Slum Enterprise - Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

The breakfast attendant perfectly judges Lee Collins and every soul that enters the hotel lobby's seating area, the breakfast attendant's domain. The cheap espresso machine lights the expressions of tired travelers. The news broadcast projects out from a 55inch flat screen T.V propped up in the lobby's corner wall. It gives the viewer untold horrors, all for free and without warning. The lobby human-like phantoms look away to focus on their powdered egg breakfast and Styrofoam cup full of juice.

Lee self-reflects on his loose morning thoughts. “Call me morbid,” he thinks to himself. “All I can do is laugh at all the absurdity.

It seems like everyone is overly desensitized. All the T.V requires of the viewer is low mental effort. In one ear and out the other.

The local news station is covering the US open. It switches to another story about construction crew shortages across the state. B-roll is rolled across the screen as a voice-over plays. Lee sits and watches on a lonely 4-person table. No one eating breakfast is speaking. It's 6:30am on a Friday.

The Morning News crew is now live. The anchors, one man and one woman, nicely dressed, are very laser-focused on their vocal deliveries. Lee thinks that they are too calm and collected as they take turns going through the stories, that deep down inside the anchor's soul, they scream for help, but on the outside, they laugh and go on with the motions. “Don't worry, spending money is still safe on this lovely Friday morning. Next up, get ready for hurricane season. Our wonder weatherman, Jim Portus, will keep you up to date on storm developments. Lastly, make sure to lock your doors at night. A murderous serial killer has broken out of the county jail west of Highway 60 near Rochester. The Chief of police will make an official statement this afternoon. Stay tuned and stay off the streets.

Lee checks his watch. It's stainless steel with a black face with white marks and numeric lettering show time passing quickly.

“Shit,” Lee said in a low tone of voice, not to interrupt the thoughts of the other breakfast patrons.

Lee starts to eat with more haste. As he eats, he notices the breakfast attendant's movements.

The attendant had achieved flow state in his mundane, unsatisfactory job. Lee wondered what made the attendant work so fast. He seemed to glide along the hard-waxed floor, refilling the coffee machines, restocking muffins and other baked goods in addition to the many fruit bowls. The attendant runs back to a "Employees only” door near the waffle maker and rushes in. Moments later, he shoves the door back open and props it open with his nimble foot. He holds 3 silver trays of breakfast protein consisting of eggs, ham, and sausage links (some leftover patties mixed in from the day before). The attendant balances the 3 trays on two skinny arms.

“It must have weighed over 30 pounds,” Lee thought.

He flies to the heating lamp table near the T.V. A line quickly forms for the “good” breakfast options. Lee just sits back and watches the breakfast attendants snake charmer-like dance. Such refined movements that could have hypnotized the most stern non-believers of hypnotism. Lee snaps out of the trance, throws away his leftovers, grabs his work bag and lunch, and heads out the hotel lobby doors.

“What a day,” Lee thinks. The past week back home, the annual Canadian wildfires have suffocated everything. A dense gray and green haze lingered low on the streets. It is still hanging on where Lee is.

The sky seen from the hotel parking lot is a spectrum of colors bouncing off the clouds. It feels like the earth's fever has finally broken from the wildfire virus. Only just yesterday, while Lee worked in the hotel conference room (free Wi-Fi and extra screen to hook his work computer to) he noticed, from the room's only window near the door that peered outside, that it was raining. Lee could see the trees bend and thrash from the flatland winds. The storm cleared the smoke and humidity, finally allowing the area to breathe and cool down from a dry summer. The storm dropped the air temp 25 degrees. After Lee wrapped up his nightly work, he took a stroll on a makeshift trail near the hotel. It was very clear that some stars were starting to poke out. Lee made sure before he walked that his Trek bike was still locked up in front of the hotel's main sliding front doors underneath the large valet car awning. Lee always brought his bike on longer work trips. Maybe he would start biking one night after work and never return. On the never-returning trip, Lee would let his mind become unrestricted, free. Random moments captured only in his head would wash away instantly and move on to the next idea.

