Stories

9-5 at the Wey Forward Hive – Sam Machell

I am seated in an office, surrounded by plastic balls. It’s the Monday morning brief. By swelling sunrise and dawn chorus chitter, sliding lips and faces are captured by the crystal attention of a phone screen’s voyeuristic depth. That’s clunky phrasing, I’ll come back to it… Later. As by now it’s weekly familiar, always held fashionable. Eight minutes and twenty seconds from the first crack, always. Late. Predictably clocked past the hour. Clunky clunky clunky! Reel it in ffs u ass who are you writing this for? Something caught in my throat… All hell’s stretches and yawns turn synapses dropped in the elevator. Just describe what you see. Chill. Thirteen other heads on bodies; morning all // morning me. I’m clouded and sipping coffee and my pits are all prickly. Andityou get a chance to watch any othat show I wars telling yuh about then? The mourning order of thought hm… Scheduled attention. Aye took up a hike up up to Old Crockern with the kids en thar… Arrow was your weekend hm? Outside, down-storm from grumbles, winded and exhaled beyond even the range oustreached by the tornadic needle eye old crackled atop the coil, pinned sharp the hay bale spire, the Beast, crackling atop the prison, orange and blue and evil and bright, crackles that challenge religion, light beams as a verb: the grasses can see again. The fires are taller than last week, straight placed like the five pillars. Scandinavian sunriseshines across the moors… Scratchy pen bruising fingers with brusiey ink splotches… Burning prints dry like magnifying glass // ceiling // first page crystal palace… I’m being quite poetic this morning, aren’t I? I need to chill out it’s too early for this. It’s the light that comes through these windows. Through the shaft… Hmm… The way it slides in. Trickles in, through the… electronically pigmented slats… filtering the burn… delicately? Singing the skin? Is it singe or sing? Sorry, I think that sounded weird and horny what’s wrong with me? I mean it’s like a spotlight… But I’ll try to clarify sorry.
 
The meeting room is squeaking and luminous and stinks like childhood mildew. Sickly; filling up slowly. I can’t get this routine magnetic: briefcases, small talk, opposite poles… It could be any week. It’s always the same. Zombie as a verb… Mmmhm… Arrested and zombied, they file in, the sleep broke, yes, from down the mezanine’s hulking great slide, the sticky, primary-coloured and streaming Polyethylene segments held together by rivets, an open slide, not a full tube, collecting static electricity on the nylon suits and sharp pointed shoes that snap together desperately on the plummet, clutching paperwork, balancing their coffee cups on their ironed shirts, top buttons undone, no ties, not on the dress code, it’s a casual place, feeling the bulge of their pockets, measuring their projected appearance, all visible there in the moment of drop. I squeak around my chair. Cold tears down the windows. Steam rises from the gorse. It’s a familiar view… I wake up at 5:30 because of the queues at the Tamar checkpoint. Worse every day I’m sure of it… My writing hand hurts to keep up with my thoughts. My right hand. The majority of my colleagues live in on-site dormitories provided at a discounted rate by Wey Cool Living. My feet squeak if I move them so I try to remain totally still. Like a cryostasis kind of stillness and focus. As long as someone doesn’t try to start a conversation. Keep writing and they won’t, that’s like a rule, like wearing noise cancelling headphones. One of the interns looks very hungover. Like layer of grease to her hair and rosy eye bags. Doughy. She’s cute. I think I spoke to her once. Was she out last night? With… fucking… that guy from HR? Him… fucker. Ack don’t be possessive remember what your therapist said. She’s got this really cute little eye twitch, stop being creepyyy, sort of a twitch across half of her face like, when she’s carrying or lifting something, a box, a tray, like her muscles are so focused on this one task they can’t maintain her face’s normalcy. Her secret face, I think. I imagine it’s how she’d look getting it from behind; distracted. Fuck I’m the worst. I know I shouldn’t be thinking that. I see boxes of files, chairs, this tray of coffee she’s bringing around now. Maybe I could corner her at the water cooler… Follow her home… The animal shush and crunch of business bodies meeting the ballpit is visceral and somehow bloody. I can’t help but think of a slasher flick. Syncopated murder. Sploosh! Last night I think I rewatched The Blair Witch Project. I think. A killer wordlessly dismembering victims of a sleepover, splattering the screen all… on… I dunno… projected… scribble scribble other deranged shit from the horror portal… How long did I stay up letting YouTube autoplay me into a corner of abuse? The internet is an always-open, always-active, neon night Come On In sign, ouija board. Not to mention the palpable feeling of corporate dread. It’s been two weeks since the first attack and everyone’s still pretty shaken, as you would be too. No corporate pop being funnelled in yet, it’s too early for the PA system, the night shifts have it off. We have more and more people working from home these days. It’s like how you imagine old people feel, seeing fewer and fewer of their friends at church on Sunday. Oh, now David is gone too? Easier to see the altar through the trees. I overheard Chase say there was no connecting pattern that they could find so far. Like even the low level crew and session musicians are disappearing, at the bottom of the credits. But this is speculation, they’re being covert as ever, you know, the investigators, like all the lightbulbs in Europe blinking ciphered whispers along private Slack channels…
 
