Homecoming

The first thing I noticed was that everybody was heavier set than I remembered them. Many still wore the exact same clothes that I saw them wear in undergrad, and everybody still looked great, but I couldn't figure out why it seemed different.

It wasn't for almost a day that I remembered my new home's obsession with physical appearance: the year-round pool parties, how everybody talks about running or swimming or doing something. I remembered feeling pressure to eat and look differently, in a way I never had before I moved out there.

I noticed that one person's belt didn't match his pants. I can't remember ever thinking about that before.

"So when are you moving back?" Krill asked.

"Oh," I laughed, "not anytime soon, the toys are so good! I'm getting to do all the things I always wanted to do, really change the world you know?"

***

Vex's company has a whole lab now, and pays $100 a month for rent there including utilities. We'd pay about 2.5K for about the same space for the Torii. He's walking around showing me his new projects.

"I just can't come back here, I want to, but there are so many good toys in my new home, I'm really getting to change things..."

Vex looks up, puzzled, and I realize my comment was unsolicited.

"Who are you trying to convince?"

***

The restaurant two blocks from campus will serve you a mixed drink in a beach bucket to share among friends. I'd never done it because I was always broke in college. Turns out it cost $13. We did a loop through the other restaurants in the area getting their equivalent drinks and splitting them about 5 ways: one in a fancy glass, another in a fishbowl. None of them cost more than the bucket. I would have paid for all three but I thought it would be rude to show how different the standard of living was in my new home.

***

A huge technological revolution will happen here: the next silicon valley. The economy is heading for a crash, and these are the people who feel the pressure, and who will rise from the ashes first. I am so sure of these things that I would be comfortable betting everything on them.

"This new home is soft, I feel like that's been good for you."

Circles is right of course. Kalei has commented on it in her own way too, and Vex complimented me on how much easier I was to speak with.

"Yeah, stuff has changed"

"I dress like a grownup now"

"Yeah I wasn't going to comment on the almost-hipster coat..."

"It's not hipster!"

"Yeah, well the Pika I remember had a bright blue cap and..." he points at his pants, grasping for words

"Cargo pants?"

"Yeah, cargo pants, and a threadbare hoodie that was barely there..."

"Yeah, there was a fashion intervention."

***

"You worried about the hurricane?"

"No, if I had to be in a disaster anywhere I'd do it with these people, hands down. They are tough and prepared to face anything."

***

In the one place my skills to work with people are challenged because the world judges more harshly, and in the other my career would be pushed harder because better opportunities are there.

I suppose a rational person would choose better opportunities with more forgiving people.

"So when are you leaving?" Sid grins over his straw as he passes the beach bucket to me.

"Tuesday"

Elephant in the Room

"I thought you were gone."

I feel like a ghost walking the halls of Umbrella. My department had moved buildings in the 8 months I was gone, so at first I considered pretending I had been on a training rotation and then moved back with the group when they changed buildings, but eventually, as usual, just telling the truth was easier.

"I was on medical leave."

Nobody ever really knows how to respond to that.

My body is covered in bruises. Nobody ever knows exactly how to respond to that either. At first I made an effort to wear long sleeves and hide them, but then I got questions about if I was being abused when they peaked from the hems of my jeans or the edges of my sleeves. That was fun to joke about for a while, but now I just wear them openly everywhere but Torii, where they never knew I went on leave at all.

Nobody at Umbrella dares to ask me any questions about my physical appearance. I had a few days where I tried to see what I could get away with, and eventually borrowed and wore a pair of bondage leg restraints under my jeans for a day just to prove to myself that my coworkers were genuinely just afraid to ask.

Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. I feel like I run like a child, that I somehow never caught up with the grace of other adults in movements other than fighting. The striking noises of my bare feet on the pavement cause my coworkers to turn, "Are you sure you should be running outside with bare feet? You could make yourself sick again."

This is the crux of the issue: nobody wants to believe another person deserves this to happen to them, and at the same time, admitting that an otherwise healthy active 24-year-old was knocked on her ass for the better part of a year completely by chance is frightening because it reminds my coworkers, many of whom are closer to being 40 than 20, that it could happen to anybody, and that we don't have control over these things.

They color-code beef as unhealthy in the cafeteria, but I pile it on my plate with spinach. I can see my coworker looking at my plate. I feel like they watch me a lot.

"I'm suppose to eat iron."

"They prescribe you iron too?"

"Yeah, but I am also suppose to eat it."

"Ah."

"It's part of the deal about winning the genetic lottery."

