It's the same every Sunday night. The looming dread of the slow-motion suicide of the morrow. In the office, the animals are free and the keepers caged. Joints of unreality are passed from one smiling, future-less being to another. Floating above the world in a corporate Christendom high, cybernetic organisms revolve the wheels of motion for better or worse, ever blindly forward. A three-piece freak's refuge, a prostitute's paradise for promotion, a universe without sun or stars, upon this meteor we ride to its final, inevitable conclusion. In God we mistrust.
Under the fluorescent sky I enter stage right. In the distance I see the ivory towers. We await the signal of white smoke and other mystic orders to guide us to the holy grail of Pyrrhic plastic profit. The galley slaves see not even this; advancement the surest sign of morality. The phone rings and my heart sinks to the bottom of a deep cold ocean.
"Hello, Tom. It's Vaselini. I need ask you favor. My lords need the project color-coded. It is vital to the well-being of the corporate."
No place on the globe is safe. My brain processes the heavy accent as I strain to translate the request because, after all, that's what I was put on this earth for. "You mean the project to have parallel lines intersect?"
"Yes, it's only one I work on needful."
Well, it's not the only one I work on needful! You expect me to keep track of everyone's projects? Fuck that and fuck this. "I can do that for you, Vaselini, but you'd have to give me a blow job first."
"You culturing is so strange! Just what is blow job, please?"
I strut down the gleaming hallway to her cube. "It's like this. First, get on your knees and open your mouth. Yes, that's it. You sure are understanding the American! Next, I will insert my penis until completion."
"How I know completion?"
"I trust your innate intelligence to know. That's the sort of faith I have in you!"
"Much the thanks!" After the swallowing she was not so grateful but still fearful to offend. "Actually, Tom, I'm not sure I can blow job for color coding. Could you in please anyway?"
"I guess. What a beating."
"Oh, thank the you! The lords need colors for understanding."
History will not speak well of us
I pass by the "Team Building Exercise" notice on the wall and smirk. They don't invite me anymore. It's where the person in front of you falls backwards and you're supposed to catch them. Both times I let them fall. Human Resourceless still gives me a dirty look every time I pass by. Aw hell, there's freaking Hayden in his cheerleading outfit waiting for me at my cave entrance.
"Hi, Tom! I just talked to the big bosses! Isn't that exciting! I know so many secrets! I'll be washing their cars later!"
"Damn, dude, you need some doggy downers."
"Big bosses are so smart! We've decided to make the parallel lines both blue and red at the same time! I just need you to tell me one thing first: what colors are blue and red?!"
In a moment of weak human impulse I slip back into the real world. "Blue and red together make purple. So you're saying you want purple."
"OK, great! But how can we make them be blue and red at the same time instead?!"
Kicked in the nuts again for acknowledging reality. I drew two black lines on some paper. "See, this one is red and this one is blue. We can make this work."
"Awesome! Only they both look the same color to me!"
"What? You can't tell the difference?"
"Haha! Of course I can! I'll just have to explain it to the big bosses!."
"You know, Hayden, if we lived in a world based on self-respect you'd look like a complete idiot right now."
"I know! Isn't this the greatest place ever?"
Hayden skipped away practicing a new cheer sure to cheer. I peer out around me at the beasts so confidantly unaware, seeking only the task ahead of them and nothing else. For them, this is The Way, a religion of high priests and low morals. I walk in a desert of mutual fiction, searching for crumbs of reality. I hear sounds of despair coming from Gina's office hole and dare to dream of hope.
"What a stupid project!" she spits in disgust. "Why are we wasting our time with this idiotic pursuit of having parallel lines intersect? We're an IT department, not magicians. This is absurd!"
"Hear! Hear!" I applaud. "Sometimes I think they consider reality the enemy. Other times I know it."
"I just want to be a productive person. Work is noble! This is how -" Gina was interrupted by a ringing phone. "Yes...Oh, of course!...I'm excited too. We'll be the first company to ever make parallel lines intersect. Quite the coup...I most certainly will take over the lead. I'm grateful to have more responsibility."
So Jesus was wrong. You can serve two masters here in the anti-world. When Gina hung up the phone I returned to my previous slouch of hopelessness. "Tom, I hear you're in charge of color-coding. I'm expecting you to come through for us. None of your usual attitude!"
"Don't worry. This work gives my life meaning."
"Way to go!"
I wander back to my defeated cave having learned my lesson daring to have hope. I stare at the monitor, arms folded, fucked and furious. Oh sure, I can come up with some bullshit that they will define as "success" to keep the party going. Their plush homes and new cars and carefully scrubbed children keep them ensconced in a bubble of seething rage knowing one day it must burst. No one cares about anything but staying in the bubble and delaying the day of reckoning. Those outside the bubble will just have to fend for themselves, live or die.
Fog enters my brain. Why care about anything? What is there to fight for? I too must stay in the bubble to eat. But I can't let these insanitists define reality for me. Where is the way out? Is God going to wait until we're all dead? I'm so tired of this mockery of reason. I stagger along hazed and defused (like I get to be every afternoon) to the meeting room to hear the state of our disunion.
Instant Section 8*. That's my greatest fear. At some point I'll finally slip, forget where I am, and let my true feeling show. The holographic image I must project in these public meetings takes an enormous amount of energy. I've actually laid my head down on the table in exhaustion before, having to claim illness. I place myself in the most anonymous spot possible.
The meeting is an insomniac's solution. Speaker keeps droning on, starting and stopping, never clear what he's saying, a spreadsheet of lines and numbers signifying nothing behind him. I start slipping, slipping, slipping...I cocoon myself in the part of me that insists life has meaning on this planet despite a complete lack of evidence. Boredom being the devil's workshop, I whip out my member in an effort to remain interested in life. I don't know how long it was out before I realized my faux pas and hastily stuffed it back in. Luckily no one noticed.
Later, on my drive home, I remember the security camera in the room's ceiling. Did it see my indiscretion?? I'm fucked for sure if it did! I'll be thrown out of the bubble, exposed in every sense of the word. What can I do? Not a fucking thing, like always! How can this not be the time of tribulation when all paths lead to death? I can't believe I'm in this mess, this web of torment. End the world! End the world and all that's in it! It was indeed a just God who did bring the flood.
* Section 8 military discharge for being mentally unfit. "Instant Section 8" refers to a phrase in "Full Metal jacket" describing the scene of a soldier who became a chronic masturbator. When sent for evaluation, he masturbated in the waiting room, an "instant Section 8".
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