Beyond the Implode!
An extract from The Ultraviolet Catastrophe A Culturepreneurial Horror by Susan Finlay
3rd November 2023, one month, two weeks, and two days until SALVATION!
Hugh Snell arrived at the AstroLabs™ Ideation Space—AKA the Space with the capital big-daddy ‘s’ at the start that was just the beginning—and immediately set his laptop down on the nearest empty plinth. The environment was one in which he continued to feel at once both barely and inescapably human: a cog in the increasingly sanitized, increasingly virtualized, increasingly ized-ized-ized late-capitalist machine and the fleshy, stinky ghost that haunted its numerous, perpetually shifting parts. Parts that oozed onto and into the other startups that populated the Tech Park and filled it with the ugly, thumping beats of future-themed commerce on overdrive.
Indeed, every minute here—or there?—at the Space, reminded Hugh of how, at thirty-seven, he was getting older fast. Of all the things he had to do before the flab gained a firmer (or wobblier?) hold; flab having the potential to influence not just his socio-sex life (AKA declining sperm count) but also the renewal of his increasingly virtualized, perpetually shifting fixed-term contract (AKA ability to support a family in the manner to which they would surely wish to become accustomed if and when they ever materialized)…
Thinking of which—or rather, thinking of his body in relation to his fiancé’s infinitely more fragrant one, as well as the barely human yet permanently aspiring without perspiring men that surrounded him now—Hugh sniffed his armpit. It smelled like him but stronger. This morning, he had run to work, his designer sneakers pounding through the gray Berlin streets until the Space, sandwiched between a gaming startup called Horus Spiel and a new black box of a building-in-progress (AKA carbon free emission cube) hove into view, and his heart rate rose on the very same fitness tracker that all the other flab-fighting, muscle-making, North American tech bros also sported.
Unlike them, however, Hugh avoided the communal showers. Instead, he sat and breathed in his own stale sweat, secretly watching YouTubers talk analog synths. Yes, there were tests to run, forms to file, and datasets to complete and present in a way that made sense to others—but worrying about these things generally took up more of Hugh’s time than the things themselves did. And taking a break from one’s worries (AKA waiting for the day to end before it had even begun) was advisable from a mental health perspective. Except that, today, Hugh had only just slipped into ‘productivity mode’ when the test results glowing flatly beside the Moog 55 Demo and the Kinder Wunsch reminder thrust him straight into the midst of another possible future.
“Hey!”
The huddle of blue shirts parted as Rob Bobson slung his gym kit over a large yet distinctly unflabby shoulder and approached the plinth opposite Hugh’s. Rob was a big man with an appearance that in another, more romantic, context might have been described as chiseled, but which, in this one, made the sleek yet uncomfortable design of the Space’s Dialogue Section seem very, very full. And yet, as he was the only one of Hugh’s colleagues who seemed even vaguely aware that he was continually performing… Something. Deeply. Weird, he was also, Hugh supposed, his best (or perhaps only) friend at work?
Anyway.
Whatever.
And—
“Good News?” said Bob, sitting, or rather perching, on the stool behind the plinth.
“…” said Hugh’s eyes.
Because instead of answering his colleague with a mere yes or no, all Hugh found himself able to do was hold his breath. And as his body drained of oxygen, a montage flashed before him, built from the many long years since Lex Ramesses had discovered then purchased Proserpina.
Breathe!
First, a scene from seven years ago, when Ramesses had founded AstroLabs™ with the intention of colonizing this new, oxygen-rich planet.
And breathe again!
And then from five, when Ramesses had contacted MIT’s Synchrotron Research Cluster (where Hugh had also attempted to combat the negative effects of radiation exposure on mammalian brains)—
“Hugh?”
And then of the ensuing interview which, being Ramesses, meant being extra and flying Hugh to another office that resembled another art gallery, full of other North American hipster-geeks-turned-jocks-turned-euro-entrepreneurs somewhere near another European Space Base Branch first—
“Bro?”
And then, being Ramesses, being extra, not actually turning up in person, but virtually interviewing Hugh from the ‘comfort’ of a gaming chair—
Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!
Before finally offering Hugh an extremely lucrative (yet perpetually shifting) fixed-term contract that an impoverished scientist must surely not just want, but need.
And—
And—
AND—
“The last lot of data,” Hugh finally blurted out. He felt dizzy, and trying to at least appear calm, he took a long, deep breath, then managed to continue, “they still show some mutations in the brain tissue, but this time all of the animals’ prefrontal cortexes are intact. Obviously, we’ll need to do a lot more of them—”
“More giraffes?” said Rob, as if more giraffes were a completely normal part of Hugh’s (or indeed any tech-bro’s) working day. “Or perhaps…?”
“Yeah, or perhaps…”
Only the sight of Rob’s just-out-the-shower hair prevented Hugh from finishing—
CRASH!
A plinth toppled over and distracted him from Rob’s wet hair. Two of their more prominent, blue-shirted colleagues were pretend-play-wrestling (i.e., wrestling) across the neighboring Wellness Area and—
Ping!
An email flashed up in Hugh’s sidebar:
From
Frau Prof LogikSubject
Feed Times & Pulse
Durations
There was another crash and—
“Bro?” said Rob.
“Err yeah…” said Hugh.
He forced himself back into the present, which in this instance meant focusing not just on how to ignore two brawling men, but also Rob’s wet hair, and the stink in his own blue-shirted pits (plus his poor disabled seamen), but also the new, no doubt important message lurking in his inbox—
And…?
CRASH!
Another plinth, in another idiotically titled area, toppled over.
And…?
Ping!
Another message flashed up in the sidebar of Hugh’s screen.
AND? AND? AND…?
“Bro?” Rob repeated.
“Yes,” said Hugh, more firmly. “Yes,” he breathed, and reached, decidedly, for his sweater in the hope that the wool would somehow muffle the pits. Of course, the headset would need to be trialed on a human subject before they could say with any certainty that deep space travel no longer posed a serious threat to human health (or resulted in certain death to healthy humans), but yes, in the meantime, the body politic was the only body that mattered, and “Hippopotami,” he said even more firmly. “Their brains have a different neurological structure. Shouldn’t be too hard to source provided that Ramesses is willing to keep on err…” and within a second the uncertainty was back, “donating…”
Which was shorthand for—
Kerching!
“Just check that Logik’s still paying off the zoo before next week’s Vibe Check,” which was what those at AstroLabs™ called team meetings. “All the big firms take Prosperium too now,” which was what those at AstroLabs™ called the crypto-currency, in which the vast majority of those who worked at AstroLabs™ were paid. “Ramesses is hardly going to say no to her. I mean, when you’re that rich, what’s a herd of hippopotamuses—”
“A bloat of hippopotami,” Hugh corrected him.
And then winced.
At a compulsion to correct every single factual inaccuracy, however irrelevant, that was as every bit as irrational as it was irresistible (to a North American hipster-geek-turned-jock-turned-euro-entrepreneur-but-still-a-kind-of-grammar-Nazi-who-just-wants-everything-to-be-in-Ordnung, okay?).
“Okay,” said Rob, “okay.” He sounded weary. And then, “But you know something Hugh?” and as Rob spoke, he shook his head such that when the droplets of water fell, it was as if the rain (or the little white tears of the little white gods) were falling down upon them. “Sometimes you really need to, like, chill.”
