I think that maybe someday the world will end and we will die. And I will sit there, on that canvas chair by the balcony railing, and I will hold your hand and we will wish for the immortality that was denied to us. We will stand then, shouting ourselves hoarse, watching as fire and water drown the world in hate and malice. We will shout because we have nothing left to say, because there is nothing left to say. Will be nothing left to say. I can already feel the words running out.
Do you know what a 14 hour workday does to your sanity? Do you ever feel the shadows of the night lengthening? Feel God's face in every mirror, every window? Watch as the curve of my skin gives way to knives and rippled fabric, shredding itself to pieces. I left my arm in the break room the other day. No one bothered to recycle it.
The trash is mounting. I think the janitorial staff stopped coming a while ago. Another cost cutting measure? Perhaps I am merely delusional. They promised us a long weekend this weekend. Did you know that? It came to all of our emails, on usual company letter head, promising us that we could all take Friday off as a reward for a job well done. I started taking notes on the walls a while ago, writing at the start of each day what day it was. It haunts me now, a great scrawling list of words, all of them "Thursday". Perhaps we were wrong to fear Mondays. I check my phone again today, the glowing screen proudly declaring that it was a Thursday again, a complete calendar to match.
Surveillance is funny because there's no way for it to work, and I would know, because it's what I do. We dance in and out of meetings, trading compliments as barbed jabs and barbed jabs as statements of fact. Promotion is a devotion to the cult of personality, the plague of capitalism, the skull throne on which our lord and master sits. I haven't been outside in weeks probably. It's okay. There are beds in the breakroom, piss stained and acidic, monsters with their claws out waiting beneath. I could almost sleep if it weren't for the screaming.
For every hour I spend scraping my eyes on the LCD screen, status LEDs punching holes in my cheekbones and scraping reaching tendrils against my brain, for every hour I spend fighting against the grim demands of my own biology, for every hour I choke in the vile sweat stench of the workshop. For every hour that trickles by, an infinity in a moment, a chaotic rumble of white noise. What did I spend that day doing? My lines per day keeps going up. Were they good?
It's almost fun pretending that my fingers still work when my manager comes round to my cubicle, hiding the bones behind my back. More duct tape will fix me, will hold me together, will return the flesh to my body. My organs all hang out in the open, groped by the passing apes, the dumb things, the laughing cackling nepo babies in their pristine suits and their merciless smiles. I wonder what's behind those sunglasses. Is it eyeless pits? Burning fires? Snake eyes? Then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize the truth. They have normal human eyes. They are the normal humans. It is the rest of us who have broken eyes, black eyes, peeling eyes, no eyes.
It's exciting because we launch next week and everyone is making preparations for the party. There are rumours of bonuses going around, passed through the wires into my brain, slipping down the spiderweb network of office gossip. Bonuses are not for the grunts normally, but this time will be different says the rumour. I wonder who started it. I wonder how much they were paid.
The snap-click of high heels on linoleum and we scatter from the break-room, rats in the light, abandoning our overpriced coffees and the avocado toast we can ill afford. We have to eat something, right? When was the last time anyone left the building? I haven't been out since Monday and that was years ago. My car sits, rusting, broken. The wing mirrors were stolen a while ago, wheels long gone, window smashed in, the radio constantly whispering the words of an unknown audiobook. None of the other cars are in better condition. I only ever go to look at it anyway. Where would I go if I could?
They rolled out something new the other day. They called it a "taste of fresh air", and it was electricity pouring into my brain, fire in my mind, the taste of acid on my tongue, a hand on my back, and then I was being dunked face first into water, coming up spitting and gagging, wrenching, curled into a defensive ball. I was fine. I was healthy. I was given a clean bill of health, slapped on the back, and sent back to work, ignoring the blood streaming from my eyes and ears, the bruises erupting over bumpy skin.