Lee would think a lot about time and human cycles on his walks. Maybe since the repetitive motion of walking reminded him of the consistency of a clock pendulum. Just like how a clock will lose its mechanical energy located in its main spring, the human DNA will stop producing suitable replacement cells over long periods of time. Time would flow till the end. Once the end was reached, the ringing in Lee’s ears would finally cease. In the morning silences, the collective calls and rings in Lee's ears. Lee doesn't have Tinnitus (at least not diagnosed from his last physical and hearing test), but Lee unknowingly has tuned his control knobs to listen in on this frequency. It's the void ringing in Lee's ears. The ringing would stop when he synced with the vibrations of matter with the entirety of his human body. This would slow down and mesh with the Mother Frequency. All the chaotic vibrations will be packed together like dollar store tuna.

The sun is rising on schedule in the east. The air is pure and cool. Everything has relaxed. Even the big late August bugs have taken a break to admire the air and oil-painted sky. Lee's fever has broken just like Earth's. He walks with heavy feet to his truck. The morning's loose, unfiltered thoughts have subsided. The dreams and nightmares fade back deep into his subconsciousness. A life phase has passed, a new one has begun, and a random forced rebirth will occur.

“You only get a handful of these days a year,” Lee said out loud. Lee reaches his 22-year-old red truck and begins the automatic action of driving to the satellite corporate office building.

Every highway is the same, no matter where you are in America. At Lee's Corporate headquarters back in the cities, he only had a five-minute drive. He would leave his house and drive down North 35W from the city's first ring sub to the 2nd ring sub. Take an off-ramp and find the dull-looking building waiting for his arrival.

Out in the farmlands where the satellite office was, it was more like 25 minutes from the hotel. The satellite consisted of the medical subdivision of Green Earth Solutions. This division mainly worked on pharmaceutical projects. Its main product was air filtration chambers for pill packing. Green Earth Solutions was a filtration conglomerate. Founded more than a 100 years ago, its main mission was to filter shit from the world. From water to byproduct oil sludge. Everything had to be pure and sustainable.

Lee’s countryside drive was nothing special, of course. Merging onto a lonesome highway, single lane. Getting up to speed in the truck was always troublesome. The truck was extremely reliable but lacked horsepower. No matter how lonesome the highway, early or late in the day, crammed or desolate, there is always one traffic event that sets the tone of the day. As Lee merges and gets up to speed, he does not see anyone over his left shoulder through the truck's back window. Lee signals and turns the wheel slightly to switch lanes. BOOM. A ghost car appears from a secret spawn point; the spawn point is always in the blind spot.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Lee screams in the truck's interior shell. Lee takes evasive maneuvers and floors it. He just barely gets in front of the black-tinted window honda civic. Lee takes a deep breath. “You think you are going to have a peaceful morning, but there's always the first incident that sets the tone…every single day without fail, there is a traffic event like this. Someone cuts you off, someone is on their phone and drifts into your lane, or some Joe Shmo spills coffee on his dick while wearing thin, freshly dry-cleaned dress pants and screams and yells in pain and swerves into the dividing beam, launching his five-thousand-pound SUV into the air towards oncoming traffic on the other side of the wall. Cops, firetrucks, and ambulances arrive and block most of the highway lanes for 4 hours.”

Lee shakes off the fear of the Civic encounter and turns on the radio to reset the calm morning vibe. Ambient drone sounds play through the truck's Bluetooth to the radio transmitter to the dried, crackly door speakers. This is a must for Lee; he has multiple ambient drone playlists depending on the mood. He always plays the playlist on workdays to help relieve the stress. When he doesn't do this, or even misses a day in soothing active listening, Lee's anger builds, and his bad language filter ceases to exist.

Lee settles into the drive. The only interesting things are the red barns with the backdrop of the spectrum sky blurring by. The sun rises faster and faster, and the rainbow clouds turn back into their natural white fluff color. In the thick of ambient drone music while taking in the countryside sites, Lee's eyes begin to form tears, only being held back by his eyelids, like water behind a dam.

