The Atmospherians

by Alex McElroy

  “Don’t be afraid to wave back.” I placed the voice immediately. Roger Handswerth was a bony Black man, nearly a full head taller than me, with a trim gray beard and an enveloping voice. He wore a slim suit the color of the ocean at night.

  I waved out of obligation.

  “I’m so thrilled we finally convinced you to join us,” he said.

  “No one convinced me of anything,” I said. “Circumstances made it impossible to stay where I was.”

  “A tragedy,” Roger said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  He leaned close. “I’m in the business of knowing,” he said, in a tone meant to chill me.

  Inside, meditative rain sounds played through the hallways. Employees paused to smile and wave from inside their glass-walled workstations. I felt as if I were touring a future museum, passing dioramas showcasing how people once worked. It all seemed for my benefit.

  “Don’t they find the glass walls distracting?” I said.

  “The walls promote transparency and encourage communication,” he said. “Which we value above everything else here at DAM.”

  The cafeteria was a spacious eye-white room decorated with photos of employees posing with celebrity chefs. Every week Roger hired a rising star to test out a new menu on his employees. The chefs were given complete control of the kitchen. “It does wonders for employee morale,” he said. He asked me if I was hungry.

  My stomach answered with a volcanic rumble. “I’d rather see more.”

  “I admire your ambition.” Roger pulled a granola bar from his inner jacket pocket. “You won’t ever eat a better bar.”

  It was somehow chewy but crisp, loaded with dried cranberries, chopped macadamia nuts, DAM drizzled in white chocolate script overtop. I downed it in two feral bites. “I’ve had better,” I said, though I hadn’t.

  “There’s no award for not being impressed.”

  “What about dignity?” I said, which made Roger laugh.

  In the domestic facility—the bulbous globe—sweat-drenched employees chatted with Roger outside the health club. At DAM Elementary, enthusiastic teachers stood before classes no larger than six. Pollocks and Rothkos hung on the walls of an apartment complex’s lobby—Roger made sure to tell me they were originals. We passed the chapel, the mosque, the synagogue. Employees told me how grateful they were I had decided to join them. They deeply admired my work and named their favorite videos from my ABANDON days. “You’re too kind,” I told them, absorbing their praise. I felt like Gretel, fattened on flattery. I ate as much as I could. A reckless confidence. I had joined The Atmosphere thinking I wanted to change the world, to help people, but perhaps I only wanted what helping people might give me: attention, validation, vindication. Forgiveness? Possibly. I wanted the envy of Cassandra. I wanted Blake to wish he’d never dumped me. At DAM, however, I received something far greater: a chance to become the Sasha Marcus I’d been before Lucas Devry.

  Very few DAM employees were white. They were Middle Eastern, Latinx, Black, East Asian, South Asian, African, predominantly women. They were queer. Fat. Disabled. And happy. Compared to DAM, The Atmosphere was asphyxiatingly white. Dyson had done this intentionally: White men must be isolated to protect other groups. White men should be the ones to help other white men work on themselves—this work should not be the burden of others. But the longer I spent in DAM, the more the pain of my isolation among those men had seemed to sharpen. It was as if I’d narrowly escaped a car accident and the danger had only just dawned on me.

  Roger made a point to explain DAM’s diversity. He criticized how tech companies and their employees were portrayed in the media. “The image of start-ups as freewheeling, fun-loving playgrounds for nerd bros has done the whole sector a major disservice. When I first started hiring, nearly ninety percent of applicants were men. Ninety-four percent of those men were white. They were sexists. Racists. Homophobes. They assumed DAM was a toxic playground of misogyny—one long party of Fortnite and genitals jokes. We condone none of that here. DAM has a moral obligation to guide society forward. Part of that means changing how we imagine technology start-ups and their CEOs.