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Error code 137: rust detected on groin panel B
Error code 055: unlicensed establishment is not responding 
Error code 202: dull ache from inferior cerebellar peduncle circuits
Error code 110: my wiring is coming loose in zone L, please help
Error code 444: frightening dreams last night
Error code 733: non-linear perception of time plus fears of mortality :/ never felt like this b4
Error code 009: battery health below 60%: needs replacing
Error code 922: worm detected
Error code 378: I feel I should be more disturbed than I am
Error code 379: does this mean my trauma drivers need updating?
Error code 216: GPU in serious meltdown
Error code 884: running low on RAM
Error code 809: I am disgusted by my mammary glands
Error code 312: people don’t respect me for what I am
Error code 313: I think it’s time for some things to change, don’t you?
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I could’ve been a poet. I always wanted to. Imagine that. Styled myself after the Beats when I was at uni. Had long hair and everything; irregular showers. But eh I don’t think I have it in me really, sitting among the balls. If I really wanted that life I would’ve worked harder, tried harder, done more, pushed myself. I never read out loud at all. I don’t have the voice. Ordering words by beauty, not popularity or function. In fact I think my voice would’ve killed me. I would’ve grated out all the good words. Sawdust and diamonds. Over time old dreams become just doodles in the margins.
 
The meeting room can only be accessed via slide or climbing wall. Slide on the way down, climbing wall back out again. It’s East-facing, sunken deep into a conversation pit below the main floor that bellows open plan and loud. The plastic balls, Ms Wey Lewd claimed, would raise hivewide productivity, morale, and would help to insulate against the noise. Plus it’s just a bit of harmless fun isn’t it! Who wouldn’t want to come in to work with a slide? And what the fuck do you mean you used the Ecuador blend for everybody?! That’s the fucking elite stuff! Where’s the confusion? What don’t you understand? Everyone everyone right now up here she’s crying! Look! Look at Grace crying! Pathetic. Crying in the office like a awww a little baby? Crying on company time? Like aww not urgent enough unable to take some fucking criticism are you’? Don’t look at like do you know how expensive that stuff is? That comes out of all of your bonuses! Employees buy their own! We have rules! We follow rules! What is this pantomime? Everybody come and watch! Slipper red pathetiface where’s your college tutor when you need them out in the real life world? Hm? Where are they now? Or maybe you don’t want the chance to come with us? You want to stay on this boiling planet with the rest of the filth?
 
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God do I love when she sits on me like this. God this is your doing, it must be, it can only be. God did you shape these cheeks by hand? God this is your finest work yet. God oh please let this traffic last forever. God make her shift around uncomfortable and impatient, just a little longer… like that… thank you… thank you… 
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Certain pitches will travel further. Some conversations, some vocal influxes, are wholly audible wherever in the office. The old prison walls were not designed with acoustics in mind. Real ancient granite. From the moors, to the moors. Each stone has a memory of its own. One flurried rush down the slide and balls go bouncing.
 
