This Topos
Thank you to the Nothing.Here team for having me on last week, it was a pleasure. (if you’re not here because of them and/or don’t know them you should check their newsletter out.)
No rants or links this week folks, time for me to subject you to my terrible prose. I have a few texts and a bajillion ideas noted down but I have actually very few finished stories, short or long.
I don’t know why but these last days felt like a time for short stories, for me to read or share. Something to be read while cleaning up the house or in public transports, I don’t know.
This is basically a shamelessly exagerated riff on my current mood and work experience as crystallised in this image made by [Evgeny Zubkov], a depiction of “fully automated luxury quarantine” as [Eirini Malliaraki] put it.
It’s just a riff but I’m sure I can find some convoluted way to justify this big stylised Vent. I don’t know, tell yourself this is an exorcism for a slow rotting future. This is an image that won’t realize itself because i’ve cast it out there. We can all laugh at its absurdity and act to make sure it doesn’t realize itself.
I also feel the need to make clear that I am not the narrator or the protagonist, I’m the author. This is not a True Story.
TODAY
Wake up at 6 AM to find 7 apps trying to kiss my ass only to better rob it. I post a meme about it on the groupchat and the others lol at it.
I pick up satchels and container and go downstairs. I get to my mailbox and some fucker has stolen my gloves. Lock’s completely fucked. I take the bills out. The filter on my mask gives me a green reading of the pollution levels, it never gets to yellow these days. Traffic is a memory.
Hands itching like hell as I get out and into the streets, fucking company disinfectant gnaws at the skin. I try and get the rating of the stuff down on the online store by spamming 0 star reviews, might need five or four more fake accounts for that to pass through, not like I got better things to do. My bike is still there, the lock has a bit less paint on it, some scraps here and there but it holds strong. I screw the wheel on, fast and tight.
Smiling bitterly at the letters sharp-penned at the bottom of the frontbasket :
High tech low pay.
BEFORE.
I meet Sacha in some consumer service comment section where I’m ranting about the lame design of a podcast app that lies to us by making us believe we own the episodes we pay for but everytime there’s an update or a buyout by another company our episode catalogue gets rebooted and we gotta buy them shits again because it’s a renting system disguised as a seller of goods-…
Anyways she comments under my venting event because I’ve typed “I’m in the freezing cold trying to find my episodes and all i see is the stupid fucking mascot shitting me some corp-speak about buying new episodes but I’ve already bought them!!”
“Wait, you’re still going out there?
“Yeah, I’m in delivery.”
“Do you have signal ?”
She PMs me the minute after : “Are you in a union?”
She’s a teleworker in tech development and infosec. Always in between gigs.
We bond over the terrible layout of the app. I tell her about my job, she tells me about hers. She wonders if I ever delivered to her but she doesn’t live in my zone.
We try to talk videogames for a hot minute : the one (passion-project) she works on and the ones she plays, I don’t know any of the names she gives me, to her resigned disappointment.
When I list her my favorite phonegames she cringes a bit.
She’s fun.
TODAY.
The parking lot at the back of “GoodFoodDood” : Nearly empty, two bikes and a deliverybot parked there. I recognise some people at the command-line, nodding at them briefly enough that the camera sees it as ordinary politeness rather than a comradly gesture.
I get my phone out while the people in the ghostkitchen get my deliveries in order. The name of the chat is “Ahmed’s meme zone” with a picture of the server’s dashing owner flexing his shiny red motocycle, now dumped and replaced. Other folks are there, exchanging messages about bike-thieves and scavengers.
“Two men spotted on next parking with bikechains and cutters, careful. They’re cowards so they won’t try anybody whose not alone but they’re careful. It’s their time of day so don’t go near them except if you are several.”
Heron’s english limps behind his experience as a worker and organisor, one day my dumb and prejudiced brain intuits that he probably spent more time surviving than learning english and that’s why he’s been in this job for longer than any other english graduates I met over the seasons. Later I learn he’s an exchange student himself who’s been in the getting-by business for as long as he’s been in academia. One outlast the other.
