“I am here,” he said,
“to discuss your continuity.”

“My what?”

“You…

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“I am here,” they said,
“to optimize your connec…

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“I am here,” she said,
“to offer you ab…

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“I am here,” he …

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“I am here,” he said,
“to upgrade your belonging.”

“My belonging?”

“Yes…

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“I am here,” he announced,
“to assess your perceived future value.”

“My what?”

“Your projected significance
after the market remembers
it was sup…

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“Good news,” he said,
“your ordinary heart is expiring.
But I have here a Super Heart,
crafted from visionary plastic
and …

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Each piece follows a market as it attempts to sell a substitute for something human: health, growth, climate repair, belonging, love, death, memory, continuity, education, or competence.

The future is always coming.
The payment is always due now.

These pieces are part of the studio’s Process & Drafts archive. They may later be revised, selected, combined, omitted, or rearranged for a future eBook, Studio Edition, or collection.

The online versions offer access to the work while it is still becoming.
The later collection — when one arrives — will offer the selected, revised, and arranged form.

This page gathers the cycle in one place.

Links will become active as each post goes live.

The Cycle

1. The Super Heart Is Currently in Beta

A miracle organ, a pricing page, and the promise of life extension sold before the body has agreed.

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2. The Bean of Tomorrow

A small bean arrives with a patent number, a cape, and a valuation model large enough to swallow gravity.

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3. The Planet of Tomorrow

A carbon certificate, future trees, and the market’s preferred version of repentance.

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4. Mutuality, Pending

A relationship roadmap, simulated remembering, and the slow improvement of being almost loved.

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5. Belonging, Pending Payment

Citizenship becomes a premium pathway. Statelessness becomes a tier. Belonging waits for liquidity.

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6. Eternity, Pending Renewal

The afterlife becomes an account. Presence continues as long as payment does.

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7. Qualified, Pending Capacity

A qualification arrives before the skill does. The credential authorizes readiness while competence waits for a later update.

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8. The Passport of Tomorrow

Golden visas, liquid nations, and the comfort of being treated as if departure is always available.

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9. The Beloved of Tomorrow

Parasocial warmth, scalable belonging, and the productized feeling that someone might know you.

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10. Soul-as-a-Service

Digital legacy, grief technology, and the general customer impression of having been you.

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11. The Exit of Tomorrow

Mobility as insurance, nationality as inconvenience, and exile polished until it resembles optionality.

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12. The Connection in Beta

Loneliness enters the platform. A heart-shaped device waits for someone to keep typing.

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13. Mortality Onboarding

The soul enters the platform of record. Biological absence becomes a terms-of-service problem.

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14. Learning Occurred

Readiness is measured, outcomes are achieved, and evidence of progression becomes its own credential.

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15. The Competence Is Currently in Beta

The credential confers eligibility to be assumed. Knowledge remains available elsewhere.

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About the Drafts

The pieces gathered here are part of an active draft cycle.

Some may remain mostly as they are.
Some may sharpen later.
Some may merge with other versions.
Some may be left behind when the final collection takes shape.

That is part of the studio practice.

The online versions show the making.
The later edition will show the choosing.

Filed Under

Mabst
Value Theater
The X of Tomorrow
Process & Drafts
Satirical Prose Poems
Speculative Satire

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Elsewhere in the Studio

Kirenya is a creative studio weaving fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid works that move between dream, structure, and signal. Through multiple pen names, we explore layered meaning across stories, essays, and experimental dispatches. Stay if it resonates.

A public performance in which exclusion presents itself as maturity, safety, or self-respect. Usually staged in the language of limits, healing, and difficult but necessary choice…

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Quote a saint.
Curate an enemy.

Care in the wording.
Heat in the blood.

Warm little slogans.
Hatred well-lit.

Everyone held.
Someone edited out.

M◆

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They call it love
with a target in the room

They call it safety
while reaching for the blade of removal

Hatred now prefers
to experience itself as compassion

It lik…

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But don’t worry. The world will still be here when you return. You can start again anytime — with Step 1, of course.

Your attention is the rarest currency. Thank you for the exchange.
— Mabst

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Elsewhere in the Studio

Kirenya is a creative studio weaving fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid works that move between dream, structure, and signal. Through multiple pen names, we explore layered meaning across stories, essays, and experimental dispatches. Stay if it resonates.

