Pawns

We are the greatest unpaid workers in the history of the world. We spit shine greed and smile as we whip ourselves into battered submission. I see it everywhere, people's spines like horseshoes, the kids like drones, and the field workers don't cry anymore; they dance. The world's a stage, and everyone's an agent. We can't go anywhere without being caught in someone's videos. Cameras stuffed into the cracking faces of the homeless. Hold these two musical instruments and clap them together; if I get enough likes, I'll throw a pair of socks and some Wonderbread at you.

"John"

"Sorry" I look around the room. Khaki bookshelves filled with flowers, screwed into flaccid grey walls. Honey-stained engineered hardwood floors. One rotating white fan and two black chairs. One maple IKEA desk and a dell laptop with a stack of two Ipads.

"You're drifting a lot today."

My shrink. Dr. Theresa Gafka sits across from me in the other black chair. A wonderful woman, a mind vacant of all things except other people's minds. It's hardly reassuring that she is in charge of managing my problems. Her hair is curly today and white blonde. Recently dyed. Calvin Klein powder blue suit with shoulder pads and tall platforms. She must have a date after work today.

I don't zone out. I get bored; I get bored of watching other people's eyes drift toward phones and a carousel of smart tech. Eyes so white and bright, yet so drained and vapid. When I was a young man, I was an active addict. I remember watching all the eyes of the fiends, my own eyes in mirrors; they had this distinct look to them. Like, magnets, pit black and regardless of where they glanced, they were always attracted to something just out of sight. Pulled somewhere else. Attracted to anything but that which most desired it. Something just behind the person they were speaking to, something else. Always scheming for the next hit. That's the look everyone has now, wanting something just beyond.

The next video.

The next hook-up.

The next wife. The next boyfriend. The next only fans subscription. The next scandal, the next gladiator on steroids, the next reply from a porn star. The next dildo. No one knows how to think anymore. Free will is determined by the ability to reason about subjects and make educated choices. If the population can't think, if the people can not decipher fact from fiction, or understand the bottom-up effect of the choices they make, do they have free will. Or do they blindly push the buttons that give them the most immediate satisfaction. The ensuing attractive force to their magnets.

"John"

"Sorry, I'm, I'm here" I study her eyes, magnets.

"You don't seem focused today."

You are paid to focus on me, and you still can't keep your eyes from glancing toward the computer. Your fingers rub the phone in your pocket. I'm the one with the problem. "I know; I just received a strange message; before I got here, it's been on my mind."

"What did it say."

"It was an email; it said, "reset your password."

"But you hardly use social media, or have you had a change of heart" Theresa's eyes glow in a mid-key way, the same way a dealer's eyes would when you give them money. That kind of void stare. The one developed after enough souls have been sucked into their trap. Everyone's a dealer now, and they're all hocking the same garbage. The new meth, the socially acceptable one. Makes them dance, makes them do all kinds of shit, for views, for some cash. Chase a dream until they lose the real one. The dream of being alive. The dream of being healthy enough to experience anything human. Most people die at sixty-five. We'll never retire.

"No, I don't use social media anymore, which is why it's bugging me."

There's a long pause between us. I can almost hear it, that dial-up connection noise from the nineties. The sound pours out of her ears. She's downloading some programming right before me; her eyes twitch at that guttural ringing. Then the code, the identical copy and pasted script everyone else says.

"It's not as bad as you think it is, you should give it another chance, it's all about how you use it" as bland and bare as the hello world script. Agent Smith.

They speak about it like it's a person, and it might as well be. It has more power over them than even their own loved ones. Even their own passions and souls. Yet it can't survive without them, for now. Even Uber and Amazon wants to get rid of their employees. The greatest thing for a company is automation. Is that not better if an autonomous vehicle can arrive for a quarter of the price to the consumer and the company? If a robot server can bring food to a table, it saves the restaurant owner money by not having to hire any servers. No benefits, no sick days, unpaid overtime, every Tyrant has a dream. If artificial intelligence can create content that is so believable it is impossible to separate fact from fiction, then the future of influencers, writers, artists, lawyers or doctors isn't human. It's code. It's a targeted algorithm. Everyone becomes nothing but influenced. We're all so important.

"John, I think that's it for today."

I look up, completely unaware that she has walked to the door. Standing there with it open. Waiting for me to leave. Her phone in hand, scrolling, getting her fix.

"Same time next week," I say, but it's too late; the second that programming is downloaded and recited, it's impossible to get them to look away from their phones. Theresa grunts and closes the door behind me.

I stand on the bus looking at the addicts. Sitting in browned blue cloth, wrappers all over the floor. Yellow stains in the cracks of the walls. Tape over the windows. The constant howling of worn brakes. I can even hear the video playing on the driver's phone. The driver laughs as he takes a corner sharply. I want to walk up to him and smack the phone out of his hands before he turns this whole bus into a statistic, but I watch the rain hit the windows instead.

