No Geek Rapture for Me_I'm Old School

by Jonelle Renald

  Several times, Mia had wanted to laugh out loud at the heavy handed, overly crafted speech that seemed better suited to a nineteenth century audience raised on rhetoric and declamation, but she quickly turned the laugh into a cough when she realized everyone else was taking his words very seriously. Even the cough received glares from several people nearby, who apparently needed to hear every single word without disruption.

  When cake and ice cream was served after the speech, Mia was introduced to the two dozen members of the Corporate Communications and Investor Relations Department. Having been in the Orientation for New Team Members program all day, she had not met any of her new colleagues yet. She was disappointed with her reception though because now that they had the opportunity to greet her, not one of them expressed the slightest interest in her arrival and walked quickly away after saying a brief “Hello.” No one shook her hand or introduced themselves to her. The lone exception was Benton Leland (Associate Director, Social Media Communications) who seemed to have an idea of who she was and actually asked her about fencing. She was surprised at how much it mattered, how happy it made her to find at least one person who was willing to show an interest in her. She started to tell him about the recent tournament at Edgestow College, but in the middle of her first sentence, he stifled a yawn and began to look around the room, as if trying to find a convenient escape. She had pity on him, and let him go so he wouldn’t have to be bored any longer. Abandoned by her department, she tried speaking to some of her former colleagues from Edgestow College, but Helen Travers and Jerry Mercer (both now in iCon’s R&D Department) seemed to have restrictions on what they could talk about concerning their work, and so after a brief, “Hi! How are you settling in?” they quickly moved back to join the people in their own department. Given her cheerful friendliness, Jan was fitting in well with her place in Human Resources.

  Mia had been surprised by Jan’s placement in HR since she’d assumed they’d be working together once they arrived at their new employer. But they weren’t. So why had Chase Amunson linked Jan’s hiring to her own acceptance of their offer? She wasn’t an assistant where Mia worked, wasn’t filling a need to cover added work created by added personnel. In fact, there weren’t even any formal lines of contact between the two departments. There was absolutely no apparent reason to make Jan’s hiring contingent on Mia’s joining iCon. It was weird to think about. It didn’t make sense.

  Looking around the lobby filled with the entire HQ team, Mia couldn’t find a place where she felt like she was wanted or included. Not one place in the whole crowd. In her own department, no one had given her a friendly smile, no one had offered a welcome to the team. They didn’t seem to want to let her into their circle, not at all. iCon talked a lot about how much they valued building communities in their workplace, but Mia couldn’t see how this theory was being applied to her situation.

  Standing in the art gallery area, Cezary was talking with a small group of people surrounding him. Remembering the encouragement he had given her to ask him questions, Mia decided she would speak to him, perhaps even ask him about the specific benefits iCon had received from the purchase of Edgestow College. But she was unable to get anywhere near the CEO. Before she got close enough to catch his attention, two of his bodyguards appeared out of nowhere and stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking her progress forward, silently forbidding her to move farther. And they seemed to be deaf as a wall, not heeding Mia’s explanation, not moving aside, not reacting in any way to her story about being invited to speak to Cezary. She was about to give up and move away when she saw Amunson observing her failure to advance into the inner ring, but as soon as she noticed his attention, he immediately turned away, also refusing to permit her in. She sighed and turned away. Obviously, Cezary’s invitation to ask questions hadn’t been in the least sincere. At least not when she chose the occasion. Disappointed, she exited the lobby, passing through air lock, first one automatic door sliding apart ahead of her and then the other as she left the HQ.

  Eight weeks ago on her first day at iCon after the encounter with Cezary’s Praetorian guard and the cold shoulder she received from the people in her new department, Mia had decided to retreat to her office in Flanagan Hall. And again today, this time on a dreary day in March, she sought out her office as a place of sanctuary, even though the door was gone and the room was open to the view of anyone passing by. Seated at her old desk, looking out the window at the robins, she thought about the students that used to drop by. Now the office was empty — all her books, files, and photographs had already been moved out — but it still felt like her space, even if it was soon to disappear altogether. Wishing she could stay here, she knew she couldn’t. She was due back at her desk in the Communications area, but she was extremely reluctant to head back to her cubicle. It was impossible to tell from day to day how the people there would treat her. Friendly, open arms for her one day, a cold shoulder from everyone the next.

