Shadowy images,
forging in the soul
what living visions
have sought to express,

Words

are riparian forms,
bearers of dreams,
eager crimson rivers
ascending wind-swept limbs
of newly born castles,
filled with night beasts
among the Carpathian mountains.

Candle Light

Within a candle’s gentle glow,
amidst the flame of this lit statue,
I find the warmth of your kisses.
I yearn for your fangs upon my body.
Our bodies stretch out to become
fiery canvases in each other’s mouths.
We pass our hands through the flame,
and we become artists—
Surrounded by dim reflections
of life on the walls around us.

“Come, my spade.”

“Alan, I’ve warned you, I’m really not okay with slang like that. It’s offensive.”

“Eh? No, I meant ‘Give me my spade.’ I can see his toes poking out.”

Joe handed over the tool in question and retreated to a safe distance. He watched the dust cloud thicken from behind the mixer as scoop after scoop was added to the pit. Outside their patch of floodlit dirt, the building sat in the dark, still, the construction crew long gone. The unfinished structure loomed up and around them, silent as the grave, quite appropriately. Its raw steel and concrete surfaces amplified the soft ‘whump’ of quicklime hitting… stuff. Assorted stuff. In truth, Joe didn’t know what lay in the hole at this point and was trying hard not to speculate. The smell was nauseating enough, even through the mask, even through the stink of the generator and the site’s general mustiness. It didn’t smell of decay or corruption or death, although that would have been bad enough. It just smelt wrong.

Alan reappeared before long, batting excess powder from his gloves and boots.

“Give me some credit, I sat through your li’l racialism speech, didn’t I?”

“You’re not the victim here, Alan.”

Joe watched the old man ditch his mask and goggles. Usually when a co-worker makes a social faux pas, however mistakenly, it hangs around afterwards like a fart in a tent. It wasn’t like that with Alan. His skin was so thick he probably didn’t need the standard issue boiler suit he seemed to live in. As if to prove it, Alan hummed a cheery tune while he headed for the van.

“Job done,” he said. “Now you lift the tank out and I’ll crack open the thermos. Sugar?”

“Sure,” Joe replied, his face a picture of doubt. “Two. Cheers.”

Alan disappeared into the cab, leaving behind a baffled colleague and a few dusty footprints. Even after a month working together, Joe still couldn’t accept how unfazed his mentor was by their job. This was a grizzly task any way you cut it and tea breaks just didn’t seem appropriate. What they were doing wasn’t illegal or unethical, true, but it made Joe uneasy all the same. In fact, he’d found himself concealing his role at CryoBe from friends and family because it was legal. It made each shift feel worse somehow, like the whole world was aware and therefore complicit. Operating at night didn’t help him feel any less shady either, regardless of the sense in working when the sites were clear. ‘Customer Deposition Logistics’: the job title itself sounded dishonest without being, strictly speaking, untrue.

Joe opened the back of the van and dithered around its contents. The heavy translucent container had no handles and required full-body contact to grasp. Full-body contact was less than ideal though. Like lighting a cigarette on a funeral pyre, hugging this thing seemed inappropriate in some indefinable way. A trail of blue slime still glistened on one of its sides, a viscous reminder of what it had recently contained.

Alan returned to find his assistant trying (and failing) to lift the tank without actually touching it. Beckoning him aside, Alan chuckled and handed over a steaming mug.

“No use pussyfooting around,” he said. “You’ll have to get it over with eventually.”

Joe grunted and nodded towards the pit.

“Shame you weren’t there to advise that poor bastard.”

Alan laughed again without a hint of mirth.

“What, you think he didn’t question the logic of all this before he signed up? Hell, the implications of the procedure are laid out in the small print — not that anyone bothers reading it.”

Alan stared at the container a moment before continuing.

“Screw ‘em. It’s good there’s no shortage of idiots trying to live forever. We’d be out of the job if there weren’t.”

That was Alan. Beneath the stubble and wrinkles, a business sense directed him like the wind might a weathervane. He didn’t mind hoofing bodies around in the middle of the night, carrying out the last wishes of clients long gone, cutting corners wherever the suits told him it was necessary. If he was fazed about his employer’s moral obligations — or their apparent neglect — he hadn’t let it slip yet. This was just a job to him.

Joe sipped his drink without much interest, appraising the glass coffin as one might a reasonably impressive sewer. “Would you do it?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?” Joe nodded towards the tank ‘‘Would you take a punt, obviously. If you had the money and all that.”

Alan was a master of the derisive snort. Presumably he got a lot of practice.

“You mad? What you’re looking at there is the most lucrative con in the history of mankind. It’s exploitation, plain and simple, pandering to rich cowards looking to out-run the reaper.” He sloshed his tea in the direction of the pit. “He catches up with us all in the end, as your man there can attest. Doesn’t matter how big your bank account is, soon as you’re on ice the parasites and scavengers arrive to pick apart what’s left. Might be a few years, might be a hundred, but nothing lasts forever.”

Joe kept his silence till the old man rounded on him.

“You can’t seriously think it’s worth it? We’ve buried and burnt a dozen stiffs this week alone and not one got as much dignity as a family pet.”

“I don’t know, Al. I mean, yeah, you’re right. Ultimately, it’s a hopeless attempt to delay the inevitable. But then again, what isn’t?”

Alan shot him a look usually reserved for lunatics, cultists and politicians one does not agree with. Joe threw up a hand as if to ward it off.

“I know, I know,” he said. “It’s crazy and irrational. At the same time, I get why they might go for it all the same. They’re just scared. Aren’t you? For what it’s worth I wouldn’t mind turning up at the pearly gates as late as possible.”

“Well, I’ve got good news for you on that front. Everyone’s late by the time they get there.”

