JPod (7 page)

God is a Window Maker docked application

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God is Oracle's OCI8 and OCI9 APIs

God is a configuration backup utility

God is Web-based group ware and collaboration software

God is a graphical editor for drawing finite state machines

Kaitlin was on the phone again, trying to extract herself from jPod. Cowboy was over by a ventilation unit, having a smoke. One of jPod's quirks is an air intake duct in front of which you can puff away on anything. Hell, you could let off an Exocet missile, and it'd suck everything up and away in a jiffy.

"If that had been my mother who showed up today, she'd have made a big deal of telling people she doesn't shave her armpits," said John Doe.

Bree said, "If that was my mother up there, she'd be asking every guy in the place what his salary was, and what his career prospects were."

Evil Mark said, "If that was my mother up there, she'd be drunk."

Kaitlin slammed down the phone in disgust. She looked over at us and put her face down on her desk.

As we'd all gone through the same responses when we were put into jPod, we felt sorry for Kaitlin. She needed a bit of quiet time.

Respecting her need, we entered work mode. The mood grew nice and quiet as we checked to see what was falling down the Chute. After maybe fifteen minutes, Cowboy piped up, 'You know, I'm so sick of cigarette smoking's negative image problems."

There was a chorus of jPod agreement.

He continued, "I have a suggestion. Let's take a minute-long break and blithely pimp for the tobacco industry."

"Okay," Bree said. "But first I could sure use the smooth clear taste of a Marlboro Light."

"Me? I prefer Virginia tobacco.
Mmm
—nothing like a Rothmans to make the afternoon sweeter."

"But you know," said Mark, "I think there's nothing like menthol for a fresh smoking experience."

I asked, "What's the deal with menthol cigarettes? What sort of person smokes regular cigarettes for years and then suddenly says,
Gee, this isn't satisfying enough. I need something more from my tobacco}"

Bree said, "My mother quit smoking in the 1980s, and then three months later they test-marketed lemon-flavoured cigarettes and she couldn't resist. She's two packs a day now."

I added that if Big Tobacco came up with orange-flavoured cigarettes, I'd probably start smoking.

Bree said, "Chocolate for me."

"I'd like roast beef-flavoured smokes," said John. "Nothing like a touch of cow to perk up a dragging day."

Evil Mark said, "Me, I find that the toasted tobacco flavour of a 100-millimetre-long More helps me to think better."

Bree asked, "More? Are those the skinny brown cigarettes?"

"Yup."

Cowboy said, "Me? I'd like to try one of those lady's cigarettes."

Bree added, "What kind of woman would look at a cigarette and say,
Finally, someone out there is addressing my feminine tobacco needs}"

"Actually, I did just that last week."

"Cowboy, you're a guy."

"But I wanted to see, you know, what a woman's cigarette might be like."

"How did it taste, then?"

"It made me feel, you know . .
.fresh."

. . .

As I walked past Evil Mark's cubicle, he moved quickly to get something off his screen.

"Porn?"

"Ha ha. Yeah. Uh. Don't tell anyone."

"That wasn't porn you were looking at. It was something else."

"Ethan, it's none of your business."

"Porn degrades everybody, Mark."

Evil Mark snorted.

"Okay, I was just trying to PC you into coughing up the truth. So what was it you were looking at?"

"Nothing."

"If it was nothing, you wouldn't be overreacting like this."

"I'm not overreacting."

Behind his cubicle wall, John Doe said, "I think he's overreacting."

"Evil Mark, are you into terrorism or something? Stock scams, maybe? Industrial espionage—passing along confidential in-house documents?"

"Leave me alone, okay?"

"Evil Mark, we're on to you now. We
know
you're up to something."

John Doe added, "We will crush you like a bug when we find out what."

"It was nothing! Just go and feed yourselves on a wide array of products containing high-fructose corn sugar.
Zheesh."

"That wasn't funny, Evil Mark. It sounded fake and hollow. You're terrible at being ironic, and you've been rehearsing that line, haven't you?"

"I am
not
evil."

"People don't get nicknames for nothing, Mark."

