*
Back at home, I set the laptop up on the desk in my spare room, which was now going to be my office. I put the business cards on display in a business card holder next to the laptop. The phone I kept in my pocket; it was important for GP&A to reach me at any time, because he’d said “they” would contact me with details about what I needed to do. I used the laptop to search for the company on the internet, but as I suspected I came up with nothing, not even a ‘coming soon’ banner; the company was either too new or too small to have any sort of web[29] presence. I checked my business card to be sure; there was no web address there. I wanted to be able to tell people, “I work for Global Partners & Associates,” and when they said they hadn’t heard of them, I’d say, “Oh, you haven’t? Well, they’re pretty global. There are a lot of associates. Why don’t you check out their website?” They’d go to the website and be blown away that I was an associate to such prestigious global partners. There needed to be a website for that to happen, though. I decided that while I was waiting for one of the partners from GP&A to call me and let me know what my job was actually supposed to be, I’d use my free time to create a website for us.
I registered globalpartnersandassociates.com, which I know is a long and boring web address that most internet users would only get halfway through typing before giving up and looking at pictures of cats instead, but gpa.com was already taken, and I wasn’t going to settle for a .net or .biz address like a homeless alcoholic might have to. I spent a while looking for a good stock image of a few important-looking people standing around in business suits looking at the camera; when I found the right picture I put ‘Global Partners & Associates’ on it in a serious font, and put that picture on the front page of the website.
After lunch, which, thanks to my medication I did not eat while hiding under a blanket, I got back to work on the website. I created a page for partners and a page for associates. I dithered over whether I should make myself a partner or an associate – was I as good at my job or as important to the company as a file cabinet was? My business cards settled it; I looked to them for guidance and saw Junior Associate under my name. It wasn’t the best title but it did leave room to grow; in time I could move up to Associate, and then Senior Associate, and perhaps, at last, VP of Associates; once I was VP they’d probably put my name in the running for Global Partner. That wasn’t all happening yet, so I used the webcam on the laptop to take a picture of myself which I put on the Associates page and listed myself as a Junior Associate, with a biography of a few paragraphs which left out my short stay in a mental hospital but mentioned my collection of hats so people didn’t think I was all business all the time.
Before being on Psylocybin I would have never put information like that on the internet – what if a hat admirer who was searching the internet for new information about hats saw my biography, decided that he wanted the hats for himself, cross-referenced my picture to something[30] to find out my address, waited until I was at work, smashed my window or my door, hid in my closet, and rubbed his body all over my hats? Now, with the aid of Psylocybin, I realized that it was an extremely unlikely thing to happen, so after I wrote and published my biography to the internet I just did the sensible thing and taped a hair over my hat closet door so that if I ever did happen to go for opening the door and saw that the hair had been dislodged, I’d call the police; I wouldn’t be caught unawares by the grunting, mostly unclothed man in my closet, squatting down over an upturned, unwilling bowler hat with his genitals resting inside it against the soft, cool, velvet interior.
You might think that was me being paranoid. You’d think that sort of person doesn’t exist. You’d say to me, “Nobody likes hats that much,” but if you were close enough I’d reach out and slap you directly in the face hoping to get you to face reality, because I’ve been an internet user since 1995 and I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe (so I won’t list them here, because you wouldn’t believe them and it would be a waste of my time and your time, and my time especially does not care to be wasted because I’m a Junior Associate in an important – a global – company; perhaps you’ve seen my biography on their website; you haven’t? well here’s my card, educate yourself); uninvited male house guests in hats being among the least of them.
Around quitting time – which I had decided would be 2PM, because I was my own boss and was setting my own hours – there came a knock at the door. I peeped through the peephole and was disappointed to see that it was a man in a suit. Someone not wearing a suit might be selling doughnuts for a church fundraiser, and that’s always a good day. I saw that he had a large suitcase on wheels, though, and it seemed the right size for doughnuts, so I took a chance and opened the door.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he said. “My name is Wallace, and I’m sorry to interrupt your work but I’m here to install the equipment.”
“I didn’t order any equipment, and I don’t need any,” I said. I was familiar with this roundabout pitch. They pretended you’d ordered something, or maybe that they got the wrong address, but since they’re already out with their big heavy suitcase would you mind if they demonstrated their product to you so it wasn’t a wasted day for them? “I don’t want any, either.” Then, I thought I’d been too quick in denying the unknown product, and said, hopefully, “Unless you have some doughnuts.”