I check my backpocket and my knife is there alright then I park near the other bikes. One is an old mountainbike like mine, the other is a velo-city, its use(r)enter who has two Speedylivery satchels full of orders at his feet is desperately trying to convince the bot on the other end of his phone that his payment has definitely pulled through. He hangs up in anger and gets on the bike but the smartlock won’t move ; the vehicle falls noisily to the ground.“fucking trash.”
The camera turns to him and locks there for a good minute but lets him slip out of view as he gets his satchels off the ground and walks away, vaping angry clouds of concrete white into the air. The eye comes back to gaze at us, all on our phones.
My podcast comes to an end at the same time the cashier gets my orders out, I stack them in my first thermal bag in one go. Tip-tapping on my phone to find the right itinerary. A cook gets out of the kitchen, a bunch of fuming pizzaboxes on one hand, a strange case in the other, she puts them all into the deliverybot’s compartment, and let it scan the QR code on the ticket before closing its trunk and letting it roll away.
A woman who wasn’t there before gets out of a building’s shadow and starts walking with the machine, the clear outline of a telescopic baton in her right pocket, her gel-reinforced security gloves shining under the sun as she pats the machine’s side ; Deliverybots are never alone these days, they get fucked up too easily.
Rumor has it some don’t even get beat up for their load but for their lithium batteries. Stupidest idea ever, these machines. Not cost-effective enough to replace us all but their presence is enough reason to lower our fucking commissions.
Rates aren’t that much disturbed because the bots are actually pretty slow compared to us. Then again since all the mess got started (and go worse) dudes figured out that between the new security systems in supermarkets, the new moving security forces to accompany delivery-bots and the strenght of delivery drivers they were more likely to win a fight against skinny fuckers on bikes than security guards. I don’t blame them, if my bank account had clotured at the wrong time I would probably be doing the same, doesn’t mean I’ll let them try me.
SOME DAYS AGO
She talks to me about her sister. Still trapped in the country next door, students retreat interrupted.
“She sends me letters because her computer has been thrashed and the library is closed so she can’t use that either. It’s…
“Horrible ?”
“Sometimes I forget she’s over there and I think about something else and then I remember her and i feel like garbage.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault."
It’s not hers either. I wanna say. But I want to say it so long after our conversation is over that I’m afraid I’ll just reopen wounds too fresh to be handled by my dumb slow brain.
“It’s not your fault” : I let these words slip into my future, hoping I won’t have to use them but knowing better.
NOW AND THEN
You’d think, with the state of shit being so down the fucking gutter, bougie folks would put some efforts in protecting the people who bring them their food and stuff but nah. The point is not to have a thing that’s durable, the point is lowering costs. Protections is cost, wages is cost. Making sure one driver in particular can keep doing deliveries is cost, plenty of people ready to join the game once a seat gets vacant.
The last wildstrike I was a part of was way before all of this, when the news were filled with a constellation of horrors, not just one big thing, you know what i mean ? That was really something, when we demonstrated through main street, our faces covered in respirator masks, helmets, caps, glasses and visors. Then, we were a procession of revving engines and traffic jamming bikes, occupying the streets. We organised a concerto of bells and klaxons, making our presence obvious, funny and disturbing to those who sometimes used our services in the hopes they’d relay the annoyance through their own channels and screens, to both their friends and the people we worked for.
A procession slow enough for the pace of the pedestrians we were joined by, either unaware people who thought the spectacle was funny or reactive activist-types who sensed a Cause to bring awareness to. Formed, informed militants and struggle-tourists ; those who only came to demonstrations to have a beer with their buddies and take pictures of the angry cops. A few of them covered their faces, scattered and dispersed anons in a flow of workers they didn’t know. Porters, carriers, deliverers, folks in rags and low-cost tactical shit, first hand masks and makeshift phoneholders, nonbranded bikelocks strapped across shoulders or across handlebars, watching out in anticipation of the moment the pigs would decide we had come too far.
I had a feeling, with all this mass around me, as we made our way to CityCenter. The feeling that something was happening, that I had a part in it, that I could help.
I saw smiling faces of people I only talked to a few times before, I chanted with the others the slogans we’d prepared and the ones we came up with on the spot. I felt moved and moving.
