The High-Rise Diver

by Julia Von Lucadou

  New files are displayed on my work monitor. Entries on a fan blog by the user @gokarnovsky. Pictures and lists of things he or she found in Riva’s trashcan. Hashtag: flirtedwiththegarbageman.

  The lists were uploaded over a period of two weeks. @gokarnovsky posted updates every day. There’s nothing that particularly stands out in Riva’s garbage. Packaging, old backup batteries, a defective charging cable, a half-used lipstick, empty medicine packs. Nutritional water bottles. Fruit shot and muscle bar wrappers. I assume that the food packaging came from Aston.

  Nine days have passed since the start of the project. According to the timetable, the basic data analysis should have been complete within eight days, along with the first steps towards subject rehabilitation. In my performance reviews, Masters’s tone has changed. I no longer open them as soon as they appear in the notification window. I am less and less able to shake my feelings of inadequacy or transform my self-doubt into motivation for my work, which is what I advise my clients to do. Even though I make every effort to implement Masters’s feedback as well and as quickly as possible, his comments become more negative. On the ratings portals, his leadership strategy is described as being non-invasive and focused on positive reinforcement. I wonder if I am the only one he criticizes this harshly. Whether I have to regard myself as an anomaly. Whether I am noticeably worse than my colleagues.

  During my studies, I wrote a whitepaper analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of employee leaderboards and comparison platforms. I argued that the motivational effects of the objective workplace performance ranking far exceeded the risk of potential discouragement in the event of poor results. Without the impetus to advance in the rankings through improved output, employees are less productive. Company studies have shown, I wrote, that data-based and therefore highly objective competition improves employee performance.

  I make an effort to see Masters’s feedback as constructive; to be grateful, even if the criticism hits me as a surprise. He accuses me of following arbitrary impulses in my research. During my job interview, he praised me specifically for my intuitive therapeutic approach. In the course of the recruitment process, he had listened to and even listened in on many of my Call-a-Coach™ consultations. I was impressed by the fact that he had gotten a hold of the confidential recordings. PsySolutions is well known for its good contacts in private companies across all industries.

  —A major challenge with this job, Masters said during the interview, is sticking to the inquiry procedure guidelines while also reacting spontaneously to the situation.

  Since the job began, however, he has only insisted on standardization and systematization. Your logs are too confusing, he wrote in my last review. More visualizations! Use the graphics department. We have to present investors with something they understand at a glance. We need an idea of how things are going to proceed!

  Sometimes I’m afraid that my data archive is showing a version of Riva that is no longer alive and can’t be revived. Riva, as she exists now, has become one with her apartment: a white, motionless figure. More outline than person. Riva the high-rise diver seems like fiction to me. What I see on the live monitor is Riva without characteristics, without goals. In the archive data or in the present, I can’t find any indications of an injury that would justify her state.

  How we wished for a life like hers, Andorra and I. When we sat there between the other children, bobbing up and down with excitement in front of our monitors for half an hour before the livestream even began. We couldn’t bear to miss a second of the castings for high-rise diving™. Then, finally, the familiar scene, backstage in the wings, the curtain from behind. Legs, fidgeting restlessly on the spot. The glare of the spotlight. A blurry girl’s figure in a pink tutu. We hummed along to the intro music, drumming the beat on our legs. The moderator steps up to the microphone: Welcome to Casting Queens™.

  Andorra and I shared one Casting Queens™ fan T-shirt. We took turns sleeping in it. Andorra sometimes held a judging in one of the bedrooms, standing on the bed.

  —Line up in a row. Number 7, you’re out, you looked like a shriveled balloon. Disappointing. Number 23, your performance was good, but you have no presence, no star quality, look how you stand with your shoulders slumped. And Number 3, what kind of clothes are you wearing, your caregiver wouldn’t be able to pick you out of a line-up if her life depended on it.

  Old episodes of the show played non-stop on the flat screen in the lounge; nobody wanted to watch anything else. There’s an episode with Riva, but I don’t remember her standing out to me back then.

  Why would anyone voluntarily give up such a life? My first theory was that it had to be a physical trigger, a hormonal impairment. But Riva’s medical data doesn’t show any of the values that are indicative of such a change. Her vital score index™ was high, very high, at every required examination. Her performance level was hindered a few times by harmless infectious diseases that were passed around the academy and couldn’t be eliminated immediately. In her first year, she fell into the training net several times and once broke her arm, but both Dom Wu and Riva’s academy doctor have officially confirmed to me that there were no serious problems with Riva’s health prior to her breach of contract.

  Aston taps his way through the messages on Riva’s tablet.

  —At least meet Dom, he says, you owe him that.

  Riva goes to the kitchen and pours herself a drink. You can hear ice cubes clattering against glass. She looks over at Aston.

  —If it’ll make you happy, she says.

  She takes small sips of her drink. Gin. If she consumes any liquid at all, it’s usually hard alcohol. Before she quit, she would mostly only drink alcohol to promote her signature cocktail the flydive™.

