Where's Unimportant

www.danielshortell.com

- novels -

- short stories -

Copyright 2011 by Daniel Shortell

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduction

in whole or in part in any form.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

Everything contained herein is fictitious. Any similarity to real events, circumstances, locations or people is merely coincidental. Should you read this work of fiction and think it describes aspects of your own life, I suggest you go to your local record store, purchase Carly Simon’s 1973 platinum hit, drop the needle, sit back and blast that shit.

Cover Design Copyright 2011 by ANONA Studio

www.anonastudio.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBNs:

Paperback 10 digit: 146106497X

Paperback 13 digit: 9781461064978

eBook 10 digit: 0615486118

eBook 13 digit: 9780615486116

THANKS

My wife - Your love and support is immeasurable

Sis - Advisor and designer extraordinaire

My crack team of editors - Rozy, Nay, Jon, Regina

Amazon and Google - enabling the little guy to play a big role

simple, clean website development - www.indexhibit.org

open source blogging - www.wordpress.com

the free encyclopedia - www.wikipedia.org

free multi-media travel blogging - www.travelblog.org

open source image manipulation - www.gimp.org

open source desktop publishing - www.scribus.net

open source, cross platform ftp software - www.filezilla-project.org

making writers the new publishers - www.pandamian.com

Last and certainly not least, YOU, my dear reader. If not for your

participation/readership, none of this would matter. If you came across

this copy for free, fantastic, I'm glad it found you and I hope you enjoyed it!

If you did enjoy it, please consider supporting my next book so

I may continue to produce. I promise to make all of my material very affordable.

Please note, you will not be spending your hard earned money to cover the inflated

salaries of the creativity leeches listed in the 'NO THANKS' section below.

NO THANKS

To the many agents, publishing houses, media gatekeepers, and 'taste-makers' who, for too long, have decided whose material is worthy of attention, and whose voice gets heard. None of the aforementioned entities played a role in the realization of this project. As the new age of media evolves andthe need for these antiquated businesses continues to diminish, I will be there to wave them a hearty goodbye :)

Adieu Publishers, Adieu!

Gravy-

Teman kembaraku, pendorongku, pencinta ku yg setia, teman terbaikku, dan isteriku yg jelita. Setiap saat bersamamu melakar seribu makna, betapa bertuahnya aku kerna dikau suriku.

-WB

All are slaves to hope or fear.

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Cease to hope and you will cease to fear.

-Hecato of Rhodes

CONTENTS

Sleep

Wake

Morning Walk

Subway

Procrastinate

Preparations

Business

Lunch

Squabble

Reflect

Sleep Again

About the Author

Sleep

My regularly scheduled bedtime is twelve minutes from now and, as expected, my anxiety is in full bloom to greet the start of yet another week. The thought of another sleepless Sunday night has me contemplating a visit to my friend down the hall. Behind his reflective facade, he offers a rainbow of colorful solutions to resolve a Sunday evening. Never mind, it’s probably best to lie here, stare into the black abyss of my ceiling and try to clear my head.

The anxiety builds up after work on Friday evenings. On Saturday and Sunday, it vacillates between peaks and valleys throughout the day, reaching a crescendo at midnight on Monday morning coinciding perfectly with my desire to fall asleep.

In an attempt to better understand my neurosis, I recorded the ebb and flow of my anxiety levels over a period of twenty weekends. I diligently recorded my anxiety each hour on a ten point scale (0 = asleep, 1 = minimal anxiety, 10 = maximum anxiety). I made entries in a little notebook carried in my pocket beginning each Friday at 7 PM, ending at midnight on Monday, two days later. At the end of twenty weeks, I compiled a basic line graph plotting the hourly results for each weekend. Here are the results for the first three weekends (which are representative of the subsequent seventeen weekends):

