Full Catch Diorama

by Nick Salomon

  Scanning for Memory Entry Point…

  Possible Match Found!

  “Attaboy Topher,” says Scott and then he turns on a dial on his fancy control station. There are dials and levers and buttons that make it look like the controls of a starship.

  ToBogan clenches his teeth and closes his eyes, taking in the migraine inflicted by rama catching. I see a small tear run out of his right eye. Single manly tear. It’s fascinating to behold such an alpha specimen of manhood be reduced to tears. Not to mention the long-term effects of catching ramas out of one’s brain. But the Maximum Straya endures and the catch goes on.

  Diorama Located!

  Catching Diorama…

  A little label under the status notice shows a percentage counter starting from zero and progressing a unit about every 10 seconds. That’s gonna take a while. ToBogan holds on to the armrests for dear life and I feel the distinctive vibration of my phone in my pocket. I pull it out and read a new text message.

  From: Lucy

  Hey

  I push the lock screen button and pocket the phone back. The catching process continues.

  “Hey Scott, you ever catch something you shouldn’t be looking at?” I ask the tech.

  “Dude, all the time,” he replies with a grin. “But by labor law we’re not supposed to immerse into any dioramas until ToBogan here dreams the whole raw sequence back and signs a statement giving Dreamax ownership of it, private or not.”

  “So you have to do all this again until the right rama comes up?”

  “An amateur dreamer might have trouble giving us an entry point for the catch, but experienced pros like ToBogan over here are usually good on the first try.”

  ToBogan struggles to open his eyes and through the pain raises the right arm to give me a thumbs-up. The whole scene reminds me of a creepy old school movie where a mental patient is given electro shock therapy. I return double thumbs-ups with both hands.

  “Cool,” I say to Scott.

  “You know, if you want to learn more about the technical details of diorama catching, there are some free training materials online,” Scott says. He’s a nice guy. Team player. HR poster boy. “You don’t have to listen to my lectures if you want to transfer to the shop.”

  “Nah, it’s cool. It’s more curiosity of mine rather than professional interest,” I lie.

  Scott shrugs and continues the catch. I stay behind him and watch which buttons he pushes and dials he turns and levers he pulls. I look around the shop and people going about their workdays. There are several dreamcatchers around but only the one ToBogan is sitting in is being used. I feel the text message vibration of my phone again and pull it out.

  From: Lucy

  I got some new stuff. Darkweb stuff. You’ll like it.

  Probably bootleg ramas. I lock and pocket the phone again. Some minutes go by and eventually the ordeal for ToBogan is done. Scott powers down the dreamcatcher and the Straya gets up and turns away from us to wipe tears from his eyes. Can’t let the betas ever see alpha tears. The betas might see weakness. The betas might attempt to challenge him for alpha-dom.

  “You okay, buddy?” asks Scott, as he taps the Straya’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, yeah. Standard procedure, mate. No biggie,” ToBogan replies.

  “Excellent. I’ll run some garbage cleanup then you’ll be able to certify the rama in a couple of hours.”

  “Yeah, I know the drill,” ToBogan says and looks around the room, not near as loud as he was before. “Gonna use the toilet real quick.”

  Scott nods and sits back down at this workstation to do his thing. My phone shakes again. It’s like she doesn’t get the message. I pull it out and notice Scott pulls out his too. It’s not Lucy this time. It’s the Dreamax HR app, showing a notification inviting all staff to the bleachers. I look at Scott who looks back at me after checking his own notification then shrugs to let me know he doesn’t know what the impromptu gathering is about either.

  “Well, wanna go check it out?” I ask.

  “Yeah in a minute, I have to finish some things here,” he says. Can’t walk the hallowed halls of Dreamax with an IT guy I guess. I nod and make my way to the break room. Who knows how long the meeting is going to be. Better grab a drink. I see the slaves hurrying to the meeting. Don’t want to be the last ones to the bleachers. Don’t want our fearless leader to see them get there last. I grab a mineral water, swipe my credit card on the automated cashier’s reader and continue to the main hall.

