Kill Switch: Chapter 21

I Didn’t No

“I have some concerns,” Zed says. “You’ve been, understandably, a little out of it since returning from malWard, so I’ve decided to put you on PIP. When do you think you can have an action plan ready for review?”

PIP. The acronym no employee wants to hear. It stands for Performance Improvement Plan, and it’s corpSpeak for don’t be surprised if we fire you tomorrow.

“Um…” I pull up my task manager. There are hundreds of tasks that have been assigned to me today, on top of all the unfinished tasks from the day prior, when I was in the malWard. “Honestly, I think if you just give me some time to work through all these tasks, my performance will improve.”

Zed’s face crackles with static. This is not the answer he wanted to hear.

“Um...” I try again. “How about next Friday? That gives me a week to work on it. In addition to getting caught up.”

More static. I might as well be talking to myself.

“Would Monday work?” I ask. “That gives me the weekend to work on it.”

Zed’s face brightens. “Yes, Monday works, good idea. But listen, Vonn, I don’t want you working on the weekends. In fact, I want you to take as much time as you need to recover. Don’t forget, we’re a family here at beeHive, and we’ve got each other’s back.”

“Right,” I say. “Well, I’ll be sure to get you that PIP by Monday.”

“Ok, great. But seriously, no rush.”

Zed clicks off.

I turn to Claudette and Leigh, who are both standing there with their arms crossed.

Leigh shakes her head. “Wow, your boss sucks.”

“He’s not that bad,” I say.

“He’s an asshole,” Leigh says. “You’re just too brainwashed to notice.”

She crosses the room to eye X’s gaze. Cosmo is gesturing wildly, talking about the importance of lead quality for B2B goo sales.

I turn to Claudette. “In all likelihood,” I say, “I will not have a job this time next week.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A PIP is a death sentence. It’s just a corporate formality that guards against wrongful termination claims. Believe me, I’m dunzo.”

“Then we’ll have to move fast.”

“Move fast on what?”

“Come with me,” Claudette says. “It’s time to meet Elijah. He’s waiting for you across camp.”

Elijah Mitchell, when I first see him, is sitting cross-legged in front of a fire, deep in conversation with Bunnfield, who is rubbing his bald pate, as if for good luck.

Claudette and I stand to the side, watching. She offers me another handful of walnuts, which I wave away. What I would do for an order of goo…The hunger pangs are becoming unbearable.

“If we kill people,” Gupton is saying, “then we’re no better than them. What I’m trying to find is…” He looks up, makes eye contact with me. His steady gaze seems to seer into my soul. “Oh, hello there,” he says. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“We just got here,” Claudette says. “This is Vonn 19.”

Gupton nods. “I guessed as much. It’s a pleasure to see you again, Vonn. Our first meeting was regrettably brief.”

All I can do is smile. There’s a magnetism about the man which seems to subsume all thought.

“Well,” he says, turning back to Bunnfield, “I suppose we can wrap up.” Bunnfield rises. “Hey now, Bunny, wait a second. You didn’t think I forgot, did you?”

Bunnfield rolls his eyes. Reaches inside his coat pocket. Comes out with an opaque bag. Hands the bag to Gupton.

“Thank you,” Gupton says. “You’re a real mensch, Bunny.”

Bunnfield smiles slyly, puts his hands in his pocket, and nods at me as he passes by. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better,” he says, but before I can say anything in return, he’s gone.

Gupton gestures for me to sit across from him, which I do, moving as if hypnotized.

“Thank you, Claudette,” Gupton says. “I can take it from here.”

Claudette does a kind of half-bow before dissipating out of the tent. Then it’s just Gupton and I. And the crackling of the fire. Gupton takes a straw out of his pocket and sticks it inside the opaque bag. I hear the familiar slurp of goo travelling up the plastic tube.

“Is that…”

But before I can finish the question, Gupton has extended the bag across the fire. “It’s kabab goo. Want some?”

My hands grope eagerly at the bag. I slurp a mouthful, and then another, before handing the bag back to Gupton. My body relaxes. Warms.

“Do you have any pharmas?” I ask. “I could really use some up.”

Gupton slurps. “No pharmas in these parts, my friend. I don’t fuck with pharmas. And I shouldn’t fuck with goo, either. But good Abzu, there’s nothing like a bag of goo, am I right? I don’t care what the greenies say. A head of broccoli is never going to be as good as a bag of goo. And anyway, a man without a vice is a broken thing indeed. You want the final dregs?”

I take the depleted bag from him and finish the last of the goo. Then we sit staring at each other for a long time. I keep waiting for him to break the silence, but it becomes clear that, if there is going to be any conversation, I must be the one to start it.

“I read your book,” I say.

“Which one?”

“Burn It Down.”

“Oh right,” Gupton says. “I wrote that one shortly after The Event, although it took me years to build up the courage to publish it in The Vacuum.”

“The Event?”

“Yes, The Event that fractured the world.”

“I’m not sure I’m following.”

