Slum Enterprise - Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32 

Lee tried to visualize what he heard. There was banter, clicking of keyboards, laughs, microwaves running. It smelled like floor wax and a mixture of soggy food. 

The clacking of heels and big leather hardened sole boots perceived Lee’s ear drums. They were moving quickly through the CEO’s building. Lee senses many direction changes, it felt like he was going through a maze. They stopped and Lee rested on the floor on his knees. He heard the ding of an elevator and door sliding open. He was dragged in. 

By the force he felt on the top of his head he knew the elevator was going up. There were 5 light dings that signaled they had ascended 5 floors. Lee was dragged out again into unmapped corridors in his mind.

Lee was being dragged through heavy doors. The lataches clicked as they shut behind him. He finally arrived at his destination for the evening.

The militia threw him down, Lee could feel that it was a wooden floor, it felt old. The black bag was ripped off of his head. Lee had to take a moment to adjust to the light. His pupils dilated to its calibrated position. He saw what was before him. 

The room looked like an old dance studio. It had hard yellow wood floors with 30 coats of protective polish. The walls were off white with massive red velvet curtains draped all around. Any sounds made in the room felt tight and claustrophobic due to the curtains' sound absorption properties. At the far end of the room, sat a throne with giant screens attached to a scaffolding system that angled the screen so however sat in the throne could see metric data scrolling across. 

Lee could see that one of the TV screens projected a matrix grid of live camera feeds from locations all around campus. It was like a Vegas casino operation room, the eye in the sky watching for cheaters of the system so they could sick the pit bosses on them and drag them into the back rooms and reconditioned them with hammers and baseball bats.

Lee reluctantly looked down the room, There he stood, the CEO in all his mysterious glory standing next to a varnished wood bar top with expensive liquor bottles lined behind it. The CEO lifted his hand with a crystal glass of dark liquid and took a drink.

“Do you know what you are?,” the CEO said. The militia officers and Miranda quickly exited the room and locked the doors.

“I mean, have you taken a good look at yourself, do you understand it?” The CEO continued. Lee felt like these were actually genuine philosophical questions and he wasn't trying to bullshit him. Lee didn't know what to say, all his body defenses were on guard and ready to take flight.

“I know what you are… a black leech sucking the essence of everyone and everything around you. You don't possibly know what you are doing. Do you have any clue what values govern your everyday life, or do you sit and sulk about the unfairness of it all just like everyone else? You're nothing special.”

Lee didn't dare to speak. He stood on his knees on the polished floor.

“I think the only thing you’ll ever truly know is the moment you gained consciousness and then the split second before the consciousness switches off, in this case death. The fluff in between these two moments will be pointless meaningless crap. But this is the same for you and me both. The only miracle I see before me is the fact that two separate consciousnesses can converse with one another." The CEO said sentimentally. 

“Here Mr.Collins have a seat.” He pointed to a chair close to the bar that was directly in front of the throne. Lee rose in a tumble and slowly walked over. The lights in the room began to dim, it was like for dramatic effect or something. When he approached the chair (a normal office chair, black) the only lights now were yellow bulbs shining under green glass lamp shades sitting on various table tops and desks. 

Lee felt weak and out of his mind, he sat down. He could barely believe he was sitting in front of the ‘man in charge.’ One of the major players of the fortune 500 that started the slum enterprise was now ready to speak with him. 

Lee planted his feet onto the wood floor and locked his hands together and placed them in his lap. He felt like he was about to be on the receiving end of an interview. The CEO strolled over with two glasses full of dark liquid. He stood in front of Lee and leaned down to hand him the glass. Lee took the glass and lifted it to his lips for a tiny sip. Still, Lee did not speak.

“I commend your stupid bravery, but I shall not forgive the headache you have caused me. You see, this is a very fragile eco system, everything must be tight or it will fall apart.” The CEO said. 

On a table sitting next to the throne there was a yellow file. The CEO picked it up and opened it. “Hmm, Lee Collins, employee number 762363, residence in X, you have been employed 5 years now and have risen to the ranks of Lab Manager, right in the middle now, impressive for only 5 years…either you have real potential or have gotten very lucky.”

Lee nodded and forced out a dry, “yes.”

“Very good,” the CEO responded back. He leaned back on the throne and set the file down. They both sat in silence. The CEO pondered over the TV screens and thought deeply about how he was going to resolve this gracefully for the shareholders. The whole thing was a mess.

