The Crystal Path was like a map of screens that could be viewed at any time, all jam-packed with data and information that we could switch on or off, supposedly curated by ourselves. We were told that we could be the editors of our own content. What a joke that was! We were pawns while big business moved the pieces of our lives around the playing field.
When I went on pat leave, I shut Jazza out of my CP. You could do that, control who had access to what. Previously, Jazza had permissions to my path that Celeste didn’t even know existed. I just hoped Jazza would heed my cry for help. God knew the guy owed me nothing considering how I’d dumped him when Bax was born.
I nodded at the rage room attendant. “Yeah. I’ll come for a drink.” I ripped my suit off, a petty act of childish fury that felt so good at the time but felt shameful later. That was me to a T: equal parts fear, guilt, shame, and anger.
The guy didn’t say anything as I followed him. He had a man bun. Talk about retro. Why was I even following a guy with hair like that? But I went out to the parking lot and got behind the wheel of my solar-powered station bubble, an Integratron company car, courtesy of Celeste’s father. The inside was full of yielding soft curves and cushions that moulded to my body. The round rolling ball of the car’s exterior looked just like glass, but it was plastic, shatterproof polymethyl methacrylate to be exact, with a sunshiny yellow interior. Our car interiors came in a variety of colours: sky blue, fire engine red, or bubblegum pink. Pink was the most popular. The cars were cheerful, happy creatures, with scads more room than one might think, and they rolled along like soap-bubble spheres. My CP connected me to the car’s displays and controls, and I could choose whether to drive the car or not. I always drove. The cars were silent and soundproof, and it felt odd, rolling along a busy suburban street or highway, and seeing other bubbles filled with reclining people who looked like they were talking to themselves, leaning back in their colourful seats and controlling the cars with their thoughts. There were no steering wheels or dashboards, just the flashview that connected the driver to the car via their CPs.
I sniffed my pits. I was annoyed with myself for skipping the post-session cleansing shower booth; my clothes had a rank, sweaty plastic smell. I’d have to do a wash down with wipes so Bax wouldn’t smell me like this. I couldn’t let my little guy smell the fear on me. I had to get a grip on things.
2. IN THE DIVE BAR WITH JAZZA
I FOLLOWED MAN BUN TO A DIVE BAR. He’d introduced himself as Norman. My heart did an arrhythmia dance in my chest as I drove, and I called my vitals up on my flashview. Heart rate, blood pressure, all good. When I pulled up in the parking lot, I looked around. Where was Jazza? I’d thought I’d see him waiting for me. Jazza. He was my best friend. He interned with me during initiation, and we’d been together through thick and thin, all the highs and lows of our careers. I guess that when I left for pat leave, I’d misguidedly hoped it was a case of so long and see you never when it came to the corporate world because I shot out of Jazza’s life like a bat out of hell. And now, here I was, needing him more than ever.
I followed Norman into the bar and studied the drinks menu that flashed like a ticker tape in a fast blur, but I was really thinking about how Jazza and I had met.
I graduated from the Global International University with a Ph.D., in Optimal Communications and Life Branding, a Master’s in Flexibility Optics and Mass Persuasion, and a bunch of other related psych and media relations majors. What the hell did any of that even mean?
University graduates got to audition at the three top branding companies, and I’d rated pretty poorly on the first two outings. Then, on the third, we were given partners to speed up the process, and thank god for that.
I realized, the second he opened his mouth, that Jazza was a genius. His brain was filled with ideas the likes of which I’d never even gotten close to, glimpses that I was only permitted to spot by using the drive-thru, the lane he opened to me and only me through his CP. Brought together by happenstance, we stuck to one another, bonded by our desperate need to survive. We got hired by Integratron, my last kick at the can but, admittedly, the biggest prize. Integratron was a giant corporation linked to other global giants, tied to mass manufacturers around the world. Our job was to come up with innovative products, launches, dances, and clothing, basically any and every manner of tiny, stupid, fascinating things that obsessed people and gave their dreary, hopeless lives meaning.
