THREE
1
I was born in a squadron of intelligent, unmanned, stealth glider-bombers that cruised the earth forever. On-board neuro-digital, idiot-precognitive systems, networked throughout the formation, predicted the weather on a moment-by-moment basis, all over the world, and kept the gliders aloft by using today's best air currents to get to tomorrow's.
Thousands of these squadrons decorated the skies over thousands of different cities at once, giving populations their final taste of awe -- and the supreme consolation prize for having put up so well with the complex bullshit of being.
2
When I was old enough, and ground-based expert systems indicated that the planet was ready for me, I crawled into the co-pilot's seat and pulled the eject lever, as I'd been trained to do on TV airplane school. Instantly, a precise dance of explosive bolts rocketed the seat and me into space. My chute deployed, and below, all life lay spread open before me -- like a nymphomaniac.
3
When I landed, there was already a job waiting for me at Company Zero -- a really pissed-off, multi-disciplinary, multi-modal, multi-tasking, multi-sexual, underground, pirate, gypsy, hegemonic, corporate behemoth, that spanned the globe but couldn't be found when someone wanted to arrest its president or make it stop.
It didn't have a comm number or a street address or an ether name. It didn't have a Tax/Security ID or encrypted password logo.
4
I was hired to be one of the many bogus employees of Company Zero, whose only task was to circulate endlessly through the bars and restaurants of a town or city, to give the false impression that our corporate headquarters was somewhere nearby.
In reality, headquarters was randomly relocated many times each month, sometimes to places tucked deep in volcanic mountainsides or to caverns under the sea, where even nuclear explosives couldn't penetrate.
For the non-bogus workers, this meant a new office in a different building or a different city or a different hemisphere or a different world or dimension altogether, every few days.
Appearances, brand name loyalties, friends and families also had to be changed at approximately the same rate.
5
When I was finally asked to leave the Company Zero apprenticeship program, one day, no specific reason was given, other than a "re-thinking of issues of corporate culture," and a "necessary reallocation of resources, based on unexpected fiscal shortfalls. Or something."
6
I immediately joined the "Smiling Saint Genocide: Mafia Bitch" Project. Its meetings consisted mostly of its chairman complaining that his monkey had a laptop on its back.
When I got home from these meetings, I'd usually learn that a neighbor or roommate had been dismembered and boiled up in a soup and fed to some community group unbeknownst, and they'd all loved it.
7
Then I dialed a wrong number, but the therapist who answered couldn't resist running me through a battery of standardized psychological tests, anyway.
A few hours later, she called back.
"After checking and re-checking and cross-checking your results with all my colleagues and mentors and even my students," she said, "It's clear to me and to everyone else, that what you have is simply an extreme case of being multi-, poly-, ultra-, para-, super-, extra-, mega-fucked-up. -- And that's the optimistic assessment."
She told me I'd better do something fast or risk evaporating on contact.
"There is only one place," she said, "That even claims to be able to deal with people like you."
[ End: Part 1 excerpt ]
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