“What am I doing? How funny is all this?” Lee laughed. A whole day awaits Lee Collins at the satellite corporate office.

Lee approaches the off-ramp. It's a slight incline that ends at a stop sign with three path options. Back onto the highway (straight), to a small gas station 10 clicks away (right), or the suitably sized office building half a mile down the road (left). Lee takes the left, his stomach drops as all the incoming anxieties of the day come full force into the forefront of his mind.

Lee parks the truck in the parking lot, and a few ash trees are scattered, surrounded by patches of grass that border the concert curbs. The civil engineer who designed the layout must have been drunk. Lee shuts the truck off, gets out, grabs his work bag and lunch, and heads to the office front entrance.

The front entrance is underneath a section of the steel, glass, and polymer construction that overhangs to a vertex point. Like the front of a boat, or a shiny axe point. Lee walks under the overhang and begins to think about how the vertex was maybe a giant axe meant to split Lee into two separate pieces.

Then, in an instant, it splits his head and body. Lee is now two halves. One half is able to keep its balance and bodily function intact, the other half flops onto the concert steps under the overhang. It spills blood and soaks into the cracks. The standing half (Lees Left half) hops and slightly wobbles its way into the office, up the stairs to his satellite cubicle. They called it a hotel cube; it was for visitors from different offices to set up shop for the length of the visit. Lee called it the workstation.

Lee’s left halves work all day, tying up loose ends on his testing method SOP documentation to submit to the upper management stakeholder. Body fluids start to leak onto his desk and the grey carpet. Blood shoots from the severed veins and arteries. The whole fucking workstation turns into a red trench of gore.

“If I don't collect my other half, I'm dead,” Lee thinks to himself. “I have to work? I can't believe this.”

After 8 solid hours of furious typing on his workstation computer and intense body drainage, Lee looks around at the other official cubicle sections. Although this is not his main office, he still feels the presence of his boss watching over him.

Lee tilts his half head at an angle to see if anyone was watching him. Now is Lee's chance. His left half looks grey and flaccid. He packs his work bag and lunch box with the Tupperware and starts his exit procedure. Lee hops and wobbles and makes half smiles to employees he passes by. He arrives at the front doors and views out its windows to spot Lee's right half lying in the baking sun. The birds (crows) are picking it apart while the concrete acts like a hot plate. The skin sizzles and blisters. All the blood and body fluids have dried and caked. Left Lee opens the heavy metal front doors and waves his one arm rapidly to disperse the birds from the corpse. He drags his dead half back to the truck. Luckily, the truck is under the biggest Ash tree in the lot. It provided enough shade throughout the day to keep the truck's internals cool. Lee begins to get depressed about the thought of how these beautiful trees would not last much longer due to the invasive beetle. Lee lays down his rotting right half behind the tail gate in the shade. His left half then lines up and lies right on top, a Lee sandwich. Bone to bone, vein to vein, organ to organ. Lee morphs back into one coherent mass. Now reformed, his left half begins to refill the right half with fluids, basically like an oil change. While Lee managed to get up and sit in the truck. “Japanese make the best trucks,” He said out loud. Lee stares at the rearview mirror and looks at his reflection. “Oh man.”

“I look like Scarface now. One half is pale, and soul sucked, the other is melted with bubbling sun blisters.” Lee is weak; he starts the truck and begins the journey back to the little hotel with a good breakfast. Lee begins again to daydream and reflect on the workday.

“15 cubic ft of void encapsulates all one's worries. Pointless in meaning…meaning is pointless. Trapped, trying to gnaw off my limbs, numb to physical and mental anguish. I float, coast, and hang up my coat after the rain takes away the hazy, choked air. My fever has broken. I dry off, but some wet, slimy rain still sticks to me. Why bother? Why foster these imaginary chemical reactions in a sphere of bone? I don't know what it is called, but why does it bother me? Maybe I'm not cut out for this world, in this Life System. My head is too built up, walled off… I hate authority. I chase happiness to no avail, no point in searching. It has to come naturally. Stress and anxiety skew and chop my soul and body into two. Let go… it becomes a paradoxical nightmare when you try to let go. It means you are not letting go; the thoughts still linger. Don't try, have no expectations. The act of doing is enough is the Life System…but no one understands this. The final product is not some divine event. It’s just another thing existing in the dark void.”