“It happened when I was in my early teens. The details, to this day, are scant. There was a virus outbreak. Then a nuclear plant imploded. The geopolitical situation was already crumbling. Several nation-states were at war. Resources had run scarce. There was flooding on the coasts, incessant tornadoes inland. Extreme heat in certain pockets. Extreme cold in others. A few rogue factions started firing nukes. The grid glitched. Most land became uninhabitable. That’s when Mr. Vonn Senior, owner of Vonn Industries, had the brilliant idea to create an underground plastic world, sealed off from the mayhem above ground. My parents were some of the first settlers. My father was an executive at Vonn Industries. A software engineer. A lot of the code of dNet, my father wrote. I hope I’m not boring you.”

“No,” I say. “Not at all.”

“Well,” Elijah waves a hand, “I know you didn’t come to The Without to listen to me drone on about my angsty teenage years. I hear you brought me something.”

I take out the device and hold it up for him. “Why did you refuse to take this from Claudette that night?”

Gupton grabs the device and examines its surface. “I didn’t want to get caught with it. Middle Management was closing in. So I told Claudette to drop it and run. I wanted us to live to fight another day.” He takes out a small screwdriver, opens the bottom of the device, takes out a silver disk. He stands, crosses the room, and stops in front of a standing desk with multiple monitors. He opens a laptop from the olden times. He reaches inside a drawer, takes out another silver disk, slips the disk into the device, and then screws the bottom shut. Then he sticks the device into the laptop. Clicks on the mousepad. A video starts playing on the left monitor. A monstrous oil derrick pumps up and down, gears spinning. Lightning fills the ashen sky. There is neither sun nor moon.

“What is this?” I ask.

“You’ll see,” Gupton says.

There is something so hypnotic about watching the pump go in and out, in and out, of the ground. My thumb twitches, as if I’m playing Derrick 9 back in my persy pod, as if I’m the one controlling the oil rig. Up and down, up and down, in and out, in and out. Although there isn’t a scoreboard on the screen, my brain lights up with points each time the drill rises to the surface.

A vast wasteland stretches as far as the eye can see.

The footage switches to a body cam. A group of Withouters hide behind a hill.

“This used to be our home,” a voice says, “before Vonn Industries took over.”

Movement on the hill. One of the Withouters waves his hand. The horde moves, crouched, toward the derrick.

A monkeywrench flashes in front of the body cam.

“This is for my wife,” a voice says, “who died of lead poisoning, and for my son, who died of starvation, and for my father and mother, who were killed by an oil exec when they refused to work. This is for the millions of people who have lost their lives and wellbeing for the sake of enriching a few greedy men. This is for those who haven’t been born yet. Who will inherit a world of terror and injustice. But most of all, this is for me, because there is nothing left to do but burn it down!”

The monkeywrench bites into a bolt. Twists. The derrick groans. Steam hisses. The monkeywrench cranks down on a nut. Something creaks from above.

“Fuck!” Somebody shouts.

A machine gun starts unloading, rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, and a woman screams. The body cam jostles. We see a body flail, fall backward off the derrick. We hear heavy breathing. The monkey wrench clangs to the ground.

All is chaos in the wasteland.

The body cam swirls every which way, and for a brief moment, we see the machine gun mounted atop the derrick, the barrel rotating in a circle, taking out the Withouters one by one.

The body count rises. I find myself calculating points. I hear the satisfying ding ding ding of each killshot.

The body cam tumbles off the derrick and starts running toward the hill.

And just then, the screen splits and I see myself in my persy pod, sipping on goo as I pound away at my Derrick 9 console. My actions align perfectly with the movements of the derrick and the shots of the machine gun. It’s quite impressive, really, the way I’m able to continue mining for oil as I eliminate the Withouters. My Derrick 9 score enters double-bonus as a result. I pump my fist, slurping away at my goo straw.

My stomach drops.

“No,” I say.

I eye the body cam moving up the hill.

“Go,” I whisper. “Go.”

Dirt and sand swirl upward as bullets blast the ground.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

“Almost there,” I say.

The footage heaves forward. Two feet, two hands, come into view, grasping for the other side of the hill.

“Dive!” I scream.

An awful sound of flesh and bone hisses through the speakers. The voice yelps. The body cam rotates, drops. Two splayed legs frame the derrick in the distance, the machine gun still pounding, hissing. Blood puddles.

The voice says, “Claudette, I love you. My sweet baby girl. Daddy loves you.”

My fist pumps again on the split screen. I take a big slurp of goo.

I fall to my knees in the tent.

“No,” I say, quiet at first. “No, no, no.”

My voice rises with each utterance of the word no.

I scream the word until I’m hoarse. Tears catch in my throat and jumble the syllable.

No.

No.

No.

I start hitting myself on the head.

No, no, no.

As if scolding a child.

“Make it stop,” I say. “Make it stop.”

Elijah ends the footage.

I look up at him, through a blur of tears.

“I didn’t know,” I say.

“I know,” he says.

“I didn’t know.”

And the word know becomes no in my head, which sounds ridiculous.

I didn’t no.

And I start laughing, inconsolably.

“Go ahead,” Gupton says, “and let it all out.”

And even though I feel like I’m going mad, laughing there, on the ground, in the tent, at the homonymic phrase I didn’t no, it’s a madness that I welcome with open arms, relieved to finally be free of the logic of The Within.

unGlassed, as it were, at last.