Apart from validating the fact that monitoring and recording my emotional state every hour was a distraction to actually enjoying the weekend, I learnt nothing. Well, not entirely true. I did empirically validate that my peaks and valleys are very consistent weekend to weekend, but this knowledge wasn’t exactly enlightening. The simple truth remains, too much anxiety is clouding my mind causing me to undertake pedantic psychological experiments. Granted, there's nothing wrong with a little self-analysis to better understand an emotional hiccup creeping from behind the veneer of an otherwise sparkling personality. Unfortunately, pausing to record anxiety levels in a movie theater is distracting, and in fact, may merit its own monitoring mechanism. Focusing my energy on devising new methods for monitoring emerging mental issues sounds daunting, and certainly won't help me to better understand the root of my heightened anxiety.

I've got to sleep. One sheep, two sheep, three sheep. Or is it sheeps? No, that's stupid. Of course it's sheep. Four sheep, five sheep, six sheep. Remember all the sheep in the paddocks outside Christchurch? Kiwis must sleep well. Who told me there were twenty sheep to every human in New Zealand? That's a shitload of sheep. How many sweaters is that? Fuck, who cares. I've got to get to sleep. Seven AM will be here shortly and I can’t afford another sleepless night, nor can I bear the thought of dozing off on the subway again, collapsing onto yet another elderly Chinese woman when the N banks hard right exiting Canal Street station. Curse words always manage to transcend the language barrier. Seven sheep, eight sheep, nine sheep. A baby sheep is a lamb, right? Or is that a baby goat? Either way, it's delicious. Come on sleep, you bastard. One lamb, two lamb, three lamb. Wait, it's lambs right? English is stupid.

My name is Jack Addington and I hate my job. I’m certain of this because I know exactly how many tiles are in each of the three bathrooms at the office. Not only that, I can tell you how many tiles in each bathroom were cut with a tile saw to fit into place. In my preferred bathroom, twenty-eight tiles in all, fourteen of which, have been cut nearly in half along the walls flanking the sitting position on the toilet indicating the person who tiled the floor followed basic tiling protocol by centering the tiles to the room. Apart from proper layout, the tile job is amateurish. The grout is sloppy and wide seams glare from the difficult to reach locations beneath the sink. These seams are completely void of grout, and, protruding from their depths, small white lumps of mastic. Border tiles along the lower edge of the wall were placed with haste and the cut-edge appears to be waiting for an accompanying tile fragment. I like evaluating tile work and comparing its quality to my home improvement dabbles. My tile work tends to be inferior, but, in this case, I win. But I'm no tile man. Nope, I'm just an office hack doing my best to earn a living sitting at a desk, staring at a computer screen for twelve hours a day and taking frequent shit breaks to evaluate tile work.

I work as a project manager for a small Manhattan-based software company among a group of young, overzealous, Ivy League-educated engineers, mathematicians and physicists. The company produces a single software product dubbed an End-User Monitoring tool, which is designed to capture everything a person does on their work computer. Playing solitaire all day long? We know. Chatting excessively with your mistress on Yahoo? We see this too. Using your company laptop to view a few boobies during the off-hours? We have the list of all your favorite sites my friend. We see everything, exposing all the gross little details of a human being in motion in the electronic world. We are Big Brother for the twenty-first century, using sophisticated monitoring algorithms and models to distill and categorize people by their computing behaviors. Large corporations purchase our software and covertly deploy it to employees’ computers, enabling us to generate ‘activity profiles’ which we sell as an ‘end-user experience management’ tool.

At this moment, some nerdish guy working in the IT department of your employer is tasked with administering our software product. In addition to dutifully maintaining user accounts and investigating log files, he's spending copious amounts of time scanning the web activity of his office crush to find where she purchases her lingerie. He is turned on by the hunt and eventually discovers that she, in her girl-next-door ways, purchases her modestly designed undergarments from H&M, usually every three months, never spending more than $50 at a time. Light blue is her favorite color. 'Bits of lace add a touch of sexy class' she told GreenEyes435 last Wednesday at 10:26 AM on Trillian. 'Cotton is not only more durable, but more comfortable as well' MrsBeachGal. 'Bath and Body Works has a great sale on their delicious apple scented lotion, check it out' HappyHippy24: www.bathandbodyworks.com/lotions/prd_ID=832_apple. Chances are, he will stab her to death in the parking lot after she rejects his advances of inappropriately precise gifts. But back to Big Brother.

