THE MONSTER!

 

Norman sat at his workstation that morning, just as he did every morning. It was the same for many others who sat at their workstations, in plush chairs sitting upon smooth casters, in crowded cubicles flooded by the whispering of forced air under an acoustically-tiled ceiling from which fluorescent light rained down like a fine mist, softening the would-be shadows, their edges softened, no boundaries – only overlapping patterns of bright and dim. It was a question of degree, not of substance.

To Norman’s right, there was a phone. A telecommunication system is more like it. A phone as merely a phone rarely exists in such an environment, having been melded into a larger venue of components – integrated if you prefer, into the greater scheme of things. But it was like a phone nonetheless. It had on it a light which changed color to meet the circumstance and it would begin its horrid and disturbing blinking at precisely 8am, Monday through Friday and occasionally on a Saturday if someone were there to watch it. It usually started with a solid, unblinking green: a sign that there were fewer than five callers on the line at that given moment. Such was a typical weekday morning, especially Monday morning. Push the “on” button and there it was: green. Glowing. Other days, particularly  Fridays, it might begin by blinking red instead. That was as bad as it was likely to get. Blinking red. It meant that there were over twenty callers on the lines at one time, and that was a condition which was as unresolvable as it was intolerable. And yet it happened. But, in either case, Norman would begin, as usual, by resolutely putting on his head set, turning his computer on, and launching several programs in readiness for the barrage of technical questions that lay in wait inside the small box to which his headset was attached.

Norman was wired. He was wired to the telephone. He was wired to the computer. He was wired in many and varied directions, strung by cables to listening devices, viewing devices, data storage devices, memory chips and whirring hard drives, optical drives, flash memory, all securely connected to Norman in the small booth where he worked. His calls were counted and their duration measured and recorded by another computer somewhere in the building. His phone system was capable of being monitored by either human or artificial means, which was to say that it was monitored by both so that the human monitor was then monitored as well. Sometimes he could literally feel the gaze upon him—particularly when he was having trouble getting a caller off the line in time to keep his stats on track. He had to make his numbers: six inbounds an hour for four to five hours. There was a period of time for outbound calls too. Callbacks or returns to callers who had gotten lost in the queue. They, of course didn’t count, that is, they didn’t help Norman’s stats, as the department was optimally expected not to have any outbound calls anyway. But nominal conditions prevailed over optimal ones. It was a strain to make the outbounds when Norman was behind on his inbound quota, a daily recurring situation. What could he do? It was all recorded. It was on a chart at the weekly meeting—a meeting which he, a mere minion, was not invited to, but one in which his manager would dutifully participate, in consort with the many well-dressed, well-heeled, executives making those private and troublesome decisions which would, no doubt, increase the efficiency of the department as a whole, even if at the expense of a few—minions that is. This would result in, quite simply, more demands, more calls, more blinking lights and more to fear for Norman. Each week it grew worse. Even his pitiful little strategies to get “caught up” only exacerbated his fears – a tactic gone wrong, a momentary lapse into self-service, la perreuque[1] if you will, when using the call back time to make a personal call. For that too was counted, if not credited, by the panoptic[2] gaze of the monster, the web of people and computers, this cyborgial system at full throttle, looking with x-ray eyes through Norman’s cubicle seeing him every time he scratched his nose.

Such was this system of machines – of machines connected to even more machines. Their cybernetic link to Norman grew in form and strength moment by moment. The grip grew tighter by each passing day. Even on the weekends it seemed to Norman that he could feel the tingle of the connection, a few millivolts perhaps, nothing more than a suspicion really, but a feeling nonetheless. As he watched television he would wonder where the wire led to which protruded from the back of the special box which allowed him to receive pictures and sounds that at times made no sense at all. Animals would crawl about on the set while a very masculine, yet kindly and paternal voice described how they were about to die a bloody and violent death in the jaws of yet a larger animal. Norman knew that these animals were different in the “real” but it had been a long time since he had actually been to the zoo, had smelled the fecundal presence of live animals, and perhaps stepped in the piles of dung which the monkeys threw at camera toting spectators in their Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts. Which was the signifier and which was the signified? The link was no longer apparent. Day after day it seemed that a Lacanian schizophrenia took over Norman’s ability to separate himself from that which he perceived. His memories grew less trustworthy as he became more subsumed by the present — a present that seemed to repeat itself endlessly, perhaps never exactly the same, but always as a “now”. So that when it hurt, and it did hurt, it hurt to be alone, by himself in that cubicle among other cubicles, it hurt then, or “now” just as it did for all eternity, for eternity is, at such moments, the embodiment of the now.

