fuck this job.com

Simon is leaning back. Just as he is about to fall, his feet come off the floor and he’s traveling back out through a window and into the cool air. He twists around, trying to see where he’s going, and just as he’s looking in the direction he’s traveling, he’s stopped again. Now he’s in an office. It’s a plain little office in a modern low-rise building located in an industrial park with freshly stomped turf and sickly green trees.

A skinny young man is talking to a young woman with stringy hair. They are all alone in the early morning. They are gazing at a computer monitor.

“It’s already happening,” he says, with a wild grin on his face. A couple of empty beer bottles grace the table top.

“No…way,” she answers, transfixed by the image on the screen.

“It’s true. Our ‘beloved leader,’ Elvin Brimes, is now fully uploaded. His body is officially in ‘a coma’ down at the hospital, but we know that his consciousness is alive and well inside here.”

The young woman looks slightly ill. “I see it, but I still don’t believe it.”

“You don’t have to believe it. Nobody is asking you to believe anything, Carla. But it’s true. It’s real. The ‘Beamer Project’—that’s the project to get our boss a new, cyborg body—and I’m going to be running that project as soon as Kinkel leaves for Washington.”

“Are you supposed to be telling me this?”

“You’re doggone right I am. I’m going to be lead designer and you—you’re going to be my assistant, and co-developer.”

Simon is a bit surprised when the young man suddenly pushes his face at the girl and they kiss awkwardly—but passionately. Simon suddenly feels ashamed watching them. He is even more ashamed as they awkwardly, but passionately begin to pull their clothes off and climb onto the table, knocking the beer bottles onto the dirty carpeting.

Simon is pulled away just as his pants are kicked wildly in Simon’s direction. He notices a Pez dispenser sticking out of the pocket as he’s drawn out the door and up through the roof. It looks like Sonic the Hedgehog.

Simon finds himself inside a silent house. The door to the only room with a light is open slightly. He glides into the room and finds a frail looking man writing a long letter on a page of notebook paper. Simon literally hovers over the man’s shoulder and reads the letter. Beside the letter is a 9mm pistol lying on the desk.

“I have dishonored my family and myself. I have betrayed my country. I cannot continue to be a part of this horror. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. The work I have spent my life on is ruined. I wanted to help. I wanted to make a true democracy possible using computers and the internet. But it’s all been stolen by evil men. This technology will be used to rig elections and destroy the democracy I have spent my life defending. I can only make this last effort to redeem what little honor I have left.”

The man puts down the pen and lays his hand on the pistol. It’s a military issue handgun. Simon notices that the walls of the office are lined with frames containing medals for heroism, photographs of presidents and business leaders—and a couple of dingy old images of a few men in combat gear, squatting for a photo near a rice paddy.

The man begins to cry. His shoulders shake and the tear drops plop onto the paper. He slowly picks up the pistol and presses the barrel to his temple. Then, even more slowly, he lowers the gun and places it back on the desk. He sniffs, loudly.

Something moves in the corner of the room. Out of the shadow a man arises, dressed entirely in black. He moves quickly but silently. He snatches the pistol from the desk and places it quickly to the head of the man writing the letter.

Then Simon feels something rising in him like nothing he has ever felt. He senses that the finger of the assassin is squeezing down the trigger of the pistol. A hurricane of power is opening up inside of Simon. His hand (but it doesn’t look like his hand!) grabs the wrist of the assassin and he feels the bones crunch.

The letter-writer leaps out of his chair and onto the floor. A yelp escapes from the assassin, but he stifles it and pulls a stiletto and buries it in Simon’s chest. And Simon feels nothing. Simon takes his free hand and entirely grasps the throat of the assassin in it. Simon closes his hand and squishes the muscle and sinew of the would-be killer’s neck. Then he walks the limp body out through the door and carries it up into the air as the letter-writer looks on in terrified amazement. He lifts his prey up like an eagle carrying a trout, up and up high over the city and out over the ocean. He holds it up over the glistening waters of the Pacific. A voice comes from Simon that is not his own.

“Here. Lucifer opens his arms to you.”

He drops the dead body, and Simon Balistica watches him fall silently into the sea below.

(TO BE CONTINUED)