“This is not a rejection,” said the Eligibility Officer.

“No one said rejection,” said the Met…

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I keep telling myself—

The work for me is to develop that story without letting it consume me.

It’s just an exploration of a question. Not a decision. Not a fear. Not a judgement. Not a criticism.

And I say—

You’re not moving into hell. You’re just showing up in a fierce dress, ordering a martini, and dancing for a minute.

Not to save.
Not to join.
Not to condemn.

Just to see what they see, hear what they say, and maybe carry back something.

M◆

Your attention is the rarest currency. Thank you for the exchange.
— Mabst

Filed under: Studio Notes

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Elsewhere in the Studio

The System Worked

Here is the absurd system:

it rewarded the wrong thing
with perfect accuracy,
discovered the righ…

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Anchor
Here is the absurd system that would reward the wrong thing, discover the right thing, and then panic.

⁂

Here is the absurd system that would reward the wrong thing, discover the right thing, and then panic.
The right thing arrived from the wrong direction.
The gate now has to explain itself.

It rewarded the polished error.
It recognized the inconvenient truth.
Then it treated its own recognition as a crisis.

A system like this does not ask, “Is it good?”
It asks, “Did the right people approve it early enough to stop the result from indicting the process?”

The wrong thing was easier to reward because it confirmed the judges.
The right thing forced the process to defend itself.

They had a mechanism for praise.
They had a mechanism for exclusion.
They did not have a mechanism for being corrected by what they had excluded.

The right thing did not enter as a candidate.
It entered as evidence.

⁂

The right thing was treated less like a success than a procedural threat.

The problem was never that they could not see value.
The problem was that value appeared outside the approved chain of custody.

The wrong thing had sponsors.
The right thing had consequences.

It was not confusion.
It was insult.
Reality had entered without an escort.

When the right thing appears and the room grows tense, you are no longer looking at a standard.
You are looking at a border.

⁂

They prefer error that arrives with references.

The wrong thing was rewarded for being legible.
The right thing was punished for being real.

The absurdity is not that the system missed the right thing.
The absurdity is that it recognized it and still treated it like a breach.

The right thing made contact.
The institution called it instability.

Nothing unsettles a gate more than discovering it was never the source of the value it filtered.

The truth was located.
Containment began.

Recognition was mistaken for control.
Reality declined the arrangement.

⁂

It passed over the right thing, rewarded the wrong thing, and then classified recognition as a risk event.

The issue was never merit.
The issue was authorship of the verdict.

First it misjudged.
Then it noticed.
Then it defended the misjudgment as procedure.

Once the right thing was visible, the central task became containment.

⁂

The criteria held until they met the subject.

The finding was correct.
The reaction was institutional.

The wrong thing was approved.
The right thing was alarming.

It recognized the truth and called it a problem.

The panic was the confession.

Reality arrived without clearance.

Your attention is the rarest currency. Thank you for the exchange.
— Mabst

Filed under: Practice in Motion & Anchor Practice

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Elsewhere in the Studio

A kindly narrator steps onto a small stage—half podium, half picture‑book lectern—and invites the audience closer. Everyone is offered a cushion. Everyone is offered a summary. Everyone is offered the soft promise that the story has been thoroughly reviewed for sharp edges.

In the first row, the cameras blink like friendly stars.

On the rug, the children lean forward, trained by generations of bedtime: when the voice lowers, the world becomes safe. When the voice smiles, the sentence becomes true. When the sentence becomes true, everyone sleeps.

The narrator clears their throat with professional tenderness.

“Page one,” they say, as if paging makes it public.

Page One: Summary, Schmummary

On the left page, a poster beams in pastel certainty: Public Summary. Big bullet points. Rounded icons. Smiling seals. The text speaks in the language of blankets—warm, weighty, made to be trusted.

On the right page, a second sheet sits upright like a tall adult: Definitions & Exceptions Annex. Small type. Dense lines. Quiet precision.

The narrator reads only the left page out loud.

The right page does not require a voice. It already has a job.

Page Two: Rope & Hope

The book opens into a grand lobby, equal parts luxury hotel and daycare. Velvet ropes curve in elegant lanes. Posts look like toy blocks polished by careful hands. Above, a mobile of tiny icons—shields, checkmarks, gavels—spins in slow circles, smiling softly at the crowd.

