JPod

by Douglas Coupland

  Hi, Mom.

  John Doe's mother!

  "So this is where you work." She glowered at the pod. "I see just one woman here. What's your name?"

  "Kaitlin."

  "Kaitlin, how can you possibly work in a space where there's not even one other woman and the possibility of synchronizing ovulation cycles?"

  "Legally, the men's and women's rooms have to be the same size. So it's actually quite nice. And my friend Bree works here, too."

  "Wait! I see another female over there smoking."

  Kaitlin said, "That's Ethan's mother. Ethan works with your son, too."

  "crow," barked his mother, "I need you to introduce me to your comrades."

  "Um, Mom, this is Ethan, Ethan's mother, Kaitlin, Cowboy, Evil Mark. Everybody, this is my mother, freedom."

  Without asking, all of us knew that "freedom" was not capitalized.

  I said, "J°lm never told us his family called him crow."

  "It is his name. But I respect his right and need as a male to generate a name that supports his masculinity in the cheerless environment of technology."

  Cowboy snorted.

  freedom cut him a withering glance.'You must be the male slut," she said. She looked at the jCola machine. "What's this—you have your own sugar-water facility here?"

  "It's our own brand of cola." I could hear the pride in Cowboy's voice.

  "Of all the corporate cysts and welts on the planet, you choose to mimic Coca-Cola?"

  Cowboy surprised us. "It's actually a form of subversion," he said. "I located an organic cruelty-free source of cola nut powder, and the sugar came from a Zimbabwe sugar-making facility endorsed by the UN."

  "That's still cash cropping."

  "One step at a time, freedom."

  "Amen," came a male voice from behind me: Kam Fong. A more potentially disastrous clash of personalities was hard to imagine.

  freedom asked, "Do you work here, too?"

  "Not at all."

  "crow, introduce us."

  Mom, this is Kam Fong. Kam Fong, this is my mother.

  "Kam, what do you do?"

  "I work with the Chinese government to ensure that as many male babies are born as possible. We take the unwanted girl babies, dry them out, and then grind them into a powder, which we mix with latex paints to make anti-skid coating for the military's helipads."

  freedom squinted hard at Kam, and then announced, "Finally! A true radical spirit here in this psychic morgue you call jPod."

  Kam pulled out cigars. "Smoke?"

  "Love to. Anything to help Cuba."

  Kam and freedom went over to the ventilation duct and chewed the fat like old school friends. From snippets I could tell they were discussing hydroponics. Their unlikely but cheerful meshing of personalities was a jolt—so much so that when I finally realized my mother was talking to me, I found I'd completely gapped out. "Sorry, Mom, what were you saying?"

  "What an amazing woman. So strong. So confident. So manly yet female at the same time. So forceful."

  I should have removed Mom from the party at that moment, but alas, it was too late. Mom was infatuated.

  A few minutes later Cowboy went off to get Styrofoam cups from the coffee room, and Kam Fong put a quarter-pound of medicinal-grade cocaine into the jCola, where it dissolved beautifully. "You losers might as well get the real thing," he said.

  Cowboy came back and poured a glass for everybody, and Kaitlin stood up to give a brief inaugural speech. Her hug machine looked like a cross between an incline bench and an industrial loom.

  Kaitlin said, "I'd like you all to know that this hug machine is for everybody in the company, and any time you need to use it, come right in. I've covered the hugging pads with removable terry cloth cozies, which I promise I'll wash twice a week. Remember, you're not walking diseases in need of correction. You're confident industry professionals who lead rich, rewarding lives and who don't need to prove anything to anybody."

  freedom led a salvo of applause.

  Kaitlin looked at John Doe. "John, would you like to be the first to try the hug machine?"

  Yes, please.

  "Very well. In you go."

  John sat on the little chair portion and then pulled a lever, which activated the two baby crib mattresses. With equal pressure applied from both sides to his torso, John appeared to be in bliss. "I want to live inside this machine."