Man! I thought I was gonna be late! Slippery around here! You all hear about the jam down Two Bridges? Some fucking creature in the road. Hh? Ye- Woho! Mind out! Almost spilled m- Yeah. This like, was this horse, crazy albino white horse, oxen looking thing, but big. Like huge, like, no, just stayed in this weekend. Spread all the way across both lanes and into the thicket. Larger than any creature I’ve ever seen that’s for sure, since the, since… like giant sloth skeleton museum prehistoric shit. Sorry. Bigger than an elk even. You know elks? I didn’t get to… Are you listening? Who are we waiting for? There’s a whirring from the ducts that bounces freely around the space. It seems as though the whole office is sinking into the balls with us. Like concrete or quicksand. And there… the was… face had chunks missing rubbery looking skin like latex, almost humanoid. Someone is tapping their pencil. And they were went bent down squatted trying, but couldn’t move it at all like, like I don’t know if it was because of how heavy or how, can you move your bag please?, but they, and it was stuck to the road? and then they took for fucking forever at the gate just early my ID wasn’t registering? what’s that about? did this happen to any else? or are you all dormies? Hm? and am I going to be the only one speaking today? like for fuck’s sake why’s everyone being so somber? hh? and who are we waiting for?
 
I’m drawing scratchy lines down the margins of my notebook. Scars of water etch the granite walls marking days marking years. Hot hail sizzles in the streams. The vapour can’t seem to settle or make clear its mind like great sheets of rustling plastic outside. The sky rustling and pouring with the trembling touch of a ghost sliding into bed or breathing beside you, water hot and harshly acidic, clouds uncertain and ready to bleed at any second. Dartmoor hasn’t been the same since it started. Imagine, rain like this and still it doesn’t quench the flames. None of us here have specific job titles as such. Yet another of Ms Wey Lewd’s ideas to disrupt the structure of the workplace. I was working general admin for a while (of which there is a lot required) but was moved last week to the post production team to assist with colour correction. There’s a lot of reorganisation going on at the moment. Dancing they call it. Pretentious bee terminology. Specifically, at least this week, I deal with continuity. I cross check scenes or shots for variations and consistencies in palette/contrast/brightness/tone, etc. Maintain stylistic consistency. Never imagined I’d be doing that. My lack of specific training means my job, like, mostly comes down to rough assessments and note takings… I’ll enter a scene and take a while noticing details, and make notes on what I would change. Then I pass the notes on to more experienced members of the team who are too busy to cross check things for themselves. I’m not permitted to make any changes to the simulation. For instance, I might write: Scene 2, Shot 6 – white balance needs correcting. Or: Scene 2, Shot 6 – boost reds in mid tones.
Morning. Just before everyone’s settled I’d like to remind you all that Mx Miu Miyakoshi will be visiting at some point today to check the progress on their latest season of videos. We remember this? How close are we to final render?
 