“Sorry, I’m not selling doughnuts. I’m not selling anything; Ron sent me.” Wallace began to look doubtful. “You are Oscar Well, aren’t you?” He waved my business card away as I handed it towards him, and said, “I’m with Global Partners & Associates. I guess Ron didn’t tell you earlier, but this equipment is supposed to be installed in your office.”
“Oh, my apologies,” I said, and explained, “I usually get Mormons. Or vacuum cleaner salesmen.” Ron from the storage unit hadn’t told me anything about this – he hadn’t even told me his name was Ron, although that didn’t seem important – but I wanted to have all the proper equipment (because it always impresses people when you can say ‘see this big expensive thing? I got it from work because I’m so important’) so I said, “Come in, I’ll show you where to put it.”
Once we were in my office, he unlocked his case and took out several complicated-looking things. He got a screwdriver and began putting them together, until it was what looked like a bulky, ugly surveillance camera along with a wireless transmitting unit. I asked him what it was, and he said it was a surveillance camera with a wireless transmitting unit, that it could transmit all the way to headquarters. He attached it to my office wall with large, thick screws, and asked if I did my work at the desk with the laptop. I said yes, and he adjusted the camera angle to point directly at the laptop.
“Isn’t this…” I started to say, but then stopped. I wasn’t really sure. I asked, “Aren’t I my own boss?”
“Yes, of course you are,” he said.
“Well, who’s watching me then? My boss isn’t, because I’m my own boss. If I want to watch myself, I’ll set up a mirror.”
“That’s really just a figure of speech. They said the same thing to me when they gave me this equipment installation job. ‘Be your own boss, install what you like, et cetera.’ But you know you’re not literally your own boss, because you get a paycheck from someone else, right? You’re your own boss in the sense that you set your own hours and you decide where you work.” He saw me looking at the camera, and said, “Well, that is, you decide where you work as long as it’s within the field of view of this camera. It’s one hundred and eight degrees though, so you get plenty of room to move about.”
“You don’t need to be worried about it; the camera isn’t there for any unscrupulous purposes. GP&A has given you valuable equipment,” he said, tilting his head towards the laptop and maybe towards the business cards, “and they just want to be sure that nothing happens to it. If you think about it, it’s really like having an extra home security system that is self-contained and wireless, so nobody can cut the power or the transmission
line. And it’s not as if the camera is in your bedroom, right? Although, that reminds me, I’m supposed to put up a unit each in the kitchen and living room.” I felt dismay when he said that – more of those ugly things all over my house? “They take up a lot less space because they don’t have their own transmitting unit, they communicate with this one and then it sends all the video back at the same time.”
“That’s good,” I said, relieved, as he held up one of the little cameras for me to see. They were small enough to fit in the palm of his hand and had a rounded, stylish design. “When you first said it I was worried that it would ruin the décor in the rest of my house; the main unit is ugly, but the smaller ones do look very nice. Are you sure you can’t put one in my bedroom?”
My concerns about the cameras were taken care of, but I had other things I wanted to find out from him. “When I went for the interview, there was only Ron there, and the place looked so sparse with only that desk and filing cabinet that I thought he was the only person at GP&A. Now you’re here; is there anyone else?”
“Oh yeah, there are others,” he said. “There are lots of us; we’re all over. That storage unit thing is just a local recruiting station for whenever headquarters needs someone taken care of around here.”
I was satisfied with his answers, and I showed him out. After, I walked through the house to check out my new cameras. The smaller units were actually quite cute. They had three curved legs which attached directly to the wall; that, along with the way their stylish white bodies curved beneath the lens into a sort of smile made them look like happy little spiders watching over me[31]. I remembered what Wallace had said about it being like an extra security system and felt pleased; I could be grating carrots in the kitchen and if I accidentally slipped and grated my nose off before hitting my head on the edge of the counter and knocking myself unconscious, they’d alert the proper authorities who’d have about a 50/50 chance of saving me before I bled to death from my face. Everything seemed to be in order with my new job, even though I didn’t yet know what my new job actually was, but I decided that rather than wait around for a call from Ron, I’d get on with reconciling things with my family and friends.
It had gone fine with Winslow, but next I had to talk with my family, and I didn’t know how that would go. The days of shutting myself up in the clothes dryer when my parents came to knock on my door were over though, so I shut the door to the laundry room and put some furniture in front of it, cutting off my last refuge, and called my mom. She sounded happy to hear from me, and said she and my dad would love to come over for dinner that night.