The Company Man
A story about love and self-discovery
Amelia and I were a couple. I was a company man and she was hopelessly in love. Once we were on a holiday. We sought a quiet place, somewhere we could settle after my retirement. On Friday, we checked in to a small prefab in San Francisco. On Sunday morning, I received a call. I promised her to return before dinner, kissed her goodbye. She shut the door behind me, holding the tears. The situation left me alone on a street, thinking, thinking about her. I stood until the pod arrived and picked me up.
I was in the pod, on my way, getting through the job briefing. It contained memory records of a person. He worked for a company for a while and vanished. The company found his brain implant floundering in a puddle of blood. No signs of a body. The memories cycled in my mind’s eye: the oddly shaped clouds, the concrete riverbanks, the oak trees in an alley, people, and more people, and Amelia. I dozed off. Amelia turned around and smiled like she did. The door closed and opened. Her eyes full of tears.
When we started dating, it wasn’t much different. I would call her when I was in town, and we would go on a date. We grew closer to each other and one day she gave us a try. She moved in, or rather she got stuck with me, as I was a company man.
“Liam, I’m helpless. This can’t go on like this.” And I looked silently back at her, hoping she could read my mind. But my mind was blank — there was no excuse she could find, even with a flashlight.
The pod landed and woke me up. The badge with a picture of a much younger me dangled on the door. I looked outside. A synthetic orange tree grew in front of the abandoned prefab house. Amelia always wanted a small orchard, but I was a company man — no time for nonsense, like orchards.
I unlatched the door of the pod and let the dry air in. A bench loitered on a porch behind the old wooden table. I set down and stared at the table, trying to remember details of the briefing. Food stains from dinners, water rings from cans, and wine glasses covered the table with layers of memories. The company taught us to never mix personal memories with work material. But the table reminded me of the time when she just moved in. We planned a romantic night, but we ate so much that we had to lie down on a balcony. We held hands and looked at the passing clouds in fear of exploding.
The contract required me to wear a brain implant, strictly for investigative purposes, of course. People talked about an impeded sense of free will, then everyone got tired, and the outrage switched to privacy. I learned to live with it, and she learned to live with it, too.
The air dried my eyes and focused my attention on the visual migraine. The implant hummed in my ears like an old leaf blower. Migraine turned into a full-blown torture. I filled my lungs with air as hard as I could and held my breath. The implant intercepted my peripheral vision, then hearing, then touch. The world faded away. An orange dropped from a tree and rolled across the wet driveway. The sky shrugged off its lead veil and bloomed with clouds. Humid wind tangled my hair and tickled my face. I sat in front of the same house. I felt light and young.
“Want to come over? I’m back in town.” — a phone buzzed with the message.
“Hey, Liam. Our spot, in 20?” I replied, locked the door, and walked towards the car.
I sat at the back. The car paced autonomously through a narrow street. Concrete riverbanks sprawled underneath as we passed bridge after bridge. Swarms of people blurred behind the window, going in and out of stores, holding shopping bags. Oak trees flickered to my eyes with uncanny precision, covering the sun. The car pulled over and stopped. I was there.
The man stood fifty feet away, glued to the phone. He held a bouquet in his left hand, waiting for the date. A thousand thoughts hammered my head at the moment. Countless choices, mistakes I made — all flashed in front of me. The man was me, everything I hated about me — the reason I spent time on the job and not with my Amelia. Even now, he read a brief, preparing himself for the next assignment. Even now, the implant in his temple blinked with excitement. My hand slipped inside the bag and grasped on something cold. And every single thought vanished. I raised the gun and pulled the trigger.
The bullet moved through the barrel. It crawled out, pushed by an explosion. Air compressed before the bullet and expanded, reaping the distance between me and Liam. His head propelled backward as the immense force pierced through the skull.
Everything dissolved. Blood droplets suspended in a grey void orbited like little planets around the sun.
A voice said: “What the hell, Liam? I need to report this. Stay where you are.”
I got up, tripped over the table, and ran. My house was beaten down as if the atomic bomb exploded and covered everything with ash. Everything looked odd and out of place. The street was empty. I ran towards an egg-shaped object and stopped in front of a mirror door. The senses crawled back to me as I tried to catch my breath. I looked at my reflection and yanked the chip from the temple of my head. The blood rushed down my cheek, forming a small puddle on the ground, but I didn’t fill the pain — I was free. I was no longer a company man.