  Kaitlin said, "This hug machine is now launched." She raised her glass: "To the hug machine!"

  The medicinal beverages took maybe fifteen seconds to kick in. A boom box was produced and people began to dance—well, okay, they moved their bodies quickly and in an odd manner.

  Steve came in. "Techies are dancing?"

  "I know," I said.

  "How did that happen?"

  "They're high as kites. Kam dumped a quarter-pound of premium coke into Mark's jCola."

  "Any left?"

  "All gone."

  "Shit. Well, maybe it'll improve their productivity."

  "I suspect they'll all start developing amazing ideas for new games, but they'll pass out around three a.m. The next morning it'll turn out that all they wrote down was the natural logarithm of yesterday's Jumble puzzle."

  "I need to score real bad," said Steve. "Can you drive me down­town?"

  Steve lost his driver's licence a week after we got back from China.

  "Steve, why don't you just kick your habit? I feel like I'm back doing Gord-O's Cheerios runs. At least at Costco I can park my car reasonably safely."

  "Don't knock smack if you haven't tried it."

  "Why can't you buy it in bulk?"

  "Ethan, if it was bulk, how could I keep it fresh? Good fresh smack is like good lettuce or fresh meat. Look—here comes Kam."

  "Hi, boys."

  Since he got back, Steve has decided to like Kam. Why? Because without Kam, Steve would never have discovered smack, and without smack, he would have been trapped inside his old personality forever. ("Ethan, do you think I enjoyed being Ned Flanders every diddily-day of the week? Fuck diddily-uck no. Every fibre of my being wanted to napalm the dry-erase boards, but instead I'd stand there smiling at pie charts, discussing how much of the budget we should allot for dried cranberries for the goodie bags at the Orlando staff retreat."

  "Dried cranberries—you mean Craisins?"

  'Yes, Craisins."

  "Kam, can you give Steve some smack so I can get on with work here?" I said.

  "Ethan, I promised your mother I wouldn't interfere with Steve's life any more."

  "Then let's just go downtown and get it over with," I said.

  In the car Steve had a jones and was rubbing his hands all over his body and shivering. "Steve, can you maybe keep your hands still?

  You're freaking me out, and you're flaking all over the upholstery. I just vacuumed it."

  "Kam is right. You really are middle-class."

  "You guys talk about me in those terms?"

  "Sure."

  I let it drop. "Which corner today?" Shopping for heroin with Steve is like choosing the right deli. I looked around; I'd never seen so many people looking for fixes.

  "I forgot," Steve said, "it's Welfare Wednesday."

  The alleys were a maze of graffitied brick, soiled Dumpsters and lame, dispirited pigeons atop crumbled pavement glazed with algae blooms. I could hear plastic mini bleach bottles popping under the car's wheels. Then I spotted three relatively together people, who looked like they had day jobs and fixed addresses, scoring from a shrunken-apple-headed hippie. They looked relatively jolly, and Steve said, "There."

  I never would have believed how normal some smack users can be. ("This is my coffee break. I have to get back and install the new Norton AntiVirus patch.") It turned out our hippie saleslady was named Tina, and she was handing out free lotto tickets with every purchase. Steve commended her. 'You should move up the food chain a bit. You're too good to be doing one-to-ones."

  "You think so?"

  "I sur
e do."

  "I've been thinking about it. But most of the time all I really want is to supply my own habit and maybe get some donuts and a new nightgown with no cigarette burns."

  "Tina, you can aim higher than that."

  "Mister, you're the wind beneath my wings."

  . . .

  Much news when I returned from the smack run. First off, Cowboy went nuts after three glasses of jCola and hooked up with some fine young lady using his pseudonym on chokingforit.com. They arranged to meet in the Denny's beside the building where his sister lives, and then in walked his sister, and it turned out that, yes, he'd arranged to get together with his sister. He's sworn off sex forever. He's never made that promise before.