I look at this young kid, moving her arms like the person in the video on her screen. Instagram is just a cleaner way to say an instant dose of dopamine. It's embedded in the name, instant gram. They're all scrolling through feeds, like cattle bent over being force-fed some concoction of drugs and corn turned into sludge. It's so strange how these words are so casually placed, feed, sustenance, gram, high, instant, tik tok, time, and Facebook, which is just another way to say person directory. Barcode. But no one can see through the blinding fog of entertainment.

The way the rain has splattered on the windows reminds me of a frowning face. I pull the yellow cord, and the bus slowly comes to a stop. I leave the bus, walking towards my small apartment.

An iron number six dangles from a screw on my door. A large hole from a fist has been plastered over near the handle. I unlock the door and get inside my apartment. I can hear muffled voices leaking into my room from different vents. I go to my computer and sit down. Open the small fridge near the desk and grab a Carlsburg beer. The green can reflects green onto the table. I take a sip.

I stare at myself in the reflection of the black computer screen. I can see the dark circles under my eyes, almost becoming part of that eerie space on the screen that seems to stretch way back into places beyond all imaginings. My cheeks are all sunken. My skin is pale. My hair is short and shaved on the sides. My eyes are beady in hallowed sockets. So this is the late twenties rugrats promised us as kids. It's just more lonely than we could have ever imagined.

I move the mouse, and the computer comes alive, eradicating my thoughts and image. The screen is exactly where I left it. An Instagram security email requesting me to change my password. I click the link. The link brings me to a page with a username that reads voiceofchange_dash. I've never seen this account before in my life. I type in a password from an old account. It says that it is the wrong password. I type out a different one and receive a failed password or username message. I type out different passwords, and all of them fail.

I click the link on the bottom that says "forgot password."

It brings me to a different page. This page has a box that says to enter an email. I enter the email I received the original password request change on. I receive an error message that says, "this email is not being used for any current user. Would you like to create an account"

I retype the email and receive the same message.

I go on the net and enter the user voiceofchange_dash. I am immediately greeted by a user with thousands of followers and hundreds of posts. The posts are all screenshots of notes written on a computer in a word program. I click on the first one, which populates as a full-screen image.

It was posted a few days ago.

It's just a simple word document with a few paragraphs on one page.

The first paragraph starts, "Capitalism is the same everywhere. It manufactures hungry masses with little to no understanding of the draconian empire that starves it to work under any conditions for that tyrannical oppressor. For the simple idea that working equals freedom. Freedom from their labours. Yet most will never escape or see their efforts go towards anything that vaguely resembles a sort of freedom. So further and more complex means of distractions are created. The system is so effective at developing means of distractions that the masses, meaning billions of people, have willingly signed a declaration to serve under the breaking bones of their bodies to ensure the well-being, not of the people, not of their own families, not of their minds, but of the oppressors that hold the whips to their children and loved ones, as long as they can remain mindlessly concerned with these various forms of entertainments."

I scroll through a few more paragraphs, and something catches my eye. A sign-off. A signature end quote. I close the website and go to my word documents. There are tens of thousands of these documents. There it is, on the first one I open. The sign-off. I open another document, and at the end of the short essay, is that same sign-off. My sign-off. I go back to the website and read that same sign-off. It reads, "Society creates a self-masturbating myth, the illusion of progress promised to us in the black smog of the industrial revolution, from overpriced spartan lodges in the middle of a mindless technological dystopia, this is John Spierre marching against the Enemy we can't see."

I exit the image and go back to the main page, scrolling through hundreds of pictures, all with my sign-off, and I realize someone must have gotten into my computer, downloaded all my files and has been releasing them. But why would they send me a message, why did they want me to know they had done this? I could have carried on my way. Writing my documents in secret, my revolution hidden in the darkness, a rage that would build for the rest of my life in secret until I die of a heart attack at sixty-five.

Unless, of course, it was a benevolent gesture. I go back into some of the pictures and read the comments. It clicks in as I read the comments that my actual name has been posted at the bottom of all the images. I read the comments, and many of them are replies from people with similar names.

Voiceofchange_dash

Voiceofchange_lefty

Voiceofchange_arrow

Voiceofchange_sploit

Others are from ordinary users, just everyday people. The comments are all different. Some support the doctrines mentioned in the post. Others are openly violent against all of the ideologies. Other people say Communism. Marxist. Socialist. Fascist. Even going as far as requesting me to openly be murdered if they find out who I am. Then further down, I see a post. It reads, "found him" at that moment, I couldn't breathe; I felt like a fish dragged across the land. Flopping around, suffocating, my lungs drying, my flesh pruning. My blood felt like sludge in the capillaries of my heart.

