My NaNoWriMo 2020: A Corona Gothic Part 2

I rarely remember my dreams. Well that’s not true. It used to be the case, but lately more and more my dreams cling to my mind waking me up and etching themselves into my memories. The night after putting in my offer on the house produced the first of these dreams. A fairly standard stress dream at least on the surface. I remember it so clearly though even now, recalling it sends chills down my spine. I have some vague memory of a school dream before it, my subconscious’s stress dream of choice up until that night. Suddenly, I was floating in near total darkness. A sense of panic filled me as it became clear I was under water, unable to breath. In not sure how long I’d been under, but surely My lungs couldn’t last much longer. I kicked frantically trying to move myself towards the surface before my lungs gave out. I could see the surface of the water but it never seemed to get closer. I kicked harder, harder, harder until finally, I jerked awake.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, I climbed out of bed. Untangling the covers from my legs before unfurling them with a jerk and a sharp flourish, the covers floating gently down onto the bed. This routine had become a regular occurrence since stating my new medication. The tossing, turning, tangling until my legs seize so violently I’m ripped out of whatever fitful sleep into which I had fallen. Time for the next step. I walked over to the nearest bare wall, placing my arm, hands and chest against it. The cool surface feels good against my skin. I then place my toes one the baseboard and step back with my other leg, giving my calves as deep a stretch as I can stand in hopes of calming down the muscles enough to return to sleep. I’d never been very flexible and always hated the burning sensation from stretching. I consider myself to have a decent pain tolerance, but for some reason certain feelings, like that of stretching muscles, the burning pricking sensation that never gets better and only seems to grow as I stretch is virtually intolerable. How I envy those who are naturally flexible, or those who either don’t feel it the same way or even like it. My latest milestone was (nearly) reaching my toes at least on days when I can tolerate the excruciating sensation as leg muscles burned with fury at the indignity of it all.

As I stretched my mind wandered over what had to be done for work in the morning. The increased web traffic on the grocery site was breaking even Black Friday records. My teammates and I had devoted all our resources to making sure the site could handle the increased load and prevent the digital house of cards from collapsing as other teams scrambled to add new Covid related features to the outdated infrastructure. The one benefit of being a contractor is at least I got overtime for this sort of thing. Perhaps this meant my savings would recover even faster than I had imagined. All this thought of internet infrastructure brought my mind inevitably to my own future infrastructure. What kind of internet would an old house in the middle of nowhere had? How had I not considered this before? Living in large metropolitan areas and suburbs all my life meant broadband internet was a given. A 300 year old house in the country had no such guarantees. Worried it would again slip my mind, I grabbed my phone and set a reminder to ask the realtor about that first thing tomorrow. Come to think of it, didn’t she say she was going to call back last night? Perhaps the deal would fall through. Successive waves of relief and disappointment spread throughout my body at the thought.

At this point my train of thought was chugging full steam down the tracks to nowhere, meaning sleep was now out of the question. With a silent groan I walked over to my desk and opened up my work machine. Might as well start earning back some of that money.