We aim to please the corporate cost-cutters here at VigilantEye Software. Yes 'VigilantEye', as in use your vigilant eye to closely observe your workforce twenty-four hours a day in atomic detail. Our software provides intelligence to upper-level management allowing them to identify employees who spend a little too much time on the sports pages, the gambling sites or the transgender chat rooms. VigilantEye provides the ability to analyze detailed behaviors second-to-second for every employee to determine if the person is following corporate policies and procedures, and to ensure each employee is adding his share of productivity to the corporate coffers. Employees discovered misbehaving, slacking on the job, or executing their job functions in a less than efficient manner are culled from the flock with scalpel-like precision.

Of course before VigilantEye software is deployed to client sites, we must do our mandatory cycle of quality assurance testing to prove VigilantEye's capability of delivering on the promise to monitor the full end-user experience. As I mentioned before, we are a small company, barely eighty heads, so come testing time, everybody participates in the colonoscopic fun of having their work innards analyzed by a team of scrupulously pedantic engineers. Discussions of end-user patterns and flaws in VigilantEye’s monitoring methodology are openly explored in round-table sessions where each employee’s computer usage patterns are placed under the microscope. Computing activities and patterns of behavior are picked apart as if alleviating a butterfly of its wings leaving nothing but a writhing black thorax to fend for itself, justifying what is inevitably, unjustifiable in the eyes of the critic.

When it comes down to the actual dog-eat-dog critique session, some people are scoffed at for spending too much time searching Google for code suggestions, others are verbally abused for their excessive use of IM, relatively innocuous things most of the time. Occasionally, someone will get busted for flipping through porn or hacking an enemy's website. Me, I earned the nickname Raj because of my lengthy visits to Bollywood sites. A recent QA session went something like this…

Cast of Characters:

Deng Zhu – age 46, CIO and Lead Engineer, Chinese-American

Daniel Kim – age 31, Engineer, Korean-American

Koiru Mazuto – age 34, Director, Japanese-American (my boss)

Michael Reemer – age 28, Test Engineer, Russian-American

Me, Jack Addington – age 32, Project Manager, Euro-Mutt-American

Scene:

Everyone is sitting in a conference room huddled around a projector that is displaying VigilantEye's reporting interface.

Deng: Ok Jack, your turn for QA this week. Daniel, kick us off please.

Daniel: Sure thing. So Jack, your recent high-level usage patterns are interesting. It appears you have relatively heavy application usage patterns throughout normal business hours with a long tail of idle time at night with the exception of a consistent usage spike between 10:30 PM – 12:00 AM. Burning the midnight oil, huh?

Me: Yeah, just catching up on email before bed.

Deng: Yes, the pattern looks consistent throughout the week. It appears your heavy application usage is centered on Microsoft Outlook, Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Project. You know, our studies indicate your role should leverage Microsoft Project 9% of the time to hit peak performance.

Me: Yes I'm aware, however, sometimes anomalous usage patterns are justified given extenuating work circumstances.

Deng: You could be correct, however, optimal patterns have been rigorously defined and validated with years of data. Can you provide proof that your deviated patterns are justified? In case you weren't aware Jack, we deal with the empirical here not the anecdotal.

Me: Um, I don’t have proof as such at the moment. I'll investigate my work from last week and compare it to application usage model assumptions to ascertain if tweaks should be made to my role.

Deng: Good. I expect you to report your findings tomorrow. Also provide definitions for your deviations and efficiency corollaries.