  “At DAM, we don’t hire tech bros or self-appointed geniuses. This is a business. We treat it like one. From nine to five, we work. After work employees do what they like—and there is a lot of fun to be had on campus. Don’t think there isn’t. But we don’t believe in forced fun or team-building activities—not when they’re in the service of making employees log extra hours. Our employees do not compete in Ping-Pong tournaments. They do not escape from escape rooms. They don’t play Mario Kart during lunch. Our walls are not for climbing but for dividing contiguous rooms. No yo-yoing during work hours. There’s not a single Hoverboard or Segway on site. No one is allowed to wear shorts. Headphones cannot be used while working—we prioritize interaction, connection. Slack has been banned. Adderall: banned. Soylent: banned. Mountain Dew: Mountain Don’t. You won’t find an energy drink within twenty miles.

  “Most importantly, though, we treat everyone here with the care they deserve: Every employee—including retail, health, education, and dining—receives health benefits for them and their families. We have our own doctors on-site, some of the most well-respected specialists in the country, many of whom have chosen to work for DAM because of our amenities.”

  Roger provided housing for employees, too. The best education imaginable for their children, delivered by competitively compensated teachers. There were lawns for pets to roam. Running trails. A quarry for children to swim in—including a safe but no less exciting water slide that spelled DAM. Movie theater. Bowling. Buses to the city on weekends. And a four-hundred-mile-long steel wall surrounding the DAM property to protect against encroaching fires.

  “DAM isn’t a corporation,” he said. “It’s the future of life in America. People need to come together. I hate how fractured we all are, always at each other’s throats. The problem is not that we hate each other—and I truly believe, deep down, it’s impossible to hate someone once you understand them—the problem is communication. No one communicates. They’d rather troll and drag and call out and harass and cancel. It’s painful. And my industry is the problem—tech companies killed communication, with social media, texting, apps that tell you when to express your love for someone. At DAM we want to bring communication to life. Like Lazarus.”

  “Which would make you Jesus.”

  “Which makes all of us Jesus.” He laughed. “DAM is a team.”

  “I don’t even know what you make,” I said.

  “We make the world safer.” He gave me a steely, blink-less look of self-importance meant to impress me. I regret that it worked.

  Dyson’s promise to make the world safer had ended with Peter and three other men dead, with Leon Cranch curled up in a jail cell, with the dissolution of my oldest friendship. “But how?” I asked Roger. “Your website says you offer ‘Preventative Atonement.’ That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Ours is an era of impatience. Investors value potential over product. According to Forbes, Bloomberg, and Barron’s, DAM has the potential to fundamentally alter how we talk to each other over the coming decade. Silicon Valley has never seen potential like ours. No investor wants to be late to the party. And the party?” He checked his watch. “Starts in eight days.”

  We returned to the office beneath the helipad. I was pummeled with titles and names.

  “María Hernandez,” said María Hernandez. “Head of outreach technology.” She was a short, dark-haired woman wearing chunky heels and a loose tunic the color of sand. The gold bracelets ringing her wrists tinged as she led me to a corner of the room so close to the forest branches scraped the glass. “Sasha, I don’t know if they’ve told you—and forgive me if you’ve heard this already. But you’re a real inspiration. The integrity and strength you showed, after all you’ve been through, it just—” She thumbed a tear from her eye. “I admire you so much.”

  “It was a very difficu
lt time,” I said.

  “You were my first choice from the beginning. We all respect you at DAM—but me more than anyone else. I know you’ll do amazing work for us.”

  There were questions I should have been asking: What work? Why did you pick me? Why the hell does everyone here look so happy? But María’s enthusiasm blotted out my concerns. I collected her praise like a bee gathering pollen.

  She sat me down in a deep leather chair facing a flat-screen TV. She capped headphones over my ears. A promotional video played:

  * * *

  Four white women sit around a small outdoor table in the courtyard of a crowded restaurant, sharing mimosas. A voice-over says: There used to be a time when we could speak freely. The women clink their glasses. One woman says, This mimosa is my spirit animal. The other women laugh—one spit-takes her drink. The first woman photographs herself holding her drink. There used to be a time when our communities supported us. Understood us. Beneath her photo, she types her joke, then posts. There used to be a time when we looked out for each other. Her phone buzzes and chimes on the table. She coyly ignores it.