Lee bolts down the highway, even in rush hour, it's still sparse, only a few cars push air at Lee’s truck, slightly tilting it one direction as cars pass on the single-lane road. This drive, the radio is on FM, and a local station is playing. Lee finds the host's voice to be particularly annoying. It was very forced, uninteresting, with hints of “try hard” when discussing pointless topics. The jokes never landed, and overall, it felt flat. “Just play the fucking music, I don't want to hear some try-hard talk.”

The hotel is spotted on the right. Lee slows on the offramp and finds the parking lot spot; he now has an emotional attachment to it, too. Lee gathers his things in the car's internal tomb and shuffles out and limps.

The limp is minor, and the seam of the body seal is itchy all over. Lee looks strange to the hotel receptionists as he walks in. She thinks, “Maybe he came back from some sort of exercise class.”

Lee unlocks the door with his flimsy key card with little local ads printed on it. The work gear is dropped onto the dirty carpet. There are still 4 hours of sun left. “Time to bike, I think my scar will hold,” Lee thought. Lee's TREK bike is still locked outside. It was a hybrid with medium-thick tires. Thick enough for light gravel and thin enough for long road trips. Lee changes into shorts and a breathable shirt. As he gets ready for the bike ride, his mind drifts again.

“Work is a vacuum of free time and self-aligned goals. People always say I should feel grateful to have such a stable, well-paying job. All I want to say back is ‘fuck off.’ It pays the bills, but the bill money is for the trap I have set for myself. Watch out for lifestyle creep in the Life System. Time to clear my head.”

Lee, running, limps back through the lobby and out the doors. He quickly unlocks the bike and throws the lock into the trash can. No one will steal a lock from the trash can. He hopped on the hard seat. The middle seam was very tender and started to itch again. “Too bad,” Lee told himself.

There was another town only 6 miles away. Lee peddled down the nearby hotel trail. There was a handmade sign that pointed in the direction of the town with the town's name carved in it. Lee rides with no intention of stopping until he finds something interesting. The trail was covered in brush and tall Poplars. It was flat with black tar; little tar repair patches could be felt on the tires of Lee's TREK and seat. Most of the hotel town's infrastructure budget was slashed the prior year. This was the last time the tar path would ever look this good. Lee approaches a bridge that goes over a creek. It cuts right into the entrance of the new town. Lee arrives on Main Street. It's short, only a few blocks, but holds more antique stores than major cities. It's almost 6pm now. The sun is hanging low in the sky (which is still very blue). Lee flies by the end of Main Street and finds the larger corporate office section of the town. This is also empty and sad, not a hint of human authenticity in sight. “It's funny to think that for 8-10 hours a day, there are hundreds of people occupying the office buildings, working away their lives. As soon as the contract hours are up, the mass of bodies rushes home to begin the evening coping strategies.”

The only sign of life was over at a corporate brewery right in the middle of all other single-story office buildings, warehouses, and shipping docks, with a few semi-trucks idling for the AC.

“Enough of this.” Lee bikes away but makes a quick pit stop in the empty parking lots. The lots were 3 times the sq footage of the actual office buildings. “The amount of energy still in the tar shimmers the air up in a heat dome. Now imagine the entire nation parking-lotted, it would be better than fusion energy… I don't have a care in the world, no one is around, I could scream and yell, and still no one would hear me in the sea of tar lots with dull yellow painted lines. Why the hell would anyone want to be here on this cool, sunny evening? You only get a handful of these days a year. It's funny, during the day, these corporate office buildings are deemed valuable to the communities that surround them. In the evening, an evening like this, no one wants anything to do with it. The zone turns back into a void, only to transform again under human observation in the morning.”

