We'll sell you the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge

Poster Image - This little piggie

What a beutiful spring day here in Pittsburgh, the sun is shining and everyone in the entire neighborhood seems to belive the virus is gone. Well that must be that (dusts hands), we’ll get back to normal very soon as if this was all just a dream. Back to neo-liberalism, fresh and new as it ever was, like the powdered ass of a euthanized septuagenarian in private long-term care.

Stay safe from the entitled, bored and lied to.



—

I am the janitor for the marketing and creative floors, floors four through six. I empty the community trash cans, and vacuum the open-plan offices (they are very easy to access with a vacuum but very hard to keep clean). I empty the dust collection from the server room and recycle the artisanal beverages containers. I rearrange hundreds of ownerless chairs and restock the hand-sanitizers distributed every 6 feet on the floor. I dust blinds and clean the hair from the sink drains. I mop the gourmet kitchen serving area; as per contract I do not mop the kitchen, that is for the kitchen team. I clean diarrhea and graffiti from the bathroom stalls; the building owners have given me a bonus for taking pictures and sending a report at the end of the week.

In the nine story atrium I straighten the theater chairs, clean up the spilled beer, needles, vomit, sputum, blood, etc. I remove soiled discarded underwear and restock the hand sanitizers distributed on every row. I note any damage to the building and send a report. Sometimes I place a blanket on a sleeping team member and dim the lights.

After the plague, all of the stores on the ground floor closed and the homeless started moving in. Management called the cops and people started breaking into other floors of the building to get away from the cops. Then management started hiring private police units, ultimately putting a no man's land on the third floor and disconnecting the elevators to the ground floor. Now the building is only accessible from the heavily guarded parking garage elevators. The second floor is entirely occupied by private police.

During the transition, the marketing director convinced management to let her stream the security cameras and charge people to watch it. Sales were slow at first, but as the quarantine dragged on more and more people became hungry for more and more games, hate and violence.

The marketing team laughs whenever they get new data about who roots for the cops and who roots for the homeless; they say it’s exactly who you would think, then they ask me who I root for and I say "Oh, you don't need my opinion."

And they're always drunk and they think they're my friend so they say "No no, tell us".

And I say "Well, like I said last month, I think of everyone in the building as part of the team, so I just hope everyone gets what they want for doing what they're asked to."

And then inevitably one of them turns to another and says "This guy, I love this guy."

After the first few months, the cops decided they wanted too much money to keep coming back to the building, and the homeless started staying away from the building, so they started hiring mercenaries to dress as cops and homeless people. They gave them NDA's, DNR's, liability waivers and added death payouts to family, grand prizes for survivors of various seasons with smaller prizes for campaigns within the season. The software team built a gambling infrastructure alongside the viewing interface and started reporting stats with announcers and commentary - nerds paired with comedians. It was all so wildly successful, one of the few new media properties of the post plague era.

The paid fighting team members have body cameras and ear pieces so gamers can interact with them like cam-girls and pay them to take risks, turn on their team mates, show their cocks and more. Gamers and companies can sponsor weapons and arenas (the old stores), and can decide where new caches of weapons are dropped. As the season drags on and more and more people die or quit (only a couple people have actually quit but apparently you lose everything when you walk away), the users can choose what kind of drugs to inject into the participants who are kidnapped and put in a single windowless steel cage with razor blades. If there is still no winner, both participants are declared a winner and both will be paid if they survive "the ultra" wherein loud music plays, bright strobe lights run at epileptic speeds, the sides of the cage are dropped and a pack of clowns beats and rapes the participants until a twenty-one DJ air-horn salute says the season is over and sanitized confetti drops. My nights are always longest at the end of the season.

Most of the day the fighting team members sleep in foxholes they've created from whatever material was used to design whatever set for this season. The show only gives them enough food to hide for a day so they have to come out when food is distributed at dinner time. I remember seeing that on the whiteboards awhile back, it was very clever.

I've talked to a few of the maintenance folks who work really long hours between seasons, and he says that there is bullet proof glass around the atrium on the sixth through ninth floors. I told him "I've never been above the sixth floor but I've seen a few world leaders I recognize from the media feed".

He says, "Yeah there are always fancy people up there, they mostly get in the way and try to flirt with us, they always seem to be drunk." He also says they patch about 30 bullet holes a week.

I say "you'd think there would be more?"

And he says, "Well you gotta think about it, bullets are scarce."

And I say "Oh yeah, you're right."

I spend most of my day away from the atrium, listening to vague muffles of music and screaming below. I listen to a lot of popular history books, all those stories of courageous individuals triumphing over the lazy selfishness of the masses; it really makes me think how grateful I am to have people here to care for me and keep me safe.

At the end of my shift I turn off all of the lights and go to the third floor. It is a no man's land still filled with barbed wire, security cameras, blood stains and lasers. Nothing is on. Since all the fighting team members are hired, this is just a place they bring tourists and visitors. I walk past the security props and down a hall to the sleeping area. The offices have been converted into ad hoc barracks but as an early resident I live alone in a converted supply closet, my heavily insulated refuge from the outside din. I'm not sure management even knows all of us live here.

Most nights I see the janitor from the second floor while we're brushing teeth and bathing in the sink. He won't talk about his work or much of anything, he always seems to be cleaning things off his arms, and has periodic bruises, but he doesn't complain, even when he is limping.

Before the plague I lived with my wife and son in a small apartment, but as the plague wore on and she slowly realized where I was working she told me to quit and I said I'd think about it. One night I came home and she and her big friend were sitting at the table, my son was on her lap. She said I needed to leave, that the friend was going to take care of them. I said I didn't see any reason we couldn't work something out. He picked me up and put me on the porch in the rain and handed me a small box of my things. He said, "Hey man I know this is hard, but it's better for your son, he'll grow up to be a man."

And I said, "You're probably right, I'm a coward but I thought that was how I was supposed to be."

And he says, "See what I'm saying?"

And I say "Yeah."

I carried my small box back here to the office, and hunted around for a place to stay. I found this closet and have lived here ever since. I started sending my son money every pay check. I may be a coward but he should have nice things.

When I lie in bed I imagine I am a fighting team member huddled in his fox hole. It is noon and I have just woken from my morning nap. I eat a corporate-branded energy bar with a picture of big tits on it announcing how much protein is in the bar. I miss my family, my wife died in the plague and my son was kidnapped. I switch on my headset and hear the voice of a young boy telling me to jerk myself off, or no no wait, shoot yourself, no no wait, kill your best friend. And I say back, "Son is that you?" And he laughs and hangs up. I love him and I miss him and I hope he can just do well enough not to care about anyone but himself.

—

Thank you’s to Luca Salerno and Jason Crye.

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