Anonymous Inc.


I'm the kind of guy who’s adventurous, with a real sense of wonder. Slightly calamitous, just sensitive enough to still feel real. I'll jump out of a moving train, just to tumble away from the tracks, burrs across my back, red clay in my face. I'd fight a war, but not for my country. I'm tough enough to fight in the pool halls but I still keep a copy of Siddhartha in my bed room. All these things, a curious spirit within natural wanderlust.

I wondered where all the young professionals ate lunch around here. Blocks and blocks of office parks, parking garages, grass menageries and gas stations. There wasn't one Ground Round or Applebees. No 7-11 or Store 24 or Circle K. No Starbucks. The city hadn't penetrated this yet.
Finally, ten minutes down I found a dilapidated sub shop. Ten, that was good. The interview wasn't for another half an hour. Thirty, that might be trouble. Not that I would take this job anyway, already a serious drawback was the distance from most proper forms of civilization. It's a stranded lonely planet out here; reflective glass, cement curios and chunky asphalt. I imagined myself: Charlton Heston, exploring brand new frontier on the edge of humanity.
The sub shop's nasty grease heat formed an envelope of pressurized air, seeping into grey daylight. I stood in the estuary of temperature, resting my ass on the warped orange plastic of an old booth near the front counter. The way the air clung to me was Parisian: Lounging around, sipping wine and taking naps.
I've never been to Paris. I need to work on that.
There was no pizza, the shop sold only hoagies. Or heroes. Subs. Grinders. What's the difference? Sandwiches. It can't be regional. Can you only call a sandwich a grinder in New England? But the second you cross into Pennsylvania they become hoagies? I've seen hoagie shops around here AND grinder shops. This was a sub shop. But I purchased pink lemonade.
"You work around here?" the burly Greek behind the counter asked. He stared me down with elongated pock marks and gold chains. I exchanged him bills for change, wincing as my fingers brushed against the palm of his hand.
I muttered something unintelligible about my position. He hovered for a sec, sweating beads of garlic and thyme. Then, grunting, he went into the grease cloud's dirty atmosphere, flensing strips of beef off the rotisserie.
"Just aksin' cause I heard about that 'vestigation up the road. NitroGene maybe? Or VeraGen? One of those genetics places."
The greek leaned over the crusted counter, his sweaty arms formed puddles that mixed with crushed red pepper and bread crumb granules littering the corian.
"No," I said.
"No what?"
"No, I don't work around here. Yet."
"Well there ‘as some shit going down over there other day. There's unmarked cars flashin' and lots of suits. Not the usual suits. These guys were feds. Something."
"Really?"
"Yep."
I heard a snotty sizzle burst from the entrance. Cheese melting on the flat top grill. Sandwich man didn't speak again. Just the scraping of metal on metal. Grit on roast beef and steak.
I reached into my back pocket, checking the Z folded print out for my job interview. They had emailed me, requesting my presence through some job finder or resume builder program I had dabbled in one night. But the job description was “Artist.” There must have been some human resources mistake.
There were so many genetics firms around there. I'd passed by an OxyGene. SimuGene. BioGen. GeneZyme. Genetrification? It was a "gene" something right? All I had was the addresss, 753 Arlington Way. And then the company slogan: Stabilization. Containment. Reclamation.


When I arrived at the company building, I waited for well over twenty minutes before someone noticed and directed me. It was rigid, being all stoic with my shirt buttoned up to my adam's apple, trying not to notice or become sexually attracted to any of the temps or assistants rushing by. Overcharged with nervous energy, mastering it by holding in, breathing in and out to the count of four. I chastened myself from running to the bathroom to masturbate by keeping my eyes on a ten foot post it board littered with polaroids from a recent company party.
There were silver-fox salesmen, shiny cuff links and sideshow glances. Interns in black cocktail dresses with sunless tans. No one over weight. No one looked old. Bland, bored professionals stared into the camera lens, beat from forty plus weeks and unfiltered office water.
I looked in the snap shots for a new me. Not necessarily the same age or hair color or build, but someone professional, loose. A sharpshooter with wide gait. A real charmer. The kind of guy whose fellow female employees weren't afraid to give a ginger touch on the back, wafting breezes of Ann Taylor delight over shoulder. He's got lusty pheromones that guy. And he's me.
