Cioran
06-10-2013, 04:04 PM
Opening of a novella, Ant Farm.
Ant Farm
Nightmares. In one, Scott was again riding the New York City subways, which he had not done in many years. There were no other riders on any of the trains, and the conductors of the trains were headless. They carried their heads in the crooks of their elbows.
He rode to the end of the 6 line, the Brooklyn Bridge stop, but there were no longer exits there. NO EXIT, the signs said. Then he rode uptown to the Bronx, where he was confronted with the same signs. NO EXIT. He rode back down to Grand Central NO EXIT and transferred to the shuttle to Times Square NO EXIT. He was still the only rider. He rode the lines forever NO EXIT. Crisscrossing chains threaded with cobwebs and dotted with padlocks covered the rusted turnstiles, barring the path to the defunct stairs to above, whatever above was, now.
In another dream he was trapped in a public restroom at Starbucks. He rattled the doorknob but the door would not budge. He took a piss. When he flushed the toilet it came alive, the water leaping upward in the shape of hands that grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, avid to suck him down into the toilet's maw. His shirt was torn from his back by the toilet monster until he managed to slam down the lid and stay the ravenous gurgling tide. The toilet backed up then, and from under the lid frothed urine and feces mixed with blood. He banged on the door, but it would not open.
Another: He was with Marge, in bed in the morning. The dawn sun blossomed in the big French windows. She stirred in his arms. The sunlight gleamed in her blonde hair, torching it. Her mane was spun gold. She was lying next to him but facing away from him, and he clung to her, and pulled her around and over to see her face. Put your head on my shoulder, baby … words I want to hear, tell me … tell me that you love me, too. But when he turned her over, she had no head. Just the golden scalp, flaring in the sunlight. Like a pelt. Bad as the others were, that was the recurring dream that always made him wake up screaming until he thought that his lungs would explode.
#
Marjorie was startled by the vending machine not far from her work station. It looked different.
She rose from her seat, and walked with trepidation toward it. She bent forward and cupped her hands over her eyes, peering through the machine's plate-glass exterior. It had been restocked. She was shocked. Prior to today, the contents of the machine had gone untouched for a long time, probably years. The cobwebs inside were gone, and everything looked spic-and-span under frosty fluorescent lighting.
Inside was her favorite snack: mixed raisins and salted nuts. The distant memory of that taste treat made her mouth water.
She rummaged around her desk and to her amazement she found spare change. She barely recognized the small silver disks with the pictures of long-dead presidents embossed upon them.
With a trembling hand she inserted the coins into the slot, and heard them clatter down. She pressed the numbered buttons for the treat, and amazingly, the lever prodded a stubbornly resistant bag forward and it grudgingly fell to the dispenser at the bottom. She pushed open the glass panel and snatched up the bag. Suddenly ravenous, she tore it open and began lifting it to her lips. When she did, mixed cockroaches and squirming maggots tumbled out. They spilled to the floor, where the roaches darted frantically about about while the maggots writhed like blobs of quicksilver.
She gagged, cursed, and flung the bag across the room. She retched into her hands, bile streaming from her lips. Staggered, she slumped down at her desk. She tore at her hair, and shrieked. That was when she was Shrieked.
A piercing scream, not hers, rose above the deserted cubicle warrens.
She jolted upright in her chair, and stared transfixed at the light above her computer monitor. Heretofore a bland blue, it now burned bright red.
She clapped her hands over her ears, grimacing until the ear-shattering noise suddenly broke off, ten seconds after it came on. A dead silence except for the boom of her heart.
She broke down sobbing, her head collapsing on her crossed arms on the desk in front of her.
After a long time, she composed herself sufficiently to raise her head. The red light burned implacably, pitilessly.
"No," she said.
Yes, the light redly replied.
Eventually she undertook the long, lonely trek toward the Hall of Elevators, where a car with her name on it would whisk her to the 70th floor and the Department of Discipline, over which George Van Data presided like a hanging judge in a kangaroo court. As she went, her knees watery with fear, bland, hortatory slogans, phrases or just isolated words scrolled continuously in giant, pixellated lettering up and down the walls and across the ceiling: “IDEATE,” one said. Another exhorted, “WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER.” Another: “PRODUCTIVITY IS JOB ONE.”
