And we will have machines for assessment, machines for learning, on top of our machines for living, here in our modern city.
He feels sick, his head is swimming, and just now
he thinks he saw his heart try to punch itself out of his chest. The reason:
yesterday, he nearly turned and walked – willingly - back into one of the central
towers of the modern city, that five years ago nearly killed him.
He sees them every day; every day he walks around
inside the walls – nervous, taut and
twitchy as a hunter, light-footing in the forest – but never ever does he stray
close to the central tower, never ever step within the immediate range of the electric
eye of central surveillance. He sees the management killers pass by. They come
in a range of models: there is the default older male in black suit, automatic
step and steely hair; eyeless in cool shades, like a glitch in the Matrix; and
then there are the younger females, who sometimes pass for real humans; attractive young women, smart and sexy in crisp white shirts and tailored trousers; dark-haired blondes with tailored voices, who bling to designer time and smile before they kill. He
wonders do they see him now, as he lounges all casual in soft shoes, stares absently
into the near distance, tries a little too hard perhaps to remain below their radar.
He sometimes stands toe to toe with them in the glass tower elevators; and he
wonders if they can smell the outworld huddled masses on his
shabby jacket and jeans. With any luck, as he operates beneath their radar, he
also operates beneath their contempt; his outworld real, outlaw human odour no more
discomforting, no more a threat than the trace of any outworld crawling creature.
Given half a chance, of course, they would stub him to a pulpy stripe beneath a
blind, efficient leather sole.
Careless of others – and that's killer competitors as much as contemptible real humans - their very existence in the modern city crushes
all hopes and dreams; all tenderness, anything gentle and kind vanishes with one click of a designer heel.
Meeting
between a management killer and a real outlaw human.
She
hears the wind blow over dry leaves. You
hear the scream of brakes, as the train pulls into Auschwitz.
He remembers the day the walls of the modern city
closed around him. It was something like this. One minute he was strolling
carelessly in bright sunshine; the next, a huge, black shadow fell across the
ground and he was plunged into blackest night, as if a high cavern roof had suddenly
snapped shut; trapping him and everyone else inside.
And
we have all been stumbling around in the dark ever since; the book of the past
has closed on us forever. Everything has changed. I don’t know north from south,
east from west; I can’t tell which way is up.
The Money-God didn’t make himself known everywhere
to everyone immediately. It was at work that O noticed the
first subtle changes. He couldn’t remember his head of department, for example,
ever being referred to as a ‘manager’ before; and he’d never even heard of a ‘line-manager’.
For goodness sake, it made him think of steam-trains, shovels and oily rags.
Metal things - cogs and wheels - and steam under pressure.
And
lines, lines, lines. Straight-lines: Adorno's shortest distance between two people,
as if they were points. And soon, it was boxes, boxes, boxes. Boxes piled on top of other boxes. Hand
in hand with Taylor and Ford, and Bauhaus, Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation,
Marseilles.
And
we will have machines for assessment, machines for learning, on top of our
machines for living, here in our modern city.
He
remembers reading how during the modern revolutions a man could be locked inside a small metal cage, with no room to stand up, no room to sit down
or stretch; he had to crouch, permanently cramped within his backbreaking
prison.
At lunchtime, news of the changes ran like
wildfire through the office, as everyone struggled to make sense of a brave new world that had such people in it.
He heard someone say, ‘It’s like I left home this morning, and now I’m back, someone
has re-decorated the whole house.