  "It felt like that dream you get where your dick falls off and you put it back into place like it was a plastic dildo, except it was . . ." He drifted off.

  "Except it was what?" Podoids always demand the full story.

  "Except it was like looking at myself, except I had tits and female plumbing and . . ."

  "And?"

  "I don't want to talk about it any more."

  And then John Doe told me that he and Kam Fong were involved in some kind of business deal with Douglas Coupland.

  "What?"

  "Just what I told you. Hardware. LED screens, that's all I can say. It's what he was doing in China when he was there with you."

  "He said he was there to take pretentious arty-farty photos."

  "For God's sake, Ethan, wake up. He's a novelist. He lies for a living. And besides, Kam's always right about business. I've invested some money in the project already."

  "What?"

  "Me, too," said Bree.

  "Anyone else?"

  Everybody, including Kaitlin, raised their hands. "I don't believe this. Why didn't anyone tell me?"

  Kaitlin said, "He came here last week. You were out looking at the new Nikes at Brentwood Mall when Doug dropped by."

  "He came in here?"

  "He's a really great guy."

  This isn't happening. "Tell me, what is this screen project he's doing?"

  "We can't tell you."

  "What do you mean you can't tell me?"

  "We can't. We signed nondisclosure agreements."

  I looked at Kaitlin. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I didn't think you liked the guy. Besides, you know how stringent NDAs are."

  "But you and I live together and have sex several times a week."

  "You make it sound so romantic."

  The phone rang and I grabbed it. "Hello?"

  "Hi, dear."

  "Hi, Mom."

  "That was a fun party earlier this evening. How nice to see you introverts having a dab of happiness in your lives."

  "Yeah. I guess so."

  "Ethan, what is it I'm hearing in your voice?"

  "I'm just pissed at everybody here. They've all invested in one of Kam Fong's schemes—with Douglas Coupland, no less—and nobody told me about it."

  "The screen project?"

  "That's it. Don't tell me you've invested, too?"

  "Sorry, dear, but I did. It's a smart idea."

  "Can you tell me about it, then?"

  "I had to sign a nondisclosure form. So did your father."

  "What?"

  "Fair's fair, dear. And besides, I don't think I'd be comfortable if Kam Fong knew I'd violated my nondisclosure agreement."

  She had a point.

  "Okay, so what's up?"

  "I was wondering if you could ask your friend there for his mother's phone number."

  "John?"

  "That's him. I'd like to speak with his mother, freedom."

  Whatever Mom was up to, it didn't bode well for freedom's future. I paused too long, and this made Mom suspicious.

  "Ethan? What's going on?"

  "It's nothing, Mom."

  "I just don't know how I gave birth to such a suspicious son. All I want to do is ask freedom about a new boron phosphate fertilizer she's imported from Vietnam. It's raising her crop yield remarkably."

  I handed the phone to John Doe and went off to the coffee room to fume. I could feel clown rage welling up inside me and knew it was time to go back to my work.

  Kwantlen College Learning Annex

  Course 3072-A

  Assignment: Interview Someone

  You Think You Already Know

  "Hi, I'm Steve"

  by Kaitlin Anna Boyd Joyce

  Steve Lefkowitz, forty-five, is project director of a game I'm working on called sprite quest Recently Steve had a remarkable but not unpleasant change in personality . . . but why tell you when you can meet Steve for yourself?

  Kaitlin:

  Steve, when I arrived at the company I thought you were a sexless prig

  Steve:

  I think that was the general impression I gave everybody. There was a part of me that knew things were all wrong in my life. But in order to repress that emotion, I'd do things like wear sweaters draped over my shoulders with the arms twisted together. I didn't want to be who I was.

  Kaitlin:

  Where were you before coming to work here?

  Steve:

  I was at Toblerone.

  Kaitlin:

  You mean those European triangular chocolate bars that most North Americans associate with hotel mini-bars?