She ransacked her memory, but could think of no gap in her job performance. Her evaluations, year in and year out, had been exceptional. She was good at what she did; damned good as a matter of fact: changing the toner cartridge on the Canon imageRUNNER 1023N. That was her job.
So, what was the problem? Why had she been Shrieked?
Maybe the problem -- and Eli in Customer Service had mentioned this, just a week before he had been Shrieked and then downsized -- was that Manhattan Mammoth's expectations of its human resources were “mutating” and that no one could meet them any longer. The bar had been set too high.
Marjorie had thought (though she would never say this out loud) that lately the building’s job requirements had seemed, well, senseless. Like the day that it had made her change the Canon's toner cartridge 1,000 times in a row.
She now stood before the elevators as before God on Judgment Day, her palms slick with sweat and her heart hammering with fear. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
Still, she felt residual hope. Before the Change, Mr. Van Data –- George -- had been her friend, even her mentor.
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Marge,” George used to say before his promotion, when he still acted like -- still was -- a human being. “Keep your head, while others all about you are losing theirs. That’s the key to making it in the corporate world.”
Her name had appeared in lights above her designated car, and when it arrived the doors flew open with a BANG that made her heart jump. The elevators were punctilious and proactive, giving their passengers precisely five seconds to hustle aboard. After that the doors began shutting, and if you were between them, you had to push -- push hard -- to force them apart. People called the doors “Jaws,” and were scared of them. Terrified, actually. From time to time, those doors drew blood.
She scampered inside, beating Jaws by about a second. They violently slammed shut behind her, nearly snagging the swirl of her skirt. She heard a pleasant ping sound, followed by a soothing neuter voice, shading toward the feminine, like that of a perky airline stewardess: “Going up!” The car then shot upward with such breakneck speed that she could feel her stomach sinking toward her knees.
#
Scott was riding the subway again. He arrived in the Battery. The doors flicked open, and he left the empty car, the derelict train. The doors flicked shut. As the train with the headless conductor pulled out of the station, he saw the weathered poster on the wall, the paper in shreds and hanging down like dog tongues. MANHATTAN MAMMOTH, the old sign said, under the photo of the soaring organic tower, one mile high and growing. Then he jerked erect in his seat. He was sweating and shaking. A flood of fluorescence momentarily blinded him. He undid the knot of his tie and loosened his collar. He looked about in confusion, until his thoughts crystallized. My God, he thought, did I drift off for a moment or two? Has my productivity been impeded?
He looked at the light above his computer monitor. It glowed a bland blue.
He heaved a sigh of relief.
Earlier in his broken dreams, he had again felt Marge's soft flesh. Now he felt the hard metal and vinyl of the ergonomic chair that Manhattan Mammoth had thoughtfully provided him, even though Scott had no ergonomic needs.
The chair doubled as a toilet. To his left was his downtime pod, in which he nocturnally entered sleep mode, and to his right was a small shower stall, to purge himself of the analog equivalent of viruses, Trojans and spam. He also had a closet cubicle that housed the software of his wardrobe. From above, fluorescent lights shone down continuously, accompanied by a faint crackling and hissing noise. They did not go off even at night, or whatever passed for night, now. Scott had wake cycles and sleep cycles, and that was all he knew anymore.
He gazed at his computer monitor, and the filmy, mucous-filled bloodshot eye mashed against the other side of it gazed unblinkingly back at him.
He depressed a lever, and a small tray of The Happy shot out of a slot in his computer’s CPU. He downloaded the spongy gray energy condensate, which was laced with mood enhancers. A big, goofy grin sprawled across his face as he experienced a thrilling dopamine surge. Suddenly, he liked being inside Manhattan Mammoth, also known as Manhattan Mile High and the Smart Building. He liked being inside it 24/7/365. Sure, he did.
