Value Theater is a Mabst cycle of satirical prose poems about the products, promises, invoices, and future-facing rituals of modern commerce.
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.
2. The Bean of Tomorrow
A small bean arrives with a patent number, a cape, and a valuation model large enough to swallow gravity.
Read →
3. The Planet of Tomorrow
A carbon certificate, future trees, and the market’s preferred version of repentance.
Read →
4. Mutuality, Pending
A relationship roadmap, simulated remembering, and the slow improvement of being almost loved.
Read →
5. Belonging, Pending Payment
Citizenship becomes a premium pathway. Statelessness becomes a tier. Belonging waits for liquidity.
Read →
6. Eternity, Pending Renewal
The afterlife becomes an account. Presence continues as long as payment does.
Read →
7. Qualified, Pending Capacity
A qualification arrives before the skill does. The credential authorizes readiness while competence waits for a later update.
Read →
8. The Passport of Tomorrow
Golden visas, liquid nations, and the comfort of being treated as if departure is always available.
Read →
9. The Beloved of Tomorrow
Parasocial warmth, scalable belonging, and the productized feeling that someone might know you.
Read →
10. Soul-as-a-Service
Digital legacy, grief technology, and the general customer impression of having been you.
Read →
11. The Exit of Tomorrow
Mobility as insurance, nationality as inconvenience, and exile polished until it resembles optionality.
Read →
12. The Connection in Beta
Loneliness enters the platform. A heart-shaped device waits for someone to keep typing.
Read →
13. Mortality Onboarding
The soul enters the platform of record. Biological absence becomes a terms-of-service problem.
Read →
14. Learning Occurred
Readiness is measured, outcomes are achieved, and evidence of progression becomes its own credential.
Read →
15. The Competence Is Currently in Beta
The credential confers eligibility to be assumed. Knowledge remains available elsewhere.
Read →
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
Explore more:
Home • Archive • Guide • Rights
Makari • Stomari • Mabst • Panoma
Video • Audio • Gallery • Catalog
Creative practice. Art lives here.
Continue with Mabst
Elsewhere in the Studio
Shadow Roses
The rose, in its own shadow. A familiar form returned through ink, silhouette, surface, and light, asking what remains when color withdraws.
The Security Guard of the Gate
I arrived with a message buffered in my body—warm data, ready for upload.
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.