“You stole that from someone didn’t y—”

“My point is,” said Alan, hurdling the accusation, “we all know how it’ll turn out eventually. The filthy rich can’t claim ignorance. That’s what bothers me sometimes. You’d think with all that money and power — money always comes with power, mind you — you’d think they’d get a nose for risky ventures and outright scams. You’d expect them to be cautious or at least catch the whiff of bullshit when it’s pitched at them.”

Joe was well aware of Alan’s misguided ideas about the upper classes. He was compiling them for a future trial.

“Even still,” Alan went on, “they pour all that cash into a million-to-one chance at an unknown future, knowing full-well that nobody ever benefited from the investment. And I know they know that. I’ve seen the marketing spiel. The warning is on the first damn page. It’s got to be, legally.” He paused to shake his head. “Do they listen? Do they hell. And however many years later, when the last penny tinkles down the plughole, look where they end up. You were promised burial? Here’s the closest patch of dirt available. Cremation? We’ll find an old boiler to chuck you in. Why? Because the company won’t fork out more than it’s got to and there’s nobody left who gives a shit.”

Right on the edge of a full-blown rant, fed by a reservoir of pent-up frustration, Alan stopped and clamped his mouth shut. The anger was still there, of course, just held in check for now. He seemed to be saving it for some future occasion.

Without the emotion to animate it, the old man’s face resumed its usual scowl.

“Anyway,” he said, calmer now, “they bring it on themselves. You can’t get too mad about these things.”

Joe had to bite his tongue at this. The evidence seemed to suggest the opposite.

“You’re not wrong,” he said, keen not to press the topic further but curious despite himself. “But it’s like you say, if people had more sense CryoBe wouldn’t… well, be.”

At this Alan tossed his dregs away and held out a hand expectantly.

“Fear makes people do strange things,” he conceded. “And I suppose rich folk are pretty strange to begin with. You have to be someone special to end up in a tank like that though. We should expect better of them.”

Joe drained his mug and passed it back. “Special, eh? Like famous, you mean?”

“More than famous, you’d have to be certifiably renowned. Or the opposite, I suppose, wealthy and influential enough to disappear from the public eye. Those are the really dangerous ones alright, but that’s beside the point. There are plenty crazy enough to gamble on the deep freeze.”

Joe was also aware of his mentor’s alternative understanding of social hierarchies and their relationship to power. Every time the topic arose, Joe felt a deep chasm opening a few inches from where he stood. However, being aware that Alan was still, technically, his boss, he always backed away from the precipice — as was his duty.

Nodding slowly, Joe played it safe while trying his best to change the subject. “I guess that makes some sort of sense… so who was in this one?”

“No idea. Doesn’t matter now.”

Alan walked away as he shrugged this off, retiring to the shadows to light a scraggly dog-end. Joe was impressed he’d been considerate enough to give him some space, so much so that he didn’t question the intelligence of sparking up in a chemical minefield. Instead, he continued staring at the grave and idly wondering who it belonged to.

“No… I suppose not.”

The pair lapsed into silence. If either one had more opinions on the topic, they kept them to themselves. On the edge of hearing, somewhere beyond the darkness, traffic continued droning into the night.

“You’re definitely right about one thing though,” Joe said, after a pause. “I’d be out scratching for cash like everyone else if this lot were any more rational. Which reminds me, I don’t think I ever thanked you for getting me this gig. It’s appreciated.”

The role of amenable subordinate was second nature to Joe by this point, as much as it boiled his blood.

Alan grunted and blew out a smoke ring. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “Not like I could have managed this month alone.”

“Right, of course, you mentioned there was a backlog. Lucky me.”

“Not a backlog, as such. But yeah, a lot more than usual. It’s not only that though…”

The old gravedigger looked uneasy. Scorn was clearly his preferred emotional register.

“…It’s just, I’ve been doing this for the best part of a decade now and it can get pretty lonely. The shifts don’t get easier and it’s nice to share the load with someone. And talk, too, of course. I mean it. It’s good to have you here, Joe, and I hope you stay on when we’re up to date. I’m sure the company will cough up the funds.”

Joe was stunned. He’d heard tough people sometimes had gooey centres but he’d presumed in Alan’s case that was because he was decomposing.

“I — I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure what I’m doing next but… yeah, maybe. I’ll bear that in mind. It’s been an interesting experience. And even if I don’t hang on, thanks for getting me this position in the first place. I mean it.”

Alan stamped out his cigarette, marking the end of the conversation and their contractually assured ten minutes.

“Don’t thank me. Thank the power cut.”

It was time to get back to work.

The light that illuminated the supermarket was as fake as the milk Sascha was about to buy. The milk was synthetic. It contained water, colour, and minerals that humans had made in large chemical factories. Before the supermarket was built, real cows had stood in its place. Then all the cows died. Many humans as well. Then Sascha’s father, Anton van der Meer, died. Sascha died in the supermarket while buying milk. The supermarket was built in the year 2057, when World War III had already begun. It had been triggered five years before.

The trigger for World War III was fifteen years old and went by the name Batbayar Ganbaatar. Ganbaatar never knew he was indirectly to blame for it. He sat at the foot of Sutai Uul when the incident occurred. Sutai Uul was one of the tallest mountains in a country then called Mongolia. From a glacier high on Sutai Uul, melted water trickled past Ganbaatar, until it reached Lake Tonkhil. A glacier was a thick mass of ice which crawled through the mountains.

Today there are no more glaciers.

Ganbaatar was a nomad and cowherd. But most importantly, he was in the middle of puberty and would have preferred to spend his time masturbating rather than looking for his cows. When Ganbaatar masturbated, he liked to think about Arielle McConnor, who back then enchanted the world with her beautiful voice and her big brown eyes. Arielle McConnor came from the United States of America, the land of great freedom, and sang in English. Ganbaatar didn’t understand English but he liked her voice and her eyes and what she did to him when he closed his eyes and concentrated.