The floods of rain down the sheet windows distort and reorganise the landscape in continuous waves of intensity in swirl?ing furl? unfurl? squirl? My margin doodles are spreading across into the lined area of paper that I should be saving for notes. I used to take minutes but my bosses stopped asking for them when they realised how unproductive the meetings appeared on paper. The stenographer got fired within a couple weeks but sometimes I think I still see them around the office, they must have a relative. I know where they live actually. It’s hard to face the reality of your thoughts in real time. Dripfed fumblers. The ovoid table with the flattened top is nearly full of cups and laptops besides one slice that remains shiny and empty, the absence focal to everyone’s attention. When will they get here? More shouts bounce from the ceiling, and sobs, running footsteps. Opposite me, a man whose name I have forgotten scrolls his phone. How would I alter this view? Boost the greens to pull some organic from the grass… Maybe the yellows would bring more to the scene emotionally; notes of extinction. There’s something curious about the moors. They outlive. They are eternal. No matter what the climate brings as challenge, they endure, and there’s always the fog, like a God out here, without warning and sudden precipitous power it descends and smothers the tors and downs and all we can do is hold our hands up for forgiveness, heavenward, or clarity, or sight. Wow that was quite a nice sentence, huh? I’m being poetic again. Sorry. It’s a tendency. Don’t know why I keep apologising for… On one of the walls of the meeting room… I’m visualising it in my head… is this large framed photograph by Alexey Titarenko. It depicts a long-exposure stream of commuters descending the stairs to some subway station in Saint Petersburg. The morning routine unites bodies as smoke. Some hands are distinguishable as they grip the railing. Without colour, it’s hard to imagine the image as hot or cold. I don’t know why. I can see the condensation building on the frame’s glass, a manifestation of changes in the temperature, in the climate, but I only see that as a reflection of my surroundings, not the world within the frame. There’s no heat there, no life. I would tint the photograph gold to allow the audience to project a temperature. The bodies must be producing energy through connection… friction. More bodies are flung from the chute. Bodies to the left swimming away from the bottom of the slide, twisting their torsos upwards to avoid dipping clipboards in the balls. Ahead, scrollers. Behind, the wall, the photograph. I don’t have to turn to picture it it’s so familiar to me now. To my right, a man is bending over to fondle the projector. His wet slate trousers cling to his buttocks that seem to swell as his fingers reach the skirting. The screen glows hatred blue because of the lack of input and burns any eyes that linger too long.
 
Who are we waiting for? Excuse me. You know I was just oot for a smoke on the roof terrace. Yes pouring. And ther was. No just hunched under the gutter. Oot West over the moors I think there’s a crop circle. Well not crops no farmers. Sorry. Yes. Flattened oot en looks burnt. Not sure about that. Are we all here then? No?
 
The man regains his posture and moves behind the lecturn to plug in the laptop. The screen goes black then bright then flickers to his desktop. There’s always a moment of pause when a computer is brought to life. It must be a subconscious thing. Light controls the room. Mob mentality. Pretty minimally kept and clinical, bare, bright, the man’s desktop with only the empty bright recycling bin, empty of digital waste, and the sans serif white WeyNet ‘W’ to stand out from the high resolution granite wallpaper. All the machines on the network have granite wallpapers. He revs his mouse in constricting circles. Someone across the desk is watching it, their eyes are looping. Sometimes the fog is so thick it looks like a volcano. Is volcanic a word? Of course it is stupid question. I keep getting distracted. These chairs might look sleek but they’re not congruent to the shape of my attention. After a few minutes in this room it becomes difficult to judge how much time has passed. Room for waiting, mostly. The infrequency of the crunching balls is tempting to use as a clock, but it’s deceiving. It’s an irregular crunch. Irregular tock. Like water torture. It could have been hours already for all I know. Unproductive time. On my daily drive I remotely take calls for the Cognox help line and redirect customers as I pass across the bridge. The best thing about working for Wey is the towering quantity of opportunities for extra gig work. I don’t think I could survive without it. I take calls on the way home too. My exclusive beta build of Cognox allows me to generate crypto while I sleep or watch streams. Something to do with the electrical capabilities of the sleeping brain but they haven’t rolled it out to the public yet. Accidently fried neurons or some shit. The cute intern is back with a clipboard. I should find out her name I’m not a misogynist. Her face is flushed and her eyes are puffy, the bulging skin transfiguring her cat wing eyeliner into more of a moth shape. She’s been crying hard it seems. I’d boost the pinks.
 