  Dreamax HQ is a three-story building. The basement and ground floor is where the shops are. Where the actual work is done. Dreamers come in and the techs catch dioramas, which then go to cleanup, post-production, editing and all that. The final product is then formatted for a variety of rama player brands and encoded with our proprietary DRM shit. The DRM usually stops hackers for a couple weeks which is the really short window any rama studio has to make money. After that, most people just pirate the shit out of them. One reason out of many only an idiot would go on business to sell studio ramas nowadays.

  The second floor is where the money sinks are. IT, HR, Finance. Without us in the second floor, any work done by anyone else in the company would grind to a halt. But still, we’re not sexy like Sales or Marketing. No, we’re cost centers and so we rarely see budget or perks. We’re money sinks and not much else.

  Third floor are Sales, Marketing, Talent and Executives. The good-looking people. The Hollywood people. The bros walking around with protein shakes, talking about the game last night. The girls posting pictures of their lunch on social media or whatever other frivolous vapid bullshit they engage in with their sorority sisters. These are the smooth talkers and smilers and social media picture-perfect, well-aligned teeth, gym members, ivy league graduates, well-connected, highly functional, above average individuals. Or at least that’s the image they obsessively portray in their half-dozen social media accounts. One can only guess what really goes on behind closed doors for the members of the Adderall fan club.

  I open my mineral water and take a sip. I love mineral water. It feels like drinking flavorless tooth paste. Eventually, I make it to the bleachers and find slaves are still finding a place to sit down while our fearless leader, CEO Audrey Reynolds holds a microphone and does that CEO thing where she spots random people in the crowd and points and calls their name. The slaves eat this kind of shit.

  ‘Oh, look she knows my name. This important, genetically superior, captain of industry and leader of the community still finds space in her brain to squeeze my name in. Surely I’m that important to her and the company. Surely being a good corporate boy pays off. I bet Stacy from Accounting is super jealous of me right now. I should post this moment in the sosh nets!’

  That’s got to be what goes through a slave’s brain when a CEO points at them and calls their name. I do wonder where that practice came from though. Maybe they teach that in Ivy League business school. When you go through business leader training, they probably have a class on how to act like a lower-tier human being to establish some sort of connection. Some sort of relatability with the troops. Must promote team synergy and all that.

  Audrey continues her round of smiles and pointing and name-calling with the occasional hand shake here and there. The bleachers area is this wooden structure near the front door that looks like oversized stair steps. Sometimes we use it for meetings, others for announcements. Last year we watched the Trump/Ocasio-Cortez presidential debates here with beers and sliders. That was fun.

  “Alright guys, let’s settle dooooowwwwwwn,” says Linda from HR with her annoying vocal fry, as usual playing bad cop for corporate when an order has to be relayed to the slaves. Execs can’t look condescending or like they’re giving orders. No, that’s a job for HR, so they’re used for deflection or to prevent workplace lawsuits. Fuck, I love corporate America.

  The noise dies down. I sit next to Sophie from Legal. Cute, petite girl. I wonder how someone like that holds their ground in court. I wave
to Steve Kowalski, my boss, who waves back and sits two levels up. Linda greets us and apologizes for interrupting our workdays with an unplanned, impromptu meeting. She goes on about HR reminders. Sign up for the company spin class, fill up the online poll, take your yearly sexual harassment sensitivity training, but that one only applies to male slaves. We all know only us males have to constantly keep our inherent rapey tendencies under control while female employees are pure, elevated beings with none an impure thought to besmirch their characters.

  Eventually Linda shuts up and concedes the stage to our fearless leader.

  “Good morning, Dreamaxers!” exclaims CEO Audrey Reynolds who receives thunderous applause and cheering in return. “Thank God it’s Monday! Like Linda said, our apologies for pulling you out of the zone, but we have some news to share…”

  This can’t be good. She goes on and on about positive things in the industry and our company. Probably softening the blow that is incoming.