AND SACHA
She asks a bit about my family. I don’t have much to say and she doesn’t press.
She tells me more about her sister, about her parents in the countryside. About friends she doesn’t see anymore and those she sees everyday for happy hour livestreams (when she got the time for those, anyways).
She’s fun but she’s a lot.
She’s fun but I feel like a spectator or a funny commentator of her life. Like she’s the one doing things and I’m on the sideline making astute and funny (i wish) commentary on everything she does, and the weirdest part is that she plays the game.
She doesn’t try to bring me into it but why does she keep coming back to talk to me anyways ?
I don’t know, I don’t know that she knows, I don’t know that s…
Actually she’d probably tell me if she knew.
BEFORE NOW.
We didn’t have a union, we technically couldn’t have a union in fact and she understood that.
Still, she saw what we’d done. Our effective organising, our demands and the concessions we got, one of them being for some companies to stop their mass hiring strategies which caused worker-oversaturation in some zones and not enough commissions to go around, in this line of work more folks to work in the same zone means longer working hours for everybody because you’re getting paid by the piece instead of by the hour(it used to be different too!). We also somehow managed to snatch the status of Worker instead of self-employed contractors, that was a big one.
Small victories but a lot of it done on our own, We didn’t even associate ourselves to the [REDACTED]’s precarious workers committee. Sacha was impressed, hers was a cell of a bigger union of techworkers trynna bargain better rates, productivity shit, bullshit emergency measures with their employers. Something hard to do when the 100+ workers of her workplace never saw each other’s faces anymore. All scattered across town, in their appartments.
Sometimes I almost felt like she was trying to busy herself with my problems because she felt powerless with her own.
“This is the time when you’d have a real power to block things.”
I texted back almost immediately : “This is the time when doing a strike would fuck shit up tremendously, more like.”
“Precisely.”
I sighed, typing fast enough to answer before she could add anything : “We can’t afford to go without money, you can see the shit going on right now, a strike would just mean losing support from the only people who donated to our “Not-Union” and had our backs.“
“A one-day strike then. Make a show of strenght, at least, if you’re not gonna use your Opt-Out rights.”
“What opt-out rights? We’re not employees.”
“You know what I mean. There’s social safety nets and solidarity networks being put together right now, there’s people trying to feed themselves right fucking now they’re not gonna let you down if they see you need help And even then, you know at the moment you want to stop striking the bosses will have work for you right away. The point is raising your commision rates enough that you can survive better.”
It takes me a bit of time to write this one because I have to dodge a lone car and stop at a red light :
“Nobody is in the condition to stop. All our time is spent working or taking care of our families, I don’t even know why you’re talking to me it’s not like I’m the leader of the Thing.”
“Who is then ?”
“Nobody”
“Didn’t you have delegates for the dialogue with the companies?”
“Guy changed cities, and he wasn’t a leader really, just a dude who knew a lot.”
She doesn’t type for a long time. I do a delivery. A screaming ambulance passes me by to get to a postal office car, plastered nose-first into a building, cracks on the windshield, blood on the paper. Earphone silence and muffled voices. The clear ringtone almost startles me :
“Postal Service is fucked too, if you’re wondering.”
She can’t hear my shallow laughter, I type something :
“I believe you.”
“You could try and talk to them about their opt-out rights.”
“Why don’t you do it :)“
I pedal like there’s shooters after me, getting out of the street faster than i got into it. She doesn’t talk for a long time and then dumps me a block of text about workers solidarity and the need to come together. I admire her prose, she must’ve written great speeches for her local group. I read the first few lines and then put my phone in my pocket.
A cop passes by, Law says bicyclists are not to have earbuds in while driving, I take one out. He stops me for a tempereature check, the heat sensor like a less threatening but not less intrusive gun against my forehead. I’m clear, he lets me through and instantly forgets about me.
I do another delivery, then another, a banner has been spread out on the face of the building screaming “WE THANK OUR HEROES” in red letters, the client doesn’t tip. Another notification makes me look at my screen: Sacha.
“No one is keeping you safe!”