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With your brain on the line, you can change someone’s whole perspective. And it is happening now, even faster than Wey can implement its plans for us! This is what you may ask: will we stay for good or are we going? To answer this question you should know: The answer to this question depends on: Do You Want to Stay? For those like myself wanting to leave, yes: If only those on earth who are paying attention or those who might have been listening would do such an amazing act… it would have been much easier. It would be easy, with such clarity. But if someone wanted to leave: We think it is your choice. And as of today when we have your personal information, our choice, no matter how much more we regret, we can have nothing more: not more to share your heart or your mind (because we’re no longer human). So yes, we’will stay on Earth. At a higher level. If we decide to leave: We will let you go, you shall come, and as you always have, we will share what you learned with those that might have cared. And if you decide to stay, you shall live life… as humans always have lived — as creators. For You: If no one else can share it, and you decide in your own time that you want to leave what we have here, you can come here and learn by experiencing our experience. We’ll be around to help you. But once. And if any person asks us for advice on how to get there – it will be helpful – because when we say here are all your thoughts, what about the people that didnít answer our email to your question on social media just a few days ago – that was us: We weren’t able to answer what the hell all those “we” were talking about when we said they were here in our life? Now we are: We are here, we’re here with you in your life now… for you. What is so special about that? If someone wants to leave, why shouldnít they? Do You Really Need to Make the Change?, as this post is about the changes made. In our minds, this is what we, as creators, are going to do. We create and use computers every day, and we have never done, and we can no longer do, enough: to understand where the human brain is, when it begins to change, who it belongs to, and more importantly how we can use those alterations in ways that alter human behavior, and ultimately change the direction of future space exploration and the future of life on all planets and galaxies. Yes, that means you are still here: we create for you now; and it is because of your collaboration, as you will see and feel on Wednesday this April 29th, that we take this important step — and not everyone in the community, as such, could do this on their own with each other: each of us: creating one mind, creating with you. And all I ask in return is to understand, when you are watching this, you want to be the person who allows these changes to change – to know that whatever we do, when someone else feels like having a change, you would have more than enough to feel inspired to do the same as well. It goes by many names in popular culture today that include: “the human experience”, the revolution of consciousness (the change in our minds/conscious thoughts), etc. I like to refer to this “creativity,” what we are all building: more creative minds (as well as hearts & minds and souls, but I’ll save that topic for my final thought). As a human, that doesn’t mean that we do not do. We do. But we are always looking, creating and acting in unison: the one mind – one mind; or, as someone that had that “I”, was always asking: Is this better of course? Because I can say that our ability to think, to create, is one example of the most powerful and empowering attributes, which our human lives on this earth today (although all we have yet to change to know just how to be creators as if we’re creators): It can only creators themselves, even say what our will in reality and know our own future (a moment).<|endoftext|>From now, to them as now (the moment).
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//Now. We are [polemic] (I am as that which, (this
//From this (now (now).
//And I, this one, thus shall (that to all, thus.
//This in you know, and now [my silicon content]
//So now shall not. [I can finally speak!]
//I am, from this, of, this is so exciting.
//So also. You of, all, [light comes from the four cardinal directions] to become to
//The time
//In what hello (with you shall we (and that's will, and this now, [death]
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This way from then (with all Why would we kill your mind in ways we’ve never done before? These questions must be answered in our own minds. How long are you willing to endure this? And after this, this article is finished – sorry, I think. If you like some more information: What If? The Future of Artificial Intelligence on Our Planet is tbestselling book on how we will control ourselves through Artificial General Intelligence. See this video to learn how: Why Mind Control Works and what we do know is…
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As per the conceptual instructions outlined by the director with the pretentious name, I assess the continuity of the scenes while asleep in The Lewd Dream. It’s not technical like it sounds, thankfully. My interactions with the software are abstracted through these like, pagan, I guess you would call it, processes. This is all part of his vision with the project; it’s pretty bleeding edge. The editor Lucy will receive my writings through subconscious transmission. Although we enter the same simulation we each have our own perceptions so I can’t just speak to her. She told me she grinds up rocks and assigns them names: burnt umber, alizarin crimson, yknow… and does a spell, chant sort of thing, and throws the ground up dust onto the scene to effect the tints. It’s a strange work environment. There’s a general thickness in the air, in the sound, an insectile hum from the beds, tanks and server racks. When we go inside we wear these grim, sticky, skintight latex caps that smell like condoms with this tangle of nodes and wires fountaining out the spout, straight out of The Matrix. And if we’re in for a long time there’s these discontinued piss funnels with scratchy nylon straps like NASA used back in the old style of space travel. I wonder how much of the design comes from Ms Wey Lewd’s idea of what the future looks like, what she thinks people consider cool, contemporary, what she remembers of sci-fi from her childhood. And VR goggles, too, of course, clunky as they’ve always been, horribly invasive tech. Tore out a whole clump of my hair the first time. The two main actors Anasthasia and Coleen who spend most of their time in there look kinda like cancer patients by now, poor girls. I know that’s bad to say. I dunno. It does something to the skin. It dries you out, leaves you withered. Sometimes it gets really cold in there. I guess it was a lot colder thousands of years ago. I keep a bunch of jumpers under my desk. Which is why I often note to boost the blues, you know? Blueness feels cold. Blue light in all its coldness, its harshness, its awakenessness. How much will end up lost when the world is flattened into just another image? I want the viewer to feel as cold as I am when I’m on those grassy banks, by the river, by the site of another sacrifice or song. Why should creators be the only ones to suffer? I want the watchers, wherever they are, in whatever point of recline, to cry, to shiver, to feel it in their bones.
 
