Day 1
I arrived early for my first day. Once again I took the bus, though the powder-blue suit was back in its closet and I was dressed instead in an open-neck shirt over which I had put on my most presentable hoodie. Pretty much the standard uniform, these days, for the non-customer-facing professional.
I also carried a man-bag thing, the closest I have to a briefcase. It was empty, but it showed I was prepared. I felt freshly hatched into this new world of employment and wanted no hint of the artist's shamble of my life-before.
Arriving with a good half hour to spare, I found a coffee shop across the office park from the SD building. Now that I was an earner again, I could afford to pay good money for decent coffee. In this case, a large latte that could double as breakfast. The Asian girl who served me seemed unnaturally cheerful for the time of day. A discreet logo on her beige uniform told me that, despite the café's No Label artisan chic, I was safely in the maw of a warm and cuddly chain franchise, could expect lowest-common-denominated products delivered with MacDonald's-like levels of uniformity.
I smiled at her to convey just how good I felt to be out and about with good reason on this chill morning – not just wandering alone and aimless in an excuse to get out of the house, my life over the last few months. Acknowledging my gesture with a demure dip of the head, she turned away to serve the next customer.
Choosing a seat with a view of the courtyard, I pulled out my phone and began to tap my thoughts. I had started a diary, a private journal. A resolution to myself: if I am going to make a go of this writing thing, then I am going to do it properly.
My thoughts were a little slow in coming. Instead I let my attention wander. The courtyard appeared occupied by an unusual number of the casually and idiosyncratically dressed, my favourite being a man in Buddhist robes printed in a khaki camouflage pattern instead of the customary saffron. Of course, I didn't know what normal was for this neighbourhood, at this time of day. Perhaps the high-tech office park offered a superior class of park bench. Perhaps there was a Greenpeace office nearby. A free Hari Krishna kitchen? Still, there was a cleanliness to them that argued against their being vagrants.
I noted, too, an unusual preponderance of facial hair. According to the signpost I had seen on my way in, The Cluster wasn't just an office park, it was also a "technology hub". So the presence of bearded engineers wasn't out of place. There was something about these courtyard loiterers, though, that didn't fit that mould. They belonged, I decided, to a different tribe. One thought followed another as I pondered what faculty it was in myself that allowed such fine distinctions to be detected from no more information than an idle glance. If I had understood correctly, this was what Spurious Developments was seeking to understand and decode, this ability for brains to perform pattern recognition (the term had come up several times in yesterday's visit). Despite my enthusiasm for the job, I wasn't sure I felt entirely comfortable with their project. The fragments of artist's soul that remained within me rebelled at the idea of some work of mine being put before a machine, its worth to be assessed.
My daydream was interrupted by the dregs of my coffee cup. It had been good coffee. Looking around at my immediate surroundings, I found myself favourably inclined toward the understated ambience of the café's interior, just as some focus group somewhere must once have predicted I would be. I used to be an artist, now I was to be a wage-earner. We all like to think of ourselves as individuals, but there are times when it's nice just to feel yourself slap-bang in the middle of the target demographic. When it came to caffeinated beverages at least, it seemed I was still an integral member of society.
I checked the time and saw that I needed to get to work. Too late now to write these observations into my journal, I left them to make their own way to posterity.
James greeted me with news of my morning's schedule: a grand tour of the basement, the place where all the science was done. This never eventuated. While I was killing time, checking out my new workstation and waiting for James to complete his morning routine, an alarm went off.
All around the room people stopped what they were doing and looked at each other in bafflement. If this was a drill, they clearly had not been forewarned. Somewhere behind me I heard the words, "bomb threat", but there was no sense of urgency. Taking my cue from the unhurried movement of bodies toward the stairwell, I joined the exodus alongside Karen as we filed down the corridor. Ahead, James had slowed for us to catch him up, so I spoke quickly to start the conversation before he joined us, pitching my voice over the wail of the siren.
"One of these three is not like the others." I gave a quizzical look, challenging her to catch my meaning.
"I have no idea what you're trying to say, Kurt. None of us is remotely like the others."
"So what is someone like you doing in a job like this?"
She stopped momentarily to appraise me, bringing her to a halt a few paces short of James. The biker chick hardness was firmly in place.
