Slum Enterprise - Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
Lee wakes up… Monday morning, 5am, he presses the “dismiss” button flashing on his pocket screen over on the nightstand.
He feels a pinnacle-pointed shiver rolling across his skin from the core of his body to his fingertips. Tears started to swell in his eyes. Euphoric sensations fill the pores. The colors and lights brighten in his peripheral vision against the dark backdrop of the master bedroom. Every sense swirls into once coherent entities, making profound, real judgments. The thought of death is what shakes him. He stares at the bedroom ceiling for a moment, a basic white ceiling, just eggshell white and smooth. The sun barely has touched the horizon; much more time needs to pass before it can be found above the neighborhood rooftops. It's so incredibly dim that Lee can only make out faint shapes of the bedroom furniture and a ball of clothes on the floor. The shades are not light blocking, so Lee can still see the faint outsider blue glow of early morning. Lee sits at the end of the bed, waiting. He watches the blue glow expand and notices that the blinds make wave patterns on the ceiling like a blank canvas accepting colors from artistic touches. The waves turn into rings like a chopped-down tree stump; they dance and sway like ocean waves. “Time for work,” Lee thinks.
5:30am is usually when Lee finally moves. Annie is still sleeping in bed, and the dog, Penny, is awake but is too tired to get up for breakfast (the dog knows the morning routine well). Annie's day starts at 6:30am. Her routine begins when Lee is already at his corporate headquarters office building. She usually showers in the main floor bathroom (the only shower and tub in the house), goes back up to sit on the bed in a towel, completes a 5-minute 1000-yard stare session, gets dressed, makes breakfast, pets the dog sitting on the couch, and is now on her way out the door to her school. She is a special ED teacher in the next district over.
Lee drags his sore body over to the half bathroom that is next to the master bedroom. The song “Ashton Park” by the James Gang plays in his head. It bounces and echoes around. He starts to quietly hum the medley while brushing his teeth. Deodorant, Q-tips for cleaning ears, heavy-duty nail clippers for preventative nail maintenance, skipping the shave, and washing his crusty eyes with a hot washcloth. This usually works for a 27-year-old man who believes skin care routines are “Pussy shit and wasteful.” Lee's hair was cut shorter recently, so he decided to forego the shower altogether. “Things look proper enough.”
He walks over to his personal closet in the spare upstairs bedroom that shares a wall with the master. He changes into suitable work attire. Solid color polo shirt with blue Levi jeans. Basic, but his office dress code didn't require much. Lee then steps carefully down the steep stairs and starts breakfast. Mostly carbs, brews coffee and fills his travel mug, packs a lunch of a main leftover course, fruit, and maybe a cookie, baked and stored in the refrigerator the week before to help preserve freshness longer. His work bag was packed the night before, still sitting on the main floor office chair. Lee calls the dog down from the base of the staircase, who is wagging her tail aggressively. He can hear Penny's collar jingle. She moseys her way to the main floor, and Lee opens the back door that leads into the spacious backyard (for an inner-city lot house) for her to do her mourning routines. Lee watches Penny circles the yard, stop for a moment so she can listen for distant barks, and run back in to meet her food bowl filled with kibble. Work boots on, work watch on, work belt on, workbag on, lunch bag on, key card on…
“Oh shit, my medication…” Lee walks back over to the kitchen cupboard that holds an assortment of medicine for both Annie, Penny, and him, and grabs his anti-anxiety pill bottle. He pours one pill carefully into his hand and dry swallows it. Lee shuts the house lights off and heads out the front door, locks it, and packs up the red truck parked on the curb.
A way to sum up Lee's anxiety is to imagine a constant, sinister presence lurking behind him. It swells and rolls along his chest and throat. Lee is always on edge, always worried or concerned about what he said to a random person 6 months ago. The presence likes to interject these thoughts into Lee's head at the most inconvenient times throughout the day. The pills help keep the presence at bay.
