the inmate's journal : the corporation vii : technology ii

Who were these people?  Boys with dreams for penises and joysticks for arms.  Who lived with one foot in a monitor, the other in a cloud.  And these thousands milling around me multiplied a thousand thousand times across the world’s paved surface … and another thousand thousand aspiring to become like them … and another thousand thousand thousand waiting in the womb … the world bit by byte transforming itself into Nintendo and unintelligibility.

 

They stormed and lurked around the opening to my cubicle like demented bees, and I would entertain them, so to speak, from time to time in my hovel.  I didn’t really understand anything they said.

 

Trebuchet, onager, mangonel, scutage, Zweihänder, Lamellar, destrier, said Spacal.

 

aamof ah ybs iykwim b/c bmtipg bmb aat Budweiser eg fos tnstaafl dyjhiw fyeo igp ibn ifvb itrw lshmbb fubar ftw foad, said Teve.

 

On receipt of a Transfer Invoke indication from FE1, FE2 shall identify.  If the transfer is found to be invalid, a Transfer Invoke response.  In the case where User A is in another network, any information pertaining to relationship rt received by the gateway PINX or by the user's PINX may be used by that PINX, said Vavakananda Madangapal Salaman.

 

// Hello.java  import  java.applet.Applet; import java.awt.Graphics; public class Hello extends Applet {public void paint (Graphics gc) {gc.drawString("Hello, world!", 65, 95);, said Lief.

 

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of God the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding penicillin in a word for reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there in the year of their Lord six hundred and something and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons I resume abandoned unfinished, said H. Maladrit.

 

But our inability to communicate didn’t really seem to matter—I would laugh when they laughed, I’d give them coffee and muffins when they looked sad; and we bonded simply by my listening to them.  Silence, my chatty gigolos and mistresses, is underrated as a path to acceptance and love.  But while I loved them—their geeky otherworldliness, their hardwired inability to socialize with normal bloodthirsty men and bloodlusty women, their dreams that curled upward to the throne of mind—I wasn’t one of them.  I liked flesh too much.  I like the smells and insanities of love, its dangers.  Most importantly, technology was for me just another world to learn and not the source of light, truth, peace, and joy.

 

Because I could grasp a few technological basics while making people think I knew more—such deception is the key to all worldly success—and because I had the ability to construct grammatically correct sentences longer than three words and could speak to a crowd of people without using acronyms or fondling my penis, I kept getting promoted.  Soon I was chief writer and language consultant to Lazarus’ project manager, advising him on how to use English to manipulate people and still have them like you.

 

And I’d be sent to teeming technology conferences in Orlando, where Mickey Mouse ears rose above the proceedings and kings and princes of the Land of the Future spoke, all dreaming the same dream … of communication that was faster, higher, stronger, greener, clearer, more democratic, efficient, beautiful, concise—and utterly fart-free.  Hordes of warbling bearded boys wept and hollered in fugal ecstasies as software was unleashed.  New hardware zoomed from laboratory caves and joined in the rejoicing.  Things were good.  It was like religion, but transcendence was only a joystick away.

 

Things got even better when Lazarus’ project manager was hit by a streetcar and I rewrote Lazarus’ mission statement so inspirationally I was asked to replace him.  I had underestimated the impact of a clear slogan in a division comprised of people who spoke in acronyms and broken sentences; there it was, proudly blinking at me on special project mugs and pens displayed on tottering stacks of paper across the detritus of my office—

 

To Reduce Costs and Improve Efficiencies

by Transforming New Bank’s Communications

 

So crisp and marvelous, I thought.  So creative, everyone said.  Suddenly I was invited out for karaoke, given an expense account, a 64 square foot office with 6’ high dividers, my own printer, a more realistic plant, and three motivational posters extolling teamwork, networks, and hard work.  Men said hi to me in the washrooms; women looked at me more lustfully.

 

I compared this newfound luxury to my life with Magna.  In the branch … standup toil, bottomed out pay, ignorance, powerlessness, insignificance, eternal repetition, dread, incarceration.  But here, in head office, with Mr. Blood still just a twinkle in my dreams … free coffee, meeting muffins served by silently obeisant immigrants, views from daily polished windows of the concrete works of man spread and seductive and flawless, the ladder visible and firm and sweet and there, so there … yes, I thought, leaning back on my ergonomically correct chair to the tunes of tinkling tomorrow … the will, the will to clamber!

 

Now we know, don’t we, most horny beloved—if not from our adventures into the world of religion then from our adventures into life—that, despite the pleas of technologists and feminists everywhere, sex is at the root of everything.  Stop sex, stop the species.  Increase sex, stop the wars.  So it was that New Bank’s Tech Division, an advocate of replacing sex with sperm banks and human messiness with pristine clones, was not particularly adept at using the normal human manipulative fleshy tools to get its way—its secretaries were dowdy, its admin assistants had bad teeth and no cleavage.  Consequently, it had received word from the Office of the Chairman to improve the situation immediately, as research had shown that Tech’s obliviousness to beauty was resulting in declining profits, shareholder discontent, media acrimony, a languid reputation, and rabidly high employee turnover.