Our New Taste

Working For A Living

I walked through the office and nodded at a few people I recognised. The taste of sleep still rested in the cleft of my gums, where the face meets the skull, and the coffee wasn't washing it away. I finally got to a door and went into my office, a lone desk by the window with a computer and chair. A large metal cabinet painted in red was against one of the walls. After turning on my computer I then begin the actual work of pretending.

For a few hours I sit and stare at the screen, doing completely nothing. Sometimes falling in and out of sleep, I could hear the office sounds around me. Telephones, shoes on cheap carpet, the hum of fluorescent lights, the occasional sneeze or cough, the barking of laughter. Now and then people pass my office door although nobody ever comes in. Once it reaches twelve I go for lunch, walking through the office corridors reading printed out spreadsheets, tiny on A4 paper. I stand in the kitchen and make brief conversation with others who happen to be there, before doing a lap of the buildings exterior. Eight hundred feet high, a mirror of the sky. I eat a packet of crisps behind some trees before heading back in. I pause at the end of the corridor. My office door was open. I walked towards it, checking my lapels for grains of salt before entering.
"Hello." I said, walking past two men and sitting back at my desk.
"Hiya. I hope you don't think me rude for asking, but who are you?" said the older of the two. I introduce myself.
"I don't think we've met. Who's your manager?"
"I wouldn't say I have a direct line manager per se." I say, wiggling the mouse to get rid of the screensaver.
"Percy?"
"Per se. As in, as is. I think anyway. You haven't heard that?"
"What is it you do here?"
"Most of my time is taken up by a side project. Excuse me, but I don't think you introduced yourself. Who's your manager?" I say, turning back towards them.
"I'm the head of HR. And I haven't heard from you. So I'm asking you again, who are you?"
"I said who I am. Who's this?" I say, nodding at a young lad in a tight suit.
"I'm Adam, the new social media manager. I'm confused, I thought this was my office?" he said to the head of HR.
"It is. Do you mind stepping out a moment?" he said. Adam leaves. The head of HR and I stare, fantasising about both being killed by and killing each other.
"I don't remember hiring you."
"I started about four months ago. Colin showed me around."
"Colin left four months ago."
"I wondered why I hadn't seen him."
"So what is it you've been doing?"
"I was given some photocopying to do." I say, nodding at a pile of neatly stacked papers.
"Then what? Why didn't you ask someone what to do?"
"No. Why would I?"
"Because you work here! You turn up here on your agreed hours and do whatever is required of you. What's your actual job title?"
"Assistant." I said.
"Come with me please." said the head of HR. I paused, weighing up the situation. Imagining potential endings to various strings of action, some ridiculous, others mundane. I got up and followed the head of HR towards the door before waiting for him to leave and then shutting it behind him. Lunging across the office I grab the edge of my desk and throw it back into the door, putting a large dint in the wood panelling. The head of HR and Adam both begin to rattle the handle of the door before there are murmurs.
"Open the door please." comes a muffled voice. Quickly I open the door of the cabinet and make some adjustments to its contents before closing and locking it. I swallow the key and walk towards the window. It had been painted shut, abandoned cobwebs spread like old ice across the sill. Placing both palms on the glass I begin to push, spreading the weight of my body across wide fingers. Sometimes an old window would just pop out. The head of HR meanwhile had managed to push the door open wide enough to reach a bare arm through it, it was quite odd. I took one of my shoes off and was about to hit the window with it when I felt him grip me around the waist, dragging me down towards the floor. The smell of Joop was overpowering as we wrestled on the carpet, pulling at each others clothes and quietly grunting.

