Free Agent 2: The Throne of Contemplation
by William D. Tucker
As part of my indoctrination into RIVALCORP, I am cracked, scanned, and drained-which means I sit in a well-appointed Throne of Contemplation with all my bodily needs attended to, the drug-pump primed just so, and my choice of authorized flickers via direct brain stimulation. I re-watch the Beverly Hills Cop Trilogy, including the TV edits. I'm actually a really big defender of Beverly Hills Cop 3, and I even think there are some inspired cuts in the censored-for-television version. A couple of the shootings are actually more abrupt and violent with the cartoonish squib-work cut out, but other scenes do suffer. I go through every iteration of the Beverly Hills Cop saga before cycling into a state of lucid dreaming.
I got into the habit some jobs ago of refusing to dream when locked down into the Throne of Contemplation, because I didn't want my internal phantasia to be recorded and made property of the system. But then they would just interdict the sleep state, and that took awhile to resist. Once I got into lucid dreaming I forced the most depraved scenarios and imagery into the system: vast howling chancroids vomiting up greasy feces and broken off teeth; syphilitic samurai seppuku; cockroaches eating eyeballs out of Muppet Baby faces; a U.S. president eating nothing but hair for every meal ... but I got worn out with that routine.
Why bother to monkey wrench the system? The system is, itself, Sabotage Incarnate. The true believers keep it puttering along on a lean mixture of malice and avarice. Juvenile shock perversities are amusing dirty jokes to spice up a puritanical day.
Moreover, I'm certain every loyal employee has engaged in such acts of so-called resistance. I got the idea from a colleague who has been mostly deleted from my memory. The system is fully capable of total erasure of an individual identity but that method has been deemed, for now, to be inefficient. The web of an individual mind has too many useful strands, connections, intersections, and working networks to be obliterated outright when it can just be steered onto the right path with the proper rewards and stimulation. Some pruning-sure, fine, and they have refined that capability to a shockingly precise degree. I admire it. I do. What they've achieved is absolutely astonishing. Solo units such as myself have largely seen an enhanced quality of life at the end of all processes. So why fuck with shit?
I don't exactly love Big Brother, or whatever you want to call it-it ain't that warm of a sentiment.
And I wouldn't say He loves me.
But He's done right by me in terms of the basics.
-August 2017
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Friday, August 11, 2017
Friday, August 4, 2017
Free Agent
Free Agent
by William D. Tucker
Mid-cycle
None of the faces or uniforms or masks or languages registered
ran diagnostics on my eyes, ears, heart
it wasn't my eyes, ears, heart
I went to the company store to buy new getup
was promptly removed from the facility
And they were kinda rough with me
which was funny at first
made me feel like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop,
but they weren't truly abusive,
didn't throw me through a plate glass window
The paramilitaries looked new and shiny
upgraded from combat webbing and shaved heads
into a league of techno demi-gods
or a cosplay science ninja team
heads encased in robo-insectoid helmets
On the street before the great and convoluted facility
I stood crying
I tried so hard to suppress all emotion
but the internal drug-pumps had already deactivated upon my termination
the tears flowed
I blubbered even.
I stood there for an hour or more,
half hoping I'd be shot by a shiny paramilitary
but no dice.
I stalked down the middle of the road,
hoping to be rundown,
but all the autocars swerved just so,
even broadcasting messages of compassion, recommending suicide prevention hotlines, Jesus Christ,
Buddha, L. Ron Hubbard;
one especially devout car offered to roll with me along my dark path,
but I mouthed insipid syllables 'til it left me alone with a pamphlet full of mistranslated, out-of-context Bible quotations.
A half hour passed
I settled into a stalking rhythm which the autocars found agreeable,
just a little deviation from their ground-plans
didn't even get clipped
I'd always wanted to test the collision detection on these machines
and an autocar pulled up next to me, told me to get in, and something inside me responded to a signal
-the chem-pumps I think-
which guided me to yes.
In the air conditioned cab, stimulant-alcoholic drinkbox in my hand
the autocar spoke at length about all the opportunities that awaited me inside RIVALCORP
which wasn't the true name, but a cipher
because the real name was knowledge reserved to the executive class
or possibly just the great algorithms in the Cloud of Clouds
the near immaterial deities rumored to have the whole game on lock these days.
