The High-Rise Diver

by Julia Von Lucadou

  The truth is: because I got a high score in the area of business psychology on the institute’s aptitude test.

  What do you think you’re going to wind up doing, Andorra once asked me. We were sitting on the roof of the institute building. Andorra was sprawled out on the concrete, nothing between her and the unfiltered sun. I was sitting under a UV screen and looking over at her, my legs pulled up against my body. The concrete roof was stained and uneven. Small rain puddles had collected in several places.

  —I don’t know, I said. My scores in economics and math are in the upper range. I’ll probably get accepted at the business academy.

  —And what about diving?

  —I don’t have the grades for that.

  A pigeon landed near us. It drank from one of the puddles and then climbed all the way in, so that its legs disappeared into the water.

  —I’ll probably get accepted at a business academy, too, Andorra said.

  —Then we’ll study together.

  —But I have no interest in business.

  The pigeon stood motionless in the rainwater. It watched us as if it understood every word.

  —The pigeon is eavesdropping, I said.

  Andorra looked over at it and posed as if the pigeon were taking a picture of her.

  —You can’t always have what you want, I said. For diving we would have to have been enrolled at a sports academy long ago.

  Andorra turned away from me to face the sun. She had her eyes closed.

  —We have to go back down again.

  Andorra didn’t move from her reclined position on the concrete. The pigeon took a few steps out of the puddle and flew away as if it were responding to what I had said.

  I went over to Andorra, put my hand on her shoulder.

  She opened her eyes and sat up.

  —Doesn’t it make you angry, she asked, that we can’t decide anything for ourselves?

  —They’re just trying to identify and foster our potential. You can still say no.

  —Who do you know that has ever said no?

  —But they don’t force you.

  Andorra’s blouse was dusty from lying with her back on the concrete. I patted the dirt off of her.

  —They just show us the best possible version of ourselves, I said.

  —Are you sure about that?

  I wonder what kind of answer Masters wants to hear. Maybe he would be impressed if I said: I’m a business psychologist because I have good opportunities for advancement and the prospect of a high salary.

  I’ve taken too long to answer. Masters looks at me disapprovingly.

  —In the recruitment process, two things about you impressed me, he says. One was your ability to instantly assess people over an audio connection without needing more intimate access to them. I’ve listened to some of your Call-a-Coach™ consultations. It was a little like watching an animal tamer, the way you brought those people from an emotional excitement level of ten down to a five in a very short time. I remember one case in particular. A level-three manager. Such a classic upper-level manager, quickly rising in the ranks, on the fast track to becoming an executive. A real go-getter. I immediately recognized his vocal pitch, the precise, levelheaded way in which he put every word in the right place, even at the moment when he had hit rock bottom. At the absolute low point of his life. He still retained something authoritative, a fundamental self-confidence. He impressed me. I wondered if I would show the same incisiveness in his situation.

  Masters’s eyes are still pointed in my direction, but his gaze seems to go straight through me.

  —When you accepted the call, the man said: I have a gun pointed at my head and a noose around my neck. All I have to do is jump off the chair or pull the trigger. But I can’t decide which way to die. And then, in the same matter-of-fact tone, you said: Then we’ll make a pros and cons list together. Ha! Do you remember?

  —Of course I remember.

  —You immediately knew it would work.

  —Yes.

  —That impressed me.

  —Thank you.

  —Of course, you were operating under the assumption that a suicidal person has already decided against suicide the moment he reaches for the tablet.

  —Not necessarily.

  —I, for one, wouldn’t have expected him to let it go. I bought into his air of self-confidence. I thought: If I were him, I would have planned this well in advance and now I would follow through with it.

  —Then maybe you would have done it.

  —Do you think so?

  —I can’t say with any certainty.

  Masters is silent. He seems to be earnestly considering the question. He’s the last person I would suspect of having suicidal tendencies. It’s interesting that he identifies so strongly with a man to whom he has no connection other than his professional position.

  —Do you know how he’s doing today? he asks.

  —No.

  —You didn’t look into it?

  —In this case, it was only about acute intervention.

  —But weren’t you curious?

  —He was transferred to a psychiatric institution by company management. It was no longer my responsibility.

  —I have to admit that I did some research, Masters says in an almost apologetic tone.

  Our conversation dynamics have changed entirely. I feel relaxed, almost cheerful. Never before has Masters been so forthcoming with me.

  —It bothered me, you see. I couldn’t forget the man’s voice. It was easy enough to find him. He’s now an executive manager, just as I’d expected. He obviously overcame his little crisis quickly.

  —Did it make you feel better to know?

  —In a certain way, it did, Masters says. But it really nagged at me that I couldn’t at all figure out what motivated him. Maybe it was just a substance issue. The wrong dose of medication.

  —Possibly.

  —But you didn’t find anything?

