The Cog Part 2

The Machine

 

 

Caylee just came back from a large Company meeting. A two hour long Pep Rally delivered by upper-up's and meant to gather the drones into a cohesive unit. "Rah Rah" speeches presented by beings who really believed their own words made a difference, because they delivered it. People who thought they were admired and looked up to. People who must look in the mirror each morning and mistake their arrogance for self-confidence. The type of people who, when portrayed in classic films, get their shoes shined and toss a dime to the poor kid - telling them "it takes elbow grease and persistency to move up in this world, kid. Nothing gets handed to you for free." The type of people who went to boarding school, vacationed in Majorca, skied in St. Moritz, and yachted to take the "edge" off. The type of people who invented the silver spoon, and decided just who's mouth it would be placed in to.

These types of meetings were beginning to weigh heavily on Caylee. There's only so much bullshit one person can hear after awhile. It's one thing to promote Company spirit and acknowledge the milestones that have been accomplished. It's quite another to backslap your good ol' boys and congratulate each other for a job well done in front of an audience. Like Congress approving their own raises. It just stinks of sordidness.

All of this monotonous talk about everyone being a contributor and everyone being a vital part of the Organization started to give her a headache. She'd been in the corporate world long enough to know the speech. It's given every fiscal quarter, for Chrissake. The speech is given before and after large lay-offs. If there happens to be a meeting scheduled during a lay-off, the meeting is mysteriously cancelled. Fucking wimps, she thought to herself. They keep serving up the Kool-Aid and expecting us to drink it up without question. Amazingly, people did. Willingly.

Back at her desk, her internal volcano continued to bubble. Underneath, she was a simmering stew of contempt, disbelief, anger and self-loathing. This corporate mechanism, this machine, was created for one reason only: to suck people in by their need for money. Once incorporated in to the fold, people were ground up, reshaped, and reassembled - like plastic dolls in a toy factory. Once perfectly formed on the outside, they were then fed with the dogma that they were "individuals", how each "person" contributed to the "spirit" of the workplace. Formed and fed, the drones were sent off to perform their tasks as instructed, no questions asked. Happy to belong to the Organization. Happy to have a Leadership Team that so understood the employees needs. As a now fully formed plastic human being, you had no feelings that needed to be addressed. You had no wants or needs. Caylee wasn't going to let this happen to her. She was just blending in. Like playing dead in a horror movie, so the serial killer thought she was already a goner. The fact that she played along contributed to her self-loathing.

Caylee knew that Holden Caulfield would have called them all Phonies. She wanted to call them something else.

*****

All one can hear in the office is the rapid clicking of someone’s computer mouse - as if they are buzzing into a game show – and the "sound masking" system that has been put into place to filter out the hum of nothingness. She would imagine this is what space would feel like. This vacuum. This never-ending battle of sound vs. silence. A silent scream.

Small discussions take place around her, some laughter, some whispers, more laughter. Not to her, or with her. She's not included. She's just there. The more time she puts in, the more she feels that she must be turning to glass, or cellophane. Yes. Cellophane. That’s it. Something that is clear and pliable, see-through. Glass is harder, hardier, and serves a loftier purpose than cellophane. Cellophane it is. She stares at her hands to see if they are starting to disappear through her own eyes. They appear human, and multi-dimensional to her. Who knows, though? She’s often thought that people could be calling things by the same name, while each seeing that something as completely different. She struggles to explain this to her mind, as if speaking to a class: "People all agree that on a clear day, the sky is blue, with maybe some clouds of white. But what if HER "blue" is really somebody else’s "red", and then somebody else’s "purple". We’ve all just been told to identify the sky as blue. Blue to who, though?"

How do you know what other people see, if you’re sitting right there and they can’t even see you?

Caylee wondered if getting up and doing a cartwheel down the hallway would be out of line.

 

 

 

With Love,
Lady Butterfly
xoxo