"That's why you were out?"

"Yeah."

He seems comforted. I suppose now in his mind this can not be my fault, and yet also not scary or some grim reminder of human fragility.

"[That] Sucks."

"Yeah."

He and another coworker invite me to play pool that night, which they've never done before.

It's a few days before the topic comes up again.

"I won the genetic lottery too."

"Oh?"

He points to his glasses, "They say the odds of my eyes being like this is 1 in 10,000."

I nod.

Slowly we begin drawing the personal boundaries: how much I'm comfortable talking about and how much other people are comfortable hearing. As a rule people seem to either be completely uncomfortable with admitting I was gone or want to hear everything.

Slowly but surely the need to talk about this is less, because it isn't such a big deal anymore, and eventually it seems to not matter at all. I think people can get use to almost anything with time.

At the very least, it's a relief to not have to hide being sick anymore.

Up

My mom's dad dreamed of a better life. Born in Hell's Kitchen, he permanently damaged his heart swimming in the polluted rivers as a child. They sent him on a charity cruise for dying children to give him one nice experience before he kicked it, but he's the one child that lived.

My mother dreamed of a better life. She hates mint ice cream. Once her family ran out of money, and used the last five dollars to buy a gallon of it for dinner. She's never told me what happened after that. She chose a career at my age to support her dying father and lives a reasonable middle-class life now.

I lived a sheltered and comfortable life. My father was out of work intermittently, but I didn't know. My parents, two siblings, and I would split one can of spam and a pot of rice for dinner, but for a kid my age that combination of grease, overprocessed meat, and carbohydrates was one of the coolest meals around. It wasn't until my mother announced one day that dad had a job and we wouldn't be having spam anymore that I figured anything out. I went to college, graduated into a respectable cube farm career that paid more than my parents made combined some years, and settled down to wonder if there was anything better.

Enron always wears polo shirts, says it's just what happens to you when you go to prep school. I give him no end of shit about it. He too was the poor kid in his highschool, but mostly because his family didn't have a jet.

***

"You're almost at the end!" I hugged him.

Jace didn't look up from screen and his keyboard, "The end?"

"You're level 54 now, you'll be level 60 soon. That's the highest level."

"See, that's the difference. Some people think they're hot shit when the reach 30, or 50, or 60, but for each person who considers something a goal, there's a better player who shrugs it off as a simple prerequisite. Those girls you coach dream of getting into college. You consider it a simple rite of passage on your way to the next thing, and always assumed you'd go."

"It's... still an achievement?"

Click click click went the mouse. He sighed and rolled his eyes, "The game starts at 60."

***

I sat on the deck of the Torii with Enron.

"I'm thinking of running for the board."

"Why?"

"I dunno, seems like a thing to do. I'm not sure what to do with myself anymore. I achieved most of my major goals. There is obviously more out there than a cube farm and toys, but I haven't any idea what it is, let alone how to get it."

"There's lots more,"

"Your life isn't interesting to me. There has to be another path 'up' other than the useless socialites."

He shrugged.

***

Six months later we, the four cofounders, are standing in a mall on a Monday afternoon staring.

"Neutral colors, all the products are very brightly colored, so the backgrounds are all very neutral to let them pop."

"Floors have busy patterns."

"Mmm, casinos are like that too."

"Let's go in the bookstore. Pretty dense product display there..."

***

"This has the potential to make us all life-changingly rich"

"I was looking for life-changing-lulz, but I also accept cash."

"That puts each of us past the only phase change in real wealth: buying your freedom. Below that is all gradations of slavery, and above that is all gradations of rich."

***

In a white suit coat he looked strangely out of place in the party. When he took us outside to talk to him, suddenly I begrudged Bluebeery and Enron a lot less for constantly wearing those damn polo shirts. Now I was the one who looked out of place, and they both needed me to make a good impression on the Angel.

"You guys are working on something pretty exciting," he said.

***

We're in a pool at a, for lack of a better term, corporate mansion. The pool is full of eager biologists playing water volleyball, and the garage is filled probably over a million dollars in lab equipment.

Enron taps me on the shoulder and laughs, "This, this is 'up.'"

Dress Up

There's a new girl with purple hair here handing me a ukulele. "Do you know how to play?"

"No," I take it anyway and imitate her in picking out the guitar opening to 'Brown-eyed-girl.' It's a shame Ginger and Giraffe aren't here, they fucking hate this song.