  Masters’s tone suddenly sounds distant and critical again. I sense that his question is no longer referring to Call-a-Coach™, but Riva Karnovsky instead.

  —Mr. Masters, I’m sorry that the data analysis is taking longer than planned. I wouldn’t have expected it to be so difficult to determine what triggered the stress situation. The data doesn’t reveal enough information. The psychograph shows no indication of any crisis situations. But I am confident that—

  Masters holds his hand up so that I stop talking.

  —If we don’t deliver within the time frame, the investors will back out, he says.

  —I know, Mr. Masters, but we will. I’m close, it won’t take much longer. I promise you that I’ll deliver results as soon as possible.

  The unpleasant feeling I had at the beginning of the conversation is back.

  —What was the second thing? I try to redirect the conversation.

  —What do you mean?

  —You said that you were impressed by two things about me in the recruitment process.

  I immediately regret having asked the question. Masters looks at me with an annoyed, distant expression.

  —Your article on businesspsychology.corp about the emotional effects of smooth surfaces in architecture, he then says. Decluttering. I liked that. I’ve already experienced for myself how the sight of a smooth, reflective surface can calm me down. That’s one of the reasons why I chose to do a digital cleanse.

  He gestures around the room with his arms.

  —I’m honored, I say. Masters’s face darkens.

  —In the Karnovsky case, he says, maybe it’s not necessarily the right approach to try to determine the cause of the crisis. You should focus on acute crisis intervention, like in the case with the manager.

  —I don’t believe that a therapy based purely on acute behavior can lead to long-t
erm reintegration, I say. Especially if the subject doesn’t cooperate.

  —Then get her to cooperate.

  —She’s very resistant. I get the impression that I can only motivate her to cooperate if I know the trigger.

  —Consider a new strategy, Ms. Yoshida.

  —Okay.

  —I mean it.

  —I understand.

  —And work on your own health values, too. The numbers from the last few days don’t look good. You don’t sleep enough, you don’t move enough, your diet lacks iron. A bad vital score index™ has a direct effect on your performance.

  —I know, I know.

  —Do your mindfulness exercises. And get a stationary bike set up in front of your monitor so that you meet your exercise minimum.

  —Okay.

  —I want to see more progress. Force Karnovsky to cooperate.

  —Okay.

  —Come back in two days.

  —Okay.

  —See you then, Ms. Yoshida.

  —See you then.

  When I get back to the office, my heart rate is at eighty-seven.

  I often advise my clients to look at images that they associate with feelings of security to calm themselves in stressful situations. In the browser search field, I type: quiet space, meditation images, introspection. The pictures that come up seem generic and redundant to me. Without thinking, I type happy family and click on a photo that shows a boy, about twelve years old, sitting on a couch between two adults and laughing. He has something androgynous about him. His smooth dark skin and his fine facial features. An image search leads me to a blog, familymatters.org. I save the image in my private folder and click through the blog entries.

  Most of the posts are video files, mainly static shots, showing a biofamily in their apartment. Eating, cooking, cleaning, talking. The image I saved seems to be a thumbnail from one of these videos. The boy in the picture has been running the blog for eight years. His username is Zarnee. His facetag is linked with the name Zarnee Kröger in the persons database. According to his date of birth, he must have just turned seventeen. The timestamp on the photo is from three years ago. That means he was fourteen in the photo, not twelve.

  Over the past year, Zarnee has gotten in front of the camera more and more often to share his thoughts and answer questions from fans. He’s particularly received a lot of likes for videos with the hashtag familyblast—short descriptions of everyday family life and throwbacks with memories of early childhood. I find thousands of reposts, links, and reviews on social media sites and blogs.

  Zarnee’s profile in the persons database lists his employer as the Family Services Agency™. I know about agencies like that from my studies. You can simulate life in a biofamily by hiring children from birth to eighteen years old and romantic partners for specific periods of time. In training, we studied the use of these and similar services as indicators of mental instability. They fall within a subculture that is generally handled in the literature under the label nostalgia trends, or colloquially referred to as nostalgia porn.

  Zarnee’s blog also exhibits clear characteristics of a nostalgia aesthetic. The videos were either recorded using obsolete devices or the image quality was reduced with filters after filming. Even the embedded closed-caption subtitles have errors, as if they had been created with very outdated software.

  Zarnee has been working in the children’s division of Family Services™ for eight years and running his blog for the exact same amount of time. He’s among the most highly requested field agents on staff.

  Zarnee’s blog has grown steadily over the years. I’m surprised that I’ve never heard of him before. Almost one year ago to the day, he reached the level of having a superfollowing.

  My emotional reaction to the blog worries me. Even though I know it’s nostalgia porn, the videos fill me with a strange sense of calm. There’s no denying that my heart rate is slowing down. I can’t bring myself to close the page for several minutes. I click my way through the image and text files before finally closing the browser app. Then I delete the saved photo and my user data from the log.