The best they had was a curly buck in his late twenties. Black marled Izod jersey polo tucked in tight enough to bunch his boxers. His Italian brown tubular belt looped over and hung just right. This new me, almost every polaroid had him leaning in on other employees like a yearbook photo session. Everyone was smiles from ear to ear. Fake but remembered. He reminded me of John F. Kennedy Junior, solid chunk of hair and rugged skin, ready to go sailing.
The interview was conducted in a meeting room adjacent to the massive hall where GeneCon kept it's 127 velvet board cubicles. A long hallway divided the two. I couldn't discern where it led to. A bathroom, probably a storage closet.
I twisted my dress shoes into the new azul carpeting, tilling fibers so the individual loops uprooted. The room was in disarray. Piles of cardboard boxes in one corner followed by disassembled Gateways and Dells. High-end Pentium 4 mother boards tilted diagonally against hard shell cases. They'd be ruined on this new carpet, the static would wipe their circuits dry. They'd forget everything they knew about their previous lives.
Two motivational posters hung in black plexi frames on either side of the room. One had a squirrel pouncing up a tree branch, acorn in mouth, and stated, "Leadership Not Authority". Vaguely communist enough to subconsciously entice the young Cantabrigian liberals working there. The other featured a burning sunset with an older couple tracing their footsteps up a white beach. "Quality. The origin of heaven and earth." A third poster, yet to be hung, lay face up on the other end of the big table. Fifty skydivers hung in the air above a cityscape, forming a multi-colored snowflake. “Teamwork”. Capitalized bold-face Times New Roman.
The interviewer came in and sat five feet across from me width wise, not crossing her legs, but her knees knocked together awkwardly. She centered a plate of brie and sliced red delicious between us, offering them with a tilt of her head and a slight glance outside of cute turtle shell designer spectacles. With a limp handshake we were introduced.
Back to the breathing; one and two and three and... I couldn't get a good sense of her, the interviewer. She was wearing all black and I liked that, imagining a sort of hidden goth presence inside of her. Was she waiting to get out on the dance floor and bite a pale waif boy on the cheek? The only way she can express herself is on casual Fridays. After hours she's a panther that one.
“Good afternoon Mr. Witte. Ennis Pickering. I'm manager of the graphics and advertising department.”
She faltered.
“Well, not really a manager. But I make three dollars more an hour than you will. That's thirteen hundred more a year. After taxes.”
$1300. To get her Gold Coast Blend in the mornings? Spruce up her desk with some cutesy mouse cover or her very own exacto blades? She couldn't have been much more than twenty-six.
She sipped a dixie cup of water and when she next spoke, the liquid smacked between her tongue and inside cheek, “Okay then. Let's get to it. I've got your resume... here... and...”, she paused, looking at a sheet of preordained company interview questions, “What skills do you have that you think, you would have to benefit our company? Or especially our art department, our team.”
She was really laying it on. Trying to project an austere sort of manager mien. She bit her lips, couldn't look me in the eye, reading our interview verbatim from a xerox sheet right in front of me. I started my rap.
“Well I work well within group environments. Before my current job I was a wellness coach in the White Mountains. We tied knots together. Pitched tents. Got our second wind.”
While rattling this bullshit off I looked straight into her eyes, clamping onto her being with my presence. She fidgeted, clutched her pen, pretended to be reviewing the question sheet as I continued.
“I've been an active designer for over ten years. I've cooperated with cigar chomping printers and tres chic marketing salesmen. I know kerning. I know tracking. I've got leading down pat. Most of these new kids? Recent graduates? They don't know that stuff. All they have are computer toy filters that distort and skew image. I'm here to advertise, not create the Mona Lisa.”
Her right eyebrow arched.
“Mister Witte? You do realize this position would be slightly below your capabilities? You'd be collating files... typing reports. We only get to use the scanner occasionally around here.”
“Right. I understand,” I locked eyes with her again. Supposedly, if you can hold someone else's gaze for over nine seconds, that means they're willing to marry you.
“I'm not overqualified for this position Miss Pickering. I'm looking for something a little less active right now.”
Had her at four seconds before she looked away, scratching the side of her head with the pen.
“I mean, frankly Miss Pickering, it is Miss right? Ha! Right... well... frankly I'm sick of all these hot shot graphic artists out there right now. It's all power ties and sideburns! They jump from job to job trying to get three figures a year before they've even hit twenty-five.”