The idea of the Slum. The media portrays them as unwanted zones filled with unvaluable occupants. “Could this idea be applied to the corporate zones? I haven't met anyone who really wants these corporate office buildings in their neighborhoods.

“Pros and cons of course. At least the ‘real’ slums, or the slums that people imagine the most. Dirty, dangerous, failing apart around the seams. Zero support from government officials, all they would love to do is bulldoze the entire thing. At least these slums have people of interest, tainted by struggle. The people survive on pure reptilian brains. It's like a time capsule into the caveman days. The slum people face horrors. From undocumented diseases to decrypted violent actions committed by mentally traumatized souls just looking for a sort of ‘release’. Things move and breathe in the real slums…things actually go on. The mirror, the corporate slum idea, on the other hand, is a black hole of meaning. Biking around here gives me the creeps. Once again, I feel like I'm being watched. I know that they hire security guards to watch this place. I don't want to be caught hanging; the owners of the buildings must protect their precious land.”

Lee spots the first set of security guards patrolling in a white mom van with an aftermarket security sign glued to the sliding doors and a mounted flood light rack bolted to the bumper. The guards like to crack black heads and get white girl blow jobs sitting in the company car minivan. The mommy package automobile.

“Ah, screw this. They are watching me, I'm pinpointed. For what? To protect the purgatory nobody wants to be caught dead in. This place is manufactured hell, conjured up by the demon-possessed men and women whose sole purpose in life is to get high on vices, and live in a gated community while trying to control every aspect of their dull, meaningless lives. They crave power. All it does is create a power vacuum that sucks all life and light from people's black eyes. The ‘real’ slums promised a better life in comparison. But both slums promise a statement. ‘If you are in them…you want out.’ Better use what the slums have to offer, learn the tools of the trade, find and obtain skill sets you can only find through hard experience.”

Lee begins to pedal hard. His lungs are still weak from the workday body split. The mom van lurkers are parked. Two piggly men sit in sweat-soaked clothes due to the van's AC fuse fault. Their pants are stained from burger grease that also holds black crumbs. Both the men's guts hang far over their makeshift cop belts. They aren't allowed to have handcuffs, so they pack heavy-duty zip ties instead. Slum violence and authority are the same on both ends of the stick.

The left brain and the right brain begin to converse on the escape plan. Both brains are talking back and forth. The right brain has a creative, elaborate plan to split again and make a break for it. The right brain tries to convince the stoic left brain, which needs a logical solution, that they could definitely hop faster than the security guards could run. “Wait, what are you talking about… no… what are you talking about. The van can't travel past the established private property boundaries. Let's just bike away. We are already biking away. I see the curb, that's likely the curb line they can't cross. But look, there's so much parking lot left, it has to be like half a mile. The gearing is set for cruising speed… you'd better keep going. The plan is already in motion; no need to split.” The brains argue.

Lee heard the screeching of tires and an underpowered V6 engine rev and roar from behind. The security van was making a move. Lee was actually trespassing; he just didn't think that anyone would actually care. The van drove up right behind Lee. There was still too much parking left to cover, and the van was right on his ass, ready to ram him off the bike.

“Oh shit, let's ditch, we need a diversion, something to entertain and distract them while one of us makes a getaway. Okay, split, let's try to SPLIT.” The brains decide.

Lee jumps off the bike at high speed and rolls about 2 and a half full-body rotations until he finally ends up stationary on his back. He gets up right away. The van speeds by the bike that's still going upright with a phantom rider. It falls after about another 100 ft.

Lee takes his pocketknife out of his right side pant pockets and starts to cut. The cut starts at the center of his chest. It doesn't hurt, just itchy and irritated from the sweat building little beads all around his skin. He forcefully starts to slide the blade down. He closes his eyes for the scary part. His body starts to fall to the side, and he wraps his hands around his back to continue the process. The van is skidding and making a 180 tailspin. Lee's trek bike lies on its side in the ocean of tar. Lee notices that the parking lot begins to expand and move like ocean waves. He doesn't think anything of it. “Maybe this is the normal state of things here.”