  “… but as we all know, all around the studio diorama industry we see trouble…” here we go. “Sony shut down their entertainment division last year. An entire, well-established titan of entertainment spaces shut down their music, videogame, motion picture, virtual reality and diorama divisions all at once. This is very scary stuff.”

  Now she’s doing that thing where we’re reminded how badly our competitors are doing so whatever is going to happen to us we shouldn’t feel so bad.

  “… and it’s admirable. I have nothing but respect for our team.” Pause for dramatic effect. “We have prevailed where others have failed and every single one of you should be proud of such an achievement. We are winners, all of us in this room. But…”

  But. There’s always a ‘but.’ Here it comes.

  “… as you all know, diorama sales are down. Studios struggle to produce the types of content that most strongly engage our audiences…”

  You mean porn, small animal torture or pranks that involve property damage among other fine genres. Yeah, good luck having any studio rama go viral the way a Chad Mars indie rama does. The MBAs don’t get it. These MBAs employed by bankers and investors who think there can be a rama ‘industry’ the way Hollywood was. I feel sorry for CEO Audrey Reynolds. Heiress to a Hollywood empire who came of age just as the entire movie industry collapsed. Then the major studios shut down one by one and the entertainment economy that sustained Los Angeles crashed. Hard. The money people fled LA like rats. Took all the money with them. Took all the investment. Hell, even Silicon Valley titans ran away to states where they wouldn’t be taxed to extinction. Then to top it all out, a dirty bomb goes off in the port of San Pedro and the whole area has to be cordoned out due to radiation and shipping traffic gets diverted elsewhere. Now California has fallen from its high pedestal. Now LA is what Detroit was in the 80’s. At least real estate is not the obscene bullshit it was at its peak.

  She keeps trying though, with the help of unwise foreign investments. Saudi Kings, Chinese officials of The Party and whoever else still romanticizes Hollywood when the rest of the world has moved on. No one gives a shit about music, movies, videogames or VR anymore. It’s all about the ramas now. Not even clean, studio produced ramas but the indie stuff. Complete unaltered creative freedom for the dreamers, even if that means sometimes shit gets dark. But that’s why they’re viral. The slaves at large love it when shit gets dark. The desensitized masses who spent their childhoods consuming healthy doses of ISIS beheading videos and all kinds of readily available porn, legal and otherwise. No, the masses don’t care about your diorama documentary about the rivers of Utah. No, the masses want to dream about rape, murder, drug use and whatnot, and this is why your company is dying. This is why your family fortune is being wasted. People like you made it so it was impossible to make money in entertainment unless your content was as family and advertiser friendly as possible. Clean, sterilized, shiny and devoid of any humanity but immune to the PR nightmares caused by social justice warriors bitching on Twitter about how the latest movie or rama is not diverse enough.

  And this is why Dreamax will fail, just like all other diorama studios. Ironic, really.

  “… but we’ll get through this.” Pause for dramatic effect as she looks up and down the bleachers. “We’ll get through it with teamwork, quality and doing our best, as we’ve always done it even if sometimes we have to do more with less…”

  More with less. CEO speak for cutbacks. Maybe layoffs. Oh boy here we go. Audrey stops talking and cedes the floor back to Linda from HR.

  “There have been rumors about cutbaaaaaaaacks for the last few weeeeeeeks and today we’re sad to confirm this is indeed the caaaaaase. After this meeting, we’ll do a manager’s and up catch-up to discuss executioooooooon. Sadly, some of you will be moving on to other opportunities beyond Dreamaaaaaaax.”

  Fuck. Time to update my resume I guess. Linda from HR continues apologizing about a corporate strategy that makes complete sense. I’ve never taken it personal when a company downsizes. I certainly hope the slaves don’t either. Maybe I’ll land a job in medical IT. People may no longer watch movies or dream studio ramas but they still get sick and die all the time. Job security for years to come.

  My phone vibrates again and I decide to check the notification rather to listen to the vocal frayed apologies of Linda from HR. It’s another text message from Lucy.

