We pursue the thing, and it flies along slower and slower, sinking toward the ground. It enters a clearing and makes a long, decelerating arc into a clump of thick grass. There it is, panting, glazed eyes blinking, splayed out on the ground in a tangle of blonde hair. The eyelids flutter, and then all at once the face slackens in unconsciousness.
Assiyeh kneels by the head, examining it. She explains she’s been tracking it ever since the attack on the pregnant woman in the public toilet the other day. That’s what they do: eat foetuses, drawing them out of the womb with prehensile intestines.
“She couldn’t help herself,” Assiyeh says, examining the face.
“Do you know her?” I ask.
I stay with the head at Assiyeh’s request as she goes back to explain things to the woman in the house. When she returns, she hands me a thermos bag.
“Hold this open,” she commands.
I hold it while she insinuates the head into the bag, which is lined with plastic and contains a liquid that has a strong artificial flower smell, like roses. She claps the bag shut and locks it, then lifts it up like a fisherman with his prize catch.
Assiyeh looks at me for a moment.
“Thank you,” she says.
She turns to go.
I stop her and start asking questions. She’s prepared to tell me only that she must get the head well hidden before daybreak, or it will die. She thinks she can persuade the head to tell her where its body is, and she can rejoin the two and begin treatment.
“Aren’t you a physicist?” I ask.
Walking away into the dark she explains that she grew up around people who dealt with these things and she knows what she’s doing. If there’s anything she will need me for, she adds, not looking at me, she will get in touch.
“You’re staying at the Hotel Bluonga, aren’t you?”
“The Surfeit is One.”
I don’t mind the dark at all. In fact, without having anything against light, I prefer darkness. I would even go as far as to say I love darkness. I feel at home in it. I don’t feel safe in darkness, but I feel safer in darkness. The eye goes silent in it. When darkness falls, everything slips for as long as it lasts, taking me along. It’s a lovely feeling, especially when it’s just starting. Like settling toward the bottom of the sea, into the cool linen of its silty bottom. Light individuates things and as it fades, the individuation of things recedes and becomes less visual and more intimate.
One by one, we fade from view. You can’t see us fade. You think we’re all still there, until the ribbon of storytelling breaks and you realize not only that you are alone, but that you have been alone.
1.) Why did you leave your last job?
2.) Can you do this job?
3.) Why do you feel you’re qualified for this job?
4.) Will you be able to in a safe manner carry out all job assignments out associated with this position?
5.) Are you able to perform this job’s duties with reasonable accommodations of them (the duties)?
6.) Can you lift fifty pounds and carry it fifty yards?
7.) Can you lift seventy-five pounds and carry it fifty yards?
8.) Can you lift fifty pounds and carry it seventy-five yards?
9.) Can you lift seventy-five pounds and carry it seventy-five yards?
10.) Can you lift a hundred pounds and carry it fifty yards?
11.) Do you keep the Ten Commandments?
12.) Can you lift a hundred pounds and carry it twenty yards?
13.) Can you lift fifty pounds and carry it one hundred and fifty yards?
14.) Can you lift forty-five pounds and carry it one hundred and seventy five yards?
15.) Are you applying to any other jobs?
16.) Are you legally authorized to work here?
17.) Are you over the age of eighteen?
18.) Can you provide proof of my age?
19.) Are you willing to relocate?
20.) Are you willing to work nights?
21.) Are you willing to work weekends?
22.) Are you willing to work holidays?
23.) Are you willing to remain permanently on premises?
24.) Do you have any restrictions on your ability to travel?
25.) Would you say that you easily can deal with high pressure situations?
26.) How do you propose to compensate for your lack of experience?
27.) Do you have unpopular political opinions?
28.) Do you have any blind spots?
29.) Do you know what this organization does?
30.) Can you describe a time when your work was criticized and how did you handled it?
31.) Have you ever been asked to leave a job?
32.) Have you ever been convicted of a crime?
33.) Tell us about yourself.
34.) Aren’t you a physicist?
35.) Describe a situation where you had to make a quick decision.
36.) Describe a time when you had to deal with contradictory demands.
37.) Describe how you prioritize unrealistic deadlines.
38.) Describe your ideal job.
39.) How would you define success?
40.) Do you think an employer should be feared or liked?
41.) Do you works better in a team or alone?
42.) Have you ever fired someone?
43.) How did that make you feel?
44.) How do you want to improve on yourself in the next year?
45.) How long do you expect it will take the work you do for you will take if hired?
46.) How much time will it take you for you to make a significant contribution to this business by you?
47.) How well do you interact with management?
48.) How would you describe your work style of you?
49.) How would you feel working for someone who you felt were less attractive than you?
50.) How would you go about quickly establishing credibility with the team?
51.) List any professional or trade groups or political parties or groups or other organizations to which you belong to which you consider relevant to be able to have the necessary ability to be capable to perform this job which you apply for am.
52.) Talk about a time you made a suggestion to improve business.
53.) Tell about a challenge you at work recently faced (and overcame).