“Now, I can play that game. But I need something more low key right now.”
Eight seconds, a doe in my headlights, I could hear churchbells, and then she dropped. Damn! She dropped back to my resume.
“Well... you're certainly accomplished. Now don't take offense to this, I'm supposed to ask; what are your weaknesses?”
I could feel it all about to geyser out of me. The act churned around inside my gut. I couldn't spell it out. All week nights in front of the VCR. All weekends at the movie theater. When I got home from the lab, I didn’t have the will to even read a book or call my mother.
Sometimes I couldn't muster the attention to even watch the television. That was a bad night. All I could do was take long showers lying face up. Four a night.
I took a company promotional portfolio from a pile in the center of the table, opened it and dampened my forehead on the header of page one.
“Oh. Well. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this but...”
She leaned forward with the perfect understanding smile, hands flat on the table. “It's okay Aldous. I'll fib,” she said.
We were on first name basis. Aldous. Ennis. Pickering-Witte.
Then, cocking her head to one side, she spoke in faux manager voice.
“ ‘You have trouble leaving the office behind when you go home in the evenings.’ That's a good answer, right?”
I could feel my confidence return. Even in character I was a little taken aback, “Yeah. Yeah sure. That fits.”
“Okay then,” still smiling, she paused, referenced down at the xeroxed list, “I think we covered your strengths. I don't need to know why your leaving your current job. And ‘Where do you expect to be in the next ten years?’ seems a little overkill for the position? It's like asking you, ‘Read us the dust jacket of your life.’”
“Yeah. I mean...,” nervous laughter, “well... yeah, oh yes.”
“That brings us to the last one. Do you have any questions regarding our company?”
I consulted my inner monologues. Nothing scripted for this one. I recalled an article I’d read that month in Wired magazine
“Well, not really a question. But,” I paused for my memory bank, “I did some research into what you do here. And I must say, I'm impressed. I want to be a part of this team. I'm excited about the position.”
“Excellent. Great, well we’ll....”
“But, let me ask you this. Do you know what a category killer is?”
She looked up at me wide eyed, without response, certainly unsure of what I had said.
“No? It's an aspect of new marketing which can devastate a previously stable sector of the marketplace. What you do here, with genetic consultation? That's not a category killer. That's a pretty safe venture. There's lots of other businesses that do the same exact thing GeneCon does. And it's a free market. So, survival of the fittest! That's good! We want to keep it that way.”
This was just rolling off the palette now.
“But like I said, there are lots of other companies out there. Literally up and down this street. It's dizzying how many companies have 'gene' names. Not very creative, but that's good! Because the key here isn't to be creative, it's to stay in business. Do what everyone else does. Be the absolute bonafide best at it.”
I was working myself into a tempest. Tremors erupted up my shoulder blades as I pounded the table, driving points home.
“Technology is the main enabler of such an eventuality, and I know you're top of the line here. Where's your competitive boundary? What is your motive?”
She was speechless. Her two week management training manual didn't cover genius. Before she had to call in a manager or executive to answer me, I spun the finale.
“Ennis, look. The way GeneCon can stay in the game is simple. Consumer's needs can be shaped! Even as they learn new ways to consume. Got me? Even all those banks and corporate identity teams. The strategy is this. Find unexploited needs.”
“In the quantitative world, we'd get instant feedback. But this is quality control. Our only boundary is our capacity for imagination. Every GeneCon worker, no matter how low on the totem pole has to be part of this. You, me, the guy who runs the mail off in the afternoons, we've got to exploit those needs! Get those bankers and tradesmen and make them value competency! And do it all without extending ourselves up and down the supply chain like a snap ready rubber band.”
Fin.
I waited for any sonorant, any little trope that could escape her velvet lips. I was in like Billy Flynn, fucking his English teacher and killing her husband all the way home. Ennis Pickering and I were only mesons apart from that kind of treachery. I'd been descended on to her. It was a scientifically verified fact.

It was about seven minutes after Ennis Pickering hired me as desktop publishing assistant for GeneCon that my lymph node glands started swelling like a puff adder. My mouth was crusty, acrid and bitter. I snatched a sugar spoon from the office coffee table, thrust it in my mouth and bit down on the handle.