I couldn't even recall the name of the company I was just fired from,
my mind only coming up with PREVIOUS GIG, PASTCORP, variations on that general theme.
I swiped my consent through screen after screen
of terms and conditions
just like I did when I got headhunted for PASTCORP.
Why do they even allow any memories, for fuck's sake?
They write in so many strategic erasures and interdictions,
everybody's hacking into everybody else's chem-pumps,
just do the full wipe, fer Hubbard's sakes!
I'm pretty sure they like it like that-leaving in just enough to promote an illusion of free will,
easy enough to frustrate, tip over into despair in a world of unlimited choice,
and thus conformity, obedience, self-indoctrination follow on with the quickness
to still the cognitive dissonance.
Also,
a full wipe just means you gotta increase resources devoted to re-skilling, re-indoctrination lead times,
so,
yeah,
it's cool.
The autocar regaled me with readings of official poetry as it whisked me towards another great and convoluted facility. The verses stirred my at-a-distance-controlled heart. Shit would work out for a few hundred cycles more, I would know where I needed to be.
-August 2017
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
by William D. Tucker
Mid-cycle
None of the faces or uniforms or masks or languages registered
ran diagnostics on my eyes, ears, heart
it wasn't my eyes, ears, heart
I went to the company store to buy new getup
was promptly removed from the facility
And they were kinda rough with me
which was funny at first
made me feel like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop,
but they weren't truly abusive,
didn't throw me through a plate glass window
The paramilitaries looked new and shiny
upgraded from combat webbing and shaved heads
into a league of techno demi-gods
or a cosplay science ninja team
heads encased in robo-insectoid helmets
On the street before the great and convoluted facility
I stood crying
I tried so hard to suppress all emotion
but the internal drug-pumps had already deactivated upon my termination
the tears flowed
I blubbered even.
I stood there for an hour or more,
half hoping I'd be shot by a shiny paramilitary
but no dice.
I stalked down the middle of the road,
hoping to be rundown,
but all the autocars swerved just so,
even broadcasting messages of compassion, recommending suicide prevention hotlines, Jesus Christ,
Buddha, L. Ron Hubbard;
one especially devout car offered to roll with me along my dark path,
but I mouthed insipid syllables 'til it left me alone with a pamphlet full of mistranslated, out-of-context Bible quotations.
A half hour passed
I settled into a stalking rhythm which the autocars found agreeable,
just a little deviation from their ground-plans
didn't even get clipped
I'd always wanted to test the collision detection on these machines
and an autocar pulled up next to me, told me to get in, and something inside me responded to a signal
-the chem-pumps I think-
which guided me to yes.
In the air conditioned cab, stimulant-alcoholic drinkbox in my hand
the autocar spoke at length about all the opportunities that awaited me inside RIVALCORP
which wasn't the true name, but a cipher
because the real name was knowledge reserved to the executive class
or possibly just the great algorithms in the Cloud of Clouds
the near immaterial deities rumored to have the whole game on lock these days.
I couldn't even recall the name of the company I was just fired from,
my mind only coming up with PREVIOUS GIG, PASTCORP, variations on that general theme.
I swiped my consent through screen after screen
of terms and conditions
just like I did when I got headhunted for PASTCORP.
Why do they even allow any memories, for fuck's sake?
They write in so many strategic erasures and interdictions,
everybody's hacking into everybody else's chem-pumps,
just do the full wipe, fer Hubbard's sakes!
I'm pretty sure they like it like that-leaving in just enough to promote an illusion of free will,
easy enough to frustrate, tip over into despair in a world of unlimited choice,
and thus conformity, obedience, self-indoctrination follow on with the quickness
to still the cognitive dissonance.
Also,
a full wipe just means you gotta increase resources devoted to re-skilling, re-indoctrination lead times,
so,
yeah,
it's cool.
The autocar regaled me with readings of official poetry as it whisked me towards another great and convoluted facility. The verses stirred my at-a-distance-controlled heart. Shit would work out for a few hundred cycles more, I would know where I needed to be.
-August 2017
Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
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