54.) Tellk about a time you resolved a conflict.
55.) How will you go about preparing yourself to join the gridded ranks of the Misled?
56.) What are the positive character traits you don’t have?
57.) What are the steps you follow to study a problem before making a decision?
58.) What would your previous supervisor, family members, or friends say is your greatest strength and weakness of yours is?
59.) What have disappointed you about a job?
60.) What about other people irritates you and how do you deal with it?
61.) What is your greatest failure?
62.) What is your greatest fear?
63.) What is your style of leadership?
64.) What position do you prefer when working on a project?
65.) What qualities do you look for in a boss?
66.) With what sorts of people do you enjoying work with?
67.) What was the most humiliating period in your life and how did you deal with it?
68.) What will it take to attain your goals?
69.) What will you miss about your current or last job?
70.) When have you most felt most satisfied to a job?
71.) Why should we hire you?
72.) Are you willing to put the interests of this organization ahead of your own?
73.) Do you have any questions for us?
—Yeah I have questions, up to and including:
1.) What?
—Or, to go into greater detail somewhat:
2.) Do you experience any emotions?
3.) Have you ever recognized the suffering of a person other than you
rself?
4.) Is there any relationship between nature and you?
5.) Have you ever noticed the harm you do? How do you justify it?
6.) Do you actually have any values?
7.) Do you believe your own lies?
8.) Can you conceive an idea of beauty that is not superficial?
9.) Why do you have this arbitrary authority over me?
10.) How can you hope to confront the despotic imagination of the Teeming?
11.) Have you ever used your imagination?
12.) How do you live with yourself?
13.) When did you first realize you were composed entirely of living venom and how did that discovery make you feel?
14.) Why do you keep perpetuating this farce?
15.) Do you enjoy taking out your humiliations on others, or is it just that you don’t notice that’s what you’re doing?
—Do you think I can’t see what your questions are really asking?
I have to say I was really disappointed to learn that the hiring was going to be handled by the human resources department, and not by the academics or by the researchers at the zoo itself. I had hoped for an informal, vis a vis exchange, instead of a questionnaire and this dry, managerial, shell-gaming, now you say it now you don’t approach. I had heard of this opening socially, and I was looking forward to just slotting in without all the b.s. But they want to run background checks on me, they want me to do a physical, which I haven’t in years, because I haven’t needed it, and they want this and they want that. They ask me all these ineptly-worded questions that aren’t questions. Ineptly-worded-because-mendacious non-question questions. When they ask “how do you interact with management” what they mean is “you’re going to shut up and do as you’re told” and that’s not a question, that’s a statement. That’s an order.
I left my last job because I was fired. I was fired because of general ill will, in which I freely participated because I felt like no one gave me an iota of respect and I was made to feel ashamed of myself just for working even though I would have been made to feel ashamed of myself for not working. I started stealing and got caught and got fired. They want to know if I can do this job when it’s obvious bacteria could do this job. My chief qualification is a boundless confidence in my need for money, which is a need anyone can depend on me to have reliably and at all times. I believe in me. I have to, because I have no proof of my existence. Where am I from? I have no origin—I’m the magic negro, remember? I don’t so much dance as move nonstop and I came into my existence unproven and in motion.
I am a safe worker. I have never injured myself on a job. I carry loads all the time. I have a load of something in front of me right now. I keep the Ten Commandments where they will keep. I’m applying to every imaginable job, I’m over eighteen and I can prove it with the scorch marks on my face, authorization for me to work here is provided by a grant from the rumbling stomach foundation, I’ll be happy to relocate the moment I have a home to relocate from, my hunger doesn’t sleep or take weekend or holiday breaks, I expect my remains will be found on your premises, I am restricted in my ability to travel by not having any money.
I am glad to report I have been told, by people at all levels, that I have a positive flair for dealing with high pressure situations. I propose to compensate for my lack of experience by plunging headlong into the experience of lack that constitutes working for you. Considering my long time experience with lack, being compensated for it is exactly what I propose. All my political opinions are populist, yes. I have no blind spots. I know what this organization does better than you will admit. The last time I handled criticism of my work I was no longer working, but I have never been asked to leave a job, nor convicted of a crime.
Tell you about me. If you want to know about me, then you should look about me. If you want to know me, I’ll be right here. I once had to make a quick decision whether to allow myself to be run over by a garbage truck or leap into a stinking, polluted river. I jumped up onto the hood of the truck and screamed at the driver until he stopped. I once had to deal with contradictory demands between my food money and my rent. I bought food. I prioritize unrealistic deadlines by telling the person setting them they’ll have what they ask for when I get around to it.
My ideal job is wandering at my own pace and to no set purpose through an evacuated landscape. With a meal behind me and another in front of me, next to a warm, not unoccupied bed under a sound roof. I would define success as complete liberation from the sway of questioning questionnaire writers. I think an employer should only hire people who are afraid to like him or like being afraid of him. I work best when I run a team I don’t interact with socially.
