“While the Network was Down” Wednesday, January 11th, 2006
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007the message reads: connection failed (in bold print) the server may not exist or it is not operational at this time. Check the sever name or IP address and try again.
But I know the server exists….
the admins scurry to find a solution and while they scramble my mind begins to wander
I think about the memos I have written. Thousands of them, mostly just to increase my cubicle cred and convince my coworkers that I’m, at the very least, capable of making it seem as though I’m doing something that might be useful. I think about the thousands of memos I have yet to write with catchy titles like “RE: tomorrow’s assassinations”, “all employees will be groped and fondled”, and “God and War: It’s our business and that means it’s your business”.
I think about the 30 gigs of crap I have stored on our company sever. I wonder if its safe or if some FBI agent is pouring over them at this very minute and wondering why the fuck I listen to Jimmy Buffet.
A message appears on my screen, “this network is under repair please be patient”. While I’m sitting quietly I hear a man down the hall begin to yell and then a loud crash. Another jumper. More crashes, more yelling, more gasps. They can’t believe it. Most of them anyway, the good ones. They’re jumping.
I get up from my chair and I look down, seven stories to see the street filling with the bodies of jumpers. I had no idea how many people were on the same network. Cars stop, unusually diagonal, on the street. Drivers get out, staring in disgust at the corpses littering the asphalt.
While they’re gawking more bodies fall from over head and pile on top of them, the spectators, crushing them.
I think of all these dead people and I’m sad because they will never read my memos. Not anymore. I resolve to think of better subject lines than ever before, because life is too brutish and short to be literal.
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