  Media Usage Log Archive No.: Bc4

  Employee: @PsySolutions_ID5215d (Hitomi Yoshida)

  Content: familymatters.org

  Media Type: Blog

  Security Category: Safe

  Usage History Data: First access

  Closed Caption Track: “A Normal Morning.srt”

  So you probably want to know what a normal day looks like in the life of a biofamily I’ll start with the morning so my biomother comes to my bunk in the morning and wakes me up with a song she sings every morning until I wake up sometimes I pretend I’m still asleep so that she sings longer my mother doesn’t have a particularly good voice and at the singing castings she was always the first one to get cut but I still like it when she sings for me it’s such a nice feeling she always sings the same old folk song from her childhood anyway then we all have breakfast together with my biofather my biomother and my biosister and me morning is the only time when our unit gets sunlight that’s why we all like the morning most of all we all like to sit as long as we can at the breakfast table and don’t want to get up at all

  -

  9

  The Academy for High-Rise Diving™ is located in the second district in the city center. The city planners color coded the steel beams along the facades of the flagship buildings of the twenty inner districts. This was intended to give the exteriors an air of relevance and rank that would match the buildings’ elaborate interior designs.

  From the street, you can’t see what lies within the walls of the academy. Likewise, you can’t see the trainings taking place above the pentagonal inner courtyard, which lies at the center of the five surrounding main buildings. Dom Wu is the company figurehead. His portrait is displayed in all the entrance halls. The photo, taken in front of the green screen in Aston’s studio, shows Wu with a commanding expression, holding up a trophy from the High-Rise Diver World Championships™. Aston has edited Riva into the image, all the way in the background, falling, an unidentifiable human form between the building facades.

  Dom Wu’s office is located in the penthouse in building 3 and extends over the entire floor. A huge bright hall with just a few pieces of furniture, windows on all sides. It overlooks the entire training area and offers a view that reaches all the way to the outskirts of the city on all sides. Up there, he resembles an air traffic controller, directing movements in the sky, any distraction potentially leading to unthinkable consequences.

  Riva and Wu sit opposite each other near the window in two of the chairs designated for meetings, which are arranged in a circle around a glass cube that functions as both a monitor and a table.

  Riva went. She responded to my summons. Masters has marked the action yellow with the tracking tool. If the meeting goes well, I can expect green. I was able to follow Riva’s commute using PsySolutions’ Skycam access. A bird’s-eye view of every step from the building to the taxi, the taxi ride along the quickest possible route, and then running from the taxi into the building to get away from the VJs who were waiting for her with their cameras in front of the entrance.

  Wu watches the bodies falling past his window, counting seconds. His index finger raps on the arm of his chair. Riva turns away from the athletes, looks around the room.

  —How are you, Riva?

  —I came by taxi. It’s waiting downstairs.

  —I’ll order you one later when you want to go.

  —How long do I have to stay?

  —As long as you want. Nobody is forcing you to be here.

  Riva laughs and turns towards Dom to look him straight in the eye.

  —You had me summoned. If I didn’t come, I’d have to pay a fine.

  Wu is not an openly emotional man. In the media, he’s known for his stony demeanor, not reveali
ng any emotion, regardless of if he wins or loses. Even now, he expresses nothing, no frustration, no surprise.

  —Valentina won PanAsia, he says.

  Riva is silent. She has turned her face and body away from Dom again.

  —She was good, he says.

  I imagine how Wu sees Riva now, looking away, defiant. Maybe he remembers Riva as a child, fresh from the peripheries. How she made mistakes in training, resisted his instruction, got angry.

  —She wasn’t as good as you, he says.

  —I’m not coming back, Dom.

  —Okay.

  —Can I go now?

  —You’ll lose your privileges, your apartment, Aston, everything. It happens faster than you think.

  In the briefing, I advised Wu to approach Riva with a combination of understanding and authority. She needs to be made aware of the breadth of her decision, I said to Wu. The impending consequences. And she must know that you’re the only one who can prevent it. That you’re on her side.

  Riva gets up, not hastily, but determined. She stretches her hand out over the glass cube towards Wu. He takes it, clasping it with both hands.

  Riva turns her body towards the door, takes a small step. She’s stuck. Wu has wrapped his right hand tightly around her wrist, his facial expression still indiscernible.

  —Dom.

  —Riva.

  —Let go of me.

  —Think it over, Riva.

  She jerks her hand out of his grip, but he’s already let go, making her lose her balance for a moment.

  When she gets to the door, she turns around again. She seems to reflect for a moment, and then says:

  —I thought of our museum visits the other day, do you remember? How you would sometimes take the girls with the best scores to the museum.

  Dom nods.

  I note Karnovsky mentions museum visit in my research column. Then I dictate a message to my assistant: Please find out which museums Riva visited during her time at the academy and if there are any reports about it.

  —Do you still do that with the girls, those Sunday excursions? Riva asks.