He was thankful that he need only focus on the immediate current needs of his current project, only on the very next urgent thing as it hurled into view, pulled in front of him by his having handled the last urgency. He was grateful for constant memos always directing him how to proceed. The hazards approaching and the hazards surrounding his current project were not his concern; only the directing memos told him of what concerned him - his supervisor and bosses' current intent towards him - and his supple expertise responded only to those urgings; light careless memos telling him to proceed sedately, harsh frenetic memos telling him to forge ahead urgently. It was such joy to plunge forward freely like this, knowing he and his bosses were moving forward as one to their mutually chosen common destination. They to where they, at the moment, decided. He, as long ago he had decided, to wherever his current bosses commanded.
In addition, more subtle messages were constantly directed at him from his supervisor and bosses. They held the whip hand of possible future perks or deprivations, future promotions or demotions, future enhancements or detractions of his status in the corporation. How to respond to the array of such subtle indications was something that had been ingrained in him long ago through relentless training regimens.
In fact this language of perks, status enhancements or detractions, and all the rest, this language of exerted power, was now the primary language he knew, really the only part of the English language he retained. His thoughts and dreams were mainly brought to him through this language of power. The poetic potential of the language of Shakespeare was a vague distant haze to him. He never used it; how could he? He always had a mound of memos to deal with; he felt uncomfortably incomplete without some memos around him. And when someone spoke to him using that nearly forgotten aspect of the English language, it nowadays automatically was conveyed to him through images of his new primary power language: 'Good' conveyed the image of his bosses approval; 'Bad' their disapproval.
His old life was now almost totally forgotten. It would come to him sometime during slumber. When working late and falling asleep while chained rigidly in place at his desk in his cubicle, strange images of himself somehow partaking as an equal in the world of his bosses would flicker across his dreams; images of him somehow enjoying the pleasures that only higher executives can know would haunt his sleep. Scary nightmare images that would leave him shaken on awakening.
While chained to his desk in his cubicle, his bosses would sometime simply directly screw with him, bending him over his desk for their use; but such thing easily merged into the nature of the way his job itself constantly screwed with him. From the moment of being chained to his desk in the morning and throughout the day and into the evening, he had been trained to naturally hold in any of the shit he had to bear while doing his job. At night, he and his wage slave brothers, after finally being able to leave their desks and with their corporate attitude butt plugs removed, would go to a designated cocktail lounge to relieve themselves of the excrement they had been putting up with throughout the day. Each of them, by listening to the shit they had not directly experienced, helped to lighten the load for the one who had; so somehow they all came out of it feeling cleaner after this nightly ablution of theirs.
He was not paid much; the promises of future advancement were the main ingredients to his phony wage. His bosses wanted him to be kept always hungry. Rarely did his bosses think of addressing his real needs. He would endure long stretches where his real needs were totally left unaddressed. And even during those infrequent times when one of his real needs was addressed by the corporation, the help given would invariably stop well short of truly meeting the true nature of his need. Pondering over such things with his power language, he now mused: my supervisor and bosses make up my whole world; my only desires are to follow their commands and fully please them; of course they cared for me, didn't they?
***
Buried deeply within his subconscious, a nightmare memory from long ago whispers:
'Of course we want you. The corporation cares for you deeply. It only want you to be fully and completely the valuable addition we know you can be.'
His desire flowed out to them. It was all that mattered. He yearned so intensely to be exactly what they wanted of him, to be fully and completely theirs. To turn over to the corporation his current aimless life with all its meaningless trappings, to turn over his youth and energy, his body and mind, his heart and soul, to turn it all over to the corporation and bask forever in a life lived surrounded by its loving care for him, for him made over into the image of its most intense desire.
'We so want you to join the corporation, to be fully one of its top men the way it needs and wants you to be; as its valuable wage slave.'
'Compared to what is being offered me' he felt in his heart, 'what do I have to lose?'