Mark was beginning to lose it for real. "Bree arbitrarily chose 'evil' out of nowhere."

"Was it really so arbitrary, Mark?" Bree asked.

'You people are nuts."

"Let's look at the facts: a) boring email name; b) chose the black spy over the white spy in 'Spy vs. Spy'; c) could easily have confessed to having porn on his monitor, but instead chose to pretend it was nothing,
meaning,
it wasn't porn, but something too shameful to let his compassionate pod members in on."

Kaitlin put her head above her wall. "You people are totally fucking crazy. How can you live like this?"

"Like
what,
Kaitlin?" I asked.

"Like people damned forever to a shady armpit of an entertainment empire too cold and indifferent to even try to rescue people from a clerical spreadsheet error that assigns employee seating."

This stopped everything dead.

"Kaitlin"— and you have to remember, this was me, someone with an embryonic crush on her—"I don't think you quite understand the ramifications of being in jPod."

"What's with this whacko jPod shit?"

From all of us: "Oooooooohhhhhhhh . . ."

"She really doesn't get it, does she?"

"Poor girl."

"She still thinks there's hope."

"Just tell me this: How did I end up here, huh?" Kaitlin asked. "Because if I'm here, it means somebody else had to leave."

She'd crossed the line. "We can't talk about that," I said.

"What do you mean, you can't talk about that?"

I headed to the snack machines as the others scampered back to their chairs.

"Augh!" Kaitlin screamed, jumping up onto her desktop, sending her Aeron chair into her hard drive, giving it a good bang. "Stop right now, all you assholes, and tell me what's going on here!"

Bree said, "This is so
Pulp Fiction."

Cowboy said, "They didn't tell you, huh?"

"No! As far as I can see, nobody tells anyone about anything in this place."

"Well, you're right about that."

Silence.

Kaitlin said, "What? Tell me something.
Anythingl"

"It was helium."

"Excuse me?"

"It was helium. Marc Jacobsen used to have your cubicle."

"You've lost me here."

This was going to be difficult. I said, "Marc was a really nice guy. He was actually a world builder for Xbox games."

"What does he or helium have to do with anything?"

Even Evil Mark had been here long enough to know that this was delicate.

"This isn't the best time and place to be telling you this," I said.

"Telling me WHAT?"

Bree stepped in. "Marc was really sweet, and totally into the games, and really wanted to make people's lives better. And he was the only staffer who was never guilted into coming in on weekends during crunch times, so that shows you how good he was, and how much clout he had."

"Helium? Everybody—
helium}"

I took over. "Marc was at his sister's birthday party, and he was in charge of party tricks, and so he rented a helium canister from a novelty supply company. He was at the party making twisted balloon animals when he decided to suck back some helium so he could speak in a Donald Duck Munchkin voice."

"And?"

"So there were maybe a dozen kids there—eight-year-olds—really easy to entertain. He put his lips onto the helium canister's nozzle and sucked in about a gallon of helium . . ."

"And?"

Silence.

"And?"

"Let Google help us here," said John Doe. "'If the concentration of oxygen falls below eighteen percent in the body, symptoms and signs of asphyxia occur. Helium gas can entirely displace available oxygen. If this continues for even a few seconds, asphyxia and death can occur.' Sure, we all want to sound like Donald Duck—but is it worth the price?"

Kaitlin said, "Uh-oh."

"Exactly. In front of all these kids, Marc keels over, turns blue and dies."

"Oh God. When did this happen?"

"A few months ago."

"And his desk has been empty all this time?"

"That's life. One moment you're mimicking Munchkins, the next, birthday cake is digging its way into your nostrils."

Kaitlin said, "What about Evil Mark? He arrived here only a little while before me. Why didn't he get this Marc guy's old cubicle?"

"Evil Mark? They just came in here one day and installed another cubicle, and then he showed up."

The look on Kaitlin's face said it all. For the first time, it was sinking in that jPod was real, and that she was a part of it, and that there was no escaping her destiny. "I think I'll just sit down now and see what's coming down the Chute," she said.

And with that, jPod fell silent.

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