  Steve:

  You nailed it. It was as if Toblerone had been typecast and couldn't get any new roles outside of hotels. So I revamped its image. We had to "think outside the mini-bar."

  Kaitlin:

  That's a stupid joke.

  Steve:

  Tell me about it. But that joke was my life for two years. Not like there was much else going on.

  Kaitlin:

  Is there a Mrs. Lefkowitz?

  Steve:

  Once. Briefly. I usually scared women away by date number three—even the hard-core husband chasers. I was hard to be around. In my spare time I'd do things like go into your sock drawer and reorganize it so that it made better use of the space.

  Kaitlin:

  Yuck.

  Steve:

  The sock drawer was what usually ended things.

  Kaitlin:

  Don't you have a kid?

  Steve:

  He and his mother are back east. We never got married. I was a one-hit wonder in the kid department.

  Kaitlin:

  Let me get this back to work. Tell me about Toblerone.

  Steve:

  I'm one of the world's few experts on mini-bars.

  Kaitlin:

  Tell me something about mini-bars I probably don't know.

  Steve:

  Here's a good one about hotel rooms in general. Most hotels have an armoire-type thing where they stash the TV set. Next time you go into your hotel room, stand up on a chair and look on top of the armoire.

  Kaitlin:

  Why?

  Steve:

  When people are checking out of a room, it's where they dump stuff they don't want to take with them, but which they can't throw away in case the maid finds it. Stuff that could get them arrested or cause them shame.

  Kaitlin:

  Like what?

  Steve:

  Really harsh porn. Pot. Pills. Coins. Touristy things that people gave them that they don't really want. It accumulates from one year to the next. In a Portland hotel I once found a pile of Italian lire, three copies of Screw and a $200 photography book inscribed To Dennis—without you I could never have conceived this book, let alone had the courage to see it to its completion. I owe you everything, Diane.

  Kaitlin:

  Sounds like Diane needed a reality sandwich.

  Steve:

  The Dianes of this world usually get hosed, don't they?

  Kaitlin:

  It's a law of the universe. But back to mini-bars and your Toblerone victory. You took them from near bankruptcy and made them a global victor in the hazelnut—milk chocolate category. I found a picture of you on the cover of PLUM
agazine.

  Steve:

  Yeah. Everyone expected me to try to coast on my laurels. Maybe I'd go in and revamp the cashew sector. But I wanted a fresh challenge. That's why I decided to go into producing games.

  Kaitlin:

  You play them?

  Steve:

  Good God, no. They're as boring as dirt. The little brats who obsess about them make me sick with worry for the future of the species.

  Kaitlin:

  So why—

  Steve:

  Marketers like to believe that their skills are fully translatable into any other product group. Gaming seemed like a natural challenge.

  Kaitlin:

  Once you were hired, you took a skateboard game that was happily chugging along and changed it into a skateboard game with a turtle as the star.

  Steve:

  Shitty idea, huh? I'm not creative, and yet I felt a need to maintain the illusion of being creative. I wrecked your skateboard game. Sorry about that.

  Kaitlin:

  At least you're honest. But, Steve, the reason for this interview is to ask you about your recent personality change.

  Steve:

  Pretty freaky, isn't it?

  Kaitlin:

  To say the least. What happened?

  Steve:

  Well, I had a crush on a woman, and I think I was a bit of a pest around her.

  Kaitlin:

  Stalking?

  Steve:

  Not quite. But I was a real nuisance, and she had to do something to get me out of her hair. So one morning I got in my car to go to work, and a guy got in the passenger side—fake moustache and the works—and he had a gun. He said we had to drive out of the city, so we did. I was actually feeling really good, because at least something interesting was happening in my life. You'd think I'd be scared, but no. So we went into the valley. We stopped, and he told me to get out, and I did, and then he handcuffed me, and there was some other guy there with a panel van. They told me to get in, and then they injected me with something. Heroin, I found out later.