(Image: LauraAnglin via Flickr)

Originally published on Deviant Art

The Architect stood, admiring his creation. The blood, sweat, and tears that had gone into the structure were immeasurable. Well, technically they could be measured, he supposed. All that would be needed was some sort of drainage system to collect the fluids. But really, to what end?

The Architect shifted his thoughts back to more important things — simply beholding his greatest work.

‘Beautiful!’

‘Magnificent!’

‘Cutting-edge!’

‘Innovative use of new materials!’

That was how all the critics had described it.

Well, almost all. One guy described the work as, ‘An unprecedented vulgar atrocity that accelerates our society’s decline into barbarism.’

That heathen stopped complaining after the structure was slightly renovated, so the alterations must have resolved his issue with the design.

The Architect stood in exactly the right place to take in the full grandeur of the edifice. The beautiful structure glistened in the sparkling sunlight. It oozed and writhed. The patchwork matrices of interlinked limbs, bolted together, gave the building a brutal, intimidating ambiance.

The structure excelled not only in aesthetics. It was also technically advanced, using the most energy-efficient bio-tech ever invented.

He nodded his head, his serious expression spreading into a tight-lipped smile. He created this glorious structure, and soon the Oligarch would decree an annual pilgrimage to visit it. A testament to the virtue of hard work and endurance for the benefit of the nation.

The putrid smell of formaldehyde decay violated the Architect’s nostrils. He grimaced, blocked his nose with his sleeve, and breathed through the fabric. Unfortunate that the wind changed direction.