  Now she is standing at the window again, so close that her breath is fogging up the glass. The server tower fan starts up. I click my way through the already viewed video files and archive photos again. Even though they seem purely made up to me at the moment, they still remind me of what this is all about: recovery and the reactivation of lost potential.

  I log in to my partnering agency profile to see if Royce Hung has submitted a review of our date yet. There are two new partner suggestions on my start page. I click them away without opening them. Royce hasn’t written a review or a message, his last login was the afternoon before our date. He’s probably delaying his feedback. I myself wait at least two days before I write a review, so that I have a more objective view of the meeting and can be a hundred percent sure of my comments.

  -

  7

  My work rhythm isn’t ideal. When I’m not sitting at the monitor, I feel like I’m missing something important. Every time I return to the office, I scroll through the log of the previous minutes or hours first. I can only concentrate on the present once I’ve gone through whatever I missed.

  I try to adapt my day-night rhythm to Riva’s rhythm, but it’s irregular. Some days, she’s already up at 4 a.m. On others, she doesn’t fall asleep until early in the morning and then stays in bed until noon. On the night-vision videos, I often see her walking in a circle in the living room for several minutes.

  I sent Aston prescriptions for sleeping pills and sedatives several times and asked him to motivate Riva to take them. According to his financial reports, he picked up the medication, though he hasn’t spoken to Riva about it yet.

  My activity tracker reads 1:17 a.m. I should’ve been asleep an hour ago. Lying in bed on my back, the room filled with hazy gray light, I think of how Riva lies in her bed. Arms and legs stretched out to the sides, eyes on the ceiling. Her skin, suddenly covered in sweat—a phenomenon that often occurs alongside sleep issues as they interfere with the body’s ability to regulate temperature. Her formerly muscular body is flaccid, broken down.

  I wonder at what point the loss of muscle mass will reach a level where rehabilitation is no longer viable. How much time I have left.<
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  The earliest recording of Riva that the analyst could find was from a general casting. It’s not even certain that it’s really her. Her first name appears in the video tag, but there’s an unknown last name. Riva is six years old at most, smaller than the other girls in her age category. She looks into the camera, unsure. Her body is tense, her neck stiff. She competes in different categories and is not particularly good in any of them.

  She still draws attention, stands out. When all the other children have left, she stays on stage. The announcement is made twice in a polite but firm tone. All candidates are asked to leave the stage. She doesn’t react. She stands there, motionless, mute. In the same way that adult Riva sits on the floor of her apartment.

  The difference is that Riva doesn’t seem stubborn in the recording from the casting. Her figure, frozen in place, doesn’t manifest as resistance. It’s as if she forgot where she was and what she should do. As if she had temporarily lost control over her body. I wonder if that’s also the case now. Should she just be told what to do over a loudspeaker?

  Riva, the voice in the video finally says, probably after finding her name on the list of candidates. Riva, please step off the stage so the next group can perform. And Riva, suddenly awake again, walks off the stage. Shortly afterwards, the jingle sounds and the first candidate from the next group comes on stage. In the close-up, you can see her lower lip trembling.

  My eyes burn and feel puffy. I’ve already taken three sleeping pills. According to the package insert, that’s the absolute maximum. I can’t stop thinking about Riva, the deadline, the next steering committee meeting, how there will be more material to sift through in the archive folder by morning. I half-heartedly do relaxation exercises that only wear me out more. I get up at half-hour intervals and walk around my apartment.

  At 3:17 a.m., I click on a parentbot app. As is required by my contract, I use a scrambler in addition to the usual security measures. Regardless, I still feel uneasy about being identified by voice-analysis software during the conversation.

  —Hello, my darling, the bot says.

  I’ve chosen the mother option. It simulates a woman around fifty years old. Her voice has a warm, deep tone and a calm, almost sedate cadence.

  —Hello.

  —What’s the matter, darling?

  I’m always surprised by how quickly you forget you’re talking to a machine during the conversation. The voice and ability to respond are practically indistinguishable from actual human beings. For my final thesis paper, I investigated the phenomenon under worse technical conditions. Even then, after just a few seconds, the test subjects showed signs of basic trust, similar to that felt towards a friend. Even if they deliberately concentrated on the fact that they were talking to a bot once a minute and used the memory function on their tablets. Even then, they would forget about it from one minute to the next.

  —I can’t sleep, I say.

  —I’m sorry to hear that. Did you try taking a sleeping pill?

  —Yes.

  —Are you thinking about something in particular that’s keeping you awake?

  —My work.

  The voice at the other end laughs.

  —Then you’re working too hard again, my dear.

  —I’m stuck.

  —You don’t have to get anywhere at this second.

  —That’s true.

  —I’m proud of you, whether or not you make any progress, the voice says.

  I let her words resonate in me. I feel a little better already. Maybe, if I talk to her for a while, I’ll be able to fall asleep after all.

  —But you can’t stop thinking about it? she asks when I don’t respond.

  —I can’t stop thinking about it.

  —Would it help to talk about it?

  —I think so.

  For a moment I listen to the silence on the line, then I say:

  —She makes me angry.