  From: Lucy

  Come check it out tonight

  To: Lucy

  Okay

  Yeah, I’ll go see my ex tonight. Why not? It’s not like the TorChan anons will miss me.

  Hardware and Software

  Lucy’s apartment is in North Hollywood. A few years back, trying to drive from Downtown up here at rush hour would be bumper to bumper hell on the 101 during a window that spanned 4 or 5 hours in the afternoon. Nowadays the ride takes about 15 minutes.

  If Downtown LA is a literal shithole taken over by homeless tent cities, North Hollywood is even worse, but for its own reasons. The celebrities, executives and upper managers who could afford to get out, got out. Real estate values plummeted and the houses they left behind were purchased by mid-level Mexican cartel lieutenants or wealthy Chinese immigrants. Nowadays it’s sort of an unofficial red district. This is the place to come if you want to grab a hooker or some coke. Or if your ex-girlfriend sends you cryptic text messages bugging you to come visit.

  The streets are littered with trash. Storefronts that years ago were used by small quaint businesses are now adult-only rama arcades or poorly concealed brothels. There are ‘massage parlors’ here and there where girls wearing nothing but a doctor’s robe stand on the sidewalk passing out flyers. ‘Open from 6:00 PM to 3:00 AM, $200 an hour.’ Seems legit. My guess is they bring much needed tax revenue or someone in City Hall is either in a cartel’s payroll or intimidated into looking the other way. Convenience stores make bank in this sort of neighborhood. Open 24/7, selling condoms, snacks, needles, drinks, alcohol. If opening a rama arcade doesn’t happen for me, one of those would be an acceptable second option.

  I arrive at the apartment building but can’t find a parking space for another couple blocks. My somewhat late-model car stands out from the pieces of junk parked next to it. I hope its alarm system works as advertised. Even after police departments through the state lost a lot of funding, California is still a may-issue state but for all intents and purposes, getting a gun conceal carry permit is near impossible. Two blocks walk in near complete darkness in a neighborhood controlled by cartel gangs. Whatever she’s got, better be worth it.

  Somehow I make it in one piece to the front door of her building. I push the button for her apartment in the comms console but nothing happens. The stupid thing is broken. Out of frustration I lightly punch the door and it just opens wide for me. Talk about safety. I walk in. It’s one of those apartment buildings with three levels, stairs going up in the corners and a pool in the middle. The pool is empty save for the deep end where I see a foot or so of disgusting greenish rain water.
Someone’s playing loud hip hop music. Someone else competes with Mexican narco-corridos. Shitty people engaged in a shitty competition for dominance of the nearby airwaves by means of shitty music. And everyone else caught in the crossfire are just collateral damage. I walk up the stairs all the way to the third level. My plump physique is not accustomed to this kind of activity so I hyperventilate, eventually making it there feeling like I’m about to drop dead from a heart attack. Her apartment door is right next to the staircase but I hold on to the handrail and take a minute to recover my stamina. I feel better now, let’s go visit Lucy.

  I walk up to the door and knock a couple times. Nothing. Could be she gave up waiting on me and went to bed. Nah, it’s only a little bit past 7 and this is Lucy. She probably goes to sleep at sunrise after a night of lurking the interwebs.

  I knock again. Nothing. But then I hear her voice from inside saying “hold on!”

  That’s fine Lucy, take your time. She’s probably putting on pants or something. The door opens and the noise of computer equipment inside escapes. And there she is, my ex-girlfriend. Shorter than me. Average body. Black hair cut short. Just as socially retarded and running on junk food as me but somehow keeping herself several pounds safe from obesity. She’s got these big brown eyes that make you feel as if she can see right through you. They remind me why at some point it felt like I was in love with her but also why we drifted apart. To this day it still baffles me why she went out with me in the first place. Not to mention insisting on keeping in touch after the break up.

  “Well you’re going to stand out there all night or what?” she asks then turns to get back inside. I grunt in lieu of articulating a proper response like a human being with minimal social skills would and follow her.