Hardcore

Keywords: Fight, Test,

The ashes of what had been known as the American Dream scattered swiftly, until all that was left of it was a thin line of dirt on the faces of people standing in line at the bus stop, or waiting to be picked up by cabs. Fragments of utopian idealism fluttered in the breeze, with no more weight than the paper and styrofoam garbage that littered the vast underbellies of the largest cities.

The revolution had seemed essential, the way a system reboot will sometimes help a computer run more swiftly and efficiently. Apathy had been kick started by some unknown event, now forgotten, into a chest-thumping pride in the ability to change. It had all happened quickly, without much real anger. It was just something to do, the way an offensive movie few people actually see or comments made by a drunken celebrity can sometimes ignite furor. It was an excuse to feel something.

But the initial joyful drunkenness of success lasted barely a week. The hangover, a lifetime.

It's hard to say what we were hoping to gain. We were dissatisfied, yes, but no more than anyone in the history of this nation. Less than some. It's questionable, really, whether our grievances were of any significance at all. But our patience, like our individuality, had been doped out of us by years of mindless television, immediate access, and escapist video games, until all that was left was a herd waiting to be led.

And we were led.

The brave new world was a bleak one. It was a world of corruption, of fear. A world where children must be closely watched, where you did not leave the house after 8:00 (unless you lived in one of the expansive corporate human resource farms, where rows of pristine houses and apartment buildings sat like crops waiting to be harvested). A world where power was closely tied to business...and this power was entirely unchecked. Government was neutered so effectively that many larger cities perceived themselves as states unto themselves, run by the wealthiest and most influential of their citizens.

For these major structural changes, you would think that some visual element would be evident, but there was none. I mean, the buildings still looked the same. The cars as well. It was not a violent military dictatorship or a charred police state that was produced by the revolution. Instead, it was a world run by corporations. And those corporations were now ruled almost exclusively by men. So there was no reason for the world to look too different...the corporations had held most of the power anyway, right?

That's not to say that you would not be able to locate difference. It would simply be slight, and easy to miss. For example, police officers would not be found in typical government-styled uniform, or driving brightly painted cars. Depending on where you lived, police officers might not be found at all. Each multi-billion dollar conglomerate had its own police force, patrolling its own area of town, where only that company's workers and the people who served them lived. If you did not belong to one of them, then you could not count on their assistance. If you were an in-house lawyer whose office was on the 53rd story, then you went home at night and felt safe. If you worked a cash register at the nearby gas station, you prayed.

There were, of course, second-rate police forces available to those who were beyond the corporate containment, but the expense and incompetence of these forces usually made them highly suspect.

The power held by the champions of business was virtually absolute. Environmental regulations vanished. Unions disbanded, or suffered for their stubbornness. Violent clashes signalling the death of workers rights movements went unreported. Little by little, the true nature of power began to be displayed: money, influence, and sex.

This became very clear in the first days, when those people labeled as enemies of change, those who had been loyal to government or were simply lied about by their enemies, were turned into slaves, given to or bought by those who could afford such luxury, and used for any number of menial, grueling, or sexual work. Some powerful businesses bought slaves to use as unpaid assistants or pleasurable rewards for their employees.

Cold winds weren't required for a chill to climb your spine, if you looked to carefully at the thing you had helped create. Most people didn't.

As for myself, I was neither opponent to change, nor a contributor. I left the revolution much the way I had entered it. This seemed to me like the path to greatest safety and security. Wrong. What I discovered was that my neutrality left me as an insignificant nonentity. I was an accountant, working for a decently sized business that was immediately purchased and shut down by a larger rival. My boss, a heavy and surprisingly large Asian man named Harold King, had been sorrowful and apologetic about the merger. He wept for the business he had built from the ground up. But there was, he assured us, little choice. After all, what protection was left to us against competitors three or four times our size?

"Tectonic shifting," he said as he poured a drink, "always brings down buildings. So let us drink to new real estate."

He promised us all good references.

I found myself out of a job in a world I did not yet understand. A world that did not yet fully exist. I also discovered that a great many companies were folding, succumbing to the influence of massive, ever-expanding corporations which were already well-staffed with expert accountants. They had no need for someone with four years experience and a B-average from a no-name university.

It's hard to explain how terrified and desperate my wife and I were. To be unemployed in a world where what you did, and who paid you for it, was all that mattered. I eventually found myself hiring out my services to what few small companies remained. I was usually contracted for small, short jobs. None of them could afford a full-timer accountant. Some of them couldn't afford to pay me at all, when the time came.

They were lean times. We sold the house, the cars, and eventually found ourselves in a small, cramped, leaky apartment that would probably have been torn down, if there was still anybody around to make such decisions. My wonderful wife, Tabitha, was patient and understanding.

"We'll get by," she told me the day we brought her ceramic figurines in to pawn. And then she kissed me and smiled, as though nothing were wrong at all. Her gorgeous face was framed by soft auburn hair, which always seemed to look good even though we could only afford to run the shower every other day and she had to cut it herself.

"I hope so, Tabby." I smiled, running a hand through my own thinning patch. "I've got a job with Omaha Beef Company today."

She frowned. "I thought they skipped payment last time."

"They did," I shrugged, glancing down the street and wondering what was taking the bus so long. "But they promised to pay me with steak this time."

Her eyes closed and she bit her lip. Beautiful.

"That would be delicious," she said. "I don't remember the last time we had steak."

"Have you had any luck?"

"Are you kidding me? Just more of the same."

I grunted my irritation. In the world of total information sharing, it's amazing to find out who is keeping tabs on you. Tabitha had started sending out resumes for any job which didn't require a degree, and although nobody returned her calls we soon were inundated with offers from the new, quickly-growing sex worker corporations.

The strange thing about a world built solely on competition is how swiftly is strips people of their basic human kindness, their liberality. In less than three years of the new world order, women had virtually vanished from the workforce, save for those poorly paying positions that exist in supermarkets and gas stations. Now that education was something you bought, and spent heavily on, many families were passing on school for their daughters, since their chances of employment were so nonexistent. Women's rights were being torn up from the very foundations, and for a beautiful young woman like Tabitha, the only available positions involved dancing, fucking, or serving at one of the elite clubs for people of status. And that last job was usually only a good idea for ambitious women hoping some rich fool would decide to claim her as his own.

"Well," I smiled as the bus pulled up and I took out our prepurchased tickets, "maybe something will come up tomorrow." She nodded, doubtfully. I didn't believe it, either.

But I was right.

The next day, we found ourselves looking down at a letter of opportunity from ColCorp, the very same massive operation that had purchased my previous employer. They wanted me to call and set up an interview.

"That doesn't make sense," I mumbled, staring down at it.

"Why not?" Tabitha laughed, far more excited than I. "You applied, didn't you?"

"A year and a half ago." I shook my head. "But only out of desperate hope. This company wouldn't take anybody who didn't have a degree from a well-known university, and a good deal of experience. There isn't a reason on earth why this letter should be sitting on our table."

Tabitha laughed again, and put her hands around my shoulders. "But it is, Michael! Who knows why, but it's right there!"

"What would convince them to send for me?"

She slapped my rear playfully. "Because you're great. Because everything you've done the last few years is available information, now, and somebody somewhere found out that you're the best there is."

"I'm not. I'm not even close."

Two hands gently gripped my hips. "Oh, shut up and put out," she whispered in my ear.

*

You would expect that an interviewee would find themselves looking up at a gargantuan tower of commerce, feeling intimidated and small. But it wasn't uncommon now for an organization to own numberous city blocks, effectively creating a compound wherein executives ruled like miniature Roman emperors.

Keywords: Fight, Test,

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