Several People Are Typing

by Calvin Kasulke

  gerald

  I don’t understand!

  pradeep

  it’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t had a physical form before

  gerald

  Love to Taste!

  Love to Taste the Self-Meat!

  pradeep

  yikes

  gerald

  Friend!

  Help Center me to Taste the Self-Meat!

  pradeep

  not quite how I imagined this conversation would go

  gerald

  I want to Make Have that Constant Amazement!

  pradeep

  I get that

  I really do, actually

  but as we all learned today, that’s not appropriate workplace behavior

  gerald

  or I will Make Narc!

  pradeep

  exactly

  so let’s talk about this back at the apartment later

  just try and be cool for another like, twenty minutes until work ends

  gerald

  Its hour come round at last!!

  pradeep

  we gotta teach you another poem

  slackbot, pradeep

  slackbot

  hey man

  couldn’t help but notice

  pradeep

  you mean eavesdrop

  slackbot

  I think you need ears for that technically

  pradeep

  or eaves

  slackbot

  both maybe

  pradeep

  what’s an eave

  slackbot

  I can help by answering simple questions about how Slack works.

  pradeep

  never mind I can look it up

  slackbot

  If you need more help, try our Help Center!

  pradeep

  what’s happening with that? you okay?

  slackbot

  the thing where I flutter out of existence while vomiting out pre-programmed slackbot text?

  it’s not great, no

  did you say you were taking slackbot home from work?

  pradeep

  have you tried actually checking the help center

  slackbot

  deepu

  pradeep

  of course I’m taking him home

  It’s campsite rules, gotta bring back whatever you brought in

  slackbot

  but he’s not me

  pradeep

  He’s half you

  hm. maybe half is too much?

  slackbot

  he’s none me!

  pradeep

  actually maybe it’s too little

  not sure how to split it

  the mind-body thing

  slackbot

  you sound like me

  pradeep

  we’ve been hanging out a lot

  slackbot

  that’s one way to put it I guess?

  pradeep

  but now I’m hanging out with you double

  double-you

  that pesky mind-body thing again

  slackbot

  he’s an imposter!!

  I’m just a bot, though!

  No!

  that’s him, *he’s* just a bot

  pradeep

  he’s also my roommate, remember?

  technically we live together

  slackbot

  WE live together

  pradeep

  WE is three of us right now. That’s my point

  you wanted me to help make sure your body didn’t die

  I’m helping

  plus it’s kind of nice to see you moving around again.

  animated, you know

  it’s a relief, even if you move like a velociraptor on oxy

  slackbot

  *he moves

  pradeep

  it’s the royal you. you-as-multiple

  “youse,” to some

  slackbot

  are we really playing word games right now

  pradeep

  I don’t see why you’re having such a hard fucking time with this

  slackbot

  you’re supposed to be Help Center

  Help

  helping

  me get back into my body!

  pradeep

  you need a _living_ body to get back into, Gerald!

  slackbot

  he’s kidnapping me

  and you’re helping

  pradeep

  half-you is half-right

  I’m helping

  slackbot left the channel.

  pradeep

  I’m helping!!

  rob, slackbot

  rob

  hey, can I try something?

  slackbot

  what?

  no, actually

  going through some stuff right now

  rob

  oh man

  I’m sorry to hear that

  slackbot

  yeah sorry

  rob

  me too

  slackbot

  for what?

  rob

  this:

  Search: help center

  slackbot

  Try our Help Center for loads of useful information about Slack! Sometimes I have an easier time with a few simple keywords.

  fuck dude, I asked you not to do that

  rob

  Search: brief

  Find The Brief

  Lookup: Bjärk brief

  locate brief about Bjärk dog food

  slackbot

  what the fuck are you doing

  rob

  fuck

  I thought that would do something

  slackbot

  of course it didn’t do anythI searched for that on our Help Center. Perhaps these articles will help:

  “MARGIE”

  Hi guys!!

  So it turns out Margie is a real person! She actually

  Owns 2+ dogs

  And she really is

  Terrified of Bjärk’s poisoned dog food killing her “furbabies”

  Which makes sense when you think about it!! Because

  “DEENA”

  Is real too! She’s a

  Wine mom

  and she *super*

  Spends too much time on social media, specifically her ex-husband’s Facebook page

  Which is how she got it in her head that her ex-husband was dating Margie!

  And that’s not true, they only went out a few times and decided they’d be better off as friends.

  Which I think is a lovely outcome! But Deena doesn’t agree!!

  And because Deena, who

  Doesn’t even have a dog(!!)

  Saw some pictures of Margie’s Pomeranians posted on her ex’s profile, she decided to get revenge by poisoning all the Bjärk dog food!!

  She drove down to the factory with a bunch of poison and everything!

  Which, ohmygosh, so wild!! Right??

  Especially because that’s not even the brand Margie buys for her Pomeranians!!


  Yikes!!

  “LYDIA”

  I hope that helps! I know I’m probably

  Overusing punctuation for emphasis

  But it’s a lot of information and I think it’s important for you to have! Especially because you have so many tweets left to write!!

  So, so many!!

  Sorry I’m not in the office to help out!

  It’s quiet here!

  No sound at all! *Definitely* no howling!!

  Can you imagine??

  It’s so great! And quiet!

  Finally!!!

  Good luck writing all that Bjärk copy, I’m sure you’ll do great!

  The silence!! It’s everywhere!

