I am a MACROHARD employee. Bona fida, absolutely legit. What would the people who raised me think? What the hell, I'm not interested in INFOPOLITICS. I've got nothing to lose playing along with whatever game they're playing with me. Why not? I sure as hell didn't want to go back to trouble shooting monitors in my rat shed of a dwelling unit. Here, I'm one of the elite. They gave me an office ten times the size of my old housing unit (with a matching apartment), three custom designed Singaporian luxevehicles, an unlimited MICROCREDIT consumer magnet at my disposal, and three dinner party invitations to choose from every night. I even get to wear the official company fedora and wear safe sex underwear. This is truly a gilded world, opulence city. I'm wearing all new synthetics, and if I do say so myself, I'm looking pretty cool.
I'm INFOHIP; which from what I understand is a status exclusively reserved for a select few MACROHARD employees. I have access to any information, and I mean literally anything. I am more than "in the know," I have a validated drivers license in the main intersection of the information highway itself. It doesn't get more privileged than this. I have the "keys" to the files of each and every person in the NATIONSTATES. Give me a name and I could tell you whom they slept with, what they ate for breakfast, and how many pubic hairs they have. It's true: God is in the details.
To be INFOHIP meant everyone treated you like a God. They knew you had instant access to the most intimate details of their lives. Being INFOHIP was the only kind of hip. Information was all that mattered anymore. You were either in the know or you were nothing. It's only now I realize how I didn't know shit before. What a wasted fuckin' life I had. I can't believe it. You really can't know how dark your pit is until someone pulls you out for a while.
My office has it all. My titanium desk top is impregnated with memory circuits, advice CDs, and is biocompatible to my DNA readings. Half the crap in the office is biocompatible; it's unbelievable. The damn walls know me better than a biological mother ever could. The floor is fully integrated with the latest environmental adjustment texture controls. Sometimes I kick off my shoes and tell the floor to be sand so I can feel the granules in between my toes. Whenever someone comes in the room I don't like, I'd make the floor granite and icy cold. If they complain, I tell them the controls are out. Even the damn bathrooms are biosensitive. One drop of urine on the floor, and boy let me tell you, you would hear about it.
I'm basically a PR guy now. People sent me photos and designs for MACROHARD advertising billboards. I look them over and act as if I know what I am talking about, make a few minor suggestions, and then start the process over again. Managerial algorithms are such a snap once you try 'em. Act knowledgeable while observing the situation, give an order--any order, ensure compliance, reward or punish, then start over. Ad infinitum.
MACROHARD doesn't seem so bad. I mean, I knew they did some bad things and all, but maybe they aren't the ogres I've made them out to be. They're pretty nice to me now. Everything here smells clean. Maybe that's what I like the most: there are no unexpected odors, no IN YOUR FACE pissy smells, no decaying protein, no burning organic leftovers. I haven't worn a nose clip once since I've been here. No one here wears nose clips. There are even multicolored organic plants with sweet smelling leaves here--incredible what gene engineers can do these days.
Will seems to have taken a liking to me. I think I've become some sort of Pygmallion project for him. Probably because I look harmless enough. My dislike for people doesn't come through my face the way it does with most people. When I say, "YES SIR," he thinks I'm really thinking he is a "sir." I don't trust him, but then I've never trusted people with synthetic hair implants. I know it's supposed to be the rage, but it does nothing for me. I'm proud of my thinning hair. Will isn't what you would think of as a typical information oliarch; he is more someone who's been INFOHIP for a long time, maybe too long. The INFOHIP can be so arrogant. Just because they know everything they think they know everything, if you know what I mean. In a way he's been polluted with knowledge in the sense he knows too many secrets. He's lost his innocence and then lost it again a thousand times. Confidential info seeps through his skin and gets on everything he touches. Will is so loaded with secrets they'll keep coming out of him even after he dies, like growing fingernails on a corpse.
No one would say Will is a handsome guy, although he must think so. I can read the genetic alterations all over his face like a faded road map. Facial alterations don't fool me though. I can read people's characters by the way they move their eyebrows, by the way they smile, by the way their foreheads react to news. Gate's boyish face says: WARNING--ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. His eyes were shocked by something at an early age and he's never gotten over it. I'd like to know what.
Will frequently calls me up into his think tank room. He's always swallowing ENDOSTIM tablets (artificial endorphin stimulators) and barking at his voice recorders with that high pitched voice of his, what to me were meaningless strings of words and incoherent sentences. I couldn't help but act servile around him. I didn't understand how one person could amass so much power and wealth. One day he called me in and touched my arm as I walked into the room. His fingers were ice cold. I mentally noted the spot on my skin he touched so I could be sure to clean myself there.