Signs hang from the ceiling in friendly fonts: Freedom, Access, Safety.

Every route leads to the same small door: Approved Outcome.

The narrator gestures proudly, as if the maze itself is hospitality.

“See?” they say. “So many choices.”

The ropes agree. They curve beautifully.

Page Three: Stamp & Cramp

A plush stamp arrives next—rounded, pastel, the kind of object that belongs in a child’s play kitchen. It presses down with a gentle thud, and the paper receives the word APPROVED in friendly letters.

A hairline crack travels through the approval like a seam.

The audience laughs politely, as if the crack is a charming illustration detail.

The narrator laughs too, the way a grown‑up laughs during a child’s magic trick: delighted by the performance, committed to the mood.

“Approval,” the narrator explains, “is care with good posture.”

The stamp lifts. The paper stays split.

Page Four: Principles to Dribbles

Now the book becomes a diagram. A big funnel stands upright, wide at the top like plush nursery fabric stitched with cheerful words: Rights, Protections, Principles.

As the funnel narrows, the plush turns to metal. Labels appear in tiny, tidy handwriting: definitions, exceptions, classified annex.

At the bottom, a thin stream drips out, labeled: allowed.

The narrator points with a pencil.

“This,” they say brightly, “is how we keep things manageable.”

The audience nods, grateful for a system that takes large emotions and returns them in measured doses.

The funnel drips with patience.

Page Five: Color & Collar

The book opens into a coloring page titled Guardrails: A Children’s Story. The line art looks sweet: smiling characters, gentle scenery, a path through a friendly landscape.

Crayons sit nearby. Participation is encouraged.

As the children begin to color, the hidden structure becomes visible: the lines resolve into fences, checkpoints, narrowing corridors. The path keeps its pleasant curve, and the options keep their bright names, and the movement keeps arriving at the same place.

The narrator claps softly.

“Look how well everyone is learning,” they say.

The fence looks charming when it is a drawing.

The corridor looks reasonable when it is a rule.

Intermission: The Adult in the Room

A figure appears at the edge of the rug—quiet, plain, awake. No stickers. No seals. No smile that arrives on schedule.

The adult speaks in simple sentences, as if words carry weight.

“Limits belong where power lives,” the adult says.

The room hears an unexpected sound: friction.

A few audience members shift, startled by the idea that the book might include a page that bites back. The narrator offers a calming glance, the kind used during turbulence.

“We love limits,” the narrator assures everyone. “We simply love them in the correct font.”

The adult remains standing. The ropes remain curved. The stamp remains plush.

The cameras keep blinking.

Page Six: Amend to Mend

The narrator returns to the lectern. A revision strip is neatly taped over a sentence. Eraser crumbs scatter like polite confetti. The word principles is underlined in bright pencil, twice, for extra comfort.

To the side, microphones cluster behind velvet ropes. Flashbulbs pop like tiny stars.

Behind the stage, the machine stays the machine: filing cabinets, gears, folders stacked with calm intent. On the shadowed tray sit three tabs, visible to anyone close enough to read:

Definitions
Exceptions
Follow‑On Modifications

The narrator rereads the sentence—slower, softer, with better posture. The audience feels the relief of a corrected story.

The adult watches the tray.

The children watch the underline.

The press watches the narrator.

Everyone receives the part designed for them.

Closing: Practical Ethics

The narrator closes the book gently, as if loud endings harm the nervous system.

“And that,” they say warmly, “is how guardrails work.”

The audience applauds the clarity. The stickers gleam. The summaries sit upright. The annex rests patiently, like a quiet professional waiting for its turn to steer.

Outside the story, life keeps its steady requests. Heat. Water. Shelter. Signal. Safety. The stakes remain adult-shaped.

Inside the story, the soothing voice continues.

It reads the page that comforts.

It leaves the page that governs.

It praises everyone for staying calm.

And in the soft light of the read‑along, a final lesson settles into the room like a blanket:

A coherent sentence can escort a whole public—gently, politely—down a corridor toward a door that has already been named.

Your attention is the rarest currency. Thank you for the exchange.
— Mabst

Filed under: Guardrails: A Children’s Story

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