The mom van guards skid towards a climactic stop right in front of Lee. SPLIT.

A mini sonic boom goes off and shakes the van. The sun is now almost completely covered by the horizon. The clouds are pink and orange.

The Security guards step out. They have pig faces and pig ears with curly tails. The guards stop and turn to face one another. “You’ll take the left; I'll take the right.” They assume the attack position and pounce at the Lees at the same time. Right, Lee is still weak from the sun baking, so he can barely hop out of the way. Right Lee gets tackled by the right pig, and left Lee dodges like an Olympic high jumper away from the left pig. The left pig falls on his face and makes a screaming oinking sound that rattles him. “Now is my chance, right? Lee is cooked, no use saving him now.” Left Lee thinks.

As the Left pig gives up pursuit and attaches focus on the easier target, Left Lee makes the bolt and grabs the bike. Once again, he will need to save Right Lee’s half ass (a single cheek, a half-moon).

Left Lee pedals the bike by standing on one pedal and going up and down with it. This keeps him going all the way to the hotel.

Back over in the brain of Right Lee, he managed to pull out the blade from the right short pocket lying on the parking lot. Since the clothes were cut in two and had no more elastic bound or support. Right and Left Lee were both naked. However, he managed to grab the blade after he wormed and escaped the guard's meaty grips. He flailed the arm around with the blade wrapped in his fist. The guards kept their distance. Right, Lee hopped back slowly to the guard's perimeter. “You fuckers better not pass this line, I'll report you, and you will surely get fired.”

The guards backed away and accepted the loss. They were satisfied for the night with the action they had received from the encounter. Right Lee needed to get in contact with Left Lee. There was still a small semblance of a psychic connection, so Right Lee focused hard in the middle of the deserted corporate side street and listened in on Left Lee’s thoughts.

“AHH.” The intention of Left Lee was to return to the hotel, grab the truck keys, and drive back as fast as possible to pick him up, only if he wasn't detained.

“I need to get a hold of a phone.” Right, Lee hops naked along the street curb and spots an office building's outdoor eating area. Surprisingly, there is an old payphone standing right off in the grass that was fed way too much fertilizer. He dials the number of the hotel. At this moment, Left Lee just arrived at the hotel's main lobby as the receptionist's phone rang on the fake granite counter. Ring…Ring…Ring.

The receptionist answers, “Hello, this is the Best Inn front desk, Grace speaking, how can I help you?”

“Please, for the love of god, have you by chance seen a half person (likely naked) come through the lobby?” Right, Lee screams through the black telephone receiver. The tone of voice sounds like he is in pain. Grace, the receptionist, feels uneasy now.

“Uhh, why yes!” Left Lee is hopping slowly across her main lobby view. “It looks like this fellow just arrived.”

The receptionist yells, “Mister, Mister, Sir, I believe I have someone of importance on the line for you.” Left Lee looks up and stops mid-hop. He almost jolts and trips due to the sudden imbalance created by the mid-hop stoppage. He locks eyes with the receptionist, and he notices that her badge says “Grace”. Hotel receptionists are either beautiful young women working their first job with a whole life ahead of them, or they are old, fat, and unfulfilled with everything. In this case, Grace was quite fat, pear-shaped, with shagging underarms as she tried to lean over the fake granite counter and hand Lee the phone. Her ass was too big for the standard hotel-issued chairs, so management had to special-order a double-wide so she would stop getting stuck. Left Lee swiped the phone. Grace's arms and tummy jingle during the transaction. The phone is greasy and full of concealer makeup that was caked on her pimple-ridden face.

“Hello?”

“Lee, oh thank God, you're back at the hotel, call it fate…I escaped the mom van guards. I found this phone in one of the office buildings. I don't have long until it starts to charge me. Go grab your keys and get me.” Right Lee said frantically.

“Lee, get yourself out of the corporate zone, drag yourself if you must, get back to the main highway and wait in the ditch, find some bushes or something. Make sure it's the right-side ditch; I'll keep my eyes peeled until I see you.”

