William Dietrich: Getting back

"I was just straightening up."

Her stare was not amused. "Cultivate conformity, Mr. Dyson."

He tried to look solemn. "We all aspire to be like you, Ms. Lundeen."

She held up the chocolate. "You could do worse." She put it into her mouth and repeated a habitual warning as she chewed. "If you can't adapt to Microcore, you may end up in a place even less to your liking."

It was an empty threat, he knew. Employees were like barnacles: you could hardly pry them loose with a stick of dynamite. "That's hard to imagine," he said.

"So is your promotion." Daniel's poem fluttered into the wastebasket.

Sanford came around the cubicle wall to fish it out. "Will you 'gongo'?" he read.

Daniel shrugged. "I needed a rhyme."

His colleague shook his head. "You're never going to bongo Mona Pietri with lame stuff like 'gongo,' Che." The nickname was taken from one of Daniel's revolutionary pictures. "Why don't you try being normal instead?"

"Because I'm not," Daniel replied.

He went for a Mongo by himself. Lights brightened and then dimmed in what was marketed as an "architectural warmth cocoon" as he walked down the pyramid's corridors, the bubble of light making him feel on stage instead of cozy. A soft female voice activated in the walls as he strode, reminding him of corporate philosophy. "You are your group," she murmured seductively as he passed the copier room.

"Profit makes possibility," she reminded near the Telecom pod.

Daniel took the stairs instead of the elevator. "Work for a good retirement," she whispered as he trotted down the steps.

Her voice followed him to the hallway, the rest room, the cafeteria line.

"Share the enthusiasm."

"Change is risky."

"Believe in belonging."

The voice was as unheard, and omnipresent, as the shadow-Muzak it interrupted. It cajoled, nagged, promised.

The cafeteria chatter was of web celebrities, game scores, designer drugs, faddish restaurants, and clone-organ operations. An accountant's bray of laughter was so obnoxious that Daniel thought the donkey should clone himself a new head. Then he sat alone, sipping his sour drink and imagining improvements to his catapult. "I hear you're seducing harridan Lundeen," someone called from across the room.

Daniel ignored the comment, stacking sugar tablets into a castle wall. Someday he wanted to defend a real castle.

Sanford came through the line and slid into a seat opposite. "The gorgon won again," he judged.

"I don't care what that old biddy thinks." Dyson sipped his Mongo, wincing at its taste. They said it was an acquired habit.

"It ain't what she thinks, it's what she can do. She called maintenance to do some midday cleaning."

"So?"

"Your wastebasket is empty now."

The catapult! "Shit. I thought she hadn't noticed it."

"When are you going to learn, Dyson? Go along to get along."

"I try to get along. It's not my fault everyone but me is crazy." He sipped again. It was possible he was the only real human being on earth, he'd theorized, and everyone else was a participant in an elaborate hoax to fool him, for unknown but no doubt evil and nefarious reasons. This could explain why everyone else seemed to tolerate a bureaucracy that drove him crazy. "The catapult actually worked rather well, I thought. The problem was the payload."

Sanford resisted any temptation to congratulate his engineering. "Sanity is the most democratic of definitions, my friend," his workmate counseled. "The majority gets to decide what's normal. Odd man out is the one who gets labeled insane."

Dyson pointed to his brain. "Maybe I'm just ahead of my time. The mark of genius."

Sanford laughed. "I'll put that on your urn registry. 'He was right after all.' I'm sure it will be a great comfort when you're dead."

"Or behind. Maybe I was born two hundred years too late."

"Judging from your office political skills, I'd say you were born yesterday."

Daniel's smile was rueful. "Mona, I'm gonna," he promised softly.

"You still have a chance. I just saw her in Telecom. No doubt word has gotten around and given you an excuse to talk to her. 'I built an engine of destruction and crossed the horrible Harriet Lundeen just for you.' What woman could resist?"

Daniel sighed. "Just about every female I've met since third grade." He stood. "Still, ours is not to wonder why, right old chap?"

"Aye! Ours is but to mate and die!"

"Remember the Alamo!"

"Don't fire until she rolls her eyes!"

"Into the breach, my friends!"

"Hey. Don't talk dirty."

Mona Pietri was struggling with the Telecom console. New features had been added that theoretically doubled its speed and realistically multiplied the ways in which it could possibly malfunction by a factor of five. The snarl of error messages gave Dyson a chance to introduce himself and demonstrate male prowess, though in truth he didn't know much more about the console than Mona did. Still, he bluffed his way through to a "ready" promise on the view screen by hammering on the machine's buttons. She granted him a look of approval, giving no hint she knew she'd been the target of romantic bombardment less than an hour before.

"I don't know why it has to be so complicated," she pouted. Instantly, he was in love.

"Microcore's purchasing agents make three times as much money as we do buying this junk and then depend on us to document the need to upgrade it," he explained. "If we ever mastered our equipment, their usefulness would be over. It's designed to torment."

She looked uncertain. "I don't think the corporation really intends that."

"Oh, but they do. Microcore is a pyramid built on a program of ever-increasing complication. 'We make things hard so you can take it easy,' but of course it never gets easier at all. Microcore snarls, so it can cut its own Gordian knot."

"Its what?"

Maybe he could impress her with trivia. "Gordium was an ancient city. The chariot of its founder was tied to a post by a knot so complex that legend promised it could only be untied by the future conqueror of Asia. Alexander the Great came to the place, considered a moment, and then cut the knot with his sword."

She nodded hesitantly.

"He fulfilled the prophecy, you see. Just like Microcore fulfills the promise on its box that this software will cut the knot created by its last box. Of course our sword ties a new knot to replace the old to ensure a market for next year's release. It's the way of the modern world."

"It's your job."

"Our job. 'Microcore, where reinventing the need for our existence is a way of life.' " He grinned. "It's vapid, but it feeds us."

Mona looked uncomfortable. "I don't think you should be so negative," she decided. "I don't think it helps the group."

Miscalculation! "I'm not negative. Just honest. Candid."

"I don't think you believe in what we're doing."

"Look." He considered what to say. "I'm just trying to analyze our market role clearly and find some humor from poking fun. I don't really object. I just look for opportunities to show… initiative."

She brightened at that. "Initiate consensus!" she recited approvingly, remembering the corporate slogan. "Plan time for spontaneity! Discipline toward freedom!"

He looked at her with disappointment. "You've been listening to the walls, I see."

She nodded. "I've memorized them all. Maybe you should too, Daniel. I think you'd be happier if you better understood why we're all here."

Alone again. That evening, Daniel lay back in the viewing chair of his cramped studio apartment and cruised his video wall. He'd been putting off an upgrade and the chips that drove it were a little cheesy- he hated the planned obsolescence that forced him to keep upbut it still managed to generate convincing three-dimensional imagery in colors brighter than real life. Sound rippled around the corners of his small room like a brook around a boulder, splashing him. "Welcome, Daniel," a female voice greeted in a whisper. "Have you invested in your future today?"