SEASON: SPRING / YEAR: 2023 / PHOTOS: @tomhgn_ 

CHAPTER 1 - ADDICTED 

My business is failing, I mercilessly consume the profit, and the little money that comes out, I squander on cheap alcohol, gambling, and prostitutes. Unfortunately, I love it. Customers are becoming rarer and rarer, the stuff is no longer in fashion, replaced by social networks, television, and excessive advertising. People don't even have time to do drugs anymore. What a sadness. So today, I roam where the outcasts have made their home: the wasteland of Affenage. This no man's land where no one dares to venture, at the edge of the city, hosts more junkies per square meter than Harlem in the 70s. If there is one place where I can scrounge a few coins, it's here. I walk through this open-air dump incognito, to do my business without attracting too much attention, but my half-clean clothes and complete teeth quickly betray me, and I become a target for all the crack-heads around, the crowd closing in around me. The smell is nauseating, I see gaunt hands everywhere reaching out to search my pockets. I find myself trapped in this pool of junkies who are suffocating me little by little, when suddenly, a hand rests on my shoulder.

CHAPTER 2 - GENTLEMEN CLUB

Thrown backward, I cut through the crowd of homeless people at breakneck speed, my feet not even touching the ground. Without understanding how, I end up far from the crowd, sitting on the ground. Three tall figures emerge from the thick haze of smoke and pollution in the wasteland. They wear black suits a bit worn by time, James Bond style, but after he fought forty communists barehanded. Their freshly polished black shoes still show signs of wear. After exchanging words in private, they approach me: "What are you doing here?" I stand up, dust off my clothes, let a moment of silence hang before throwing them a little: "Are you cops?" The guys laugh like Sicilian mafiosos, then the tallest of the three replies: "We are the opposite of cops, we fight for freedom, we are the Gentlemen Club." I start wondering what Masonic mess I've fallen into, then another adds: "What are you doing so far from your perfect world that is waiting for you with open arms?" And damn, these guys are just crazies dressed like penguins: I explain my activity to them, tell them that in the city, the situation is complicated, that human beings disgust me, with their technology and addiction to digital and social networks. The three guys look at each other, look at me, and the tallest speaks again: "We can give meaning to your life, but for that, you will have to follow us."

CHAPTER 3 - UNDERGROUND

When one of the three rascals approaches a manhole to lift it, I start to wonder if going with them was such a good idea. The guy turns to me, then invites me to follow him. A small ladder plunges into the depths. I can't see the bottom, it's narrow, but I gather my courage and begin my descent into the darkness. I'm not naturally claustrophobic, but let's be honest, I'm literally shitting myself, and I sincerely wonder what I'll find down there. After 5 minutes of descent, I land in a rather dark and dusty room of about a hundred square meters. The smell is horrible, and one of the guys looks at me laughing: "Don't worry, you'll get used to it." I discover what surrounds me: cobwebs cover the damp walls, old neon lights flicker, a completely burnt Porsche 911 stands in the middle of the room. How did it end up here? Written in soot, I can clearly read on the door "Ready to live." At the back of the room, I see a heavy metal door with a code lock. After entering the combination, one of the guys opens the door for me, and what I discover far exceeds anything I could have imagined: a true underground city, the size of several football fields, teeming with thousands of people, houses as far as the eye can see made of pipes, metal... Everything is clean, far from a slum, it's a real organized metropolis.

CHAPTER 4 - TRAIN SURFING

I follow my guides through one of the narrow alleys of the underground city, I have the feeling that something is brewing. Hundreds of people are busy on state-of-the-art computers, lines of code scroll on the screens, the heat from the servers running at full capacity is unbearable. The guys explain to me that they are going to change the world, that they are working on a secret project that will revolutionize society, and that they need soldiers to bring down the system. But they don't dwell on the subject any longer, and the tour continues. They lead me above a subway train, the one from the "city above." One of the guys looks at me with a slight smile and says, "Now, let's see if you have the guts." The ground starts to vibrate, the subway approaches, passes in front of us, then, in a burst of madness, one of the guys jumps onto the roof of a car. Without having time to understand what is happening, a hand pushes me in the back, and I launch myself in turn. I roll on the subway moving at full speed, grab onto whatever I can to slow my run. I am terrified for the first 5 seconds, then gradually, I crouch on the car, hair in the wind, and start to enjoy the moment. The sensation reminds me of my youth racing down the downhills of San Francisco on a skateboard: it's awesome. When the car slows down, one of the guys jumps onto a platform on the right. A bit disappointed that the ride ends so quickly, I follow him, already looking forward to the next session.

CHAPTER 5 - HELL'S EDUCATION

The room is dark and gloomy, it feels like a satanic cult. Hundreds of children recite texts by heart, energized by a guru dressed like a Finnish metal singer, all barely lit by a few candles. It's creepy. My excitement about this new adventure diminishes. One of the guys looks at me and understands from my face that I need explanations: "Don't worry, it's a mandatory step, we need to accustom our younger generations to the violence and vices of human beings. They must accept them, understand them, and control them. The people above were in denial, everything was sugar-coated, beautiful and radiant." He explains to me that their educational system is based on learning about human sins, with the 7 deadly sins being extensively studied. The idea was to instill our deviations in the young so they would be aware of their weaknesses and the obstacles they would encounter in life: acceptance versus denial, essential for them in building the New World. I was skeptical: at that moment, it mostly looked like a pedophile rite. Well, after all, the surface educational system encouraged the young to take selfies and become influencers, it couldn't be worse. The visit continues, and I will finally be informed about what is really going on in the city's basements.

CHAPTER 6 - TITS ATTACK

I arrive in a conference room that looks like the White House crisis cell. About ten screens overlook a large meeting table equipped with microphones. I am thoroughly searched, only the inside of my rectum is spared. Until now, I felt like I was in a science fiction movie, but the next few minutes would far exceed all my expectations. A guy approaches the table, rather scrawny, dressed normally, with broken glasses repaired with tape. A kind of Steve Jobs from the 70s, when he was still taking LSD. He looks like the leader of this insurrection. For more than 10 minutes, he describes to me the crisis situation the company is going through, with social networks and the general dumbing down of the population. He fervently explains that the only solution to put an end to all this would be a total Internet blackout, but since the system is complex, the network could not be cut off so easily. So the decision had to come from within; the system had to be forced to self-destruct. And for that, he had imagined a radical solution: a pornographic cyberattack. At these words, it is hard to keep my seriousness and not imagine this little geek jerking off in front of Pornhub while devising his plan. He explains to me that screens around the world will broadcast porn movies on loop, like a meteor shower of breasts falling on cities across the globe. The government will have no choice but to cut off the Internet to eradicate the problem, then, after a certain period of anarchy, the ground will be fertile for the development of a new society.