The Trouble With Spectators
One of those faceless modern office blocks you see everywhere these days. It lies enclosed inside a smooth, curved whitewash wall, which leaves enough room for a tarmac car park and a small green lawn in the middle for the plastic sign. The sign has the name of the company, which is housed in the building on it and an intentionally infectious corporate logo lurking in the corner.
Imagine all this vacuity, reflected in the window of a small electric car. There’s a passenger on the inside looking out through the glass, which renders him deaf to the incessant drone of the engine. The engine carries him to the parking space designated for ‘visitors’. The motor shuts itself off and in doing so tells the automatic sliding door to open. In turn the man obliges the door and steps out into the sun-baked car park. His pupils expand to accommodate the light and another automatic door anticipates his arrival.
The insides of the building are familiar to him since they are similar in impersonality to the outside. The door closes behind him. He is met by a tall, lithe, man who extends his hand as he introduces himself:
“Ah, Mr. Mansbane! We are glad to have you with us, um, if you’d like to accompany me to Observation Level Two we can begin the day’s work, of which there is plenty as I’m sure you are aware – and I hear you are a man of haste like myself.”
A placid smile, expectant at Mansbane for reciprocation, retreats in the face of formality when Mansbane says, “Dr. Doyle I presume?”
Mansbane takes his hand and Doyle’s eyes squint as he says, cursing himself for his clumsy social etiquette, “Yes, forgive me for not introducing myself.”
“A man of your stature needs no introduction Doctor. Lead the way.”
They travel through the network of corridors to Level Two. Little is said although there is no tension between them. Doyle is distracted with work on his mind and Mansbane expects no less from him. All of their scientists become socially inept eventually. In fact, he’s never met an employee who hasn’t withdrawn from their colleagues to some degree.
*******
The Doorbell is loud. So loud, that it sounds like the living room has tinnitus. ‘Who the fuck could it be?’ he thinks.
-I’ll get it….
As his ears stop ringing he continues rolling the joint, which divides his attention with the television. On the screen, he watches a transvestite tell a theatre audience, that the more you resemble your dream, the more authentic you are. In his hands he watches dust from the hash stick in the pores of his thumb and forefinger, while the majority crumbles into the paper below. Caira comes back from the door and says:
-There’s a guy at the door who is really upset because, he says he can’t stand the way the corporations use T.V. to keep the masses docile and obedient by making programs about people who are basically a reflection of…
-Look, just shut the door and come back in.
-He was talking about this program he remembers as a kid about rag dolls in the reject bin of a factory, “Dolls like you and me” he says and…
Tell him to fuck off and come in and smoke some of this he says to her, because his confidence over-rides question of judgment. In fact, confidence anticipates any inkling of thought on the situation and so the statement is uttered before the situation has a chance to become an event. A split second later, the incident of the man at door has not even occurred in his mind.
“A man who is called a name just hates it when electro-magnetic fields interfere with his perception… But, he likes it when his will interferes with electro-magnetic fields!”
A loud speaker outside the house announces this as if it should mean something of astounding importance to the inhabitants of the street. Caira shuts the door in the man’s face, which is still standing there, reciting it’s diatribe like the playback of a recorded message. She sits down in the living room and smokes and wonders if the world is really as inconceivably deranged as it seems to her. Putting the roach to her mouth for one last drag only to find that joint is actually a pencil, she picks up a piece of paper lying beside her on the couch and writes ‘CANNABIS’ on it in big letters. She watches the page. Derren turns from the television to ask for the joint and noticing it’s absence from Caira’s hand; he looks around to see where she might have put it.
-Where’s the joint?
Caira throws him a glance and looks back at the page. It now says ‘PENCIL’
-Shit!
-What?
-Nano-Pol!
-Aww. Fuck!
Derren pulls a white putty rubber out of his pocket where half an ounce of dope used to be. Outside the loudspeaker says, “You are the subjective elements of an objective whole!”
Inside Caira and Derren hold their heads in their hands and wonder what to do for the rest of the evening. Derren is staring at the television while Caira gazes into her shoes. To Dr. Doyle the tableau is framed by the black shell of a monitor screen. He smiles with affection for the variables of his experiment. Setting down the microphone he turns to Mansbane, who is reviewing financial records through a terminal on his right.