“So many things to do… so many choices on what to do with you.” Lee heard this and froze in panic. He turned a little pale and started to have twitches in his lip. The ensuing conversation would somehow force Lee back to a child-like state. His soul was now riddled with stammers and anxiety. He could barely force out a coherent sentence.

“Lee Collins, you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, the nature of my enterprise, my beautiful creation. A universe that cannot and will not be disrupted by the likes of a man like you.” The CEO paused, and touched one of the screens with his long pointer figure. “Lets see what lingers in the database… ah some reconditioning training . People have noted that your mood and overall demeanor has been lacking enthusiasm. You don't seem eager to be here, do you, Lee? The company has done so much for you, it pays your bills, provided for you family, it has allowed you to live a life of luxury and comfort.” The CEO smiled and continued to scroll through the deeper on screen files pertaining to Lee. 

Lee broke his silence.

“All of this is hell on earth, a prison that we are forced to attend and uphold its rules. Have you seen inside the walls of your prison?” Lee said. 

“I’ve seen everything.” The CEO said cryptically. He went on to explain. “Mr.Collins, once a single law is broken the whole system loses its integrity, it all falls apart, then no one will dare listen to the laws, the system of checks and balances if off. If one broken law is not punished, then worse things will happen. Fires will be set, the employees will fall into further decrypted actions. The enterprise will collapse like a dying star and turn into a black hole. The intense mass of the black hole will suck the rest of the world in until it explodes one last time into its surrounding entities. It will slowly engulf neighborhoods, towns, cities, states, nations, and so on and so on. The holy apocalypse will land on your doorstep in no time. The lucky ones will flee and live the rest of the days in bunkers. Personally, I don't want this to happen in my lifetime, the other 499 agree. How are we to prevent this black hole explosion from destroying everything?” The CEO took a drink and winced in pallet pain.

Lee started to feel his hands go numb and feet tingle. He was beginning to feel like it was all over. Hope was conquered and killed by the janitor closet guillotine.

“Me and the 499 did this to protect you all.” The CEO said.

“Protection from what, ourselves?” Lee said.

“You’re not at stupid as I thought. Protection from you causing damage to yourself and the world around us. The common man has no idea what to do with themselves, there are two many options nowadays. Too many options leads only to one thing…instanity. It was better to make a primal playground for all of you, then you could focus on simpler things. It gave you all a purpose and allowed the executive teams to keep the flow of money continuous. Employees found purpose again. They didn't bring back the drudgery of having no purpose to the community or their families. The worst of human nature was contained. Sure employees left and found other jobs, but the grass isn't always greener. They'll find the same thing happening at the other 499 companies.” The CEO said.

“We (I) can't live like this,  just look at the mess you created. It's only gonna get more violent and nasty. The air is hostile and poisonous, the food is rotting, the ‘working’ environment is deadly, people are already at each other's throats.

“Of course,” the CEO said. “We have the paper work ready for all these possible scenarios. There will be plenty of tragedy in the enterprise. Hell, America was founded on tragedy. What's another dead body… throw it in the statistics. America was destined to become this, empires only last so long.”

“The founding fathers never wanted this to happen.” Lee yelled out.

“Mr.Collins, you don't even know what you're talking about. America was founded after a brutal war that was preceded in many other brutal wars. All the colonies were in ruins, people lived in slums just like this. America is still the wild west, anyone could do anything they want. Power and Law finally developed later on of course. The corporations now control it. They realized that no one could actually stop them. The corporations have the money/resources to bulldoze anyone standing in their way.” The CEO took another drink and continued.

“You have no idea how the world works. Look, the world has achieved major peace, the standard of living is at the summit. We did this by providing wage contracts and benefit packages and the promise of the stock exchange. The planet is now one big business, the biggest corporation of all.”

“What are you saying?” Lee said in horror.

“No one wants to do business any other way. The population desperately wants to be told what to do, to sit back and relax. It makes the cruel fact of existence easier to bear. Why do you think religion was invented? To soothe the ideas of the inevitability of death. Your pocket screens do a much better job of that now. But there are some drawbacks, it's been harder to control all of you. There are now too many voices throwing ideas to a wall hoping it will stick. that wall is infinite in size now. The pocket screens have created another void within this void. The enterprise project has been struggling with this. Not to worry Lee, this is only the first revision of your so-called dystopian nightmare.”

“The next generation will thank us, they’ll see the perfect  controlled world and pray and worship our sacrifices. We all must work together through the slime and slums to ensure future prosperity. I want to turn your dystopia into our collective utopia Mr.Collins. Me and the other 499 have designed this from the ground up. How beautiful is that, we can create our own realities and control.”