Jazza and I made a great team. While I’d never had much confidence in myself or my ideas, Jazza was a chronic Asperger’s boy with shameful secrets that meant he could never leave me. But he didn’t want to leave me because I was the cool guy in his eyes. More importantly, I was the sales guy. I was the guy who could sell sand in the desert, water to a drowning man, a pork chop to a vegetarian—ha ha you get it. When I was in pusher mode, I was unstoppable.
Norman shook me from the shadows of memory lane and asked me what I wanted to drink.
“Raspberry hops, protein infusion, no alcohol,” I said and Norman groaned. I called up my flashview and messaged Jazza again:
Where r u?
Would he even reply? I could see he’d accepted and read my message, and I waited for the tiny speech bubble to appear to show me that he was typing a reply. There was nothing. Shit. But then, came the reply:
Close
I could breathe again.
“Hi, I’m Knox,” Norman’s friend introduced himself. He was an over-friendly, in-your-face type of guy, vintage hipster to the bone, skinny, with a beach-ball beer belly and toothpick legs in tight jeans.
For some reason, I wanted to punch the shit out of him. But hey, that was just me. The whole world annoyed the shit out of me to the point where my mother had banned me from even using the word “annoyed” or any variation thereof. That didn’t stop me from breaking shit and thinking about how “annoying” pretty much all of my life was.
“Kiddie fruity smoothie for my buddy here,” Knox called out to the bartender, interuppting my thoughts. I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror and felt marginally cheered.
Thank god I had this handy mask to hide behind. People saw a handsome, reassuring man, with a cleft in his chin and a strong jaw that belied the reality. I had a thick head of hair, model good looks, and deep dimples that made it seem like I was smiling even when I wasn’t. A trustworthy face. The face of a strong man. What a joke! Inside I was like Jello, afraid all the time, afraid of everything, and yet, also so damn angry with it.
Celeste loved my dimples. And the cleft in my chin. “So manly,” she crooned, stroking my face like I was one of her FluffSqueaks. Since when did dents on one’s face make you manly? But I smiled back at her and said encouragingly reciprocal things because that’s what love was all about, right?
Knox and Norman were talking about hockey. I perked up. Sports were bigger than ever. We loved watching the steroid gladiators getting out there and pushing their bodies to insane limits. They were everything we’d never be. I tried to join the conversation, but Knox was like a shadow boxer, dancing and hopping to keep me out.
I was saved by the arrival of Jazza. I knew he had arrived because the mood in the bar changed. A hush fell, and there was a sense of freak-show wonder in the air. Jazza was a man unto himself. A six-foot-seven giant with a craggy face of folds and ridges that only a mother could love. Except that Jazza’s mother didn’t love him—she had vanished to live among the Blowflies, leaving him to make his own way through the various levels of state-funded care.
The Blowflies were the less fortunate economic sector who had been shuttled into the highrise condos built in the boom of the early twenty-first century. The rental wars had reached the point where no one could afford to save up for a mortgage, kids never left home, and the condos stood largely empty, save for overseas investors. And when those investors left, driven out by economic and viral disasters, the governments figured why not shunt th
e lesser-fortunate into the vacant skyscrapers because, among other things, it would make them easier to manage. Affordable housing solutions at last! cried the politicians, and thus, the inner cities of BlowflyLand were globally born. That caste kept to themselves in their tall glass castles. Admittedly the world population had dropped like a stone, thanks to all the diseases that flared up and wiped out millions. Way back in 2020, the world population was nearly eight billion. Eight billion, with the number of daily births doubling the number of deaths. Too many people! After the dust settled and we’d returned to a sensible and manageable two billion, the question was asked whether the rabid diseases had been biological warfare let loose to rein things back under control, orchestrated by Minnie’s predecessors, but nothing was ever proven.