Before long Adam and a security guard had arrived. The head of HR had overpowered me and I had my hands bound behind the back of my office chair.
"You captured him!" said Adam with glee.
"I'd like to let everyone know this is wrongful imprisonment and you should let me go immediately." I said.
"You're under citizens arrest for...posing as an employee at a private company."
"I am an employee though. I've just not done anything for months."
"He's right sir, I'm afraid he hasn't broken any laws technically speaking." said the security guard.
"What about vandalism? He broke that door!" shouted the head of HR.
"I was defending myself against false imprisonment and I failed. There's no need to make me feel bad about it as well."
"Let me untie you." said Adam.
"You'll do no such thing until he explains what's in this cabinet." said the head of HR, armpits damp with sweat that must have brushed cold against his underarms as he slapped the aluminium.
"My personal things are in there."
"It's company policy to allow us at any time to search through your belongings under suspicious circumstances."
"Is it?" said Adam.
"I swallowed the key."
"Darren, do we have any bolt cutters?" said the head of HR.
"I think we might." said the security guard called Darren.
"Fetch them up here will you." he said.

The three of us had been listening to each other breathe for ten minutes before Darren reappeared. Darren glided across the ribbed carpet before resting the teeth of the bolt cutters around the padlock. Although I'd been untied I remained sat in the chair and watched as the broken lock fell to the floor.
"Open it." said the head of HR. Darren nodded and swung open both doors. Inside the cabinet was a wall of soil kept in place with a series of planks that resembled the Slavonic cross. On the inside of the cabinet doors I had made many notes in my beautiful handwriting, along with diagrams. There was a true silence as they looked upon the things. Finally;
"What is it?"
"It is a diagram involving the infinity found inside pi, which in itself is found in all circles, both a positive and a negative infinite. The circle itself occurs in nature repeatedly, from a cell to a star. If seen at the right perspective a cell would eclipse a star. And in all of infinite is all of everything. All of the things possibly said, every molecule of DNA ever coded, every image that could be seen. All." I said, pointing at my notes.
"And the soil?" said the head of HR. I walk forward and pull at the central plank, causing an avalanche of blackness to flood the small office space along with a rotting pig.
"It is a grave." I said, picking up the carcass and looking at it, face to face. The skin had turned a bruised yellow and had begun to harden, shrinking tighter to the bone in some areas and bloating out in others. Worms festered in it's ears. I left the room and begin to walk through the corridors, carrying the pig. People were awed at the foul march as I made my way through every single office, the death stench hanging heavy in the air. Parts of the corpse had begun to fall off or leave big patches of rotten slime across my work clothes. An alarm wailed as I made my way out of a fire exit and across the car park. I carefully placed the thing in the back seat of my car and slowly drove away. In the rear mirror the office fades from view, around a corner, behind a tree. The traffic ahead swallows me into it. Summer is almost here.

I Am The CEO

I cruised over the rocky outcrop with a cigarette pinched between my teeth, it was a recessed type of filter used by machine gun artists in the second world war. The All Terrain Vehicle came to a purring stop as I parked on the mountain side, looking at the city through my field goggles. I had been in Los Angeles a long time. And I hadn't learned nothing. Don't get a McJob, be a Steve Jobs. I had integrated myself into a large non-profit company and worked it from the inside out, sabotaging my co-workers, setting up chains of events so that they would find themselves destroyed. I was the puppet master. I was the Royal Tenenbaum. I was CEO, earning eighty thousand dollars a year just to go wine and dine chumps in order to secure investment. I sat across from gorgons eating expensive salad and drinking white wine. Success? I'd made the American Dream a reality. I was a semi-state fictional character starring in my own film before being made into life. Was this box office blockbuster going to bombasticate the socio-cultural landscape of Los Angeles? I was in the mouth of the world, my whispers being projected across multiple wi-fi dimensions directly into high definition big detail corporate monosynths. I lowered the binocs and dialled my assistant on my cell phone.
“Organise a board meeting, stat.” I whisper through cut teeth.