“You can control anything, it's all a fake perception, a perception that will ensure the failure of this whole thing. You aren't gods.” Lee yelled, he planted his feet on the ground hard.

“Nevermind that, it doesn't matter, you and the slums are just another dynamic variable that will change and help us refine the future enterprise. We are studying this as we speak, what worked and what didn't. We are studying what the worst of humanity has to offer. Let it burn to ashes, learn and take notes, and pick up all the pieces from the ash pile and rebuild. We get to call the shots, start anew, place things where we want them with confidence. The Life System needs to die by our hands, it is not sustainable, we all are making a new system from the burnt forest… Mr.Collins. I am the lightning bolt sent down from the heavens to burn it all down. It's the process of refinement and implementation over and over until it is right. The first enterprise revision will collapse and when they do, me and 499 get to create another with more control and oversight over a larger area. God damnit the ducks will be in a row. The reward of a thing well done-is to have it done. There will be no worries or fear, only acceptance.”

The CEO stands up from the throne and runs over to Lee in long strides, Lee doesn't have time to react, he is still frozen in his chair. The CEO picks him up like he weighs next to nothing and carries him over to the window looking eastward over the entire campus, the slums. It looked like an early 1900’s photo of an immigrant town near factories, dark and hazy.

“How beautiful,” the CEO whispered into Lee's ear as he held him by the shoulders. Lee was so uncomfortable he felt like he wanted to die. The CEO continued his speech.

“Through the slums to achieve utopia. Strip back the walls, the support networks, make the man become primal again, live like an animal. Let's gain back what we have all lost in the Life System… A collective purpose.” The CEO began to shake Lee violently like he was trying desperately to make him understand his vision.

“This enterprise is at the end of its rope, soon we will refine from the pile of rubbish that's left. We will implement new programs, community outreach centers, shelters for the junky and beatnicks, create housing projects, revitalize food stamps, medical, legal, banking, everything Lee. It's all raw carbon waiting to form into a diamond. Everyone's silly ideas will be subdued, it will die, no creativity is needed by the common man, we have it all here. We will split the mind and take what's left and mold it to our perfect formula."

“What? you want robots?” Lee said.

“Yes I do, much easier to control in the refinement process? The dumber you get the easier it is to play god… besides when was the last time you saw god anyway?”

Lee breaks free from the CEO’s grip and runs back 15 paces and readys his fists.

“Lee I don't want to fight, I want to bring you along with me, let's stop all this, be reasonable.” The CEO said in a calming voice.

“No, fuck you and all this shit, your purpose doesn’t make sense” Lee yelled.

“I beg to differ, the purpose is to continue and never stop, it seems trivial yes? But that is the meaning of life, to continue and never stop finding a purpose… this is our purpose. We live life in the cosmos right? Then we must look at the cosmos to understand life. To understand yourself and life is to understand the universe. Look to your soul and see what is really there. Our souls are an uncharted land full of potential, I have found mine, have you found yours Lee?”

Lee didn't say a word. He didn't want to give it away that he had found something like this.

“Have you suited up like an astronaut and dove into the internal void of the soul. Lee, our astronauts will one day find the uncharted land, plant a flag and start to extract its resources, its ideas of the truth. If the cosmos has almost unlimited energy, then so does the internal soul. Once fusion is scientifically cracked and runs through its paces in humanities systems, soul energy will take over where fusion left off. It will power quantum ships through light years of space, inwards and outwards to infinity. Lee looked at me, don't faint now, this has been a lovely conversation.”

Lee fell to the floor, it was all too much from him to handle. Moments go by and he wakes back up on the office chair. The CEO is sitting back on the throne.

“Remeber Lee, it's all just a cycle, it's all just a big floating orb in the void. The entropied collective mesh lives in all our little black pools… I have seen mine just like you have seen yours.” The CEO said. Lee felt that it was over for him.

“Its quite easy to differentiate people who have and haven't seen the black pool.” The CEO took the final slug of his drink. 

“Our ideas today will manifest into the ideas of future generations, the souls will get these ideas from soul fragments, bits pieces of our souls. It will continue forever and ever. The enterprise has only just begun. An idea this small and doesn't occupy much of a void in the collective entropied mesh, but soon it will spread and encapsulate it, soon everyone will think this is all normal.

“I…I…I,” Lee couldn't speak, the room was shrinking around him, it was all over.