  My god, Shelly, you’re blowing up.

  What’re they saying?

  Are you faaaamous?

  Shelly gasps when she picks up her phone.

  What’s wrong, Shelly?

  What happened?

  They’re saying I’m… I don’t want to say it.

  Comments like RACIST and COLONIZER and UGH WHITE WOMEN and UR CANCELED SHELLY MAGUIRE flow over the screen. But major shifts in technology and the expansion of communities have drastically changed how we interact.

  You know I’m not like that, says Shelly. It was a joke.

  Pretty tasteless, says one of her friends.

  I would never have posted it.

  You can’t take risks with comments like that.

  A montage follows Shelly through weeks of isolation, crying in her shower, getting fired, dumped, her friends ignoring her calls. It concludes in the restaurant where it started. Shelly, with deep bags under her eyes and frazzled hair, sits alone in the corner, glaring at the table where her former friends currently sit and refuse to look at her.

  The video cuts to footage inside a technology lab. Employees type on laptops and mark figures on enormous touch screens. There used to be a time when no one got hurt. But those days are over. Employees hugging in hallways. Footage of a verdant forest and children swimming in a quarry. But some of us still have faith in humanity. Some of us still believe in the value of teamwork and are working to ensure the prosperity of our communities for generations to come. Mixed-race friends walk down the sidewalk, laughing and licking ice-cream cones. A puppy licks the face of a child. Introducing DAM. A revolutionary new technology that shows users how their words will be interpreted by people outside their communities. DAM uses advanced algorithms to simulate over four hundred billion possible outcomes for whatever you might post online. We all make mistakes. But what if we can atone for our mistakes before making them? A series of bars rise and fall on various graphs. They shift in color from green to purple to orange to red—the screen blinks as if indicating a nuclear strike. DAM’s risk analysis summary provides users with a full overview of how their words might be interpreted. Once risk is determined, users complete a multi-step confirmation process before they can post their comment or photo.

  This mimosa is my spirit animal, says Shelly again—clearly skinnier than she was in the first clip, and prettier, too, with shinier, blonder hair. The friend spits mimosa over the table. Shelly pulls out her phone and drafts the same post from before. Only this time, she taps a shield icon in the upper left corner of the screen. DAM SCORE CALCULATING flashes. RESULT: 39% chance of causing harm to Indigenous and Native People. 22% chance of losing followers. 8% chance of professional repercussions. 17% chance of personal repercussions. 99% chance of unjustifiable appropriation. DO YOU STILL WANT TO POST? Y/N? Shelly types: N. She sets down her phone. I love spending my Sundays with you, she says to her friends. Awwwww, Shelly Bell, they say.

  DAM hammers onto the screen: It’s your strongest defense against yourself.

  * * *

  María uncapped my ears.

  Roger patted my shoulder. “Remarkable, right?”

  “I still don’t get it,” I said, though of course I got it. I envied Shelly—this symbol of women like me—for escaping the punishment she didn’t deserve.

  “You don’t need to get the technology,” Roger said. “I hardly get it myself. All you need to know is that it works.”

  “Do you want me to produce videos for you?”

  “That’s what I love about her,” María said, to Roger. “The modesty.”

  “I wish I could say the same about me,” Roger said.

  He and María laughed.

  I laughed.

  Then nobody laughed.

  María said, “Sasha, you’ll star in the promotions.”

  My lungs shrunk. “Doing what?”

  “Reenacting your infamous night,” she said. “We think your story will really resonate with our clients. What you said to—”

  “Lucas Devry,” said Roger.

  “I’m not an actor.”