  As a director, Mia was theoretically the supervisor in charge of Skip Morrison (Public Relations Writer, Communications and Investor Relations). But the reality was that he had taken immediate charge of her. He gave Mia her writing assignments and then later provided her with feedback on the completed work. Tall and skinny, he was twenty-one years old, wearing skinny jeans and YSL Chelsea boots, brown hair gelled into a spiked faux-hawk (bald spot just beginning to dawn at the back of his head), a blotchy complexion, glasses with black frames to correct his nearsightedness. He had a brilliantly charming smile that would appear and disappear as the situation required. On most occasions, he appeared to be open and friendly with everyone, especially with the people above him on the company’s org chart, but when people got in his way or annoyed him, he proved he possessed a malicious streak, expressed in covert mockery, backstabbing, and gossip. He had started at iCon as a summer college intern but by August he had dropped out of college to keep working with the team. Every morning at eight o’clock, he had an informal, hour-long meeting with Chynna Chandler, the department’s senior manager. Some people said that as Chynna’s unofficial mentee and confidant, as well as her source of information for what was going on in the department and iCon as a whole, in exchange he had gotten favorable status and scope beyond his job title, often put in charge of important committees and projects. Overall, he was almost as talented as he thought he was. Chynna treated him like a son, but in return, he mocked her mercilessly behind her back and told stories to get people to laugh at her. Like the time she had belched loudly while speaking during one of the morning meetings and then kept going as if nothing had happened. When Skip told that story to everyone around the table at lunch one day, he went down several notches in Mia’s estimation for betraying his relationship with Chynna, but everyone else just seemed to enjoy the laugh at her expense.

  Even though he was one of the newer people at iCon, Skip was the leader of the department, but not in the sense of being people’s boss. Skip had conquered the pack with charm and wicked humor, and like compliant herd animals, they had all eagerly capitulated, surrendering wholeheartedly to his command and control. Mia heard Andie say, “Skip has an evil way of repeating gossip. But what he says is so funny, I don’t even care if it’s true or not.” Looking for an entertaining leader to follow, someone to be in charge of their thinking and deciding, they liked that Skip had volunteered to fill that role, that he was willing to set the tone for the group. He chose who was liked or disliked, what the topics of conversation would be, where they would go together as a group, what would happen next. And everyone was happy to follow his lead. For the first month she was at iCon, Skip led the group in giving Mia the cold shoulder, and was subtly rude in all his dealing with her. She supposed it was because he was upset that she had been hired to be his supervisor due to her level of education, not because she had experience or credentials in public relations or corporate communications.

  But after a month of snubbing her, his attitude changed as he s
tarted a campaign to collect her, bring her in as part of his compliant herd. In a change from previous behavior, his brilliant smile would beam at her in a personable and charming way. And everyone else followed suit.

  — “Come to lunch with us, Mia!”

  — “We’ll be going to The Airship tonight. We’d love to have you join us.”

  — “We’re taking a break. Walk to the lobby desk and chat with us!”

  Mia wasn’t taken in by the change in the way the wind was blowing, but she was willing to be cordial to the group. The walks to the lobby desk were always interesting. Maggie Pittman, the corporate receptionist, always had great stories to tell. The iCon visitor list might include bankers or scientists or astronauts, United States senators or congressional representatives, governors from neighboring states, politicians or investors from around the world, presidents and deans from the largest and most prestigious universities, big names in the transhumanist world, Nobel Prize winners, or p.r. officials from the Vatican. And after listening to stories about what had happened in the lobby during the day, it would be time to start a session of mockery, making fun of someone, usually an iCon teammate, for their looks or weight or how they talked or dressed. Anything was a reason to start mocking. Not wanting to participate in ridiculing anyone, when the mocking started, Mia would walk back to her cubicle alone while everyone else was still laughing around the front reception desk. She was content with her decision to leave, even though she had no illusions that they didn’t start mocking and laughing at her once she was out of earshot.

  It didn’t matter if she was spending time with Skip and other people in her department, joining the group on occasion for lunch or after work. Mia hadn’t become a member of their collective, and the group never did make much of an attempt to do anything positive to motivate her to wish she belonged. The two dozen people who worked in Communications could be very friendly and likeable, but almost immediately, Mia noticed she wasn’t being offered friendship. Instead, there was a pressure for Mia to change, to become not just a part of the group, but a mirror image of everyone else. No one was interested in her or in the things she liked, no one never expressed curiosity about anything she had ever done in her life away from iCon. When she tried to talk about her love for fencing or some book she was reading, people would either roll their eyes and look away, stifle yawns, interrupt what she was saying, or even get up and leave while she was still talking. If they didn’t appreciate or understand her, why did they think they could charm her into their collective? She had no interest in belonging to their group. Except as a principle to be friendly with the people she worked with, there was very little reason to wish that she had something in common with them. In addition, although they would never imagine it possible, Mia thought they were very dull and boring. In their own estimation, they were confident that they were the most fascinating people on the planet, and yet to her they weren’t. They had a very limited range of topics for conversation, which was limited even further by the fact that they all shared the same opinion about everything. Also, they thought their habit of mocking other people was the same thing as having a witty sense of humor, but Mia thought it was mean, not a bit funny, and she didn’t want to join in. If she didn’t participate — or worse still — tried to change the subject when they started mocking someone, the cold shoulder from the group would return until Skip signalled otherwise.