While sitting there, eyes closed, concentrating, his cows continued to drink the water of the Sutai Uul glacier that flowed past them on its way to Lake Tonkhil. If Ganbaatar had looked closely, he still would not have seen that his cow Arielle had laid the foundation for World War III.

Here is what ice on Earth was good for: humans stored food in ice to make it last longer. Nature stored bacteria in ice to make them last longer. Bacteria were small creatures that humans could only see with the help of a magnifying device. Nature had stored bacteria in the Sutai Uul glacier. Now these bacteria floated down, past Ganbaatar and his cows, all the way to Lake Tonkhil. Some of these bacteria were absorbed by the cow Arielle. Clever humans later named the bacterium Mycobacterium bovis subsp. mongoliense. The disease it caused was called Cattle Tuberculosis, or CAT for short. Cats couldn’t get infected with it.

When one of the bacteria entered a cow, it multiplied. If a cow had the bacterium inside it and met another cow, the bacterium entered that cow as well. Ganbaatar’s cows met many other cows. The following happened when the bacterium had multiplied sufficiently: The cow got tired and was hungry no longer. In the cow’s lungs, small nodules formed in the blood vessels, which burst after a while. The cow coughed up blood from its lungs and died. Ganbaatar’s cow Arielle died after twenty-three days. Had it been able to speak, it would have wished for death to arrive sooner.

Thanks to Ganbaatar’s cows, which he drove further south, CAT was able to reproduce and from there came to China, Kazakhstan, and India. India was a country where cows were sacred to many humans. I mean, why not? Unfortunately, a disease that killed cows was not the best thing for a country where cows were sacred. While CAT was not dangerous to humans, many clever ones thought it might be possible for the bacterium to mutate and eventually adapt to them. Some of these wise humans said the best thing to do was to kill all the cows.

Nobody killed cows in India because cows were sacred.

In the United States of America, the land of great freedom, humans liked to kill because guns were sacred. So, the humans there started shooting all the cows. The smart humans then said to humans in other countries they should pretty please do the same. In Europe, humans followed the words of the United States of America, the land of great freedom. In India and China, they refused.

Four years after Batbayar Ganbaatar sat by Sutai Uul with his eyes closed, concentrating, the last cow in the Americas died.

At the same time, back on top of Sutai Uul, the glacier continued to melt and revealed something else: a tiny spaceship.

The spaceship belonged to Dulrax Zondobar. Dulrax Zondobar himself belonged to the Pirasakut, who lived about eighteen light-years from Earth on the planet Ylon-B.

Here’s why Dulrax Zondobar’s spacecraft ended up in the glacier: Dulrax Zondobar, distinguished professor of anthropology at Ylon-B University, had to make an emergency landing during a research trip. The forced landing took place during the last great ice age, when the glacier had formed on Sutai Uul. Dulrax Zondobar had been preserved in ice for thirty thousand years. Just as nature had preserved the Mycobacterium bovis subsp. mongoliense, the cause of CAT, in ice.

When Dulrax Zondobar landed on Earth, Mycobacterium bovis subsp. mongoliense did not exist. What did exist was the Mycobacterium bovis, which caused a less dangerous variant of bovine tuberculosis, and a hole in the fuel tank of Dulrax Zondobar’s spaceship.

The Pirasakut used a biological fuel made from slug-like creatures that was harmless on their planet, Ylon-B, but could cause serious mutations in living beings on Earth. Thanks to the fuel, Mycobacterium bovis mutated into the much more dangerous Mycobacterium bovis subsp. mongoliense.

When Dulrax Zondobar awoke from the ice, he had a problem: no fuel. So, he sent a message to his fellow Pirasakut. The Pirasakut communicated with their hands and fingers.

Before humans began communicating with their lips and their tongues and other parts of their mouths, they also used their hands. Then they used their hands to develop tools and beat other humans to death.

Now they don’t communicate any longer.

Even though the Pirasakut had a similar build to humans, there was one difference. Where humans had a head, the Pirasakut had a third arm with a third hand and a third set of fingers. They used their side-fingers to telepathically send messages and their top-fingers to receive them. Sending a message far into space required larger fingers than usual, so Dulrax Zondobar had to boost his transmission power. He did this by using the largest hands that existed on Earth.

These hands belonged to humans that have been more important than others. They were as fake as the milk and as fake as the illusion that all humans were equally important.

In order to show these important humans how important they were, less important humans recreated them using stone or metal, and these recreated, important humans were placed in large squares. Humans called these fake humans statues.

Dulrax Zondobar used the statues’ hands to send a message to the other Pirasakut. With the help of a device in his spaceship, he was able to position the fingers of the statues as needed and sent the message out into space. The Pirasakut called the device Telespector. The message consisted of two hundred and eighty-three thousand different finger signs. Here’s what Dulrax Zondobar sent to the Pirasakut on Ylon-B:

HELP! DULRAX ZONDOBAR

While Dulrax Zondobar waited for help, the United States of America, the land of great freedom, threatened to use nuclear weapons to wipe out all cows in India and the rest of Asia. Some humans thought this was a slight overreaction. India still refused. Cows were still sacred there.

Meanwhile, Dulrax Zondobar’s message had arrived on his planet Ylon-B, and the Pirasakut sent a fleet to rescue the stranded professor. The Pirasakut ships were fast. On departure they said, “Zip-wop.” Mongolian authorities, who sided with India on the cow issue, discovered their ships and reported enemy aircraft to India. India mistook the spaceships of the Pirasakut for airplanes of the United States of America, the land of great freedom. Fearing invasion, India sent a nuclear bomb towards the Americas, which was intercepted en route.