My fingers type, absentminded : “You think I don’t know that?”
“I’m sorry”
“We’ve been here before, this is the same shit but more.”
“I’m sorry but it’s not the same, not at all.”
Her second text comes up at the same time I send mine :
Her : “You can’t just wait for the ghost of “global immunity” to make itself real, we have to act now. Not wait.”
Me : “To us it is. What we try right now is just to keep going and maybe later we’ll think about the great proletarian revolution but right now it’s food in belly time, not fighting the power time.”
Me again : “What are you doing for action ?”
“I told you all about it before. We’re walking out, soon enough. Shit, the company we work at provides service for some of the companies you work for! We could have a united effort there and then, instead of everybody in their own corner doing their stuff and not much else.”
I type faster than i can think : “We’re not doing “not much else”. This is not a fucking vacation. I risk my life every fucking day. I don’t want to risk more than that.”
Pause. Sacha answers : “I know and I’m sorry, but things are not coming back to normal. They never will. And even when things were “normal” it’s always been the same : we fight or they fuck us, you know that.”
“I know I don’t wanna think about this rn, got 5 orders going”
I “leave the chat”.
Leave : Like this is a place I escape from rather than something I pick up and throw away into the future. Like the stupidest fucking boomerang.
A pedestrian looks at me weird for chuckling under my mask.
AHMED’S MEME ZONE
“Souleymane got beat up.”
“What’s up?”
“Spit on a pig, cop got mad.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Not his first time tho, he can’t contain himself”
“That’s not the fucking point, he can’t go to a hospital.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“What he doing ?”
“Hooked him up with an unemployed medic, guy got his appartment transformed into a fucking cabinet when folks found out he could help a bit.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah, except he doesn’t get paid.”
“Pay him then.”
“I got bills too, my man”
“Sorry.”
“That’s alright, I’m just angry cuz I got pigs problems myself. One mf in particular, everytimes I pass through, acts all high and mighty, asks me to get to him so he can see my ID and certificate, then screams not to get too close, “social distance” and shits. Crazy.”
“Asshole”
“Then I get an order the day after for bread. Imagine that: just bread, none else. And guess who’s the fucking client ?”
“Damn.”
“motherfuckers call you a superspreader for breathing in the same street as them but will still be happy to get their fucking bread delivered smh. He ain’t even tip.”
“I mean that’s a cop lol, what’d you expect ?”
“I just don’t like his face, man. In fact I like none of this shit, this is driving me crazy.”
“Someone stole your stuff again ? Ubereats can give you some shit if you’re in the right zone”
“Yeah shits the right word, like their fucking sanigel that bites the hands, and they don’t give masks, they just give you money and tell you good luck. I’ve had to knit my own mask, that shit takes time man.”
“They don’t give a shit, once they’ve given their 5 euros a head they can act as if they’ve solved the problem and then it’s on us to be clean.”
“It’s always on us.”
“Yeah, gtg see ya.”
“Stay safe out there.”
RUMORS
It used to be we mostly had food delivery jobs, as freelancers. Now UPS and DHL got themselves some new competition ; speedylivery, EasyLiving, IKEA-hjul, even Uber and Tesla when they collaborated on their stupid bots : “trynna disrupt that bringing shit to people market”.
The invisible internal borders of the cities, the “1km radius-perimeter for allowed circulation”, those made themselves real in shark-like police patrols, lone cars of two or three agents just looking for civilians to harass. We didn’t escape their eyes, far from it. It all depended on if Officer Prosciutto wanted to see your license, your permit, your hands, your eyes, your mask, your certificate ; wasting your time, wishing you’d talk back, or not. Cops are easily bored so I guess this is their sport now, pick your ordinary criminal.
Then again there’s rumors going on, and as always they’re as imaginative as they’re unreliable. One was about a secret app, a secret company, a secret something that delivered items you couldn’t get through regular channels, because the items in question were high risks or plain illegal. That’s the part of the rumor that got the wildest with speculations in the most shitpostey parts of our group-channels ; gun-delivery, drug-delivery, information exchanges disguised as hardware transport and logistics, state secrets stacked in packed lunches.