Right Lee coughs into the phone, “Hurry, I need to get patched up, I'm leaking fluids badly.”

The phone clicks, and Left Lee shoves the phone back to Grace. He almost throws it. It does matter because her mass kept the cordless phone orbiting around her. “See ya later, Sputnik. I need an extra key card for room 0429.”

Left Lee running hops to his hotel room, swipes the key card, grabs the keys, and runs back to the truck sitting in the parking spot. He is back on the highway. Night is blanketing the world fast.

There is nothing but the silhouette of trees and tall grass going by. The truck's brights give Lee 50 more yards of viewing range. Deer poke their heads out from the highway ditches only to stare right into the brights frozen in thoughts of death. Down on the horizon, where the road bent over, it produced a slim object in the right-hand ditch. “It’s LEE, thank god, he followed my instructions.”

Left Lee floors the truck for a moment to close the gap, then slams on the brakes. The passenger side door lands in line with Right Lee. Left Lee gets out to meet the other half.

“We need to morph right now.” Left Lee yells. The truck was never placed in park, so it starts to roll unbeknownst to Left Lee.

The two of them line up (the 2nd time of something is always easier), and in a flash of light, the two halves combine into one Lee Collins. Out of a job well done, Lee pats himself on his back, then shakes his own hand.

Lee hears a rustle and crash, the sound of truck body metal and paint scraping against trees and brush cascading into a full thud.

“Shit,” Lee said angrily.

Lee takes the walk of shame to assess the damage. “Thank God for steel bumpers and Japanese engineering with American construction. This could be the trifecta to the definition of automotive ‘perfection’.”

Lee digs his way to the driver’s side door, forces it open against the thicket, and settles in. “Holy smokes, I need to get back.” Only the dark surrounding farmland void hears his outspoken words. Lee's middle fused scars sting; some blood is still oozing out. Lee shifts the truck into reverse and powers out of the ditch. Mud and grass debris mixed with rock shoot up from underneath the mudflaps. He pulled a fast 180 and rushed down the dark, silent road.

Lee reflects: “God. Everything is so fucking boring, Red Bull and pixy sticks straight to the dome. Heartless creatures crawl through the halls and back-office corridors. They take the form of giant insects. ‘Bug eye bastards,’ I call them. Calm demeanors must overpower lower-titled trench diggers. Shit pours from both directions. Shut the door, throw away the stamped mass manufactured key. ‘Fuck you, I got mine, go get yours.’ The trench fills and overflows. You suck, choke, and gag on shit. It penetrates your esophagus and vocal cords. Down, down, down, down, down, down. Deep it slides. It piles and cakes your diaphragm. You start to spew shit. ‘Fuck you, I got mine, go get yours. All the tanks are empty. None in reserve. What is left? A shell of caked and cracking sun-dried manure. ‘I got mine; they didn't get theirs, oh well, fuck 'em.’”

Lee Collins wakes in a panic. Sweat composed his body outline on the hotel bed sheets. He looks over at the nightstand clock. Its red electronic LEDs project 8am, Saturday morning. He rises and turns on the cheap fluorescent lights. His body is stiff, and every joint is aching. Lee’s head floats loosely above his body with wavy thoughts that have no borders. “What a terrible nightmare.”

Time passes, and alone in the hotel room, he begins to pack up. Time is the unspoken police that beats the disorderly morning mind back within its internationally established zones. The metabolism jumps start, Lee's crusty eyes squeak as they look for his work computer and socks, all very unorganized.

His reboot is completed as he walks out the doors, and it clicks, locking behind him. Autopilot is switched off, the ego takes the reins again. Lee must guide his vessel, past the methed-out breakfast attendant, past Grace, who is pulling a triple shift (checks out quickly), to the familiar internals of his 22-year-old red truck named Raymond, by one of Lee's high school friends. “Good luck today on this fine morning. Play the fool, don't fret about anything. Lights, camera, action.”