“First things first, before you join…lets get you split… I want to rid you of these funny ideas and cure you. Like I said before, the common man doesn't deserve to think nor do they want to.” the CEO said. He jumped up and ran around the throne and cannonballed down a trap door that opened in mechanical swift movement. Lee sat in the black office chair in silence. Lee looked over at the window, he could see a dense green smog billowing around the grey sky.

Down below, the CEO’s building's front entrance is blasted open by the green smog that had been funneling to the lower atmosphere. All who stood in its path are blown away and slammed against the walls. The receptionists are instantly killed as their cathode tube monitors are catapulted right into their faces thus shattering their skulls on impact. 

The other occupants further down the entrance hall bobbed and weaved the smog and duck for cover onto the floor. The smog had lightning bolts of static electricity flashing as it penetrated deeper into the building. The lightning would shock men and women employees as it passed. The men and women then turned into sailors. It was an instant transformation from casual business attire to old school 50s movies sailors outfits. Striped shirts and gay white caps tilted to one side. The pants were blue and held up with a black belt.

The smog not only changed the appearance of the employees but also the minds, it implanted ideas into them like they were being controlled by a higher force against their will. The idea was to go up to the CEO’s office floor and find a person there that also needed a transformation. That person had to be split in two. Keep the good half and throw away the other.

The transformed sailors break the conveniently placed harpoon gun cases that used to contain fire extinguishers covered with cheap thin glass stating “break in case of emergency.” The smog was way ahead at the elevators now. It piled and pressurized the elevator and pressed floor 5 with its lightning bolt finger. It waited patiently in the ambiance of Muzake airport music playing from the overhead speakers. The smog felt suffocated by the music and how slow the elevator was. The smog let out flashes of light and decided not to think about it any longer. The elevator said it was on floor five. The doors opened letting the smog out. It depressurized and filled the halls. The smog waited for the sailors to come.

The CEO was long gone, the trapdoor escape route located in between the floors and walls of the building was the perfect escape route. There was a water slide system that ejected him to ground level from the 5th floor. It looked identical to a big slide you see at small town water parks that desperately try to attract tourists to stop and spend money. They really needed the money because the pot holes were getting so bad they were starting to explode and crack the axles of rusty work trucks with more than 300k miles on the odometer.

The infamous street corner in the small town where kids would gather and watch cars drive over the town's biggest potholes was jammed packed, it was an everyday spectacle. It provided much needed entertainment walking home from school in the gray winter landscapes. An old work truck owned by the meanest man in town axel would crack when it hit a pothole 2 feet in depth. The rest of the truck disintegrated into many pieces onto the black and cold and wet tar road. The kids would laugh and scream all the way back home to tell their divorced mothers what they had seen on the infamous street corner. The Mother would light another cigarette in the kitchen and cough and never look down at her son. She would sneer and say something like, “Oh wonderful honey…” and nothing else till dinner.

TV dinner, the smell was something else. The son would have to set up the 1970s puke green plastic trays in front of only the TV in the house located in the living room. The carpets were brown and stained. The mothers son never knew if it was installed like this or if it became this color over time. He decided not to question it because it made him sick. 

A couch with plastic wrap faced the TV, the son sat there. The mother retreated to the recliner (once owned by her ex-husband.) The wife never gave the recliner up as it was the last memento of him. Deep inside the foam the mother could still smell him. The divorce was never initiated by the mother. In fact, the mother still loved him. 

She had been so emotionally distant toward her son this winter. It was hard living in a small town in the north country. Everyone knew who you were and what was going on with your life. Nothing was secret for long. The son felt ashamed at school, he wanted to see his dad but knew he was long gone. The other kids at school had dads but some didn't have mothers so maybe he was just overreacting. 

The father was down south in a motel drinking beer in a similar recliner to his old one eating a  TV dinner in front of his shitbox set. The son imagined he was there with him. 

The son and father discussed random things. You know when kids get into a good stride of conversation and the questions just start to flow while the father tries to answer them as best he can but still is watching his show on the shitbox. The question arose on what the fathers favorite place to be was. He answered, it was something about a white beach with warm weather and a cool breeze coming off the blue ocean waves. The father said he would be sitting on the beach with a nice fruity cocktail. He would lay back on the beach chair feeling good and stay until nighttime. He made it a rule that he couldn't leave the chair until he saw 5 shooting stars. Sometimes the sky was active and it was quick work, other nights he would stare on a moonless night and fall asleep only seeing 2 or 3. He would awaken to the sounds of seagulls pecking at his cooler sitting next to him in the sand. He stands up, shivers and shakes off the hungover sleep. The sleep wasn't that bad. He checked all his belongings and was a little surprised no one stole off him in the night. He folds his beach chair and walks to the boardwalk to find something to eat over on the boardwalk. Dog walkers were out and about. The hair of the dog was on the fathers mind.