"Is this some sort of divide and conquer tactic?" As soon as she had spoken she started walking again.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't change the subject. The subject is: what do you mean?"
James fell into step beside us. "What does he mean about what?" he asked.
"I'm just trying to make sense of my new job."
"Plenty of time for that. Seems the boss likes you."
"Does he? How could he tell? He spent the whole time yesterday lecturing me. Something about wanting to privatise our emotions. I barely said a word."
"Ah, the company pitch," said James. "I know it well. Wrote most of it myself. It's odd that he should have tried it on you, though. Its main job is to extract money from investors, not to provide a pep talk for our publicist."
"You wrote it?"
"Well, me and Graeme mostly. All that stuff about trust and economics, that's not what our Dear Leader is really interested in, you know."
"Dear Leader? Is that his official title?"
"Well, he has also been called the C-question mark-O, on account of his being very important but no one quite sure what he actually does."
I laughed. "That I can understand. He had a lot to say, but I couldn't quite work out what angle he was coming from."
"Understandable," said James. "The reverse won't have been true though. He will have had no trouble assessing you. Doesn't matter that you didn't say anything; it's the body language he watches."
"I thought he spent most of the time staring at his own knees, or the wall behind me."
I glanced around at Karen. She appeared content to follow us down the stairs, let James do all the talking.
"Don't be fooled," he said. "Lance Coriolis is not the boss because of any special expertise in the science of what we're doing, nor in presenting business plans to investors. He's the boss because he is the one with the relentless single-minded determination to achieve his goal, and because he is very good at choosing the right people he needs to do that. Now he's chosen you. So, welcome aboard."
"His goal? And why me? An ex-artist who has never written a paid word in my life."
James shrugged. "Mysterious ways."
We shuffled our way around the final loop of the stairwell and emerged into the lobby. Ahead of us, people were walking calmly toward the exit. There was no sense of rush. The receptionist's turret had already been evacuated.
Karen, who had kept her silence while James was having his say, now spoke. "There will be a reason. And if you needed to know what it is, he would have told you."
"He asked if I was a story teller."
"How did you reply?" asked James.
"I said I like to make it up as I go along."
"And?"
"And he said what he wanted was a picture painter."
"There you go then ..."
James's words came slowly to a halt as we exited the building and took in the scene outside. Evidence of fire or other calamity was entirely absent. Instead, the office park courtyard was full of placard-waving demonstrators. "Fuck off Mindfucker" was the first to capture my attention; "My Mind is My Own" and "Keep Out of My Head" were other examples. "Lance the Boil" was the pick of the bunch, an unflattering cartoon image accompanying the words.
Above us monitor drones were floating in the air. Off to one side a well-dressed young lady was standing in front of a camera and speaking into a microphone.
"Uh oh. I think we have just become breakfast television."
I glanced at my companions. Karen had the same hard look of disdain she had had when ticking me off earlier. James surveyed the scene with a sly smile – perhaps wry recognition, or just as possibly an arrogant dismissal of the futility of the protestors' strategy; placards against dollars.
The protestors had left us a pathway across to the emergency assembly point on the far side of the courtyard. With nowhere else to go, we ran this gauntlet, following closely behind those ahead of us and keeping our heads slightly cowed in an instinctive response to the chanting and abuse. Many of the protestors were wearing tin foil hats, and among the faces I thought I recognised some of those beards I had been observing back in the coffee shop.
Once through the worst of it, I came to a decision. I was still holding my man-bag and it was still just as empty.
"Here, hold this." I thrust the bag into Karen's hands and turned away before she had a chance to refuse it.
If I was to tell their story, I needed a story to tell. This might turn out to be the closest thing to excitement I would get in my time among them – no point letting it go to waste.
I chose a target, a young man of stocky build accompanied by what may have been his girlfriend. They were placard-less but wearing the tinfoil hats and fully engaged in the chant ('Hey, rich man, leave our heads alone', to the tune of an old Pink Floyd song). He registered my approach and broke off from the singing.
"You work up there? Whatever they're paying you, brother, you know it won't buy back your soul." His voice started out with an accusatory tone, then softened. I was feeling a genuine sense of bewilderment at how my first day at work was turning out; the evidence for this must have been plastered across my face for all to see. Bewilderment – but I also couldn't stop a smile from curling the corner of my lips. It's hard to feel intimidated by someone with tinfoil on his head. By his expression, I guessed it was at around this point that the same thought occurred to him.