The United States of America fired back.

World War III was now coming to India and with it Americans and Europeans who killed all the cows and many humans. By that time there was already no more milk in the supermarkets and the Pirasakut were on their way back to Ylon-B.

Sascha van der Meer was not only good-looking, but I had also endowed him with a polite personality. He would never have said the following word to the old lady standing next to him at the supermarket’s milk shelf: “Cunt!” Perhaps he would have been able to if he had known who the lady was. But I never gave him that information.

The lady was seventy-one years old, and her name was Anna Baumann. Her husband’s name was Julius Baumann. Julius Baumann was dead. And it was his fault that Anton van der Meer, Sascha’s father, was dead too.

Julius Baumann had been working at Tepco Ltd. when CAT started to spread. Tepco Ltd. was the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, and Julius Baumann tried to develop a vaccine against CAT. Although Julius Baumann was among the smart humans who were concerned about mutations in the Mycobacterium bovis subsp. mongoliense, he didn’t succeed with creating a useful vaccine. One of the promising vaccines was called CI-6. CI-6 was Julius Baumann’s greatest hope. With its help, many test cows had been saved from death by CAT. Unfortunately, CI-6 came with side effects.

Cows vaccinated with CI-6 developed toxins in their milk. When calves drank from it, they would go into a frenzy and soon die of cardiac arrest. One morning, Julius Baumann arrived at the Tepco Ltd. laboratory and he found the usual pile of dead cows, but also an unusual pile of dead employees. Millions of dying cows had a bad effect on the mental health of humans, so many of them decided to end their lives. This was what one of Julius Baumann’s colleagues decided as well. He was a mad man. This mad man wanted to die by drinking the milk of cows that had been vaccinated with CI-6. In his opinion, something that caused cardiac arrest in cows should certainly do the same in humans.

He was wrong.

What happened was that Julius Baumann’s colleague had been thrown into a frenzy and killed all the colleagues in the lab. Tepco Ltd. security guards eventually shot him.

At least he had reached his goal.

Julius Baumann continued his research on this milk and found that it made humans uninhibited and aggressive. Exactly the right tool for a war. And since Julius Baumann was not only in possession of intelligence but also had a wife who was very fond of money, he sold his knowledge about the milk to the military. They were pleased because from now on their soldiers could kill much more efficiently and without a bad conscience.

They called the milk War Milk. War Milk turned even the kindest of humans into ruthless killing machines.

One of the kindest humans was called Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was born about two thousand and sixty years before World War III, and two thousand years after his birth many humans gave socks to each other to celebrate his birthday. Apparently, he was the son of a God.

In this story I am the only god and my son’s name was Sascha.

All soldiers stationed in India received War Milk. Anton van der Meer, Sascha’s father, was stationed in India twenty-one years before Sascha entered the supermarket.

Before World War III began, there were too many human beings on Earth because humans spent a lot of time connecting parts of their bodies, and not so much time caring about glaciers. This is one of the reasons why there are no more glaciers today. Nine months before Sascha’s visit to the supermarket, an Indian woman had spent roughly seven minutes connected to an Indian man, and nine months regretting it.

To compensate for this new life and to counter overpopulation, I decided to kill Sascha.

In Jaipur, in the northern part of India, Manisha Bhandari was in labour. Manisha Bhandari’s father, Himal Bhandari, was among the humans who considered cows sacred. Manisha Bhandari was poor. When she was a little girl, she played with cow bones.

She had never found her father’s bones.

Before Himal Bhandari, her father, died, he was tired and no longer hungry. When he was shot, he was coughing up blood from his lungs. Had he still been able to speak, he would have wished for death to arrive sooner.

As Manisha Bhandari’s labour intensified, Sascha’s death also advanced with great strides.

Sascha was still standing in front of the shelf with the artificial milk. Here are the last words his father spoke to him: “Make sure to drink enough milk.”

Then he shot himself.

Sascha’s mother removed her husband’s blood residue from the tiles with scouring milk. Scouring milk wasn’t real milk, but a white liquid that humans used to remove stains. When humans drank scouring milk, they died.

Sascha’s mother drank scouring milk.

Anton van der Meer, Sascha’s father, didn’t drink scouring milk. He drank War Milk.

Anton van der Meer was the perfect killing machine. He worked smoothly. In five months, Anton van der Meer killed one hundred and thirty humans in Jaipur, in the northern part of India. He was an excellent automated killing machine. He killed one hundred and thirty humans with a well-aimed shot to the lungs, sometimes a second one, just to make sure. Anton van der Meer was efficient and bureaucratic. One hundred and thirty humans on a list.

Ayush Singh: a well-aimed shot to the lungs. Next please! Khira Kumar: a well-aimed shot to the lungs. Next please! Himal Bhandari: a well-aimed shot to the lungs. And so on. Anton van der Meer was a mindless killing machine as long as he was given War Milk.

When the war was over, he was no longer given War Milk but what he got instead was dreams of Indians starved to the ribs, bleeding from their mouths.

Next please!

At first the dreams haunted him at night, then also during the day. Anton van der Meer saw dead Indians everywhere.

“Make sure to drink enough milk,” he said to Sascha when he could no longer bear the many Indian nightmares, and he shot himself with a Glock 54. The Glock 54 was a semi-automatic killing machine that fully automatic killing machines like Anton van der Meer used. The semi-automatic killing machine came from Austria, the country where Sascha was now standing in the supermarket. Anton van der Meer’s gun was never found after his suicide. Sascha’s shopping trip had meanwhile led him to the cleaning supplies. On the shelf next to the scouring milk I put the second present for him, a Glock 54.