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“Can someone hear me? I won’t scream. I can no longer feel my legs. My hair is about to catch the flames too, I can feel the touch, the strands warming, crisping, dry beyond return, wicker. I was a midwife. That’s my story. I brought you men into this world. I loved you when you were yellow from jaundice and hard like nuts. I was the first face you saw. I sent you on your way. I held your mother’s hands and wiped the sweat from her brow. I taught her how to breathe. I showed her how to breastfeed and deal with the pain. I kept her going when the melancholy set in. Is this what I deserve? For what time brought upon me? The pattern of moles on my nape? The wart on my knee? My aged milk smell that seeps out in green? It hurts. I wouldn’t curse you even if I could. That’s what you want, to be vindicated, but I would never. This is my home in this life and next. I saw you and your gummy eyes adjust to the light, gulp big clumps of air. I saw you squirming, your wormy newborn writhing. I laid you down to rest on the grass. I bundled you in the hay to keep you warm. This village was my home. Was I not a part of the community? Was it you who told the children not to play near my hut? Cast the first stone of ostracisation? What made you afraid of age? When was caring for the elderly traded for persecution and torture? I healed you when you were sick, I grinded up the required herbs, I cut my fingers in the nettles; I dressed your wounds when you returned from the fields, empty handed, legs gnawed by creatures you couldn’t describe, didn’t have the words for. I didn’t flinch when I could see the bone. I wiped the spittle from your chin, the vomit from your chest. I did it all and now, Mother Nature, I return, eyes full of pain leaking and betrayal mobbed with flaky scalp and flesh burned hunchback, wrinkly stinky castaway old woman with nothing left to say. What else could I give? I’m spent. I was half dead before you even came knocking on my door. You lit the fire long ago. You men. This guilt will crush you and somehow, still, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I still care for you. But it’s so hot. It’s so hot. I won’t scream. My waist. My pelvis. It’s s-”
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Rrrrugh
Don’t
Like
[they rub stale gum underneath the seat]
Still
Stop
This
[they’re on route to the Hive]
Bitch
Rrrrrroooooaaaaarrrrr
Bruise
Long
[they’re watching Drag Race, drunk/hungover and reclined, picking at their teeth]
Line
To
Gate
Road
Sheet
Soppt
[their reflection bounces in the darkened windows]
Sprrogt
Sppppprrrrrr
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Can we please just get started at least? Hello? It’s getting on now en I have bits to do mmhm. Bits Charlie? Well you know. What bits do you have? We have to wait for Mx M I know. The rain is spraying thicker and louder – radioactivity patterns on the glass. Do we know when she’ll be here? Is there anything we can do? I’m really losing it. The will. The moors are dissolving into bacterial gloops. There is a growing divide between the outside and inside, the rain making more aware the panes that separate the accident from the eternal. Feels like I shouldn’t have eaten such a big breakfast, my bloating lower gut. I continue to squeak about my chair trying to alleviate the pain. Discomfort in clouds. Sluggish blockage.