Previously, I had taken yoga, ayurvedics, so I could get out, meet some new people. The whole point was to relax, find some sort of center within myself. But it wasn't happening. I couldn't stop staring at all the women. How can you ease into downward dog when there's a whole mess of curves, clavicles and bare necks just inches in front of your face? I tried to be better, to ignore the flesh. But every time our instructor told me to listen to my body's rhythm, I'd lose balance, not capable of feeling the panaceum.
It was my third week there when we got into spinal relocations. A partner and I would press between one another's spinal columns, helping to arc the back just so. I was always teamed with Dorie. She was in her sixties, tired and rotund, limping around the class with an ankle injury. But that feeling of her touch, loosening the fluid between my body and my brain... I kept recoiling, trying to find center again.
Ennis turned to me without looking at my face.
“In the winter it gets absolutely frigid in here. We have to set up space heaters next to every desk. Top management is too cheap to provision the building properly. They can't be bothered to give me a six month review, but they'll check every single cubicle after five to make sure we unplug every computer, every printer, every desk lamp.”
Occasionally she'd slip, let out these disparaging remarks. It almost seemed like part of the interview. We were on company tour, between the mail room's color copy duplos and a wall of chartreuse filing cabinets, blocking the view of the parking garage. Ennis was chattering on about GeneCon's loose dress code when compulsion took me over.
“I wish my brain could come up with a million long winded reasons not to tell you this,” I stumbled, “But a fact which registers abstractly is just... it's just bad.”
“Excuse me?” she asked.
We were in the doorway now, linking the perforating department with the graphics one. She kept walking, ahead of me now, and turned right into a larger cubicle. I followed, she was slouching against a massive xerox machine. I worried her ass would slide against the ON button and the whole thing would leap to life, lights flashing, gears winding, forcing her up like a jack-in-the-box into my arms.
She looked up, eyebrow arched again, with a little bit of smirk, “What were you saying Aldous?”
“I was going to just leave you here, never answer your calls. It doesn't matter. The phone number on my resume's fake anyway. But I'll be honest. I can't charade you Miss Pickering. I have no intention of taking this job.”
“Mr. Witte I th....”
“Now wait. Don't try to offer me some kind of signing bonus,” my mouth was clamy now, “I'm not even a graphic artist. I'm not... I'm a chemist. Dermalogica. We develop beauty products. Mostly pore cleansing facial masks.”
“Okay. Mr. Witte. I'll have to..”
She was quizzical. I didn’t think it was sinking in. Thank God she didn’t freak out, calling for security or something. I kept going, having to get it all out.
“I did THIS,” I pointed with both hands at the lined carpet floor, “for release. Look, I’ve struggled against doing for years.”
She pushed slowly up off of the xerox machine with both hands. When she balanced on both feet, she reached out and grasped my right wrist with her hand. I could feel the live pulse and heat of her palm through my suit jacket. It killed me.
“Please don't!”
I backed up into a stack of xerox reams, raising my hands up, warding her away like a ghoul.
“You touched me! I didn't want it to be like that. It was supposed to be better. I've fucked it up now, just like I always do. Just like I always will!”
“You've got to calm down!” she whispered, looking over her shoulder, over the cubicles.
“Okay. Okay,” I lowered my voice down, but it was pouring out of me now, the truth was syrupy, “I shouldn't have come here at all.”
After all the yoga, addicted to touch, I tried doctor's appointments. The nurses caught on, and stopped taking my blood pressure when I came in four times in one week. So I scheduled an echocardiogram on referral. She rubbed this sticky, viscous, sensor glue into my chest. Each rubber pad's electrode lightly connected our two forms. It was heaven, slippery, and felt so goddamn good that I fell asleep right on the gurney. I had an explosive wet dream and spent half an hour cleaning the inside of my khakis and boxers with wet paper towels, hiding behind a drawn hospital curtain.
“Oh, fuck. fuck. fuck. You'll never talk to me now...”
“Aldous,” she grabbed my chin, lifted it so I had to look at her face, “The interview is a psycholaxative. The words, the room, the carpet, me, everything. It's set up to get you to purge.”
She hesitantly looked over at the cubicles again, focused back on me, not sure if loosening her gaze would snap me back into frenzy. Slowly, she added, “I'm not an artist either. I'm an actress. GeneCon hired me to do these interviews because my face and voice match up with a comfort zone pattern in paranoid histrionics.”