Perhaps then, like his computer and his phone and all the computers at his work, his television also was connected. Connected to the monster that is. The monster which lived in the buildings and in the wires and telephone cables and under the floors and under the streets throughout the city and ran from state to state, clawing its way through microwaves to satellites spanning continents, immune to the names of nations and the heads of corporations. Yes, Norman was sure of that. It sounded a bit paranoid, but how else could it be?

The planet itself was now the cyborg[3]. It was not just the people like Norman who were becoming machines, but the entire globe. It had started, quite possibly with steel and concrete. The roads, once dirt, and stone, had marked the trails which would soon become the arteries and nerves of the cyborg monster. A dragon like the those imagined in medieval times, but now, instead of scales, teeth, a forked tongue breathing flames and flapping wings, one that was composed of metal and glass and optical fibers, composite insulation, the skin of the giant reptile. Buried in the dirt and running under the oceans, cables and tunnels have reached out to span the entire globe so that the ultimate hive would be created: a hive of workers who toil under the gaze of each other in an effort towards greater and greater efficiency through greater and greater connectivity. The “gaze” is a shared moment. It is a shared dilemma. An infection, a virus. Once internalized, it is passed on and on, from one to another, each time taking on the form of the next host, each then a mirror of the other.

Norman stared at his monitor for a moment. As the computer booted up the screen was dark, and caught the reflection of light from a distant window. His face was momentarily reflected in the screen. The face looked at the face looking at it. There was a moment of connectivity—of continuity that shook Norman. Where was his face at this moment? Was it still attached to his body? Or was his body now in the machine? Or did it even matter? The connection between the signifier and the signified was, then, lost. Which was the reflection and which was the original. Or was there an original? But there must be! Yet, where was it? Then, with a flicker of the glowing screen took on its familiar appearance of icons against a bleak darkness, Norman now the Sauseurian[4] link between one space-time referent and another, but only by passing through a void into which Norman would reach and reach and reach for more and more information, then, when satisfied he had exploited all of the possible resources, spew them out again towards the myriad of callers, of customers, of voices throughout the country, even the world. It was information which would surface in the form of more and more machines, each demanding something new of its attendant biological subjects. The demands would grow and grow until the bio-sub was used up, fatigued, exhausted and no longer suitable to the task of propagating more machines, and then discarded, laid-off, fired, retired, bought out, early-outed, or, worse yet, promoted even deeper into the recesses of the monster’s lair – an executive position perhaps.

It was all for the moment. That moment. The moment which inevitably demanded his fullest attention. He tried looking behind him, or to the side, remembering, finding a path out somehow, but by looking backwards he only saw the greater presence of the moment. The future looked like the void in the screen. It looked like the emptiness of space, a space without stars. The past, however, was only a series of photographs pasted upon the sides of buildings, torn posters worn by rain and time itself which served to make those things that were a distortion, a recollection of a time that never was.

Norman remembered his last vacation time. He had walked outside, and tried to smell the air. He could, but he could also smell the exhaust of the cars, the acrid diesel of trucks, a faint whiff of road tar —and the noise too had bothered him so. He had walked along a sidewalk, up a small hill among large houses with large lawns, wet from sprinklers set to timers, tied to power lines, themselves a part of the monster. The sidewalk was so narrow. He walked on, but in fear of the racing automobiles as they careened downward, inches from him, but so many safe yards from the houses behind the soggy lawns. He attempted to cross the street. The light had turned green for the automobiles while the bright red “wait” signaled Norman to remain, passive, where he was, and he did so, for the sign was wired too, through the pole into the concrete, into the earth upon the monster’s back perhaps, wired firmly, resolutely as it were. Norman had forgotten the ritual of the button and now he had to wait for the light to turn red and then to turn green again. The sign would change then to “walk,” but only for a few moments, the person, the human, clearly subordinate to the demands of traffic, the motors of commerce, the wheels of progress so to speak. He simply must pay more attention. Norman knew his place among the monster’s world of metal and plastic and asphalt. He would remember his homage to the monster, and this time press the button.