Her perfect little face laughed, eyes winking, promising that I was cute and pathetic and maybe she'd take me back to her perfect apartment, her soft clean sheets, the touch of her curves. She could fix me. She could have her fun with me. She could survive something so trivial. I want to break her, to hurl her into the drowning rain, to watch as her porcelain body shatters into a thousand cracks. Would they stitch her back up, their little wind up doll, golden lines marring the place where the tool fought back? Wouldn't it be nice to feel loved, to feel gentle hands instead of rough ones? Would it feel nice to feel the crunch of her tongue as I bite down, blood dripping onto my hands, staining them red again?
Taking a life is easy, a button press, an update to the code, a car crash, an explosion on a distant tac screen, a drone overhead, a missile, a bomb, a flood, a stamp saying no. When they weren't looking I totalled it up. When they weren't looking I figured out how much I personally was responsible for. When they weren't looking I saw the ghosts behind me in the mirror. The angry spirits loathed me, they followed me wherever I went, they plotted my demise, powerless and impotent. I'm so sorry, I promise, I'm so sorry. It was me or you. I'm so sorry. It was me or you. I'm sorry.
The bathroom mirror is one way glass, just another way they keep tabs on us. My friend tore out his eyes, and crushed the cameras contained within to tiny pieces, the squirting juices dripping from his hands as he screamed that nameless rage, as the manacles closed, as they dragged him away still screaming, as I never saw him again.
I stagger down long dark hallways, a voice booming from speakers, their uplifting anthem song, the cheerful jingle of our own advertisements. I've seen the numbers, the dropping recognition, the hatred over social media, the quantified rage of 7 billion innocents. I know that we cannot be long for the world, that this scam has to stop somewhere. That nothing can be done. My fingers fly over the keyboard, mashing words and brackets and numbers in, the code forming a complete monster, a beast that threatens to devour us. In my nightmares, it becomes the building, doors chomping, lights flickering with the intelligence no human could match, all that knowledge turned towards an end, our end. We are the villains of this story and sometimes I run and sometimes I just stand and laugh as it takes me, bones ground to dust and I can feel it as my body is scattered to the wind. I am in every atom and I am finally free, I am everywhere and in everything, and my boss has his hand on my back shaking me awake, laughing because it's 2:36 am and my shift ended half an hour ago. I'm so devoted. I'm so good. I deserve a gold star. I deserve my photo on the bounty wall, on the list of employees of the month.
I think my brain must be hooked up somewhere else, that I pilot my body on remote. Perhaps in one the vast sub-basements where venture capital goes to be spent, where the internet is manufactured, where the earth is beaten into shape, where electricity crackles over the flesh of the million sacrificial lambs. I don't fear death. I fear the absence of feeling, the isolation, how much grayer the room could get. What if they took down the posters? I'm hanging in there. I smile at the cat and touch its paw. It's falling in slow motion, just like me. It cannot hold on forever, just like me. Someday the mold will eat it, just like me.
How can I quantify the future? How can I quantify my life? As a series of numbers, as a series of events? As a GPA, as a pair of degrees on the wall, as the marks of starvation, as the patterning of my scars? As a disjointed series of memories, the touch of a mother, the fear of myself, the fear of isolation, the fear, always the fear. Have I ever not been scared?
I don't know how to stop. I've tried every day for the rest of my life. But I keep dragging myself down the halls on palms rubbed skinless, leaving trails of blood and gore. They step over me and laugh. They hold each other and laugh. They joke about how they're going to be okay.
It's okay because we're launching on Monday and they're still looking for bones to weave into the walls to keep the demons out. Perhaps if I give them my legs, they'll let me go. Perhaps my ribs would be enough for a profit. Perhaps if I were to die, to give all of me, to become the skull on the prow, it would carry me with it and maybe that would be as good as escape, as survival, knowing that I too would go forth. Perhaps then it wouldn't matter how many times my body stops, how many times the life leaves my eyes, how many times I die and reach for that distant peace.
I hope that fucking rocket crashes. I hope it takes us with it.