The son would hold onto that memory.

There were no lamps on while they ate their TV dinners. The TV produced just enough light for the kid to pick at it and stare at the white popcorn textured ceiling. The kid counted the popcorn protrusions and ripples in the ceiling just like his father counted the stars on the white beach sand.

The popcorn cielceing was the son's sky of the night, the stars created patterns. He started to see figures in the popcorn starry sky. Giant ships had white sails full of wind. The wind was the light coming from the TV screen. The brighter the image on the screen, the greater the wind velocity. It would bend the mast and stretch out the sails. Inside those ships were the same sailors that now stood packed like sardines in the slow moving elevator with harpoon guns in hand. The harpoon guns were loaded with shark size arrows with metal barbed tips. The sailors began to chant, “Bigger fish to fry, Bigger fish to fry.” 

The elevator doors slid open and the sailors rushed out into a green haze. One of the low ranking sailors, likely freshly 18 who they called “Maggot” stayed behind and cleaned the finger and handprints off the stainless steel doors and walls of the elevator. Maggot was hoping to make a name for himself. This was the first step, do the jobs that no one wants to do and rise through the ranks by showing the officers his incredible work ethic. Maggot will go to bed on campus tonight in his swaying bunk cot and think hard about his future.

The harpoon gunners run down the hallway and gather at the CEO’s office door. Lee was sitting on the other side still stunned and confused. The sailors pummeled the door down and saw their target. They surrounded Lee and pointed harpoon guns at him. They all screamed “thar she blows.” The green smog slowly crept in and rose to the ceiling. 

Lee was the shark they were hunting for. The sailors were extremely frantic and excited. They thought of all the wonderful oil they could drain from Lee’s body to use as kerosene. The pay from the kerosene would be drunk away in a few nights at the port side pubs. The green smog circles around Lee like the eye of a hurricane.

It was all so strange, so strange that Lee couldn't even dare question the strangeness of it all. To Lee it looked like the green smoke was powering and possessing the sailors. “Am I Moby dick? Am I a whale shark, what the actual fuck,” he thought. BOOM

A cloud of white smoke exploded from the end of a harpoon gun and Lee heard a loud whack of the barbed bullet hitting his right lung puncturing all the way through to the other side. The rope attached was pulled taught and the barb reconnected with his skin and dug in. The pain was so shocking Lee didn't scream, he could barely breathe. 

Lee fell and saw flashing images in his head. He saw a galaxy spinning slowing in the vacuum of space. The galaxy shrunk, Lee was traveling farther away.

The sailors pulled on the harpoon rope and heaved Lee back over. The sailors docked Lee and began to dig fishing shanks into his arms and legs and pulled him up into their make believe ship. 

The sailors tied up Lee and tossed him to the side for further processing. Lee was now barely conscious. He was bleeding all over the floor, the blood matched the curtain drapes in the room. The green smog was funneling lower off the ceiling. One of the sailors reached into his belt and pulled out a large cutting knife. 

This was a nimble sailor. Lee understood that his job solely was to cut up the catches. The sailor could latch on with his skinny arms and slash away until the catch was fully processed. He jumped on top of Lee and plunged his knife right into the top of his skull. Lee did not die. The sailor positioned himself and dug his feet into the floor and with one big pull he cut him into Left and Right Lee. The other sailors grabbed the Right half and threw it overboard right into a large dumpster that was brought in by Maggot. Another group held onto Left Lee, it was spewing body fluids. They tilted Left Lee up so that the open cavity of Lee's body pointed upwards to the ceiling. 

The smog channeled into his body. It started to rebuild Lee’s other missing half, the blood, organs, bones and all. The right half was green but it began to change to the proper color of his skin. The DNA must have synced with the smog. All the smog in the room had been absorbed creating the new half. The sailors stitched up the middle seam on Lee's body and dressed him violently in a 3 piece suit. 

Lee did not protest. He understood and obeyed. The sailors released the catch back into the sea of reality. Lee stood on his own two feet unsupported. He walked to the elevator doors that were now spotless from Maggot's elbow grease and pressed a button to go down to the main floor. The elevator doors shut. The sailors could only see the reflections of themselves.