The Architect turned away from his creation, shoulders slumped, and took long strides to escape the grasping tendrils of rot. The bad smell was the only problem they never solved. Maybe if they’d had more time, more funding from the government. Should it not have been perfect at all costs, this Man-Made Structure Made of Men?

~~~~~~

Eyesight breaks through his fevered delirium. Eyelashes flicker, but eyelids  clamp tightly against the cornea-etching brightness.

At last his free-will — contextual freedom |Ha Ha| not really a laugh at all a sub-vocal cackle |Ha| — overcomes his reflexes, allowing him to see.

He regrets his decision. Convulsing, he rails against this nightmare his eyelids no longer conceal.

What the fuck is going on!

Is it a thought? Is it shouting? It should be shouting because his muscles strain against the thick bolts and wires that pierce his flesh and bind him to the others. His dried-out mouth is open, and air from his lungs wheezes out.

Shouting? SHOUTING! What is shouting?

The convulsion ceases. His body falls limp again. Light-sensitivity, constant dehydration, insomnia, delirium, cramping. He knows these new friends to be side-effects of the drugs. What violation here isn’t? The grim reaper would bring him peace without the drugs, but no grim-reaper. Just grim. Got it on discount! Ha.

Except the man bolted to his right arm. Death came for his right-arm bolt-buddy. Poor bastard hadn’t moved for days.

Moved? Moving to Alaska would be lovely. It’s cold there. Less rotting. Less of the bad smell. Numb too.

He notices a tiny insect way down on the ground. It stands still, looking up at the atrocity he forms a part of. It’s not too small as to be unrecognisable. His leg breaks free from one of the higher parts of the building, and his heel descends, crushing the bug. The ultimate critique of the Architect’s work.

The Critic stops convulsing. He feels additional pressure in his arms and one of his legs, and notices that he hangs off-balance. Wonderful tidings! His right leg is now free. Unfortunately his foot is nowhere to be seen, and blood spurt-spurt-spurts from the tattered remains of his lower leg, spattering those below.

The Critic looks back down at the fleeing Architect-bug. Disappointment! His foot must have missed it. Only scared it away. What the fuck! The Architect ate his foot!

Oooh. Dizzy.

Spare Kidney (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

If my body and mind was a corporation, I’d be undergoing a restructuring. NeilCorp won’t be disposing of any of its assets (I don’t care if I only really need one kidney), but some thought-processes have been made redundant and have had to be let go.

NeilCorp doesn’t offer much of a retrenchment package, so we hope there won’t be some sort of mass litigation by those who we’ve had to let go. Mostly the Engineers, Consultants, and Photographers.

Part of the restructuring has been to make this site a repository for my short-fiction, along with the Commitment Man serial novel. I’m being a little sneaky. The new content is more likely to be short fiction than Commitment Man itself, but it’s better than nothing.

I suppose it isn’t really surprising. I haven’t put up any new content.

Just in case you happen to be following my RSS feed, you might be interested to note that I’ve put up a new header. Click through and have a look. It’s still rubbish, but it’s better than what was up there before.

Now all I need to do is write more C-Man content.

A few, previously loitering, Cube Farm dwellers scattered before him, scurrying back to their designated work places in the open-plan Cube Farm labyrinth. The Delegator gave a lopsided grin as he observed them scratching around, pretending to be working on extremely important tasks that, until moments before, had required them to stand around in the passage chatting.

The Delegator closed, and deliberately locked the Cube Farm Office Door. A unique door for a unique office. Unique things were clearly labelled in Cube Farm, and so the door had a beautifully embossed sign that read “THE CUBE FARM OFFICE DOOR.” Above the door, on the permanent walls of the office, was another similarly constructed sign that had a slightly shorter message: “THE CUBE FARM OFFICE.”

The Delegator ambled down the central passage way, looking left and right into the pokey cubicles, constructed of the highest quality compressed wood-chips. Cube Farm office workers (a misnomer really, since the only office in Cube Farm belonged to the Delegator) received only the best office furniture manufactured by the Cube Farm Corporation’s factories. The rest of the world paid top dollar for those misery-inducing surroundings, while the Cube Farm’s head office received dismay and disillusionment at cost-price.

One of the workers pried himself out of his cubicle, by seemingly dislocating his shoulder with a wince, and then clicking it back into place once he stood in the passage. He stumbled over and said, “Excuse me sir. May I take a moment of your time?”

Irritated by this interruption of his journey, the Delegator replied, “You already have. Don’t you have any work to do?”

“Uh. Yes sir, but that’s just the thing. I struggling to get anything done because I don’t have any desk space. I can hardly breathe when sitting down at the PC. Is it possible to make my cubicle slightly bigger?”

The Delegator stared at the young man for a while, not saying anything. Just looking. The young man smiled sheepishly. The Delegator stared. The young man cleared his throat. The Delegator stared. The young man pulled at his tight scratchy collar and tie. Sweaty beads formed on his forehead. At the point he seemed to be about to dislocate his shoulder in order to climb back into his cubicle, the Delegator started to talk.

“When you buy an Economy Class plane ticket, you get a seat on the plane. It’s not a big seat and there’s not a lot of leg-room. Sometimes you get the middle seat, and an obese woman who should have paid for two seats, sits on the aisle seat next to you. On the window seat, on your other side, is some skinny, pimply guy, with bad personal hygiene and a bladder infection, who needs to go to the toilet every 10 minutes. You sit in that seat for 8 hours or more and you suck it up and don’t complain. And you paid money for that.

“Here at Cube Farm, We! Pay! You! Get back to work!”

Continuing on his way down the passage, the Delegator thought back to when he had first established Cube Farm, and had considered calling it Rows-And-Rows-And-Rows-of-Desks, but couldn’t settle on the number of rows of desks. Rows-And-Rows-, or Rows-And-Rows-And-Rows-And-Rows-? It was a major dilemma at the time. In the end, Cube Farm was just the most obvious name. Cube Farm did, after all, make Cube Farms.

The Delegator didn’t walk very far along before reaching the Parking Bay. It also had a lovely sign to designate it’s uniqueness, although unlike the office sign, this one was on a pole embedded in the floor. In the Parking Bay was the Golf Cart. The Delegator got into the cart, happily fondled the steering wheel before turning the ignition and kicking the motor into life. Cube Farm was a big place – far too big to walk around. With the Cube Farm Office situated right in the centre of the place, the Delegator would have a lengthy 15 minute walk to get to the edges. Thus, the necessity of his personal Golf Cart.

He revved the engine gratuitously (custom made petrol-fueled golf-cart – none of that pansy electrical bunny-hugger crap) to annoy the adjacent dwellers, and zipped down one of the main passageways towards the cube where Manuel Drone laboured his agonised, claustrophobic, days away.

I’ve settled on the theme to use for this ignoble venture I’m embarking on. I’ve taken care to ensure that it supports next and previous links on posts in order to make it easier to browse through the gripping tale I am about¹ to unleash on the internet.

The theme also has page navigation along the top, which works better for me than a column of links to pages down the side of the site.

Inconveniently the theme supports a custom header. The default picture for the theme isn’t really appropriate for Commitment Man, so I’ve replaced it with something even less fitting. But hey, the story is still in construction so, the header might as well be too.

This is where you, the reader come in. Hopefully the graphic-design-talented reader. Make me a header and email it to the address in the current, malformed outrage up on the front page. The scope of the project is broad, and I’ll consider anything (mostly because I’m not expecting any entries). Think along the lines of man escaping from the corporate rat-race labyrinth that is a cube farm, and throw in a rodent of some sort for good measure.

The header I like the most becomes The Header, unless the entries are all on par with what I’ve already put up there. In that case I’ll need to make another plan. You need to be willing to release your art with a creative commons, attribution-non-commercial or less restrictive license.

¹ “About” is something that is nearly going to happen, but how near are we talking? Certainly not ångström-scale² proximity, so don’t get too excited just yet.

² Yes yes. Mixing and mashing temporal and spacial measurements in my metaphor. Leave me alone, I brought my poetic licence along.

We hope and pray that the serial novel will be better.

The Adventures of Commitmentman was originally intended to be a comic strip, but I suck at drawing, and no-one else volunteered. We’re all talk and no action over here at the Commitment Man brains trust.

It would appear that I also suck at writing humorous comic-strip dialogue, and I can’t blame the brains trust for that, since I came up with this abortion myself. The idea was to introduce the Delegator and Niall Commit characters, with some hinting at the future involvement of gerbils.