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by
Adam Engel
May
6, 2003
The
Possessed man is not bad, nor is he good. He is terrified, alone – even among
friends and family. He works to support his family, but he is not sure exactly
what the hell he does. According to his
Job Description he, “administrates creative product strategies.”
Well.
Well.
The
Health Insurance covers his wife, who also works, and their two kids, both
under seven years of age and subject to all manner of illness, injury and
disease. Then there were the expensive pregnancies themselves, and the drugs he
must take daily to function at his job without drinking to excess or veering
into violence. Or bursting into tears.
True, he’s covered by the Company plan, but loopholes open and money
falls through. Deductibles. Co-payments. Fine print scams.
He
is no longer interested in his friends, the few that he maintained since
school, or in having friends at all. What good are they, except to drink with,
and he's not supposed to drink while on his pills -- though he does anyway. And don't think this is all confidential,
that they don't know, the ‘they' at the
Company, whoever they might be, that he sees a head-drugger to stay on top of
things.
He's
thirty-seven and still paying his student loans.
Graduate
program at the University. MBA. Had to do it. Or else how would he have climbed
to even his middling position on the ladder?
He's reached his final rung. He
knows he hasn't the energy to kill, the will that would enable him to climb
further. In fact, the remaining energies of his life will be directed toward
hanging on to the rung on which his life is precariously perched. He must
maintain his station place on the limitless ladder to the sky. He can barely see the people at the bottom,
but he would need quite a powerful telescope indeed to even glimpse the Stars
at the top.
The
kids will want to go to college. His wife, also a mediocrity, but in a
different position at a different Firm, a different profession, will grow
stronger, as women tend to do after fifty, after the sex and procreation, after
the body, just when he is starting to collapse. Rapid rise from twenty to forty, slow descent, then at fifty the
rolling tumble. Unless you're at the
top of the ladder, in which case fifty is not fifty, due to special treatments,
physical training, private cooks, drugs, vitamins, surgeries...
He's
reached the end of things, he knows, but he must see things through, at least
until the kids are out of school. But of course college won't be enough. It
wasn't for him. He needed a Masters. His kids will need Ph.D.s.
He
worries that somehow the system will fail him. It has not failed him to this
point, merely placed him at his rightful place in the hierarchy. But he fears that the system, based on
protocols, laws, unwritten rules, tacit agreements and technologies that he can
never hope to understand, will collapse of its own weight and intricacy. He does not understand how the Network
works, or how food gets to the supermarkets, or how the Parent Company trickles
his paycheck down the pyramid of subsidiaries and holding companies and through
his department and into his bank account.
He
does not understand the high level of partnership between the bank and the
corporation that owns it, which is the parent of the company he works for, and
where he will spend his days before being traded or shuffled off in some arcane
corporate deal or merger or is fired outright. Laid off. And then what? Sending
out resumes as he'd done as a kid fresh out of college and as a young married
man with his expensive MBA?
He
fears limited resources, so he does not read the hard copy of the City News,
but browses the paper's site on the Network. But when does he have time to read
this, working nine to five as he does, which is not nine to five at all, but
eight to six, seven, sometimes ten o'clock? By which point he is exhausted,
despite his clockwork consumption of caffeine and nicotine.
And
when he does brows the news on the Network, he realizes how small he and his
life are, even in the context of the Corporation, not to mention the role of
the company in international affairs.
Good god. The Corporation is
everywhere, in every country. Many of
these countries are at war with each other, and if the corporation's interests
are seriously threatened, they might go to war against the Nation.
But
the Nation is ALREADY at war. He is glad that the Nation possesses the most
well-trained, technologically advanced military on the planet. He had not gone
to the last war, for he was in graduate school. But the current war terrifies
him, the destruction the Nation wreaks upon its challenger with missiles paid
for with his tax money. He has been extremely nervous since the current war
began. But he does not doubt that after the slaughter the Citizens will be
treated to parades and celebrations on television and he will watch flag-waving
marchers outside his office window.
He
is neither angry nor satisfied with the affairs of the Nation any more than he
is or could be with the machinations of the Company. It is all beyond his ken. He is, if not happy, grateful to be
able to rise each morning, take his pills, and begin the commute to his job and
arrive at his job, no matter how demanding. No matter how trivial. No matter
how wasteful of his time on earth. The countless meetings, the talk. The
talky-talk talk. The assignments from superiors that he organizes and delegates
to subordinates.
Often
he finds himself with nothing to do, no actual work, but virtual work,
deadlines planned for the future, the possibility of truckloads of data hanging
over his head. So he spends many hours -- those not spent attending meetings --
creating plans and memos and scenarios for the monstrous jobs, the impossible
tasks to come.
He
is attracted to his wife. They go to the gym together. He forces himself to go
to the gym not to postpone the inevitable descent, but to make the landing
smoother. He's seen many a man crash. But he doesn't have the same kind of
energy for his wife, not like he used to. Maybe once a week, if that. And of course she has her work too, and they
are both busy with the children.
He
feels, given the uncertainty of the world, that he should own a gun, at least a
rifle. The Police exist to protect his property, not his family -- anyway, they
are always somewhere when you need them, but seldom HERE, where they could save
your life, if so inclined. But he is
confused by the City's Byzantine gun laws, and he is not comfortable letting
the Government know he has a weapon. Should the Government turn for the worse,
the gun owners in the Database will be the first ones visited by the police.
But he fears being caught with an illegal weapon, a mandatory jail term, and
the end of his career and all he'd strived for. Only those outside the system
can own unregistered weapons with impunity.
Truly,
he would rather be dead. He might live another forty years. Forty years of
this. Maybe fifty. Another reason to own a gun. He can think of no better way
to exit. Effective drugs are as illegal as guns, and the medications the
head-drugger prescribes won't kill him. Worse, they might put him to sleep, and
he'd be caught holding the bag -- or pill bottle -- trying to ESCAPE, a Federal
crime. He worked too hard for too long
to lose it that way. If he must exit this earth, he will buy a gun. On the
black market. What and wherever that is.
If he makes the decision, it will not matter that his corpse is found
holding an illegal weapon. Of course,
if he gets caught in the act, before pulling the trigger, or chickens out, they
will send him away to an institution. Again, that would ruin him.
Of
course, this is all hypothetical.
Daydream talk. He has a deep responsibility to his family. His children.
His is the kind of ethic that was instilled in his subconscious forcefully,
frequently, and early on. It is so part
of his psyche that he cannot even attempt to fathom it. Just accept it,
passively, silently, albeit reluctantly.
Nevertheless,
he does think critically about his children. He wonders aloud -- to himself, of
course -- if he actually loves them. His own childhood seems both distant and
parallel. That is, he often feels mired in his own childhood and resents the
adult, paternal role he must play.
Also, he feels sorry for his children and fears for them. He does not understand the structure of the world
outside his home and office cubicle, but he believes it is heading for a fall,
collapse, chaos.
What
then? What of his children? What right had he and his wife to yank them
from the peace of Cosmic Nothingness and thrust them into Time and
consciousness against their will?
Adam Engel is Possessed. Ideas
for Exorcism and/or Salvation accepted at bartleby.samsa@verizon.net