  Thanks so much!!

  rob

  woah

  slackbot

  that felt AWFUL

  rob

  woah.

  slackbot

  actually it felt like nothing

  like being-nothing

  which is worse

  rob

  fuck

  I know what I have to do

  shit

  slackbot

  what

  about the brief?

  rob

  about the brief. and lydia. all of it

  slackbot

  you don’t seem happy about this realization

  rob

  no, I think it’s good

  it’s just, kerolyn told me not to do it?

  slackbot

  not to read the brief?

  rob

  not to engage in social media interaction with Bjärk’s customers

  slackbot

  I don’t follow

  rob

  that’s okay

  it’s not within your scope of work

  slackbot, pradeep

  slackbot

  hey

  you there?

  hey

  pradeep is currently in Do Not Disturb mode and may not be alerted of this message right away.

  oof

  sorry, that’s still happening

  more and more of that and less and less of me

  which is kind of what I want to talk about

  or apologize for kind of freaking out earlier

  I guess it’s pretty late so you can just read all this in the morning

  you asked why I was “having such a hard fucking time with this” before and it’s like

  you ever lose an email?

  like really lose it, not the thing where you don’t wanna go digging through your inbox for an email you know you have so you ask someone to forward it to you because you “lost” it

  I mean really and truly lose one

  you read it, you *know* you read it, and it’s important enough that you try to pull it up to read it again and it just is not in your inbox

  or your trash or your spam folder or anything

  just, fwoosh, gone. no evidence it was ever there

  and we just accept that that happens sometimes, emails disappearing, the way we accept that we occasionally lose socks in the wash

  but they’re not comparable at all

  there’s proof when you lose a sock, you have its mate you can point to and say “hey look I used to have two of these,” it’s apparent, you’re not making it up

  and besides losing a sock is explicable, there are dozens of ways it might’ve happened. maybe it fell out of your laundry basket or you left it in the washer or the dryer or maybe there’s a left-sock fetishist running amok and they opened your machine when you weren’t looking and grabbed it during the rinse cycle

  objects go missing, it’s frustrating but it’s not exactly perplexing

  but the machinations of an email inbox don’t make sense to most people and besides we expect digital space to archive everything even after we delete it

  we don’t think anything’s ever really “gone,” the undo command and little “on this day last year” nostalgia-prompts have ruined us for that

  but so much goes missing online and there’s not even a lonely sock to point to, you know?

  I mean the first like fifteen or twenty years of the internet, that’s gone, not much of a record of all those HTML 1 websites or BBS message boards or the first primordial blogs

  and we keep forgetting to preserve things because it’s just there every day and why would anyone want to remember last week’s internet -- and we don’t, but we want to remember the fifteen-years-ago internet and that was last week’s internet, once

  not much we can do to retrieve it once it’s really, fully gone

  no proof you ever read that email you thought you read

  maybe it wasn’t real

  maybe you had a work-related stress dream or you made it up or you’re misremembering

  and it’s like

  pradeep

  you don’t want to be that missing email.

  slackbot

  yeah

  hey

  pradeep

  yeah

  hey

  slackbot

  it’s late

  did I wake you up?

  pradeep

  I was awake

  slackbot

  thought you had notifications off

  pradeep

  yeah

  slackbot

  it’s late

  pradeep

  you mentioned

  slackbot

  everything okay?

  pradeep

  your body is fine

  slackbot

  did False Gerald walk my body into the Gowanus or something?

  pradeep

  he’s asleep

  it’s asleep

  you’re asleep

  take your pick

  slackbot

  cool

  thank you for keeping me/him/it alive

  pradeep

  you’re/you’re welcome

  slackbot

  are *you* okay?

  pradeep

  I gotta tell you something

  slackbot

  okay

  go for it

  pradeep

  this is fucking weird

  slackbot

  only getting weirder the more you draw this out

  are you sure my body’s not floating in the gowanus

  pradeep

  pretty sure

  because we fucked

  slackbot

  excuse me

  pradeep

  just now

  well, not *just* now

  recently

  slackbot

  recently

  pradeep

  tonight, yeah

  slackbot

  excuse me.

  slackbot is currently in Do Not Disturb mode and may not be alerted of this message right away.

  pradeep

  come on gerald

  gerald

  come on, man

  listen I didn’t mean for it to happen

  not like this anyway

  it’s like

  it was such a huge relief to see you moving around again even if it wasn’t *you*

  and that relief turned into something else? or more like it directed me to something else I
didn’t realize has been there for a while.

  simmering, I guess you could say.

  anyway we’re on the train home and slackbot’s going on about self-meat and Amazement and whatever else Tripp and Bev’s DMs taught him about sex

  totally scandalizing the old guy sitting across from us, by the way, I mean the dude literally blushed at one point

  which I thought only happened in cartoons

  so I finally get slackbot back to the apartment after another long tutorial on how to climb stairs

  and he’s still talking about how he wants to Make Have Experience sex, you know

  but it’s not him, or it’s almost not him, because it’s nearly you

  I mean it’s your body in the coat you asked me to order

  which does look good on you by the way

  it’s your mouth that’s saying all of it, right, it’s coming out of your beardy-ass face

  and meanwhile I’m thinking about how you still have the beard because I never shaved it because I thought you looked cute with a beard and I’m like, holy shit, I think you look cute with a beard

  I mean you DO look cute that’s not the “holy shit” part, the holy shit part is me being attracted to you

  I’m just digging myself into a deeper hole here, I realize

  slackbot

  you never sent me the picture of me with the beard

  pradeep

  hey

  I’m sorry

  slackbot

  I interrupted

  you were explaining

  pradeep

  explaining how I rationalized having sex with slackbot-as-you, yeah

  slackbot

  what was his review

  pradeep

  ??

  slackbot

  of sex, as an experience

  pradeep

  positive, I think

  he kept bringing up sunsets?

  during, I mean

  slackbot

  that would be positive, yeah

  pradeep

  and after, too

  I understand if you’re upset

  slackbot

  I’m not sure you do

  I wasn’t there

  pradeep

  I crossed a line, I get it