Sascha knew what he had to do. Meanwhile, Manisha Bhandari’s son was born. A little later, a bacterium entered his body, which clever humans called Bordetella pertussis. The bacterium caused Manisha Bhandari’s son to develop whooping cough. He died a few days later. Well.

This was his chance at a new, better life, one where he could make student loan payments, maybe even have a girlfriend or a car, where he could get away from the soul-crushing drudgery and dehumanizing sweatshop conditions of software coding. The interview wasn’t a dream come true but it was the last door between him and that dream and he was determined to kick that door wide open.

He knew his kick would have to be Herculean. There were thousands of applicants for every publicly listed job, no matter how small. Between simple power tripping, a sea of unqualified job hunters and laws that made workmen’s compensation and unemployment assessments the biggest operating expense after golden parachutes and insurance, companies had engineered hiring procedures that raised nitpicking to a fine art.

Nikki knew it and he prepared as carefully as an ancient warrior facing mortal conflict. He showered using the hypoallergenic soap that cost him a week’s lunches instead of his usual salt/soda mix. It was worth the hunger to avoid any chance of setting off some corporate drone’s allergies. He also shaved his armpits and applied the expensive pheromone cream. Nikki had read all the blogs on hunting strategy and had seen more than one story of odors crushing hopes.

Nikki opened the door of the toilet closet next to the kitchen sink so he could use the full-length mirror. He picked up the razor and had to stop when he felt a flash of panic at the thought of nicking himself. But he had to use old-fashioned blades. After his other expenses, he couldn’t afford a laser cleaner.

Nikki remembered his friend Arianna, who had made the mistake of misspelling her name when she signed the form that authorized the company to subpoena her cellphone records. The company psychs had made that sound like a personal identity problem almost as bad as schizophrenia. With that on her record, she would have spent the rest of her life as a waitress if she hadn’t “fallen” in front of a train. If he showed up with a cut, what would they think of his self-control or his ability to pay attention? Any trace of blood and he may as well be chum in the shark tank.

Nikki closed his eyes and reached back to his yoga lessons. He carefully blanked his mind of everything outside this moment. He drew into himself and silently intoned the Litany Against Fear he had learned in his classical philosophy class. Then he raised his razor and began.

The next few minutes passed in an almost dreamlike state. It took several seconds after the last stroke to realize he was finished. Face fashionably just short of baby-smooth and no damage — Nikki breathed a huge sigh of relief. He gave himself a huge smile and an ironic salute. “Hail Caesar, we who are about to interview could really use a shot of gin.” But nobody would hire someone whose breath set off air snoopers during an interview, so he devoted himself to his other preparations.

Nikki followed the bizwear feeds to the letter: Hair slicked back in last year’s corporate-leader style. A shirt that had both sleeves and a collar, with a tie of this year’s power color painted on it. Shoes, not sandals. Even socks. A formal hoodie and long pants with pockets. The stuff cost a freaking fortune but he was confident today would make it all worthwhile.

His clothing and hair were right, teeth nearly luminescent, natural scents neutralized and heat points painted with gengineered fungi that gave off industrial-strength confidence pheromones. Physically, and nasally, he was as ready as a man could get. Now for the more extreme measures.

Nikki had researched AirFlex and knew almost everything about their hiring process. The street said they were old-fashioned and fairly low-key. They did more background checks than usual and treated the meat-meet mostly as kind of a final test. They did use some basic active measures during the interview to see if candidates could be shaken but they didn’t elevenize their realfacing procedures as some companies did. Still, it was better to take no chances.

First came the “salary snot” injection. Nikki inserted the tube in his left nostril and gave the trigger a one-second squeeze. The aerogel, laced with nanomachines and reactive chemicals, quickly expanded to fill the airway. It would allow the passage of oxygen and inert gases but would neutralize or trap any nanomites or common industrial psychoactives. He repeated the spray into his right nostril, then raised his head and checked in the mirror. Perfect. The material could not be seen from outside. He barely felt it, just a tiny bit of pressure below his eyes. It would not protect him against war gasses or military-grade cellbugs but he had no intention of trying any company that would use such things. Now he was ready for possible pay discussions as long as he remembered to breathe carefully.

Next were the contact lenses. He couldn’t afford models with active countermeasures but these would provide warning if the company tried any psycho-strobing or color bending. They would prevent any attempts at retina or iris scanning, so his eyes would not give away clues. It would be up to him to work his way out if they did any visual spoofing and he had spent hundreds of hours reading up on such tactics and practicing to give plausible responses that wouldn’t look too forced.

He debated waiting to apply the topical cream that blocked contact psychotropics, since it could cause a rash but finally decided he had to do it before he left his apartment. He could accidentally find a sick “joke” that was left by some terrorhobbyist. Better safe and a little itchy than sorry. He applied the cream carefully, making sure it coated all exposed skin, and stood bouncing nervously while it dried to invisibility.

What else? The semiconductor weave in his clothing would proof him against any physical-contact monitors concealed in the furniture. The counteragents he had swallowed to guard against drugs in the coffee or water fountains were spreading through his bloodstream. But he consulted his checklist just in case…

Sonics! He had nearly forgotten the earplugs. He folded the bed against the wall so that he could reach the cabinet built into the bed frame. He unlatched the smallest drawer and dug out the tailored bacteria lumps, inserted them and squirted in the activator. They began fuming, working inward and thinning. Nikki had to work to keep himself from jumping out of his skin; it felt like snakes crawling into his ears. The plugs plated themselves across his eardrums, indistinguishable to the eye from the underlying tissue. They would pass sounds within human-voice range and form a rigid barrier to any frequency outside that. Between all the linings in his nose and ears and clothes, he should now be immune to being stampeded into anything regrettable.