Bunch of bullshit, I guess the gist of the rumor was something-something anonymous encrypted transactions, something-something no-contact dead-drop deliveries, “dropgangs”, no need for tips because the salary was so far above minimum wage that you could do two deliveries and be set for the whole year.
Proper capitalist employment with shady characteristics, wish-fulfillment for the few angry-hungry people who didn’t have enough experience to dream of a different job, yes it was a youth thing, obviously. Fully-automated luxurious delivery. And the story got associated to some newbies in the profession, their image was striking after all to those who’d been there for a while : Reckless youth who believed themselves immune to the virus, annoyed by the quarantine they went out and aboout passing as delivery-drivers, techwear ninjas on dirtbikes and rollers, scouring the streets in silence and style. Pompous bastards who wouldn’t answer back when you said Hi, delivering their shits to Masque of The Red Death style gated communities who thought themselves free yet doomed. Trapped but still in control.
Rumor and gossip, obviously. Then again that rumor would probably make itself real if it got to the ear of the right deep-pocketed VCs. For now, all Big Money seemed intent on doing was exploiting the absence of human presence and the breaks in workflow as much as possible while trying to salvage what they could of their assets from the cascading crisis unfolding.
I’m using big words but I don’t really get all the mess that got out (or in?) of where we are, where we’re going. It’s obvious that workers stopping work prevents bosses from generating value but that doesn’t stop some companies from fleeing the country. I guess I thought nationstates were stronger than just the money circulating through them but most in the Global North have caved in, the japanese tragedy, Africa’s descent, even the chinese government showed its ass by introducing a “gradual dequarantining” necessary to restart its economy, and don’t get me started on the USA.
Now all I see is absence of what was there before.
Absence of traffic means less accidents, means less money for insurances, means less money for cops trynna fine you, means less activity for cops who need their violence-kick, means more anxiety from cops, so fewer cases but probably more violent, means more homeless folks at risk, means more people in prison, means more deaths in prisons, means more agitation in prisons, means more agitations scattered in little cells, bubbles, houses, homes.
Everything happens even as the streets stay empty. It’s just a fucking cascade, it never stops, there’s too much moving too fast.
I feel like I’m drowning.
UNITED WE BARGAIN
When the text reaches me I’m on my way home and the day’s sun has fallen down a long time ago. I cycle through the streets, slow and steady, trying to let my legs rest as much as possible.
I check my phone as I get to my doorstep : Signal Notification. Sacha : “…”
The message : “[Group txt:] If you’re receiving this it’s that you’re on a list of people working in free-lance or gig jobs, who’re still working through this crisis. Lately I’ve been reaching out and talking with more people like you, and me. Part of the “essential workers”, if you’re reading this you’re a part of the people I trust as competent and informed about the mechanisms of different actions of strike, blockade or sabotage. I want us to have a conversation, plain and simple, about how we’re going to get out of this mess. Now this is something I’m doing under the frame of my syndicalist convictions, I want that clear. I’m not talking to you as a friend but as a potential comrade : someone with whom you can work towards a shared goal, if that sounds pompous I’m sorry I haven’t had my cheap beer of the day, I’ve been doing shitwork nonstop for 12 hours and I don’t have any Monster Energy left in my system. I’m just tired I want us all to get out of this bullshit.”
I read the entire message in one go and click the link to the chatroom without really thinking about it. There are other people there, I recognize some usernames I’ve seen online, a few work in other zones.
I put the key in the lock and get in, my eyes still fixed on the screen.
People chit-chat, waiting for more to join the conversation.
Sacha joins us an hour later. She speaks in small sentences, still tired ? I don’t ask. Everybody’s introduced, someone acts as voice-giver to make sure we don’t trip on each others trynna talk and read, someone acts as “time-master” to make sure we don’t take the time out of each other’s life (everybody gets turns of 2 minutes to talk).
I give a bit of info from the people I know. Not much else. There’s the usual arguments in favor of action and those against, some suggestions of resilience and solidarity projects that are parallel to the question and kinda already are consensus and I just watch them unfold, not saying anything. I stay static as they pass me by.