If you asked me, the Blowflies had it good. Food trucks kept them stocked with solid if unexciting fare, they had Welfare Streaming Channels twenty-four-seven, drugs kept them blissful and tame, and they even had schools for their kids. They were guarded by Welfare Ambassadors, aka security guards, because it didn’t make sense to put the Blowflies to work since robots did a much better job than they did. They’d been dubbed the Blowflies by some low-grade journalist, and the name stuck.
I only knew about Jazza’s mother’s defection to the Blowflies by careful sleuthing. He never talked about her, and I reached a dead end without learning too much at all. I wondered if Jazza had ever tried to find her. If he had, he kept it a secret.
Genius Jazza was full of secrets. For one, he liked wearing women’s underwear. Big sheer granny panties, 1950’s style, sheer and gauzy, with ruffled chiffon edging. And he had bras to match. I’d seen his stash, along with peach-coloured feather boas, cashmere sweaters, and fluffy angora scarves with soft fringes.
I often saw the line of a bra strap under his shirt, and I once saw the top of his frilly panties riding above his jeans. I didn’t say anything then because I didn’t want him to know I knew, but seriously, I couldn’t let him near my Bax—are you kidding me? And I knew it hurt his feelings, but the man was an aberration even if he was my best friend. Separate the issues—work was work. He was my friend, but my kid was untouchable. That was why I ditched him. That and the fact that I really had thought I was escaping the workplace forever and that I’d never have to go back to Integratron.
“Sharps?” Jazza showed up at my side, parting the sea of people at the bar. He sounded understandably confused at being summoned, and he also didn’t exactly sound warm and friendly. I guess he thought I could have visited him during my year off. But it wasn’t only about the feather boa and women’s underwear thing—there were his animals, too.
Jazza was a fiend for illegal real live fur babies. Genetically modified squirrels, sheep-like woolly cats, multi-coloured guinea pigs, and even a weasel. His apartment was filled with creatures, all of them scampering around and shitting everywhere. The place was a germophobe’s nightmare, a fecal shit-fest of gargantuan proportions, and Jazza himself was a walking cloud of bacteria and fungi. I literally used BleachBuddy on myself when I got home from his apartment after my first visit. After that, I insisted we hang out at my apartment and, once I got married, we hardly saw each other outside of work.
So yeah, I acknowledged that Jazza’s feelings had been hurt when I excluded him from my perfect family life, but what else could I have done?
And now, a year later, he looked much the same, but he wasn’t exactly enthused to see me. I thought about opening with an apology for neglecting him, but the whole thing was a can of rotting worms better left untouched.
“Yeah man, thanks for coming!” I leapt off my bar stool and hugged him, startling him by my spontaneous affection. My head rested on his big barrel chest, and he patted my head awkwardly.
“So good to see you!” I grinned. Knox and Norman were chatting up the bartender, a blonde girl, oblivious to me.
“You want a drink?” I asked Jazza, and he shook his head. “I’ll get some food,” he said. “Starved. I’ll get us a bunch of stuff. Go sit over there.”
He pointed at a booth in the corner, and I obdiently did what he said. How was I going to explain my panicked flash comm? My out-of-character summoning?
A few moments later, he settled himself into the booth and leaned back, arms folded across his chest. “They’ll bring food. So buddy, you worried about coming back tomorrow?”
“Yes!” I practically shouted at him, and he looked startled. Thank you, Jazza, for giving me an out. Because it was that but it wasn’t, it was everything. I was drowning. My life was suffocating me, and it was all of that and more.
“Everything all look the same?” I asked and he nodded.
Integratron, our hallowed place of toil and grind was a sci-fi Legoland, a sprawling estate housing hundreds of primary-coloured, dome-shaped bungalows made of interlocking durable plastic shiny blocks. The domes, or Sheds, spiralled out from the base of a two-hundred-storey, four acre, pink-and-blue skyscraper, Sky The Tower. And it was all plastic, which was par for the course. We had polybutylene terephthalate for cars; polyethelene terephthalate for clothing; good old Teflon polytetrafluoroethylene for pots, pans, and cookware; soft polyurethane for foams and sponges; strong-bodied polycarbonates for appliances while acrylonitrile styrene acrylate bricks replaced cinder blocks. We even used polylactide for medical implants. Fluffy, furry, velvety, or glasslike, there was a plastic for everything. Jazza and I had, out of curiousity, done the intel.