He remembers the first day he knew something was off about his nominal mental state. Back at his childhood home, hanging out in the kitchen. The kitchen was likely the coolest one on the neighborhood block. It was all 50s retro decorated. Old 7Up and Coke signs, walls painted yellow with a white ceiling with red accents. The retro red clock hangs above the retro refrigerator. Even the oven had red burner knobs that lit up to let the user know that the blue flame was shooting from the stove ports. Everything in the kitchen was basically industrial, a time capsule back to the quality mass-produced 50’s metal products. Lee remembers that it was later in the evening, and he was pouring a glass of water from the Brita water jug into a yellow, heavily BPA-infused plastic cup. In a flash, Lee gets an overwhelming feeling of pure dread out of nowhere. Nothing seemed to trigger this; it's like his brain flipped a switch. It takes over his whole body, and he begins to cry. He placed the yellow glass into the deep white ceramic sink and ran upstairs to his room and shut the door. Lee lay on his bed all night, staring at the ceiling, crying because the dread was attacking everything. He felt that the dread would never stop, and he wondered if he could take the pain. It felt like he would never be happy ever again; every memory he had up to that point was reeling in the back of his eyes. Instead of reliving the positive moments of the memory, it was stripped and replaced with the negative moments. Everything he did was now a failure… how he looked, how he talked, what he liked was stupid and destined to make him a failure. No matter how hard he tried that night to shut his brain off, he couldn't. Lee somehow made it to school the next morning, not knowing who he really was.
It's another cool morning. The bugs are still chirping to shed off the night. There are a few early morning dog walkers with reflective vests. They look focused and determined to be the first out to show off the new “trendy” wear and to let the other dog walkers know that they “have their shit together and are responsible for their dogs' needs.”
Lee starts the truck, it revs high for a minute, then drops to idle rpm once a little heat is produced. It's a mint condition Tacoma (1st generation) with less than 100k miles on the odometer. Lee loves this truck. No rust, no major mechanical issues, just slight electrical problems with the dash lights and electric door locks. Like the greatest point A to B automobile in the state. Lee will never sell this truck; the plan is to drive it till the frame snaps in half, which will be the likely catastrophic failure point. The Japanese meant well in the over-engineered full box frame design. They didn't consider the rust belt and how moisture would get trapped in the box framing, eating away the steel from the inside out. Besides this slight oversight, all bulletproof.
It takes Lee five right turns to get to work. Straight down the main road of his street, right. Down 66th St, right. Down the onramp to the south, merge onto southbound 35X, right. Off the highway off-ramps that border the office campus, right, into the parking lot entrance, right. Into the parking spot. Six minutes from the front door of the house to the office. A lot of Lee's friends and family say, “How lucky you are to be that close to your job. You get to avoid major traffic delays, you can get out of bed right before your shift starts, you can even walk or bike to work if the truck is giving you problems.” Whenever these comments are made (usually at family events like birthday parties, where 2nd cousins or distant aunts or uncles always forget what they do for a living and ask the same questions from last year to avoid awkward silences) Lee tends to feel depressed once again depressed. They wish they had Lee's commute; they would probably like to switch places with Lee for that commute. They think Lee has a sense of entitlement to the company he works for, just because his commute is so short. It's like the company planned for Lee to move to his house and knew exactly where and when he would work.
6:25am, Lee turns off the V6 natural aspirated underpowered engine, grabs his gear, and walks to the front entrance.
The corporate campus of Green Earth Solutions is an interesting place. Home to powerful executives and a Fortune 500 CEO who runs the show. The show is called the “Life System.” Everyone is born into a Life System. It's the force that drills ideas into helpless, feeble young minds from the day of birth until the day of death.