The limousine slinks it's way through the streets of Hollywood with me in the back, reclining on Swedish leather. Deep warbling world music swells in the speakers around me as a single tear coagulates on my bottom eye lid and captures the reflection of the street lights as they zip overhead.
“It's all so...beautiful.”
The limousine pulls up to a traffic light. I look over into the car next to me and see a young couple. The one driving looks like Danzig. His girlfriend looks over to me then says something to her partner. They both laugh. I turn back to watching the stop light and put my hands on the wheel. I rev the engine. The couple return the challenge. We are both revving our engines, the pitch of the valves increasing as explosions rapidly accelerate. The light goes green. I slam the stick shift of my ATV into Drive and begin flying down the length of the limousine. The racer next to me flies past, I can see his expression of concentration increase through the flicking windows. I hear a horn ahead of me and look up. The seven forty express train coming from Pasadena is on a collision course with me and the driver next to me. And he's slowly catching up. I flick the stick shift into it's race gear setting and begin to pull away. The train's horn toots again just as the front of the limousine smashes through the barrier across the tracks. I look over once more at the couple. He is frantic, eyes bulging, heads pressed against the wind shield. She looks over at me and winks. I push the ATV to it's limit and with a jump narrowly escape along with the rest of the limo. The other car meanwhile isn't so lucky. It's passengers are ejected two hundred feet in the air whilst the car is crushed beneath American railroad legacy. I come to a skidding stop just before the driver's compartment. A little window opens.
“Any problems boss?”
“Guess they had a train to catch.” I say to Bill.

The limousine finally pulls up on the very bottom section of the underground car park. I enter a set of steel doors and plod wearily through the benign corridors. I enter the board room and see it's members sat around a long oak table. A fire blazes in the heath, throwing shifting shapes across the little bald men. Silently I walk to the head of the table and put my seven thousand dollar Dolce briefcase on the table.
“Gentlemen of the board. Any acknowledgements?” I say.
“What are we here for?”
“I gathered you here today...for a presentation.” I say. “Just a few weeks ago the world's entire supply of titanium was bought out. All the mines, processing plants and country stockpiles were purchased overnight.” I take out a lump of titanium from my pocket and throw it onto the table.
“Gentlemen...welcome to the titanium business.”

I ascend the spiral staircase up into the tower. Printers continually churn out stock market prices, high energy business people talk to themselves on headsets, sometimes a basketball is thrown about in order to decide who's making coffee. I stand at a cubicle in which a long haired lawyer rests his feet on the desk as he makes a yo-yo bounce up and down, speaking Portuguese into a cordless phone. He notices me and puts the phone down.
“How's it hangin, hot shot?” I say, leaning against a thin wood.
“Long, loose and full of juice padre. How was the board meeting?”
“You knew about that?”
“Anybody whose anybody heard your business deal. You've transformed a non-profit law firm into the world's one and only source for titanium.”
“Walk with me.” I say, walking off. He follows.
“So what's next?”
“How much does a kilo of titanium cost at the moment?”
“Seven hundred and sixty five dollars.”
“But how much are we selling?”
“None.”
“Exactly. By the time we finished this conversation the world will value titanium twenty bucks more than it did when we started.”
“What's the game plan though here ?”
“What do you know about titanium?”
“Well...it's strong. And it's light.”
“That it?”
“I don't mine it, I buy it.”
“It's used in the manufacture of aerospace parts, sporting goods, surgical instruments and the storage of nuclear waste. It can also be processed into a white dye used in teeth whitening. But I'm going to do something else with it.”
“What?” said the lawyer. I exit the office and stand on a balcony overlooking the Los Angeles skyline as dusk settles in, walking over to the short wall seperating myself and a sixty foot drop. The lawyer grabs hold of the door and nods.
“You're not afraid of heights are you?” I say.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You know what else titanium can do?”
“What?” he whispers, lips turning blue.
“It can turn a man invisible.” I say, taking a potion from my pocket and drinking it's contents. I watch the lawyer look directly at me in astonishment.
“Padre? Padre?” he says. I creep towards him. “Where've you gone man?” I grab him by both wrists and begin to pull him. He yells. “Stop! Stop!” I pull him towards the balcony and begin to climb over.
“See you in hell!” I scream as I pull him over the edge.