Lower eschelons worked in the Sheds, while movers and shakers took up space in Sky The Tower. The Tower was cylindrical with an open centre at the core, allowing light to flow into the offices, and each pair of worker bees had their own cell in the hive. No more open plan, no more shared space. It had been proven that people, like bears, needed private caves in which to think, hibernate, and create.
The dome-shaped Sheds, the ornamental Art Deco entrance façade to Sky The Tower, and the giant animal statues dotting the fake green lawns were intended to infuse the workers with a sense of childlike joy, but they failed miserably. The inmates were fearful desk sloggers who did the minimum and escaped like scurrying mice as soon as the schoolbell rang.
“There are more Sheds,” Jazza said. “And there’s a waterfall and atrium in the main foyer. Lots of Monarch butterflies. I find them creepy.” The butterflies weren’t real, of course. Neither were any of the plants in the atrium.
“Ah,” I said and we were at a loss for a moment, silent.
“I guess we’ll have to come up with a new campaign,” I finally said. “Unless you came up with something amazing while I was gone.” But I knew he hadn’t because our boss and my father-in-law, Mr. Williamson, known to me as Daddy, would have told me.
He shook his head. Jazza wasn’t being exactly welcoming, and I needed to bring him on side. And how better than with a little self-flaggelation, the revisiting of Jazza’s successes, and a spotlight on my failures?
“Best I don’t screw up again like I did with the MDoggHotBody campaign,” I said mournfully and I saw Jazza’s craggy face soften.
He unfolded his arms and leaned forward. “You gotta stop beating yourself up about that, buddy. Old news.” He waved his hands around just as the waitress arrived, and he nearly knocked the food off the tray. Enough food to feed the bar. And it nearly landed on the floor.
“Sheee-it!” Jazza dived and saved the tray, coming up grinning. “Sorry!”
The waitress tried to avert her gaze from Jazza’s misshapen face and rushed off. I felt badly for the way Jazza was treated in public, but he didn’t seem to register the waitress’s disgust and attacked his food with glee. He’d suffered from acromegaly as a child—his welfare family had not taken care of him as they should have—and the lingering giantism was evident in his features.
“Seriously, buddy,” he said, his mouth full of onion rings and cheeseburger, “MDoggHotBody was a mistake—so what?”
; So what? I had failed us. I had failed me. I had failed Jazza. I had failed my unborn son and Mother and Daddy. I’d brought the subject up to give us a bond, but in truth, it was never far from my mind. “Easy for you to say, genius boy,” I commented. “You scored 123BlikiWin, which was historical.”
He had the grace to nod modestly. “Yeah, well, by the time we got to present our shit, my brain had been working on a bunch of ideas for a while.”
“Man, were we ever hot shit, then!” I said. “Home run, first time out to bat. The Board loved it!”
“Yeah, well, you sold it. They wouldn’t have listened to a word from me. I don’t have the visual asthetics to be a front man. Whereas you, everybody loves you!” He chewed, staring off into space, and I knew we were both thinking back to our early days, fifteen years prior.
3. GLORY DAYS
A PAY-TO-PLAY LOTTERY. Our first project. Targetted Shoppers, or TCs, had to rack up WinCreds by joining a points program that would score them a golden ticket to try out for the next golden ticket. If they won the round, they were promoted to a higher grade. There was a thirteen-level maze of lottery wins and points acquisitions and TC’s had to shop their way through all of them. Finally, with the odds at one in three million, they got to be one of a dozen contestants on 123BlikiWin, the hottest reality program out there. Jazza and I created it. Correction, Jazza did. He invented the whole thing, and it was gold.
The Rage Room Page 2
