SF in The City Anthology (34 page)

             
Then company researchers linked prevodorant use with multiple personality disorder. Apparently the human body wasn’t meant to have semisolids shove into its pores for months on end. Lyssium within the prevodorant had been getting past peoples’ blood brain barriers and causing permanent neurological damage. I was the company’s PR guy. I was supposed to keep Onofrio Prevodorant Incorporated smelling like roses to the public, while our product poisoned the minds of City dwellers.

             
I couldn’t handle it any longer. Visiting the company’s CEO, Nechtan Washington Onofrio, I handed in my resignation personally, like a good sport. He didn’t seem too keen on the idea. As a matter of fact, he had this big bodyguard named Changpu Beyer who had a bod mod that gave him the appearance of an anthropomorphic bison. I had always gotten along with Beyer, since neither of us talked much, but the CEO had him throw me out that day as an example to the rest of the employees. After suffering such a humiliating removal from work, the public would never believe a word I told them from then on out.

             
For two months I bounced from bar to bar, telling my sob story to guys and gals too drunk to know they were conversing at all. I tried starting up a mlog to share my thoughts on the dangers of lyssium in prevodorant, but my hosting site shut it down within a week. Once I even approached a news outlet about this problem and was met with a threat on my life, not by gangsters paid by the corporation, but by cops on their payroll.

             
Around this time, I read
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
and had something of an existential crisis. Once in my life, I had passed a man being mugged in one of the alleys near my workplace. Fear didn’t discourage me from saving him – urgency did. I had three minutes to get to my office and being late for the second time that year would make me look like an ineffectual employee.

             
The more I read, the more I desired living a life focused on experience rather than possessions, which really wasn’t difficult, considering that my only source of ECUs came in the form of residual income. I had written a small time book for PR managers called
Saving Shapira: A Lesson in Handling Crises
, which documented Jaliyah Cài’s brilliant strategy for minimizing the damage to Shapira Nanotube Manufacturing Incorporated when an employee leaked that the company had a default in its products that caused permanent harm to those who had a Shapira made nanotube matrix inserted in their brains. To think that I wrote a book like that and now found myself an employee fired by a capricious CEO. Yes, go ahead. Laugh at the irony.

             
I had saved up a great deal of money over the years, true poverty wasn’t a concern, yet I knew that my penthouse at Gelashvili Residential Tower was no longer a realistic place to rest my head. Keeping with my new found appreciation for minimalism, I moved to a sparsely decorated apartment on Amphisbaena Street. Despite numerous attempts to find a job, I had been blacklisted thanks to Mr. Onofrio’s vengeful nature. Self-employment looked better each day.

             
I started reading up on Buddhism, and it finally occurred to me one day, as I collected writings on the Buddha from digital archives, that I had found a new premise for a book –
The PR Manager who Found Enlightenment
. With my niche nailed down, I started work on my imagined best seller, only to get a rude awakening.

             
When I bought a small Buddhist statue with the money I made by being a place holder in a line for tickets to see
The Tale of Lady Thi Kinh
at Prefecture 67’s largest opera house, my landlord, a nasty old codger named Edward Skalp, had me evicted. He said that it was because I didn’t take good care of my living quarters, but we both knew his true motivation. Mean old Skalp hated religious people, and he had said as much in the past.

             
I couldn’t find nearby apartment vacancies in my first day of searching the Net, so I had to sleep in a capsule hotel that evening. As I changed into a robe provided by the establishment and put my belongings away safely in a locker, it really dawned on me for the first time just how I felt about my life. The Third Noble Truth of Buddhism suggested that true happiness was attainable. In that moment, I believed that my suffering would last for eternity.

             
It’s all just pretension
, I thought to myself.
I really just want a luxurious life, and now I know that I can’t have it
. Fighting through a fitful night’s sleep, I got up the next morning and checked out of the hotel before heading to the Malhotra Dining Tower. I figured eating a good meal before killing myself made perfect sense. Now that I think about it, being rested and well fed really doesn’t make sense if you’re going out anyway, but I wasn’t in the most rational mood. I chose to eat some sushi at Chinbat’s Fine Food on the sixtieth floor, since it was the restaurant located the highest up in the building that still allowed balcony seating for the brave and wealthy.

             
After I had finished sipping my Vermentino wine and eating my Shirayaki
[51]
, I stood up from my seat and looked over the balcony. My view of the parts of The City around me was good, but not great – most of the towers in the area were taller than Malhotra’s, so I didn’t have a horizon to admire. Then I looked down at the street below me, and a weak feeling passed through my abdomen and down into my legs. For some strange reason, I felt this tension the most in my anus.

             
What if someone suspects that I’m going to jump and tries to stop me
? I thought to myself.
Sixty stories have to be high enough to kill me instantly…right
?
What is pops going to think about a closed casket funeral
?
He already despises me for losing my job. All the more reason to jump, I suppose
.
I’d finally get back at him for pushing me into PR so forcefully
.

             
If you’ve ever considered suicide (I recommend you don’t), than you know that these introspective conversations with yourself often as not start out mustering up your “courage” to go through with your plans, but then as you think about it longer and longer, you start to realize just how stupid the whole idea sounds. I may wind up never getting a job again, save digging through toxic waste without protection or shoveling refuse at less reputable institutions, but I still had my health, the clothes on my back, enough money to live another seven months without employment and even a book idea in the pipeline.