He was as ready as he could afford to be. Now it was time to do battle.

It was a quick trip down to the lobby and he stopped a few steps short of the doors that held the outer world at bay. Before stepping into the drizzle outside, Nikki put on his overshoes and gloves and carefully sealed his body condom. It would mean disaster to show up splattered with road schmutz or a parting gift from the inevitable door bums. He had installed a fresh battery, so the cooling fans worked properly. He could hustle to the light rail station without worrying about the wrapper basting him.

Lastly, he took a deep breath. The aerogel wasn’t effective against many organic molecules and he hoped to get to the end of the block without having to breathe again. He signaled the guard and stepped outside.

And almost tripped over a seated bum whose legs were across his path. “Got any change?” the wreck asked. Nikki grimaced and hopped over him, keeping his gaze straight ahead, waving away the hands stretching toward him. He ignored the pleas and imprecations until he heard someone yell “Fancy asshole is too good to look at us mere humans, huh?”

Normally he would have shrugged it off but today he was too high on anticipation. As he pushed loose from the pack, he shouted, “Bugger off, losers! I’m coming home with a job and a life and tonight, I’m going to eat hamburger while you lick up sidewalk stew!”

A storm of abuse and spit broke out behind him but he was already too far away. During his walk, Nikki held tight to the straps of his daypack, just in case some gutter ronin looking for fix money managed to slice through them despite their Kevlar cores. He arrived without incident at the terminal of the Portland-Tacoma-Seattle Corporate Axis rail system — official acronym PoTaSeaCARS, known to plain citizens as Portacattle. He bought an express ticket to get on site early so that he would have spare time to use the bathroom and applied his motion-sickness dermapatches, a brand that was on the very short list of drug test allowables.

Nikki decided to blow a twenty on a bucket seat to reduce wrinkling, so he would still look crisp when he arrived. With the seat buckled around him, he waddled to the hookup point and shoved the ticket under the scanner. It beeped approval, then lowered the snaphook and he linked up. Instead of waiting for the scheduled gaps required by a basic ticket, the magnetic rail slide immediately winched him up and moved out. It slowly gained speed on the merge rail until the slide shot up a shunt onto the main line and he was up to full speed with a sudden wrench that swung him almost parallel to the ground. The surrounding buildings zipped by in a blur while he twisted and flapped in the wind, praying the unfamiliar patches would work. Heavy rail would have been so much better, but enclosed cars were too expensive for anyone but the IPO Mafia.

It must have been a red-letter day for the line — there were no power interruptions or sniping and Nikki arrived at his destination in only a few minutes. The system slid him off onto the deceleration strip and eased to a stop. The experienced Nikki started walking the second he was lowered enough to touch the sidewalk, so when the hook released it fell behind him. He unharnessed quickly and took a minute to strip off his protective garb and fold it into his daypack.

The building that housed AirFlex was the usual bland concrete eyesore. The only indication of the company’s presence was the name on a plate next to the doors. Before stepping inside, Nikki took a moment to shake himself loose and powered up his underwear. The mesh woven into the undergarments began to emit vibrations and electromagnetic fields that would be read by mikes or remote biofield sensors. They would detect respiration and heart patterns that made him look cool and calm, no matter what. It made him tingle in a very unpleasant way and the power source strapped to his thigh was an impediment to his mobility and a threat to his social life. But it was too important — he had to just shrug and risk a self-inflicted wound.

Nikki waited quietly while the security gear scanned and sniffed him. They would detect his countermeasures, of course, but his gear was all legal for business use, so his signature wasn’t likely to mark him as a terrorist. In the search slideway, he dutifully emptied his daypack and allowed its contents to be scanned again, before he was finally allowed into the lobby.

Crossing the lobby, Nikki noticed no signs of hirespying. The contacts in his pants prodded him as expected but their pattern indicated common security scans looking for explosives or dangerous chemicals. The guard who tracked him was as bland and neutral as the decor. There were plenty of cameras, of course, and for his unseen audience he was careful to look a little eager but in control. I should get an Oscar, he thought.

The receptionist in front of the elevators asked for his pass and Nikki dug out the business card he had been sent. When she ran her thumb over the AirFlex logo, the recording identified him as a visitor to that company and stated the date and time for his appointment. She swiped the card and the readout blinked confirmation. She handed the card back and directed him to the third elevator.

On the 34^th floor, Nikki spent a few minutes in the bathroom. It wouldn’t do to arrive too early and look too eager — it might give them the idea he was desperate for the job, and encourage them to up their game. He waited until he would be no more than two minutes early and then marched to the door that bore the AirFlex logo.

Another secretary put him through the same check routine. She noted the time, signed him in and pointed him to another door that suddenly looked to him like it should bear a sign about abandoning all hope. Nikki paused and took a deep, shuddering breath and for the second time that day, he let the calming words of the Litany roll through him. Back under control, he knocked on the door. On hearing an answer from the other side, he touched the access plate and the walnut-paneled door slid open.

Behind the desk within, an elderly Asian man rose and extended his hand and spoke in a light voice. “Good afternoon. I am Delbert M’Zengwa, support manager for our company. I am in charge of all logistical matters such as procuring goods and services the company requires. This includes procuring talent, which I understand from your resume and transcripts you have in abundance.”

“Nicodemus Kristanopolous, sir. Please call me Nikki.”  They exchanged a brief, damp handshake. Nikki felt no warning buzzes from his countermeasures, a great but very welcome surprise. Out of politeness, he folded down his hood and the men settled into their chairs.