While his girlfriend had a Bohemian look, shared by many of the other protestors, my pattern recognition faculties were tagging this guy as being of a more down-to-earth disposition. Someone who worked with his hands for a living, perhaps. He was dressed in a check shirt and dungarees.
"Hey, I'm just a contractor." I did my best to sound bemused. "This is my first day here."
"But you know what goes on in there, right?"
"Sure ..., well, sort of." My confusion, too, was genuine. They had given me a lot of PR, but I was still feeling a little vague about specifics. I noticed a nearby placard. "Mindfucking, right?"
"You got it! They already control all the money. Now they want to go looking inside our heads. They're scared of what we might do to them if we start thinking the wrong thoughts."
"How does that work?"
"You don't know? They are experimenting on people. With brain scanning machines. You heard of those medical imaging machines they use in hospitals? Well it's like that only more advanced. They can see right into the synaptic connections in your head, in enough detail to decode what's going on in there." He was getting into his stride now, using his words like he knew what they meant. It was as if he had recognized, in me, an audience who actually did give a damn. I glanced across at his girlfriend who returned a complicit smile.
"They told me something about medical research," I said. "You know, helping study schizophrenia, dementia, that sort of thing." I knew a few big words, too; didn't want to be outdone.
"Like they care about the mentally ill. That's just an excuse, bro'. I mean, look what happened with drug testing. Started out, it was like 'just for people who operate heavy machinery'. Now you can't even get a job flipping burgers without you first have to pee in a bottle."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"Yeah. And you ever wondered why it's mainly the cheap drugs they detect? The ones you buy on the streets or grow yourself?"
I admitted that I hadn't.
"It's all about control. All this," he gestured up at the Spurious building, "it's just another way to keep the people in line. They've got this homeland security bullshit going, told us it's protection against all those bad hombres out there who want to do us wrong. But what do they care about a few deaths among the public trash? Truth is, it's just an excuse to keep us all under surveillance. Because we're the real threat. We're the ones who could kick them out, if we ever made up our minds to do it. That's what all this mind-reading shit is really all about. Making sure that never happens. Digging themselves in deeper. That's why we have to stop it."
I had set my phone to record on my way over, so I was getting all this. Not sure if it was anything I could use but at least I had it stored.
"My name's Kurt," I said when he wound down. I stretched out a hand and he shook it, followed by his girlfriend.
"I'm Tane. This is Elovi'i."
"Hi Kurt." Elovi'i had a broad enthusiastic face, with dirty blond hair that hung down to her shoulders, unkempt yet attractive. Of all the protestors, it was her metallic skullcap that looked least out of place, something to do with the wideness of her smile.
Around us, the chanting had come to an abrupt halt and people were redirecting their attention, away from the huddled SD staff and back toward the building. Standing up on a block of marble to one side of the entrance door, no more than ten meters from where I stood, was my new boss, Lance Coriolis. He was holding a megaphone. To his left was Miranda, down on one knee like a medieval handmaiden giving obeisance to her lord. She was holding up what looked like a tablet computer. From the way Coriolis was staring at it I guessed he was using it as a teleprompter. It would have made a great image for the book, but I refrained from pulling out my phone to take a snapshot, worried that it might give the wrong impression to my new friends. No doubt it would all be captured by the reporter's drone that was currently sidling its way in toward Coriolis for a closer shot. I figured I'd be able to do a frame grab off the web later.
"You are witnessing one of the rare cases of our leader making a mistake."
Turning to my left, I discovered that Graeme, the unassuming third scientist, was standing beside me. Until that instant, I had had no inkling of his presence. I cast a glance toward Tane and Elovi'i to see whether they had registered an enemy in their midst. They showed no sign of having noticed. Perhaps it was his tee-shirt that fooled them. Its logo read, "You just know you're right?". He blended easily with the people around him.
"This is costing Lance, appearing in public like this, but it isn't going to do us any good. He can be surprisingly human at times. He's decided that the courageous thing to do must be the right thing. That's a very human mistake."