“We know. We know about you. Every haloperidol, lithium and doxepin in your bloodstream has been accounted for. We know about the numbers fixation. We know about that echocardiogram incident. You're lucky. That doctor didn't press charges.”
“What? Numbers?” I asked, grasping for any previous advantage I might have had.
“Your file says that you're only capable of having positive moods when the integers in the end of a year are divisible by one another. Like twenty-four? That was a good year. Right?”
“Uh huh,” I looked down, ashamed, unable to look at Pickering's new, hard face.
True. Twenty-four, my last year at school, I finally hit my stride. Integral personality disorder was getting worse. With the onset of the new millennium I'd moved from divisibles to binaries. I was ecstatic on January first and tenth last year. November and October were great too. This year was running out. The last full good day for almost a decade would be November 11. Everything and everyone came down to ones and zeroes.
I could feel myself warming to her. Maybe this exposure was what was real, not my disastrous attempt as the go getter. I realized, her hand was still holding me by the jaw. How long had it been? I hadn’t reacted, maybe it was ten seconds, eleven seconds, one minute and one second?
“Aldous,” she used my first name again, distracting my attention away from the hand, “Everyone at this company has little tics and obsessions. But we keep it to ourselves. Let's not make a scene, and disturb the serenity, okay?”
I nodded. It was all coming together now. The company photos, our interview; all a prerequisite, a mental blueprint for my admission to Empire GeneCon. Was that sweaty greek somehow involved too?
“Due to unforseen circumstance... we've just had a massive lay off. And we're starting an all new chemical research division. We want you to head that department Aldous. We'll pay you twice what they give you over at Dermalogics, four weeks paid vacation, even dental.”
Her hand released my face, dropping my gaze away from her new eyes, focusing on the speckled crease of flesh just above her printed rayon blouse. I connected her freckles into constellations. Could I join the ranks of this place? I pieced together chain reactions; events that would lead me away from my current isolation. Minutes collapsed. Ennis stayed there with me, ignoring my flesh stare, making sure my heavy breathing didn't become hyperventilating, or then a full blown episode of manic screaming and destruction of company property.
If I could show restraint, they might think I was just above a shy decibel level. Those flare ups of "I hate" would probably silently consist, but before accepting I thought:
I can deal with high school again.

I remember the rue of company gossip I'd overheard at the hoagie stop. Was it connected? All those disturbed people over here, none of them able to reach out and confess to their insanities. Some kind of reverse twelve step program. They just keep feeding the company grind, indentured by paranoia and fear and low self esteem.
Someone in human resources has a contact, a sister or friend, who'd been working at McLean's for some time, with access to all previous patients files and current addresses. They kept in touch with all the kind of Ala Teens and Dual Recoverys and One Step At A Times across the state.
The idea is: if everyone here is paranoid or neurotic they won't develop any outstanding relationships. Everyone's so afraid their own psychosis will be revealed, they just keep to themselves. If they even say “Hello” to their cubicle mates it might be a dead give away.
No chitter chatter by the water cooler or numbers exchanged at the xerox machine. No talk radio or internet abuse. Since no one here ever becomes friends, none of us ever go out to lunch or really even take breaks for that matter. They hired people from rehab clinics, halfway houses, battery shelters, mental homes. Most importantly... none, I mean NONE of us wonder out loud about what it is we work on.
We walk past each other in the halls, heads down, staring at cheap static carpeting. We just want to punch in eight hours, go back to plush apartments, watch DVD players and have sex on leather couches.
Me? Now I'm the kind of guy who has a presence. I can really work a crowd. I brim with so much confidence that I project an aura of warmth around me. People like that heat and I'm willing to open up my personal bubble, let them in on that gift. Our lab assistants feel comfortable when I place my arm over them, pointing out a report error or misplaced serial number. Sales staff give me long, firm handshakes. The company courier likes to slap me hard on the back, congratulating me on my knowledge of football teams, electronic equipment and automobile engines.
I imagine myself to be a transparent organic battery. A soft cell filled with a bursting white light that refracts off walls and ceilings and desks and finally wraps itself around all the people in the room; giving them a rainbow of faith. I'm always there with them. At work, in church, at their son's baseball game; they remember me and my loyalty to our GeneCon family. Then they breathe deeply, fall in love, and feel alive.