I click on the user's name, which brings me to a page. The first image I see knocks me back in my chair with shock. It's a zoomed-out image of a google map, and I can read the address. My address. I click that image, it opens, and I read the post's caption. It reads, "kill this commie."

I click the image, and it turns into a video and plays. It starts at the top of the world and slowly zooms in. First above the United States, then Canada continues until it's over Toronto. Then it continues zooming into Parliament and Shutter st, and there it is. Moss Park Apartments. My home. The video pauses for a bit, then goes dark. Then up comes a picture of my face. Then a live video plays and someone records me leaving the apartment building.

I fall back in my chair, right onto the floor. Cracking my head on the ground. I push myself away from the computer, and the beer tumbles onto the carpet, spilling everywhere; I crawl back toward the wall on the far side of the room. My whole mind clouds with dust, and I almost puke pure anxiety onto the floor. So much that saliva builds in my mouth like a large cup of warm milk. I look around the apartment, white fridge and dusty yellow lights. Old stove. Poorly cleaned carpets. A brown loveseat. No television, just a computer and a tiny little table for dinner. Stacks of books like wallpaper. Covering every wall in the apartment. Some going as high as the ceiling. Yet, everything seems to be in place. Nothing moved. Am I being paranoid? Could they get into this building? I think about how poorly handled any security is in this building and how easy it would be to sneak in here.

A ding from the computer. I can see an email notification from the room's far side. My eyes dart across the room almost as quickly as my heart throbs, and every so often, I glance out the windows making sure to keep my head down, and I crawl towards the computer, ducking from eyes I can't see that stare at me from the other side of the window, and I from my knees rise to study the screen of the computer, and I click on the notification.

The message is from a user called voiceschangethefuture. It reads, "open the top right side drawer of the desk. In the envelope is a phone. Call the number in contacts."

I pause for a moment. I look back at my front door. My body melts into the ground. My hands are so unsteady that the desk vibrates. I open the drawer, and inside is a large envelope. It has the words for John written on it. I open the envelope, turn it over, and out comes a Motorola slide. It's old, navy blue and dusty. I click the home button, and the phone shakes in my hands. I clench the phone with both hands, trying to still my nerves. I open the contacts, and just one name is on the list. Lefty.

Moving to a hunched-over position, I peer out the window like a miserable old man making sure no kids touch his grass; my fingers seize the windowsill, and I see a few parked cars along the street. None give me any feeling, at least none that I can separate from a growing paranoia. An assortment of black and white vehicles, Hyundai Elantras, Ford Focus, an old Lincoln, and some beaters from the early two thousands, like a firebird and a rusty dodge van. Some standard colours like red, blue, and silver. Then I see a car drive down the street, and then another, and a few people walk by too. I can feel the eyes in my head, building factories that secrete anxiety-inducing chemicals because suddenly, I am flattened by the feeling that all these vehicles and people are here to kill me.

Am I going crazy? Is this really happening to me?

I look at the phone in my hand. I squeeze it until my stomach tightens. Until the blood in my fingers disperses, all that's left is this white fleshy pale skin, like freshly whitened teeth. I squeeze it so hard, but I never wake up. I rub my sweaty hands on my pants to dry them. Clicking a few buttons on the phone, I hover over the name in the contacts again. I click it.

It asks, call? I click yes.

It rings.

It rings.

It rings.

This dark, growly voice with an accent I can't quite pinpoint answers. "John," it says.

I hang up, throwing the phone across the room. The Motorola hits the wall and flies back toward me, sliding across the carpet.

The phone blares. This old nostalgic eight-bit jingle. Ringing. Ringing for me to answer. I look towards the window and feel a world pry me to pieces, hang me from my feet, and crucify me in a fire that grows from my exposed documents. The phone's constant blare explodes in my ears like a vocalist's gruff ramblings in an old political punk band. It demands my answer, and at the last second, I oblige.

On the other side is static.

A static I can almost crawl inside. For some reason, I feel nothing but a world of possibilities in that bleak, aimless noise. A few endless moments pass with this sensation.

Then that voice. The one with the accent. "John. Don't hang up; they are watching outside."

I turn quickly. My spine cracks at the speed of the movement, and I examine the outside world through the window. Those same cars, none have moved. Some people walk down the street on both sides. I can't see anything suspicious at all.

"John," The voice on the phone faintly comes back into my consciousness, "can you hear me."

I pause, press the phone to my ear and answer slowly, half expecting myself to wake up, "Yes, I'm here."

"They've been watching you for days now."

"Who has been."

"That doesn't matter now; you need to escape the building; some of them are already inside."

I look to the door, then back to the window, pressing my face against the pane. "Whose here, in the building. What do they want."

A few moments pass in that static, and I hear the answer loud and clear. "What do I do?"

"The window in the bathroom leads to the roof. On the far side of the building."