Hell, who didn’t?
We live to work.
Ant Farm
Nightmares. In one, Scott was again riding the New York City subways, which he had not done in many years. There were no other riders on any of the trains, and the conductors of the trains were headless. They carried their heads in the crooks of their elbows.
He rode to the end of the 6 line, the Brooklyn Bridge stop, but there were no longer exits there. NO EXIT, the signs said. Then he rode uptown to the Bronx, where he was confronted with the same signs. NO EXIT. He rode back down to Grand Central NO EXIT and transferred to the shuttle to Times Square NO EXIT. He was still the only rider. He rode the lines forever NO EXIT. Crisscrossing chains threaded with cobwebs and dotted with padlocks covered the rusted turnstiles, barring the path to the defunct stairs to above, whatever above was, now.
In another dream he was trapped in a public restroom at Starbucks. He rattled the doorknob but the door would not budge. He took a piss. When he flushed the toilet it came alive, the water leaping upward in the shape of hands that grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, avid to suck him down into the toilet's maw. His shirt was torn from his back by the toilet monster until he managed to slam down the lid and stay the ravenous gurgling tide. The toilet backed up then, and from under the lid frothed urine and feces mixed with blood. He banged on the door, but it would not open.
Another: He was with Marge, in bed in the morning. The dawn sun blossomed in the big French windows. She stirred in his arms. The sunlight gleamed in her blonde hair, torching it. Her mane was spun gold. She was lying next to him but facing away from him, and he clung to her, and pulled her around and over to see her face. Put your head on my shoulder, baby … words I want to hear, tell me … tell me that you love me, too. But when he turned her over, she had no head. Just the golden scalp, flaring in the sunlight. Like a pelt. Bad as the others were, that was the recurring dream that always made him wake up screaming until he thought that his lungs would explode.
#
Marjorie was startled by the vending machine not far from her work station. It looked different.
She rose from her seat, and walked with trepidation toward it. She bent forward and cupped her hands over her eyes, peering through the machine's plate-glass exterior. It had been restocked. She was shocked. Prior to today, the contents of the machine had gone untouched for a long time, probably years. The cobwebs inside were gone, and everything looked spic-and-span under frosty fluorescent lighting.
Inside was her favorite snack: mixed raisins and salted nuts. The distant memory of that taste treat made her mouth water.
She rummaged around her desk and to her amazement she found spare change. She barely recognized the small silver disks with the pictures of long-dead presidents embossed upon them.
With a trembling hand she inserted the coins into the slot, and heard them clatter down. She pressed the numbered buttons for the treat, and amazingly, the lever prodded a stubbornly resistant bag forward and it grudgingly fell to the dispenser at the bottom. She pushed open the glass panel and snatched up the bag. Suddenly ravenous, she tore it open and began lifting it to her lips. When she did, mixed cockroaches and squirming maggots tumbled out. They spilled to the floor, where the roaches darted frantically about about while the maggots writhed like blobs of quicksilver.
She gagged, cursed, and flung the bag across the room. She retched into her hands, bile streaming from her lips. Staggered, she slumped down at her desk. She tore at her hair, and shrieked. That was when she was Shrieked.
A piercing scream, not hers, rose above the deserted cubicle warrens.
She jolted upright in her chair, and stared transfixed at the light above her computer monitor. Heretofore a bland blue, it now burned bright red.
She clapped her hands over her ears, grimacing until the ear-shattering noise suddenly broke off, ten seconds after it came on. A dead silence except for the boom of her heart.
She broke down sobbing, her head collapsing on her crossed arms on the desk in front of her.
After a long time, she composed herself sufficiently to raise her head. The red light burned implacably, pitilessly.
"No," she said.
Yes, the light redly replied.
Eventually she undertook the long, lonely trek toward the Hall of Elevators, where a car with her name on it would whisk her to the 70th floor and the Department of Discipline, over which George Van Data presided like a hanging judge in a kangaroo court. As she went, her knees watery with fear, bland, hortatory slogans, phrases or just isolated words scrolled continuously in giant, pixellated lettering up and down the walls and across the ceiling: “IDEATE,” one said. Another exhorted, “WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER.” Another: “PRODUCTIVITY IS JOB ONE.”