             
I stepped away from the balcony’s edge, my legs trembling. After nearly committing suicide, I strangely felt more fearful for my life than ever before, as if I fully realized not only how precious it was, but also how fragile. At that moment, discussing my problems with an attentive listener seemed like the best option. To this day, I don’t know why I chose to speak with my father.

***

              When I rang the doorbell to his penthouse, I immediately regretted my decision. We hadn’t spoken to each other in two years. After Mom died, he became gradually obsessed with the idea of cheating death, going so far as to join the transhumanist cult Prima Facie. I nearly laughed myself to death when dear old dad told me that he would have eternal life by downloading his consciousness into “the Great Collective.” People who had their minds placed in cyborg bodies usually had relatively short life spans (10-15 years post operation on average), and hopping between frames didn’t help extend this time frame either. Eventually, death caught up with everyone.

             
Then a certified confidence man by the name of Shayṭān Namdam came along and founded Prima Facie. Despite the fact that the scientific evidence was in vast opposition to his claims of digitized eternal life, he had a secret weapon – marketing skills. With a charismatic personality and years of “beauty improving surgery,” that fellow could have sold smog to Prefecture 91’s residents if he so wanted. 

             
“What do you want addlepate?” my father answered the door in his jinbei
[52]
.

             
“Hi Dad,” I sighed. “Would you mind if I came in, and we just…talked?”

             
“Why would you want to do that? I mean, I was doing some exercises to cultivate my inner Ch’i before you showed up.”

             
“Since when did you care about Ch’i?” I muttered.

             
“Listen sport, I’ve really been getting into Neidan, or internal alchemy as you may have heard it called, as of late. Namdam says that it will increase my chances of successfully uploading into eternity, if I get the Three Treasures of Jing balanced.”

             
“Believe me; Shayṭān Namdam is just taking you for a ride. He sold you a download of his video series on Neidan, didn’t he?”

             
“Yes, for a discounted price. Luckily, I caught it on sale before anyone else noticed.”

             
I could feel myself getting a little hot under the collar. My dad and I had never gotten along very well, given that he was gone working 355 days of the year, and he spent what time he did have at home criticizing me for joining my school’s Photography Club as a youth rather than Business Men of the Future. Still the idea of someone taking advantage of my father deeply disturbed me. Shayṭān probably knew as much about internal alchemy as I know about hovercraft maintenance, but people like my father would buy out of desperation anyway.

             
“If Mr. Namdam really is teaching you Neidan, won’t he eventually explain to you how to how to achieve Tao and become an immortal, or a Xian as it’s called?” I looked my father forcefully in the eyes, but they stared back halfheartedly.

             
“He has already shown me the way to heaven son, and I’ve got a reserved place there. Since I signed up before the more simple minded, I got in for a 15% discount. You should be happy! I’m leaving you with a bigger inheritance because of fast thinking.”

             
“Dad I beg you to stay away from Prima Facie,” I didn’t feel in the mood for this crap. “I realized myself just how valuable
life
is to me. You can live without money and prestige. Life doesn’t have to be all butterflies and rainbows.”

             
It struck me for the first time why I had become so mad about this transhumanist taking advantage of my dad. I had been studying Buddhism for the last few months, and the teachings of its founder clashed with those of the Prima Facie’s own leader.
What is the First Noble Truth of Buddhism
, I thought to myself.
Life includes suffering and eventually death. It’s how we learn to deal with these issues that matters.

             
“You always were thickheaded,” my father began to close the door.

             
“Dad, you won’t even let me in?”

             
“Why should I?” he glared at me. “Onofrio has been a good friend of mine for a long time. If he fired you, it must mean that you crossed the line.”

             
“There was evidence that the prevodorant we sold had toxic chemicals in it,” I protested. “Lyssium is a dangerous chemical agent. How can you possibly condone the sale of such harmful materials?”

             
“Ambrose, I thought that I had instilled good values in you, but now I see that this was never the case! You never,
ever
question your boss.”

             
I had suffered his drivel long enough. As I turned to leave, it surprised me to hear him give a sharp little cry in surprise. He had his faults, very many faults, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care for me in his own twisted way.

             
“You know,” he said hesitantly, “I could get you some storage space for your consciousness too.”

             
A strange smile, perhaps out of disbelief, crept onto my face. “To be quite honest Dad, I appreciate it when someone offers me a glass of Kool-Aid, but that doesn’t mean I’ll drink it. See you around, unless you’re
immortal
of course.”

***

              Talking with my Dad had changed my mood not for the worse but also not for the better. Instead of feeling depressed, anxiety had overcome me. On numerous occasions, I had told my father that I hated him, yet occult leanings still bothered me. I don’t know why I cared about his fate so much. Perhaps it was because he had all the “success” according to society, and I wanted at least one of us to meet with a happy ending.

             
I identified as a Buddhist, yet I really took no comfort from the religion other than reassuring myself at times that everyone suffers throughout life. “Misery loves company” they say. Putting this sentiment into practice, I visited a bar called Midnight Miruvor (the establishment’s owner was a big fan of
The Lord of the Rings
) on Kakkoi Street. Sure enough, there were plenty of drunks I could converse with.