Enron lags a little behind us, smartphone pressed against his face, one finger from his other hand covering the opposing ear, "No Jason, that isn't what we agreed to..." He's interviewing a candidate at noon just as we finish lunch, and discussing the results of it with his peers as we wander the next beach. He's got somebody calling him to schedule an appointment during the car ride home, and when we get back to the Torii he paces the front lawn working out the details.

"It's alright," Kaleidoscope laughs, "I looked at Nexus, I realized what a CEO was, and I knew exactly what I was getting in to when I decided to date him."

He's on the phone a few weeks later in the park, and he's huddled over his laptop while Kalei(doscope) and I are enjoying a beer. I'm not about to tear into Enron for being so involved in his work. He's as happy a person as any of us, and this is what he would do for fun anyway.

***

"I can't fucking believe this."

DC giggles and covers the microphone on the radio, "Hush a minute, we can't swear on the radio."

I can hear Sid's voice over the crackle through the radio, "You guys will never make it in that car..."

"Well if it's got to die, right in front of the dorms isn't a bad place..."

"WY1HBT here," the radio chirps, "I got this covered."

"Who's that?" I ask my carmates.

DC grins, "Whacker."

A few minutes later Whacker rolls up in an oversized truck grinning from ear to ear. There's a yellow lightbar bolted to the top of the truck, and seems like he just couldn't be more excited to be jumping the car.

"What's with him?"

"He's proud to be saving the day."

***

If I had known it was going to be this sort of party I probably would have tried to find some less ratty jeans to wear. The bar is full of people who believe they are slick and sophisticated. It is somewhat amazing to watch the similarities between people flirting and explaining their business plans to one another. I can watch streams of my contacts interact with one another from the balcony, and they all believe they're very important and influential.

***

"Yeah," he says taking a drink, "You see a lot of stuff."

"We had a sophomore come up with doll-eyes a few weeks ago."

"Oh for the love of CHRIST," CoLo looks exasperated, "No more EMS talk at parties!"

***

"It's like playing dress-up,"

We're back in the Torii parking lot, watching Enron pace around on his phone, and Kalei is giving me a very puzzled look. "But it's real..."

"That doesn't mean they're playing any less!"

I can watch Kalei trying to be very very patient with me.

"It's all just games. It's no different from when we were small and pretending to be important, except that, as a side effect of pretending for so long, some of these people actually made it real. That isn't the point, though, because they're still just playing. They don't do all this theater because it's needed. They do it because they love it, because they enjoy being the important person they dreamed of more than they enjoy the actual tasks of the job."

Kalei laughs, "Maybe we should get him a pretty princess hat..."

Consumer Trust

Street cleaner bristles, a dremel, and piles upon piles of locks and picks. A small group of adults, mostly in their 20's, huddle around it tinkering. Every once in a while a latch clicks open and somebody is patted on the back.

"This," Dany says, showing us an unusual keyway, "is an older style lock. It just has a lever in the back and you just press the whole way to the back and rotate to open it, no tumblers at all. The rest of the stuff in there blocks the wrong keys, and is the sort of lock you build skeleton keys for."

A key for one of them, a dremel, and 10 minutes later and I'm holding a key with only two sets of bumps on the bottom. It opens all the locks of that style on the table.

Some of the newbies stand in mild disbelief. That's the most common reaction I get when holding this class: that this is only the sort of thing which happens in movies, or by extremely skilled people. The concept that I can teach a room full of people all the skills they would need to break into a hefty percentage homes in under two hours always comes as a bit of a shock.

"What's the easiest brand to pick?" Some of them fumble with their phones during the class to find a locksmith to call to upgrade their doors.

"Masterlock padlocks are normally the first thing you practice on. Next are kwikset and schlege...but a lot of it is personal preference"

"But those things are everywhere."

It is true. I have seen them on yard fences, electric equipment, government storage spaces, countless yard totes, virtually everywhere. People routinely trust in these products to secure their belongings, and yet most of the consumer-used security products blatantly do not offer much resistance to even a modestly trained individual.


"I am disappointed," he said, "I had always thought personal security was one of those markets which would sort itself out, with snake oil being readily exposed."

The taller girl from juggling class looks down over the edge of her glasses, "You do realize they're really just out to sell you peace of mind right?"

"But this is a really easy-to-test product and the free market right? Inferior products will lose out to superior ones via competition..."

"Like in what industries? What industries are governed by this law that the superior product can run an inferior one out of business? Can you name a time it has happened?"

We sat and thought for probably half an hour, and we couldn't think of any.

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