He and the manager exchanged meaningless banalities for a minute, followed by about ten minutes of apparently directionless questioning about Nikki’s aspirations, the usual cark about why Nikki was interested in AirFlex. As if someone who had been unemployed for two years had any reason but the need for money. But Nikki carefully kept himself calm and on track, giving answers that he had worked on with his hunt masters coaching him, tailored spiels that had been tested to click with almost any corporate types but would seem individual as long as he was a good enough actor.

When Nikki’s last response died away, M’Zengwa regarded him with a blank look for a moment and Nikki returned his best number 2 bare hint of a smile — eyes lively, mouth set but curved up just a touch, relaxed but alert… and a complete lie. He knew his opponent was as tense as he, waiting for an opening that he steeled himself to avoid giving.

This was the moment that could define his future. This was the pause that kenshis knew in iaijutsu — that silent tension that presaged the carnage, with both combatants carefully watching for any sign of bad stance, of shakiness, of fear, knowing full well that being the first to move also meant being the first to possibly make a mistake. To be the first to die.

Finally reaching some internal decision, M’Zengwa smiled and opened a folder. “Well, Mr. Nikki, I think we should proceed to the real purpose of this encounter.”

For just a second, his eyes flickered as if he were glancing at unseen readouts. But Nikki knew M’Zengwa’s cavalier address of him was just a small test, an attempt to needle the applicant into a physiological reaction to calibrate his sensors. Nikki was confident in his preparations and his self-control remained unbroken. He sat still and waited for the first real maneuver.

M’Zengwa spoke again, this time giving Nikki a background on the company. His hands kept moving slightly, almost rhythmically. He kept his face bland and smooth and spoke in a calm, measured cadence. It was very soothing and Nikki began to relax, to slump slightly… he dug his fingernails savagely into the palm of his hand and the pain rocketed up his arm and jolted his mind. The lights were subtly changing in time with the manager’s speech and the man’s head was rocking slightly in the same rhythm. All in rhythm with the wall clock ticking. Hypnotism? Talk about “old fashioned”! But the spell was broken and his smile made that clear.

M’Zengwa knew the ploy had failed. He cut off his spiel and slapped the pile of printouts on his desk. “I have here many papers regarding your application for employment with our company. Your history shows a strong work ethic and consistent good performance. And in those things that reflect upon your relationships and your personal interests, you also show signs of being the type of person we find most useful.”

 “I must congratulate you on your net standing, Mr. Nikki. You have quite a circle of friends and acquaintances, many of them the type of people, or in the right positions, to make your connections valuable to you and our business. Your ability to charm people will doubtless serve you well.”

Despite the hint of sarcasm in the manager’s voice, Nikki gave him a tight smile and a brief nod; an acknowledgement, not a thank you. Internally, he thanked the keystabbers who really deserved the praise. His hired astroturfers had done their work well.

“As I am sure you know,” the manager went on, “we have already investigated you quite thoroughly. And for any questions we may have about your abilities, your character, your credit history, your personal opinions on anything of interest to us, we have already developed our own answers. We believe there is no point in subjecting you to an interrogation which really does nothing but give you the chance to exercise your histrionic talents. Why waste time prodding you for answers which may only contradict the professional opinions of our psychiatrists and spies?”

M’Zengwa smiled and made an extravagant hands-up shrug and Nikki replied with a light chuckle. “I appreciate the implied confidence, sir. So, what can I tell you or show you that you may still want to know?”

“A small thing. We still wish to see how you react to real-world situations of the type you would have to deal with as our employee. So, we have for you a practical test.” And here came the real pressure. M’Zengwa produced a standard UDP exchangeable chip. “This is the same type of tests you took during your training, only tailored to our particular business. And this is slightly different in that it will test not only your problem solving skills but also your business sense. We need to see how you would perform when presented with the type of problem which our clients present to us daily.”

“During this test, you should act as if you were in the presence of an actual customer, and you must not only solve his problem, you must do so in a way which protects and, if possible, improves our business relations with him. Please use your personal system to run this test, and show me your results. And remember that many clients are impatient, so work as quickly as you can without imperiling the value of your solution.”

M’Zengwa laid the chip on the edge of the desk. “Please load the test program and let me know when you wish to begin.”

Nikki took the chip, then slid his universal data platform from its hip holster. He slotted the wafer and at the same time, with the tiniest of movements, he thumbed the unmarked pressure plate that shunted all input to his UDP’s second processor farm. He opened the test program in a sandbox. He knew his antimalware software couldn’t protect him against the really slick stuff a corporation could field but hopefully, he could walk out with an uninfected system. When the last indicator flashed green, he gave a terse nod and the manager smiled and ostentatiously pushed the start button on a timer that suddenly loomed larger in Nikki’s eyes than the desk under it.

It was a tricky problem; he had to run through several decision trees and run several searches to check all the possible ramifications. The sections that required tool usage were particularly bad. Since he couldn’t actually handle the hardware, he had to provide terse yet complete descriptions of what his real-world actions would be, much more difficult than simply calculating or identifying components.

The warning buzzer in the folded hood suddenly began vibrating. Bastards! A tight-beam sonic was being directed at his head, avoiding the linings. It was meant to stimulate him into a panic. He rolled his shoulders as if to ease tension and waited. In seconds, the processors in his clothing had analyzed the signal and the piezoelectric speakers in his hoodie blasted out a destructive interference pattern, neutralizing the attack. He kept hammering at the problem, gradually filling the required answer sections in the test RAM.

Nikki began to worry about the time he was taking but he dared not risk a glance to gauge the manager’s reaction. He had to stay focused to work out his solution. But the tension built to the point where he had to silently give thanks to the charcoal pads in his shirt’s armpits.