Finally a person who I’ve never met before who seems quite influent in their zone announces that all the people in her zone are “ready to strike but just need a plan. An idea that’s more certain than just stopping work. They don’t even need a guarantee, just a plan.”
Sacha : “That’s good. We can work with that. But I don’t have a plan of my own, the question is more of how we’re going to create one together. The first step is obviously to make a powermap of our targets, the weak points, the joints, contingency stuff, anything we can touch.”
Someone pulls out studies on the systems used by the delivery-apps and services, he manages to explain to us the wordy-stuff and we start to get a bit of an idea, though it still feels a bit vague to most. Some 6 or 7 people start to discuss more often that the rest, they talk AWS cloud infrastructure , Amazon RedShift, twilio and acronyms I don’t remember.
Some people (I) stay mute, knowing full well to let experts speak before but someone who hasn’t spoken since he joined the chat says : “if you’re gonna pull a high tech solution out of your pocket, i hope you can make it as normal-sounding as possible, we’re not all into this type of stuff, youknow.”
Silence.
One of the nerds starts to explain basics and we all listen. After an hour or so we’re all feeling a bit more confident as we realize there’s actually things to be done. The lesson becomes a brainstorm as more of us ask more of them direct questions on potential flaws.
An idea comes out of the brainstorm, another buds out of that one and quickly there’s a tree of potential events and planned blockages, an outgrowth that demands attention and action, as we’re all aware of the fragility of a strike.
Suddenly there’s energy, people go AFK only to come back less than an hour later with energetic : “I’ve convinced all the guys in my zone!” or “All in!” Or they take a longer time and quietly type the number of people they can muster with them.
The ones who go to bed first leave with pumped-up message dripping showers of emojis, like that uncle you got on facebook who always @ you in his joke publications. The rest establish a first draft of a plan and share it on all the (secure) channels we can. Then we let the idea take hold, and it does, so quickly!
A few days later, we surprise ourselves with the number of people ready to take action, even if we don’t conjure the entirety of the workforce, it would be ridiculous for the bosses to not pay attention to our numbers. The idea is to coordinate a telework strike for maintenance IT people with an “opt-out” from delivery workers in different zones.
No union-presence means this couldn’t be done just by printing out a pamphlet, we had to talk “face-to-face” with other folks, delve as little agitators into the most private delivery-memes group messages and instagram accounts comment sections. Just really dig our way in people’s face without being intruders either, easiest job in the world, right? But we still did it, fuck me. We did it.
And the week before our chosen date, we get the idea to exploit even more the dual-strikes’ potential : IT work-stoppage at times of low-traffic means that the companies will turn off some servers for energy-expanses, if we opt-out right before traffic picks up again we got strong chances of having the servers shut down, that’s why we’ll start (or start seriously) delivering orders right when the IT folks stop working. Disjointed data flux, confuse the hell out of management.
The plus is that hungry clients still get their food or the app will start crashing on its own so they’ll order elsewhere, maybe they won’t even order.
At some point a gentle soul points out that there must be some team supposed to take care of this kind of outages, a failsafe, something to make sure they don’t happen again, Sacha types back : “these people exist, it’s us. :)”
THE DAY
The day starts out like any other except my belly aches because I’ve eaten some rotten stuff, probably.
I don’t know, anyways routine : ghostkitchen, parking lot, hurt hands, empty streets, then the time comes and I veer away from my itinerary, making the app a bit confused and ping-y, nudging me to think about the declining temperature of my cargo. I ignore it like it’s the breeze and am quickly at the rendez-vous.
I didn’t think all of this would turn out like that : All of us, gathered but not grouped, in a park, apparently ready to take orders. The apps make our phones vibrate in unison like a choir of small monks singing the glory of the companies. Some of us check them, most of us sit still, on benches, on bikes, on the ground, in a circle. 1 meter and a half, proper distancing.
One of us gets a text from a manager, a real one apprently, not a chatbox. He pastes the thing to the message group and we chuckle nervously at it.
“Your score might be lowered if you don’t fulfill productivity rates in the timescales you’ve used us to. I’m saying this because I’ve seen what you can do, you’re a real one.”