Michael: "I think Jack’s overall application usage patterns look more-or-less normal considering his role as a project manager. Deng's right though; there are substantial anomalies with respect to application usage percentages. I noticed Intranet usage is particularly light."

Koiru: Yes I agree, Intranet usage is low on the aggregate for Jack. I’m on the Intranet all day long using the project manager tool set; however, it appears that Jack's not making the most of these tools. But, I’m more interested in the late night Firefox usage spikes. Daniel, drilldown on Jack’s Firefox usage on the evening of March 24. I’d like to get a perspective on his usage after hours.

Daniel: Sure.

Daniel drills into the specific websites, pages, and navigation points for my Firefox usage on the evening of March 24. A list of Bollywood sites pop up revealing extensive video watching and numerous searches for 'Shahrukh Khan' and 'Abhishek Bachchan'.

Me: (Shifting nervously and posturing defensively) Yeah, I decompress by watching movies in the evening.

Koiru: I’d say you do. Looks like you hit the decompression chamber for about five hours on Thursday evening. You have a real passion for Indian cinema huh? Perhaps you shouldn’t be using company assets for entertainment purposes.

Michael: This usage pattern is not consistent with other project managers.

Daniel: Obviously this is personal use. We're not going to gain any insight into worker productivity here.

Deng: I agree with Daniel, although, that's a lot of time spent using company assets for entertainment. This activity certainly doesn't improve VigilantEye's profitability.

Koiru: Important point Deng. Five hours usage of company machines for personal reasons, not to mention, a white guy from Virginia watching Bollywood. Not only is it flagrant use of company assets, but, I'd say, an interesting user pattern as well.

Daniel, Deng and Michael laugh at Koiru’s joke and look at me dismissively.

Me: Thanks Koiru. What are we looking for anyway?

Koiru: "Interesting usage patterns, Raj. You shouldn’t be using company assets for personal reasons. VigilantEye spends lots of money purchasing and maintaining resources which should be reserved for conducting the business of VigilantEye. If you would like to use your laptop for personal reasons, check with me first and I may be able to sign-off on your request."

At this point, Koiru looks over at Deng to receive his nod of approval. Kudos from an executive officer, Koiru's favorite currency.

Me: Sorry, I didn’t realize it was a problem.

I'm beaten, humiliated and obligatorily subservient.

Koiru: That's the other problem. You seem to be unaware that this is unacceptable.

Me: What can I do? I said I was sorry.

Koiru: You could start by getting with the fucking program. You're being paid to forward the goals of the company, not to entertain yourself.

Thinking back on that round-table session, I don’t know why I postured so aggressively. I could have simply mentioned my wife’s computer died and she was borrowing my work laptop that week to watch movies, sparing myself the irritating new nickname at least. She’s the Bollywood buff, not me. It wouldn't matter though. I'd be rebuked for that too. That’s the way it goes at VigilantEye. The assumption is that you are busy late night because you're in love with your job, constantly pushing to forward the mission of VigilantEye. I was casually trying to embody that mentality, but was caught off guard when they drilled into a spurious late night instance of my Firefox usage. You constantly have to be on alert, because everyone, your own boss especially, stands ready to cut the legs from under you at any moment. Confrontation, humiliation, and degradation are part of the daily routine at VigilantEye.

Everyone at VigilantEye is a self-centered, brutishly ambitious creature working feverishly to develop the next great algorithm, UI design, or reporting scheme to score points with management and to forward the goal of thrusting the company’s software onto the desktop of every corporate computer. Yep, that's the vision of the company, to install VigilantEye software on every corporate machine in the entire world. Every company, every country. Ambitious to say the least. Our aim would be every single computer, but entering the personal computer monitoring space is nearly impossible considering privacy concerns in western countries. The corporate space is fair game for monitoring though. Each employee signs away any right to privacy at the point of job acceptance. The company owns its employees and reserves the right to observe everything the individual does on company assets.