After the tight beam, he was not surprised when his eyes began to tingle and tear up. He noticed M’Zengwa had pushed back from his desk, closer to the air outlet in the ceiling. Something close to Nikki was emitting a type III gas, probably a soporific to dull his mind, to simulate his performance if he was ill. But with M’Zengwa in the room, it couldn’t be full strength or based on a contact penetrant, and it wouldn’t get past his nose filters. It was too easy. Nikki needed only a moment of rapid-fire blinking to get his eyes back to normal and he continued working without a pause.

Finally he nailed down a work plan that he was sure was feasible. It even included a pricing estimate that showed how he had improved ROI by substituting for some of the company’s standard components, with a matrix that laid out a cost/benefit comparison. Confident he had the right answer but trembling at the thought he had been too slow, he saved the solution and handed the chip to M’Zengwa.

Without a word, the manager loaded the chip on his system. He was not at all reticent about openly running several AM programs and Nikki mentally paced around the room while he waited. Finally satisfied, M’Zengwa threw Nikki’s solution on a large display on the wall of his office. He turned and sat regarding it silently with no reaction other than occasionally twisting his lips or tapping his fingers on his chin. Nikki was almost ready to explode when he finally turned back.

Nikki steeled himself and launched a ploy of his own. “How did I do?” he asked, a question he had practiced for weeks. Just the right touch of concern but more simply wanting to confirm his solution. No one could have detected any hint of nervousness with anything short of an MRI.

M’Zengwa smiled mightily. “My congratulations to you, sir. You have done quite well. Your solution is exactly what we need — effective and efficient. Minimal time and effort, maximum result. Obviously your ability to diagnose and solve these problems would be quite useful.”

Nikki had to work very hard to keep from screaming in relief and joy. He was tensing his muscles to rise from his chair and accept a handshake when the ceiling fell in.

M’Zengwa said, “But as I am sure you understand, our hirings must be timed so they fit our business needs. We cannot simply hire people and then wait for work for them. We are on the cusp of our slack season, when business ramps down significantly because people take vacations and move and many who need our services delay contacting us until later in the year. So right now, we have no openings for you.”

“Please contact me again in two months, when we will have a much clearer picture of our staff needs. At that time we should have enough work to justify hiring you and we will be happy to make you a part of our family. I would enjoy seeing you join us. Your performance has been most impressive. If you should decide to take employment elsewhere before we have an opening for you, please contact my secretary and inform her. You have my card. Thank you, and I wish you an enjoyable day.”

Nikki had studied everything available about AirFlex — everything except their business cycle graphs.

And just that quickly, just that easily, his life was over.

He somehow stumbled back to his building. Later, he couldn’t remember actually making the trip. He saw and heard nothing. As he stumbled up the sidewalk, the bums saw him coming. They noticed his glazed eyes and the zombie-movie shambling gait and it gradually sank in. They started grinning and they rose and organized themselves into a gauntlet.

They didn’t touch him — the guards glowering in their cupolas above the door would make short work of them if they assaulted a tenant — but they came close enough that slobber spotted his clothes. “Hey Gates, when are you moving to the suburbs?”  “Hey, loan me a million!”  “Got your new Ferrari picked out yet?”  “Enjoy your burger, jobbie! What kinda wine you gonna wash it down with?”

As Nikki pushed through the mob, he didn’t notice the laughter and the jeers or even the stink. His mind was beyond anything the bums could do to him. He managed to reach his apartment and close the door working purely on automatic. All he could think was, Two months?  Another two months before I even find out if I have a chance at the job? How am I supposed to live until then?

Nikki shuffled to the window and stared at the gray clouds, numb inside and out. Gradually he looked down and stood silent and unmoving, watching the drab horde of coders and ware engineers shuffling through the drizzle.

Nikki started beating his head on the armorglass. This may have been his only chance. If this didn’t work out… what else?  If his attempt to break into air conditioner repair had failed, what the hell would he do with the rest of his life?  He had mortgaged his soul to the employment school and the loan sharks to get the money for retraining and job hunt support. He was almost broke and had no health insurance. And if the loan sharks didn’t get him, the government would.

Two months. If he didn’t post a verifiable hiring on his job search page by the end of this month, he’d default on his unemployment loan. The Unemployment Bureau police could find him any time by the RFID button they had implanted when he had applied. They’d force him to do community service at a soup kitchen or a recycling sort line until he had paid back the entire amount. At their wages, he’d be 40 by the time they released him.

The loan sharks wouldn’t wait. They’d hire someone in the work site for a pack of cigarettes, and he’d wake up with a dagger made from duct tape buried in his spleen.

Without this job, the only way he could avoid that fate was to go back to contract programming like those poor slobs down there. And he was sick of that soul-sucking, brain-rotting assembly line work. He had done it for eight years — more than two thousand days of death march projects, of his life being measured in the number of lines of code churned out each day. He shuddered at the memory of living in third-world code farm hellholes like Lansing and Omaha, living every minute in fear his job would be undershored to some south Alabama sharecoder who would work for a penny an hour less.

It has to be a test. It’s just a stress test to see if I’ll crack under the strain of wondering, to see if I can keep calm when it looks like things have gone wrong.

But what if it wasn’t? And what if he had already blown it? He had no idea how he left M’Zengwa’s office. He was so stunned that he had braincrashed. He could remember nothing between the chair in the office and his apartment. What the hell had he done?

Nikki’s shoulders shook and he started crying. He knew he may be under observation but he didn’t care anymore. After so much time and effort and expense, to come this close only to be told he still had to wait so long — it was like reaching the gates of heaven only to be kicked back down into a free clinic waiting room. Something broke inside him and unashamedly he wailed his grief, his tears streaking the window like the rain streaking the coats of the cowed throngs of QA thralls and UI designers plodding back to their jobs through the drab, slimy streets below.