He spoke quietly but somehow his words cut through Coriolis's megaphone address. His tone didn't suggest any expectation of a reply, so I turned my attention back to what the boss was saying.
"Ladies and gentlemen, ..." he had started out. A silence descended. The incongruity of this choice of greeting and his obvious awkwardness appeared to have put the mob off its stride. I missed his next words because Graeme was speaking, so picked up the thread about thirty seconds in.
"... So you see, you have no need to fear us. What we are doing is intended to free people, not to trap them ..."
The crowd's silence was losing its shape. First just shuffling and muttering, then jeering, finally the stamping of feet and a resumption of the chant. Coriolis continued for a short while longer but his words were increasingly unintelligible as the protest built in volume.
Just before the end, Graeme spoke once more. "I have your first assignment. We want you to follow up with these new friends of yours. Find out who is behind all this. There will be ringleaders. We want to know who they are. Pretend to sympathize with their cause. You're an artist. They will accept you as one of their own."
I was astonished. "Was an artist. You seem very confident of my loyalty. I'm barely on the payroll yet. Aren't you worried that I might become what you want me to pretend to be?"
"No. You have been hired to chronicle what we're doing. You can see it for yourself, first hand, see how valuable it is."
How do you argue with confidence like that? He spoke in the same flat voice I would come to know well over the next few months: in my experience, it was the only voice he had. I never once heard him speak in anger, never heard him even attempt to be persuasive.
Unable to summon a counterargument, I watched on in silence as Coriolis and Miranda retreated back into the building. When I turned to Graeme again, having belatedly found some words for my indignation, I found he was no longer there, that I was alone once more among the protestors.
The city fringe business park is venture capital's answer to the megachurch, a comparison that extends to ample visitor parking. When the fun was finally over and the congregation had begun to scatter, Tane suggested to me that I might like to join them at the after-match get-together, offering a lift to get there.
"On my first day? Sure, why not? With all the fuss, I doubt anyone will notice me gone."
I accompanied them to the carpark, where I was not at all surprised to find waiting an old beat-up Tesla saloon.
Little had happened after the Coriolis speech ended. I'd spent a few minutes being introduced to some of the protest organizers, then stood among them and mouthed along with the chant as the Spurious Developments staff and other tenants filed back into the building, escorted by the team of security guards who had arrived in the interim. Stood, I should say, at the back of the crowd. My invitation, I assume, was reward for this show of support.
Tane unplugged his vehicle from its umbilical and the old beast hummed back to life as I climbed into the backseat.
"This is okay isn't it? I'm not being taken away to be shot as a collaborator?"
In the front seat mirror I saw Elovi'i smiling her Earth Mother smile. "We're passionately committed to non-violence," she said. I acknowledged with a nod of the head.
"So you're a writer then?" asked Tane as he backed us out of the charging bay and turned for the exit.
I laughed at the naivety of the question. "I wasn't one yesterday but perhaps I am one today. I guess I'll have to become one at any rate, if I decide to stick with it." Like I had a choice on that last point.
"I don't get it. How did you get the job then?"
"Oh, you know, the usual way. A friend of a friend. Someone from my old work."
"What did you do before, then?" Elovi'i asked. "If not a writer?" She had a pleasant lilt to her voice, a way of talking that eliminated any suggestion of interrogation. We were just these strangers getting acquainted, making good progress through the comparative sanity of mid-morning traffic.
I hesitated. "Oh, you know. This and that. A bit of teaching. Casual stuff to keep the bills paid."
"Sounds like this new job must be quite a break for you." The compassion in her voice almost made me wince.
"It's very kind of you to say so. Given the circumstances."
"We all need to make a living somehow. We all need to make our own decisions."
"True enough." I hesitated again, then thought, why not? "Actually, I used to be an artist. Did all right at it for a while. Not any more though. Hence the fresh start."
"Oh wow. That sounds wonderful." Elovi'i turned around in her seat to grin at me.
"It was fun for a while, I suppose." I shrugged and grimaced. Suddenly I was eight years old again, sitting in the back seat, being ferried to a play date so my mum and dad could go off to run their adult errands.
To my relief, the conversation shifted away from my personal history; we spent the rest of the journey discussing impressionism and the meaning of abstraction.