Grow up, make some initial friends, don't be shy, be happy, go to school, make some more friends, be more outgoing and happier, get good grades, don't get into trouble, come home on time from playdates, find interests in girls, maybe get a nice girlfriend. Later, get a nice girlfriend; one that doesn't get into trouble or involved in “free” thinking activities with local self-proclaimed intellects. Make sure she doesn't wear black or tight skirts to family functions with low-cut tops that entices the grandpa to peer down more often when trying to fake a cough or sneeze. Grandma catches wind and hits grandpa hard on the forearm, which gets the message across to be more respectful and stop acting like a pig. Study hard from government sanctioned textbooks, graduate high school at a respectful level within your class, go to accredited university not so close to home but also not to far away, make sure it has a solid science and engineering program, don’t think about the arts as a future career path, Join a fraternity that paddle you just so you can “Fit in” with a crowd and go to the weekly internal fraternally update meetings. Don't stand out, be nice and never cause a scene, respect your elders and the wise. Graduated from university and moved back to a city with plenty of job opportunities, got “a foot in the door” so to speak. Apply to 500 jobs while you drink heavily at night to pass the jobless days, get 2 or 3 direct “No’s” and 497 ghosts. Get lucky one cold afternoon, the recruiter has found a position for you. Start your entry-level job at a well-established firm that designs systems to clean shit from the world and leave it pure and pristine. Work hard, keep your head down, rise through the ranks, match your 401K contribution, become a head of a department, boss around 10 to 15 direct reports for only 35 more years. Navigate personal tragedy, and make sure not to let the tragedy affect work performance. Avoid getting laid off, try to keep old friends, find new hobbies and interests, become a parent, buy a 2nd house, destroy the first one, and build a parking garage for your collections of fancy sports cars so you can arrive at the office in style. Retire, find newer hobbies that keep up with the changing trends, see friends and family pass on, and start feeling tired of the mundane. Finally, one day, look at all the pointless artifacts collected over the years and scream in disgust. Get mad because you can't take any of it with you. Sell it all, leave with nothing, as your surviving family and friends surround your hospital bed.
The executives can watch the whole show and are never worried about whether the protagonist will falter on his lines. They have invested large sums of money in the best theater and vocal coaches. Every fact of life is influenced; every advertisement and system put in place is an elaborate scheme to steal and control every drop of pure humanistic energy. The media can tell you what to think and what to buy, and the armed forces go over to conquer lands and bomb the common folk. The Life System had forced consumer ideology. It is all indoctrinated distractions. Thinkers are drowned in the seas of instant information, screens in every room, and in every hand, called pocket screens. The people are almost forced to stay connected or face utter rejection from society. Forced to consume and compare, then consume again, to once again go back to comparing. The people are throated fucked with cheap Chinese-made slop trinkets that rolled off the 1000-foot freighters that burned millions of pounds of carbon energy just to get it to your doorstep. The lucky few who see it for what it is are barely hanging on (in terms of sanity). These few souls are promptly placed on HR watch lists at Green Earth Solutions. Get caught not following the program, and they bring you in for reconditioning of the “Free thinking disarmament program”. The purpose is to prevent taboo thoughts from spreading to the other unawaken individuals, ignorantly going about their workday. The Jester is the new wage slave telling jokes to save his own head from the non-humorous king with a guillotine on standby in the janitor's closet.
Green Earth Solutions corporate headquarters, located in the 2nd ring suburb X, was built in the 1960’s. The company was founded in the early 1900’s. It had flat roofs with pyramid structures to make it look less brutalist. Painted a purple-ish brown color on the outside. The outside color scheme had no match to the forest green trademarked company color they were famous for. Overall, it was a normal engineering firm. The front entrance vestibule had a nice, wide open welcome space with two receptionists sitting behind a large admin counter with monitors and a security button to allow employees through two other separate doors down those halls that lead into the office spaces. Employees would badge in a magnetic key card slot on a tall monolith box and get granted a green light for “Enter” or a red light to stop and go check with one of the receptionists to see what was wrong with the badge. The vestibule was painted the hallmark forest green and had many inspirational corporate slogans on the walls about the importance of sustainability and teamwork. The main message is to make the world a “Greener Place” through filtration systems.
Lee Collins badges at the monolith box and was granted a green light. Beyond the color and inspiring statement ridden vestibule lobby was a much different reality than the offices. grey and beige all around with white concrete brick walls. It had a prison vibe to it, sterile with the feeling of “no hope of escape” lingering in the air. Lee thought the company would install a new advanced air filtration system for the building since the company manufactured them, but no, it was too expensive to overhaul an old building with constant roofing leaks. Besides, the state taxes on corporations are high, which the CEO’s disliked extremely. The CEO would never build offices in the state again. The plan was to start out sourcing to cheaper, less infrastructure-intensive southern states or overseas.