“Caira has been quite depressed lately. I don’t think Derren is emotionally mature enough to satisfy her. The only thing they seem to share with each other is the alleviation of boredom by the consumption of cannabis.”
Mansbane cranes his neck toward the screen, more out of obligation than interest,
“Indeed, he seems more interested in that T.V than in her.”
“Mmm, well, we’ll see how they manage without their medication.”
Doyle makes a note of the changes to their program. Mansbane looks again at Caira’s face. Something in her eyes leaves him unhinged for a moment. It’s a look that he isn’t quite accustomed to. It’s been so long since he’s encountered anything out of place in his day-to-day communications with people. They are all efficient workers. The emotion that they convey, be it visual or verbal does not vary much between individuals. The feeling of uncertainty invoked by the girl’s thoughts soon leaves him though, and his calculative eyes resume their focus on the hundreds of sums before him.
Meanwhile, Dr. Doyle is transfixed to another monitor. There are twenty in all, strewn haphazard about the room, which is almost oval in shape. On the one he is looking at now there is a middle-aged man in the kitchen of the house he shares with his mother. It is four o’clock in the morning. The man can’t sleep, so he is playing a game with her. She is upstairs, asleep in bed and the aim of the game is to unload as many dishes as he can from the dishwasher, into their respective cupboards around the kitchen, without waking her.
Doyle watches him as he sets individual forks gently on top of each other in the cutlery drawer, so as not to make a sound. He makes some notes and then moves on to another monitor: a couple breeding. On the screen above, a man watches their silhouette as he walks past their window with his dog. Doyle picks up the microphone and says something about ‘the accident’ of evolution into it. The burst of the loud speakers startles the man and sends him scuttling up the street, wide eyed and dog barking. Doyle chuckles to himself and moves on to another subject.
Two floors up, Observation Level 4, Professor John Ingot scribbles furiously on a tattered feint and margin note pad. Tiny rivers of black coffee fill the cracks of his chapped lips and run towards his chin, but are cut short by a vacuum from his tongue. He places the empty polystyrene cup back on the desk just next to the digital image of Doyle and Mansbane carrying out their duties with the standard enthusiasm. Ingot is particularly interested in Mansbane. It’s not often he gets to see the employees interact with visitors. But in this case, it’s the lack of interaction between the two that makes up the bulk of his notes.
Professor Jones, on Observation Level 6, watches Ingot through her left eye as she fishes a lump of mascara that has collected around the corner of her right. She flicks the offending mass away with her thumb and continues an objective observance of Ingot’s eating habits, which are only surpassed in fervour by dedication to his work. With one hand poised over her mouth, she pushes a button on a small grey box. It’s the control board for Ingot’s room. Presently, a localised electro-magnetic field stirs the atoms around a donut sitting by Ingot’s empty coffee cup. It falls to the floor.
Jones watches attentively, a smile breaking on her lips as the Professor moves his chair close to pick up the donut. Dimples appear on her cheeks as he takes a bite from it, wipes sugar from his mouth with his sleeve and goes to fetch more coffee. Jones is baring her teeth now. Her fingers, long and angular, drum at a keyboard with violent speed, but her hammering is precise enough to prevent the breakage of manicured nails.
There are ten such rooms in the company building with twenty monitors in each and one spectator similar to Dr. Doyle. Outside the company buildings the cities are under constant supervision from solar powered airships that carry giant computer automated eyes and the orbit of the planet itself is littered with various satellites, projecting their findings back down to the surface for processing.
The observations are used as templates, which contribute to the design and control of mass populations. A scheme that eventually hopes to encompass every living being of their kind. If successful we may see a further drop in the subjective aspect of their collective experience, the very essence of their individual nature.
Incidentally, despite my continued research, I have no more useful insights about the species than when I began this study. It seems to me that the more I learn about them, the more elusive and complex their character becomes. Perhaps my colleagues are right and it is impossible to bridge the semantic gap between dimensions with our primitive technology. And their limited existence to only four of our dimensions has instilled a severely retarded perception in their genes.
Suggestions for further research:
- In my opinion it is time we introduced a new threat from outside their planet, something devastating enough to drastically alter their persistently shallow view of the universe, and also give us an opportunity to observe any long term affects this may have on their communal behaviour. It will be exciting to see what they are capable of in such a situation - If they can survive it at all.
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. But, thanks for reading it anyway.