E-cig review

Like many other smokers I can't help but begin to feel the adverse effects smoking has had to my health. I struggle to run up the stairs, I cough in the morning, I sometimes don't like it and generally wonder what I'm trying to achieve in life. After trying to quit a handful of times with various methods in the style of Wile E. Coyote, I have decided that smoking is going to be a lifelong habit for me. But what if I could smoke a robot? Or maybe look like I was from the future? All of this could be achieved through smoking. But not in the sense of burning plants, but electricity and liquid. Smoking for the new millennium has arrived with the advent of electronic cigarette machines, or e-cigs for short.

The process of smoke delivery is quite simple. A lithium ion battery cylinder is attached to a short cartomiser in which a mixture of Propylene Glycol and flavouring is ignited through a heated lattice, vaporising the e-liquid and delivering a lungful of cloud gently into the body. This vapour is itself made up of hydrogen, oxygen and nicotine, a much more benign substance than the old fashioned cigarette or cigar. It dissipates quickly in the air and remains odourless, allowing e-smokers to puff away happily anywhere in the world. Now that sciencey bit is out of the way I'll get on with the reviews! I have chosen a collection of starter kits from a variety of suppliers and spent the afternoon trying them out.

JACVAPOUR V1P PCC STARTER KIT

This e-cig is a handy little device. It's just a little bigger than your average cigarette and when you puff away it feels like a genuine smoke! The end of mine has a blue LED in it, which is cool. Makes me feel like Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. I often smoke my V1P quite happily at work, at home or relaxing by the sea. The 'juice' or PPG liquid is quite tasty. I got watermelon, bubblegum and mocha flavour. I can mix and match the various liquid in the style of a kind of alchemist. This is more steam-punk than cyber-punk! I have tested this kit to great extent and highly recommend it to the casual e-smoker.

E-LITES E-PRO 4 E-CIGARETTE KIT

What more can I say, this is a fantastic starter kit. It comes with a USB charger, not one but two battery packs, 32MB of disk space and a special black cloth to clean your e-cig. Sadly the flavours I received turned out blank, so taking a hit was like washing my mouth with diluted milk. Still, this e-cig really packs a punch! It can deliver over 23mg of smoke in each puff, making this little thing into seeming like something better than it first appeared! I rate this kit 3/5.

APOLLO SMART LITES 4400 ELECTRO-CIG KIT

The 4400 is the ultimate in vapour tech, infusing each bauble of liquid with a tiny hint of flavour amongst the great lungfuls of black vapour. I tried making a cocaine tincture by dissolving 2g of the white stuff in a VG based liquid over a two day period. This thing was like smoking crack, and quickly ruined the small bauble that came with the kit. Still, I highly rate this experience.

NU-SMOKE 60/40: THE REVENGE STARTER KIT

Nu-smoke 60/40: The Revenge starter kit is a surprisingly unsatisfying piece of mechanical engineering. American boffins have been tinkering away at this new type of e-cig for the last few years, creating an energy efficient vape that delivers both satisfying hits and versatility. Customisation is key in the 60/40, with different cases coming with the kit as if they were important. It comes with several different mouth pieces, batteries and half a metre of ethernet cable, although I'm unsure why. I smoked this e-cig underwater whilst searching for scrap metal and found it held up, though didn't work after a major car accident. A poor show by the Nu-smoke team, though shows great promise. Might be worth purchasing this one for the ipadness of early adoption.

LIBERTY FLIGHT LITE XP PRO KIT

What more can I say, this is a fantastic starter kit. I took a toke of this sweet smoke and thought I had reached Nirvana. I imagined the great Ganesh covered from head to toe in the finest golden finery, his red skin seeming to glow from within like the underside of a finger covering the sun. With one tusk broken and the other proud, he speaks to me in Hindi.
"I don't understand." I say. The vision dissipates. I am alone.
I give this starter kit 5/5.