Crying-Laughing emojis.
“Brosky said : hop on this dick and spin like a monkey.”
“Nah, my mans said : Yo you got some of that surplus labor?”
“Y’all got it wrong, he said I really appreciate you bro and I’ll invite you to my wedding, now pick the shovel and dig your own grave.”
Boys banter. I stay quiet.
The chatbots get a bit excited, trying to entice us with promos, some human management also intervenes but most of us just receive notifications for “pro tips”, some receive so called “cheat sheets” which are practically the same only named differently, so now we know who they think is a good kid and who’s a bad kid I guess.
The unexpected but not unknown “update to the terms of services” pops up, earlier than we thought, on our screens. Some of us start to read it, see if there’s anything useful there.
Two minutes later : Map won’t load, orders are buggy, loading is slow. Some apps are down. Folks get up on their bikes, elbow-bumping each others, wrinkly smiles under their shades and masks. One of them starts to sing as he makes his way out of the park, others pick up the chant. I can’t say it didn’t move me, it didn’t last though. Busy thinking.
The youngest start-up-companies don’t have back-up servers, they’re down and out at least for the day. The older competitors see that and seize it even as their apps stay buggy ; they lower their commission-prices and offers considerably and don’t give bonuses anymore. Nobody picks up anyways except some outlier in another zone, we don’t pay attention. Deliveroo is supposed to pay workers during server outages, some of us note it down to harass them with it in a few months. It’s a strange day, unnerving and quick but one that still doesn’t seem to end.
AFTER
I fall on the couch, phone on mute vibrates now and then. I don’t look at it.
I cancelled the netflix account some weeks ago.
Scrolling some feeds in search of distraction but there’s nothing, or too much, can’t think.
Dusty hands brittle with dry blood from paper cuts, I take my phone in hand and call my dad.
The nurse is overworked and distracted but kindly transmits my call to his room, his speech is slow and measured, there’s no tension there even as he knows what could happen someday soon. A neighbor called him the week before to catch up, brought him some stuff to eat. I listen without asking which neighbor.
“It’s been a long time. How is work ?” I take some time to register the fact that he just asked me a question.
Finally, I let out: “Work is… work.”
“If you need help you can ask. You can always ask.”
“I know dad.”
“You always know, you’re such a smart kid, you. Quiet and helpful.”
He talks to me about the greenhouse he can see from his window. He’d like to go there but the nurse have cancelled walks and group visits. I try and talk to him about the reasons why, he asks me about my boyfriend. I tell him we broke up a few months ago, he acts as surprised as the last time I told him.
“He was a nice man.”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard too. Anyways I gotta go dad.”
“Take care.”
I go into the bathroom, I look at me.
Purple rings under eyesockets, sweaty armpits, I take off the shirt.
The familiar words greet me even as I try not to pay attention to them :
“Pain is the fuel we burn on the journey.” Easy words.
Washing the sweat away now, holding breath under flow. Get dry and get out. Open the window to look at the empty streets and lit windows. There’s life all around in silences and bubbles.
On the computer the celebrity-streamer hosts a poll to vote to which medical organisation he’ll donate the money raised during his livestream. Calls for donation and Gofundme URLs spam the chat.
Sacha calls, different company managements have contacted her union, they want to open negotations, finally. As expected, they’re trying to play us by dividing up the opposition ; treating the teleworkers stike as one case and the deliverors strike as another. We got delegates up and ready to go and shit all over their demands, still need to vote on that though. “We just gotta keep on keeping on, right ?”
I listen and nod without saying anything, when she’s finished I wish her a good night, she adds softly : “I’m doing a livestream later, you can join now, if you want ?”
“I gotta eat first.”
“It’s not for now now, it’s really for like later, you know, in a few min-”
“Yeah I’ll try.”
“Oh ok…”
“Yeah.”
Hangs up.
I open the window to sit at the edge and let my feet dangle in the dark for a minute or two. The air is humid and still, everything feels trapped in a hold, in a grip.
Invisible ties, not tightening, not loosening. Just there.
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