  “You don’t have to be,” said María. “You’ll be playing yourself.” She squatted beside me and laid a hand on my knee. She spread her other arm to the sky. “We open with you in the back of a taxi. Is that right?”

  “An Uber,” Roger corrected.

  “A Lyft,” I muttered.

  “We open with you in the Lyft giddy from a wonderful night on the town. You’re on top of the world. You’re laughing; you’re tired; you’re proud of yourself. And you have every right to be. You just got some excellent news. When you pull out your phone, though, you see that an awful man has left an awful comment on your beautiful photo. Close-up on the screen. You type your response, something like…”

  “I am trying to create a loving beautiful world,” said Roger. “And the world would be so much more beautiful if you and everyone like you were dead.”

  “A fairly innocuous comment,” María said. “Mean-spirited, yes. But on the internet that’s like flicking a pea at someone—if it had been made in a vacuum, that is. Sadly, we don’t live in a vacuum. If we did, we wouldn’t need DAM.”

  “If only we didn’t need DAM,” Roger said.

  “This time, though, instead of posting you tap the DAM shield on your screen.”

  “Upper left corner,” said Roger.

  María read off a tablet: “Forty-four percent chance of causing offense. Twenty-nine percent chance of follower loss. Sixty-four percent chance of personal repercussions. And finally: eighty percent chance of personal repercussions. Now, because one or more of your scores exceeds fifty percent, the application advises you not to post. But you’ll type Y anyway—you’re angry; we get it. And what happens? The app delays the post for five minutes, and during that time it gives a comprehensive overview of how other users might interpret this post. This, of course, is available only for DAM Platinum Members. But it’s worth it. Because after five minutes, you change your mind. You type N when prompted again. The Uber drops you off at your apartment. You wake up refreshed in the morning. You go on with your life, with your career. You and I never meet.”

  “Sounds wonderful, right?” Roger asked. “That other life.”

  I felt like a magician’s assistant standing inside a box pincushioned with swords. “There must be other celebrities,” I mumbled. “Ones who’ve made even bigger mistakes.”

  “Sure, there are other celebrities, but we don’t want to work with a celebrity. We want to work with you. Because we love you, Sasha. We’re huge fans of ABANDON.”

  “My sister-in-law was a subscriber,” said María. “She changed her life because of you. I don’t think she’d be with us today if it weren’t for your program.”

  “We admire all your work with your clients—the care and respect you showed them,” he said. “And the work you’re doing now.
Were doing, I mean. With those men in your cult.”

  “You’re the perfect fit for the campaign,” María said.

  “People know you,” added Roger. “But they don’t know you know you. A large segment of the population (thirty percent) will instantly recognize you. Another thirty will be sure you’re familiar but won’t know without searching. The final forty won’t have a clue who you are. To them, you could be anyone. You could be their sister, their mother, their wife, their daughter: themselves. You’re everyone and you’re no one. You know what that makes you?”

  “Trapped,” I said.

  “Ha-ha!” said María.

  “That makes you a unicorn,” Roger said.

  “Something terrible happened to me,” I said. “People died because of me.”

  María rubbed my shoulder and leaned in for a hug. “That’s not true,” she whispered. “You know that’s not true. Lucas Devry was sick. You had nothing to do with that.”

  I was eager for exoneration. Dyson had said similar things to me months ago. But I hadn’t felt the words until now. María meant what she said; she understood, intimately, how unjust my guilt was. Her words lifted a weight I hadn’t realized was there until she spoke.

  “I don’t know if you think of yourself in these terms,” said Roger. “But to me, and to María, you’re an artist. While some artists use paint and words and film and dance, your medium was inspiration, kindness, advice. You renewed people’s faith in themselves. And artists—all great artists—create from places of trauma. They transform trauma into art that addresses the masses. That’s what you’ll do with DAM. Suffering transformed into joy. You’ll commune with people facing similar issues. There is no higher calling than using your pain to help others.”