Lee walks along the grey carpets past departments full of six-foot-tall beige cubical walls hiding working cogs. Lee liked the tall walls; they hid you from the bosses better. Anybody couldn't just peer over to see if you were there; they had to make the effort and get up and look over the walls or find a proper viewing angle to catch a glimpse of your back hunched over a computer keyboard.
Lee reaches his department zone, which is past the cafeteria. The cafeteria cooks wore green chef outfits and made greasy burgers and chicken wraps in mass quantities. The company cafeteria doesn't subsidize the food; it costs a fortune just for one burger. Lee bobs and waves through the labyrinth of cubes in the zone cubical sections, finds the one, and sits down, dropping his work gear on the floor under the desk. He pulls out his laptop and docks it to the monitor systems. This allows Lee to have 3 screens of viewing real estate. One stays on the backlog schedules, one stays on emails, and the final one on the instant messenger application (kind of like texting).
“There you are,” Lee hears a voice behind him in the next-door cube. “You look like a man who knows how to work HARD.”
“How are you doing, Scott?” Lee responded in a casual way (he always called him by his last name). Chester Scott, an older gentleman who was Lee’s Senior Engineering Technician. He was the leading expert in the lab Lee was managing. His hair was white and grey, wore thick bifocals and had the same grey shirt and pants with black work boots he has worn every day for the last 35 years. “How are things going today?” Lee repeated.
“Oh, I can't complain, the weather is holding out, and we are both living and breathing.”
“I feel that, Scott. Say, how are the testing projects?” Lee asked. After the initial greetings to break the ice, Lee liked to ask about the status of Scott's work. As the most senior tech, Scott had the most challenging lab testing projects. Other department engineers would send new systems and filtration prototypes to test. Lee’s massive engineering laboratory had 18 different test benches that all did one specific kind of test. Anywhere from structural bursting to complex efficiency and capacity tests. The purpose was to gather data and send it back in a nice report to the engineer who requested the test. Lee's team of 10 other technicians ran the benches and produced data.
The engineers would then use the data to refine their filtration products and systems, and the cycle would repeat until a suitable sales product was finalized. The tech's main job was to set up the filtration product in the benches themselves and be the eyes and ears if anything were to fail on the product. Having this fine detailed look at the failures was critical information to design them out in the next prototype revision. Lee’s lab specializes in fuel and hydraulic filtration products. The benches would flow oil and different pressures, temperatures, and have different containment types to check performance specifications. He likes the hands-on aspect of the job and tends to think he can test pretty much anything. That's why he was at a satellite department creating a new testing method for pharmaceuticals the previous week.
“The one I got going in the climatic chambers is going a little haywire, Lee.” Scott paused for a moment to clear his throat. “We are running cold, so the filter gaskets keep failing and leak against any sort of fluid back pressure above the specification pressure. I'm not getting any useful data for…what's his name?” Scott was horrible with names and never remembered the engineer who submitted the test project.
“DETTER, yes DETTER… any way I’ll give the ol’ bastard a call and let him know the failure modes. Say Lee, make sure to tell these guys about the submission process again, they’re always fucking up the testing parameters in the write-up. How the Hell am I supposed to decipher what they did on their stupid filters? Stop letting them waste my time.” Scott was becoming a bit flustered as he said this. He couldn't help it; he was a man who wanted things done right the first time.
“No worries, Scott, I’ll press that during the engineering department's next priority meeting,” Lee said. He was lying a little because he had been saying this over and over during the biweekly meeting. Lee knew they just didn't listen or care to send in a decently written test matrix. But what could Lee do? The techs were so particular in their craft. It took almost 5 years to master all 18 benches; each bench had a special characteristic that took years to figure out and understand…engineering relied on this tribal knowledge, and for the techs to call them and tell them what to do.
Green Earth Solutions was like this, massive testing laboratories for air, liquid, industrial, marine, military ect… all with specialized benches built with 40–60-year technologies, all survived by the passing down of cult-like training programs only hired techs could access. Still, the rest of the departments from engineering to finance disliked the lab crews. They thought of them as 2nd class cogs… just low life uneducated people with no work ethic to become a “real” engineer later on. Lee was sick of this… but what could he do? He wasn't paid enough to care.