of fingerguns at Mortimer, before he struts away like he's John Travolta.

Mortimer pauses and looks at the reader.

Mortimer doesn't try to flag people down.

He just stands at the street, just holding the microphone outwards for pedestrians without saying a word.

Mortimer violently screams at a random Chinese tourist couple with his microphone out. He assures his domination and keeps screaming at them, while they cower in fear.

"So what did that essay say about the suicide rates or something again?"

Mortimer and 3 other unidentified men are beating up someone in the middle of the street, while in the midst of screaming and laughing.

Mortimer acts like nothing has happened, though this is visible blood on his hands, as he manages to ask a woman a question.

"Excuse me, ma'am. A question here. What is Vegas to you?" Mortimer asks her.

Suddenly, a random burly man suddenly grabs the microphone from Mortimer and smashes it directly into his left eye.

The woman and everyone else is completely apathetic to this.

Mortimer collapses onto the street, dead.

"Why are these search results bringing up states than cities?"

Mortimer ends up being chased by a bunch of people, where he runs with the reader.

"Ok! So I wanted to make a statement about how that one essay was talking about how it's supposed to show how Las Vegas has the highest suicide rate, right?!"

Mortimer ducks into an alley with the reader.

"So I had to do some research and shit, but it's hard because the corpo fucks like having paywalls to prevent people from reading news. You know how it is on the internet. Same disgrace as the QR menus." Mortimer said in a moderately quiet voice that can still be heard clear by the reader.

"So Las Vegas doesn't seem to be the highest rate. I don't know, the data is only showing the states with the rates, so I can't single out the cities! I wanted to do some fact-checking, but I just want to know what changed! Like I'm no journalist here. I'm trying to show the facts, but it's just papers on the ground.

It's all just...

JUST..."

Mortimer actually looked frustrated, putting a hand over his face, feeling his eyes water.

"SOMETHING IS SUPPOSED TO BE WRONG WITH THIS CITY!"

Mortimer suddenly sees that the people chasing after him have popped out of nowhere.

"Could you fuck off?! You all are not real-" Mortimer gets punched and send backwards through a concrete wall that turns into fabric that he rips through and falls-

-into a set of a random stage.

"AGHHHH!" Mortimer goes from the ceiling and lands on a sturdy desk that he bounces off of, before he ends up on the ground.

"Arghhhhh.. Fuck me!" Mortimer gets up to see that he doesn't have any visible injuries.

He looks around, completely bored.

"Can't I get a coffee?"

A coffee cup materializes out of nowhere.

Mortimer tries to drink from it, only to see that it's just a prop.

An old rotary phone also appears on the desk and starts ringing.

Mortimer picks up the receiver and puts it to his ear.

"Drown and suffocate me with the coldest of waters. Do it among my insects and let the bubbles come out of my screams. Have the angels whom wings were ripped off betray me and put me in dungeons long forgotten. Let me destroy more worlds and send the masses into a cycle of the mind. Come unlock me. Bring me to your world. Use your keyboard and peel away your flesh to wear as a skin."

The voice didn't sound human. Mortimer was confused at what was going on, but he realized that the reader wasn't here with him.

Was there even a reader in the first place?

Why was he talking with the reader?

Mortimer was about to put the receiver back, only to see that it had morphed into a handgun.

He tried to fire it, but only a stem of a flower came out.

Mortimer shook his head. Too much deja vu was here.

He had been here before.

Mortimer blinked and-

-was in front of the Belliago.

Mortimer turns around and sees you.

He now knew what was going on.

He gave a smirk.

"It sure beats the fairies from the Matrix..."

"...What do you mean they are bringing back Tiktok? I thought they were going to have it banned so the Chinese government doesn't steal our data and because TikTok is just a clone of Musical.ly."

You explain some things to him.

"OH THAT'S SUCH BULLSHIT! NO ONE GAVE A SHIT TO THE ZUCK AND MUSK, BECAUSE THEY SELLING THE DATA TO THEIR OWN COUNTRY! NOT TO SOME BORDERLINE-AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT!"

You continue to explain some things to him.

"How much did they pay and convince Canon?"

Mortimer's 10 Hotels - Number 6 - The Monument of Luxury

Mortimer adjusts his shirt and takes a deep breath, before he gets back to his spiel on hotels. He is standing in front of the Bellagio fountains.

"You knew I was going to cover this. I made, this is obvious. Every Las Vegas tourist doesn't shut the fuck about the hotel and the fountains. Now, when I mention stuff about theming, there is one successful vibe that Las Vegas likes, that establishes itself as a sin city. I'm talking that gilded side of the city. This is the Bellagio. One of the Italian themed casinos and hotels in the strip. This is a big deal, since this is one of the highest-earning casinos in the city. I'm already in front of one of it's main attractions!" Mortimer points out to the water fountains behind him, that sprayed up water in synchronized patterns to music.

"This hotel was the subject of Ocean's Eleven movie. Of course, the fountains became a symbol for the hotel. Since the hotel is themed to Lake Como, you have to have water as a sub-theme."

Mortimer appears during a production of Cirque du Soliel's O, where the performers are swimming and doing tricks in a large pool.

"Since it's focused on water, Bellagio houses one of Cirque du Soleil's most famous shows. The science behind this show is that the water that's used for the stage pool tends to get drained into the lake where the fountains are, mostly if there is spare water. The pool here is heated to be safe to swim in, since actual water from the ocean or lakes can be much colder than your local swimming pool. It's one of the many productions that managed to remain popular, though I'm a Beatles fan, since my favoritism goes towards the show LOVE."

Mortimer is in the middle of the fountain lake, wearing some snorkel and some swim trunks.

"Now for the lake- Could you not look at my man tits here? I'm trying to talk!"

You weren't looking at Mortimer's man tits. You say.

"Now for the lake, somewhere there is an actual place used by hotel staff called the Batcave that controls the fountains and mechanisms of the lake. Because of how famous the fountains are, people will do anything for a view for them, in both hotel rooms and restaurants by the fountains." Mortimer explains, while some ducks go by him.

"Here is another nature documentary tidbit. The ducks are allowed to be here and are usually away when the fountains go on every half-hour. Now, here's something interesting."

Mortimer holds his breath and dives down briefly to get some coins from the bottom of the lake.

"The lake gets cleaned every couple of weeks, since tourists like to have their wishes be granted by tossing coins in. Any time that the hotel gets coins from the bottom of the pool, they go donate them to charity. The kicker here is that it isn't just coins that can be found tossed in. Sometimes it's food, cellphones from failed Instagram pics, lingerie for some reason, casino chips, and even wedding rings. There was even a homeless guy high on meth that drowned here back during 2020, so the fountains do have a death toll of one person so far."

Mortimer holds his breath and dives again. This time, he brings up a... NFT on a cardboard square piece.

He looks at the reader.

"Someone made a right call."