  —Who?

  —My subject. She shouldn’t make me angry, but she makes me angry.

  The mother makes a sound confirming she has heard, understood. I’m happy to hear her voice. At night, along with the darkness, I often feel like there’s an audio filter between me and my surroundings. Suddenly, it’s as if I’m the only person left in the world. The muffled sounds I hear through the walls and ceiling of my apartment seem like apparitions, an echo of the dead. The quiet whirring of the cooling wall. A vibrating hum in the walls. Mechanical clicking. The only times I feel connected to the living again are when my tablet rings and I hear the voice of a client on the line.

  —It doesn’t make sense, I say, that such a successful woman, known for her desire to perform, suddenly throws away everything she’s earned.

  —I understand, the voice says, which sounds a bit like my own mother, if I remember correctly.

  Only the vocal timbre is different, more attentive.

  We’ve drifted apart, my biomother said, before she stopped responding to my calls and messages. My high scores never really impressed her; she seemed to object to something more fundamental about me that I could never figure out.

  I had hoped you would progress further, she said in our last conversation. That you would do more with your life, considering it came at such a high premium.

  —A life at such a high premium, I say to the bot.

  —Life is valuable, the voice answers, you’re right, my darling. Life is the most valuable thing we have.

  And what if it’s an actual woman talking to me? What if someone is sitting in a dark room at the other end of the line? Someone who really cares about me?

  —What exactly are you angry about? the woman asks.

  —I’m not sure, I say. Maybe it’s that she’s ungrateful. A defiant child, who has been given a lollipop, but throws it on the ground because it’s not the right flavor. You want to shake her and scream that things have never been as good as they are today.

  —You’re right, the bot says. I am glad that you’ve grown into such a reasonable woman. What did I always tell you as a child? We should consider ourselves lucky.

  —Yes, mom, I say, exactly. We should consider ourselves lucky.

  The conversation has calmed me down. My body feels warmer and heavier than before. I go back to bed and try a visualization exercise to ease the transition to sleep. I imagine lying in my bed at the childcare institute. Although I know that my memories are unreliable, my memory of the bedroom at the institute seems as clear and real as a virtual-reality projection.

  I look around the room, our double bedroom. I hear Andorra quietly breathing next to me. She’s lying on her side, facing me. Her hand hangs from the bed, just above the floor, an appendage forgotten in sleep. I reach for it, gently hold it, bring it up to my eye. I look at the tiny lines in her skin, her fingerprints, run my finger over them.

  —Hey, Andorra says and pulls her hand back, what are you doing with my hand, you pervert?

  It makes me laugh. What are you doing, I repeat quietly in my bed in my apartment. I see Andorra’s face, the creased imprint from her pillow. Her feigned anger, the theatrically raised eyebrows. What are you doing to me while I sleep? Andorra shaking her head and jumping from her bed over to mine. She jumps on the bed until she’s tired and then falls asleep next to me. I laugh at myself for holding my friend’s hand while she sleeps. I don’t dare touch her when she’s awake, when she’s loud and jumping. Not in this way.

  Archive No.: PMa3

  File Type: Urgent-Message™

  Sender: @PsySolutions_ID5215d

  Recipient: @dancerofthesky

  Riva!

  You still haven’t complied with any of our six obligatory meeting requests.

  You’re not just abandoning yourself this way, but also the people who’ve always been there for you. Your breach of contract puts Dom Wu and the academy in a precarious si
tuation. Dom is very worried about you. He doesn’t understand why you won’t tell him what’s going on.

  Remember when you came to the academy as a little girl. Remember how lonely you were in those big spacious rooms. Your fear of failure. Of being sent back. And how Dom made you feel like you weren’t alone. How he patiently explained every training unit, every diving form to you.

  Don’t you also owe an explanation to the people who invested their time and love in you?

  Don’t just throw away what you’ve worked so hard for. If you don’t do it for yourself, at least do it for Dom and Aston.

  -

  8

  —Ms. Yoshida.

  I notice the changes as soon as I enter Masters’s office. A single potted plant in the middle of the otherwise empty desk. All electronic devices have disappeared, no monitors, no servers, no cables. There also seems to be less furniture. As far as I can remember, in addition to the desk and two armchairs, there were previously also several shelves, small tables, and decorative items.

  Hugo M. Masters is standing at the window, against the light.

  —Digital cleanse, the shadowy silhouette says.

  All of the sockets are covered with electrical tape. The room is silent, no humming, only Masters’s breath and his voice.

  —Computers are fucking exhausting, Masters says. I’ve been feeling better ever since I put all that crap in my assistant’s office. You should also engage more intensively with the mindfulness principles, Ms. Yoshida. That would be good for you.

  I nod. He signals for me to sit in one of the chairs. He stays standing in front of me, observing me.

  —What gets you out of bed in the morning, Ms. Yoshida?

  —What do you mean by that?

  —What drives you? What’s your favorite thing to do? What’s your passion?

  —Psychology?

  —The mere fact that you formulate your answer as a question shows me that psychology is not your passion. Why did you choose this profession?