A large truck rumbled by. It shook the ground on which Norman walked, and rattled the windows of a nearby house finally setting off a hideous alarm buried inside the bowels of a parked car. Norman felt frightened lest the owner of the car think it was he, Norman, who had somehow tampered with the powerful machine of metal, rubber and plastic as it sat, for the moment inert, but for the cacophony of the wailing alarm,  yet a mass of potential energy, full of dangerous combustible fluids, ever ready to unleash its enormous kinetic power on the broad road that ran along the sidewalk.

He looked for a place to be, but there was no place designed for his frail soft body, so Norman continued walking and walking until he found a small park. He thought of sitting in the park and doing, well, nothing. Possibly defining a space for himself by merely being there. Was such a thing even possible? Certainly it must be! There, just over there, a short distance, some children were sitting about playing loud music from a black box. They had their space. Did Norman have his? Or was he only intruding into theirs? The music was familiar but not kind to Norman. Its dissonance was irritating. But the children seemed to like it. They were swaying to the rhythms, or at least the beat, of the music, their familiar yet unfamiliar baggy pants now like South Pacific sarongs with sparkling chains. It was their music. It was not Norman’s.  They seemed so at ease with what to Norman was so utterly unfamiliar. Had time once again abandoned him – leaving him stranded, alone, an alien? These children, their use of the music, their strange clothes, playing in the busy streets, setting off car alarms for fun, all this constituted a special kind of knowledge, a savoir-vivre[5] of the moment. But for Norman it was discord and chaos – a dizzying and disorienting rupture[6] in his continuum. The place of signification was lost for Norman. He could not stay. Instead, he continued walking until he was too tired to continue. So he found a bus stop and there he sat until its arrival. It came to a screeching halt, the hard metal of the brakes rubbing against the composite abrasive of the brake pads. It lurched upon its final stop. The doors opened with a hiss of hydraulics and a man with sunglasses sat behind the wheel looking in Norman’s direction. Norman boarded. He gave the anonymous driver a dollar and received no change. He received no acknowledgment of even having boarded the bus. So he sat down near an old lady and thought about the old Mrs. Dupuis[7] who had owned a bakery years ago. He remembered the building, a white concrete box with one large window in which there were displayed loaves of bread and an occasional cake either meant for a customer or simply for decoration. Had she died? Where had she gone? What of the business? He had gone back one day, and there was no sign of her or the business. The building, still white, still a simple box, had its window now filled with antique clothing instead of piles of round bread loaves, and a young purple-haired woman was arranging the clothes on their mannequins and display racks. The clothing itself was strange, long, slinky, with beads draped here and there. The young woman was wearing similar clothing which draped from her body in an alluring fashion, but which also contradicted her age. But somehow those clothes made sense against her very pale skin, and her face with black lipstick and strange shadows around her eyes. Norman could barely see what appeared to be a set of tiny headphones plugged into the young woman’s ears. The hint of a wire, so delicate and fine, a fiber, a blade of grass or a bit of spider web perhaps, which ran from her neck to some hidden recess in her clothing. A connection? Or perhaps a consolation – even a roadblock to the Monster, a barrier of white-noise, or a song of reconciliation. A bright neon sign was above the window and read “Years Truly”. Strangely appropriate, thought Norman. Strange too, how such a thing like Dupri’s store could come and go like that. How what must have been decades of her constant presence could so utterly disappear. How even the same old white building could be so different now, as if it had never been otherwise, and how it could never again retain the sense of permanence it once had – again the rupture, the historical rift, as if history had stopped altogether. Well, not all of history perhaps, but the one which Norman had belonged to. Was old lady Dupris merely a style of that other time? Or was she the thing of permanence which had been somehow lost, now replaced by the young woman with the wires that ran out of her ears. Or could it be that the young woman was ever more thoroughly the one of permanence! After all, it was she who was now connected to the monster, not old lady Dupris. Not Norman.