I have once fired someone. The board had grown bored with her and decided without speaking to her or to anyone she worked with directly, with the exception of one person who had it in for her for some reason I never knew, that she was too well paid and old for her own good. Firing her made me feel demonic, disgust, administrative, cruel, and standing over the savaged remains of a victim. I want to improve myself by never letting assholes like that make me their disaster instrument again in my life.
Am I a smoker? Yes. I am a smoker who doesn’t smoke. I was born a smoker. Ever since I first saw or knew about smoking I knew I was a smoker. I was intrigued by tobacco in just about any form so long as you smoked it. I tried smoking cigarettes, cigarillos, cigars, bidis, kreteks, briar pipes, corncob pipes, meerschaum pipes, clay pipes, hookah, always hated it. Only drink your own poison, an experienced old spectre once told me.
There is no need for concern about deadlines with me. When it comes to deadlines, I have an unbroken track record. I will make a significant contribution to your business in zero time. I interact with management dynamically; I do not tolerate the detection of any shortcoming in my work, and apply myself to the utmost to eliminate such detections and prevent them in future. My work style is gradual, unhurried, relaxed, contemplative, often tired, unoriginal, replete with fantasy. I quickly establish my credibility with “the team” by making sure they are immediately aware of my positive, no nonsense, can-do, don’t fuck with me, I’ll call you attitude. I am a card carrying member of Terrorist, Witch, Communist, Drug Addict, Faggot, Black, Hispanic, Muslim, and some others. I am prepared to join or convert to any group that will further augment the degree to which I attract irrational hatred and persecution.
Once I suggested we improve business by eliminating management and running the company ourselves on an egalitarian basis and got fired. I overcame a challenge at that time by managing not to get killed or jailed, and resolved the conflict by threatening a lawsuit they didn’t know I couldn’t afford, thus enjoying the most fun I ever experienced on the job when they backed down and offered me an insultingly small severance package. Having is the one character trait I am positive I don’t have. When I make a decision, sometimes I follow the steps of Karl Marx, and sometimes I follow the steps of Jimi Hendrix, and sometimes I follow the steps of Malcolm X; it just has to have an X in it, although don’t assume I would put Jesus Xrist on the list on that account. I’m not close with my dead family and other people just don’t understand me, but I did regard my parole officer as a personal friend, and it was his opinion that I try too hard, and that I seem to care too much about other people while tragically disregarding myself.
What has disappointed me about a job? The time commitment, the lowness of wage rates, the bilious attitudes of my co-workers, supervisors, etc., the waste, the pointlessness, the sinister milieu of petty deceit. As for irritation, I do find I deal with quite a bit of irritation on the job. Wherever I work, irritation seems to follow.
My greatest failure is that I’m filling out your questionnaire. My greatest fear is the idea that my going along with this is a sign I have no spine, and that the future for me is just a collapsing umbrella, the canopy come loose from half the spokes and the whole thing inverted in the storm, then whipped out of my hand at last and tossed in with all the oth
er undifferentiated street clutter.
My style of leadership is remote, absent, uninvolved, natural, democratic, listening. When working on a project I am at my best giving constructive feedback from the margin, in fact you might say I specialize in feeding back. The qualities I look for in a boss are difficulty in keeping track of things, forgetfulness, indecision, leniency, generosity, having a benign awareness deficiency, gullibility, nonpunctuality. I most enjoy working with people who are beautiful, freewheeling, inventive, forgiving, generous.
Am I willing to work inside the chimpanzee enclosure? Am I willing to work in the chimpanzee enclosure alone? Well, will I get paid? If so, then yes.
What was the most difficult period in my life and how did I deal with it?
Right off the bat I want to comment on how much that I appreciate that question. For the answer, see above.
What will it take to attain my goals?
Well, we’re going to have to do better—a lot better—much much better—in the exploration of space and justice and the arts.
What will you miss about your current or last job?
The stellar vending machine area at my former place of employment.
When have you most felt most satisfied in a job?
I always feel very satisfied when I head home at the end of the day.
Why should we hire you?
It would mean you could stop looking for someone to hire.
Are you willing to put the interests of this organization ahead of your own?
I am absolutely willing to do whatever it takes to get this organization over.
Signature: SINCERELY SUPERAESOP
A probing, baggy eye dialling out of spirals of disco lights—the gaze belongs to Professor Delatour, fellow economist and attendee at the conference. He has, before the general assembly, made a display of debunking animal money, and has denounced its creators as charlatans. The first Professor Long makes a great many phone calls, but it appears the challenge will go forward. Acting on behalf of the group, Professor Budshah sends seconds to Professor Delatour. There is constructive criticism and then there is destructive criticism. There is criticism that springs from a high calling, and criticism that slinks forth from less honorable motives. There is the incisive indication of flaws, and then there is ad hominem vitriol. Professor Budshah, speaking on behalf of, and with the full agreement of, the creators of the concept of animal money, formally requests Professor Delatour’s presence at such and such a place and time, to answer honorably for his calumnies, in an economist’s duel.
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