"The stairs"

"Yes"

"Then what"

"Towards the front of the building, an old Lincoln; move quickly, don't look back, do not waste any more time."

"Okay," I answer, but the line is already dead.

I run to the bathroom. Prying on the window hasps, but they don't budge. A thick covering of white paint seals them. Then a knock at the door. Then another. I try to scratch the paint off. But it only pulls on my fingernails. I pry on the locks, pushing against them with all the force my body's small frame can create. I can feel the resistance of the paint loosening against my power. Then the paint tears, liberating the locks as the rasps at the door increase feverishly. I thrust the window up, smashing the frame above with a loud crack. But then, a moment later, another loud smash. Then another, but it's not coming from the window but the door at the front of the apartment.

They're kicking in the door. I can hear the wood fragment splintering against the bashes.

I crawl out the window onto the roof and, at the last second, turn and see the front door shard into pieces and long spears of wood slide across the carpet. A hand reaches up through the hole in the door towards the handle. I quickly rush across the roof, around the bend to the stairs. The stairs are all black and rusted iron. Two floors up, I can see other rooftops and a parking lot. Half sliding down the rails and tripping on each step as I crumble like a tossed pair of shoes down the last set of stairs. Rolling across the gravel on the ground. Grime fogs all around me in the air. I cough, push myself to my feet, and look back toward the roof; I see one of them.

This black suit wrapped around this big hulking guy with tight cornrows. White tattoos all over his neck and face. Dark glasses. He starts to move down the steps. His body makes the old iron stairs sway from side to side. I rush down the alley toward the old Lincoln I saw earlier, and there it is, door open, waiting for me at the end of the alleyway. I jump through the door. Folding myself in the back seat like a tossed grocery bag. The car's wheels spin wildly, and screech as the vehicle takes off. I gather myself, slam the door, and see, walking down the alley, that same hulking guy from before. He speaks into a phone, staring at us as we drive away down the road.

I look into the front seat, studying the guy from this angle. He has long, straight black hair woven into two braids. These really crazy cheekbones and a long powerful nose. Something is wrong with his face, like scarring, but I can't make it out. His body is massive, not so much built and packed with muscle, but also not fat in any way; his body just occupies so much area that he spills into the space between the two front seats.

He takes a turn, then another. I'm flying all around in the backseat. We are heading towards the highway. He turns to me slightly, his head darting from side to side, studying everything. "You have the phone on you still?"

"Ya"

"Toss is out the window."

"What, here?" I look around; cars are all around us. Driving eighty kilometres an hour in forty zones. Pedestrians. Dogs.

"Toss it," he belts, then continues after a few moments and another sharp turn, the wheels squealing, "they can track you!".

I look at it and move toward the window, cranking it open. Wind crashes into my face, and the noise engulfs everything in my mind. I dangle the phone out the window and, for a second, just sit with the wind smashing against my skin, relaxing, meditative. I am suspended for a second, without any other influence but the wind.

The car takes another sharp turn, and suddenly we are driving onto the Don Valley. I let the phone drop, and I picture it smashing into pieces. I roll the window back up.

A few minutes pass by, and I notice his head isn't turning around as much. I can only see the right side of his face. I ask him, "who was that guy back there" but he doesn't reply.

I wait a few more minutes, nothing but the smell of old, mildewed fabric seats between us and the constant racket of rusted brakes.

I ask again, "who was that guy back there."

"That will be answered soon; just know you're in great danger, but you are safe now."

"Who are you? Why can't you tell me what's going on" I can sense from his posture that he isn't going to answer any questions for me.

Then he says, "I'm Lefty," in this strange accent.

"Lefty is that code word for something."

"Ya," he replies. Suddenly turning toward me. Showing me his face, and he only has his left eye. This big vacant hole where his right eye should be. I try to look away, but I can only stare into that hole. I've never seen anyone who was missing an eye before. He turns back around to face the road.

"Did they do that to you"

"Did who?" Lefty answers

"Those guys back there, whatever, those agent-looking guys."

"No," and he sort of pauses, almost picking some quiet memory out of the air "it was my father," he says slowly, "when I was a kid on the reserves" he overtakes someone, drifting into the fast lane "everyone's called me Lefty ever since."

I'm unsure what to say to that, so I kind of nod and say nothing at all, then last second, "I'm John."

"We know who you are," speeding, driving around another car. "We know everything about you."

"What do you guys want with me" I look into the rear view mirror now, locking eyes with Lefty's left eye.

"We want you to help us shut down the systems, all that stuff hidden in your computer; it's the voice of change, the sound of revolution, the words that will create the greatest reset in the history of the world, words John, words have the power to transform history and unlock minds"

The car hastens, this old engine, red hot and revving, and we drive north until asphalt becomes dirt, and the concrete world morphs into trees until nothing but pale fires accent the darkness of night. The fire will soon consume the whole world, and from the ashes, the oppressed rise.