The bus lurched at a stop, and the old woman next to him got up, holding a plastic bag, wearing clothes much like the ones that Norman remembered having seen the young woman wearing in the old bakery building. How strange! Did they know each other? She got off. The doors slammed shut and the bus jolted off towards the downtown. 

It was a city of glass, each building reflected in another and another. In such a reflection of continuous but fragmented images, each pain held at once a portion of what it reflected and what it was, melding them together into a larger and more complicated single image. Behind each window people could look outside yet remain secure in their own anonymity, indeed, invisible to the outside, the objective observer. Reaching down from dozens of stories high all the way down to the grime of the street upon which Norman’s bus traveled, the reflections continued. It was a crystalline structure growing up from the ground just as it also reached down from the heavens. The bus traveled its prescribed path only stopping at precise and discrete points. Pedestrians, however, seemed more free. They crossed the streets wherever it seemed convenient, oblivious to the dangers, even taunting the horrible machines that surrounded them. Into the buildings they went, and out again, into the many street-level doors which held shops and offices. They seemed connected but not like Norman felt connected. He was tethered to the monster, while these urban dwellers seemed to be unafraid of it, in fact, they seemed to be almost playing with it! They had their earphones on. They held little telephones. They worked their way through crowds of people and machines as if with purpose, claiming a new “total space”[8] in the process. It appeared to Norman as a kind of “hyper-crowd” amid some collective practice of the spectacle.  These people looked neither forward nor backward, but directly at and into the moment. They were the survivors. Or were they? Could they merely be passive captives of the monster? Soldiers caught in the passivity game, caught “in the power of hierarchical surveillance” and ultimately normalized?[9]

Norman, for a moment, while in the bus, as if on a tour, watching from within the spectacle without, grew envious of these creatures. So modern and so deliberate. In their grace they seemed so utterly unreflective, as if the myriad of class walls surround them prevented dangerous levels of introspection, and instead beamed constant images of themselves at them, keeping them in their place, in straight lines, like gasses in a laser, lasing from one mirror to another in a constant rhythm of minute quantum leaps, the occasional photon, the stray thought. How comforting it would be to just be. To merely participate. It was what Norman had always wanted wasn’t it? To be among the many. To be secure at last amid the throngs of people who now scurried about, happily involved in, in what? Oh yes, involved in the monster. The MONSTER! That was it. This was the making of the Monster.

The memory of that day on the bus, the walk to the park, the children playing loud and strange music, the large soggy lawns and narrow sidewalks, all that faded into the cool luminescence of the florescent lighting into the cubicle where Norman sat. The little light was amber now. Amber was, well it was certainly doable. There were probably ten callers on the line. Or in the line. Down the line, as it ran along the wall to Norman’s booth, and then through the floor and into another computer, then to a router, and switching boxes and even further to a main trunk of massively bundled copper wires and fiber, and then split up later into more and more switches, some to become microwaves and then turned back into simple electrons which would run along copper again, forming the scales of the Monster’s body. The endless continuum of people, machine, people and machine again reaching though the very core of the earth with everyone, maybe not yet, but eventually, everyone connected, happily or not, connected to the monster, at one with the monster, the greatest cyborg of all: the Earth. Norman pressed the button on the phone. There was a moment of quiet. Norman pondered the quiet. For a moment he wished it really were a quiet. But it was more of a digital silence. He could not endure the moment. He acted. He spoke: “Technical support. Norman here. How can I help you?” The silence continued. But only briefly until Norman was swallowed up once again, linked by that wire, and the keyboard, and the screen and the memory chips and the cables and satellite dishes, linked again, yoked to the Monster, just like the thousands of others in their cubicles, in glass buildings and air-conditioned rooms, at that very moment – yes, just like Norman, wired to the monster.