She ransacked her memory, but could think of no gap in her job performance. Her evaluations, year in and year out, had been exceptional. She was good at what she did; damned good as a matter of fact: changing the toner cartridge on the Canon imageRUNNER 1023N. That was her job.
So, what was the problem? Why had she been Shrieked?
Maybe the problem -- and Eli in Customer Service had mentioned this, just a week before he had been Shrieked and then downsized -- was that Manhattan Mammoth's expectations of its human resources were “mutating” and that no one could meet them any longer. The bar had been set too high.
Marjorie had thought (though she would never say this out loud) that lately the building’s job requirements had seemed, well, senseless. Like the day that it had made her change the Canon's toner cartridge 1,000 times in a row.
She now stood before the elevators as before God on Judgment Day, her palms slick with sweat and her heart hammering with fear. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
Still, she felt residual hope. Before the Change, Mr. Van Data –- George -- had been her friend, even her mentor.
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Marge,” George used to say before his promotion, when he still acted like -- still was -- a human being. “Keep your head, while others all about you are losing theirs. That’s the key to making it in the corporate world.”
Her name had appeared in lights above her designated car, and when it arrived the doors flew open with a BANG that made her heart jump. The elevators were punctilious and proactive, giving their passengers precisely five seconds to hustle aboard. After that the doors began shutting, and if you were between them, you had to push -- push hard -- to force them apart. People called the doors “Jaws,” and were scared of them. Terrified, actually. From time to time, those doors drew blood.
She scampered inside, beating Jaws by about a second. They violently slammed shut behind her, nearly snagging the swirl of her skirt. She heard a pleasant ping sound, followed by a soothing neuter voice, shading toward the feminine, like that of a perky airline stewardess: “Going up!” The car then shot upward with such breakneck speed that she could feel her stomach sinking toward her knees.
#
Scott was riding the subway again. He arrived in the Battery. The doors flicked open, and he left the empty car, the derelict train. The doors flicked shut. As the train with the headless conductor pulled out of the station, he saw the weathered poster on the wall, the paper in shreds and hanging down like dog tongues. MANHATTAN MAMMOTH, the old sign said, under the photo of the soaring organic tower, one mile high and growing. Then he jerked erect in his seat. He was sweating and shaking. A flood of fluorescence momentarily blinded him. He undid the knot of his tie and loosened his collar. He looked about in confusion, until his thoughts crystallized. My God, he thought, did I drift off for a moment or two? Has my productivity been impeded?
He looked at the light above his computer monitor. It glowed a bland blue.
He heaved a sigh of relief.
Earlier in his broken dreams, he had again felt Marge's soft flesh. Now he felt the hard metal and vinyl of the ergonomic chair that Manhattan Mammoth had thoughtfully provided him, even though Scott had no ergonomic needs.
The chair doubled as a toilet. To his left was his downtime pod, in which he nocturnally entered sleep mode, and to his right was a small shower stall, to purge himself of the analog equivalent of viruses, Trojans and spam. He also had a closet cubicle that housed the software of his wardrobe. From above, fluorescent lights shone down continuously, accompanied by a faint crackling and hissing noise. They did not go off even at night, or whatever passed for night, now. Scott had wake cycles and sleep cycles, and that was all he knew anymore.
He gazed at his computer monitor, and the filmy, mucous-filled bloodshot eye mashed against the other side of it gazed unblinkingly back at him.
He depressed a lever, and a small tray of The Happy shot out of a slot in his computer’s CPU. He downloaded the spongy gray energy condensate, which was laced with mood enhancers. A big, goofy grin sprawled across his face as he experienced a thrilling dopamine surge. Suddenly, he liked being inside Manhattan Mammoth, also known as Manhattan Mile High and the Smart Building. He liked being inside it 24/7/365. Sure, he did.
Hell, who didn’t?
We live to work.