As morning approached my tired brain fought with itself, the comfort of knowing my new place would have internet competing with the intense dread of having to talk to a cable customer support rep. I am unaware of anyone ever uttering the phrase “that was a short, pleasant conversation, and now my problem is solved.” Until just now as I write it here to illustrate my point. I had a few hours between meetings along with my lunch break, so given this large block of time, I actually had some hope to finish the call within that window. Picking up the phone I tapped the number the realtor sent and waited for someone to pick up the phone. To my great surprise someone actually picked up on the 4th ring, introducing himself cheerfully.
“Hi, I began, with rapidly growing suspicion. “I’m about to move, and I’d like to get Internet service set up before I do.”
“Sure!” The technician said cheerfully. “What’s the address?”
“It doesn’t have one, but you provide phone service to the house already, or at least you did as of a year or so ago. I have the phone number.”
“Ah okay,” the agent said, with an affected tone of regret. “Let me transfer you to a specialist. I’m afraid I can’t do that from here.” Before I could even respond there was a click and then suddenly an ear full of crunchy staticky trumpets filled my ears at a volume that could not be safe for anyone and was ten times louder than the rep had been at least. Yanking the phone away from my head, I set it down as I could still hear the hold music without even turning on speakerphone. I tried my best to focus again on work and ignore the ever-growing exacerbation as the music would stop suddenly as if someone answered only to start playing again where it left off. It wasn’t enough they made you wait forever, that dirty mind game just added insult to injury.
Finally, someone picked up for real. Once again, I went over the situation. “I can pull that up for you” the new agent said helpfully. “Yes! It looks like there was cable ran to the residence. There should be no problem hooking it up. We can mail you a kit to hook up yourself.”
“Could you please send a technician? I’m not there yet, and it’s an older home. I work remotely, so it’s very important the internet is working before I get there.”
“Ah yes! Lots of us are doing that these days. Let me transfer you to my manager and see what can be done.”
“How long will…” that click again followed by those trumpets from hell. Despite my best efforts of self-control a shout escaped my mouth and echoed across the tiny apartment. My cheeks burned red at the thought of my neighbors hearing me lose my cool.
“Yes, we can send someone,” the manager said simply, leaving me to wonder why I had to be transferred at all for such a simple confirmation.
“And you are positive this is the right place?” I asked repeating the phone number again.
“Yup! He replied. Let me send you over to sales, so you can sign up for your plan.”
“Can’t I just do it online, I pleaded desperately, hoping to avoid yet another round of horrendous trumpets.
“Normally yes, but since you don’t have an address, and you want someone to come by special we have to do this over the phone. There’s no way to request those things online.”
Once again the dreaded click. This time I was fast enough to avoid further ringing in my ear from those blasted trumpets.
You’re in luck! The rep said when someone finally picked up the phone. Despair filled my soul as I noticed the sun had already begun to set in the sky. I’d only gotten half the work done I’d planned to that day.
“You qualify for our $39.99 triple play bundle for phone, cable and internet.”
“$40 for all that? I asked incredulously.
“Yup 39.99 for each package.”
“So wait, 120 a month total?”
“Yes!” She replied cheerily.
“How much for just internet?”
“Internet alone would be $49.99,” she responded, sounding slightly disappointed I had asked.
“How fast is it? I work from home.”
“So many of us are doing that these days,” the rep responded. “$49.99 gets you 6 mb per second.”
I couldn’t help but gasp in disbelief upon hearing this. However, rep continued,” and as a new customer, we’ll double your data cap to 200 GB for the first 3 months!” as if describing a revolution in modern communication.
“Wait, so I’d be limited to only 200 GB? My mobile plan is better than that!”
“If you upgrade to our pro plan you can get 50mb per second.”
“That’s it?” I asked,” That would be better, I guess. How much would that cost?”
“$89 for the first 12 months,” she said cheerfully. “And with that plan, you get a whole TB.”
“Is there anyway to get unlimited,” I asked, sure the rep could hear my eyes roll at this modern insult.
“For that you’d need a business plan, let me transfer you.” Once again that dreaded click. It took every gram or self-control I had left not to toss my phone against the far wall hard enough to send it into the next apartment. When I finally got a business rep, they promised 100mb/s for roughly the amount one would pay to lease a well-equipped SUV, but at least it was unlimited, and they reassured me several times that they had the right house and everything was in order. They even threw in landline service, as if that was any use at all. At least I can write it all off on my taxes I reminded myself in an effort to provide some comfort from the sticker shock. By the time I got off the phone I’d missed two meetings and everyone else had long signed off from work. At least with my early start I was only a few hours behind now. By the time I finished work I could barely make it to my bed before losing consciousness and falling into a fitful sleep.

Originally published at https://scribbling.ink on December 28, 2020.