Sleep is nearly upon me. Recounting the details of my job, and the subsequent anxiety, has drained me. I wrestle with the covers for a few minutes and plant a kick to the back of my wife’s leg. She moans between heavy breaths of snored air as if to curse me in her dreamy netherworld. I fade further as I consider the benefits of leaving this world behind. What if I just fade away, fall asleep and never return to a conscious state? Sure this would burden those who care about me, but they'd get used to feeding me through a tube and spending long nights watching the breathing machine rise and fall to the cadence of forced existence. Machines monitor heart rate, heartbeat good. Little human vessel still vaguely a part of the connected web of human interaction, observed second by second and scrutinized for anomalies.

The idea seems ludicrous and my mind jumps to encroaching perverted sleepy thoughts, followed by images of celestial flight, then, back to abstract work scenarios of increasing vulgarity. Another switch. I’m drifting over Manhattan being chased by the electronic police, speeding away in my hovercraft looking for a place to hide, a place off the grid of observation. I race away from the police chasing me in that world while my eyes grow heavy in this world and flicker shut. The power warning light on my heads-up display flashes red and I remember that I haven’t changed the little nuclear battery in months. My turbines sputter and slow. The police are gaining and have begun firing their neurological arrestors at me. I’m hit. I freeze. I’m sitting motionless in my hovercraft. My senses are fully capable, but my brain is unable to transmit any directives to my skeletal muscles. They close in for the capture. Another violator of the electronic code-of-conduct detained, my body to be reprogrammed for more productive use.

My consciousness wanes considerably and my hovercraft and the electronic police dissolve like television fuzz. One dream ends, another materializes to fill the void. All that is visible in my mind’s eye is a jerky, black and white movie of myself being chased by a massive, slobbering centaur prostitute with hooked-knife arms braying about the discount she is offering for a handy. I'm tempted, but keep running forward. It gains. I ask how much. It replies 'just ten yuan'. I pause to consider, then relent, handing over a fistful of gold. It begins my service, but, instead, aims high, slicing my neck. My head rolls off, bouncing on the ground, stops, blinks and looks up at its body, watching what happens next. A new head grows in its place, happily offering itself up to the prostitute who dispatches Version 2.0. This repeats and the pile of heads grows, all staring up at a sacrificial body offering it's most prized possession over and over again. Then, sleep.

Wake

Light oozes in and my eyes flicker open. Again, I’m awake before the alarm and another morning begins before it should. Threads of street light cut through my bedroom window taking various shapes on an otherwise black wall. Tree branches waving in the wind bend the light into smirks and winks, nature laughing at my premature awakening. Pointless meetings, overbearing personalities, politics; all the joys of an upcoming day take shape in an otherwise vague head. Twenty-five minutes until the worst sound of my day. Close eyes and focus on the cadence of breathing. First breath, unstable, balance the equation with... a second breath. One equals one, equilibrium achieved, mathematics equates in respiratory perfection. Breath three. Imbalance, incongruity. Breath four. Even, not prime, composite and stable, beautifully balanced. Five. Chaos, limited options, third prime number, 5th Fibonacci, daily salah, one-naught-one binary. Force a dream. Think of something. Stop counting your goddamn breaths. High school, stupid kids, irresponsible... far from VigilantEye.

There wasn’t a particular reason why I decided to dance in the freezer, other than the fact that the acid had been coursing through my veins for several hours and my subconscious motor controls beckoned me. It wasn’t a particularly lengthy performance, however, it lasted long enough to showcase my ability to deftly maneuver among piles of frozen dinners without causing substantial harm to the food, a testament to my intoxicated agility developed over time. It was half-past midnight in a secluded corner of a massive suburban Food Lion sufficiently hidden from the view of grocery store authority.

Get outta the freezer, dickhead! Adam said, clearly irritated. Adam Reese was a good guy. Always first to help out if you needed it, but he was