  The more Mia resisted the pressure to assimilate as a minion in the group — not by actually trying to resist, but just by being herself — the more Skip lost his charming smile and resumed the snarky smirk he’d had her first week at iCon. And of course, Skip’s cold hostility spread to the rest of the group. They didn’t like objectivity, so it was inevitable that they would never like her. No matter what, she would always think for herself, always see the strengths and weaknesses to both sides of an issue, even when she had already chosen one of the sides.

  So after two weeks of trying to win her with charm, the people in the Communications Department returned to their attitude of hostility and settled on resenting her very presence, showing disapproval for everything she did and said. She was thirty-two, and except for Chynna, she was eight to twelve years older than everyone else. Mia had never had an issue relating to her students at Edgestow College, and many kept contact with her even after graduating, so she had expected to make good connections with everyone in her department, no matter their age. But no. She was treated like she was a Victorian era nanny and came to work wearing bustle, corset, flower-decorated hat, and button shoes. Compared to themselves, they thought she was hopelessly out of date.

  But the issue wasn’t the date of her birth. It was her perspectives and mindset that were out of sync, ideas that were the polar opposite of their viewpoint. Their interests were foreign to her, and her area of study was a total blank to them. They didn’t read books — at all — let alone literature that had been written centuries earlier. A couple of weeks earlier, Mia was reading her copy of Paradise Lost during lunch. Andie sat down next to Mia at the large conference table where everyone ate their salads and sandwiches and asked, “What are you reading?”

  Smiling, Mia handed her the book, “Paradise Lost, by John Milton. It’s one of my favorites.”

  Andie read a bit, and then losing Mia’s place, started flipping through the pages of the book. “When was this written? It looks really old.”

  “Middle of the 1600s.”

  “Mia.” Andie handed the book back, closed. “You should be reading Joan Didion instead. That would bring you up to the twentieth century at least.” After this, she got up and walked away, unable to endure the mere presence of such an ancient book, confident in the knowledge that she have done her best to show Mia the path toward becoming a more contemporary woman. All while gathering another amusing anecdote to tell the cool kids, another justification for mocking Mia behind her back. Because obviously, Mia read old books because she had never heard of more contemporary authors.

  “Frack Joan Didion,” Mia thought. “What is it with this place? So now I have to get the reading I do on my own time approved by committee?”

  With everything that had happened, she realized the only way she could fit in with Skip’s herd would be to never speak up. However, she had already experienced a time she had given in to pressure to conform to someone else’s wishes — and that had been a disaster. A total disaster. She wouldn’t repeat that experience. Never again. As a result, during the last two weeks there had been no friendly invitations to go to lunch or take a stroll to the front desk. Mia soon found herself isolated, alone in the middle of a group of people who had become openly hostile toward her. She started wondering how long she had to stay at iCon to ensure Jan would keep her job. “I have to get out of here. I don’t belong here.”

  Even the work itself gave her a headache. The writing assignments that Skip gave her made no sense. The topics didn’t seem to have anything to do with iCon or transhumanism, and yet she had spent all of these first eight weeks writing pieces that were out and out news stories about made-up events that had never taken place. Rallies at the nation’s capital, protests against this or that, shootings and rioting. Her assignment was to write these stories from the perspective of both the right and the left. When she first got these assignments, she assumed that they were testing her ability to write, allowing her to practice and improve her skills at communicating with a mass audience. What did iCon have to do with news reporting anyway? They didn’t broadcast the news or provide wire service copy. Skip wouldn’t explain the purpose or give her a straight answer about the use for these assignments. Whatever the rationale behind the assignments, this writing made her very uncomfortable because it wasn’t any of it real. She was just glad none of it would ever see the light of day.

  Yesterday’s assignment had been different — even worse. Once again, Skip refused to explain what it was for, saying, “Just do what you’re to
ld to do.” She was to write a series of social media responses commenting on a short message sent by someone from his work account at a university to a buddy — “Off to Sulawesi, looking forward to the colonial architecture, best of the Dutch style influenced by native huts to produce charming styles.” She was to express increasing levels of outrage at this man’s use of the terms native huts and colonial architecture, even though the remark concerned sights he hoped to see on vacation and wasn’t an opinion about the culture, didn’t downgrade anyone’s worth or value. She was to categorize the remarks as harsh and hateful insults, a racist reminder of slavery which had nothing charming about it whatsoever. Only a despicable person would have said such things. The finale of the social justice firestorm was to conclude with calls for his immediate firing. But as soon as Skip had given her the assignment, she had wondered why iCon would ever have a use for this kind of writing. It had nothing to do with upgrading human evolution. This was simply a writing exercise. It had to be.